August 19, 2019: A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian

By Michael Regenstreif

No matter what one may feel about the policies of “The Squad,” four women of colour elected in 2018 to their first terms in the United States Congress, or even the antisemitic tropes that were tweeted by one of them, there was no denying the explicit racism employed by U.S. President Donald Trump in his attacks on them last month.

“So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” Trump tweeted on July 14.

And that was only the beginning of Trump’s tweet storm.

Just for the record, three of the four congresswomen Trump was attacking – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib – were born in the United States. The fourth, Ilhan Omar, was born in Somalia and was brought to the U.S. legally as a refugee when she was a child. Omar became an American citizen in 2000 when she was 17.

By the way, earlier this year when Jewish organizations and congressional colleagues came down hard on Omar for employing antisemitic tropes in criticizing Israeli government policies toward the Palestinians, she did apologize for them – even writing an op-ed in the Washington Post describing Israel as the “historical homeland” of the Jews and reiterating her support for a two-state solution to the conflict, calling for “internationally recognized borders, which allow for both Israelis and Palestinians to have their own sanctuaries and self-determination.”

So, while Omar did come to understand why Jewish people were hurt by her words, and apologized for them, Trump has shown no such understanding.

Even leaders of some of the U.S.’s closest allies took the unusual step of calling out the American president for remarks he made about domestic political opponents.

“The prime minister’s view is that the language used to refer to these women was completely unacceptable,” said the spokesperson for then-prime minister Theresa May of the United Kingdom.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she rejects Trump’s racist comments and stands in solidarity with the congresswomen he targeted.

“That is not how we do things in Canada. A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian, and the diversity of our country is actually one of our greatest strengths and a source of tremendous resilience and pride for Canadians, and we will continue to defend that,” said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Trudeau’s comments were inspiring to hear at that time. Our Canadian Jewish community, and so many other ethnic and religious communities in Canada, have thrived in a country that takes justified pride in its multiculturalism.

But, and it’s a big but, “a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian” is not necessarily true when Quebec, our second-largest province, encompassing nearly a quarter of our population, uses the notwithstanding clause to override the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to prevent people working in the public sector from wearing kippot, hijabs, turbans and other expressions of religious belief, including Stars of David, under its Bill 21.

For example, Minister of National Defence Harjit Sajjan is a Sikh whose religion mandates that he wear a turban – a turban that he wears in the House of Commons, a turban that he wore as a Canadian military officer serving on deployments to Bosnia and Herzegovina and three times to Afghanistan, and a turban he wore during an 11-year career as a Vancouver police officer and detective. Now, though, because of that turban, Sajjan cannot be a police officer in Quebec.

With a federal election two months away, are Trudeau and the other federal leaders and candidates willing to defend our diversity – in both official languages – and ensure that “a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian” is more than just a platitude?

July 22, 2019: We know not to trivialize the Holocaust

By Michael Regenstreif

Last month, U.S. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a left-wing progressive who was first elected in her New York district in 2018, came under attack when she referred to the detention centres used by the United States government to warehouse Central American migrants – including children needlessly separated from their parents – as “concentration camps.”

As horrible as the conditions are at those detention centres – and from all credible reports the conditions are truly horrible – Ocasio-Cortez quickly came under sharp attack from political opponents, scholars, and several American Jewish organizations for her use of a term that conjures comparisons to the camps used by Germany’s Nazi regime in its perpetration of the Holocaust, a genocide in which six million Jews were murdered in an attempt to eradicate European Jewry.

“Concentration camps assured a slave labour supply to help in the Nazi war effort, even as the brutality of life inside the camps helped assure the ultimate goal of ‘extermination through labour.’ Learn about concentration camps,” Yad Vashem – The World Holocaust Remembrance Center, in Jerusalem, tweeted to Ocasio-Cortez.

Even U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, a candidate for the Democratic Party’s 2020 U.S. presidential nomination usually seen as an ally of Ocasio-Cortez, distanced himself from the comparison. While saying, “locking up children and keeping them in deplorable conditions for weeks in places that are not meant for kids … is absolutely unacceptable,” Sanders stressed that he didn’t and wouldn’t “use that terminology.”

We have learned not to trivialize the Holocaust – the worst genocide and the ultimate manifestation of antisemitism in history – with comparisons that do not rise to that horrible standard. That is why objections were raised to Ocasio-Cortez’s use of the term “concentration camps” and why we bristle when Israel is fallaciously accused of behaving like Nazis toward the Palestinians.

And yet, perhaps the most trivial of comparisons to the Holocaust in recent memory came from no less a figure than Rafi Peretz, Israel’s minister of education.

Peretz, who served as chief military rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces from 2010 to 2016, was elected leader of the Jewish Home Party in advance of the last Israeli election after former leader and former education minister Naftali Bennett, and former justice minister Ayelet Shaked, left Jewish Home. In a deal brokered by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Jewish Home and Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power), a Kahanist successor to the banned Kach Party, stood together in the April election as the United Right, winning five seats in the short-lived 21st Knesset. A new election is scheduled for September 17 after Netanyahu failed to build a governing coalition.

On July 1, during an Israeli cabinet meeting, Peretz compared intermarriage – when a Jew marries a non-Jew – to “a second Holocaust” and rhetorically said that six million Jews have been lost to intermarriage over the past 70 years.

The comment came after a cabinet briefing on trends in Jewish communities around the world from Dennis Ross, chair of the Jewish People policy Institute.

As Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League tweeted in response to Peretz, “It’s inconceivable to use the term ‘Holocaust’ to describe Jews choosing to marry non-Jews. It trivializes the Shoah. It alienates so many members of our community. This kind of baseless comparison does little other than inflame and offend.”

Surely, the minister of education of the State of Israel should have known better.

June 24, 2019: No predicting Israeli election outcomes

By Michael Regenstreif

Israelis went to the polls in an early election on April 9 – an election did not need to be held until seven months later. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, faced with increasing dissension within his right-wing coalition, a new and credible opposition party, and the possibility of looming criminal indictments in three corruption cases, sensed he would fare better sooner than later in his quest to remain head of Israel’s government.

When the votes were tallied, Netanyahu’s Likud Party had 35 seats, the party’s best showing since Ariel Sharon led Likud to 38 seats in 2003. And although the new Blue and White Party – led by Benny Gantz, a former chief of the Israel Defense Forces – also won 35 seats, Netanyahu was tasked by President Reuven Rivlin with forming a coalition government because the right-wing bloc of parties who indicated their likely support for him formed a majority of the 120 members elected to the Knesset.

Then came the wheeling and dealing necessary to form a government with majority support. Such negotiations typically involve promising control over certain ministries and policies to particular parties, many of which, like the religious parties, are narrowly focused and thus wield influence far greater than their percentage of the vote would indicate. For example, in the April election, Shas and United Torah Judaism, the two religious parties combined, took less than 12 per cent of the vote, but Netanyahu could not have formed a coalition without them – and their presence in the government would ensure continued haredi Orthodox control of religious matters in Israel.

But Netanyahu’s potential coalition also needed the five seats of former defence minister (and former foreign minister) Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu Party – and that’s where the wrench got thrown into the coalition-building spokes. One of Liberman’s main planks is the end of exemptions allowing haredi men studying Torah to avoid military service – which the religious parties insist on maintaining. Many Israeli pundits expected Liberman would back down from his position in the coalition negotiations and become defence minister in the new government. But he called Netanyahu’s bluff and the prime minister’s time, and extended time, to form a government ran out. Israelis will vote again in a do-over election on September 17. Netanyahu’s early-election strategy didn’t work.

Opinion polls taken right after the new election date was announced indicated the possibility of similar results to the April election. Those polls also suggested Liberman’s party might increase its seat-count from five to eight, or even 10.

According to the cliché, a week is a long time in politics, which means there are about a dozen long times to go before the election. A lot can happen over the next three months and there might well be new alliances that come together and older alliances that fall apart (recall that in the 2013 election, Netanyahu’s Likud and Liberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu ran as a joint ticket). Some parties, like the once-mighty Labor, will have new leaders and it remains to be seen what will happen with the New Right Party of once powerful Netanyahu ministers Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked, which fell just short of the electoral threshold for Knesset seats in April. Although they are firmly on the right, any loyalty they might have had to Netanyahu is in question after he dumped them from his provisional cabinet in the wake of the new election call.

So, the results of the September vote are not a foregone conclusion. Will Gantz’s Blue and White – which virtually tied Netanyahu’s Likud in the April vote – take more seats this time and have enough possible coalition support to be tasked to form a government?

There is no doubt that Netanyahu was weakened by his failure to form a government after the last election and should he win again in September it’s very possible that the same stalemate that led to the new election will still be there.

And complicating matters further are that Netanyahu’s pre-indictment hearings on the three corruption charges are scheduled for October 2 and 3, just when he’d be trying to put a coalition together if he is successful on voting day. Those hearings were originally set for July but were rescheduled after Netanyahu’s lawyers argued they needed more time after the April election. Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit has already rejected Netanyahu’s request for further delay.

As noted, there are 12 long times to go before the election.