politics – Jewish Independent

Historic next election

For the first time in its history, Israel will go to the polls because the Knesset Israelis elected in April could not form a government.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu crowed after the election results came in that his Likud had defied critics and won a comparatively easy reelection. The number of small right-wing parties in the Knesset made it impossible for the opposition Blue and White bloc to assemble the 61 seats needed for a bare minimum majority coalition, leaving Netanyahu a free hand to form another government. Or so it seemed to everyone.

But there’s right-wing and then there’s right-wing. As in any country, a range of issues and interests combine to make up political parties and movements. While they may be in sync on a whole range of economic, social, internal and foreign policy issues, the one thing that unified Likud and its ostensible allies among the smaller right-wing parties was animosity toward the left, which Netanyahu demonized during the campaign – even accusing the veteran military figures who lead Blue and White of being too far left. The leftist bogeyman Netanyahu was conjuring is, at this point in Israeli history, largely fictitious. The Labour party, once the dominant force in the country, suffered its worst showing ever, finishing with less than 5% of the vote.

What divides the right-wing parties are a few issues of core principle. The ultra-Orthodox parties are right-wing and prefer Netanyahu as prime minister. But they want special considerations for religious institutions maintained and strengthened. Nationalist parties, like Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party, are right-wing, but secular, and Lieberman would not budge on his assertion that there should be no compromise on a new law – promulgated under his watch as Netanyahu’s minister of defence – that yeshivah men not be automatically excused from conscription. The five seats Lieberman’s party won in April were the lynchpin for a fifth Netanyahu government – and the notoriously combustible Lieberman ultimately kiboshed the government and the 21st Knesset.

Some commentators suggest principle was less a factor in Lieberman’s choice than personal pique. The two men were once the closest of allies – and nothing is more bitter than a family fight. A number of policy issues have frayed the relationship. For example, as defence minister, Lieberman publicly excoriated his boss for what he characterized as letting Hamas off the hook too easily in the most recent flare-up of cross-border violence from Gaza. Lieberman, it appears, would have preferred a far more punishing response, though he has a history of making dire threats on which he does not follow up. He once brazenly gave Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh 48 hours to live if he did not return an Israeli hostage and the bodies of dead Israeli soldiers. The gambit failed. The millionaire Haniyah remains very much alive, luxuriating in a waterfront palace he built with a 20% tax on all goods traveling through the tunnels between Egypt and Gaza. Lieberman meanwhile continues with similar bellicosity to stoke his base, primarily older Israelis with roots in the Soviet Union.

Whether Lieberman’s dashing of Netanyahu’s plans was an ego issue or a strategy to improve his party’s weak showing in April, or whether it was, in fact, a matter of principle, doesn’t matter much now that new elections have been slated for September.

Most of Israel’s 2019 will have been eaten up by election campaigns and, unless the electorate has a swift change of heart – or the criminal charges hanging over Netanyahu’s head shift the discourse – the results in September may be very similar to those of April. Then what?

Ehud Barak, a former prime minister who has been both ally and opponent to Netanyahu, posited last week that, whatever the outcome in September, Netanyahu is finished. While there are anonymous sources inside Likud suggesting the leader may be ousted after the next election, the fact is that Netanyahu’s career has been declared dead several times before, but he has defied prognosticators and triumphed. Not for nothing is his nickname “the Magician.”

Harbingers of future?

In 2015, the federal New Democratic Party nixed Paul Manly’s hopes to run for Parliament, barring his candidacy because his anti-Israel politics were deemed too extreme. Manly joined the Green party and, this month, won a federal by-election in Nanaimo-Ladysmith. As only the second Green federally elected, Manly now makes up 50% of the federal Green party caucus.

By-elections are notoriously poor predictors of voter intentions in general elections. Manly’s win could go down as a footnote in history – or it could be a harbinger of tectonic change in Canadian politics. Little should be extrapolated from a single by-election outcome, but neither should we ignore the fact that the by-election win by Deborah Grey of the Reform Party, in 1989, represented the beginning of a new epoch in Canadian politics. The Reform party in the West and the Bloc Québecois in Québec gobbled up the Progressive Conservative party – and the New Democrats’ share of the vote.

Just days before the Nanaimo by-election, the Green party also made inroads in the Prince Edward Island provincial election, forming the official opposition. Just as a by-election is not a good measure of federal voters’ intentions, neither is a modest success in the micro-province of P.E.I. What both these outcomes do suggest is that a larger number of Canadians than ever before are considering casting a ballot for the Greens.

The outcome in Nanaimo-Ladysmith should send chills down the spines of Liberal and NDP organizers. Both parties saw their vote share collapse while the Greens leapfrogged and the Conservatives held their own.

Conventional wisdom says that the Green party should take more votes away from the NDP than from any other party. However, many 2015 Liberal voters are over their Trudeaumania and millions of Canadians are looking for a place to park their votes. The party would get a significant boost if Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott, two women who embody the country’s disappointment in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his sunny ways, opt to run under the Green banner, as has been rumoured.

Jagmeet Singh, who managed to win his own by-election last year, can hardly find any silver lining in recent results. With the Liberals, who arguably ran to the left of the NDP last time, hemorrhaging support, the NDP should be sitting pretty. They are not.

Six months out from the general election, Conservative leader Andrew Scheer is the only party leader who should be pleased with the current landscape.

What this all means is not completely clear. Under Thomas Mulcair’s leadership, the NDP was dragged back to a more moderate middle after a period when it had seemed to go a bit off the rails, notably on the issue of Israel and Palestine. How the party addresses that and other contentious issues in the coming years will be determined significantly by the makeup of their caucus after the October elections. It was after their last terrible drubbing, in 1993, that the NDP fell under the sway of anti-Israel extremists. With just nine seats in parliament, and Svend Robinson as the most vocal and visible MP, the party became a hotbed of anti-Zionist activism. (Robinson is seeking a comeback in the riding of Burnaby North-Seymour.)

Under Mulcair’s leadership, a number of former New Democrats, like Manly, shifted over to the Green party. Elizabeth May, the party leader, and, until this month its only MP, doesn’t seem certain of where she stands on the issue. When her party’s convention passed a wildly unbalanced attack on Israel, she threatened to resign unless it was rescinded or watered down. Since then, she herself has made some contentious comments about Israel.

In the NDP and in the Green party, there are a small number of courageous Jewish and non-Jewish Zionists trying to lead their parties to a common-sense position on Middle East matters. Too often, these individuals are ridiculed in our own community when they should be commended for promoting a balanced, reasonable approach to the issue regardless of political persuasion.

Nevertheless, given the emerging landscape, if the Greens and New Democrats do not form some kind of electoral alliance – and if the Liberals do not pull themselves out of their largely self-inflicted pit of unpopularity – Canada is likely to be in for a long run of Conservative government. In that case, the nuance of Israel-Palestine policy on the left will be a moot point.

Extension granted

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, left, and President Reuven Rivlin hold the agreement that allows Netanyhau another two weeks to try and form a coalition government. (photo from Ashernet)

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met with President Reuven Rivlin May 13 to formally request an extension on forming the government. If Netanyahu is not able to form a majority coalition, then Rivlin would call on the head of the political party with the next highest number of votes to try and form a viable coalition government.

Complex, funny, beautiful

Dylan Floyde (Willy), left, and Stephen Aberle (Evens) rehearse for Slamming Door Artist Collective’s production of The Sea, which opened May 2 at Jericho Arts Centre. (photo by Michelle Morris)

“Published in 1973, The Sea is fiercely, presciently relevant. [Edward] Bond seems to anticipate David Icke’s mad, xenophobic alien conspiracy fantasies, flat earthers’ denial of gravity, ‘fake news,’ societal upheaval and the potential for devastation – and, through it all, glimmers of hope through stoic resilience, change and growth,” said Jewish community member Stephen Aberle, describing Bond’s play, The Sea.

Slamming Door Artist Collective presents The Sea at Jericho Arts Centre until May 19. It opened last night, May 2.

Director Tamara McCarthy told the Independent that she had seen a production of The Sea at the Shaw Festival in 2014 “and was deeply struck by the complex poetry and stitch-ripping humour, all playing out within a beautiful tragedy.

“There are many current resonances, from Trump to Brexit,” she said. “Interestingly, The Sea debuted in 1973, the same year Britain joined the European Union.”

On a more solemn note, she added, “Eventually, the sea will sweep us all away. Until then, we choose to live in hope or despair. Or both. This play intricately explores these themes.”

The synopsis reads: “A wild storm shakes a small East Anglian seaside village, and Willy is unable to save his friend from drowning. The raving coast guard is too drunk to do anything, Hatch the draper is passing by but he believes that hovering alien spaceships are slowly replacing people’s brains and he refuses to help, while the grande dame, Mrs. Rafi, bastion of respectability, amateur theatricals and velvet curtains from Birmingham, sets her face against the chaos.” The play is set in 1907.

“There are big time echoes of [Shakespeare’s] The Tempest, for sure,” said Aberle. “Storm, shipwreck, collision of worlds and societies, innocence blossoming into love, monsters and a kind of shimmering magic. I would say there’s a strong parallel with the Book of Jonah as well: shipwreck again, and the struggle to find meaning in an often apparently unkind and unfair world. Ecclesiastes, too: ‘the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happens to them all.’”

Aberle plays the character of Evens, who he described as “the grizzled, weathered, often drunken ‘wise fool.’ A bit of the Prospero type, if we want to look at The Tempest connections, with aspects of both Jonah and the big fish, as well. He has withdrawn from society and lives (and drinks, ‘to stay sane’) in a little hut on the beach. It’s said of him in the village that he ‘knows the water round here,’ though, as he points out, ‘… luck and chance come into it. It doesn’t matter how clear the main currents are, you have to live through the details. It’s always the details that make the tragedy….’ The young hero, Willy, comes to him, looking for answers. Whether he finds what he seeks is a question whose outcome you’ll have to watch for.”

“Slamming Door Artist Collective presents classic contemporary works that aren’t otherwise being produced in Vancouver,” said McCarthy. “We provide not only opportunities for our audience to see these plays, but for established and emerging actors and designers to play with us on material they likely wouldn’t have the chance to otherwise.”

Joining Aberle on stage will be Raes Calvert, Genevieve Fleming, Dylan Floyde, Jessica Hood, Elizabeth Kirkland, Cheyenne Mabberley, Michelle Morris, Melissa Oei and Mason Temple. The collective’s members “work professionally in film, television and theatre throughout the Lower Mainland.”

Aberle said he is “overjoyed to be introduced to this play and this playwright.”

“In my experience,” he said,

“Edward Bond is sadly unsung and underproduced – I’d never seen or read any of his work before and it’s delicious. My sense is that, when he came on the scene, he alienated the powers-that-be in British theatre. He’s from the working class and he writes about class alienation, struggle and societal transformation, with sometimes brutal clarity of vision. Apparently, there was nearly a riot when one of his early plays, Saved, was first performed – shouting from the audience and fisticuffs in the lobby.”

For tickets to The Sea, visit theatrewire.com.

Propaganda is all around us

Ai Weiwei is among the artists featured in Propaganda: The Art of Selling Lies, a documentary by Larry Weinstein, which will screen twice during DOXA. (photo from DOXA)

This year’s DOXA Documentary Film Festival lineup includes Propaganda: The Art of Selling Lies, which “explores a diverse range of mediums, from well-recognized symbols of fascist movements, to more subtle forms in political satire and online slander.” Ahead of the festival, veteran filmmaker Larry Weinstein spoke with the Jewish Independent. Propaganda screens twice during the festival, on May 9 and 10.

JI: Can you share a bit about your background a few key moments on your path to being a documentary filmmaker?

LW: I’ve been directing for 35 years and have made close to 40 films in that time. But I actually started in high school and especially became interested in documentary (and propaganda) when I made a film about a slaughterhouse soon after I had become a vegetarian. It was the usual stuff – slow-mo shots of slit jugular veins and unborn calves being ripped from their slaughtered mothers all set to the music of Debussy.

After the film screened in my school, a good percentage of the students became vegetarian and I realized that, with this power to persuade, I wanted to make more documentaries. But, my first professional film 10 years later was quite different and a bit more subtle – Making Overtures: The Story of a Community Orchestra was a film which seemed like a home movie but it did very well, including an Oscar nomination. It set me on the road to a long series of music films, especially those about composers like Ravel, Schoenberg, Falla, Rodrigo, Weill, Beethoven and Mozart. It’s hard to refer to key moments. Each of the films is special to me. I’ve been very lucky.

JI: The topics you’ve covered are wide-ranging, from music and the performing arts to global politics to Dreaming of a Jewish Christmas and the documentary on Maya Farrell. How do you choose your subject matter?

LW: Originally, all my films were music based but, more recently, I’ve made three sports-based films. The latest, The Impossible Swim, is on three generations of marathon swimmers and was co-directed with my filmmaker daughter, Ali – something very special for me.

photo - Filmmaker Larry Weinstein — Filmmaker Larry Weinstein *(photo from DOXA)*

Our Man in Tehran is a documentary about the 1979 hostage crisis that corrects the inaccuracies of Argo; Inside Hana’s Suitcase is [a] Holocaust film. But, to tell you the truth, many of the music films also deal with history, with science, with politics, with culture and they are quite varied in form as well as content. Many of the films have come out my own dreams and interests. Many have been suggested by broadcasters and other sources, but those must also become internalized and feel like they come from me before I can really proceed with them.

JI: Propaganda has existed since humans appeared on earth. The DOXA blurb asks, “How do we know what we know?” But is it possible to not sell a specific perspective, if not a lie. Someone’s truth is another’s lie? What’s your diagnosis of the problem and do you have a suggested remedy? Or is propaganda a problem that can never be solved?

LW: Propaganda has indeed existed from the beginning. It was born along with the birth of art, of language, of spiritual thought. Orwell said that all art is propaganda. That’s debatable but probably accurate.

Propaganda is mind-control. It’s not necessarily sinister but I subtitled the film The Art of Selling Lies because I was in a bad mood, often reading Trump’s tweets first thing in the morning, fed up with his lies. Nothing he says is the truth; seeing that he was directly inspired by rhetoric of Stalin and by the speeches of Hitler. But propaganda is everywhere – it surrounds us and seems to be flung at us exponentially with social media – whether politically, socially, economically, religiously, too. We are fed lies and untruths from the moment we are born. Coke tastes good. You want a Barbie doll. You want a Corvette. This political party will save you; that one will destroy you. Religion is your salvation. There is an omnipotent, omniscient God who loves you but you’re [screwed] if he’s angry. All that stuff. Lies. Propaganda.

The remedy? Think about what you are being force-fed. Be rational about it. Propaganda feeds on emotion, on your fears, on your anxiety, on your superstitions. Resist and don’t accept crap just because somebody says it’s true, when it’s obviously questionable.

Propaganda screens May 9, 8:30 p.m., at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, and May 10, noon, at Vancity Theatre. The May 10 screening is part of Rated Y for Youth and includes a post-film discussion. Tickets to DOXA can only be purchased online: doxafestival.ca. For more information about the festival, which runs until May 12, call 604-646-3200.

A miracle in Beit Shemesh?

(photo by Davidbena)

Beit Shemesh is centrally located, halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Many Moroccan immigrants were settled here in tent camps in the 1950s, followed by many subsequent immigrants,

including from Ethiopia, the former Soviet Union, North America, South Africa and England. For the last decade, the city has been known as a hotbed of protests instigated by religious extremists – a symptom of an Israeli political culture moving toward greater religious segregation and intolerance.

Miraculously, though, the tides are turning, bringing with it hope and optimism. For the past decade, Moshe Abutbul, who is ultra-Orthodox, was the local mayor, and he marketed new homes to this community. Before the elections last November, popular opinion was that he would win again. His only challenger was Dr. Aliza Bloch. Though she was well-known and popular as an educator and community leader, Bloch is a woman and not ultra-Orthodox in a city that has been attracting more ultra-Orthodox residents while others have been slowly moving away.

But the miracle is that Beit Shemesh residents of all stripes and styles collectively understood that our beautiful city had deteriorated into one of the poorest in Israel. Everybody wants a nice, clean place to live and raise their families – whatever their religious observance. So, in what is probably a rare occurrence in the history of Israeli municipal politics, the residents of Beit Shemesh decided it was time for a change. They broke away from traditional voting patterns and voted for Bloch, who ran as an independent, under the banner of professionalism and transparency.

Bloch made no deals or promises as part of her campaign. She promised the people cleanliness, law and order, good education and the establishment of a youth department – 50% of the 122,000 residents are under the age of 18.

Bloch spent her first day in office getting to know every single employee on a personal basis. In her first month, she met weekly with the sanitation department, including personal tours of their routes to help improve morale and services to the entire city. She organized a municipal clean-up day for volunteers of all ages in every neighbourhood. She has already replaced many department heads, and the youth groups are finally getting facilities for their weekly meetings and programs, after 20 years of meeting outdoors on the streets, regardless of weather conditions.

Even more exciting are the “town hall” meetings with every neighbourhood that are open to the public, and her efforts to bring national ministers and other influencers to Beit Shemesh to help dig this fast-growing city out of its deficit and help it flourish.

The new administration works from early morning to late at night to improve the city services. But it’s the human factor that is most interesting. Bloch has a doctorate in education. She is literally educating an entire city to respect one another and cooperate for the greater good. And that is the true Israeli miracle of her first several months in office. A diverse and highly opinionated population is learning to live and work side-by-side with mutual respect and understanding. A city that was known for anger and intolerance is turning into a beacon of understanding and mutual respect.

Mimi Estrin Kamilar is a former Vancouverite who made aliyah and is a philanthropy consultant. She is a 25-year resident and community activist in Beit Shemesh. While she has known Dr. Aliza Bloch for a long time and became active in her campaign, she is not an employee of the mayor or the municipality.

Strongmen bromance

Binyamin Netanyahu appears comfortably ensconced in the Israeli prime minister’s office after last week’s elections. While his Likud bloc effectively tied for seats with the upstart Blue and White party, the smattering of smaller parties are mostly of the nationalist, religious and right-wing bent, meaning Netanyahu will have a fifth term as leader. If he hangs on until July, he will surpass David Ben-Gurion as Israel’s longest-serving prime minister.

The likelihood that he will reach that mark seems good. He faces probable criminal charges but that does not necessarily mean the end of his career. Rumours are rife that he is considering a legal escape hatch that would permit him to remain in office even if indicted or, more likely, make it illegal to indict a sitting prime minister. In most democracies, at most times in recent history, such a move would be seen as intolerably corrupt. Times change.

The leaders of democracies today are blazing new trails. The words and actions of the U.S. president confound our capacity for incredulity. Jaw-dropping statements of contempt, bigotry, juvenile pique and lies emanate from his mouth (and Twitter fingers) faster than the outrage can follow. Across Europe, far-right extremist parties are rising, as they did in elections in Finland on the weekend. In Britain, which is convulsing from self-induced Brexit trauma, the leftist Labour party is engulfed in an antisemitism crisis. Positions and statements that would have been unthinkable in the civil discourse of recent decades are suddenly at the centre of public discourse in democracies everywhere.

Israel is no exception. During the recent election campaign, candidates expressed erstwhile unspeakable ideas, including a scheme to ethnically cleanse the West Bank of Arabs and annex the land to Israel. The advocate of that idea was soundly defeated – the Knesset democratically cleansed of his ideology when the party failed to reach the 3.25% minimum vote to enter parliament.

But Netanyahu himself floated some astonishing trial balloons during the campaign. He mooted annexing West Bank settlement blocs into Israel – a concept that is not ludicrously beyond the pale since, if a negotiated settlement ever emerges, it will likely include such a move in exchange for traded land. But he also suggested annexing settlements that are not adjacent to or contiguous with Israel’s recognized boundaries. Such an idea would create a patchwork in the West Bank along the lines that would make an independent Palestine unworkable. The fact that the incumbent prime minister opened this political Pandora’s box is evidence of a new willingness to play with potential fire.

That foot play with extremists is not limited to domestic affairs. If an Israeli Rip Van Winkle fell asleep a couple of decades ago and woke up to Israel’s current diplomatic situation, he would be confused and possibly delighted. If that Van Winkle shared our worldview – an apparently old-fashioned belief in pluralistic, inclusive, universal humanitarian values – he would quickly conclude that the prima facie bonanza of goodwill has a rotting core.

As former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Ron Prosor said Sunday night (see cover story), Israel has open lines of communication with countries that for decades steadfastly rejected its very existence. Likewise, Israel has excellent relations with some of the most populous and powerful countries in the world – India, China, Russia, Brazil and, in different but important ways, a refreshed, familial relationship with the current U.S. administration.

Israel has superb relations with these countries, and with the Philippines, as well as with Hungary and other eastern European states that have traditionally been problematic for the Jewish state. That seemingly good news is tempered by the fact that these good relations are not based on conventional diplomatic alliances. To a large extent – especially in the cases of Hungary, the Philippines, Brazil, Russia and the reinvigorated bonhomie between the leaders of Israel and the United States – these close relations are based on a shared strain of politics that fill us with more nervousness than naches.

These relationships are less between Israel and Brazil or the Philippines or Hungary or Russia than a bromance between Netanyahu and Jair Bolsonaro, Rodrigo Duterte, Viktor Orban and Vladimir Putin, to say nothing of the continuing lovefest between Bibi and Donald Trump. Each of these figures is a strongman who is, to varying degrees, pushing the limits of their democracies to see how far they can stretch rule of law and diminish respect for human rights. With this in mind, the diplomatic warmth seems less about traditional bilateral relations than about a fraternity of nationalist, populist and authoritarian men leading the world down a path unimagined a decade ago.

With that background, Israel’s unprecedentedly improved relations with so many countries seems less positive a development. Our proverbial sleeper might pull the covers back over his head and hope for better in the decades to come.

Politicians speak at AIPAC

Clockwise, from top left: U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence, Joe Lieberman, Senator Marco Rubio and Senator Cory Booker address attendees of last month’s AIPAC Policy Conference. (photos by Dave Gordon)

U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence, in addition to other ranking American politicians, spoke of their unwavering support for the Jewish state to 18,000 people at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference, in Washington, D.C., March 24-26.

Speech themes revolved around recent rocket attacks against Israeli civilians, the Golan Heights being recognized as Israeli sovereign territory by the United States, and sanctions against Iran. Every official who mentioned BDS, the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel, condemned it.

Much was said about the Democratic congresswoman from Minnesota, Ilhan Abdullahi Omar. Her statements – including “Israel has hypnotized the world” and that AIPAC has influenced U.S. policy through money – have been interpreted as antisemitic by some Jewish leaders.

Pence said, “History has already proven [Donald Trump] to be the greatest friend of the Jewish people and the state of Israel ever to sit in the Oval Office of the White House.”

Among the pro-Israel bona fides of Trump, Pence said the United States shut down the Washington branch of the Palestinian Authority as a consequence for funding terror; ended tax dollar funding for United Nations-funded Palestinian schools; moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem; and recognized the Golan Heights as Israeli territory.

“We stand with Israel because her cause is our cause, her values are our values,” he said.

In addition, Pence talked about the end of the “disastrous nuclear deal with Iran” that has been replaced with “a maximum-pressure campaign” of sanctions, thereby causing Iran’s economy to dip.

“There’ll be no more pallets of cash to the mullahs in Iran,” he said.

In a swipe across the political aisle, Pence said, “It’s astonishing to think that the party of Harry Truman, which did so much to help create the state of Israel, has been co-opted by people who promote rank antisemitic rhetoric and work to undermine the broad American consensus of support for Israel.”

Without mentioning her name, he referred to Omar as “a freshman Democrat in Congress” who “trafficked in repeated antisemitic tropes.”

Former U.S. ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley’s first comments were about what she believes is the UN’s hypocrisy.

“You know, what’s interesting is, at the UN, I can guarantee you this morning it is radio silent,” she said, in reference to the rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel. “They are not saying anything about Hamas, they’re not saying anything about the lives lost, they’re not saying anything. But, if it was any [other] countr[y], they’d be calling an emergency Security Council meeting.”

David Friedman, U.S. ambassador to Israel, claimed that Trump is “Israel’s greatest ally ever to reside in the White House” and, to those who think otherwise, “please, take a deep breath and think about it some more.”

How America is now sanctioning Iran was one example of an Israel-friendly policy. Friedman criticized the previous administration for paying the Islamic Republic $100 billion in the hopes that country would “self-correct.”

“What did Iran do with all its newly found treasure?” he asked. “Did it build up its civilian institutions? Did it improve the quality of life of its citizens?” Instead, he said, it “doubled down on terrorist activity in Yemen, in Iraq and in Lebanon. It increased its stock of ballistic missiles and it invested in military bases in Syria, on Israel’s northern border.”

photo - Protesters at this year’s AIPAC Policy Conference, in Washington, D.C., last month — Protesters at this year’s AIPAC Policy Conference, in Washington, D.C., last month. *(photo by Dave Gordon)*

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu delivered an address via satellite, initially planning to take the podium in person, but returning to Israel to deal with the rocket attacks.

“The Golan Heights is indispensable for our defence,” he said of the recognition by the United States of the northern land seized by Israel in the Six Day War, in 1967. “It’s part of our history. When you put a shovel in the ground there, what you discover are the ruins of ancient synagogues. Jews lived there for thousands of years and the people of Israel have come back to the Golan.”

Netanyahu said he thought comments like Omar’s are antisemitic.

“Again, the Jews are cast as a force for evil,” he said. “Again, the Jews are charged with disloyalty. Again, the Jews are said to have too much influence, too much power, too much money. Take it from this Benjamin, it’s not about the Benjamins.”

In the session Canada’s Relationship with Israel, the panel included Liberal member of Parliament Anthony Housefather, Conservative MP Erin O’Toole and former Conservative foreign minister John Baird.

Housefather said he believes Israelis do not think there’s a negotiating partner for peace, but they share some blame in the conflict: “The more they create settlements, the less likely there will be peace … they should think carefully before expanding settlements.”

A questioner asked him when the Canadian prime minister would do something “real” for Israel and Housefather noted that, in recent weeks, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau forcefully condemned the BDS movement in a town hall meeting.

Another audience member asked why the Trudeau government continues to fund the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. While acknowledging that UNRWA has “curricula problems” that involve “anti-Jewish, anti-Israel comments, misogynistic comments and anti-gay comments,” he said that the $50 million in funding was just.

Housefather said he had spoken with the head of UNRWA and voiced his “concerns at the slow pace they are making changes in the curricula,” but added that their schools make children “a lot less likely to become terrorists against Israel.”

“Yes to helping them with UN aid programs; no to funding their schools,” said O’Toole. And Baird agreed.

On the topic of a peace plan, O’Toole said he “kept hearing from Palestinians their want for a ‘one-state solution,’” while their government “exerts violence, and does not take care of the needs of their people.”

“I think you’ll see from Israeli leaders that they’re prepared to experience real pain [in concessions],” Baird said, but “Palestinians have to stop the incitement” and the “hate-mongering.”

While several candidates for the Democratic party’s 2020 presidential nomination skipped the conference, leading Democratic figures were prominent at AIPAC, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who insisted no one will be permitted to make Israel a partisan wedge issue.

Dave Gordon is a Toronto-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in more than 100 publications around the world.

Quebec’s underlying goal

Sometimes in complex or far-reaching events, a small, seemingly less significant factor can illuminate a larger understanding. Successive efforts by Quebec governments to enforce laïcité, a policy of compulsory secularism in the delivery of public services, have included a minor exception that really speaks to the inequality such efforts seek to create.

Since 1936, a not-at-all-subtle crucifix has hung above the speaker’s chair in the legislative chamber of the Quebec National Assembly. A week ago, the Quebec government voted to take down the crucifix as part of a much broader policy against religious symbolism in the province’s public life. Even as they proposed policies that would ban religiosity in the forms of Muslim, Sikh and Jewish head coverings and other items, such as pendants with stars of David or crucifixes, previous governments have contended that the legislature’s cross is exceptional. In the narrative advanced across a decade of this debate, the cross represents an indisputable aspect of Quebec history. Reading between the lines of this argument, the crucifix – the definitive symbol of Christianity – transcends its religious particularity, presumably on the idea that Christianity was an inherent part of Quebec’s history and development.

The message of this exceptionalism is clear as a bell: this place was founded on Christian principles and those of other religious traditions, despite whatever contemporary contributions they might make to Quebec society, rank below the founding religion even as we seek to erase all of them from the public eye. Christianity, in other words, is a first among unequals.

To their credit, the government of Premier François Legault is not excepting the crucifix from this latest bill aiming to impose secularism. The bill, which was introduced last week by the centre-right Coalition de l’avenir du Quebec government elected last year, has all the characteristics that have been discussed in recent years by various governments intent on erasing outward appearances of religious difference. In the provision of government services in which an employee has “coercive” influence – including police, prison guards, judges and teachers – kippot, chadors, turbans, kirpans, crucifixes and anything else that speaks to an individual’s religious affiliation will be banned.

The decision on the National Assembly’s crucifix at least pays lip service to the idea of equanimity in the crushing of religious identity. But it cannot erase the foolishness and inherent injustice of the move. The Quebec government makes absolutely no defence against the charge that the bill contravenes Canada’s and Quebec’s constitutional protections of individual and religious rights. In introducing the new law, the government stated it would use the notwithstanding clause, exempting the law from those constitutional safeguards.

The injustice is a matter of principle. The government – backed, according to public opinion polls, by most Quebecers – is fully prepared to infringe on the rights of people who heed obligations to display certain outward evidence of religiosity. Depending on interpretation and levels of observance, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh and other people are required to wear identifiably religious objects. Lay Christians, by contrast, are not. A crucifix necklace is a choice, not a requirement. For observant Jewish men, a kippah is not optional.

On a related front, it is illuminating to hear non-Muslims discuss whether a chador, hijab or niqab is a cultural or a religious requirement. Over the years, some who have justified banning head coverings have contended that Muslim law does not require them. The fact that many or most of those making this case are non-Muslims adds insult to injury: not only will we argue that we don’t want you wearing your religious garb, we will go so far as to argue that you can’t even interpret your religion correctly.

Aside from the principle of the matter, the nuts and bolts of the proposed law guarantee confusion and offence. The bill grandfathers existing employees, meaning that a currently employed teacher who wears some form of religious accoutrement will be free to continue doing so, but a new hire would not. More bizarre is that, if they were to receive a promotion – from teacher to vice-principal, say – the grandfather clause would be removed, and so would the religious article. The opportunities for mayhem abound.

Ostensibly, the bill, which is really the culmination of years of discussion around “reasonable accommodation” and similar concepts in Quebec society, is intended to preserve the importance of Quebec culture. Understandably, as an undeniably distinct cultural and linguistic minority vastly outnumbered by anglophone North Americans, Quebecers are vigilant in preserving their uniqueness. But it is tough to discern any substantive advantages this bill will grant to Quebec’s distinct culture other than to underscore assumptions of intolerance and insularity. The genuine intent of the law – and the larger ideology that drives it – is to encourage assimilation into a dominant (French, nominally Christian) population. In a visit to France last year, Legault didn’t mince words. He wants a Quebec that is more “European.”

Many Canadians outside Quebec accept that some accommodations are necessary to save what makes Quebec unique. We see this as something apart from the xenophobic nationalisms sweeping Europe. But what is inherent in Quebec society that would not also be found in Swiss or Finnish or Hungarian society to justify banning symbols of different cultures? If Quebecers have a right to “protect” their cultural identity through admittedly discriminatory laws, why wouldn’t Polish and Ukrainian people?

Ultimately, a law preventing religiously observant people from displaying the evidence of their faith will not strengthen or save pur laine Quebec society, unless by doing so it discourages such people from coming to Quebec in the first place. And there’s the key to understanding this bill.

One of the first steps Legault took as premier was to reduce Quebec’s share of immigrants by 20%. This was about the same time he went to Paris and declared he wanted more migrants who are European. With this in mind, the secularism bill is probably less about the people who are already in Quebec than about sending a message to those considering a move there. The bill says stay away, Quebec does not welcome you.

Trump’s empty gesture

When U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted last week that Israeli control over the Golan Heights should be recognized as legitimate sovereignty, it was like sending a box of cherry cordials to his friend Binyamin Netanyahu. In other words, the gesture was sweet, cheap and filled with empty calories.

Israel handing the Golan back to Syria is not on anyone’s agenda. A strategic position at the confluence of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel, the area was taken by Israel from Syria in the 1967 war and remains, ostensibly, a disputed territory, like the West Bank. But it’s different. For one thing, Israel effectively absorbed the Golan into Israel proper in 1981, though for critics that makes no difference. More importantly, the Golan has strategic significance in ways that differ from the strategic significance of the West Bank. Notably, most of the Syrian population that had lived there fled during the war and both the Jewish and non-Jewish populations of the Golan have remained comparatively small since. So, while still a matter of international dispute, the Golan does not evoke the same issues as the population-dense West Bank in terms of a large non-citizen population living under military rule.

More to the point, who, in their right mind, would think that handing any land, anywhere, over to Syria at this point in history would be a reasonable idea? That country has been catastrophically ripped apart by civil war. If anyone sincerely thinks that Syria deserves the Golan back, they couldn’t possibly think this would be an appropriate time to make such a move.

But up pops the U.S. president to kick a sleeping dog, declaring American recognition of the Golan as part of Israel. It was a typical Trump triumph: it cost him nothing, it rewarded his pal Netanyahu as the Israeli leader arrived in Washington and it set Trump’s enemies into a raging fury, which seems to be one of the few coherent identifiable objectives of most of the president’s actions.

As the BBC reported: “Syria said Mr. Trump’s decision was ‘a blatant attack on its sovereignty.’” If the tragedy of Syria were not so sorrowful, this response would be laughable. “We interrupt this civil war, which has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and displaced 12 million people to haughtily contest the recognition of what has been, for all intents, the status quo for half a century.” Suffice to say, the Golan is the least of Syria’s worries right now.

Yet the gambit was just another trinket Trump has offered to Netanyahu as the latter enters the final days of a tight reelection campaign. The U.S. president makes no pretense about his support for Netanyahu’s continued leadership of Israel. As we discussed in this space two weeks ago, the politicizing of the American-Israeli relationship has potential benefits only for cynical American politicos. Israel (and Jewish Americans) will not win when Jewish people’s identity and connections to the Jewish state are exploited for partisan ends.

But neither is this a case where Jewish people are standing by, uninvolved and without agency. The Israeli government – the prime minister in particular – has encouraged this sort of partisanship overtly at least since he snubbed then-president Barack Obama by accepting a Republican invitation to address Congress. More egregiously, Jewish Americans, including some leading individuals and agencies, have exacerbated the political divisions. Some have created the “Jexodus” movement, inviting the roughly 75% of Jewish Americans who usually vote Democratic to move over to the Republicans. Such a campaign probably has more legs on social media than it does in the real world, but more worrying examples abound.

It is true that AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, was among those groups to speak out against Netanyahu’s courtship of a far-right Israeli extremist party recently. But, that aside, its conference earlier this week in many ways cast aside the group’s traditional bipartisanship. Vice-president Mike Pence and other elected officials delivered overtly partisan speeches. Many leading Democrats, including several who are vying for their party’s 2020 presidential nomination, stayed away from the gathering. A better response would have been to attend and speak frankly about the genuine divisions that exist among Israelis, Diaspora Jews, Americans and the various constituencies, including disaffected young Jews and upstart alternatives to the perceived rightward drift of AIPAC, such as J Street. By ceding the platform, Democrats fed a narrative that reinforces the unhelpful partisan divide.

Regardless of who wins next month’s Israeli election or next year’s American election, Jews and Zionists in the United States, Canada, Israel and everywhere will need to either heal this divide or play into the charade that one side of the political spectrum is friend and the other foe. We need to reject partisanship and return to a time when standing with Israel is a logical extension of Western democratic, pluralist values. The alternative is to accept a new world where standing with Israel, and potentially with Jews, is weaponized by one set of partisans to hammer another.