From the JI – Page 37

Must confront issues

Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union suffered dramatically in state elections in Germany last weekend. The German chancellor’s party received a brutal admonishment from voters, who concurrently gave startlingly strong support to a far-right, anti-immigrant party that is almost brand new to the scene.

The election was a referendum, to a large extent, on Merkel’s liberal approach to refugees from the Middle East. Last year, 1.1 million refugees streamed into Germany after often perilous journeys from the eastern Mediterranean. At the current rate, this year could see even more arrive unless, as some even in Merkel’s own coalition argue, border controls are imposed.

Still, there is no question that Germans – and everyone else on the continent – are confounded by the challenges created by refugees flowing in from Syria, Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. Merkel is in the process of negotiating with Turkey a cash deal that would see Turkey offer an alternative destination for those set on Europe. Yet even that would not allay all the concerns among Europeans and others in the West.

Are there potential terrorists among the millions of people on the move? It would be a foolhardy terror leader who would miss the opportunity to plant some agents in the West when an opportunity so ripe as the current porous borders presents itself, so almost certainly. But terrorists will find their marks even if it is not so convenient – and many of the perpetrators of European terror in recent years have legitimately been in the countries they attacked. Some were even citizens. The seriousness of this potential should not be diminished, but neither should we lull ourselves into believing that stanching the refugee flow would eliminate the terror problem.

As we have noted previously, more prevalent dangers may come in the form of some refugees’ attitudes and approaches to women and minorities. Violence (most notably a huge number of sexual assaults on New Year’s Eve) and other anti-social behaviors being reported suggest that there will be a serious challenge integrating some refugees into societies where expectations of women’s and men’s behaviors are radically different than in Syria and Iraq.

Then there are the economic realities, which have been remarkably glossed over. Before 9/11, opponents of admitting immigrants and refugees could be depended upon to raise fears of unemployment and abuse of social services. Thanks to the real or inflated threat of Islamist terror, economics seems to have been eclipsed. Even Donald Trump, whose campaign plays on every imaginable fear of difference or diversity, has limited his hate-fueled anti-Muslim rhetoric almost exclusively to the terror motif. In his mind, evidently, Mexicans take jobs, Muslims are terrorists.

Yet neither Trump’s xenophobia nor Merkel’s open-handedness will solve the underlying problems of war and despair that drive people to risk their lives to reach Europe or the Americas. And even if that crisis were to be solved which, despite U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s efforts, seems remote, we need to remind ourselves of a larger issue still.

We are one world. A country may once have been able to close its borders and seal itself off from the rest of humankind. The 20th-century fate of the Jews of Europe is the most memorable reminder that this was once true. But no more. We can set policies and even build walls, but we are part of an irrevocably interconnected and interdependent world. Efforts to stop the advance of this reality will ultimately be futile, even if they were desirable.

We need to find a way to get along. There could hardly be a more simplistic statement, but it is nonetheless true. We need to find ways to coexist inter-culturally and intra-culturally. With those who are coming to Europe and North America, we need to engage in a deep and committed dialogue to find common ground and we must not be afraid, as Canadians so often are, of confronting cultural differences, because ignoring them will cause problems, not solve them.

Proudly in the middle

Slovakia’s elections on the weekend ushered into parliament for the first time a far-right neo-Nazi party of the sort that have made inroads in various parts of Europe over recent years. About the same time this was making news, Donald Trump urged supporters at a rally in Florida to raise their right hands in a pledge to vote. The ensuing scene was – as any sensible person would have foreseen – eerily redolent of a Nazi rally.

Since the collapse of the bipolar Cold War-era status quo, global politics has been unstable. Common enemies make for strange bedfellows and temporary alliances have been the pragmatic responses to regional brushfires, such as the alignment of Shia and Sunni Muslim factions with, respectively, Russian and Western powers. Some Sunni Muslim powers have even been making pleasant noises toward Israel, seeing it as an ally, however unlikely, against the Iranian menace.

These tactical alliances are taking place at a molecular level, too, if we can put it that way. Not only are strange alliances forming between nation-states (and, in some cases, non-state players like Iranian-backed Hezbollah and the Western-backed Free Syrian Army), but ideologies are merging at the edges. The far-right and the far-left, in some instances, are almost indistinguishable.

In their historical forms, communism and fascism in the form of Stalinism and Hitlerism, were the most adamant of enemies. Until they weren’t, thanks to a non-aggression pact, and then they were again, thanks to Hitler’s abrogation of the pact. For the great majority of people in the West who are democrats (whether liberal, conservative, libertarian, social democratic or whatever) the two ends of the political spectrum can look very similar. Both have been responsible for genocides causing millions of deaths and neither respects the human being’s right to individual freedoms.

From a Canadian perspective, we have been blessedly free of anything more than weak startup movements of the far-left and the far-right. The communist party, under different names, had minimal electoral success in the 1930s and 1940s. When the antisemitic far-right permeated the Social Credit movement and later the Reform party, they were fairly successfully shut down. Canada is a place of moderation, a trait we bear smugly (and, therefore, without our alleged national humility) while watching the machinations of American politics today.

Today’s far-left and far-right, which are more recognizable in their traditional forms in Europe, nevertheless have traded off some characteristics. In some instances, European far-right parties, who are almost unanimously anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim, have adopted a convenient philosemitism and pro-Zionism, seeing Israel as a bulwark against radical Islam. At the same time, we are witnessing a growth of not only anti-Zionism but overt antisemitism among components of the left. Notably, the Labor Club at Oxford University, the campus arm of Britain’s second-largest political party, has been recently criticized. According to reports, Oxford Laborites mocked Jewish victims of the Paris terror attacks, made light of Auschwitz, expressed solidarity with Hamas and defended the killing of Israeli civilians, routinely employ the term “Zio,” a slang for Zionist that is usually found only on the most extreme websites, and a former co-chair of the club has said that “most accusations of antisemitism are just the Zionists crying wolf.” It is little solace that the antisemitism seems to have emanated from the Momentum movement, a hard-left stream within the Labor party headed by Jeremy Corbyn, the party leader.

The Oxford debacle is among the most public of countless incidents of Jew-baiting and Jew-hating on the left, but there is much cross-pollination between groups like those who hold Israel Apartheid Weeks and other groups that proudly march under the “progressive” standard.

Antisemitism, it is so often said, is an early symptom of a societal sickness, the first sign of crazy. This is a bit simplistic, though, because antisemitism is so unique, so capable of metastasizing into whatever form of scapegoat a society requires, so ubiquitous and yet still so fundamentally not understood, that blanket statements about it are a fool’s game.

Perhaps it is safe to say this: antisemitism exists in many places, but it is now and has perhaps always been most prevalent at the fringes of the political spectrum. No one should be surprised that it is a dominant characteristic of the far-right as well as the far-left, particularly when those terms themselves seem to have more overlap, or at least more fluidity, than perhaps ever before.

Extremists exist in Canada, as they do elsewhere in the world, and so, too, do inequality and other social issues that have the ability to polarize us, if we let them. But, extremism does not seem to be intrinsic to our land. This good fortune is something we must not take for granted. While people may joke – an example, Why did the Canadian cross the road? To get in the middle! – we have a lot of which to be proud, and something valuable worth protecting. We also, perhaps, have something to teach the world about tolerance and moderation.

BDS condemned

The House of Commons this month voted overwhelmingly to condemn BDS, the movement that aims to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel.

The motion, put forward by Conservative members of Parliament Tony Clement and Michelle Rempel, reads fairly simply: “That, given Canada and Israel share a long history of friendship as well as economic and diplomatic relations, the House reject the BDS movement, which promotes the demonization and delegitimization of the state of Israel, and call upon the government to condemn any and all attempts by Canadian organizations, groups or individuals to promote the BDS movement, both here at home and abroad.”

The Liberal government backed the motion while the New Democrats and Bloc Quebecois opposed it, leading to a lopsided 229-51 victory.

A handful of Liberal MPs abstained and two voted against, but the vast majority of government members backed the Conservative motion. Two NDP MPs abstained from their party’s otherwise monolithic opposition to the motion. Both are Vancouver-area MPs – Vancouver Kingsway’s Don Davies and Port Moody-Coquitlam’s Fin Donnelly.

Supporters of the motion expressed views that have been prominent in these pages in recent weeks: that BDS unfairly targets one side in a conflict, that it is counterproductive and possibly based on bigotry. Opponents of the motion took a more novel approach.

NDP leader Thomas Mulcair said, “This goes against the freedom of expression we hold so dear in our society … to call upon the government to condemn someone for having that opinion, that’s unheard of.” He said the motion “makes it a thought crime to express an opinion” and contended that it is fair to disagree with BDS and still debate its arguments.

We like to think that you would be hard-pressed to find a more thoroughgoing defence of free expression than has appeared in this space over the past 20 years, and even longer. We have routinely taken a stand for open expression when some readers and community leaders urged variations on censorship. Yet the NDP leader’s defence of free expression is confused at best.

The motion does not make it illegal to support BDS. If it did, we would be out with our figurative pitchforks and torches opposing it. What the motion does is condemn a despicable idea. And here is where so many people who claim to support free expression in principle actually screw it up in the execution.

Mulcair argued that we should be able to debate BDS. That is precisely what Parliament did through this motion. He argued that his party does not support BDS, merely free speech. Leaving aside that several unions that support the NDP also support BDS, and that the NDP is the natural home in Canadian politics for anyone else who believes in BDS, his circumlocution on our sacred freedoms provides a tidy cover for avoiding the real issue that could paint his party into a corner: some – a few? a lot? a majority? – of his party members and MPs do, in fact, support the BDS movement. So, to avoid condemning BDS and perhaps alienating party members and supporters, he cloaked himself in a non sequitur of free expression, debasing the very value he claimed to be defending.

Too often, when unpopular views are expressed, those who might be counted upon to contest them abdicate that responsibility, defaulting to the argument that bad ideas are protected by our values of free expression. Indeed, they are. But so, too, are good ideas!

Supporters of BDS absolutely have a right to express their views. And, although it seems difficult for Mulcair to comprehend, so do its opponents. Every Canadian has a right to express their opinion within limitations around which our society has largely developed a consensus. Elected officials not only have a right, but an obligation to do so. A parliamentary motion condemning a terrible idea does not detract from anyone’s right to express and support that bad idea. In fact, it is the embodiment of free speech in action.

Let’s talk about Nini …

Screenshot of Noa’s official website, where she shows that she retains a sense of humor towards the press: “Believe half of what you hear and nothing of what you read! :)”

Internationally known, award-winning Israeli singer and songwriter Achinoam Nini – who has served in the Israel Defence Forces, who has been a goodwill ambassador for Israel and who has been honored for her peace work – has been invited to headline the Vancouver Jewish community’s Yom Ha’atzmaut celebrations this year. Apparently, this is a controversial choice for some in our community.

Nini (widely known as Noa) is clear about her political views and, so far, her critics have come up with the following to explain their upset at her invitation. She hates – a strong word, but it applies in this case from what we’ve read – Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. She rejected an award from one artists organization and resigned from another because they honored someone she thought was too right-wing. She may have written in a since-deleted Facebook post that she supported B’Tselem, Breaking the Silence and New Israel Fund for their work supporting peace. In 2012, she expressed hope that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas could help bring peace to the region. Also in 2012, she took part in an alternative Remembrance Day event organized by Combatants for Peace, which describes itself as “a group of Palestinians and Israelis who have taken an active part in the cycle of violence in our region: Israeli soldiers serving in the IDF and Palestinians as combatants fighting to free their country, Palestine, from the Israeli occupation.” The ceremony mourned Palestinians and Israelis who had been killed in the conflict.

One of her critics has compiled a curious mix of her posts to supposedly show why she is an inappropriate choice to perform, including: “We believe in two states for two peoples, Israel and Palestine, living side by side, supporting, protecting and nurturing each other…. We believe in three simple steps: recognize each other, apologize to each other and share the little we have.” We, too, believe in two states for two peoples, and in reconciliation.

With plenty of Vancouverites apparently scouring the internet for “evidence” against her, there may be more to come. Nini’s political views are not above criticism. Nobody’s are. But she stands behind her opinions, acts on her beliefs, and is very clear about who she supports – some people might be surprised that B’Tselem and Breaking the Silence are not among those listed on her website as groups she endorses – and who she doesn’t support. Unlike some of her local critics, who are hiding behind the anonymity of social media and don’t put their names and reputations behind their opinions, Nini owns her views. Whether or not you agree with her, that’s worth respect.

Should we be inviting someone with whom we don’t all agree to headline our Yom Ha’atzmaut ceremonies? What about someone who criticizes the Israeli government?

We who love and support Israel understand that holding a large community-wide celebration once a year feels good and offers a sense of solidarity. But what kind of Jewish community is it that doesn’t brook differences in opinion? Such uniformity certainly does not reflect one of Israel’s – and Judaism’s – greatest attributes and secrets to continuity: openness to debate and discussion.

Skipping over what Judaism says about character assassination, the harm that can be done with words, the fact that lashon hara is worse than theft because money can be repaid but the destruction of a person’s reputation can never be completely mended, is there a line that shouldn’t be crossed when making out a Yom Ha’atzmaut invitation list?

As we argued in this space last week, it is our view that boycott, divestment and sanction (BDS) is a movement steeped in racism (though not everyone who supports BDS is an antisemite, of course). Rightly, Canada, the United Kingdom and other democratic countries formally condemn BDS. If we were to draw a red line not to be crossed, support for BDS might qualify as a deciding factor in whether or not to bring an artist to perform at a Yom Ha’atzmaut – or any – event. It also might not.

Despite what the emails in your inbox might say, Nini has explicitly said that she is against BDS. At most, she might associate with groups that might have supporters that also support BDS – groups that are legal in Israel and part of the vital discourse there.

In a democracy, all voices that don’t incite hatred against an identifiable group are to be, if not welcomed, at least tolerated. This includes those who believe that Nini should not sing for Vancouverites on Yom Ha’atzmaut this year. However, the right to speak is not predicated on being right. This applies to Nini as well as her detractors.

Some people are demanding that the invitation for Nini to perform at our Yom Ha’atzmaut celebrations be rescinded. If successful, it won’t matter much to Israel’s future, or to Nini’s. We should not overinflate our self-importance. But such an act – a boycott of Nini – would certainly affect our community’s future. It would be a signal of intolerance, of closed-mindedness and an unwillingness to brook the very presence of a Jew, an Israeli, a veteran of the IDF and a great singer, simply because some disagree with her politics – and, worse, that we rely on innuendo and rumor to make our decisions. How solid a foundation is that upon which to build our community? What lesson would that teach our children? This is what we talk about when we talk about Achinoam Nini.

Racism at the root of BDS?

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers is again attacking Israel and urging its members to support the campaign to boycott, divest from and sanction the Jewish state. Last week, the union’s national president, Mike Palecek, sent a communiqué to members packed with boilerplate calls for attacking Israel economically and politically, including a call to end the Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement.

The BDS movement lays bare a stark moral dissonance among so-called “progressives.” In confronting almost every other conflict and issue, these are people who urge discussion, negotiation, compromise, dialogue, conciliation. Except when it comes to Israel.

Why is Israel treated differently in this, as it is in so many other realms?

Obviously, Israel is held to a higher standard, as so many critics have noted, because it is a democracy, it prides itself on human rights and rule of law. However, the standards to which the world holds Israel are impossible ones that no country could measure up to when faced with the continual threats and violence that the country has endured for nearly seven decades.

The Jewish country – given the Bible, the Holocaust, the principles upon which it was founded – is expected to be the quintessence of morality and humanity. Which it might have been capable of, were it not for the fact that those who seek its destruction recognize no parallel standards of morality or humanity.

BDSers and other extreme critics of Israel shield themselves in a blanket rejection of the idea that their ideology could in any way be influenced by negative perceptions of Jews. Be that as it may, Donald Trump, of all people, may have illustrated the situation perfectly while speaking with Jewish Republicans last December.

“Look, I’m a negotiator like you folks; we’re negotiators.… This room negotiates perhaps more than any room I’ve spoken to, maybe more,” he said.

To Trump, being an expert negotiator is a compliment, though compliments often have double edges.

The stereotype of Jews as unconquerable negotiators is a driving force behind BDS. It is so universal a stereotype that Trump didn’t even realize it might be offensive, just as so many BDSers are blind to the bigotry inherent in their worldview.

Consider Sept. 28, 2000. The Israeli-Palestinian peace process was proceeding and an independent Palestinian state was in reach. Then Yasser Arafat left the negotiating table and began the Second Intifada. A decade and a half of continued statelessness for Palestinians has followed, as well as endless violence and thousands more deaths. World reaction should have been to rear up against Arafat’s rejection of negotiation and his return to violence. It wasn’t. Despite all reason, the world nearly unanimously empathized with Arafat’s actions. Why? Because many in the world, consciously or not, hold to ideas that let them believe the Palestinians were never going to get a fair shake. Despite all evidence suggesting that negotiation was leading to a two-state solution, violence was completely understandable because, you know, no one bests the Jews at negotiating.

Of course, there is the other factor – that Arafat seems to never have wanted a two-state solution, but this does not explain the reaction of erstwhile progressives and peace-seekers around the world.

Other stereotypes of Jews also drive the tactics of BDS. Note the two primary targets of the movement. First, it’s about attacking Israel economically. Secondly, it’s about academic boycotts. First, hit them where it hurts: in the pocketbook. Then sock it to them in the intellect.

It is hard not to draw the conclusion that, at its root, BDS is a movement steeped in racism.

Paint away complexity

“Palestinian Roots” by Ahmad Al Abid. (photo from cjnews.com)

Anyone visiting the student centre at York University in Toronto has been confronted since 2013 with a mural that some say incites violence and makes York a less welcoming place for Jewish students. The piece features a young man, pictured from behind, wearing a keffiyah with a map that includes an undivided Israel and Palestine and holding two rocks. Below him is a bulldozer, presumably Israeli and presumably preparing to overturn a farmer’s tree.

Recently, the mural has led one philanthropist to pull his support for the university and it has been taken up as a cause by Jewish and Zionist organizations.

The mural makes a not very subtle point. Israel is an aggressor, wantonly destroying Palestinian livelihoods for no reason. Palestinians are helpless Davids in the face of this Goliath, reduced to that most primitive of weapons, the stone. Beneath the image are the words “Peace” and “Justice” in several languages.

A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words and this is probably why the mural upsets so many people. With one glance, the viewer understands the anti-Israel narrative in all its simplicity. Israel is powerful; Palestinians are weak. Israel is aggressive; Palestinians are defensive. The map on the keffiyah, which erases Israel, is understood as a statement that the Jews stole this land from indigenous Arabs, whereas the same map, if employed for Zionist ends, would elicit cries of racism and genocide. Even the symbol of violence – the stones – can somehow be perceived as tools for “peace” and “justice,” given the nature of the enemy.

Since the mural was painted, the weapon of choice for the Palestinian lone wolf – if we can call someone incited to murder by their government and official media a lone wolf – has morphed from stones to knives. Videos and infographics teach Palestinians how to stab Jews most effectively.

Never mind all that. The world has an idée fixe, an unshakeable certainty, that Jews are powerful and, therefore, the Palestinians must be victims; they cannot be perpetrators or instigators. A new poll of French people says nearly 60% blame Jews to some extent for antisemitism. Antisemitism is uniquely identified as brought about by its victims, not its perpetrators. We wouldn’t have to be antisemitic, it seems, if only you would be less Jewish. Even the secretary-general of the United Nations is standing by his statement that Palestinians stabbing Jews is simple “human nature” in response to “occupation.”

The same poll also affirmed the view of Jews as powerful – and the attitudes of the French in this regard are probably not substantively different from those of other Europeans and some North Americans, varying more by degrees than by kind perhaps. Today, that power is measured in perceived wealth and access to political and cultural elites. When Jews were historically powerless in those conventional senses, they were attributed with supernatural abilities. Antisemitism adapts magnificently as required.

The perception of Jews as powerful is not only at the root of antisemitism but doubles as an impervious shield against challenging it. Consider: if Jews are powerful, then coming to their aid is an act of siding with the powerful against the oppressed. This belief is, at root, the very essence of the anti-Israel narrative now dominating much of the West, especially on the political left.

As always, this incarnation of antisemitism is a form of scapegoating, the projection of sins onto an empty vessel. As we are now almost congenitally conditioned to do, we acknowledge that Israel is not above criticism. No country is. Yet the proportion of global attention, the level of vitriol and the hyperbolic accusations against Israel are clear to anyone with a sense of proportion that this has limited relation to Israeli policies or anything else rational. The nature of the beast is that there have always been “good” reasons to attack Jews. Today’s reason is Israel.

Israel, of course, is a very powerful state, with a massive military for a population its size. If it wasn’t, its population would be dead or dispersed. Yet this still feeds the narrative of Jewish power and Palestinian weakness. If this is a battle between rocks and bulldozers, well, then, who wouldn’t side with the folks holding the rocks? This, in the end, is what the mural at York is telling its viewers. It is, actually, a magnificent synopsis of the mindlessness of the anti-Israel narrative, which strips all context from the conflict and ignores the fact that the perpetuation of violence is mainly a product of Arab maximalism and refusal to live in peace with a Jewish state. That’s a picture that is a little more complicated to paint.

Foreign policy of fools

There was a tempest recently when National Public Radio, the listener-funded American radio network, published a map on their website that erased Israel and called the region between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River “Palestine.”

There were other errors on the map – Turkey and Cyprus were also omitted as part of the Middle East and Afghanistan and Pakistan were included, despite not being considered part of Middle East. The map was removed from the website after complaints from HonestReporting.

It is good that watchdogs like HonestReporting exist and that media outlets that make errors – or deliberate misrepresentations – respond when challenged. However, there is a degree of irony in the fact that more attention is given to erasing Israel from the map on a relatively irrelevant webpage than there is to the near-universal erasure of Israel from the curricula and foreign policies of almost every country in the region.

In textbooks, including some funded by the United Nations, Israel is omitted from maps that teach children geography, replaced, as in the NPR case, with the word Palestine. This is by far the bigger concern.

The reality is that, from the foreign-policy perspective of most Arab and Muslim-majority countries, Israel doesn’t exist and never has. Foreign policy toward Israel among members of the Arab League is one of aggressive denial, in which Israel is referred to obliquely as “the Zionist entity,” or worse. In Iran, there is less denial that Israel exists and more overt determination to literally wipe it from the map.

Yet, all of these facts are effectively ignored by Western European foreign policies, like that of France recently. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has called for a peace conference “to preserve and achieve the two-state solution.” Fabius said that, if his plan for a negotiated settlement did not break the status quo, his government would unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state, as Sweden did in 2014.

Rightly, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu rejected the idea on Sunday. The French proposal, he correctly noted, provides the Palestinians with a disincentive to negotiate in good faith. Failure of a negotiated settlement is pretty much guaranteed by promises like that of France. Historically, the Palestinian leadership has rarely been willing to compromise, confident, correctly, that their Western allies would endorse their position without it – there has been no need to recognize Israel’s right to exist, to negotiate borders or other outstanding issues. From far too few countries has there been recognition that there are actually two legitimate sides with competing claims.

Aside from being a foreign policy of fools, the French proposal reflects the false narrative that is dominant in Western circles, one that sees Israel as the only obstacle to peace. If Israel does put roadblocks in the way of European proposals for a negotiated settlement, it is because European countries have shown too little concern, if any, to the very legitimate concerns Israel has about its security and indeed its continued existence with the very real potential for a terrorist state immediately abutting its tiny territory. If governments run by Hamas and Fatah are not worrisome enough, their stability in the face of threats from even worse terrorist organizations, namely ISIS, may be of no concern to the French, but it is a very serious concern for Israelis and those who care whether they live or die.

Alleged Israeli obstructionism, exemplified by the admittedly unhelpful expansion of settlements, is held up in the West as the main obstacle to peace, while the genocidal incitement that is rampant among Palestinians and in other parts of the region is dismissed as a temporary by-product of Israeli policies. In other words, as so often in history, Jews are blamed for bringing catastrophe upon themselves.

It is not a good thing that a news organization like NPR would redraw the boundaries of Israel and Palestine. Of far more concern should be efforts by the government of France and other Western powers to force such reconfigurations on a region they clearly do not understand.

Let the American race begin

When Joe Lieberman was named Al Gore’s running mate in 2000, there was some discussion about the potential for America’s first Jewish vice-president. With the exception of the dustiest corners of the internet, the discussion was respectful and more curious than bigoted. It was probably less heated than the issue of America’s first Catholic president that came up when John F. Kennedy ran in 1960 and, because the Republican base is made up of a great number of evangelical Christians, probably even less significant than Mitt Romney’s Mormonism in 2012.

Now that Bernie Sanders is a leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for this year’s U.S. presidential election, there has been almost no discussion of the potential for America’s first Jewish president; the discussion has been far more about the potential for America’s first avowedly socialist president.

After a seemingly interminable campaign, voting begins next week, launching the process of elimination that will determine the Republican and Democratic candidates for president this November. Voters in the first caucus state, Iowa, will gather in church basements and town halls on Feb. 1. In New Hampshire, eight days later, voters will cast ballots in the first primary of the season.

While American politics has always had many differences from European politics, the U.S. version this year seems to reflect, to some degree, the trend in Europe away from the centre. The Republican candidates are largely clustered on the right side of the spectrum, if not the far right. Donald Trump, the leading candidate according to polls, does not fit easily into ideological boxes, but his many very extreme comments appeal to at least some of the people we would describe as far right.

On the Democratic side, Sanders, an erstwhile low-profile junior senator from Vermont, who self-describes as a democratic socialist, is fomenting what is no doubt a very unwelcome sense of déjà vu for the once-presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Clinton was to be the unbeatable Democratic candidate in 2008, until an almost unknown senator from Illinois caught fire and bolted into the White House on a wave of reformist zeal. While not a single ballot has been cast yet in the 2016 battle, Clinton’s inevitability has almost evaporated.

What is it that explains Clinton’s inability to seal the deal, even with voters in her own party?

Part of the issue is her gender. How could it not be? If elected, she would be the first female president. But is gender an advantage or disadvantage for her? Perhaps it is both. Part of the challenge and opportunity Barack Obama faced was around his race. Whether race or gender are, in the end, advantages or disadvantages depends on a huge range of factors, including time and place, and the individual embodying them.

However, perhaps gender, race or religion will be less significant in this election because voters seem to be craving something different altogether. Even left or right may not be such key factors as (apparent) authenticity.

After decades in the public eye, Clinton is a consummate politician. Yet consummate politicians, even exceptional diplomats, are not what Americans seem to be seeking right now. Quite the opposite. American voters, in both parties, seem to be gravitating to unorthodox figures who do not follow scripts. Clinton seems both orthodox and tightly scripted.

Say what you will about Trump, his xenophobia and verbiage seem absolutely authentic. On the other hand, whatever Sanders’ ability or inability may be to get elected and then get any sort of socialistic agenda through Congress, his channeling of Americans’ economic realities and fears appears equally authentic. Both men have captured something in the zeitgeist that scripted politicians have failed to exploit.

And, while the Democrats and Republicans battle it out, a third option looms. There has been talk that, should the Republicans nominate Trump and the Democrats Sanders, a third-party candidate might emerge, appealing to wide swaths of the centre and chunks of both the left and right. Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg – a Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-independent – is seriously considering a run and will announce his intentions by March, associates told the New York Times. Imagine a three-way presidential campaign – with two Jewish candidates. That would be an authentic landmark.

Are good intentions enough?

The pope visited a Rome synagogue Sunday – the first visit to a synagogue during his papacy and a significant event in the context of inter-religious friendship. Pope Francis condemned violence based on religion and called on Catholics to rediscover the Jewish roots of Christianity. During the past half-century, relations between the Catholic Church and the Jewish community have made historical and immensely positive advances. Out of a history of bleak victimization based on Catholic teachings, the modernization of Catholic doctrine in the early 1960s reversed the millennia-old accusation of deicide and began a process of reconciliation that has been largely genuine and welcomed.

But, sadly, antisemitism – religious or otherwise – remains.

Recently released statistics say 2015 saw more Jews make aliyah from Western Europe than in any year since the founding of the state. Nearly 10,000 Western European Jews – 8,000 of them from France – made the move to Israel. While this level of aliyah will be heralded by some as a positive milestone, it reflects a dismal trend for Jewish communities in France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Belgium which, in that order, saw the greatest number of emigrants.

And the trajectory seems unlikely to abate, with Jews in the southern French city of Marseille now being advised by the leader of their community not to be seen in public with a kippah after a brutal assault on an identifiable Jew in that city and several years of similar violence across France.

In response, two women have started a social media campaign using the hashtag TousAvecUneKippah – everyone with a kippah. The idea is for everyone to don the traditional Jewish headwear as a gesture of solidarity and to confound those who would no longer be able to identify Jews to attack. This has resulted in some fun viral photos, such as a kippah on the Mona Lisa and another atop a model of the Eiffel Tower.

The idea that “we are all Jews” is an effort at solidarity and is a heart-warming and obviously well-intentioned move. It has some history, too. There is an apocryphal (that is to say, in this case, pleasant but untrue) story of the Danish King Christian X wearing a yellow star in solidarity with his country’s Jewish population during the Nazi occupation of his country. It is the sort of story that we wish were true.

Even so, there is a potential downside to claiming membership in an oppressed or victimized group. Middle-class North American university students wrap themselves in Palestinian keffiyas, thinking they are showing solidarity when to some it can have a whiff of blackface, of usurping the history of another.

Cultural appropriation can cut both ways. The idea that “we are all Jews,” as the kippahs-for-all idea seems to advance, has a potential to damage as well as heal. The pretense that “we are all Jews” could provide a licence to critique Judaism and Jews in ways that people would never dare with other ethnic or religious groups. If we are all Jews, after all, then antisemitism is little more than self-criticism.

Another not insignificant consideration is the fact that the world is not all Jews. Neither are we all Muslims (or Parisians or Charlie Hebdo or anything else). While such efforts at solidarity and support are well-intended, they also, in their way, betray a proud tenet of Canadian and other pluralist societies, which is that we do not gloss over or erase these differences, but celebrate and defend them.

Similarly, the pope’s efforts to exalt the Jewish roots of Christianity, seemingly well-intentioned, could be problematic. The fact that Christianity emerged as a Jewish sect has been a point of contention for 2,000 years. That a small group of stiff-necked people has refused to accept Christianity as a successor religion has caused outrage that has led to literally countless deaths over centuries.

The idea that we are all Jews is a nice one in times like these, but we should remember that such ideas have a double edge.

Mein Kampf and free speech

Adolf Hitler’s manifesto of hatred against Jews, Mein Kampf, went on sale last week in Germany for the first time since 1945. The annotated edition proved a bestseller, we hope because people intend to take a critical look at the ideas that drove their country to apparent mass insanity.

The reissue has been controversial, not surprisingly, but, as a practical matter, banning material these days is impossible. Mein Kampf is available to anyone with an internet connection, so the act of banning it in recent years has been a statement of principle rather than an effective means of keeping it from interested eyes.

Nevertheless, the book is an historical document that should not be hidden away. The ideas it contains were the seeds of one of humankind’s greatest atrocities. This suggests it has a power that those who would ban it justifiably fear. Yet, again, since banning it is not feasible, better that the opportunity be welcomed to analyze it and try to understand, confront and negate the ideology it represents, which is clearly the intent of producing a heavily annotated edition.

In fact, news of the book’s reissue has already sparked some welcome, thoughtful reflections on the nature of antisemitism, ideological hatred and also the matter of free expression itself. One lesson is that words matter. They have power. This is certainly the undergirding reason the book has been banned in Germany for 70 years.

It may seem a conflicted philosophical principle we have taken on this page for many years to stand firmly in the court of free expression – the right of people to express themselves free of undue constraints by governments, mobs or the threat of violence – while contending at the same time that people should police their own self-expression. It is not conflicted; in fact, it is a primary tenet of democratic, pluralist societies. It is the axiomatic idea that with freedom comes responsibility.

The proof that words matter is evident every time a Jewish person is stabbed in Israel. Palestinian society is being saturated by calls to kill Jews, including publications that demonstrate the most effective means of stabbing a Jew. Of course, Palestine is not a democratic, pluralist society where freedom and responsibility are sides of a coin, so this may be one of the reasons Western voices have for decades given a pass to rampant incitement.

But, tragically, we see it far closer to home. Some of the language around the arrival of Syrian and Iraqi refugees to Canada has gone beyond the realm of what most Canadians probably like to imagine is our tolerant, liberal approach to “others.” At a welcoming event for Syrian refugees in Vancouver last week, an individual pepper-sprayed people milling about outside the venue. It seems an act of such deliberate cruelty to undermine the confidence and well-being of people seeking a better life. It is impossible to know the precise factors that motivated this attack, but we can be fairly certain that some of the language used recently about refugees and Muslims did little to dissuade a person inclined to violence that such behavior was unacceptable. Donald Trump, according to opinion polls one of the people most likely to be the next U.S. president, has made obscene, inexcusable statements about refugees and Muslims. Such words do not fall on deaf ears.

We are at a time in human history where the very nature of words seems to be changing. Everyone can send their opinions out into the world in ways never imaginable even two decades ago. At the same time, long-form reading seems to be declining precipitously and we, in Western societies at least, may be forming our opinions more on bite-sized slogans than on deep consideration.

It’s hard to pinpoint what it means that the erstwhile banned rantings of Mein Kampf flew off German bookshelves. Hopefully it means people aim to use this annotated version to critically assess their country’s history.