From the JI – Page 6

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.

Who are the cynical ones?

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is the world’s foremost state sponsor of terror. The IRGC’s Quds Force (“Quds” meaning “Jerusalem,” to note the ultimate priority of the corps’ aims), is effectively the international terrorism arm of the Iranian government and military.

Ottawa finally got the message. Last week, the Government of Canada designated the IRGC a terrorist entity under Canadian law.

“The Canadian Jewish community has persistently called for this decisive action against the IRGC, recognizing its role in promoting violence and instability globally, including through its support for terrorist groups targeting Jews and others,” said a statement from Shimon Koffler Fogel, president and chief executive officer of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. “While we applaud this step, it is disappointing that it took so long for the government to act on its commitment.”

Iran has destabilized (the word seems profoundly modest) Lebanon, by backing Hezbollah, the terror group that has wreaked havoc by upending that country and turning it into a staging ground for attacks on Israel, and Syria, by supporting Bashar al-Assad, the strongman who has waged war on his own people for more than a decade. Terrorism by the Iranian regime has prevented Iraq from becoming a functioning state. Tehran’s long arm has also terrorized individuals and organizations in the large Iranian diaspora. In 2020, the IRGC shot down Ukrainian International Airlines Flight 752, killing all 176 passengers and crew, including 55 Canadian citizens and 30 Canadian permanent residents.

And still Canada’s government did not take the seemingly simple step of calling the IRGC what is so clearly is.

In 2020, the US State Department estimated that Iran was supplying Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups with $100 million per year in training and military and financial support. An Israeli source put that number, by 2023, at $350 million.

Part of the intelligence catastrophe of Oct. 7 was an apparent assumption by Israeli intelligence that Hamas did not have the capacity to organize as complex an attack as it did against Israel that day. This was a tragic intelligence failure on many fronts, but it was certainly a failure in Israel’s massive underestimation of the extent and complexity of what Hamas was capable of, thanks directly to the IRGC.

Canada is grappling with the fact that foreign actors have meddled in our politics, with China and Russia the prime suspects in this still-shrouded issue, but Iran has certainly had its fingers in our pie. The Iranian regime is also suspected of laundering money through Canada.

Iranian-Canadian human rights activist Nazanin Afshin-Jam addressed a parliamentary committee this month, putting a fine point of who we’re dealing with, not only internationally but domestically in Iran as well.

“Any time you have seen video footage of women in Iran being beaten and dragged screaming into police vans because of not properly wearing a hijab or of Christians arrested for worshipping in underground churches or Kurds being gassed or children being executed or peaceful protesters being intentionally shot at, blinded, raped or tortured, these are all the acts of the IRGC and its paramilitary subgroup, the Basij,” she said.

So why did Canada act now?

The announcement came less than a week before a pivotal byelection in Toronto. Voters in the riding of St. Paul’s, a Liberals stronghold since 1993 and considered one of the party’s safest seats in the country, went to the polls Monday.

The riding has one of the largest concentrations of Jewish voters – about 15%, which may not seem a lot but is 15 times the national Jewish population average and enough to swing a tight race, certainly. Another 1,500 of so residents list Farsi as a mother tongue and those, presumably Iranian-Canadians, know as well as anyone what the IRGC is capable of.

The very suggestion that a Canadian government would make a crucial, long-delayed decision like this based on crass political motivations is almost beyond the imagination.

Asked point blank by a reporter whether the decision was linked to the byelection – which many suggested could have existential implications for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s political career – Trudeau seemed to glass over and deliver a robotic reply.

Canada, he said, has already been “extremely preoccupied with the activities of the murderous regime in Tehran.” His government, he said, has “been working very, very hard on this for years.” He suggested that the delay was based on concerns for Iranian-Canadians and their families back home.

We are glad our government has taken this step. We are also revolted at the very suggestion that the decision could have been motivated by political expediency. It is unfathomably cynical – but who are the cynics? Is it reporters and commentators who accused the government of politicizing this move? Or is it a cadre of political advisors and elected officials who calculated that a few Jewish voters in midtown Toronto could save the prime minister’s hide if they were just thrown a bone?

We may never know exactly. But, if that was Liberals’ calculation, it failed. Conservative candidate Don Church upended tradition and won the riding. Liberals and others are still poking through the entrails to divine the wider implications for Canadian politics.

Small wins amid gloom

The rescue of four Israeli hostages from Gaza last week and their reunions with their loved ones is a bright spot amid much dismal news – though there remain 120 hostages whose reunions with their families we dream of and hope will happen soon.

This rescue has been a source of tempered joy for Israelis and others. In a time of tragedy and despair, these moments are worth appreciating. Amid the relief, we mourn the life of the Israel Defence Forces officer who died from wounds received during the operation and we mourn the lives of the many innocent Gazans lost. Holding this tension is weighing mightily on many of us, knowing that placing hostages among civilians is a deliberate and overwhelmingly cruel strategy of Hamas.

Closer to home, we are not without bleak news, but neither are we bereft of hopefulness.

The arson attack on Schara Tzedeck Synagogue two weeks ago is deeply troubling and scary. The outpouring of support and empathy from so many is a silver lining. Clergy, elected officials, multicultural community leaders and ordinary folks have expressed solidarity with Schara Tzedeck and the broader Jewish community.

A few less monumental but hopeful items crossed our desks recently.

The Vancouver Comic Arts Festival, which had earlier canceled the participation of artist Miriam Libicki, issued an apology for their actions – and announced that “the vast majority” of individuals who had perpetrated Libicki’s banning had resigned from the organization’s board.

Suffice to say, this is not the foremost news story this year. But it is surprisingly uplifting when a glimmer of common sense emerges where intolerance had once prevailed.

Libicki had been canceled ostensibly because she had served, once upon a time, in the Israeli army. IDF service was also the excuse used when inspirational speaker Leah Goldstein, a BC resident, was canned from an International Women’s Day event in Ontario in March.

Assertions that an artist (or performer or whoever) is being excluded because they served in a military that we see every day in the news engaged in a tragic conflict may seem legitimate, or at least not quite as blatant as, say, posting a sign that reads “No Jews allowed.” Notably, though, no such litmus test, to our knowledge, has ever been applied to any artist (or whoever) in Canada based on their service in any other national armed forces – and, given the diversity of our country, we can be pretty much assured that we have citizens who have served in many of the world’s most tyrannical and nasty, even genocidal, militaries.

Other excuses to ban Jews or pull Jewish- or Israel-related work from events, exhibits, performances, etc., have also included enough plausible deniability to steer just clear of indisputable antisemitism.

Goldstein’s cousin, local photographer Dina Goldstein (it’s sadly becoming a family affair), was recently removed from a group exhibition. In this instance, the gallery claimed financial considerations were the deciding factor.

Then there are cases where venues pull an event or performer based on security concerns, as the Belfry Theatre in Victoria did with their scheduled performance of the play The Runner. They had reason to fear violence – the theatre was vandalized amid the controversy. But cancelations based on security concerns, as valid as they may seem, give an effective veto to those who are potentially violent.

In the shadow of the Belfry decision, The Runner was pulled from the PuSh Festival in Vancouver, the stated reason being that another artist threatened to pull their work from the event if the play was mounted.

In addition to cancelations, there is plenty to raise alarm bells about anti-Israel bias in the public education system, as well, as we are forced to outline in discouraging detail elsewhere in this issue, with the BC Teachers’ Federation making some controversial decisions. But, again, here some reason prevails, though not from the BCTF.

The Burnaby school district took what it called “immediate action” when it became known that elementary students had been given an exam question asking them to make a case for and against the existence of the state of Israel. We could fill volumes with outrage about the unmitigated nerve of a teacher thinking this was a legitimate subject for grade sixers (if it was on the exam, one can only imagine what the same educator said in the classroom) but let’s take some solace that there were reasonable people in a position of authority to respond when this became public.

In further good news in the education realm, on June 1, the University of British Columbia’s Vancouver Senate soundly rejected (by a vote of 49 to 16) a motion urging the university to cut ties with institutions in Israel.

In challenging times, it is even more necessary to acknowledge and celebrate small victories and acts of decency. It is an act of individual and communal resistance to remain hopeful and steadfast in pursuit of peace and justice.

Grief and joy intertwined

Every year, the sun goes down on Yom Hazikaron, Israel’s national day of remembrance for victims of war and terrorism, and the celebratory day of independence, Yom Ha’atzmaut, begins.

It’s a stark juxtaposition. The parallel of the two national days, of course, make perfect sense historically. The country was born in war. At the moment Israel became independent, it was attacked, with the intent of annihilation, by the military forces of all neighbouring countries. As a result, it is impossible to consider or celebrate the joy of that moment – the rebirth of Jewish national self-determination after nearly 2,000 years – without considering the human costs associated with that achievement, and not only Jewish or Israeli lives, but those of peoples whose leaders have refused to accept the existence of Israel since that rebirth. While reestablishing the Jewish homeland displaced Arabs living there, whether by being forced out or told to leave by their leaders, Israel has been a home for Jews displaced from surrounding Arab countries, Russia and elsewhere.

For the average attendee arriving at Vancouver’s celebration of Yom Ha’atzmaut, it was hard to know what to expect. Given the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks and the ensuing war, the remembrance commemoration, 24 hours earlier, was perhaps one of the most emotional, intense and moving this community has experienced. Could the next night’s audience, many of them the same people, make the emotional transition?

Under the circumstances, the event’s planners struck an appropriate balance in what must have been among the most difficult challenges organizers of this annual event have faced.

When Israel’s early leaders set these dates consecutively, they knew the nature of their neighbourhood. They would likely have foreseen the possibility of further wars, and yet they made the decision to mark the joy of independence immediately following the somber acknowledgement of the high cost of freedom. This was not a coincidence. Nor, presumably, was it a contrast they thought appropriate only in years that are relatively calm and peaceful. They recognized that, come what may, independence and freedom would come with a cost – and the deeply conflicting emotions these realities evoke will inexorably exist together.

Like the smashing of the wine glass at a Jewish wedding, joy is never absent of grief – and grief cannot eclipse the joy brought into the world by those we lost on Oct. 7, and since. Those murdered and kidnapped that day, the soldiers who have been killed in the war and the Palestinians who have been killed in the conflict as Hamas continues to hold them and Israel hostage.

In Jewish tradition, the various markings of time after the passing of a loved one – shiva, shloshim, yahrzeit, for example – each come with their specific obligations and expectations. These periods formally guide us through process of grieving.

Unlike that relatively slow process of mourning, the closing of Yom Hazikaron and the opening of Yom Ha’atzmaut is abrupt and immediate. Life in Israel has, in some sense, condensed time, requiring a speedier processing of even life’s most challenging realities, including loss and grief.

It is often said that Israelis have been in too much of a hurry to be polite about things. Stereotypes, often accurate and amusing, portray Israelis as sharp-elbowed, impatient and determined. If there was not some truth to this, they would not have built, in a mere three-quarters of a century, one of the most extraordinary nation-states on earth – all while confronted by existential threats.

The Israelis who chose to set the remembrance day immediately before the celebration of independence must have understood that, in some years more than others, the transition from one emotion to the other would be especially difficult. Perhaps we should trust their judgment that, even in the most difficult years, the juxtaposition is both manageable and appropriate.

Noam Caplan, who lit a candle at the Yom Hazikaron commemoration and spoke about his cousin, Maya Puder, who was murdered at age 25 at the Nova music festival, remembered his cousin’s love of dancing and looked ahead to happier times.

“The Jewish people will dance again,” he said.