From the JI – Page 27

Poll exposes confusion

A poll undertaken by the Union of Jewish Students in France returned some bizarre and seemingly contradictory ideas among the French public about Zionism, Israel and Jews.

More than half of the 1,007 respondents to the poll – 53% – viewed Zionism as a Jewish conspiracy aimed at manipulating the world to benefit Jews. Likewise, half of respondents said Zionism is a racist ideology.

Thirty-eight percent said Israel’s existence “feeds antisemitism” and 26% said that boycotting Israel is justified. Asked if Israel was a “threat to regional stability,” 57% said yes. More than half – 51% – called Israel a “theocracy.”

These are disturbing findings. Some of these are not matters of opinion – Israel is not a theocracy, no matter how many French people say it is. Other responses are deeply distressing. The assertions that Israel is a threat to regional stability – rather than being seen as a stabilizing force in a region roiling with instability – or that Israel’s very existence makes people hate Jews indicate a pattern of opinion that is seriously disordered.

But here’s where it gets really weird: 46% of respondents acknowledged that Israel is a democracy and 48% see it as a “normal country like all others.” A remarkable 54% of respondents view anti-Zionism as a form of antisemitism and 59% correctly identify Zionism as a “movement of liberation and emancipation for the Jewish people.”

Together, these responses paint a picture of French confusion and contradiction – a picture that would probably be replicated to a degree in other European and North American polls, were we to undertake them. One might be tempted to critique the pollster and their methodology. After all, polling is suffering a crisis of credibility these days and this particular poll is so confounding in its contradictions that it simply can’t be right.

Or can it? Is it possible that the French (and others) are so baffled by the truths and fictions floating around that they could, as a community or as individuals, hold such cognitively dissonant ideas such as the acceptance that Zionism is a movement for the liberation and emancipation of the Jewish people and that it is a Jewish conspiracy to manipulate the world and that its fulfilment creates antisemitism? Could people believe both that Israel is a democracy and Israel is a theocracy? One could argue that different individuals responded differently to the questions, but with affirmative responses to all these questions ranging near or above majority levels, it is almost certain that some people responded affirmatively to contradictory positions.

In fact, this makes as much sense as any other explanation. The poll seems to suggest that the French (and we would extrapolate to most Western countries) hold very confused, bizarre and inconsistent views about Jews and Israel.

For all the work Zionists have done explaining ourselves for the past seven decades, we seem to have a long way to go.

A paper covers events

Last week, we published a story about a group of people gathering outside the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver to hold a Yizkor service for Palestinians who died during the March of Return actions at the Gaza-Israel border.

We are not surprised by the reaction from readers, but we are disappointed in some of it. We have been criticized for covering the event. One commenter on Facebook accused us of supporting Hamas.

We are a newspaper. The fact that a group of Jews – it doesn’t matter how many or how few – organized an event like this is newsworthy. We covered it. It is what any newspaper worth the paper it’s printed on would have done. To accuse the Independent of endorsing the event – or Hamas – because we ran a story about it demonstrates a stunning lack of understanding about the basics of journalism. When a newspaper covers a flood, it is not endorsing the river.

At least one critic suggested our approach should have been to publish a raving tirade against those saying Kaddish. Our approach, generally, is to report events in an unbiased fashion and leave the raving tirades to others.

Just one question, really, for those who didn’t like the inclusion of that story in last week’s issue: Would you rather not know what’s happening in your community?

Human life v. politics

A dozen or so people gathered outside the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver Monday in a makeshift Yizkor service to commemorate the deaths of Palestinians killed by the Israel Defence Forces in recent weeks. (Click here for story.)

Each one of the people killed was, indeed, a full human being, with a full life, as Rabbi David Mivasair said of the Palestinian dead. And the loss of life is tragic. That is not something we will debate.

However, reports indicate that, of the 60 Gazans killed on May 14, for example, 53 were claimed as members by Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Given the IDF’s strategy of deterrence, which includes graduated steps from warning shots, to shooting to injure and, as a last resort, shooting to kill, it is likely that those who died were among the most aggressive and dangerous among the protesters, some of whom were armed with pistols, firebombs and other weapons.

While there were peaceful protesters among the thousands who marched on the Israeli border, depictions of the rally as a primarily peaceful protest are wrong. In some interpretations, unarmed protesters were there merely as human shields for the violent participants, whose aim, in the words of a Hamas leader, was to infiltrate Israel and tear the hearts out of the Jews. Hamas social media channels presented maps to guide people from the border to adjacent Israeli towns, encouraging those who might break through the frontier to head for civilian locations and presumably fulfil the orders of Hamas.

The deliberate strategy of the Gazan leaders, it seems, is to sacrifice their own people’s lives for their PR value. Col. Richard Kemp, a British military official who has become a vocal defender of IDF strategies, said of Hamas: “This is the first government in history that has deliberately sought to compel its enemy to kill its own people.”

In a Daily Telegraph article re-printed in the National Post, he went on to state that, had the thousands of protesters breached the border and headed for those Israeli towns, the bloodshed would have been exponentially worse.

There is no question that the entire situation is a tragedy. And there is blame to go around. The narrative purveyed outside the JCC Monday and in much of the media commentary – that the Israeli military wantonly kills human beings – is as unfair and inhumane an assessment as the alternative extreme, which finds satisfaction in the loss of life.

As for Monday’s gathering, the combination of a Jewish religious ritual with a political agenda that arguably makes common cause with those seeking the destruction of the Jewish state is a dubious choice, but this is a free country and Judaism is a big tent.

To be clear, the people of Gaza are suffering, due in part to the Israeli blockade, in part due to the repressive kleptocracy of Hamas and in part to their own self-defeating actions, like burning down the main border entry point for supplies.

Palestinians receive more humanitarian aid per capita than any other people in the world. Where much of that money ends up, sadly, is in the mansions of Hamas and Fatah leaders and in pensions and rewards to terrorists and their families. This fact, of course, does not bring the dead back to life.

Palestinians, Jews and everyone who cares about human life are struggling with recent events. Each of us is confronting the multiple dimensions of the violence, which seems to be a repetition of seven decades (or more) of recurrent conflict. Respect for human life – on all sides – should be what we seek. Tallying up the dead like they are goals in a sports match does not demonstrate respect. Indeed, it may be precisely what Hamas wants us to do and, as such, may encourage them to put at risk even more Palestinian lives.

An apology is the start

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said that he will make an apology in the House of Commons for the government of Canada’s 1939 decision to turn away the refugee ship MS St. Louis. The ship, carrying 907 German Jews, was denied entry at most North American and Caribbean ports before returning to Europe. Around half of the passengers were then accepted by the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France and Belgium. About 500 were returned to Germany, where 254 were murdered by the Nazis.

Apologizing for the past has become common in Canada. Trudeau himself has apologized for Canada’s refusal in 1914 to allow the docking of the Komagata Maru, a ship carrying 376 migrants, mostly Sikh; apologized to gays and lesbians who were discriminated against by government in the past; exonerated six Tsilhqot’in chiefs who were hanged in 1864; and apologized to survivors of the Indian residential school system in Newfoundland and Labrador. The latter apology was necessary because this particular group was excluded from the 2008 residential schools apology made by Stephen Harper, when he was prime minister, because the schools there were not operated by the government of Canada. Harper also apologized, in 2006, for a head tax that penalized Chinese immigrants. Brian Mulroney, when he was prime minister, apologized, in 1988, for the internment of Japanese Canadians.

Such apologies are deeply important to the victimized communities, as evidenced by comments from Jewish community organizations last week.

“Canada is extraordinary not only because we strive to uphold the highest ideals,” said Shimon Koffler Fogel, chief executive officer of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, in a statement, “but also because we have the courage to address moments in our history when we failed to do so.… A formal apology will be a powerful statement to Holocaust survivors and their families, including St. Louis passengers who live in Canada today.”

Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre president Avi Benlolo said, “While an apology can never change the past, it can awaken the national conscience to ensure such grave mistakes are never repeated in the future.”

On the other hand, critics come from two sides: one arguing that we cannot change the past by apologizing in the present; the other contending that apologies are mere words.

The government’s recognition of past injustices is important, however. While political motivations are probably a factor in any government decision, this should not detract from the positive impacts an apology has on affected communities.

That said, if the objective is, as the prime minister and others have stated, to learn from the past and create a more just present and future, apologies should be accompanied by other undertakings, such as ongoing education, including curricula that teachers could download to contextualize issues, monuments at relevant locations marking the incidents (some of which already exist), a commitment to further commemoration or a host of other initiatives created in conjunction with affected communities.

Apologies, in other words, should not be the end of a conversation, but the start of a process.

Blaming the victims

In a speech to the governing body of the Palestine Liberation Organization last week, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas rambled off a host of textbook antisemitic myths. He reiterated the refrain that Jews have no historical connection to the land of Israel, unearthed a legendary trope about Ashkenazi Jews actually being descended from Khazars and accused European Zionists of collaborating with the Nazis.

Abbas went on to say that the tragedies of Jewish history were not a result of antisemitism, but of Jews’ own behaviours. “The Jewish question that was widespread throughout Europe was not against their religion,” he said, “but against their social function, which relates to usury and banking and such.”

One of the things Abbas has in common with other elected leaders is the willingness to try to get away with something and then to apologize when called out. Though his wasn’t much of an apology: “If people were offended by my statement … especially people of the Jewish faith, I apologize to them.”

The speech gave Israeli and other commentators the opportunity to once again insist that the Palestinian leader is no partner for peace, something that is no more or less true today than it was last month. Abbas has been saying things like this most of his adult life. His doctoral dissertation, which was later published as a book, quibbled over the number of Jewish victims of the Shoah and advanced the perverse conspiracy theory he returned to last week: that Zionists were Nazi collaborators for whom six million (or, on Abbas’s abacus, fewer) Jewish lives were a small price to pay for advancing the Zionist cause.

Inherent to most antisemitic suppositions is the defence that Jewish particularities, habits, traditions, identities – in other words, whatever stereotypes the purveyor is advancing – are the legitimate causes of Jewish woes. In Abbas’s telling, all European Jews were usurers and bankers. (Consider the corollary: That, if true, being bankers and usurers would seemingly justify genocide.)

It is appalling that a man who is accepted as a legitimate figure on the international stage can claim, with minimal consequence, that Jews brought the Holocaust upon themselves. So, the most salient point from this terrible incident may be what it says about his audience.

Consider this in the context of the widespread global interpretation of the Arab-Israeli conflict. One can disagree with the policies or approaches of an Israeli government or any number of historical and contemporary developments. But, by no fair reading of history can the full blame for 70 years of conflict be laid at the feet of Israelis. Yet, at almost every point in history – when a pizzeria blows up in Tel Aviv or Jews are stabbed walking down the street in Jerusalem or when Hamas sends thousands to the Israeli border and floats firebombs that set the Israeli landscape aflame – there will be a sizable number of people who will conclude that Jews brought it on themselves.

Whatever else his speech may have accomplished, and despite his apology, Abbas has succeeded in bolstering the stereotype that cunning Jews will sacrifice whatever is necessary to reach their devious aims, and that any horrors that befall them are their own fault. That suits the contemporary popular narrative neatly.

Place blame where due

For weeks since March, each Friday, thousands of Gazans have rallied at the border with Israel, leading to violent confrontations with the Israeli military. The objective is to build up to an incursion of such proportion that Israel’s military is unable to prevent an invasion into Israeli territory. The stated goal of the so-called March of Return is to catalyze the movement toward a “right of return,” which would have the not coincidental consequence of demographically threatening the Jewish nature of Israel.

Of course, even tens of thousands of Palestinians trying to breech the border will not result in this goal. Instead, there is an unstated goal: Hamas seeks to turn global opinion (further) against Israel. Shamefully, it seems that a few dozen Palestinian lives is a small price to pay, in Hamas’s worldview, for the PR benefits they deliver. As the New York Times reported Sunday, at least some of the protesters believe that they have nothing to lose. “It doesn’t matter to me if they shoot me or not,” said a 22-year-old protester interviewed by the paper. “Death or life – it’s the same thing.” That attitude will suit Hamas just fine.

To overseas audiences, march proponents depict it as an unarmed, peaceful, civilian-led mass action – and a peaceful protest is something we could accept, if not agree with. However, evidence shows that it is stage-managed by Hamas and anything but peaceful. Flying swastika-festooned kites with petrol bombs are sent over the border, massive tire fires are set to obscure the view of Israeli soldiers and tug-of-war lines are formed to pull down the border barrier, while crowds simultaneously hurl projectiles. At this past weekend’s action, there were reports of a few protesters armed with pistols.

Writing in the Times two days earlier, Fadi Abu Shammalah, executive director of the General Union of Cultural Centres in Gaza and a documentary film producer, insisted that he loves life, but that he is prepared to risk it to give his children a future with dignity.

A more effective means to ensure that Palestinian children live a life of dignity would be for Shammalah and others like him to write opinion pieces in the New York Times and to agitate elsewhere for the Hamas leadership to abandon both violence and their refusal to live in coexistence with the Jewish state. These are the two prerequisites to Palestinian self-determination. But such actions could well get Shammalah and others killed faster than marching against the border with Israel.

A sovereign country has the fundamental right to protect its borders from invasion. Ideally, this could be achieved without the use of live ammunition, and should minimize casualties as much as possible. Killing unarmed protesters is not acceptable.

Exclusively blaming Israel, however, is unjust. But this is more than misplaced blame: it has the precise consequence of rewarding Hamas’s strategy of sacrificing its own citizens. The more world media and activists condemn Israel and reward Hamas, the more Palestinians will be pushed toward the border. In such a scenario, the blame lies not solely with Israel or even with Hamas. The blame must be shared by these overseas enablers who, by rewarding Hamas, truly deserve part of the responsibility for the deaths and injuries.

Cynicism and realism

Last week, thousands of Germans of all faiths and identities participated in a “kippa march,” standing in solidarity with German Jews who feel endangered in the current political climate. In 2017, there were 1,468 reported antisemitic attacks in Germany, most perpetrated by members of the far-right.

The gesture is lovely. However we cannot help wondering if the whole “Je suis Charlie,” “We are all Muslims” or the “Ich bin Eine Jude” movements that pop up as gestures of solidarity are not at least slightly misplaced.

We will leave it to others to speak for their communities. But we would note that there may be a degree of comfort among some people in Europe and North America to criticize Jews. Since Christianity is descended from Judaism, it seems that there is felt more freedom to criticize Jewish behaviours, including the policies of the Jewish state. After all, the thinking might go, we are all part of the same family; it’s practically constructive self-criticism. Yet this ignores millennia of significantly divergent experiences and theology.

While the idea that donning a kippa will help keep Jewish neighbours in Germany safe, recent European history should give us reason to worry that today’s gesture of solidarity could be repurposed as a cover for criticism tomorrow on the pleasant idea that Ich bin Eine Jude.

This is a cynical response to a kind gesture, we realize. But sometimes cynicism and realism are not unrelated.

The tough choices

The value of ahavat ha’beriot, the love of God’s creations, is open to broad interpretation. The animal world, the environment, as well as other people, can all fall under this crucial tenet of Judaism.

Like positive values and most good things, of course, this is easier in theory than in practice. We all want a clean environment and a better world, but we also want the convenience of automobiles, abundant and varied food, and the panorama of disposable consumer goods that we associate with the “good life.”

Awareness is, on the one hand, the most important factor in social change. On the other hand, it can overwhelm us to learn the full scope of our impacts on the world. Leave aside the huge looming catastrophe of climate change and consider for a moment the impact of a single, almost universal item of clothing: the cotton T-shirt.

Some bumper sticker wisdom urges us to “live simply, that others may simply live.” We do not always think of our wardrobe when considering our carbon footprint. Yet, after housing, food and transportation, for many people, clothing is one of the largest expenditures. Since voting with our wallets is one important way of making change, it is worth considering the impacts of our wardrobe choices. And what we wear on our backs says more about us than merely our fashion sense. It speaks (whether we know it or not) about our views on the environment and matters like child labour and fair wages.

To this end, one might think that a basic T-shirt would be a good choice. Yet it can take up to 2,700 litres of water to produce the cotton required for this simple garment, according to the World Wildlife Federation. Caring for the T-shirt over its lifespan takes further resources: each load of laundry takes more than 150 litres of water. Throwing it in the dryer (with a full load) consumes even more energy resources than the washing machine – about five times as much. Hanging it instead on a clothesline would reduce the shirt’s carbon footprint by one-third, but who remembers those? (Walk down a back lane in Vancouver a generation ago, and clotheslines snaked across almost every yard.) That few of us would be prepared to make this comparatively small shift indicates the glacial – to use an ironic term in the context – pace of human change in a time of rapid change in the environment.

Our food choices are even heavier with impacts. Researchers at institutions including the Weizmann Institute of Science calculated the use of land area, water and nitrogen fertilizer in animal food production. Potatoes, wheat and rice require half to one-sixth of the resources needed to produce pork, chicken, dairy and eggs in a calorie-for-calorie comparison. (Beef takes as much as five times the resources as chicken.)

Livestock for food are estimated to create about 20% of greenhouse gas emissions while using vast amounts of agricultural and water resources. Reducing or giving up meat consumption results in a huge reduction in resources. Producing a kilogram of protein from beef requires about 18 times more land, 10 times more water, nine times more fuel, 12 times more fertilizer and 10 times more pesticide than producing a kilogram of protein from kidney beans. But, again, many people love a steak or roast chicken and giving up these pleasures is not on the agenda.

This is not to instil hopelessness that even our simplest choices are leading to environmental disaster. Rather, it is to be aware of the power of small changes to have significant results.

We can extrapolate the outsized impacts of larger choices. When faced with the realities of carbon fuels on our environment (and health), most of us will not choose to sell our cars. But we might use them more judiciously. Or buy a more fuel-efficient vehicle. And, when it comes to making big political decisions that impact our environment and health, we might consider that, on balance, we should be moving toward investing in alternatives to fossil fuels, not pouring public or private billions into perpetuating deleterious and nonrenewable resources. We may not go cold turkey on gasoline and oil overnight, but our discrete choices should be leading incrementally in the right direction, not the wrong one.

Antisemitism exposed

It recently came to light that Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom, was a member of at least one closed Facebook group where antisemitic rhetoric and hatred, including the most ridiculous assertions based on the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion and other such bunkum, was liberally purveyed.

David Collier, an independent British researcher, released an in-depth analysis of the kind of content that appeared in the group to which Corbyn and other leading Labour activists belonged. Members of the group routinely threw around phrases like “Jewnazi” and “Zionazi.” Members posted articles about the “Rothschild Empire,” the “Zionist agenda and New World Order” and “Jewish organ trafficking,” the latter, as the title implies, being a modern incarnation of blood libel.

About Mein Kampf, one poster urged: “Everybody should be forced to read it, especially Jews who have their own agenda as to why they were not liked.” Members have claimed that Hitler “supported Zionism” and that the Holocaust is being exploited so that Jews can oppress others – all the while shielding themselves with the assertion that “criticizing Israel isn’t the same as antisemitism.”

When caught, Corbyn, who has called Hamas and Hezbollah “friends,” defended his online association with antisemitism by saying, “Had I seen [evidence of antisemitism], of course, I would have challenged it straight away, but I actually don’t spend all my time reading social media.” In fact, even the most cursory glance at the page would indicate this is a site with which no legitimate public figure should be associated.

An older incident was made public about the same time, in which Corbyn defended the artist in a case where a local government opted to paint over an overtly antisemitic mural on a public wall. Later, Corbyn would claim he hadn’t really looked at the mural, which clearly depicts stereotypically Jewish looking men divvying up money on the backs of the oppressed, while the symbol of the Illuminati, a figment of the antisemitic movement’s imagination, hovers above them.

The fact that overt antisemitism, which has existed in the Labour Party for some time, has finally had a bright light shone on it, has brought some surprising reactions. Some MPs and other Labour activists have called for MPs who attended a rally against antisemitism to be blackballed from the party. You read that right.

Those whose dogged campaigning has brought the unseemly underbelly of antisemitism on the British left to light seem to now face the daunting task of ensuring that the blame for the problem – and the task of fixing it – falls to the perpetrators, not the victims.

Challenges in Mideast

The Russia- and Iran-backed Assad regime in Syria employed chemical weapons against its own citizens again last week. It’s hard to imagine that the atrocities in Syria could be any worse. Indeed, it is chilling to imagine what Syrian forces would be doing right now had Israel not neutralized that country’s nuclear capabilities in 2007.

Despite the horrific images coming out of Syria, much of the world’s attention, including that of the United Nations, was focused on Israel’s response to rallies on the Gaza border. It was striking to hear the outrage about Israel’s reaction to the Gaza events while a few hundred kilometres away the most atrocious acts were being perpetrated on a people by their own government. That said, the loss of life in Gaza is startling and we hope that the Israel Defence Forces can find non-lethal ways to defend against the protesters.

At the same time, it has been difficult not to be frustrated about the placement of blame. Portrayed by apologists as a peaceful rally – the so-called March for Return – the Friday events, for the second consecutive week, were a violent assault on the Israeli border. The planned action featured Gazans burning hundreds of tires in order to obscure the visibility of IDF soldiers. While tallying up the number of dead – 26 have been killed, according to the Associated Press Monday – it’s clear that the associations of some of the dead have been lost on most audiences, as at least 10 have been reported to be known combatants in the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, Islamic Jihad and Hamas’ terrorist wings.

On Friday, the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Yehya Al-Sinwar, was employing what outside observers will likely dismiss as flowery rhetoric for domestic audiences when he exclaimed on Al-Jazeera that “We will take down the border [with Israel] and tear out their hearts from their bodies.”

Whether the actions of the IDF are deemed justified, the Diaspora community must continue to press for a non-military solution where possible and demand that the IDF remain restrained when demonstrators are unarmed. With a video surfacing that allegedly shows an IDF sniper shooting an unarmed Palestinian man while other soldiers cheer, there are calls for an investigation within Israel from across the political spectrum. As one Israeli politician said in the Times of Israel, “The battle isn’t just between us and Hamas; it is also for ourselves, for our values and for the identity of Israel society.”

It was, however, a leading figure in the Fatah government of Mahmoud Abbas, which runs the West Bank, who pointed out what should be obvious to the world. Dr. Mahmoud Habbash, a supreme judge in the Palestinian Authority Islamic court and Abbas’s adviser on religious and Islamic affairs, accused Hamas of “trading in suffering and blood, trading in victims” to get sympathetic headlines worldwide.

It seems to be working. “Solidarity” marches around the world included chants of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will soon be free.”

Against this backdrop, it may seem odd to raise the issue of Israel’s treatment of African refugees. As a Jewish newspaper, we feel it is our obligation to defend Israel from unjust accusations and attacks, and it is our duty also to condemn actions by Israeli governments or others that betray what we believe to be the just course.

Last week’s flip-flop by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was a disgrace and an insult to the values on which Israel prides itself.

A week ago Monday, Netanyahu announced an agreement with a United Nations refugee agency to alleviate a conflict about what to do with 38,000 African asylum-seekers currently in legal limbo in Israel by relocating about half of them to Western countries, including Canada. The next day, after getting pushback from right-wing members of his coalition and some aggressive residents of south Tel Aviv (where most of the migrants live) who want few or no migrants to remain in Israel, the prime minister reneged on the deal, seeking again to eject all 38,000.

As we have said in this space previously, it is ludicrous to suggest that 38,000 Africans – or half that – threaten the Jewish nature of the state. Neither, contrary to Netanyahu’s allegations, would the acceptance of these refugees – who fled violence and war – create a precedent.

If Israel wants to create a situation where it can avoid unwanted refugees while ensuring that it meets the obligations of a democratic state, it must develop the systems to appropriately adjudicate refugee claims. At present, situations like this – affecting the lives of 38,000 individuals – are being addressed arbitrarily and inappropriately. Israel, like Canada, Germany and other democracies, needs to have a standard by which the world’s homeless, who happen to find temporary refuge within its borders, are assessed and treated fairly within clearly defined legal parameters that recognize both the rights of individual non-citizens and the necessities of Israel, from the perspective of both the security of its citizens and the Jewish nature of the state. These are not incompatible objectives.

There is no shortage of challenges facing the Middle East. The situations in Gaza and Syria seem intractable. The fate of 38,000 migrants should not be so difficult to resolve.