October 26, 2015: There is never any possible justification for terrorism

 By Michael Regenstreif

As I’ve mentioned before, this column is generally the last thing written before an issue of the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin goes to press, so I often use this space to comment on issues of concern that are in the news while being as up-to-date as is possible when we have to go press 10 days before the official publication date and about a week before the issue begins to arrive in subscribers’ mailboxes.

The two news stories that have dominated my attention as we worked on this issue have been the federal election campaign here in Canada and the terrible wave of terrorism in Israel.

As I write, we are three days away from the October 19 election day. While the votes will have been counted by the time you read this, we can only look at the opinion polls – which may or may not reflect what actually happens at the only polls that ultimately count – and speculate on what will happen and who will form the next government. I expect to have more to say in our next issue on what did happen when we voted.

The latest wave of terrorism has been brutal – at least seven innocent Israelis have been murdered in terrorist attacks in recent days – and so utterly senseless in that the terrorists, many of whom seem to be lone wolves attacking independently, have been inspired, as Barbara Crook notes in her My Israel column, by absolutely false lies and rumours that Israel will seize control or even destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Dome of the Rock, a Muslim holy place built on the site of the ancient Jewish Temples in Jerusalem.

These rumours are not new. When the Second Intifada was launched in 2000, it was said to be in response to a visit to the Temple Mount by Ariel Sharon and his plan to seize control of the Muslim holy place. It turned out, of course, that PLO leader Yasser Arafat had long planned the Intifada.

Then, as now, Israel has been unequivocal that the Al-Aqsa Mosque will remain under the control of the Jordanian Muslim Waqf, as it has since Israel captured eastern Jerusalem from Jordan in the Six-Day War of 1967 and reunited the city.

While much of this latest wave of terrorism has been propagated by so-called lone wolves – some of them very young teenagers – they have been egged on by the highest levels of the Palestinian leadership. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas repeated the claim that Israel would take control of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and has even followed in Arafat’s footsteps by denying the historical existence of the Jewish Temples.

In what was perhaps his most obscene moment of incitement, Abbas took to Palestinian TV on October 14 to claim that Ahmed Mansara, a 13-year-old Palestinian boy, was executed “in cold blood” by Israel.

In fact, Mansara, who was filmed stabbing a Jewish man in Jerusalem, was injured when hit by a car as he attempted to flee the scene of his crime and was recovering well in an Israeli hospital.

Two days later, an unnamed official in Abbas’ office tried to walk back the claim saying Abbas had been misled before making the execution claim. So far, though, Abbas himself has remained silent.

In a speech at Harvard University on October 14, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry blamed the existence of Israeli settlements in the West Bank for the terrorism.

Of course, history tells us that Palestinian terrorism against Israel began years before there was ever an Israeli settlement, and that terrorism from Gaza only increased in the years after Israel shut down its settlements there. The next day, the U.S. State Department walked back Kerry’s statements, suggesting what he meant was the settlements pose an impediment to achieving a two-state solution.

There is never any possible justification for terrorism. In fact, terrorism is always counter-productive as no government (of any country) can allow its citizens to live under such threats for long. The quest for a just peace, for a viable two-state solution to Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians, is always set back by such violence.

Let us hope there will soon be a return to calm and that the quest for real peace will resume.

October 12, 2015: Next government may not be obvious on election night

By Michael Regenstreif

The longest federal election campaign in modern Canadian history is finally into the homestretch and, as I write on October 2, it’s still a horserace with the three main parties – Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, Tom Mulcair’s New Democratic Party, and Justin Trudeau’s Liberals – very close in the opinion polls. The latest data shows the Conservatives with such a small lead over the Liberals that it’s within the margin of error, with the NDP not far behind.

If the current polling trends are an accurate reflection of what will happen on October 19 – and that remains to be seen given both the volatility of the electorate and the difficulty pollsters have had in recent years achieving reliable polling results – then it is all but certain none of the three main parties will elect enough members of Parliament to form a majority government. The question then becomes which party will form the government?

Conventionally, in a minority situation, we assume the Governor General will call on the party that elects the greatest number of MPs to form the government. That’s the way it’s usually worked in the past when the competition to form government has been between two main parties with third parties well behind in their seat counts.

This time, though, it looks like all three main parties could well end up within striking distance of each other with just a few seats separating the first-place party from the second and third. This presents a number of possible scenarios, which could turn the days, or possibly weeks, following October 19 into a whole new ballgame.

The way parliamentary systems actually work is that it’s not necessarily the party with the most elected members that forms the government. Rather, it is the party – or a coalition of parties – best seen to command the confidence of the majority of members that establishes government.

In Israel, where no party ever elects a majority of members of the Knesset, it’s not always the party with the most seats that heads the governing coalition (and it is always a coalition there), it is the party that can make the deals that give it the confidence of the majority. In 2009, for example, Tzipi Livni’s Kadima party received more votes and elected more members than Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud, but it was Netanyahu who was able to cobble together a majority coalition making him prime minister.

Could Canada, after October 19, 2015, be in for the kind of negotiations that take place after every Israeli election?

Let’s assume the current polling numbers are somewhat accurate and that they hold up through election day. The analysis at threehundredeight.com – a site that aggregates and analyzes results from all the main polling fi rms – suggests each of the three main parties will win more than 100 seats.

If that’s what happens and the parties all insist on going their separate ways, we’ll have an unstable minority government and will almost certainly be in for another election very soon.

However, if any two of the three main parties can form some sort of coalition, it would have the support of a solid majority of members sitting in the House of Commons.

Realistically, it’s hard to imagine the Conservatives working with either of the other two parties.

And while the other two parties may be closer ideologically to each other than either is to the Conservatives, this has been a campaign marked by their leaders’ seeming disdain for each other.

Is there enough common ground between the Liberals and the NDP to form a stable coalition? Would one leader yield to the other as prime minister? Would we see a power-sharing agreement – as we sometimes see in Israel – where one is prime minister for two years and then they switch?

Both the Liberals and the NDP have talked about electoral reform that would result in a House of Commons whose membership more accurately reflects national voting patterns than the first-past-the-post system in each riding that has been in play since Confederation. If a proportional or partial-proportional representation system is introduced in Canada, it may well mean we’ll never elect a majority government again and Israeli-style negotiations leading to Israeli-style coalition governments becomes the norm here.

In the past, when we’ve elected a majority government or a minority government with a significant plurality, the election night results have been quickly obvious.

That may not be the case on October 19.

September 21, 2015: Canada must somehow act during the Syrian refugee crisis

By Michael Regenstreif

I’m writing this column on September 11 – just before this issue of the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin goes to press and just before we close our office for Rosh Hashanah – and the news over the past several weeks, and, indeed, our federal election campaign, has been dominated by the Syrian refugee crisis. With millions of refugees in camps in Jordan and Turkey and with thousands upon thousands attempting to find safety in Europe, it has been described it as the worst humanitarian crisis since the Second World War.

The world’s collective hearts were broken early this month, when a photo of the drowned body of three-year-old Alan Kurdi, washed up on a Turkish beach after the small boat his family was in capsized. The boat, meant to hold a maximum of eight people, carried 16 desperate refugees. The young boy’s mother and brother also drowned and the father was the family’s only survivor.

The Kurdi family’s tragedy hit particularly hard here in this country, when we learned the family had hoped ultimately to join relatives already in Canada.

The Syrian refugee crisis is not a new phenomenon. The brutal civil war, which has seen hundreds of thousands killed and millions more displaced from their homes, has been raging for more than four years. The terrible situation in Syria was incomprehensibly tragic and unbearable even before ISIS inserted itself into the conflict in 2014, making everything unimaginably worse. It was seemingly impossible to find a credible faction in the civil war worthy of support. All seemed to be brutal and cruel and with no regard for the innocent civilians whose ways of life – if not their very lives – were being destroyed.

Watching these events from afar, Canadians want our government to do something to help solve the problem – but we watch with a feeling of helplessness, knowing that no matter how many refugees we bring to Canada, it will solve but a drop in the bucket of human suffering.

Still, though, we need to see our country do something. And, so, it was heartbreaking to open the morning newspaper today and learn that Canada’s immigration department, the department responsible for processing refugee applications, returned more than $350 million in unspent funds to the Canadian treasury between 2011 and 2014. Those unspent dollars imply Canada has not done all we could – or even what we have budgeted for – since the crisis began.

As Jews, we know something of what it means to be refugees. Many of our ancestors arrived in Canada between the 1880s and 1920s fleeing the brutal antisemitic pogroms of Eastern Europe. More Jews arrived in Canada after the Second World War as Holocaust survivors; and more again when life became unbearable for Jews in many Muslim countries following the creation of the State of Israel.

And we remember when the Canadian government’s policy toward Jewish refugees attempting to flee the Holocaust was “none is too many.”

The Syrian refugee crisis is incredibly complicated, and I can’t pretend to have any answers as to how much we can possibly do now to alleviate the crisis – or what ultimately can be done to end the civil war that has brought about this seemingly unresolvable, catastrophic situation. We live in a world that seems to be so cruelly extreme on so many levels.

I do know, though, that Canada, indeed the world, cannot just stand by. We must do something.

September 7, 2015: Vote for whichever party best represents the sum of your views and values

By Michael Regenstreif

As I write, on August 28, we’re already about four weeks into the campaign for the October 19 federal election with another seven weeks still to go – the longest federal election campaign since 1872, which was long before the days of the quick radio and TV coverage that developed in the 20th century or the more recent development of 24-hour news channels and social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter.

Seven weeks out from election day, the latest polls indicate this may be the tightest three-way race ever with the Conservative Party under Stephen Harper, the New Democratic Party (NDP) under Tom Mulcair and the Liberal Party under Justin Trudeau all in real competition – not just to form the government, but also for second place official opposition status. The NDP has led by a small margin in most of the polls to date, and, if it ultimately comes out on top, it will be the party’s first time in power after sitting as the official opposition for the first time ever after the last election in 2011.

Much has been made over the years since Harper first became prime minister in 2006 of Canada’s very real friendship with Israel. And, while there is no question that the Canada-Israel relationship has only strengthened in recent years, it was a process that began under previous Liberal governments.

It should also be pointed out that Harper has not changed Canada’s official policy in regard to Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians. Canada does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank or east Jerusalem and supports a negotiated two-state solution to the conflict. There is virtually no difference in the positions of all three leading parties and all three potential prime ministers on this issue.

I bring this up because I’ve encountered a few people in the community who say that Harper’s Conservatives are the only possible choice for Jews in this election because of their support for Israel.

But no party or leader is running on a single issue, and I don’t believe that voters – or a community of voters – should cast their vote based on a single issue. And I know that the other parties and leaders are also sincerely supportive of Israel. So, I have no doubt that Israel’s friendship with Canada is secure and will endure no matter which party and leader forms the government after October 19.

The Communications and Community Relations Committee of the Jewish Federation of Ottawa is planning roundtable discussions in the coming days with Ottawa-area candidates from each of the main parties (including the Green Party) on issues of specific concern to the Jewish community. We’ll be reporting on these meetings in the September 21 issue of the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin. And beyond issues of specific concern to the Jewish community, there are many other issues of concern to all Canadians. I urge everyone to follow the election campaign, both at the national level and in your particular riding, know where each of the parties stands on all issues that concern you, and cast your vote for the candidate from whichever party best represents the sum of your views and values.