From the JI – Page 28

About the Passover cover art

photo - Fae at Passover — Fae at Passover *(photo from Ramsay family)*

While based on the above photo of my niece Fae at a seder several years ago, the cover art is inspired by all my nieces and nephews: Hannah, 24, Zac, almost 22, Caleb, 17, Fae, 6, and Charlotte, 4. I may not get to as many family seders as I would like, with all of my immediate family living in Ontario, but this photo is just one of many that has adorned my fridge over the years I’ve lived “out here,” and there have been many visits, as well as Skype and phone calls, so I’ve been able to get to know the wonderful people they are, despite the physical distance, and am so proud to be one of their aunts. I am confident that they will contribute, each in their own way, to helping make this a world in which, eventually, everyone has the love and opportunities our family has had.

To create the cover illustration, I scanned a pencil sketch I made from looking at the photo. I emailed the scan to myself so that I could use the app Paper 53 on my iPad to do most of the “painting,” including nine of the 10 plagues. Jewish Independent production manager Josie Tonio McCarthy helped me symbolize the death of the firstborn sons in QuarkXPress – trust me, no letter d’s were harmed in the making of this cover! Josie also refreshed my memory of how to use some aspects of Photoshop, which is where I brought everything together, with the odd embellishment or two, or three.

With wishes from all of us here at the JI for a Pesach sameach.

When will it be enough?

For a people who make up a fraction of one percent of the world’s population, Jews sure do gather a lot of attention and get credit for an extraordinary amount of bad doings on the planet.

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin, who evidence suggests directly meddled in American politics and is partly (if not entirely) responsible for Donald Trump’s election, said maybe it was “Jews” who meddled in the election.

Why wouldn’t he? It’s a strategy that has worked in Europe for centuries. In trouble? Look around. Find a Jew. Blame them.

About the same time, Trump was giving a farewell address to Gary Cohn, his erstwhile chief economic adviser, who resigned last week because of disagreements over tariff policy.

In his toast to Cohn, Trump said: “He may be a globalist but I still like him.” An untrained ear could hear the president’s remarks and assume Cohn is a free trade proponent in an administration filled with economic protectionists. But anyone familiar with alt-right radio broadcasts and white supremacist dialectics knows exactly what it means: Jew.

Jonathan Greenblatt, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, says the term was adopted in extremist and white supremacist circles as a euphemism for a stereotype of someone engaged in a global conspiracy. And the president of the United States feels confident he can use it with impunity.

Also at the same time – because fighting antisemitism these days is rather like the carnival game Whack-a-Mole – the leader of the United Kingdom’s Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, was found to have been an active participant on a hidden Facebook page called Palestine Live, where overt antisemitism, Holocaust denial and white supremacism were rampant. He even hosted an event at Westminster for the leaders of the secret group. Now, confronted with his past association with it, Corbyn’s response is, essentially, “What? I didn’t see any antisemitism. I don’t spend all day reading social media.” This comes as Corbyn’s supporters are being investigated for and purged from his party by the head office over seemingly incessant expressions of Jew-hatred and repetition of classical antisemitism. A glance at the evidence being presented online by anti-hate wings of the Labour party include every imaginable accusation against Jews – and plenty more that are beyond the imaginings of a healthy mind.

Then there is Louis Farrakhan. The head of the American-based Nation of Islam held his annual Saviour’s Day event in late February. There, Farrakhan declared Jews his enemy, “the mother and father of apartheid,” claimed that Jews have chemically induced homosexuality in black men through marijuana and are “responsible for all of this filth and degenerate behaviour that Hollywood is putting out, turning men into women and women into men.” He added: “When you want something in this world, the Jew holds the door.” Most chilling, and self-aggrandizingly, he declared: “Farrakhan … has pulled the cover off the eyes of that Satanic Jew, and I’m here to say your time is up, your world is through.”

Oddly, rather than holding Farrakhan to account for his words, perhaps because that is deemed a futile endeavour, most of the fallout has been around the association leaders of the Women’s March have with Farrakhan. Individuals like Linda Sarsour and Tamika Mallory have attended Saviour’s Day events and refused to condemn Farrakhan’s latest broadside on Jews. The march organization issued a statement, saying that his words were “not aligned with the Women’s March Unity Principles.” (By contrast, organizers of the Women’s March in Canada issued an unequivocal repudiation of Farrakhan and his remarks.)

Yet another notable incident happened recently. Residents of the Montreal borough of Outremont attended a public meeting to complain about a network of buses used by their Chassidic neighbours. Some of their complaints seemed justified. It appears the buses cause congestion on neighbourhood streets. But some of the residents appeared at the meeting wearing strips of yellow tape on their clothing. The allusion was obvious to anyone. This was meant to invoke the Nazi “Jude” star.

Some residents defended their choice, saying, effectively, “What? No! The yellow tape represents the buses that are disturbing our neighbourhood.” But one forgot to follow the script. “[The Jews] always bring up their painful past,” Ginette Chartre said. “They do it to muzzle us.”

In this month’s issue of The Atlantic, Armando Iannucci, an acute political observer who created the satirical TV program Veep and the recent film The Death of Stalin, noted: “Things are being said now that you wouldn’t have tolerated 10 year ago.”

As we approach Passover, we reflect on our history and celebrate our freedom. It is simplistic and insufficient to say that history and freedom have seen their ups and downs. But this time of year does invite us to put today’s events in a broader context. As much as the situation has worsened for us, we are not the only targeted minority, and oppressors to rival Pharaoh still abound. When we toast to next year in Jerusalem, we might also add wishes for the strength and wisdom to help bring about a tipping point at which people of goodwill say “Enough!” – and work even harder to ensure that our better natures win out.

What is anti-Zionism?

Last year, the Students’ Society of McGill University, in Montreal, barred the reelection of three Jewish members of the board of directors. The issue, according to a report undertaken on behalf of the university, was not the students’ Jewishness, but their Zionism. It was, the report concluded, a political issue, not one of discrimination against Jews. There is a great deal to unpack in this story.

B’nai Brith Canada has launched a petition calling for a comprehensive investigation into antisemitism on the campus, noting that the SSMU incident was far from the only concerning episode in recent years.

Sometimes, antisemitism is unequivocal. Swastika graffiti and statements that overtly target Jews for condemnation or murder are uncontestable. But, in many cases, unwitting perpetrators are so unaware of the history of antisemitism and its associated symbols and tropes that they employ antisemitic concepts without consciously knowing it. For example, many images and much of the language of the anti-Zionist movement dovetails with traditional images of scheming Jews merely recast as scheming Zionists or Israelis. Note the term “Israel lobby,” which does not imply a legitimate political position but rather suspect coercion.

With the McGill situation, part of the problem is that “anti-Zionism is not antisemitism” is often stated as a self-evident truth. A more accurate statement would be “anti-Zionism is not necessarily antisemitism.” Because, sometimes it is. For example, the most casual perusal of online discussions about Israel turns up volumes of images evoking blood libels of the Middle Ages. And the equation of Zionism with Nazism, which can plausibly be denied as explicitly antisemitic, intentionally rubs salt in the most painful of Jewish historical memories. Label such comments as one will, they have the very deliberate effect of inflicting pain on Jews.

And this is the important point here. People can defend their positions by saying that their criticisms are of Israel, not of Jews; that their positions are political, not based on ethnicity or religion. But, as we have said in this space before, outcome matters as well as intent. Israel may be the intended target but Jews feel the effects.

It doesn’t matter that not all Jews are Zionists. It would not matter even if most Jews opposed Zionism. The fact is that opposition to the existence of a Jewish state – which is the definition of “anti-Zionism” – is arguably de facto antisemitic. There are all sorts of defences, of course. Some people claim to oppose all forms of nationalism, yet the practical application of their ideology is to start by boycotting the Jewish state rather than, say, the Mexican, Malaysian or Dutch nations. As well, opposing Zionism, while knowing the historical impacts of Jewish statelessness, including history that took place in the memory of living generations, could be viewed as such disregard for Jewish individual and collective security as to be antisemitic.

Others claim they support Israel’s right to exist, but then take positions that defy these words, such as denying Israel’s right to defend itself, which in effect is a denial of, if not statehood outright, the right of Israeli citizens to live free from terrorist murder and missiles. What name should we give that?

When Jews say they feel singled out because of their Jewish identity or because of their support for a Jewish state, they are met with responses ranging from outright denial of the legitimacy of their experiences to accusations that they are fabricating their concerns as a political weapon. The idea that anti-Zionism is not rife with antisemitism would be more believable if its purveyors acknowledged that such a thing does exist, and condemned it.

Partisan decision

Andrew Scheer was two days old when Joe Clark was elected prime minister of Canada in 1979. In that election campaign, then-Progressive Conservative leader Clark promised to move the Canadian embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.

Cabinet documents recently released help explain why that promise was never fulfilled. There were diplomatic and, yes, commercial considerations though, at the time, the government claimed potential backlash from Arab states and businesses was not a factor.

Andrew Scheer is now leader of the Conservative party, facing a different Prime Minister Trudeau, and this week he promised to, well, you guessed it.

“Canada’s Conservatives led by Andrew Scheer will recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital when we form government in 2019,” declares a pledge on the party’s website. It describes the party as “a strong voice for Israel and the Canadian Jewish community.”

The Conservative government under Stephen Harper was indeed a strong voice for Israel – at times the only government in the world to be so – and for the Jewish community in Canada. There is no reason to believe that a Conservative government under Scheer would be any different, but the politics around this pledge are disappointing.

The statement came in the form of a petition-type pledge on the party’s website. That is, for those unschooled in the modern art of email harvesting, a strategy – legitimate and legal, certainly – of inviting people who agree with a topic to sign their name (and share their email address). The party can then target that voter, knowing they have a particular interest in the topic.

Again, there is nothing untoward about this, in general. But if a party that wants to form government chooses to issue a significant platform plank or promise dealing with one of the most contentious diplomatic issues in the world, perhaps a speech in Parliament or other suitable venue would be a more appropriate medium than a partisan webpage unabashedly accumulating names of voters for future political solicitations.

It is also so blatantly an imitation of the U.S. president’s shameless move on the issue. As we wrote here at the time, Donald Trump’s actions were not motivated by principle, but by sheer political calculation. Or, inasmuch as that president is not given to overthinking matters, more intended as a slap in the face to his political enemies.

We will leave aside here whether the embassy move is a good idea, a fair one, timely or otherwise merited or unmerited on substance. The point here is that the Conservatives are exploiting this issue for political purposes – and that is not good for Israel or for Jewish Canadians.

When Justin Trudeau became prime minister and effectively adopted the same policy approach vis-à-vis Israel as his predecessor, it was clear that a Canadian consensus was essentially in place. The New Democratic Party, in convention a few days ago, managed to put a lid on most of whatever dissent there was on this topic. Elizabeth May, the leader of the Green Party, put her leadership on the line in the summer of 2016 to let her members know she would not lead a party with an extremist agenda toward Israel.

This consensus is not a result of stifling free expression or of Zionist power or of anything other than a fair Canadian reading of important world events. In other words, for whatever else we disagree on, Canadians, by and large, accept Israel’s right to exist free from terrorist attacks.

Scheer’s move this week is cynical. It turns the legitimate consideration of the embassy’s location into a partisan one, when it should be entertained within the broader consensus we have developed. That is not the kind of voice Israel or Jewish Canadians want from our elected representatives.

This year at Purim

Purim is a time when we play with identities, dress in disguises and revel in deceptions. There is an aspect of great fun to this holiday, and there are lessons that are deeply serious.

One of the timeless aspects of the Jewish calendar is that, while the dates and texts may remain the same – Purim again will start the night of 13 Adar and the Megillah will not have changed – we, the readers, are different than we were last year and the circumstances of the world we live in have changed since our last reading.

As with many Jewish holidays, Purim includes a lesson about the importance of continuity and survival against existential enemies. This is, sadly, an enduring reality.

Just this week, at the annual conference on international security policy, in Munich, Germany, Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu reiterated the danger posed by Iran’s nuclear program and warned that regime not to underestimate Israel’s resolve in confronting it.

There are other threats, as well, in the form of growing antisemitism among far-right parties in Europe and in the British Labour Party, online and in the number of antisemitic incidents reported in North America and elsewhere.

We are still trying to uncover whether antisemitism played a role in the mass murder of 17 students and teachers at a Parkland, Fla., school last week. The tragedy led a white supremacist group to claim the perpetrator was one of theirs, but, despite being widely reported, this claim has been debunked.

Five of the 17 victims were Jewish – the high school is in an area with a significant Jewish population – and the murderer’s online rantings were teeming with hatred of African-Americans and Jews. In one online chat, he claimed that his birth mother was Jewish and that he was glad he never met her. Per usual, we are engaged in debating what motivated the perpetrator – easy access to guns, mental illness, pure evil or various combinations of these. As usual, we will engage in a nearly identical cycle of shock, grief, argument and ultimate apathy the next time this occurs, and the next time.

Threats of another kind are also top news right now, with charges recently laid against a number of Russian individuals and groups who are alleged to have interfered with the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The deception appears to have involved creating and stealing social media identities, as well as starting fake political pages intended to divide Americans. A rally against Islam, in Houston, Tex., in May 2016, was met with a counter-rally against Islamophobia. Both rallies, it now appears, were incited by Russian troublemakers.

More seriously still, the allegation is that deceptive and outright false statements were made in online posts and advertisements, which had the apparent impact of suppressing support for Hillary Clinton in key swing states, thus electing Donald Trump president. As each new allegation and example of proof has arisen, Trump has misrepresented reality, deflecting charges that his campaign (including members of his family) was engaged in collusion with the Russians, and claiming vindication at every turn.

A better president would pledge to get to the bottom of whatever is (or isn’t) real in the matter. Instead, this president plays partisan games and, unlike King Ahasuerus, does not take wise counsel willingly.

So, identity, disguises and deception are not only central to our Purimspiels, but woven through our news cycles and sensibilities every day, demonstrating again the eternal relevance of our narratives. Each year, on this holiday as on other days, we recognize and gird ourselves against the threats to our identity and existence. But we also celebrate our survival and rejoice in our not insignificant good fortune.

Denying facts not a solution

For years, Poles have bristled at terms like “Polish death camps” or “Polish concentration camps.” Rightly so. Places like Auschwitz-Birkenau were Nazi German camps on Polish soil. Calling them Polish camps was misleading and imputed the murder of millions of Polish Jews (and many other Poles) to Poles themselves. This is a linguistic formulation that should be avoided.

But it should not be illegal. There are few, if any, words that should be illegal, in our judgment. But the Polish government thinks otherwise and has passed a law that penalizes any suggestion that Poland was complicit in the Holocaust. So, anyone who uses such terminology as “Polish death camps” could face fines or up to three years’ jail time.

However, while the camps were German, there has never been any question about the willing complicity of plenty of Poles in the extermination of most of their Jewish compatriots. Many Poles were conscripted into the Nazi killing program, but others willingly advanced the mission. Notably, the murder of Jews in Poland did not end with the Nazis’ defeat. There were many instances of Holocaust survivors returning to their homes after the war only to be murdered by their former neighbours, the most notorious example being the Kielce pogrom of July 1946, in which about 40 Jews were killed and as many injured. To utter these facts in Poland now is presumably illegal. On the other hand, it is presumably not illegal to state the fact that many Poles risked their lives to save the lives of Jewish Poles.

The dreadful and confusing new law has been condemned by the American and Israeli governments, among others. Israel’s criticism hit a particular nerve with Andrzej Zybertowicz, an advisor to the Polish president and a sociology professor at Nicolaus Copernicus University. He suggested that Israel’s response to the law resulted from a “feeling of shame at the passivity of the Jews during the Holocaust” and he accused Israel of “clearly fighting to keep the monopoly on the Holocaust.” He went on to say: “Many Jews engaged in denunciation, collaboration during the war. I think Israel has still not worked it through.”

The irony is as stark as it is distressing, that Zybertowicz could accuse Israel of failing to work through its Holocaust history when his own country has just codified its own refusal to do just that.

Conversely, Germany has just announced that it will acknowledge as Holocaust survivors Jews who lived in Algeria under the Nazi-collaborationist Vichy French regime. This means about 25,000 people will be eligible for some compensation under the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. This is a positive development, no matter how late it has come.

These two very different present-day actions, 73 years after the liberation of the camps, are but two examples of how we are still navigating the facts of the Holocaust. We are still determining, among much else, who are to be included among the perpetrators and who among the victims. And these are not even the much more difficult, perhaps impenetrable, moral questions and issues raised by the Holocaust. We have not come close to understanding the patterns of antecedents, the human and historical prerequisites that allowed the Holocaust to happen – and which permit genocides to continue happening.

Dave Barrett’s legacy

British Columbia lost a larger-than-life figure last Friday. Dave Barrett was the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, he grew up in the Commercial Drive neighbourhood of East Vancouver and became British Columbia’s first – and so far only – Jewish premier.

Though he led the province for just a little more than three years, his legacy was substantial. His New Democratic Party government – another first in B.C. history – created the Agricultural Land Reserve, the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia, strengthened labour laws and substantially reformed the welfare system. His government created Pharmacare, increased the minimum wage, created the air ambulance service, introduced French immersion in the B.C. school system, initiated consumer and human rights protection legislation and – not to be forgotten – banned pay toilets.

Author Tom Hawthorn, writing a few days ago in The Tyee, said that Barrett at the podium was “by turns a rabble-rousing firebrand, an Old Testament scold and a Borscht Belt comedian.”

He infuriated many on the right and some on the left, including trade unions whose refusal to back him in 1975 helped lead to his early defeat. He also made some enduring enemies in the Jewish community. In his last interview with the Independent, Barrett acknowledged that some never forgave him for recalling the legislature on Yom Kippur.

But his self-deprecating humour made him hard not to appreciate. He liked to tell the story about how a newspaper, during one of his election campaigns, hired an astrologer to assess his and his opponents’ characters. The seer declared that Barrett must be a passionate lover. In his nightly call home, as he retold the story, he asked his wife Shirley if she had seen anything interesting in the news that day.

“No, Dave,” she said, “just the same old lies.”

Barrett was a social worker by training and vocation, but he was elected to the B.C. legislature at the age of 30 and remained active in politics for the next 33 years. Though his victories were numerous, he was no stranger to political losses. He lost his first bid to become party leader in 1969, and lost his own riding when his government was defeated in 1975. He returned to Victoria through a by-election and led the party to two more defeats before retiring as party leader. But he was not done with elective office. In 1988, he was elected to Parliament and he ran for the leadership of the federal NDP, losing narrowly to Audrey McLaughlin. He lost his seat in the 1993 election and retired from politics.

He knew that his time in power could be short and he wanted to make the biggest impact he could. Barrett was a bold leader whose drive turned out to be part of his legacy and part of his undoing. He was a model of idealism, influenced in part by his family’s heritage. It was quite a life for a working-class Jewish kid from Commercial Drive.

Tracking down haters

Israel’s Ministry of the Diaspora recently announced what it calls the most advanced system of its kind in the world to track antisemitic content on social media.

The Anti-Semitism Cyber Monitoring System, or ACMS, can find relevant posts that are antisemitic (using the definition devised by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) on Facebook and Twitter in English, French, German, Arabic. It can see who posted and shared the comments. Other languages and social media platforms are expected to be added to the system as it progresses.

In a month-long trial run, the system identified 409,000 antisemitic posts by 30,000 individuals. Whether the system can or cannot catch every instance of antisemitism online is less significant than the fact that it is a tool to identify trends. In the trial, the system identified the world’s “most antisemitic cities” as Santiago, Chile; Dnipro, Ukraine; and Bucharest, Romania. Western cities that topped the online antisemitism list were Paris and London.

This is relevant research. It would be useful to know where Vancouver or Canada falls in such a ranking. That kind of information could help our community work with governments and other agencies to address the topic and devote resources to education and countering hatred.

But information is power. And power can corrupt. There is a difference between accumulating information that is (or can be) anonymized to allow for research into the topic. It is also fair to use such a system to identify individuals who should be reported to authorities for investigation for potential contravention of hate laws or for exhibiting potential for violence. But the words from Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Ministry Naftali Bennett were not reassuring. According to the Times of Israel, Bennett said the system would expose online antisemites “for all to see.”

“The time has come to put a mirror in front of our haters and expose the ugly face of modern antisemitism,” Bennett went on. “From now on, we’ll know who every antisemitic inciter is.”

Anyone who has spent time online and confronted the sorts of nastiness that exists there might find a sort of satisfaction at the idea that some of the people who are purveying the worst Jew-hatred will no longer get off scot-free. But let’s take a step back.

It is one thing for an intelligence agency – or a responsible nongovernmental organization such as the Southern Poverty Law Centre – to accumulate information like this for the purposes of research, monitoring dangers and notifying appropriate authorities. It would be quite another if, as Bennett seems to suggest, a government (or other agency) were to make public an online database of people who express offensive or racist comments online.

There is a website called Canary Mission, which, according to its self-definition, “documents people and groups that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on North American college campuses.”

The site is a compendium of individuals who have made comments online or been seen at events of various types and includes links to their LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and other social media pages.

Some of the comments Canary Mission has assembled are indeed disturbing. “I swear if [a] Jew gets within 5 feet from me at the protest and says a word, straight murder,” one person wrote. “Ima kill a jew in a month,” wrote another.

There is also no doubt that, among these people, most of whom are university students, are some who have been drawn into anti-Israel movements and have made, as many of us do, occasional untoward comments on social media. It may be fine to call these comments out, but it is not acceptable to assemble in one place a group of people who vary widely – from those who should be reported to authorities for posing a danger to society to some who are probably legitimately attempting to make a peaceful political statement, however misguided we may think that message is.

This approach encourages vigilantism. It is the sort of tactic that has been used in the past by anti-abortion terrorists who have murdered or attempted to murder healthcare providers, including one right here in Vancouver who was shot through a window in his home.

Consider – and there is absolutely no reason to view this as far-fetched – that a website was set up to aggregate information about you, your parents, your children and anyone else you know who has traveled to Israel, donated to Zionist causes or attended pro-Israel events. There are a lot of irrational people in the world and a project like this could help them act out in potentially catastrophic ways.

Again, there is value and importance in accumulating this information. It should be shared with relevant authorities, including the universities, police, FBI, CSIS and so forth. But we should not be encouraging the public dissemination of this material. It is an extremely hazardous game.

A no-go zone for Jews?

Women and their allies across North America marched last Saturday in a massive show of feminist and progressive activism. It was the second annual such event, the first one coming the day after U.S. President Donald Trump’s inauguration last year.

At the Los Angeles Women’s March, actor Scarlett Johansson, who is Jewish, told the audience that she became part of the movement because she felt a rage in her on behalf of women who have been abused and because of things that have happened to her in the past.

“Suddenly, I was 19 again and I began to remember all the men who had taken advantage of the fact that I was a young woman who didn’t yet have the tools to say no, or understand the value of my own self-worth,” Johansson said.

Johansson’s experience is one of millions that have been shared in recent months since the advent of the #MeToo movement. But it was a message that was not heard by all.

Because Johansson was scheduled to speak at the event, Palestinian women’s groups boycotted it. One group accused Johansson of “unapologetic support of illegal settlements in the West Bank.”

The Palestinian groups’ complaint, ostensibly, is that Johansson was a spokesperson for SodaStream, which produces an at-home beverage carbonation system. The fact that SodaStream was based in Maale Adumim, a West Bank Jewish settlement, made it a target for BDS, the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel.

The Palestinian American Women’s Association declared: “While her position may not be reflective of all organizers at the Women’s March Los Angeles Foundation, PAWA cannot in good conscience partner itself with an organization that fails to genuinely and thoughtfully recognize when their speaker selection contradicts their message.”

In a free country like the United States, anyone is free to boycott anything. The Palestinian women’s groups were fully within their rights to stay home. But the idea that Johansson was not a legitimate voice to be heard at the rally because she does not condemn Jewish settlements in the West Bank is a bit of a stretch.

If Johansson’s association with SodaStream was the real reason the Palestinian groups stayed home, as they say it is, it presents an opportunity to reflect on a bit of recent history. In one of their few successful campaigns, BDS managed to force SodaStream to close its West Bank plant, causing unemployment for 500 Palestinians who had worked there. Some achievement.

However, something potentially more significant may be afoot, which has nothing to do with SodaStream or settlements at all.

The Palestinian movement is trying to co-opt the progressive and feminist movements in the name of a nationalist movement that gives no indication that it would, if successful, reflect anything like what North Americans would consider a progressive or woman-friendly independent country.

One of the things that progressive people have come to accept, with much thanks to #MeToo, is that intent sometimes matters less than impact. We have come to accept, for instance, that what a man might call “persistent flirtation” can be experienced by women as coercion, intimidation or worse.

Palestinian groups – and the progressive and feminist groups they infiltrate – should be conscious that what is intended as criticism of Israel, whether they like it or not, impacts on Jews. Of course, not all Jews are Zionists. Nonetheless, when you attack Israel, Jews feel it.

Consider from where we’ve come. A few short years ago, most “pro-Palestinian groups” insisted they didn’t oppose Israel’s existence, they were merely criticizing certain policies of the Israeli government. Now, it is extremely common for people to express outright antipathy to Zionism. Indeed, Zionism is a dirty word among many of the people who organized and participated in the marches last weekend. This is a far step from criticizing certain policies. To oppose Zionism is to oppose the existence of a Jewish state.

The Palestinian movement is trying to kick the Zionists (and that includes most North American Jews) out of the progressive and feminist movements. Is that OK with progressives? Is that OK with Jews?

If both sides don’t do something about it, Zionists and Jews are going to have a sworn enemy on the left and the left is going to be known as a no-go zone for Jews and Zionists. Who thinks that’s OK?

Abbas more isolated

U.S. President Donald Trump with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the Presidential Palace, Bethlehem, May 2017. (photo by the White House)

Mahmoud Abbas has had enough. Thirteen years into his four-year term as elected leader of the Palestinian people, he has nothing of substance to show for his efforts and his friends are abandoning him.

On Sunday, his frustration was on full display during a two-and-a-half-hour speech.

Things have been building up lately for Abbas and his Fatah faction and, at a meeting of the Palestinian Central Council, he finally let loose.

Naturally, he focused on Israel, which he declared a European colonialist enterprise and denied Jewish connection to the land.

“Israel is a colonialist project that has nothing to do with Jews,” Abbas said. “The Jews were used as a tool under the concept of the Promised Land – call it whatever you want. Everything has been made up.”

Abbas, who has a doctorate in history, has taken a creative approach the discipline from the start, when his dissertation discounted the number of Jews murdered by the Nazis and contended that European Jews were collaborators in their own genocide in order to advance the cause of Zionism.

Of course, Abbas also railed against the U.S. president for his announced intention to move the American embassy to Jerusalem. Abbas accused Donald Trump of destroying the prospects for peace.

“Yekhreb Beitak,” Abbas said in the general direction of Trump. According to the Associated Press, the curse literally translates as “may your house be demolished.”

“In colloquial Palestinian Arabic,” AP explained, “the phrase can have different connotations, from a harsh to a casual insult, but its use in a widely watched speech seemed jarring – and could exacerbate his already fragile relationship with an American president who is particularly averse to criticism.”

If the U.S. president is a notorious hothead, that’s exactly how Abbas appeared Sunday, but certainly not without reason.

What must hurt more than anything is that Abbas now sees those who have been the Palestinians’ historic allies softening their resolve. As a New York Times investigation earlier this month indicated, while Arab leaders from Egypt to Saudi Arabia were making appropriate noises in public about Trump’s Jerusalem gambit, behind the scenes they are giving every indication that they won’t expend political energy on the matter.

The irony is clear – and for Abbas and his allies it must be especially painful.

The welfare of Palestinians has never been a genuine priority for the Arab world, even as they have propelled the Palestinian cause to the top of the global agenda, paralyzing the United Nations in the process. For Arab leaders, Palestinians have always been little more than a battering ram with which to land blow after blow against the Zionist entity. Palestinian life under Israeli occupation and autocratic leaders is filled with small and large indignities.

Now that geopolitics suggests Israel is not so much the regional threat that Iran poses, the Palestinians, once a useful weapon for the Arabs in their 70-year confrontation with Israel, are being cast aside.

Abbas’s obvious frustration Sunday suggests there may finally be a change afoot to the status quo that has been unsatisfactory for Israelis and even more so for Palestinians. What the future looks like for the Palestinians – and for their relations with Israel – remains unclear.

***

Note: The headline of this editorial has been changed. In the Jan. 19 newspaper, the piece ran as “Abbas rightly irked,” which misled some readers to think that we agreed with Mahmoud Abbas’s remarks. We in no way condone his abandonment of historical fact, his inhumane accusation that Jews were complicit in the Holocaust or the many other false and immoral statements in his two-and-a-half-hour diatribe.