Mira Sucharov – Page 2

Why are you attached to Israel?

I was recently invited to speak to an Ottawa-based Israeli-Palestinian relations group on the topic of Canadian Jews and Israel. Unfortunately, there is a dearth of public opinion data available on Canadian Jewish attitudes. We have some broad strokes on identity issues, though. In addition to Conservative Judaism – rather than Reform – being our largest denomination, Canadian Jews, compared to American Jews, are one generation closer to the Holocaust, are more likely to speak Hebrew, educate their kids Jewishly, and to have visited Israel. Most central to my talk though, was how Canadian Jewish institutions are responding to attempts to challenge Israel as a Jewish state, including the boycott movement.

A lively Q&A followed, but there was one question that stopped me in my tracks. What is it about Israel, a man asked, that makes you feel attached to it? He seemed genuinely curious and rather puzzled, so puzzled that he asked it twice.

Being in the field that I am in, I have a ready answer, but I know I am not typical. My own attachment to Israel centres primarily on a deep passion for Hebrew and Israeli culture. I lived in Israel for three separate years in my 20s, I speak only Hebrew to my kids, I alternate my Netflix watching with Israeli dramas and I am as likely to binge listen to “The Last Waltz” as to Kaveret’s final concert album. My daughter’s d’var Torah at her bat mitzvah was the only one I’ve heard reference Arik Einstein lyrics. Of course, the attention I devote to Israel is partly a function of my profession, but I chose my area of study based on a great sense of attachment to the country and a desire to understand how the Israeli-Palestinian region can become a more just and humane place.

But what of my fellow Canadian Jews? Those of my parents’ generation, who grew up in the shadow of the Holocaust, might view Israel as an insurance policy in the event of the unthinkable. Religious Jews might feel a profound spiritual connection to the land. But what of the many less religious Canadian Jews of my generation (and younger), those for whom Canada, with its absolute commitment to freedom, tolerance and multiculturalism is as safe a haven as any they could imagine; those for whom particular stones on particular bits of territory are not understood to hold sacred meaning, and for whom Hebrew or Israeli contemporary culture is not something that pulls them?

What does Israel mean to these Jews who are unlike my parents, unlike religious Zionists and unlike me?

I encourage my fellow Canadian Jews to articulate their attachments. Doing so with nuance and open hearts may help uncover new political arrangements. Maybe it would point to two states, maybe a confederation system where everyone has access to all the land but possesses citizenship in only one state (as Dahlia Scheindlin and Dov Waxman have proposed), and maybe even a single state where both languages and cultures are carefully preserved. We should ask what threat, exactly, does refugee return pose, rather than leave it as an imaginary bugaboo. Being explicit about our emotional ties – while being open to hearing the emotional experiences of others – may bring us closer to supporting creative peace efforts.

A postscript. A survey of the Canadian Jewish community is currently being circulated by Jewish Federations of Canada-United Israel Appeal, and British Columbians can respond online via svy.mk/20qCWb7. The survey is being conducted by David Elcott and Stuart Himmelfarb, both of New York University’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. As I recall, there is only one question on Israel, which asks whether the respondent feels “attached” to the country. Attachment is associated with many different perspectives, and says nothing about one’s commitment to human rights for those under Israel’s control, for example. I hope that we may soon see more in-depth survey research on Canadian Jewish attitudes towards Israel and its policies.

Mira Sucharov is an associate professor of political science at Carleton University. She is a columnist for Canadian Jewish News and contributes to Haaretz and the Jewish Daily Forward, among other publications. This article was originally published in the CJN.

Concern over incarceration

A new handbook published by T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights provides a resource for the Jewish community to press for change around the problem of mass incarceration in the United States.

“We are here to uphold ideas of redemption and mercy,” said T’ruah director of programs Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster, citing a colleague who described America’s prisons as having a “mercy deficit.”

The handbook is available for free download at truah.org/incarceration. It provides background and resources – steeped in Jewish texts and teachings – for Jewish communities to take action around these issues. Leading a network of 1,800 rabbis across North America, T’ruah aims to bring attention to an array of domestic social justice issues, as well as human rights for Israelis and Palestinians.

When it comes to mass incarceration, Canada doesn’t have the same problem, but we have similar societal ills when it comes to race, ethnicity and imprisonment – as well as problematic prison conditions themselves – that call out for redress.

The handbook initiative came out of T’ruah’s earlier work on ending solitary confinement. Over the last couple of years, Kahn-Troster has found the Jewish community to be increasingly receptive to grappling with issues around incarceration. Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, which details the effect that mass incarceration – and the subsequent denial of civil rights for convicted felons – has had on the African American community, really opened people’s eyes, she told the Independent.

Why the term mass incarceration? Compared to other countries, the United States imprisons its population at alarmingly high rates: 698 out of every 100,000 citizens are behind bars. For comparative purposes, Canada’s per capita rate is 141 out of 100,000, according to Statistics Canada.

And then there is the problem of race. African Americans are six times more likely to be jailed than their white counterparts, yet crime rates are not necessarily different. According to American Civil Liberties Union data cited in the T’ruah report, despite equal rates of actual usage, a black person in America is 3.73 times more likely as a white person to be arrested for drug use.

In Canada, blacks are incarcerated at three times their rate in society, according to the Office of Correctional the Investigator of Canada (OCIC). And, while only four percent of the population of Canada is aboriginal, 25% of the prison population is aboriginal. Among the female prison population, fully 36% are aboriginal, and these percentages are only increasing, according to CBC News reporting from January of this year. For aboriginal adults in Canada, the incarceration rate is 10 times higher than for non-aboriginal adults, says OCIC. Maclean’s, in February, quoted criminologists describing Canadian prisons as the country’s new “residential schools.”

In addition, a report from Saskatoon and Regina, cited in the Saskatoon StarPhoenix, revealed that indigenous students are 1.6 times more likely to be stopped on the street than non-indigenous students. A Toronto Star analysis revealed that, in Toronto, blacks are three times more likely to be stopped by police than non-blacks.

As the Supreme Court of Canada has noted, “courts must take judicial notice of such matters as the history of colonialism, displacement and residential schools and how that history continues to translate into lower educational attainment, lower incomes, higher unemployment, higher rates of substance abuse and suicide and, of course, higher levels of incarceration for aboriginal peoples.”

The legacy of slavery in America looms large, and racial bias in the criminal justice system continues to haunt society. “People of color are more likely to be pulled over,” Kahn-Troster said. “The War on Drugs enables cops to search them. There’s a higher level of policing in black areas; there’s racial bias in jury selection; it’s easier to strike black people from juries; the sentencing is harsher if there’s a black perpetrator and a white victim than the other way around.”

In Canada, solitary confinement is an ongoing issue, as is overcrowding, concern over mental and physical health and rehabilitation, and an overall troubling rise in incarceration rates just as the crime rate lessens. Reporting in the Toronto Star puts the figure at a 17% increase in the federal prison population over the last decade.

With t’shuvah (repentance), cheshbon hanefesh (personal accounting), a questioning spirit and the search for social justice all core Jewish values, T’ruah’s initiative is laudable. It’s easy to look away – and harder to do the tough work of asking how we can both prevent harm to victims while improving our nation’s justice system to avoid discrimination and to shelter the most vulnerable.

B’nai Brith and IJV face off

The Jewish community is seeing mud being slung again. B’nai Brith Canada has come down hard on Independent Jewish Voices (IJV). The latest salvo, which came via email blast as the Jewish Independent was going to press, contended that IJV has taken part in Al-Quds Day events in Toronto. Before that, B’nai Brith claimed that IJV “promotes Holocaust denial.”

With regard to the latter accusation, B’nai Brith, also via email blast, called attention to IJV having posted an article by blogger Alan Hart about antisemitism and anti-Zionism, which had been republished on a website called Veterans Today. That website – Veterans Today – evidently engages in Holocaust denial.

A statement by IJV issued on June 8 takes responsibility for the error. “We thoughtlessly linked to Hart’s article on the Veterans Today site. We acknowledge that our oversight in this respect was lax: we didn’t verify the nature of the Veterans Today website.… For that, we apologize to our members and supporters for our carelessness. IJV has now removed that link.”

IJV campaigns coordinator Tyler Levitan told me by email that, “while we are guilty of a very small number of regrettable social media posts over the years – out of thousands of articles we’ve posted – that linked to decent articles reposted to indecent websites, this by no means makes us in B’nai Brith’s words, a ‘fig leaf for neo-Nazis and antisemitism’ [a quote which appeared in the Canadian Jewish News]. That’s pure slander. We are in no way connected to anything on the right, let alone the far-right.”

Levitan then came out swinging. “B’nai Brith, on the other hand, has had very close relations with far-right Christian fundamentalist groups and individuals, such as John Hagee, who promote homophobia and bigotry. Their CEO Michael Mostyn used to be the director of the neoconservative advocacy group Canadian Coalition for Democracies. Their connections to the far-right of the Canadian political scene are literal, not imaginary.”

In response, Mostyn told me by email, “I am proud of my prior work with the Canadian Coalition for Democracies, especially its advocacy on behalf of persecuted groups such as North Koreans, Middle East Christians and Baha’is in Iran.” Mostyn added that B’nai Brith Canada “does not have any current affiliation with John Hagee.”

Following IJV’s apology, B’nai Brith issued another community-wide communications statement attempting to further impugn IJV’s reputation. It didn’t help that elsewhere Hart has apparently issued conspiracy theories. This, too, Levitan responded to, saying in the email interview, “we certainly do not subscribe to his political views regarding 9/11.”

What seems to be going on here is a regrettable discursive war over Israel fought by other means. Dov Waxman’s recent book Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict Over Israel details the acrimony taking place on the topic of Israel across the American Jewish community. On this score, the Canadian Jewish landscape is little different.

Better than issue smear campaigns against those who don’t hew to the mainstream Jewish community perspective, the Jewish community should be debating the issues at stake. How to end Israel’s 49-year long occupation of another people? What kinds of security assurances does Israel need in order to bring that era to an end? What are Israel’s obligations under international law? How can the refugee issues be resolved in a just way? How can Israel institute full equality between its Jewish and non-Jewish citizens?

These are issues that would be very worthy of more discussion. That said, two lessons can be learned here. First, organizations should be careful about with whom they associate. If conspiracy theorists are going to undermine the message – and, to most ears, they will – organizations should find other ways to raise issues than relying on questionable sources. And, if cozying up to the far-right is going to help portray an organization as being out of touch with its constituency, then it, too, should be careful about with whom it rubs shoulders. If, on the other hand, these allies are understood by the organization to be representative of their values, then that is also an important opening for discussion so community audiences can decide with whom to cast their lot.

To this end, I would like to encourage IJV and B’nai Brith Canada to take their feud out of the realm of email blasts and counterpunches and into the realm of policy questions. Perhaps a public debate hosted by the two organizations over mutually-agreed-upon questions with regard to Israel and the Palestinians would be apt. I know that I, for one, would tune in.

Time to change Hatikvah?

(photo by Zachi Evenor via commons.wikimedia.org)

With Liberal MP Mauril Bélanger’s private members’ bill seeking to change the lyrics of O Canada having advanced to its second reading, I am thinking about another anthem close to many readers’ hearts: Hatikvah. With Yom Ha’atzmaut having recently passed, the content of Hatikvah deserves some reconsideration.

Bélanger’s amendment would make the Canadian national anthem more gender-inclusive, changing “in all thy sons command” to “in all of us command.”

As reported by CBC News, Bélanger said, “As Canadians, we continually test our assumptions and, indeed, our symbols, for their suitability.” He continued: “Our anthem can reflect our roots and our growth.”

It’s a statement that is rife for comparing with the Israeli experience. Israel’s Jewish state-building origins have long been challenged by the country’s democratic requirements.

When it comes to inclusiveness, Bélanger knows of what he speaks. Over the last several months, Bélanger has been an especially unifying figure in the corridors of Canadian power, having been recently diagnosed with ALS. Not long ago, my own synagogue in Ottawa honored him in a highly moving ceremony that easily transcended whatever residue of partisan divisions may have remained after what was an unusually divisive Canadian election.

Despite being written in the highly gendered language of Hebrew, Hatikvah doesn’t suffer from gender exclusion (its gender inflections are mostly in the neutral “we” form). But there is a different gap in its inclusiveness: the 20% of Israeli citizens who are Arabs. Reports about swearing-in ceremonies of Knesset members or Israeli judges from time to time include a mention of an Arab or Palestinian honoree walking out or simply refusing to sing.

Writing in the Forward in 2012, Philologos (a pseudonym for Hillel Halkin) proposed changing Hatikvah’s lyrics to make them more inclusive. “It’s unacceptable to have an anthem that can’t be sung by 20% of a population,” he wrote. “Permitting [the minority] to stand mutely while others sing is no solution.”

Philologos’ fix is simple. Change Yehudi (Jewish) to Yisraeli (Israeli), and le’Tzion (to Zion) to l’artzeinu (to our land). Close the song with “in the city in which David … encamped.”

It’s an idea that is top of mind for Israel’s Arab MKs, such as Yousef Jabareen, who told me in a 2015 interview that he believes Hatikvah should be adapted “to accommodate both national groups.” He added, “The Arab minority are not just another minority. They are a native minority. They were there before the establishment of the state of Israel.”

When thinking about any type of policy change, it’s important to consider who stands to gain and who stands to lose. Given that a recent Pew poll found that 79% of Israeli Jews feel they “deserve preferential treatment,” it’s clear that Jewish Israelis are comfortable with their position of privilege – whether legislative or symbolic – in Israel. It stands to reason that any erosion in perceived privilege might be seen as a threat.

Israeli Jews may not embrace these sorts of changes. Neither, when it comes to changing O Canada, do some Conservative MPs, citing no need to bend to “political correctness,” as Larry Maguire said. Another MP, Kelly Block, said she does “not believe the anthem is sexist,” according to CBC News.

However, there is something powerful about allowing for expanded boundaries of inclusion. Further enfranchising those who feel excluded can help buttress the institutions that constitute the state, and the costs would be relatively low.

By their design, national anthems are meant to express the will of the polity. Those who wield power might want to think about the effects of the content of national symbols on those who don’t feel represented by them. When it comes to nation-building, casting a net that extends to the edges of the polity bears fruit for democratic functioning and civic identity.

Mira Sucharov is an associate professor of political science at Carleton University. She is a columnist for Canadian Jewish News and contributes to Haaretz and the Jewish Daily Forward, among other publications. This article was originally published in the CJN.

Community’s foundations

(photo by Cynthia Ramsay)

With the skyrocketing Vancouver real estate prices the talk of Canadian news media almost daily, less attention has been given to the fate of the many homes whose high property price-tags all but encourage demolition and rebuilds.

One Facebook group has been seeking to draw attention to the disappearing streetscape of Vancouver. With 10,000 followers, Vancouver Vanishes bills itself as “a lament for, and celebration of, the vanishing character homes in Vancouver.” Some houses – like one on West 15th, originally owned by an assistant salesman for the Canadian Pacific Railway – have already met their fate. Others are slated for demolition, with photos posted in the hopes that followers will register their protest with Vancouver City Council.

My late grandfather’s home – on Fremlin Street near West 54th Avenue – was recently torn down to make way for a generous new build. Purchased with my grandmother and their three daughters in the late 1950s, my grandfather lived in his mid-century vernacular bungalow for nearly six decades, until he died three years ago at age 97.

While it was spacious and modern by 1950s standards, my grandfather’s house probably wouldn’t have made it to the pages of Vancouver Vanishes. It was a standard bungalow with four modest bedrooms, generous entertaining spaces, a kitchen large enough to accommodate Passover and everyday dishes, and a spacious rec room with a wet bar for teenage dance parties hosted by my mom and aunts. With more room to spread out, it would have felt excitingly large to the three daughters and, soon, another girl they fostered, compared to the small character home on Quesnel Drive from which they had moved. But theirs wasn’t among the most celebrated Vancouver “heritage home” variety – the Storybook homes, or the Tudor, Georgian or Mission Revival structures.

Still, the Jewish community may want to pause to consider a special type of vanishing as more and more of these homes disappear. That is, the kind of community-building that took place within the four walls of my grandparents’ home, and in the homes of many other community leaders and activists of their generation.

In my grandparents’ home on Fremlin, there was organizing and affiliation with Schara Tzedeck Synagogue, then under the leadership of Rabbi Bernard Goldenberg and Rabbi Marvin Hier. As well, with three growing daughters, there were the activities of many youth groups: NCSY, Young Judea and Habonim. There was the founding and nurturing of Camp Miriam, where my grandmother was the first “camp mother.” There was much work to be done for Pioneer Women, for the Histadrut (Israel’s trade union association) and in the preparation of a weekly radio show my grandparents hosted on Jewish and Israeli themes. In between the many hours devoted to volunteer work, there were their small businesses to run – Clifford’s Jewellers in Kitsilano, and their real estate ventures.

Plus, there were Sunday waffle brunches for the large extended Margolis family – whose members had found their way to Vancouver starting in the 1940s after arriving in Winnipeg from Kiev two decades earlier – and visitors from Russia and Israel.

With their three daughters spread across Vancouver Talmud Torah, Kitsilano, Churchill and Eric Hamber secondary schools, there was a home library to nurture, classical music records to collect, family photos to display and a garden to tend: irises, tiger lilies, azaleas, rhododendrons, peonies and hydrangeas, and fruit trees – apple, pear and cherry.

By the time I was around, spending one memorable summer in the orange bedroom in the late 1970s, there were memories for me to make – like suffering my first wasp sting on the back patio – and hobbies for me to discover: there was a teach-yourself-to-type book and a learn-to-speak Spanish book to read, all while I took up tennis in the shadow of my grandmother’s formidable court skills. By Grade 8, having moved to Vancouver with my parents from Winnipeg, there were weekly dinners prepared for me by my grandfather between my school day at Eric Hamber and my Judaic studies classes at Congregation Beth Israel and at the home of Rabbi Daniel Siegel.

What is lost when a mid-century Vancouver bungalow is demolished? Wood siding, stucco, a large picture window, a tiled porch and a garden lovingly tended. But for communities, there is so much more: memories forged of childrearing, philanthropy and leadership. Luckily for Vancouver’s Jewish community, while the building materials of these homes may be gone, the scaffolding of a vibrant community – generations later – remains.

Is it time to end IJV herem?

When Vancouver-based songwriter and musician Daniel Maté wrote on his public Facebook page that he had declined an invitation from Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver to accompany some singers on Yom Hazikaron, since he “couldn’t in conscience do that as long as we don’t honor the far more numerous victims of the terror ‘our’ side inflicts,” he received an invitation from an Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) member to get involved in their group.

Sarah Levine was that IJV member. “It’s important to me to stand with other Jews who are working for Palestinian human rights,” she told me. “I think we have a particular role as Jews to think critically about Zionism, since the state of Israel often claims that it does things ‘in our name’ and with our support.”

Along the political spectrum of Jewish groups in Canada devoted to matters pertaining to Israel and Palestine, IJV – which bills itself as a human rights organization – tries to carve out a space rejecting traditional Zionist principles. In an organized Jewish community where conservative positions on Israel prevail, this doesn’t make it many friends.

Writing in the Huffington Post, IJV campaigns coordinator Tyler Levitan cites the silent treatment he regularly receives from an array of Jewish institutions when he seeks to publicly debate issues including Jewish National Fund discriminatory land-lease policies and the boycott, divestment and sanction movement. IJV considers BDS “a last resort,” as the group’s website says, and, while most observers would characterize IJV as anti-Zionist, it says that it “does not define itself in terms of Zionism.”

I spoke with Levitan. “Eroding that support base [for political Zionism] would be weakening the glue that binds the community,” he said. “That’s the fear. But we at IJV feel that having difficult and honest conversations is what makes the community stronger.”

For several years, I’ve watched IJV operate from close quarters. As a self-defined progressive Zionist, I have not signed onto IJV’s platform. But, as someone who values serious debate within the Jewish community, I have twice participated in an IJV-hosted forum. Mostly, I find it a sign of community weakness that most of the engines of the Jewish community attempt to shut IJV out of the conversation entirely.

Some Jewish papers (namely this one and the Jewish Post & News in Winnipeg) are open to including IJV perspectives, but the Canadian Jewish News and the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin keep a wide berth around IJV. Yoni Goldstein, CJN’s editor, will not grant IJV editorial space. As Goldstein put it, “… even though we promote inclusion as a virtue, there are limits to how inclusive we’re willing to be. Abetting BDS and rejecting Israel’s future as a Jewish state crosses the line.” Goldstein added: “Independence has its benefits, but the comfort of community is not usually one of them.”

With the exception of the Peretz Centre in Vancouver and the Winchevsky Centre in Toronto, no Jewish community locale will host IJV events – or even rent space to them, according to Levitan. But they’re not giving up on trying to be heard within Jewish community walls. “We’re persistent,” he said.

To reject Zionism indeed does place IJV outside of the mainstream community tent. It is this way, but should it be?

Like all political “isms,” Zionism’s meaning comes from the effects of the policies with which it is associated. While the debate between statist Zionism and those who foresaw other possible arrangements for Jewish liberation in the early 20th century was robust and active, non-Zionist voices receded as Jewish statehood emerged. But now, almost seven decades later, Israel is in crisis. It may be time to ask whether Jewish privilege should be rolled back in favor of some more inclusive and democratic arrangement. A frightened community, however, may view this very question as akin to treason.

IJV’s adherence to the Palestinian right of return is the biggest stumbling block for those who support Israel’s identity as a Jewish and democratic state. But even here, consider the wording on IJV’s website: “Peace will only be possible when Israel acknowledges the Palestinian refugees’ right of return and negotiates a just and mutually agreed solution based on principles established in international law, including return, compensation and/or resettlement.”

Any solution – even a two-state one – will likely involve some return, some compensation and some resettlement. While IJV does speak in terms of “rights,” in practice we might see their call as somewhat more pragmatic than many assume.

The thing is, even reasoning out these complicated dilemmas as I’m trying to do here is well-nigh impossible as long as groups like IJV remain excluded by the sort of herem (excommunication) with which they’ve been saddled. One thing on which Levitan and mainstream Jewish community leaders seem to agree is that there’s a lot of fear. And, sadly, we know all too well the kinds of politics to which fear can give rise.

Antisemitism’s blurry lines

Avi Benlolo, president of the Canadian Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre for Holocaust Studies, was recently quoted in the National Post saying that Jewish university-bound applicants should consider options other than Toronto’s York University. The reason? A faculty association executive proposal to divest from weapons manufacturers. The proposal didn’t mention Israel by name.

According to Benlolo, this is a “campaign of censorship against Israel and the Jewish people.” The organization also issued a statement declaring that, in the wake of the proposal, it was “concerned for the safety and security of [York’s] Jewish students and faculty.”

I recently combed through the 2015 report of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre on antisemitism on American campuses, headlined: “A Clear and Present Danger.” Over the 26-page document, I discovered a few antisemitic incidents over the eight preceding years. (I selected an eight-year period to represent two generations of students at a four-year university or college.)

As the report detailed, at Harvard in 2013, to raise awareness of Palestinian home demolitions, activists slipped mock eviction notices into dorm rooms. There was no evidence to suggest whether Jewish students were targeted. And, in 2014-2015 at University of California-L.A., Rachel Beyda, a Jewish student, was barred admission to a judicial position by the student council following accusations that her Jewish heritage made her biased. After an uproar, the administration pressured the council to reverse itself. A similar dynamic played out at Stanford in 2014, when Molly Horwitz was asked, “Given your strong Jewish identity, how would you vote on divestment?”

The report also noted a “decade” of “increasing hostility” at the University of California-Berkeley in 2015, “including “vandalizing Jewish property, spitting at Jewish students, threatening violence, and physically assaulting Jewish supporters of Israel.”

Incidents like these should be called out strongly. But every other event chronicled since 2007 in the Simon Wiesenthal Centre report described political activity directed against Israel or its policies – not instances of antisemitism.

The latest mudslinging debate in the antisemitism wars is more nuanced. It concerns a talk by gender studies scholar Jasbir Puar at Vassar College, an event that authors of a Wall Street Journal op-ed described as antisemitic and a blood libel.

In the talk (of which I received a transcript), Puar made two particularly jarring claims. About the bodies of 17 Palestinian youth that Israel kept for two months at the end of 2015, Puar said, “Some speculate that the bodies were mined for organs for scientific research.” (These youth, it is important to note, had been attacking Israelis. Puar described these Palestinian youth as having been involved in “stabbing” and as part of a “peoples’ rumble” but called their deaths “field assassinations.”)

Puar also suggested that Israel engages in “weaponized epigenetics, where the outcome is not so much about winning or losing nor a solution, but about needing body parts, not even whole bodies, for research and experimentation.”

Puar did not respond to my requests for comment or clarification regarding her accusations.

While academic freedom is a principle meant to protect scholarly speech from legal censure, there is an equally important norm requiring a scholar to provide evidence when making empirical claims. On this, Puar failed.

But is Puar’s scholarly breach antisemitic?

Joshua Schreier, an associate professor of history at Vassar and part of the steering committee of the Jewish studies program that was one of the co-sponsors of the talk, doesn’t think so. He attended the event. “It’s really important,” he told me, “to protect free speech and protect academic speech,” adding that “we have a responsibility, as academics, when we talk about speculation, to note … whether it’s substantiated, whether we’re trying to give new life to those rumors, or not, but none of that makes it antisemitic.”

Unfortunately, the unsubstantiated charge of using “body parts for experimentation” cuts close to the bone of blood libel myths. It is also uttered in the context of a cultural moment on campuses when most criticism of Israel is inappropriately being cast as antisemitic. This surely means that there will be fallout from the talk that will serve to distract debaters from the pressing issues around the ills of occupation. It also means that amid the hyperbolic rhetoric about antisemitism on campuses, actual antisemitism is becoming more difficult to spot when it does occur.

Meanwhile, hundreds of faculty members from across the United States have issued a statement to Vassar’s president asking her to “write a letter to the Wall Street Journal … condemning in no uncertain terms the unjustifiable attack on Vassar and on Professor Puar.”

For its part, the Anti-Defamation League had nothing more damning to say about Puar’s appearance at Vassar than that she has sometimes accused Israel of pinkwashing.

Ian S. Lustick, a professor of political science at University of Pennsylvania, told me by email that he signed the statement “to show solidarity against the campaign to restrict the space of politically correct discussion on anything pertaining to Israel and Palestinians.” About the claim of organ harvesting, Lustick said that “the speculations about horrific

Israeli behavior with respect to organ harvesting from Palestinian bodies are as unlikely to be true as they are likely to be circulated as long as Israel refuses to quickly return bodies of dead Palestinians to their families.”

Debate over campus discourse on Israel (and even on things like armaments, weirdly perceived by some to represent Israel) will continue. Vassar’s president, for her part, invited parents and alumni to an online forum to discuss “current issues and tensions within our community related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

As for whether actions on campuses over the last decade constitute antisemitism, the ledger is mixed. Verbal or physical harassment directed at Jews for reasons related to their ethnic or religious identity is antisemitism. Same with leveling dual loyalty charges against Jewish students.

But consideration of divestment from weapons companies is not antisemitism. Criticism of Israeli policy is not antisemitism. Criticism of the occupation is not antisemitism. Criticism of violence – whether it is state-sponsored violence or violence carried out by individuals or groups – is not antisemitism.

Presenting unsubstantiated claims against agents of a state in a public lecture is irresponsible. And, if the symbolism chosen for these non-evidenced charges quacks like an infamous antisemitic myth, it will, not surprisingly, be heard by many as redolent of that scourge. But that does not necessarily make it, in and of itself, antisemitism.

A satirical vlog on Zionism

A screenshot from the trailer for Avi Does the Holy Land. The vlog will appeal to some more than others.

Good satire depends not only on distancing the viewer from the object of ridicule, but on making them identify with it, if only just a little. For North American Jews who’ve grown up with affection towards Israel, a new video blog (or vlog) does just that.

Avi Does the Holy Land is a sendup of sex-drenched Zionism, a vlog that purports to tackle various hot-button aspects of Israel – “the most contentious state in the Middle East!” in the words of Avi, a “Canadian Jewess” who “went on a Birthright trip and fell in love with Israel.” (Haaretz has since revealed that Avi is Aviva Zimmerman, originally from Calgary, and now an Israel-based filmmaker.)

Through a website, a YouTube channel and a Facebook page, Avi covers such topics as how to beat terrorism, whether Palestinians are really oppressed or not, what to pack for Birthright, and the accusation, by Israel’s critics, of pinkwashing.

And, while Avi is a cartoonish, lipsticked character who perpetually seems perplexed by the sincerity of her interviewees, many of us will no doubt identify with at least a sliver of her carefree naiveté.

“Did I just give a blow job to a guy named Dudu?” she muses in one segment.

In my kibbutz-loving period of the early 1990s, it wasn’t a guy with the unfortunate name Dudu I fawned over, but another whose name in translation meant “ploughed field.” Giggling over his agricultural moniker while in ulpan class, my pals and I idealized his Zionist credentials.

In another scene, Avi wears a pink T-shirt emblazoned with an Uzi, the kind that pepper tourist shops throughout Jerusalem.

While I never wore clothing depicting an actual gun, I did rummage through the kibbutz lost and found one day and select a worn, burgundy T-shirt from a paratrooper, the kind Israeli soldiers design when they finish their basic training. (This one, from 1984, was extremely tame next to the tasteless ones appearing in more recent years – ones that promote rape and anti-Palestinian violence.) I later found the owner – a different strapping kibbutznik whose name meant cedar tree – but never did return it. Why would I? It had the perfect mix of soft fibres and Jewish power pedigree. All the better to wear while painting metal beams and bantering with the workers over never-ending tea-and-toast breaks in the kibbutz welding shop.

Avi Does the Holy Land’s web episode “Pride vs. Pinkwashing” is the most cutting in terms of political messaging. It involves alternating scenes of Avi doing what she “does best” – “dancing on a truck” at Tel Aviv Pride – and interviewing Rami Younis, a Palestinian writer and activist, over charges of Israeli pinkwashing. Calling Israel’s critics “belly-aching leftist sh–heads,” Avi muses over Younis being “hashtag superserious,” and finally suggests to him that perhaps if he drapes himself in a rainbow flag, Israel will treat him better.

It’s probably fair to say that I move in circles that are highly critical of the occupation and that, while I’ve taken a nuanced position on pinkwashing, still take the claim seriously. But I, too, have enjoyed a Tel Aviv Pride beach party, trying to order a vodka cocktail from a shirtless bartender and, in my distraction, confusing the Hebrew word for cranberries with that for paratroopers and enjoying my private little malapropism – a symbol of Diaspora idealization of Israel – for weeks after.

So is Avi “other”? Or is Avi “us”? For those who are distressed by the occupation and feel a gradual distancing from Israel through decades of government intransigence and illiberal moves intended to silence and intimidate human rights activists, probably a bit of both. And for those who don’t have a single critical word in their lexicon for the Jewish state, I’m really not sure. But I’d love to see their reaction.

More to becoming an adult

It’s a bat mitzvah year in our family. We’ve booked the photographer, the caterer, the DJ and the invitation company. Our daughter is studying her parashah and learning to chant the Haftorah and maftir.

Now, it’s time to inject some social justice into the experience, in the form of what have come to be known as “mitzvah projects.” Coming of age in the 1980s, my generation was less social justice-oriented. So what exactly, I wondered, should a “mitzvah project” entail?

I turned to JEDLAB, the Jewish educators’ forum on Facebook. I discovered that there is an organization expressly founded to support kids in their mitzvah project strategies. Called Areyvut (Hebrew for “social responsibility”), the New Jersey-based group offers consulting services – from a free phone consultation to more extensive, fee-based ones – and direct organizing of an array of hands-on, direct-action-style activities in which party guests can participate. Called “chesed fairs,” these might include game-board painting for a social-services agency, hat-making for cancer fighters or cupcake-decorating for a local day centre. Clients need not live in the area, or even in the United States.

Elsewhere, Areyvut teams up with synagogues and youth groups to teach kids to be “mitzvah clowns” for residents of long-term care facilities.

I decided to take up Areyvut’s offer to engage in a free phone consultation on my daughter’s mitzvah project idea. She had chosen a complex topic – addressing the economic effects, particularly around access to housing, of urban gentrification. Talking to Areyvut’s staff reminded me that mitzvah projects need not be confined to financial giving. Advocacy and awareness can be just as important.

I decided to take some of these ideas to my own community. Through word of mouth, I initiated a b’nai mitzvah club to help develop mitzvah project ideas. At the first meeting, which we called “Hot Chocolate for Hot Issues,” I led a workshop to get the kids thinking about a given issue, how to identify deeper causes of the problem and how to consider the range of action one might take to address these problems.

For our mitzvah club this year, each child will identify a pressing issue around which he or she is passionate and then develop an action plan, a plan that should involve at least two of the following: fundraising, political advocacy, public awareness and direct action. Fundraising could involve donating a portion of bar or bat mitzvah gift money, or holding a bakeathon or danceathon. Political advocacy might involve letter-writing to elected officials. Public awareness could include an Instagram campaign increasing public understanding of the issue. And direct action means identifying a relevant organization at which the child can volunteer.

Sometimes, there is an identified need, but not an established organization dedicated to it. In these cases, Areyvut can support kids in being more ambitious – for example, in creating their own nonprofit organization. Billy’s Baseballs grew out of a bar mitzvah initiative where a child organized the sending of decorated baseballs to soldiers stationed abroad.

Daniel Rothner, Areyvut’s founder and director, puts it this way. As Jews, we are supposed to be a “light unto the nations,” engaged in making the world a better place, he told me. And the impact extends beyond the Jewish community, he added. He is also passionate about getting kids to think about the deeper causes. What of Dave, the homeless man who appears at the soup kitchen every week? Why does Dave need to come week after week?

Our own b’nai mitzvah club has come a long way from kids reciting the “today I am a fountain pen” joke. As my daughter said, the bar or bat mitzvah milestone means that “technically, you’re becoming a woman or a man and, once you are [an adult], you have a responsibility to help out with the issues in the world and in our community.”

NGOs should flaunt funding

The Transparency Bill, also known as the NGO Bill, received cabinet approval in December and is, therefore, closer to becoming law in Israel. The bill requires any Israeli nongovernmental organization receiving more than half its funding from foreign governments to disclose this in all written communications with elected officials; to declare it orally when meeting in places where public officials gather; and, perhaps most chillingly, to require these NGO representatives to wear a badge indicating this funding whenever they visit the Knesset. The government’s coalition members have already agreed to support the bill when it is presented to the Knesset.

It’s no wonder left-wing NGOs and their supporters are bristling at the bill, seeing it, rightly, as targeting them specifically. Right-wing NGOs tend to get their foreign funding from individuals (who are often more difficult to track) rather than from governments. Given the current composition of the Israeli government, right-wing NGOs also naturally seek to support and intensify existing government policies, whereas left-wing NGOs are more likely to challenge the government’s policies. The bill is also somewhat redundant, since all NGOs are already required to declare their funding sources.

Nonetheless, should the bill pass, NGOs should wear their scarlet letter proudly. Unlike the literary figure Hester Prynne who flouted her community’s norms by committing adultery, Israeli NGOs are not only upholding the democratic norms of their own country, but are indeed enacting the norms of a much larger world than their own: specifically, global international society.

Consider the foreign government funding sources of ACRI, Israel’s premier civil liberties association. These donor countries are exclusively democracies. Ditto the country donors to B’Tselem, Israel’s premier human rights organization. Adalah, New Israel Fund, Sikkuy: all of these rights groups in Israel receive funding not from authoritarian regimes who trade in tyranny and persecution, but from democracies.

What do democracies have in common? Namely, a mission to uphold the practices that define them: openness, transparency, protection of the individual and of minorities, human rights, civil liberties and freedom. Expressing these norms is one of the main explanations for one of the most enduring features of the international system: the tendency for democracies to never go to war with one another. In believing that fellow democracies act with similar degrees of openness and debate, democratic governments inherently trust one another to solve disputes peacefully.

Democratic governments also have another unique quality: by design, they speak for their majority. Right now, the donor countries to these NGOs are mostly European. (Some United Nations bodies are represented, as well as USAID.) Imagine if every democracy in the world chose to funnel some of their foreign aid budget to Israeli NGOs: these Israeli groups would then be acting as an extension of global democratic society writ large, the best slice of human capital the world currently boasts.

On the day of the vote, the Zionist Union wore protest tags declaring “a Jew doesn’t mark another Jew: a Jew doesn’t mark another human being.” Galei Tzahal, Israel’s army radio, has revealed that 98% of Netanyahu’s campaign donations are from donors abroad. An American petition is circulating urging “President Obama and Congress to support U.S. legislation and regulations that would ensure that similar restrictions to whatever is enacted in the Knesset against ‘foreign funding’ of Israeli human rights groups are applied in the U.S. to private U.S. funding of the Israeli right and the settler movement.” And now, a group of American citizens have filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Treasury, attempting to rescind the nonprofit status of 150 American NGOs that apparently send billions of dollars to the settlements and to the Israel Defence Forces.

These are understandable rearguard actions. But perhaps supporters of human rights and civil liberties are looking the wrong way.

The Israeli government worries about Israel being “delegitimized” in international circles. The best hope for Israel is for the country’s fellow democracies to believe in Israeli civil society enough to continue to boost it. Until the upholders of democratic values give up on Israel altogether – and I sure hope that does not happen – Israeli NGOs should boast proudly of their foreign democratic government funding. It follows, too, that the Israeli government should be grateful for it. Amid all the delegitimization stemming from Israel’s running of a patently undemocratic regime in the West Bank, which regularly flouts human rights and civil liberties, the good work of these Israeli NGOs – the cornerstone of Israeli civil society – is the best reminder that there is hope for democratic Israel yet.