From the JI – Page 6

Small glimmer of hope

The tyrannical regime in Syria has collapsed, and Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad has fled to Russia. We can hope this represents the end of the catastrophic Syrian civil war that has cost perhaps 600,000 lives, maybe more, and displaced half the country’s population.

The only thing that seems certain, however, is that the Assad regime is over. What comes next is largely unknown.

The forces that undid Assad, whose family has ruled the country with an iron fist for five decades, are a mix of ideological and theological entities, including Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a group that sprang from the Islamic State and has links to al-Qaeda, as well as Western-aligned Kurdish nationalists, deserters from the regime’s military, and forces aligned with a vast array of foreign actors, including Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and the United States. These are not likely to coalesce into a comfortable new government.

Regardless of what happens next, Israeli and American leaders were happy to take some credit for Assad’s fall.

Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, said the outcome “is the direct result of our forceful action against Hezbollah and Iran, Assad’s main supporters.”

“For years,” said US President Joe Biden, “the main backers of Assad have been Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia. But, over the last week, their support collapsed – from all three of them – because all three of them are far weaker today than they were when I took office.”

Israel has created a buffer zone in the Golan Heights to protect its territory in the event of continued unrest.

Meanwhile, there were US airstrikes on Sunday against the Islamic State, which operates in parts of Syria, an act intended to hamper that extremist group’s ability to fill the vacuum left by Assad’s toppling. But the United States is now just weeks away from the transition to a new president – a president who was elected partly on the promise to avoid foreign military entanglements.

At the same time, Donald Trump’s approach on issues has tended to be unpredictable. In characteristic all caps, Trump posted about Syria on the weekend, “This is not our fight.” Just days earlier, he promised “all hell to pay” if the Israeli hostages held by Hamas are not released by the time he becomes president. Whether the new Trump regime is isolationist or belligerent may depend on the mood the president wakes up in or what cable news channel he last binged.

One thing that seems certain and hopeful is that the collapse of Assad is part of a broader series of setbacks to the Iranian-based web of international terror. Israel has massively undermined Hezbollah, killing many of its top leaders and destroying much of its capabilities. The war against Hamas in Gaza, protracted, horrific and with no apparent end in sight, is nonetheless on the trajectory it set out on, more than a year ago, to eliminate Hamas as a force.

Assad’s collapse, while leaving a vacuum, is unequivocally the end of something terrible. Whether it is the beginning of something better is a question.

In one of the most encouraging signs, some commentators are suggesting that the multi-front failure despite billions of dollars in Iranian funds funneled to its proxies could even endanger the fundamentalist regime in Iran itself.

This is no time to celebrate. It is always, however, worth seeking out reasons for hope. That is especially true for Jews in the season of Hanukkah.

The collapse of the Syrian regime, the immense weakening of Hezbollah and Hamas and, to some extent Iran, are glimmers of light in a place and time of much darkness. It would be profoundly naïve, however, to assume that what comes next for Syria (and, as a result, for the region) will be either quick or entirely positive.

For the sake of the Syrian people, we hope for something resembling stability, as well as human rights and social and economic reconstruction. For the larger region, we hope for stability and that multi-front conflicts resolve in ways that advance mutual well-being.

For the sake of Israelis, who have known far too much war and violence, and whose borders and neighbourhood have been notoriously dangerous for 76 years, may the latest developments prove, when history is written, a step toward lasting peace.

Hope for best outcomes

Every election leaves a portion of the electorate thrilled and another group disappointed. The more polarized the electorate, the more intense these emotions. Two elections recently were certainly examples of this – and they were elections that could hardly have been closer.

The British Columbia provincial election returned the New Democrats under Premier David Eby to office – but just barely. A single seat assured a majority government but that is a most precarious victory. Eby will need to be vigilant to ensure not a single member of his caucus steps out of line on a confidence vote or becomes disgruntled enough to bolt the party. This is almost certainly part of the reason Eby gave every member of his caucus a special title (along with added pay for the responsibilities).

Eby has a reputation for centralizing power in his office – to be fair, almost every leader in our parliamentary system does, but apparently Eby is a master at micromanaging – and this is a double-edged sword. He does not lack the skills to keep potentially wayward sheep in line, but excessive domination tends to incite rebellion.

Jewish voters especially will be watching a few things. The new mandatory curriculum for Holocaust education is to be rolled out next year. Given behaviours of the BC Teachers Federation and the potential for individual instructors to go rogue, the possibility exists for this curriculum to be weaponized against Jewish people. There are already dispiriting anecdotes about anti-Israel activism among some teachers. The introduction of mandatory Holocaust education could open the door to reactionary activism among those who think the Holocaust should not be privileged over other human catastrophes, as well as conversations that could turn in inappropriate directions because they lack the language or support for context. We hope that the province’s curriculum experts have anticipated this potential and worry that it is a nearly impossible task to monitor. We should be looking for various types of evaluation to guide these educational programs.

The back-from-the-grave BC Conservative Party, now the official opposition, has promised to introduce adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism among its first acts in the new Legislature. This will put the Jewish community and our issues in the centre of political drama immediately – not a welcome or comfortable situation for our minuscule demographic; the debate is sure to engender opposition and recriminations.

In the broader scope of 2024 history, though, our provincial election will be a footnote next to the election that took place a few days later. The reelection of once and now future US president Donald Trump will almost certainly have exponentially more dramatic effects.

The reelection of Trump turned out to be not as close as every poll suggested, but also not as commanding as some commentators say it was. He won the popular vote this time by about 2.5 million votes, which, in terms of the raw vote margin, is the fifth-lowest since 1960 – but, compared to having lost the popular vote by almost three million votes when first elected in 2016, the 2024 margin points to a swing in the electorate that cannot be ignored.

Trump’s recent election seems to have been met by opponents with a fatalistic sense of déjà vu. His choices of cabinet appointees suggest his second term will be no less a circus than his first and quite possibly more damaging in many ways.

According to exit polls, Jewish voters in the United States supported the Democrat, Vice-President Kamala Harris, over Trump by a margin of almost four-to-one. (Israeli voters, if they could have voted, would have backed Trump by almost mirror-image landslide margins, according to at least one poll, a disparity that deserves discussion some other time.)

Support for Trump’s stated pro-Israel positions is premised on the presumption that what he says is what he will do. This is true for all politicians of course, but it is especially true for an individual as volatile and unpredictable as this one. (Whether his positions are actually good for Israel and Jews is also a topic for further analysis and discussion.)

Whichever parties or candidates we support, all of us should hope for the best outcomes. Much depends on it, if in significantly different magnitudes – the government of BC does not, for example, have nuclear weapons – but polarized partisanship does not serve the majority well.

As a Jewish prayer for elected officials says, “May they be guided with wisdom and understanding to serve all its inhabitants with justice and compassion. Strengthen their resolve to protect freedom and promote peace, so that harmony and tranquility prevail among all who dwell here.”

UNRWA faces deadline

Last week, the Israeli government announced that it would ban the operation of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency from operating in Israel, including in East Jerusalem.

For Arab citizens in East Jerusalem, this would mean an end to civic services like garbage pickup, three UNRWA-operated schools, and some health care and social services.

The laws passed by the Knesset would not preclude UNRWA from operating in Palestinian territories, but they would impede their work substantially. And they would eliminate any privileges or assistance UNRWA staff receive from the Israeli government, including easy passage across borders and through checkpoints.

UNRWA is a problematic organization. Begun in 1949, it has been criticized for perpetuating the Palestinian refugee crisis it was ostensibly created to resolve. By preventing Palestinian refugees from being resettled in host countries, UNRWA ensures that the refugees stand as living testament to the presumed injustice of Israel’s founding – the original sin in the anti-Israel narrative.

Through permissions granted by a bloc of Arab, Muslim and nonaligned states at the United Nations, UNRWA has expanded seemingly beyond the control of its larger parent body.

In the most illuminating example of UNRWA exceptionalism, the organization changed the definition of “refugee,” so it applies to Palestinians in ways it applies to no other people on earth. Palestinian refugee status is a heritable right, meaning descendants of the original refugees – now down to the third and fourth generations – are designated refugees when they may never have set foot in their ancestral homeland and may be second- or third-generation, for example, Jordanian- or Lebanese-born non-citizen residents. The objective of this strategy is clear: make the problem grow. The approximately 700,000 refugees of the 1948 war have grown exponentially, to 5.9 million people.

Operating in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, UNRWA operates more than 700 schools, teaching about 500,000 Palestinian students. UNRWA clinics provide primary health care, mental health support and referrals to specialized medical services. The agency provides food assistance, welfare and other forms of support. During times of war and other crises, UNRWA provides emergency food, shelter and medical services to affected populations. They respond to needs created by violence, displacement and natural disasters. UNRWA is responsible for the most fundamental services in the refugee camps where generations of Palestinians live, including sanitation, water supply and housing.

So why is Israel banning this agency that is so clearly a lifeline to the Palestinian people – especially in a time of catastrophic war?

Israel has provided to the United Nations evidence that some of UNRWA’s 30,000 employees were involved in the Oct. 7 terror attacks and have collaborated with the terrorists before and after that dark day.

There are also older, systemic complaints. For decades, Israelis and others, including the European Union, have complained that the UNRWA-operated Palestinian education system is as much about inculcating antisemitism and a radical political agenda as it is inculcating the three Rs.

As a politicized arm of the United Nations, UNRWA is both a weapon in the decades-long global campaign against Israel and an agency that provides desperately needed services to Palestinian civilians, never more than in a war that is wreaking destruction and death on the people of Gaza.

Israel’s move looks punitive and vindictive in a moment when the world sees the humanitarian tragedy in Gaza. This is a bad PR move on the part of a country with a bad PR history. But PR should be among the last concerns in situations where thousands are dying. Banning UNRWA could have disastrous consequences on some of the most vulnerable people.

The Knesset’s vote to ban the organization is set to take place in 90 days. That is not a long time, certainly, but it is a window during which UNRWA and the larger UN apparatus has an opportunity

to demonstrate goodwill. To date, they have effectively ignored Israel’s decades-long protestations that UNRWA is, for whatever necessary social services it provides, also a provocative source of incitement that promotes dependency rather than initiative and fosters antisemitic and anti-Israel activism and even terrorism.

After years of Israeli complaints and warnings, the Knesset finally put a time-limited threat to their concerns. The UN, NGOs, commentators and much of the world are up in arms over the announcement. Instead, they could be diverting those substantial energies into cleaning up the mess at UNRWA.

Perhaps the Knesset vote is an empty threat. Or rather, it could be an empty threat, if it’s primarily intended to make the larger UN body and the world take seriously the systemic problems UNRWA has exhibited through its long and troubled history.

If UNRWA demonstrates it is willing to take seriously the rot at the heart of its operation, we hope that Israel will not enact the ban. No one can clean up the panoramic mess in three months, but we hope that evidence of goodwill would be met with flexibility on Israel’s side.

If, in the worst case scenario, the UN does not do what it should have done long ago, Israel has an obligation – humanitarian, moral and legal – to ensure that the necessities of life are provided to the people in territories it occupies. In the absence of the UN behaving responsibly, Israel must. And Israel should absolutely be able to call upon a community of humanitarian nations to assist in that process. The world’s leaders have had a great deal to say about the well-being of Palestinian civilians in the past year. This would be a moment for them to put their money where their mouths are.

And the winner is …

The recent British Columbia provincial election was one of the closest in history – so close that the result is not yet certain. By press time, the incumbent New Democratic party was leading or elected in 46 seats, the Conservative party in 45 seats and the Green party held two. While 47 seats are needed for a majority government, that number would represent a very precarious situation from which to govern.

Recounts are taking place, as is the counting of 49,000 absentee ballots that have not yet been tabulated. With several ridings featuring races divided by just dozens of votes, it remains possible that either the NDP or the Conservatives could form government when the dust settles.

The likeliest scenario echoes the tight 2017 election, which resulted in a minority government. A supply and confidence agreement between the Green party and John Horgan’s New Democrats made Horgan premier and allowed him to govern for more than three years as if he had a majority.

Many Jewish voters took special interest in this election. Provincial and municipal elections have not generally carried the same level of interest around specifically “Jewish issues” as a federal election, but that is less true now. While Jews obviously share the same policy interests as other British Columbians, and have the full diversity of opinions as other voters, current events added gravity to this campaign.

There has been an alarming increase in antisemitic rhetoric and incidents. This has magnified attention on issues that fall at least partially under provincial jurisdiction, like public security, police enforcement and prosecution of hate laws, education and public sensitization around multiculturalism and intercultural harmony, and a host of other topics.

Regardless of who forms government, both parties have expressed commitment to the implementation of mandatory Holocaust education, something that was announced by the last NDP government.

Some Jewish British Columbians felt a sense of betrayal by the treatment of former NDP cabinet minister Selina Robinson, who was fired from cabinet after referring to pre-state Israel as a “crappy piece of land.”

The election of Nina Krieger, the NDP candidate in the riding of Victoria-Swan Lake, will certainly reassure Jewish voters that they have a voice if the New Democrats form government. Krieger is a member of the community and was a longtime executive director of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre. Her expertise will be invaluable as the province operationalizes the Holocaust education curriculum and as a liaison with the Jewish community.

The new Conservative caucus also has many vocal allies, including Claire Rattée, in the far northwestern BC riding of Skeena, who is Jewish, and many others who have made efforts to connect with the Jewish community over the past year especially.

Both Krieger and Rattée were profiled in the last issue of the Independent.

All parties made the right noises toward the Jewish community during the election campaign. Politicians, of course, are generally good at making the right noises. Follow-through is what matters.

We are encouraged that, during the campaign, the Jewish community and the Middle East conflict were not exploited as wedge issues by any party, a tendency we have occasionally seen at the federal level.

The apparent lack of polarization around issues important to Jewish people is a bright light in a deeply polarized province. With the collapse of BC United, the erstwhile BC Liberal party, the centre of the political spectrum became something of a vacuum. Not only did the Oct. 19 election indicate a stark binary between left and right in the province – not a particularly new phenomenon here – but urban/rural divisions have rarely been more pronounced. To look at a map of the province after the election is to see an ocean of blue, with the Conservatives having won almost every rural seat. New Democrats won all but a single seat in the city of Vancouver and the rest of their caucus is almost entirely from urban centres and the close-in suburbs.

There is an adage that has rarely been more apt: “In the Maritimes, politics is a pastime, in Quebec a religion, in Ontario a business, on the Prairies a cause and, in British Columbia, entertainment.”

By the time you read this, perhaps we will know who the premier will be. Perhaps not. In times of uncertainty, we can guarantee this: expect no dull moments.

A lesson learned anew

In the late 1990s, the collective Jewish community organizations in North America acknowledged a crisis. What had been increasingly evident anecdotally was being confirmed by statistics, research, published works and commentary. Affiliation with Jewish communities and agencies was declining precipitously – to the extent that the very future of the Jewish community, by some estimates, was in doubt.

Assimilation, intermarriage and declining religious observance were seen as factors in this decline. Counterintuitively, the almost complete disappearance of systemic antisemitism and the sidelining of social antisemitism meant that this opposition force no longer had the pull it once did to enforce cohesion among North American Jews.

This realization, and the debate it launched, were among the reasons that Jewish federations, synagogues, Hillels and other agencies engaged in a redoubling of efforts to reach Jews where they are. For example, to destigmatize intermarriage and welcome mixed families, and to entice largely assimilated Jews into Jewish community centres and synagogues and Jewish spaces on campuses, through the development of innovative programs.

But the core “problem” facing Jews in this narrative – a decline in the defensive, if unifying, force of antisemitism in Western societies – took care of itself just three years later.

Conflict in the Middle East always results in a conflict over the conflict around the world. The launch of the Second Intifada, in September 2000, saw an upsurge in anti-Israel and antisemitic (not exactly the same; not unrelated) activities on campuses and elsewhere around the world.

By various measures, the first two decades of the 21st century saw some successes in terms of sustained engagement and growth in aspects of the community. This was a result of a confluence of events – the debate that began in earnest in the 1990s; the investment in outreach undertaken across the Jewish community; and, not at all incidentally, the rise in global antisemitism that coincided with the growing conflict in the Middle East.

Then came Oct. 7, 2023.

In response, early indications suggest, some Jews have prudently covered up Magen David necklaces, put caps over their kippot and otherwise reduced their visibility in public. This is a superficial response, but it is based on reasonable principles of safety.

Here is what Jews overwhelmingly have not done: abandoned Judaism and the broader Jewish identity that draws the hostility of haters.

On the contrary. Synagogues, Jewish advocacy organizations, Hillels and other Jewish groups are seeing spikes in engagement unknown in recent memory.

Many Jews whose lives have been comfortably lived with only tangential connections to the broader Jewish peoplehood found themselves suddenly and profoundly isolated in their various communities after Oct. 7. Some Jews who had concluded that they did not need the benefits of collective engagement found, perhaps to their dismay, that they do.

This fact (or its observation) should not be seen as an “I told you so.” It is merely a recognition that antisemitism exists and, throughout history, it has been a cyclical phenomenon that rises and falls in waves.

Let us not pretend that there are silver linings in the horrors we have experienced collectively in the past year. No one would choose this trade-off. What we are suggesting is that, in the face of this new reality, Jews are doing what Jews have always done: returned to the teachings, core values and simple togetherness that have sustained our people and traditions for millennia, realizing, as generations before have done, that these ancient assets are no less valuable today than in eras past.

We cannot foresee the future. Things may get worse before they get better. But when this cycle finally recedes, we hope we will be a stronger people. Those who had dismissed their own parents’ warnings around cyclical bigotry are conveying to their own kids the lessons they had disdained. There are reports of record synagogue attendance at High Holiday services this year, established and new ad hoc advocacy programs and organizations have been enriched by an influx of people and talent. Innovative organizations have popped up to support many non-affiliated or disaffected Jews in spiritual exploration, with racialized identities, or those who want to advocate for peace and dialogue outside of established communal structures. On campuses, Jewish students are learning advocacy and skills that will empower our community for decades to come.

This is not, to be clear, an instance of Jewishness being defined by negatives, driven by its opposites. It is a constructive, positive, heartening phenomenon in which people who did not even know that they needed community reach out, find one and, in the process, empower both themselves and the larger people.

Again, this is not a silver lining in a terrible time. This is simply an ancient lesson learned anew.

A different new year

The experience of the Jewish calendar is ever-changing because, while the week’s parshah is the same every year, the people experiencing it have changed. This seems especially true for the year just passed.

Pesach held stark resonance this spring, as Jews worldwide held in our hearts the captives in Gaza and pain around the ongoing war. Every happy moment in the calendar was darkened by the shadow of Oct. 7. Every solemn moment seemed laden with deeper significance.

It is a rare Jew whose life has not changed dramatically since that day. Israelis and Jews had ripped from us a sense of historical, collective and personal security that the Jewish state was supposed to provide. While 75 years of conflict and insurrection have reminded us that Jews have never been entirely free from the hatred of others, the collective defence embodied in the state of Israel massively reduced the vulnerability experienced by previous generations. We also understand that this security has come at a cost and that the last 75 years have also been a source of suffering for our Palestinian neighbours and cousins. This is a juxtaposition we struggle with daily.

And then Oct. 7 ripped away our sense of communal security in a profound way. For Jews worldwide, it provoked what can be considered significant intergenerational trauma, recalling times when soldiers and their civilian collaborators could enter Jewish homes, perpetrate atrocities, annihilate families, separate us from our loved ones, loot our possessions, force conversions, exile and expel us, and take us captive.

Worldwide today, Jews have experienced a different, related trauma. In too many cases, Jews in Canada and elsewhere have been betrayed by our neighbours, let down by our ostensible friends and had our awareness wrenched open to the potential for abrupt changes in political climates.

This will be the first Rosh Hashanah since Oct. 7. It will be followed by the anniversary of the terror attacks, a commemoration that will be added to the black dates of Jewish history over millennia.

Day after day we hope for the return of the captives, and it will be a joyous moment when surviving hostages come back home. Between this writing and your reading, may that dream have become real. If not by then, let us hope for their redemption by the new year or certainly before the calendar turns on a full annual cycle since their capture. Every moment is a moment too long for their captivity. And every moment is a moment too long for continued war, and the destruction experienced by innocent Palestinians who are caught in it.

We can all well remember the holy days of just a few years ago when a global pandemic kept us from celebrating in person with our loved ones. For most of us, that forced separation has passed. That togetherness is reason enough to celebrate. Even so, it is precisely the idea of togetherness – when we know that so many families have been torn apart either temporarily or permanently – that adds sad resonance to our own sense of unity.

While we mourn those who will never again celebrate with their loved ones and we hope and pray for the return of the hostages so that they can rejoice in freedom with those they love, we should also take special appreciation for the gifts of those with whom we gather.

In Jewish fashion, the changed reality in which we find ourselves is already being woven into a sort of makeshift liturgy, as more than one article in this special issue of the paper describes. Thoughtful people have developed ways to memorialize and hold spiritual space for the hostages and all affected by this historical moment.

As we complete another cycle of the calendar, the immutable foundations of our tradition provide strength and familiarity. At the same time, as individuals and as a people, we are profoundly changed.

Education a key issue

Students across British Columbia have returned to the classroom. On university campuses, the activism that had roiled those spaces during the last academic year has returned to a boil. Jewish students are facing more of the horrible same.

Even public high schools are not immune, with reports of harassment of Jewish students and inappropriate comments by teachers and other students.

About a year ago, the government of British Columbia announced that Holocaust education would become a mandatory part of the Grade 10 curriculum. This came as a surprise to many people, who were shocked that it is still possible for a student to graduate from the public education system in this province without encountering anything about the Holocaust. To be clear, this is probably not usually the case, but what a student learns about that dark history has been left to the discretion of teachers.

Starting next year, that will no longer be the case. Students will have to study the Shoah. This is a positive development in many ways. Holocaust education is an entry-point to critical discussions about human rights, dignity, oppression, genocide, totalitarianism and a vast range of crucial topics.

From a Jewish perspective, at a time of increasing antisemitism, this is especially welcome. The dangerous potential of unchecked antisemitism is, of course, the ultimate and unique lesson of the Holocaust. Sensitizing young citizens to this message is an important part of addressing anti-Jewish racism.

The curriculum is still in development and we trust that educating about the Holocaust will be done in the context of a larger history of antisemitism. It would be a mistake to let students conclude that antisemitism is a product exclusively of a different place (Germany) and time (1933 to 1945). The Holocaust, students must understand, was part of a much longer trajectory of anti-Jewish racism and it must not be seen as anomalous in this larger context.

While there was much satisfaction at the announcement that this history would become mandatory in the curriculum, there is cause for concern.

When dealing with issues of extraordinary sensitivity – gender, race, sexuality, religion, treatment of historical events – parents, elected officials and the broader society depend on the ability and integrity of teachers to deliver this content in appropriate ways. This is where we have reasonable apprehensions.

While it is the government that mandates curriculum content, it is obviously teachers who deliver it. The teachers’ union, the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation, has a long history of disseminating anti-Israel materials and adopting biased approaches to the issues of Israel, Palestine and the conflict there.

This year, a group of (mostly Jewish) educators applied to the BC Teachers’ Federation to create a specialist group to help equip teachers to educate on the Holocaust. Astonishingly, the BCTF rejected the application for recognition – a recognition that is, apparently, almost rubberstamped for most other topic areas – without any suitable explanation. Given the history of the BCTF on this subject, many people have understandably come to their own conclusions about what was behind this rejection.

By the nature of their roles, teachers have a vast amount of leeway in transmitting information. The government will set out learning outcomes and expectations for this component, but the potential for inappropriate messaging in individual circumstances is great. Off the top of our heads, for example, we can imagine teachers equating the Holocaust to contemporary events and universalizing beyond the edges of what is reasonable given the uniqueness of the Holocaust in the context of antisemitism throughout the ages.

Not only does the government need to create a curriculum for the subject matter, it might do well to consider a curriculum for teachers to address appropriate and inappropriate ways of addressing the topics raised, including comments from students who have seen the inescapable propaganda accusing Israel of “genocide” and equating Israelis with Nazis.

In just over a month, British Columbians will elect a new government. Whichever party forms government will necessarily have to find a way to work with British Columbia’s teachers to ensure the useful delivery of this curriculum material.

When candidates call or knock on your door, it would be good to remind them that Holocaust education is an important issue for you (as are many other issues, addressed in the story here). Let them know that ensuring this new component of the curriculum is handled appropriately is something you will be watching for as a new government – NDP, Conservative or, given the bizarre upheavals in politics recently, some other group – sets course on this important initiative.

No slow news days here

In the journalism biz, summer is generally considered slow news season. That’s why our publishing schedule takes a bit of a hiatus. Then there are years like this one.

Rarely in political history has anything so upended American politics than the debate by President Joe Biden against former president Donald Trump June 27. Biden’s performance was deemed so portentous of defeat that a groundswell of Democratic party operatives mobilized to replace him on the ticket mere weeks before the election.

Avoiding potentially divisive competition, the party instantaneously rallied around Vice-President Kamala Harris, who then selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate and, according to early opinion polls, the race has been completely shaken up. This week’s Democratic National Convention was the Harris-Walz ticket’s effort at solidifying the momentum that began with her selection a month ago.

Practically the only bad news the Democrats have had during this honeymoon period has been the disruptions at Harris rallies and at the convention by anti-Israel campaigners and those pushing for an end to the Gaza war. As the vice-president said to one group of hecklers, “If you want Donald Trump to win, say that.”

Israel’s opponents are not the only ones agitated by the Democrats position on the Gaza war. At the fringes of the pro-Israel movement are those who believe a President Harris would undermine the US-Israel relationship and those who have particular concerns about Walz. In fact, both candidates are effectively in line with the mainstream Democratic party and larger American consensus, which recognizes the invaluable and special relationship between the two countries.

On the other hand, pro-Trump Zionists, who insist that the former president’s rhetoric and family connections guarantee a degree of loyalty to Israel, premise these assumptions on the flawed idea that Trump has loyalty to anything beyond his own self-interest or that he subscribes to any coherent position on anything. And they ignore his connections to and endorsements of far-right and antisemitic figures and movements. As we saw on Trump’s 180-flipflop on electric vehicles after he was endorsed by Tesla-founder Elon Musk, or on bitcoin or on TikTok after donations and endorsements from other billionaires, Trump has no core principles. It would not be in the interest of Israel, American Jews, Jews around the world, or the rest of the world to trust the future to a person who is demonstrating increasingly erratic behaviour and policies.

The Democratic party’s comparatively speedy defenestration of their incumbent president has inspired some members of Canada’s Liberal party to wonder if such a political decapitation might happen here.

The incumbent government is stuck in opinion polls far behind the opposition Conservatives, led by Pierre Poilievre. The loss of an erstwhile safe Liberal seat in a Toronto by-election in June has a number of Liberals wondering if self-preservation demands the replacement of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as leader. This fall’s return to Parliament – and probably the outcome of two upcoming by-elections, especially one in a relatively safe Liberal seat in a Montreal suburb – will almost certainly determine whether the Liberals stand by their man or take a lesson from their cousins to the south.

Still closer to home, British Columbia politics has been heating up over the summer. The BC Conservative party under leader John Rustad is polling higher than that party has dreamed in about a century. Since being thrown out of the BC Liberal caucus two years ago, Rustad has taken the failing provincial Tories – a party that last won an election in 1928 – to opinion poll heights of a few points off top spot.

Kevin Falcon, whose disastrous rebranding of the BC Liberals to BC United seems to have left millions of voters unclear on what party he leads, is now in the single digits and faces complete obliteration, if polls are to be believed. Fears of a split centre-right vote (a perennial driver in BC politics for a century or so) seems to have been obviated by an overwhelming consensus by non-NDP voters to rally around the BC Conservatives.

Of course, campaigns matter. When voters realize that Falcon’s party is the one they used to know as the BC Liberals, some may return to familiar patterns, especially since BC United has frantically prevailed on Elections BC to allow them to include both their new and old names on this fall’s ballots.

It all just goes to show that you should take nothing for granted. With the BC election on Oct. 19, the US election on Nov. 5 and a minority Liberal government with increasingly uneasy backbenchers (and frontbenchers), the slow news season of the summer seems likely to usher in a rather exciting autumn. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

World political theatre

Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu visited Washington this week, coincidentally in the aftermath of US President Joe Biden’s decision to not seek reelection. There is certainly no shortage of topics on their minds – and there are doubtlessly some unspoken subtexts. Given that one man is now officially in the final months of office and the other seems likewise approaching an end, the significance to each man’s country of a tête-à-tête is inevitably minimized.

This was hardly the only theatre happening in recent days. The Bibi-Biden meeting took place days after the International Court of Justice declared that Israel has perpetrated a “de facto annexation” and is preventing Palestinians from exercising their right to self-determination.

The decision by the World Court, as it is known, is “advisory,” rather than “binding,” which is effectively neither here nor there, since Israel will probably do whatever it chooses anyway. And so it should.

This is not to say the court’s decision is meaningless. But its impacts are not at all what the court or those trumpeting this decision think they are.

To be clear: the court is not wrong. Palestinians are experiencing human rights violations in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. They are being prevented from fulfilling their right to self-determination – for reasons well beyond Israel’s control, though Jewish settlements and other Israeli government decisions make a prospective Palestinian state more difficult to realize.

Two things, though, can be true at the same time. Palestinians are experiencing these violations. But, Israel will, and should, ignore the court’s ruling. The ICJ opinion was a political, rather than a judicial, expression, the culmination of a concerted campaign by some of the most despotic regimes in the world. Israel did not participate in the hearing, choosing not to legitimize the process. The decision deserves to be dismissed.

Likewise, the world should largely ignore a related provocation by Israel’s parliament.

The Knesset last week, for the first time, effectively voted against a two-state solution. The vote, which called the idea of a Palestinian state an “existential danger” to Israel, was every bit as much a political act as the ICJ decision. In fact, they are basically two sides of the same coin. The Knesset vote was a slap (along right-left party lines) against those who would presuppose an independent Palestine in the absence of what would be inevitably long and complex negotiations.

The entire situation is a tragedy. The tragedy of the ICJ decision is, first and foremost, for the United Nations broadly, the World Court specifically and the millions, if not billions, of people worldwide whose legitimate need for human rights and a global voice for justice is diminished by the politicization of the ICJ. It is another nail in the coffin of the United Nations’ legitimacy.

Nawaf Salam, the chief judge who released the decision, is a two-time candidate for prime minister of Lebanon, having run with the imprimatur of the anti-Zionist and antisemitic terror group Hezbollah. His presence in this role is a mere illustration of a toxicity that has permeated some branches of the UN, not least the evidence that employees and leaders of UNWRA, the UN branch responsible for Palestinian refugees, were involved in the atrocities of Oct. 7. All of this is inevitable when a global parliament operating on democratic principles is made up primarily of autocratic member-states.

We must step back, though, and make a defence of the world body. Danny Danon, Israel’s former UN ambassador, who has undeniable Likud bona fides, is both a critic of the UN’s failures and a staunch defender of the necessity of its existence. He knows better than almost any other pro-Israel voice of the good work the UN does on too many fronts to abandon it. The idea of the UN is too important to terminate just because it is, in practice, falling woefully short.

Perhaps the best way to think of all these developments is as theatre. Like Netanyahu’s trip to Washington, the Knesset vote against a Palestinian state, the ICJ decision and all the hoopla around these events are just performances and, as Shakespeare said, all the people merely players. Only when all parties commit to laying the foundations for whatever form peace and coexistence might take, rather than simply making dramatic pronouncements, can substantive, positive change become reality.

Upheaval, good and bad

The French elections Sunday resulted in a hung parliament, with no party coming close to forming a working majority in the lower house. Given the choices French voters faced, this may be the best possible outcome.

The results were a surprise. The far-right National Rally, led by Marine Le Pen and founded by her father on neo-fascist roots, was widely anticipated to win. This would have been a long-dreaded victory for far-right extremism in Western Europe.

Dissatisfaction with the moderate President Emmanuel Macron was a significant factor, but the failure of the president’s party also reflects a larger trend across Europe toward the political extremes and away from the centre. This shift forced French voters into what, for many, was an unpalatable choice. Sunday’s election was the second round in a two-part process, the first round having eliminated many of the Macron-aligned candidates and forcing voters to choose between Le Pen’s party and a coalition of centre-left and far-left parties.

While Le Pen attempted to convince many French that her party had abandoned its antisemitism roots, the far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, in some ways, has taken up the antisemitic baton. He has repeatedly picked fights with the main French Jewish communal agency, employed what many hear as antisemitic dog whistles and condemned Macron’s acknowledgement of the complicity of some French people during the Holocaust, including in the notorious Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup of Jews. He has even dug up the ancient allegation that Jews crucified Jesus. So long are the litany of Mélenchon’s affronts to Jews that indications are that many Jews, possibly a plurality, opted for the far-right in Sunday’s vote. Additionally, many Jews apparently felt betrayed by the urging of Macron and other ostensibly moderate French leaders to support the left-wing bloc over the right-wing bloc.

Imagine Jews feeling it was safer to vote for a party born in fascism than a leftist bloc that includes individuals who don’t even make pretenses that they reject antisemitism.

This sense of being squeezed from all sides is not a new or unfamiliar discomfort for French Jews, who have been abandoning that country for years. Terror attacks, often perpetrated by radicalized individuals originating or descended from former French colonies in North Africa and other Muslim-majority countries, have undermined what sense of security Jews had there. A litany of shocking crimes has occurred in the past two decades, including grisly antisemitic murders, a mass shooting at a kosher grocery store and, last month, the gang rape of a 12-year-old Jewish girl by perpetrators hurling antisemitic slurs.

Coincidentally, just three days before the French elections, a general election in the United Kingdom provided a dramatically different message.

In the previous election, the Conservatives, then under Boris Johnson, crushed the Labour Party, which was led by Jeremy Corbyn, a vocal anti-Israel voice and someone many British Jews perceive to be antisemitic. An internal party investigation and a government watchdog group denounced “a culture within the party which, at best, did not do enough to prevent antisemitism and, at worst, could be seen to accept it.”

While the Conservative government elected in 2019 stumbled from one disaster to another through a succession of failed party leaders and prime ministers, the Labour Party underwent what may prove to have been one of the most profound rehabilitations in modern political history.

The new Labour Party leader, Sir Keir Starmer, now the prime minister, promised he would “tear antisemitism out of our party by the roots.”

The party undertook an intensive process purging those accused of creating the antisemitic culture – and Corbyn himself was ousted from the party (though he was easily reelected as an independent in his longtime constituency).

After one of their worst defeats in generations an election earlier, the Labour Party emerged July 4 with one of the most whopping landslide victories in British history.

Among the 400 or so Labourites who will sit in the 650-seat House of Commons when the new government convenes, there are almost certain to be some who will demonstrate recidivist antisemitic tendencies. It will be up to the new prime minister and his team to demonstrate clearly and quickly that this sort of rhetoric and behaviour will not be accepted.

The uplifting message is not so much that the Labour Party won the election – we can agree or disagree on their policies and approaches. The nearly miraculous thing that has happened is that a democratic party has provided an example for reasonable politicians everywhere of how to pull a movement that had been dangling over a dangerous ledge of extremism back to a reasoned and tolerant position.

The fact that such a rehabilitation is even possible, let alone achievable by a single determined leader in a mere couple of years, should be a message of profound hope to people who value tolerance and inclusivity and who oppose antisemitism.

Perhaps we have too much naïve optimism. But it is worth clinging to.

If Starmer’s efforts at cleaning up the antisemitic mess he was left with proves successful in the long-term, people in democracies around the world should be flocking to Labour Party headquarters to find out how it’s done.