A sinister Jewish plot

Editorial

The Jews are plotting a takeover! This ancient refrain is the gist of an open letter sent by a group of New Democrats to party leader Jack Layton recently.

In the letter, which was publicly distributed, Arif Raza and 25 other signatories accuse the federal NDP of shifting toward pro-Israel policies. The letter-writers, who include several candidates in June's federal election, cite the alleged silence of Layton and the party's foreign affairs spokesperson Alexa McDonough on recent developments, including what they refer to as Israel's "apartheid wall." They also criticize two NDP members of Parliament and the party's president for accepting a trip to Israel paid for by the Canada-Israel Committee.

The letter notes that "the entire world community" has condemned Israel and implies that Layton and the NDP have remained silent. In his open response, Layton justly and correctly responds that, in the face of the entire world's condemnation, the NDP has remained far from silent.

Indeed, the federal NDP has provided some of the harshest attacks in the global swarming of Israel. Burnishing his anti-Zionist credentials, Layton used the opportunity to lambaste Israeli policies, giving lip-service, as usual, to "the right of Israel to statehood and security." Yada, yada, yada.

The activists' letter urges the NDP to "distinguish between the victim and victimizer." It would appear that dead Palestinians are victims; dead Israelis are victimizers.

The humor in this scenario, if there is any, is in its unintentional irony. The writers depict their anti-Israel policies as "critical and historically NDP issues," adding: "We have stood by the party through its good and bad times and have contributed to its strength, both in terms of time, commitment, as well as money, without asking for much in return."

Perhaps. Yet there seems to be a blank in the institutional memory of the writers. The NDP, and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation before it were, from the 1940s arguably through the 1970s, the strongest Zionist parties in Canada. Zionism and socialism – in Canada and Israel – were inseparable until recent years and "historically NDP issues," if the critics had this memory, were avowedly pro-Zionist. Without the work of Zionsit activists, in fact, it is arguable that there would not even be today a socialist party in Canada. If there has been a shift in NDP policy recently, it isn't toward Israel.

Forgetfulness is one thing; duplicity another. The alleged shift of NDP policy is, they write, "troubling and problematic not just to Canadians of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African ancestry, but [to] all equity-seeking citizens."

But truly "equity-seeking citizens" recognize that Israel has legitimate security claims and that even Israel's worst "atrocities" pale against the beheadings, stonings, suicide bombings,institutionalized misogyny, cleptocracy, theocracy and dictatorships that deny equity to citizens throughout the Middle East outside Israel. The writers, of course, are free to claim the mantle of "equity-seeking citizens," but their selectivity has to be counted for something.

This is not to say that Israel's critics bear any responsibility for these events elsewhere in the Middle East. But it is fair to suggest that their silence in the face of other atrocities belies their claims to be "equity-seeking citizens." Life is about choices and in choosing to fight Israel, when the rest of the Middle East is a cauldron of human inequity, the signatories have made clear that their commitment to seeking equity ends, more or less, at the Jordan River. It is quaint to paint Israel as the sole enemy of equity-seeking Canadians. But the facts, irrelevant as they are to Israel's enemies, paint a very different picture.

But the most notable part of the letter is the conspiracy it purports to unveil.

"We may not have reacted with such alarm, had we not come across a document released recently by the Canadian Jewish Congress," says the letter, which, at this point, veers into the realm of McCarthy-era conspiracy." This CJC document states as its objective, the need to influence the left in Canada and to make it abandon support of the Palestinians while bringing it closer to Israel's positions."

What this letter demonstrates, most alarmingly, is a misrepresentation of the very nature of a democratic society. The essence of democracy, in Canada and elsewhere, is involvement in the political process to influence policy. When other groups do this, it is "big-tent politics" or "grassroots activism." When Jews or other Zionists do it, it is, as the letter puts it, "a result of lobbying and undue influence by the CJC and its partners within the NDP."

Translation: The Jews are plotting a takeover!

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