The JI and the election

Editorial

As election day – this Tuesday, Oct. 14 – approaches, the fate of this country and the future of Israel rests on what you read in the Jewish Independent. At least, that's the impression one might gather by the phone calls and some of the e-mails received in our editorial office.

Liberals accuse us of being Conservative patsies and Conservatives see us as Liberal shills. Our week will truly be complete when someone accuses us of being a mouthpiece for the NDP.

The latest salvos began during the Vancouver-Quadra by-election last March. The hotly fought race, which ended with a 151-vote Liberal plurality, was the first substantial test of the theory that Stephen Harper's enthusiastic defence of Israel has caused a tectonic shift in Jewish voters from traditional patterns of support for the Liberals.

Now, as the Liberal Joyce Murray battles to retain the seat in a rematch against Conservative Deborah Meredith, both sides are aiming at each other – and us. After the by-election last spring, letter-writers criticized this paper's editorial "endorsement" of the Conservative - an endorsement that was news to us. Following an article on Liberal MP Bob Rae last week, Conservatives condemned us for a one-sided approach, condemnation that will doubtless be redoubled when they see this week's interview with Liberal former minister of justice Irwin Cotler.

Where the Liberals saw conspiracy in our coverage of the by-election, Conservatives now see connivance in our coverage of the general election. Both give us too much credit.

We have not dedicated a great deal of space to this election – not because it is not important; it is. But, for 78 years, this newspaper has been covering the issues that matter to Jewish British Columbians on a weekly basis. Regular readers obtain a balanced menu of news and views. The issues of particular concern to Jewish voters are issues we have covered week after week for years. Things such as parties' support for Israel, human rights, multiculturalism, economic responsibility, environmental sustainability, funding for communal security and so forth are not matters that we wait for an election to cover. Come the election, we trust that regular readers are well versed in the issues of concern to this community and can make informed choices without relying exclusively on our coverage. Politicians may believe this gives our readers too much credit; we do not.

So, why two consecutive front-page interviews with leading Liberals? Because they invited us to their events, a week apart, both of which were targeted specifically to the Jewish community. The Liberal party made Rae and Cotler available to the Independent, contacting us directly with an offer to spend time with two of their front-bench stars, albeit an interview only with the latter. No commensurate offers came from the Conservatives. (The NDP seems to have given up on this newspaper, just as they have given up on this community.) Both Rae and Cotler have deep roots in the Jewish communities of their respective provinces and have unique and valuable perspectives on the issues that matter to our readers. At a local level, we profiled the one self-identified Jewish candidate who approached us seeking coverage, Salomon Rayek, the Conservative candidate in Vancouver-Kingsway. The interview with him appeared in our Rosh Hashanah issue.

Prudent candidates take nothing for granted. Still, the energy devoted to parsing the Independent's coverage in the final days of what is likely to be one of this country's closest election campaigns seems misplaced. Are there not doors to be knocked on and lawn signs to hammer in? Moreover, while partisans assail each other over who is the best friend of Israel, we should not overestimate the impact Ottawa has in international affairs, let alone the pull this paper has in influencing that impact. This paper and this country's foreign minister could be Israel's best friends or worst enemies, with the same negligible influence on the long-range chances for peace or security in Israel.

Conversely, as we have suggested before, "Israel," as an issue in Canadian politics, may be an unconscious surrogate Jewish voters use to gauge the attitude of politicians toward our community more generally, Israel being simply the most immediate issue on which Jewish voters can measure a candidate's sensitivity to Jewish concerns. If a leader cannot be trusted to come to the aid of Jews under attack in Israel today, why would we trust them to come to the aid of Jews at risk, God forbid, here? If voters haven't answered that question for themselves by now, a couple of articles in the Independent in the weeks before an election probably aren't going to influence their judgment.

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