Category: News

הפרשה המורכבת והמסתורית

סוכן המוסד לשעבר: “עזרתי לישראל לחשוף את תוכנית הגרעין של סוריה” – חלק ראשון. (צילום מחוסיין עלי סומדייה)

לאחרונה שני עיתונים מרכזיים ‘הטורונטו סאן’ ו’הנשיונל פוסט’ דיווחו בהרחבה על הסוכן הכפול לשעבר של עיראק, ולאחר מכן של המוסד, חוסיין עלי סומדייה (53), שגר בקנדה ומנסה למנוע את גירושו בשנית לתוניסיה. הפרשה המורכבת והמסתורית משהו על סוכן כפול תמיד מעלה את רף העניין אצל הקוראים, שברובם המוחלט אינם יודעים מה היא האמת ומה שייך לפרי הדמיון, בסיפורים יוצאי דופן מעין אלה.

חשבתי שכדאי לשמוע על קשריו ועבודתו של סומדייה עם המוסד ממקור ראשון, אך לא הצלחתי למצוא מידע על פרטי ההתקשרות עימו. לבסוף מצאתי באתר בית המשפט הקנדי המידע על התיק המתנהל בעניינו, ושם פורסם גם שמו של עורך דינו, ג’רארד וויל מטורונטו, שמתמחה בנושאי הגירה ופליטים. עו”ד וויל הוא זה שמסר לי את האימייל של סומדייה וכך נוצר הקשר בינינו. הוא אגב קורא לעצמו כיום סם סומדייה. בתגובה לבקשתי לראיין אותו כתב לי: “אסכים להתראיין ובתנאי שלא מדובר באחד מכלי התקשורת הערבים”. מדוע? שאלתי וסומדייה השיב בשיחת טלפון מהמילטון (במחוז אונטריו) ששם הוא גר: “עבורם אני בוגד, כלב או כל שם גנאי אחר – כיוון שעבדתי עם הישראלים”. זו גם הסיבה לטענתו שאם יגורש שוב לתוניסיה הם ידאגו לחסלו. ב-2005 עת גורש לראשונה לשם הוא עונה לטענתו ולבסוף הצליח לברוח שוב לקנדה. “לכן”, הוא מוסיף: “אני מתקשה להבין כיצד השלטונות הקנדים כל כך נאיבים ולא מבינים מה יעלה בגורלי אם אגיע למדינה ערבית כשלהי”.

לפי הפרסומים בעיתונות הקנדית בתקופת הרודן סאדם חוסיין בשנות ה-80, סומדייה שגר באנגליה, שימש סוכן כפול של מנגנון הביטחון הסודי העיראקי לשעבר – המחובראת, ולאחר מכן סוכן של המוסד. הוא יליד עיראק ומחזיק גם באזרחות של תוניס, שבה נולד אביו, חוסיין סומדייה, ששימש שגריר עיראק בבלגיה תחת סאדם חוסיין.

סומדייה שמנסה כאמור בכל כוחו למנוע מהשלטונות הקנדיים את גירושו בשנית לתוניסיה, הגיש ערעור לבית המשפט הפדרלי של קנדה. זאת, לאחר ששרותי ההגירה הפקיעו את תושבות הקבע הקנדית שלו. כשהכוונה בשלב השני בעצם היא לגרשו שוב לתוניסיה.

“הסוכן הכפול” הגיע לקנדה לראשונה ב-1990 לאחר שברח מהשלטון העיראקי וביקש מקלט מדיני. שלטונות ההגירה לא הסכימו שהוא ישאר בקנדה בטענה שיש סבירות גבוהה שבעבודתו כסוכן, חשף לא מעט אנשים למעשי עינויים ואולי אף להוצאה להורג. ובעצם מדובר בפשעים שהוא ביצע נגד האנושות. לפיכך לאחר שנים של הליך משפט ארוך שכלל ערעורים רבים מציד סומדייה שנדחו, הוא גורש לבסוף לתוניסיה ב-2005. סומדייה טען אז שברגע נחיתתו בתוניסיה הוא נעצר על ידי רשויות החוק. הוא הובא לחקירות קשות שכללו מעשי אלימות ועינויים. לאחר כשנה הוא הצליח לברוח מתוניסיה לאלג’יריה, עבר להולנד והציג לשגרירות הקנדית בהאג מסמכים מזוייפים לבקשת מקלט מדיני בקנדה. על בסיס המסמכים הוענק לו דרכון חרום וכך טס בחזרה לקנדה בקייץ 2006. מאז שוב עניינו נדון בבית המשפט, בזמן שרשויות ההגירה מסרבות להעניק לו תושבות קבע, לאחר שעשה שימוש במסמכים מזוייפים. לאחר שנה (2007) רשויות ההגירה הסכימו עם טענתו שאם יגורש שוב לתוניסיה, אכן צפויה סכנה לחייו. “לטורונטו סאן” אמר סומדייה כי המאבקים הקשים בשלטונות ההגירה עלו לו הרבה, ובין היתר גרמו לגירושים שלו.

Jewish history’s next chapter

The JDC’s Zoya Shvartzman is part of the FEDtalks lineup Sept. 16. (photo from JFGV)

In returning to Vancouver, Zoya Shvartzman is retracing the route that has seen the Moldova-born woman help “write the next chapter of the history of European Jewry.”

Those words, while spoken by Shvartzman, are not about herself – she was crediting North Americans and others who support the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) with helping revivify communities that were almost annihilated under Nazism and then suppressed by communism. But the work Shvartzman does in her role at the JDC means she could rightly claim to be among a number of authors altering the future for Jews in Europe.

Shvartzman and her parents made aliyah from the East European nation when she was 8 years old. At 15, she and her mother migrated to Vancouver. Here, the family had some hard times and they turned to the Jewish community.

“The Jewish community welcomed us with open arms and gave us almost a second home,” she recalled recently in a phone interview with the Independent. “It was a very, very fond memory of my time there and it has a lot to do with the Jewish community that became our family.” She will speak about this time when she presents as one of four speakers at FEDtalks, the opening event of the 2018 Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver annual campaign, Sept. 16.

Shvartzman chose to pursue a degree in international development studies and political science at McGill University and so, after four years on the West Coast, she and her mother decamped for Montreal.

“After that, I decided to move to Budapest to pursue my master’s in political science because I was focusing on Eastern European politics and transitions from communism to democracy,” she said. “Because I’m from that part of the world, it made sense to go back and be there, be where it’s taking place.”

She completed her studies at Central European University, which was founded and funded by the democracy philanthropist George Soros, and, after graduation, worked for the Canadian embassy in Budapest. In 2007, she was offered a position at the JDC, where she is now director of strategic partnerships.

Shvartzman’s role is to identify on-the-ground needs of Jewish communities in Europe and convey those needs to potential funders, primarily in North America. Federations, foundations and philanthropists then contribute to help the JDC complete its projects.

“In Europe, basically, our main mission is that we build resilient communities,” she said. “We help build communities where they were shattered after the Holocaust and after communist regimes.

“In Eastern and Central Europe, we help poor Jews with basic services like food and medicine and winter relief, help to pay their utilities,” she explained. “Most of the elderly are Holocaust survivors. We work extensively with Holocaust survivors together with the Claims Conference funding. In the last 10 years or so, we developed services for children and families, modeled on the JFS [Jewish Family Services] model that you’re familiar with in Canada and the U.S., addressing the needs of poor children and families.”

Examples of projects that the JDC has spearheaded or supported include a Jewish community centre in Warsaw and a summer camp in Hungary, where children from 25 countries come to strengthen – or, in some cases, learn about for the first time – their Jewish identity. But the work is not limited to Eastern and Central Europe.

In France, the JDC has opened a “resilience centre,” to help Jewish schools, social workers, teachers, children and families respond to threats experienced by Jews in the country. Several acts of anti-Jewish terror in recent years in France have compounded existing anxieties about the security of its Jewish population and institutions.

The decade-plus that Shvartzman has been with the JDC has been a time of challenge for Jews and others across the continent.

“Especially the last four or five years have been particularly tumultuous for Jews in Europe,” she said. “There are different threats – external, internal threats. We see communities that have nearly collapsed, like the community in Greece, in terms of the economic crisis that really, really shattered it.”

In addition to the generalized economic challenges experienced by people in many countries, Jews have faced particular difficulties. Rising antisemitism and political extremism in places like Hungary and Poland have stoked once-dormant apprehensions.

Even so, Shvartzman is bullish about Jewish life in Europe and plans to share her enthusiasm with Vancouverites.

“There are many causes for optimism,” she said. “When you look at the revival of Jewish life in Europe and how these communities have gone from survival to really thriving Jewish communities, I think that’s a big cause of optimism.

“This is quite remarkable when you consider the history and some of the deep, deep traumas that this community has suffered and, today, Jews are reclaiming their heritage and are proud to be Jewish,” she continued. “All of this gives us great causes of optimism that Jewish life in Europe is thriving.”

Shvartzman’s Moldovan childhood and her current work both reflect and embody the JDC’s mission to save and build Jewish lives, said Michael Geller, the JDC’s North American director of communications.

“In her professional life and her personal life and in her life’s journey, she understands quite deeply the importance, the critical importance, of the work we do every day to ensure that needy Jews have the basic needs to continue to live their lives and, in addition, to have a strong Jewish identity, one that is their own, that they make themselves, and one that we help strengthen and empower through the kind of work that we do,” he said.

Returning to the theme of writing the next chapter of European Jewish history, Shvartzman credits overseas allies with making possible all of the achievements she and the JDC have realized.

“It’s only possible because of the support of the North American communities, North American Jewry, that chose to invest in that part of the world over the past 20, 25 years,” she said. “If I had to underline one message, it would be that: North American Jewry helping to write the next chapter of the history of European Jewry.”

FEDtalks features keynote speakers Rabbi Irwin Kula, Pamela Schuller, Arik Zeevi and Zoya Shvartzman. The event takes place at the Vancouver Playhouse on Sept. 16, 7 p.m. Tickets ($36) are available from jewishvancouver.com.

Love your uniqueness

Pamela Schuller will share her story at FEDtalks Sept. 16. (photo from JFGV)

On Sept .16 at Vancouver Playhouse, as part of FEDtalks, Pamela Schuller, an internationally known disability and mental health advocate and professional stand-up comedian, will share her story. Her aim? To inspire attendees to remember and cherish what makes them unique.

Schuller divides her time between being running a Jewish teen mental health initiative in New York City and traveling the world, using her own experiences to discuss inclusion and the importance of embracing differences and disabilities.

“I tell my story of growing up with a severe case of Tourette syndrome (TS) and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) … and how, over time, I learned how to be more than OK with those things,” said Schuller. “I learned to love them and embrace them, and found that they add positive, incredible things to my life when I allow them to.”

According to the website tourette.ca, TS is “a neurodevelopmental or brain-based condition that causes people who have it to make involuntary sounds and movements called tics.” And, according to the Canadian Mental Health Association (cmha.ca), OCD is “a mental illness … made up of two parts – obsessions and compulsions. People may experience obsessions, compulsions or both, and they cause a lot of distress.”

Growing up in America’s Midwest, Schuller felt she stood out as the oddball kid with TS. Her mom had a hard time raising her. And, as her mom struggled, so did Schuller – dealing with having TS, as well as with numerous trips to the hospital for broken bones and depression. It took a boarding school environment for Schuller to be able to come out of her shell.

“I’d always felt like I was something my community had to work through, that I was a nuisance,” Schuller told the Independent. “But, at this boarding school … well, I’m not going to tell the whole story … I’ll save that for when I’m in Vancouver. But, I can tell you that the school knew that, if I was going to pull myself out of this space of feeling worthless, I’d need to have something about myself that I loved. So, their goal was to help me find one thing about myself that I loved. And we used that to catapult me into realizing that the one thing I love about myself translates into other areas of my life. And that, maybe, I don’t love this thing despite TS, but maybe, in actuality, TS adds to this thing that I love.”

Schuller speaks openly about being depressed before experiencing this mental shift, and of not having wanted to be a part of this world.

“To be honest, I think it’s a journey that doesn’t stop,” she said. “I still have days where it feels like having TS is bad, embarrassing or painful. And I have to remind myself that it’s OK and that there are still things I love about myself … and that, a lot of them, I learned because of TS.

“The first thing I learned that I love about myself was my sense of humour. But, it took some time to channel that sense of humour from snarky and sarcastic … to a more channeled sense of humour.

“Then, over time, I started talking seriously, not using humour, about what it means to love differences, to love the most challenging thing about yourself, the thing you struggle with the most.

“A few years ago, I realized that stand-up and talking about disabilities don’t have to be separate. So, I combined them into a talk, with humour and storytelling.”

A few years ago, Schuller earned a master’s degree in child advocacy and policy, with an emphasis on creating inclusive communities.

She believes that much of celebrating differences is about believing it is possible – that, whatever you bring to a community, you can be a part of that community.

Stand-up comedy serves as a sort of therapy for Schuller. “When I’m on stage, it’s not that my TS calms down … but, even on a tough day, I’m reminded that I love my brain,” she said. “And my brain allows me to do stand-up and have TS.

“That reminder allows me to see other things about me that I love. I think I’ve always seen the world from a different point of view, in part, because of TS. Comedy allows me to point those things out and, in a way, speak without being judged.”

Schuller encourages people to find the one thing that makes them incredible and unique.

As far as what people can expect to get out of her talk, Schuller said, “It doesn’t matter if you have a disability or not, the message is pretty universal. So, you can expect to laugh, to think about things and, maybe, sometimes, to cry, because feelings come up.

“Some of these conversations are tough. We’re all afraid of what we don’t know or maybe we don’t feel so great about ourselves or what we bring into this world. I think, by pairing humour with some of these messages and storytelling, it makes people think – about themselves and how they treat others, how they treat people in their community and what their community is doing.

“I walk into teen communities and I have everyone laughing and thinking,” she said. “And, when I finish, the teens line up to talk to me, share with me or ask questions. So, I think that my goal is to not be preachy, but to be a conversation starter.

“Typically, when communities bring me, they’ll have me perform for everyone. Then, I’ll do workshops, classes and programs. I’ve been working with communities around being inclusive for years, professionally, sharing ideas and talking about the tension points in your community around inclusion and how can we come up with some ideas that might help that.”

Schuller and her family have realized that, sometimes, the things they struggle with the most can also be their greatest strengths.

“It doesn’t mean I don’t still end up in the hospital from broken bones, from TS, but, even in those tough moments, as a family, we’re able to find humour … and to find those moments where, we’re like, ‘OK, this is so amazing … how cool that we’re learning this, doing this or experiencing this.’”

For tickets to FEDtalks ($36), visit jewishvancouver.com.

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Vancouverite to serve in IDF

Vancouverite Maya Gur-Arieh was among the 57 soon-to-be-enlisted Israel Defence Forces lone soldiers who landed at Ben Gurion Airport on Aug. 15. (photo by Gil Zohar)

A happy crowd of approximately 2,000 people – family and friends, along with eight members of the Knesset and assorted officials – arrived at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel at 6 a.m. on Aug. 15 to welcome the second plane of Nefesh b’Nefesh olim (immigrants) and returning citizens to touch down this summer. On board were 239 newcomers, including olim hailing from British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec, and 24 American states.

The reception at Terminal 4, a hangar adjoining the tarmac, festooned with banners, featured hora dancing, shofar blowing, tears of joy and shouts of “welcome home” and “mazal tov.” The newcomers varied from babies to retirees, including 30 families, 90 children and three sets of twins. But it was the 57 soon-to-be-enlisted Israel Defence Forces lone soldiers, wearing T-shirts emblazoned in Hebrew with “Ascending to an army uniform,” who garnered most of the accolades.

Among these future IDF soldiers was Maya Gur-Arieh, 18, who was born in Ashkelon but moved with her family to Vancouver when she was six months old. Keen to enlist for the past 24 months, she told the Jewish Independent, “I’m really happy I’m here. I’m really looking forward to my service. I really recommend Garin Tzabar.”

The program, affiliated with the Hebrew Scouts Movement in Israel and largely funded by the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption, facilitates service in the IDF and provides a support system for Israelis and Jews from the Diaspora serving in the army who do not have at least one parent living in Israel.

Lone soldiers receive a higher basic salary from the IDF, as well as financial assistance from the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption and the Ministry of Housing. Lone soldiers in combat units receive a monthly salary of NIS 3,100 ($1,200 Cdn), according to the Garin Tzabar website, and they are given help with housing and the right to extra time off, including 30 days per year to visit family overseas.

Gur-Arieh said she attended four Garin Tzabar programs in San Francisco, at her own expense, in anticipation of joining Zahal, the Hebrew acronym for the IDF.

In heading to Israel, she is following a Gur-Arieh family tradition, she said – her two older sisters both served as lone soldiers, one as an artillery instructor and the other as a combat engineering instructor. Both became officers, she said with pride. One of her sisters is making a career in the IDF.

Gur-Arieh doesn’t know where she will be serving since she hasn’t done the battery of physical and psychological tests that all draftees must complete before being assigned to a unit. Like her sisters, she, too, would like to be an instructor in a combat unit.

Until she is drafted, Gur-Arieh – whose surname means lion cub – will be living at Kibbutz Kissufim on the Gaza periphery. Asked about the tensions in the south and the rockets, mortars and incendiary balloons and kites from Gaza that have targeted her adopted home, she was nonplussed.

Founded in 2002, Nefesh b’Nefesh has assisted in bringing 57,000 Jews to Israel from Canada, the United States and Britain. The organization currently assists 3,200 soldiers in its lone soldier program.

The Aug. 15 Nefesh b’Nefesh charter flight was paid for by Heidi Rothberg of Denver, Colo.

Gil Zohar is a journalist based in Jerusalem.

JFS launches new program

Jewish Family Services has launched a new program to provide short-term financial assistance to Jewish community members living in the Tri-Cities area, including Maple Ridge and Mission. This program is funded by a grant from a private donor through Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver.

Called the Chesed (or Compassion) Program, the project responds to recommendations made by the Jewish Food Security Task Force, a joint collaboration between JFS and Jewish Federation, that identified the lack of regionally based Jewish food options as one of the top priorities to address.

According to a report from the Jewish Federation, 4,200 Jews in the Lower Mainland earn less than $30,000 annually and live below the low-income cut-off. Approximately 20% of these households live in the Tri-Cities, Mission, Langley and Maple Ridge. Another five percent of households in these areas earn less than $50,000. This means there are approximately 1,000 people living in these communities, many of whom are single-parent working families, who are considered food insecure.

Richard Fruchter, chief executive officer of JFS, said that, for those living in this situation, their day-to-day reality is dire. “Many do not have enough food to last the whole month without accessing a food bank,” he explained, and “some parents go without so that their children have enough to eat. Still others have poor diets, lacking sufficient income to purchase fresh fruit and vegetables.”

Nearly all Jewish programs and services are located in Vancouver and, despite the number of low-income Jewish households in these geographic areas, there are no Jewish-run social services available to them. Many are families that have requested assistance from JFS but, because of the distance to Vancouver or the Jewish Food Bank’s limited hours of operation, they are not getting the help they need. In addition, a significant number of these households are new immigrants, the majority of whom are Russians or Russian-Israelis. They would benefit from being connected to the Jewish community and having access to social and educational programs offered closer to their homes. The Chesed Program is a small but significant step in creating access to these social services.

The program is designed to offer up to six months’ short-term assistance for people in crisis where no other source of funding is available. Eligible are Jewish community members 18 to 65 years old who are residents of the Tri-Cities, Maple Ridge or Mission and can demonstrate financial need (i.e. bank statement, rent receipt, income tax statement, social assistance cheque, proof of income) and are willing to develop a long-term plan for addressing their financial needs, where possible. Individuals or families who meet the eligibility criteria will receive a loaded credit card that can be used for purchasing basic needs items.

For more information about the Chesed Program, contact Tanja Demajo, director of family and adult resources at JFS, at [email protected] or 604-637-3316.

Benefits from being bilingual

Dr. Carmit Altman of Bar-Ilan University. (photo by Carmit Altman)

“Anna,” a preschooler in the Israeli city of Bat Yam, was thought to be cognitively impaired because testing her in Hebrew showed her cognitive skills lagging behind her classmates. But, when retested in her home language, Russian, she was found to be normal. About half of all Israeli children speak a different language at home than in school, making Israel possibly the world’s best “laboratory” for researching the still little-understood phenomenon of growing up with two or more spoken languages.

One important Israeli discovery is that comparing bilingual kids like Anna to monolingual children is like comparing apples to pears, according to Bar-Ilan University Prof. Sharon Armon-Lotem. For two decades, her lab has studied language-acquisition processes of Israeli preschoolers from English-, Russian- and Amharic-speaking homes.

Roughly 20% of children entering first grade in Israeli secular public schools come from immigrant homes in which the dominant language is not Hebrew. The largest cohort is Russian-speakers, numbering about 1.2 million out of an overall Israeli population of 8.7 million.

Adding more than a million Israeli households where Arabic, Yiddish or African languages are spoken, the percentage of bilingual children climbs to as high as 50% of the general population, Armon-Lotem told Israel21c.

To evaluate bilingualism properly, one must understand that children who grow up speaking two or more languages in everyday life are not using the same brain processes as do monolingual children learning a second language in school, note Armon-Lotem and other Israeli experts. And, if bilingual children like Anna initially have a smaller Hebrew vocabulary, they have better syntax and concept-generation skills in both languages. Overall, they develop language no differently than monolingual peers, unless they have developmental language disorder (DLD).

DLD, estimated to affect five to seven percent of both monolingual and bilingual children, causes dramatic delays in language acquisition not related to other impairments. DLD might manifest differently in each of a child’s two languages, but usually shows up as difficulty with word retrieval and grammar. Since these same phenomena can happen in typically developing bilingual children as they learn the majority language, bilingual children with and without DLD are often misdiagnosed.

Armon-Lotem emphasized that bilingualism does not lead to impairment. From 2009 to 2013, she led a network of researchers from 26 European and five non-European countries in formulating standards for characterizing typical bilingual development and identifying atypical bilingual development in more than 30 language pairs. Research by Natalia Meir in Armon-Lotem’s lab was the first to show that it is possible to disentangle typical and impaired language development, and with 90% accuracy.

“We’ve made a lot of progress in this area in Israel,” said Prof. Joel Walters, professor emeritus of linguistics at Bar-Ilan and now chair of the department of communication disorders at Hadassah Academic College in Jerusalem, which hosts hundreds of specialists at its annual conference on communication disorders in multilingual and multicultural populations.

Walters’ study of the processes underlying how the brain merges two or more languages into a single utterance is informed by recent brain imaging of bilinguals. One of his focuses is “codeswitching,” when a bilingual speaker starts a sentence or word in one language and switches to the other.

“Codeswitching was once thought of as a random phenomenon but actually it’s very systematic and occurs in sentences, phrases and even within words,” Walters told Israel21c. An English-Hebrew bilingual child might tell her sister “muzi,” merging the English word “move” with the Hebrew “zuzi,” for example.

Walters and two co-authors recently published in the International Journal of Bilingualism about their study of Russian-Hebrew bilingual 6-year-olds asked to retell a Russian story to a Hebrew-speaking puppet, a Hebrew story to a Russian-speaking puppet and a codeswitched story to a bilingual puppet. The children were also asked to respond to conversational questions asked in Russian, Hebrew and codeswitched speech about holidays and activities at home and in preschool. In both tasks, the children did more codeswitching from Russian to Hebrew, “because that’s the language of school and street and that’s the language that will help them integrate socially.” However, in children with impaired language development, the directionality is not as predictable, said Walters.

As Israeli researchers formulate better ways of evaluating and treating bilingual children with DLD, Armon-Lotem is planning to establish a global database of voice files sent from clinicians and preschool teachers who work with bilingual children in different language pairs. Data scientists at Bar-Ilan will use new methods in machine learning and big data to better identify existing markers of DLD and possibly find new markers.

Am I Russian or Israeli?

Carmit Altman of Bar-Ilan’s School Counseling and Child Development Programs studies the social impact of growing up bilingual, looking at family language policy – what language parents want their child to speak and how they enforce that preference.

One of her group’s frequently cited studies, published in 2014, examined the language policy of 65 Israeli families raising their children in Russian. They found three main approaches: parents with a strict policy of speaking only Russian at home; parents who don’t forbid Hebrew at home and sometimes encourage it; and those who actively promote both Hebrew and Russian at home for speaking and reading. They predicted that the strictest language policy would result in the best performance in Russian but the middle group performed just as well. Children from this group also showed an advantage in Hebrew in tasks predictive of future Hebrew literacy skills. “In syntax, all the kids did better in Hebrew than in Russian, with no group differences,” Altman said.

Altman’s lab also studies how bilingual children and their parents perceive their children’s language abilities, and their sociolinguistic identity and preferences. They invented a “magic ladder” scale on which preschoolers can attach happy and sad magnet faces to rate their agreement with statements such as “I speak Hebrew well.”

Parents of both English-Hebrew and Russian-Hebrew bilingual children think their children prefer Hebrew, but the kids say they prefer their home language, Altman found. And, while the kids consider themselves hyphenated Israelis, their parents consider them totally Israeli.

There were also differences in performance perception. “In Russian-Hebrew families, both children and parents think the children perform similarly in Russian and Hebrew. In English-Hebrew families, children feel they perform better in English, while parents think the children have similar abilities in both languages,” said Altman.

In collaboration with Armon-Lotem, Altman’s group is developing tools to help researchers understand these differences and to help preschool teachers detect which bilingual children may need a DLD evaluation.

Advantages of bilingualism

The ability to speak more than one language is widely accepted as beneficial in ways from the practical (business, academics, travel) to the medical (possibly delaying symptoms of dementia). When Altman was doing a post-doc in New York, she and her husband spoke Hebrew to their children at home. She feels that raising kids bilingually “is a gift you can give your child for life” and that cross-generational communication is one strong motivation for doing so.

“Having more than one language and more than one culture is definitely a huge advantage in life,” agreed Armon-Lotem.

It is less clear whether bilingualism sharpens “executive functions,” such as shifting attention and inhibiting instructions, as was believed in past decades.

“In one study, we found that English-Hebrew bilingual children with DLD show an advantage in executive function over monolingual children with DLD,” said Armon-Lotem. “But we didn’t find the same in Russian-Hebrew bilinguals. We might be able to find cognitive advantages for certain populations at certain age ranges and within certain tasks.”

Armon-Lotem and her colleagues are beginning to study bilingualism in children with autism and Down syndrome, and will provide tools to help bilingual preschool children, including Eritrean asylum-seekers in Jerusalem, tell coherent stories in Hebrew and their home language.

Israel21c is a nonprofit educational foundation with a mission to focus media and public attention on the 21st-century Israel that exists beyond the conflict. For more, or to donate, visit israel21c.org.

Golden discovery

A Hellenistic-era golden earring, discovered in the Givati Parking Lot in the City of David National Park. (photo from IAA courtesy Ashernet)

A Hellenistic-era golden earring, featuring ornamentation of a horned animal, was discovered in the Givati Parking Lot in the City of David National Park encircling the Old City walls. The discovery was made during archeological digs carried out by the Israel Antiquities Authority and Tel Aviv University. According to the researchers, “It is unclear whether the gold earring was worn by a man or a woman, nor do we know their cultural or religious identity, but we can say for certain that whoever wore this earring definitely belonged to Jerusalem’s upper class. This can be determined by the proximity to the Temple Mount and the Temple, which was functional at the time, as well as the quality of the gold piece of jewelry.”

 

אייר קנדה במקום השלושים

(צילום: abdallahh from Montreal)

כמדי שנה חברת סקייטרקס מפרסמת את מדד מאה חברות התעופה הטובות בעולם. במדד של השנה: סינגפור איירליינס הגיעה למקום הראשון ואילו אייר קנדה הגיעה למקום השלושים.

להלן עשר חברות התעופה הטובות ביותר בעולם לשנת 2018: סינגפור איירליינס במקום הראשון (עלייה של מקום לעומת אשתקד), קטאר אירוויס במקום השני (ירידה של מקום לעומת אשתקד), אול ניפון איירוויס מיפאן במקום השלישי (אשתקד גם כן במקום השלישי), אמירייטס מאיחוד האמרויות במקום הרביעי (אשתקד גם כן במקום הרביעי), אווה אייר מטייוואן במקום החמישי (עלייה של מקום לעומת אשתקד), קתאי פסיפיק מהונג קונג במקום השישי (ירידה של מקום לעומת אשתקד), לופטהנזה מגרמניה במקום השביעי (אשתקד גם כן במקום השביעי), היינאן מסין במקום השמיני (עלייה של מקום לעומת אשתקד), גארודה מאינדונסיה במקום התשיעי (עלייה של מקום לעומת אשתקד) ותאי איירוויס במקום העשירי (עלייה של מקום לעומת אשתקד). אייר קנדה היא חברת התעופה הקנדית היחידה שנכנסה למדד מאה הטובות בעולם. אייר קנדה תופסת את המקום השלושים כאשר אשתקד היא הגיעה למקום העשרים ותשעה.

אייר קנדה תפסה את המקום הראשון בקרב סקר חברות התעופה הטובות ביותר בצפון אמריקה ב-2018. החברה שנוסדה ב-137 מחזיקה כיום ב-185 מטוסים בגדלים שונים. לחברה יש חמש חברות-בנות: אייר קנדה ג’אז – המתמחה בעיקר בטיסות פנים במטוסים קלים, אייר קנדה טאנגו – המתמחה בעיקר בטיסות למקסיקו וארה”ב, זיפ – המתמחה בעיקר בטיסות לחוף המערבי של ארה”ב’, אייר קנדה רוג’ – המתמחה בעיקר בטיסות לואו-קוסט לדרום אמריקה, אירופה וישראל וכן אייר קנדה אקספרס.

אייר קנדה טסה ל-222 שדות תעופה שונים ברחבי העולם (64 בקנדה, 60 בארה”ב ו-98 בשאר רחבי העולם), בהן 7 טיסות שבועיות בקו טורונטו – תל אביב במטוסי הדרימליינר, וכן 2 טיסות שבועיות עונתיות בקו מונטריאול – תל אביב במטוסי הדרימליינר. אייר קנדה הסיעה אשתקד 48 מיליון נוסעים.

החברה הקנדית מנסה להפעיל מחדש את תוכנית הנוסע המתמיד “ארופלן”, בשותפות עם הבנקים הקנדים טי.די וסי.איי.בי.סי וחברת ויזה. רכישת “ארופלן” נאמדת בכ-2.25 מיליארד דולר קנדי אך לא ברור אם תצא אל הפועל.

האדסון ביי העיפו את המוצרי איוונקה טראמפ מהמדפים ומעתה הברנד לא קיים עוד

רשת בתי הכלבו הקנדית הוותיקה האדסון ביי החליטו בחודש שעבר שלא למכור עוד את קו מוצרי האופנה של איוונקה טראמפ, בתו של הנשיא האמריקני הבעייתי, דונלד טראמפ. המוצרים של טראמפ הבת כמעט ולא נמכרו בקנדה, ויש שיאמרו כי החרם על קו האופנה של מי שמזוהה כל כך עם אביה – עשה את שלו.

מכל מקום החלטת האדסון ביי היוותה סממן שלילי נוסף לעתיד הברנד של טראמפ הבת, שלא הצליח להתרומם לאור התנהגותו השערורייתית של טראמפ האב. עד שלבסוף החליטה הבת בסוף יולי להפסיק לחלוטין את קו האופנה הכושל.

איוונקה טראמפ (36) הקימה את קו מוצרי האופנה שלה ב-2014. בעת הקמפיין הפוליטי המלוכלך של אביה המכירות זינקו. לאחר מכן החלו להישמע טענות שהבת מקדמת את מוצריה בדרך לא הוגנת, ופעילותה בבית הלבן ליד אביה יוצרת בעצם ניגוד אינטרסים. כן נטען שהועסקו עובדים זרים תוך ניצולם במפעלי הברנד בחו”ל.

רבים בארה”ב ומחוצה לה קראו להחרים את המוצרים של טראמפ, ורשתות שיווק שונות החליטו להפסיק ולמכור אותם. האחרונה הייתה כאמור האדסון ביי הקנדית ומעתה מוצרי איוונקה טראמפ לא קיימים עוד.

קנדה: “זה הבית שלי”

פעם שנייה: סוכן כפול עיראקי-ישראלי לשעבר נלחם למנוע שוב את גירושו לתוניסיה. (צילום: Amy Keus)

סוכן כפול לשעבר של שירותי הביטחון של עיראק בתקופת הרודן סאדם חוסיין, וכן של “המוסד” הישראלי, חוסיין עלי סומדייה, מנסה למנוע את גירושו לתוניסיה בפעם השניה. סומדייה (53) יליד עיראק שמחזיק גם באזרחות תוניסאית (ששם נולד אביו), הגיש ערעור לבית המשפט הפדרלי של קנדה. זאת, לאחר ששרותי ההגירה המקומיים הפקיעו את תושבות הקבע הקנדית שלו. כשהכוונה היא בעצם לגרשו בשלב השני שוב לתוניסיה.

סומדייה עבד עם מנגנון הביטחון הסודי העיראקי לשעבר – המחובראת, במהלך שנות השמונים, עת למד באנגליה. הקשר עם המחובראת נוצר בעקבות היכרותו של סומדייה עם בניו של הדיקטטור העיראקי: עודאי וקוסאי חוסיין. הוא מסר מידע נרחב למחובראת שהביא בין היתר לחשיפת כשלושים וחמישה איש ובני משפחותיהם. לדברי סומדייה הוא הוטרד מהעובדה שהוא עובד בעצם “למען המפלצת סאדם ומכונת ההרג שלו”, ולכן החליט לחצות את הקווים ולהתחיל לעבוד עם “המוסד” הישראלי. סומדייה טען אז כי במסגרת עבודתו עבור “המוסד”, הוא אסף מודיעין על השגרירות של עיראק בבריסל, וכן ריגל אחרי חברי הארגון לשחרור פלסטין. בגלל שחשש לשלום משפחתו שוב חצה את הקווים וחזר לעבוד עם המוחבראת, עד שב-1990 עזר אומץ וברח לקנדה וביקש מקלט מדיני כאן.

שלטונות ההגירה הקנדיים לא רצו שסומדייה ישאר בקנדה בטענה שיש סבירות גבוהה שבעבודתו כסוכן, חשף לא מעט אנשים למעשי עינויים ואפילו הוצאה להורג. בעצם מדובר בפשעים שהוא ביצע נגד האנושות. לפיכך לאחר שנים של הליך משפט ארוך שכלל ערעורים אין ספור של סומדייה שכולם נדחו, הוא גורש לבסוף לתוניסיה ב-2005.

סומדייה טען שברגע נחיתתו בתוניסיה הוא נעצר על ידי רשויות החוק המקומיים. הוא הובא לחקירות קשות שכללו מעשי אלימות ועינויים. לאחר כשנה הצליח סומדייה לברוח מתוניסיה לאג’יריה, עבר דרך אמסטרדם והציג לרשויות בהולנד מסמכים מזוייפים של בקשת מקלט מדיני בקנדה. לאור זאת ההולנדים העניקו לו דרכון חרום וכך טס בחזרה לקנדה בקייץ 2006. מאז שוב עניינו נדון בבית המשפט בזמן שרשויות ההגירה מסרבות להעניק לו תושבות קבע, לאחר שעשה שימוש במסמכים מזוייפים. לאחר שנה (ב-2007) רשויות ההגירה הסכימו עם טענתו של סומיידה שאם הוא יגורש שוב לתוניסיה, צפויה סכנה לחייו. עם זאת ב-2016 החליטו ברשויות ההגירה לבדוק שוב את התיק שלו, לאחר שהושמעו טענות שהמידע שמסר על כך שכביכול עונה בתוניסיה אינו אמין (ובו בזמן שתוניסה לא משמשת עוד הבסיס של הארגון לשחרור פלסטין). סומדייה לא וויתר והגיש שוב ערעור על עמדת הממשלה האומרת, כי לא נשקפת סכנה עם יגורש לתוניסיה. הוא טען לעומת זאת כי כאחד ששיתף פעולה עם ישראל נשקפת לו סכנת חיים ממשית, אם יחזור למדינה ערבית כלשהי. לעיתון הטורונטו סאן אמר סומדייה: “המילה “המוסד” היא המילה הכי מפחידה והשנואה ביותר בעולם. כל אחד יודע שמי שקשור למדינה היהודית, יעשה לו לינץ’ על ידי ההמון ברחובות של כל עיר ערבית אליה יגיע”.

בינתיים בעת שהותו בקנדה במשך כשלושה עשורים הספיק סומדייה להתחתן בפעם השלישית, ויש לו כבר שלושה ילדים. המשפחה גרה כיום בהמילטון (במחוז אונטריו) והוא אף מחזיק בחברת בנייה. בראיון לעיתון הנשיונל פוסט אמר סומדייה: “אלו היו עשרים ושמונה שנים. יש לי את החיים שלי, יש לי את המשפחה שלי, יש לי את העסק שלי. מיקמתי את עצמי כאן בקנדה. זה הבית שלי”.

Consul general speaks with JI

Consul General Galit Baram was in Vancouver last month. (photo from Consulate of Israel)

Galit Baram, consul general of Israel to Toronto and Western Canada, was in Vancouver last month.

“The visit was very good,” she told the Independent in a phone interview. “It included some political meetings and an academic meeting and I addressed the Jewish community and I attended the Negev Dinner of the JNF…. I had the opportunity to see the city, which is beautiful, and the weather was nice.”

Baram will be returning to Vancouver in November, when the late Dirk Pieter and Klaasje Kalkman will be honoured as Righteous Among the Nations for the assistance they provided to Jews during the Holocaust. The ceremony will be held in conjunction with Yad Vashem Canada and the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver.

Baram’s June meetings explored the opportunities of expanding cooperation between Israel and British Columbia in innovation and entrepreneurship.

“I believe that there is great potential in economic cooperation between Israel and British Columbia,” she said.

The provincial government, she said, “is making its initial steps now…. There is interest, there is curiosity, there is awareness of what Israel has to offer in innovation, in the medical field. When it comes to pharma, when it comes to cybersecurity, Israel is a leading country in the international arena in many of these fields.

“We had very good relations with the previous government and we hosted a mission … in November of 2016, a mission that was led by then-minister of finance [Michael] de Jong; there were representatives of different business sectors in British Columbia…. [It] is our intention to work very closely with the current government as well.”

The change in the federal government in 2015 also hasn’t affected Canada-Israel cooperation. On May 28, in Montreal, François-Phillippe Champagne, minister of international trade, and Eli Cohen, Israel’s minister of the economy and industry, announced the signing of the modernized Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement.

Cohen spent two days in Canada, said Baram, adding, “I hope that Minister Champagne will soon reciprocate and visit Israel as well.

“I believe this is very important to have visits on such a high level … because I believe that governments can contribute greatly to bringing countries together. But we have to remember that, at a certain point, governments have to take a step back and leave it up to the business sector and the private sector to build bridges and to bring the countries together, but, as governments on both sides, Israel and Canada, we do as much as we can in order to strengthen and broaden our bilateral relations.”

Baram also sees the possibility of building a groundwork for peace in Israel through business and trade.

“I believe that economic mobility plays an integral role in bringing communities together,” she said, “and we are watching with pride the growing high-tech sector in the Israeli-Arab community, especially in the Greater Haifa area, in cities such as Nazareth…. We would like to see more Israeli-Arab students concentrating on science, concentrating on business, in business management and innovation and entrepreneurship.

“When it comes to building social bridges between Israelis and Palestinians, not necessarily Jews and Arabs, there are many activities that concentrate on that … and they are conducted by civil societies in Israel and it is heartwarming to see that. I would like to mention the activity of an organization such as Save a Child’s Heart … [which] brings children to Israel [for cardiac care] from Arab countries, from the Middle East, from Muslim countries in general, and they do wonderful, wonderful things in building bridges…. Another example I can give you is the upcoming visit of Dr. Yossi Leshem, one of Israel’s greatest experts on bird migration – he is going to be in Vancouver towards the end of August and he will be accompanied by his friends from [elsewhere in] the Middle East, and they are going to present beautiful regional projects in a conference that will be held in Vancouver…. Two other organizations that I would like to mention … are Ultimate Peace, that organizes Frisbee tournaments for youth … and another project, by Danny Hakim – Budo for Peace – teaches martial arts to Israeli Jews and Arabs, Palestinians, Jordanians and others, and they have instructors coming to Israel from Japan and from other countries…. I believe that such organizations can do so much good for Israeli society in general, for the Palestinians and for neighbouring countries in the Middle East.”

Of course, there are significant obstacles to peace, not the least of which are the ongoing altercations at the Gaza border.

“When it comes to the situation on the Gaza border, we are facing some very serious challenges,” admitted Baram. “It is an uphill battle. We see that there is sometimes a deterioration, sometimes the situation stabilizes a little bit and then there is another deterioration, the situation changes constantly.

“There are many, many challenges on a daily basis that are facing not only IDF [Israel Defence Forces] soldiers and the Palestinian civilian populations, but also the civilian population on the Israeli side of the border. Sometimes there is a tendency to forget about them but there are families, there are entire communities, that raise their children on the Israeli side of the border and because of this intifada of burning kites and balloons, they have to deal with arson cases on a daily basis, with a loss of crops and forest in the south of Israel, and it’s heartbreaking to see that because so much work has been put into making the desert bloom, especially in those regions.”

She added, “The one very disappointing thing for me to see as a former director of the department for Palestinian affairs was the fact that the Kerem Shalom border crossing that was built in the first place to enable trucks to enter Gaza was burned down by Hamas activists and by other terrorists and it’s a shame to see that because so much money was invested in that, so much effort was done in order to make trade between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and especially Gaza, easier and simpler for us but especially for the civilian population in Gaza. And it’s difficult to see a civilian population that is being held captive by a terror organization…. Of course, there is awareness of the situation in Israel and understanding that the main enemy that has to be dealt with is definitely Hamas and not the people of Gaza.”

As for the Canadian government’s initial statements after the violent March of Return protests – in which Canada admonished Israel, saying its “use of excessive force and live ammunition is inexcusable,” and called “for an immediate independent investigation to thoroughly examine the facts on the ground” – Baram said, “I would like to mention that, after Hamas started attacking Israel, [with] renewed rocket attacks to the south of Israel, there were statements that were released by Prime Minister [Justin] Trudeau and by Minister of Foreign Affairs [Chrystia] Freeland condemning Hamas for this activity and I believe we should concentrate on these statements.”

And Canada’s reluctance to move its embassy to Jerusalem?

“When it comes to Jerusalem,” said Baram, “we believe that all countries should move their embassies to the capital of Israel and the capital of Israel is Jerusalem. Every sovereign country has the right of defining and choosing its own capital and we believe that we don’t have to prove over and over again the story connecting the people of Israel and the land of Israel, between the people of Israel and its eternal capital, Jerusalem.”

With respect to the almost 40,000 Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers in Israel, Baram said, “We have to remember that the first Western country that these people from Africa, from Eritrea, from Sudan, asylum seekers, work migrants – define them as you wish – the first Western country they encounter is Israel. And, several years ago, many of them came to Israel…. This is never an easy issue to deal with because the personal stories are very emotional and very difficult, and these people, many of them have been through terrible ordeals, until they reached Israel.

“The issue of migration in general … is an issue that is dealt with in Europe and in other parts of the world,” she said. “In the Middle East, for example, the issue of Syrian refugees is a very big issue that many countries deal with and, now, Syrian refugees, for example, are coming knocking on the doors of European countries, as well, but this is a problem that many Middle Eastern countries have dealt with for quite awhile, a long time now.

“With the African refugees or asylum seekers or work migrants, definitely a solution must be found in order to protect them, protect their rights. On the other hand, we have to keep the sovereignty of the state of Israel and we cannot allow floods of refugees entering Israel because we have to think about our population and … providing an answer that would satisfy all parties involved. This is not easy,” she said.

And neither is Israel’s relationship with Diaspora Jews always easy.

“When you look at Israeli society, you see that the public debate in Israel is very heated and emotional,” said Baram. “This is how we do things in Israel. People are very opinionated … they don’t hide their views and opinions, and I think this is wonderful. This is the strength of Israeli democracy.”

She recalled a statement made by Israeli President Reuven Rivlin about a year ago. “He talked about the four tribes of Israeli society, and he referred to secular Jews, to Orthodox Zionists Jews, to the ultra-Orthodox community in Israel and to Israeli Arabs…. And he called for these four tribes to join hands to discuss the future of Israeli society for the benefit of the country. Later on, he added the fifth tribe … and I believe this is very important to mention that the fifth tribe is Diaspora Jews because Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people…. I am actually very encouraged when I visit Jewish communities throughout Canada and people ask me sometimes challenging questions … about the nature of Israel and about the nature of Israeli society, and what should be done and what is done correctly, or what should be corrected in Israel. I encourage that and I welcome it, because it shows love and devotion and interest in Israel.

“And I encourage people to come visit Israel and express their opinions and to keep us Israeli diplomats on our toes … and I thank Jewish communities for participating in this ongoing discussion. I think this is vital not only for Israel by the way – this ongoing discussion is vital for Diaspora Jews as well.”

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