Opinion – Page 82

BDS puts Green party in turmoil

In early August, the Green Party of Canada voted at its national convention to endorse boycott-divestment-sanctions (BDS) measures against segments of Israel’s economy and society. BDS advocates were quick to claim victory, citing that the Greens are now the first Canadian political party of any significance to support BDS.

But not so fast.

In the wake of the vote, party leader Elizabeth May immediately declared she was “devastated” by the decision and “disappointed that the membership has adopted a policy in favor of a movement that I believe to be polarizing, ineffective and unhelpful in the quest for peace and security for the peoples of the Middle East.” May added that, “as is the right of any member, I will continue to express personal opposition to BDS” – a breath-taking statement to hear from a party leader, particularly when the leader is the party’s sole voice in Parliament.

In the weeks that followed, May openly mused to the media about how this entire episode was causing her to rethink her future in the Green party. In an interview with CBC Radio, May talked about the possibility of walking away from the party: “I would say as of this minute I think I’d have real difficulties going not just to an election but through the next month. There are a lot of issues I want to be talking about with Canadians, and this isn’t one of them.”

And May wasn’t alone. The leader of the Green Party of British Columbia, Andrew Weaver, issued a scathing statement disavowing the federal party’s decision. “This is not a policy that I nor the B.C. Green party support,” said Weaver. “I think the Green Party of Canada needs to take a careful look at their policy process and ask themselves how a policy that goes against Green party values could have been allowed on the floor of a convention.”

Various Green candidates likewise condemned the decision. One from Ottawa said, “I’m in a state of disbelief.… I don’t agree with it, I don’t like having that over me going into [the next] election.” Another, from Halifax, said the policy is “destructive for the party.… Every country has its issues. When we specifically single out Israelis, I worry about the buzzwords and subtext and code language, which is antisemitic.”

A party torn apart. A leader willing to quit. Controversial headlines eclipsing anything else the party intended to highlight coming out of convention. Is this what a BDS victory looks like?

The fight against BDS revolves around psychology much more than economics. Israel’s economy is strong, with trade and ties growing despite calls for BDS. But, on the psychological level, BDS activities have the potential to poison attitudes toward Israel among civil society organizations and demoralize the Jewish community. On both levels, BDS proponents failed when it comes to the Green party.

While May has since declared she will stay on as leader, every Green voter should be outraged that BDS activists – in using the party to promote their own marginal agenda – nearly pushed the Greens’ only voice in Parliament out of the party. If anything, this initiative has exposed the toxic nature of BDS to those it intended to seduce. As CIJA Chair David Cape recently wrote: “Once again, BDS has proven bitterly and publicly divisive for political parties that contemplate endorsing it. In this case, BDS has sown resentment among Greens and come at a great cost for anti-Israel activists.”

And when it comes to the morale of the Jewish community, this issue has mobilized thousands of Jewish Canadians across the political spectrum (including former Green party members) to speak out and condemn the party’s hostility toward Israel. In a matter of weeks, CIJA galvanized some 7,500 Canadians to email the Green party’s leadership to express their opposition to this initiative. Without question, our united efforts had an impact, with May openly admitting BDS is “very clearly a polarizing movement that leaves most of the Jewish community in Canada feeling that it is antisemitic.”

Hopefully, this will spur May and other Greens to take the steps needed to annul the BDS policy and regain control of the party’s direction from those behind this hateful agenda.

Steve McDonald is deputy director, communications and public affairs, at the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs.

Tempest in coffee pot

The BDS movement – which seeks to boycott, divest from and sanction the state of Israel – is having an impact. Though maybe not exactly as they’d hoped.

There was a tempest in a coffee pot recently when an East Vancouver café waded into the topic, angering some customers and, we surmise, perhaps some of the establishment’s own employees and investors.

As we addressed in this space last week, Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party of Canada, was dismayed by the vote by her party in convention to support the BDS movement. She pondered resigning her position but this week announced that she would remain at the helm and seek to revisit the issue with her party.

A social media feed for Bows & Arrows Coffee, on Fraser Street, declared that May’s lack of support for BDS meant that she “got cowardly” on the issue and “caved.” One online commentator responded that the café’s coffee “tastes a little too antisemitic for my liking.”

After some social media back and forth, the co-owner of the café, which is headquartered in Victoria and only recently opened the Fraser Street location, published a statement acknowledging that he had “tweeted without consultation with staff and business partners.” Seemingly surprised that a simplistic #BDS hashtag and name-calling would elicit strong and equally simplistic reactions, he says that he blocked other posters and deleted tweets. He did these things, he claims, because he “wanted to address real arguments, not stand in a storm of accusers that would not engage or address my criticism of a state.”

Hopefully, he has learned that Twitter is not designed for intelligent and in-depth debate or discussion. More hopefully, perhaps he will now consider the possibility that BDS is not necessarily about “solidarity with oppressed peoples everywhere.”

While BDS supporters, including the one involved in this instance, reject the idea that the movement has any antisemitic elements and insist it targets “Netanyahu’s administration and policies of expansion in the territories,” plenty of evidence exists to suggest that BDS aims to end the existence of a Jewish state and, some would argue, this is perforce antisemitic.

Nonetheless, at least one member of the Jewish community went beyond Twitter and invited the B&A co-owner to discuss the issues surrounding BDS. In his email, the community member included a link to an article by Alan Dershowitz that was published by Haaretz, called “Ten reasons why BDS is immoral and hinders peace.” It can be found on the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs’ website.

While the brewmaster may contend, as he implies in his statement, that he was a victim of “[t]he silencing that occurs daily via the repetition of the dominant narrative,” what he really experienced was disagreement with his beliefs and a resulting effect on his business. He was not silenced. He voluntarily chose to exit a discussion he started.

In Canada, thankfully, the freedom to speak one’s mind comes with the freedom of others to criticize the views that come from that mind. Such discussions are healthy and can even be enjoyable – especially over a nice cup of coffee.

Those who came before us

I was recently in Australia, where I presented at Limmud Oz, a Jewish festival of learning. One thing – among many – that struck me about the community was that, on more than one occasion, Limmud sessions or other parlor meetings opened with a public acknowledgment of the elders of the Gadigal people (in Sydney) and the Boonwurrung people of the Kulin Nation (in Melbourne).

Similar acknowledgments are becoming more common in locales across Canada – references to the Métis Nation at events in Winnipeg; the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh in Vancouver; the Wendat, Anishewabe and Massasagua in Toronto; the Algonquin in Ottawa. But I have only heard this done once in a Jewish context – at a Jewish Voices for Peace event in Ottawa.

Ittay Flescher, a Jewish educator at Mount Scopus Memorial College, a day school in Melbourne, has been one of many educators to call for his school assemblies to open with a similar acknowledgment, and feature signs on classroom walls “acknowledging country,” in Australian parlance. His shul, Shira Hadasha, a partnership minyan, also incorporates such a statement in its Prayer for Australia.

Flescher has gone deeper in raising awareness, having introduced a Grade 9 aboriginal studies course. These students were in kindergarten when the government issued its historic 2007 apology for the Stolen Generations policies, whereby aboriginal children were taken from their parents to be raised by whites – Australia’s version of Canada’s terrible Sixties Scoop.

Named Yorta Yorta Beyachad (beyachad means “together” in Hebrew), the course is anchored in a little-known event that bound Australia’s Jewish community in Shepparton to William Cooper of the Yorta Yorta tribe. Having been one of the first to launch an aboriginal civil rights movement, in 1938, Cooper – a person with no status, no voting rights and no formal citizenship, as was the case among aboriginals in Australia at the time – turned his sights to another oppressed people. Appalled by the events of Kristallnacht, Cooper marched to the German consulate in Melbourne to present a petition denouncing “the cruel persecution of the Jewish people by the Nazi government of Germany,” an act of protest that stayed virtually hidden until it was discovered by a Melbourne archivist in 2002.

Each year, Flescher takes his students to Yorta Yorta country in partnership with the Australian Jewish social justice organization Stand Up. For three days, they meet with elders, learn traditional dances, discuss issues around identity, and deepen their understanding of aboriginal history. They visit Cummergunja, one of the Catholic missions where aboriginals were forcibly placed in 1889. They even visited Cooper’s grave where they recited Kaddish for the victims of the Shoah. “It was an incredibly moving and humbling experience,” Flescher said.

The Canadian Jewish community is beginning to tackle the issue as well. The CJN reported in May on a Jewish teen cultural exchange to the Nipissing First Nation Reserve. And, in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, several Jewish groups, including Ve’ahavta, the Toronto Board of Rabbis, the Canadian Council for Reform Judaism and CIJA, signed a “statement of solidarity and action.” Bernie Farber, former head of Canadian Jewish Congress and now head of Mosaic Institute, has been at the forefront of moves to advance deep and thoughtful discussion about the fate of the First Nations.

These are all encouraging. And, like the dancing of the hands before reciting the Shabbat candle blessing or the kissing of the mezuzah before entering a room, there is something powerful about a ritual-like statement at the beginning of a Jewish gathering to acknowledge who came before us and how we can help repair the wrongs inflicted – even if most of us, or our ancestors, were fleeing our own private horrors when we arrived at the shores of this great country.

Mira Sucharov is an associate professor of political science at Carleton University. She is a columnist for Canadian Jewish News and contributes to Haaretz and the Jewish Daily Forward, among other publications. This article was originally published in the CJN.

BDS infiltrates Greens

In a turn of events that party regulars and, really, no Canadians anticipated, Elizabeth May is spending her vacation this week considering whether to resign as leader of the Green Party of Canada.

The impetus, apparently, is her party’s decision at its recent convention to adopt a resolution that attacks Israel and calls for boycotting, divesting from and sanctioning the Jewish state. It’s all part of a movement (shorthanded BDS) that hides behind the language of human rights to separate Israel from the community of nations, while ignoring not just the atrocities perpetrated by the Palestinian governments of Hamas and Fatah but also the most serious human rights abuses in the world.

May made it clear before the convention that she opposed the resolution, though most delegates probably did not realize it was a stay-or-quit litmus for the leader. After the vote, May complained that the issue was not subjected to a fulsome debate at the convention and that she did not have the opportunity to explain why she opposed the policy and why delegates should join her in rejecting BDS. Still, most delegates would surely have known how their leader – who earlier this year was endorsed in a leadership review with a whopping 93% – stood on the issue, given extensive media coverage.

There was something odd even in some of the remarks by opponents of the BDS policy, which emphasized the electoral albatross BDS would hang around the party’s neck, rather than the inherent immorality and hypocrisy of BDS. Critics seemed to assume BDS is a vote-loser, but is this assumption based on the fact that informed Canadians would oppose the movement? Or on the stereotype-founded idea that messing with the “Zionist lobby” is a no-win proposition? This may be unfair criticism if we assume rational people equate immoral, hypocritical policies with electoral failure.

May has spent a decade attempting to put the Green Party of Canada on the political map and succeeded, in 2011, in becoming the first Green MP elected to Canada’s House of Commons. She was reelected in 2015. She is almost certainly the only Green party public figure most Canadians can identify. Without her at the helm, the party would lose its sole recognizable face.

After the convention vote, May said there were plenty of issues she was happy to defend going into the next federal election, but BDS is not one of them. The anti-Israel movement has put her in this spot and it is an object lesson for Canadian politics more broadly.

BDS is a parasitic movement, attempting to infiltrate vulnerable hosts like the Green party and other well-intentioned trade unions, academic groups and social justice movements with an ideology that is not progressive at all, but anti-democratic and anti-intellectual.

BDS, and the anti-Israel movement more broadly, has attempted and in many cases succeeded in convincing progressive Canadians that they share values and ideals. Had the Green party engaged in the fulsome debate May says she wishes had happened, there would have been an opportunity to point out that BDS presents a one-sided, unbalanced interpretation of events that does not advance peace, that demonizes Israel and that makes common cause with the world’s most misogynist, homophobic and illiberal forces.

It was when the New Democratic Party of Canada was at its lowest ebb, in the 1990s and early 2000s, that the party’s policy was co-opted by extremists who used the language of human rights to advance an anti-Israel agenda that was anything but rights-oriented. Since then, the anti-Israel movement (because, as we have reiterated here, “pro-Palestinian” does not do justice to the injustices the movement excuses) has tried to graft itself onto any emerging cause.

It began, most visibly, with the eccentric Queers Against Israeli Apartheid – who privilege official Palestinian oppression of LGBTQ people over the reality that Israel is (at the very least) an oasis of freedom for gay people in a desert of sexual repression – and has spread to other movements, including Black Lives Matter.

Black Lives Matter, a desperately necessary effort to confront police violence and systemic discrimination against African-Americans, recently adopted a manifesto rife with boilerplate loathing of Israel and attestations of support for the national cause of Palestinians. Black Lives Matter has no foreign policy, except inasmuch as smearing Israel constitutes a worldview.

Why? Because the anti-Israel movement is adept at playing on the guilt of progressive people and movements to advance an agenda that is, at root, backward, violence-justifying and ignorant of history.

The BDS movement succeeded in co-opting the Green party into adopting its regressive position and now, depending on May’s decision on her future, may have done irreparable harm to the party, as BDS continues to harm the prospect of peace in the Middle East and a better life for Palestinians, the ostensible beneficiaries of the movement.

A call to community seniors

Recently, I met an old friend. During our conversation over coffee, he asked if I was still involved with the Jewish Seniors Alliance of Greater Vancouver. “Of course,” I said. With a funny look on his face, he said, “You are putting a lot of time into this work.”

His remark and the look irritated me quite a bit, and I said, “Joe, you are probably 10 years younger than I am, you have your wife and children near you, you are a lucky man. You are also financially independent. It may be possible that you are not aware and possibly don’t care about what is happening around you – you are complacent.”

Let me bring Joe – and you – up to date.

There are several hundred elders in our community who are poor, lonely, marginalized or abused. JSA is making every possible effort to find these isolated individuals in order to help them.

In its outreach and advocacy programs, JSA is contributing to the well-being of countless elders with our educational programs. We reach out to these people through our two forums and four Empowerment Series sessions yearly; through our Senior Line magazine, which is published three times a year and contains current, relevant and well-research articles; and by means of our website, which not only informs but entertains.

And Joe, why should your indifferent attitude change? You are OK and you believe that JSA has nothing to offer you. But, there are hundreds of seniors giving of their time and wisdom to help other seniors. Something else you should know Joe – sooner or later, almost every senior needs help.

At our annual general meeting in September, JSA will be honoring a few individuals selected by their organizations for their extensive volunteer work for Vancouver’s seniors. And Joe, please note that JSA’s events are cost-free and are not fundraisers. Our outreach programs have a preventive focus, so that people like us remain functioning and enjoying a healthy life for as long as possible.

And Joe, if you think that this is all, let me tell you about our Peer Support Program, which JSA started almost four years ago.

Our two professionals have trained more than 100 senior volunteers to be peer counselors: to give emotional support, to conduct weekly visits at seniors’ homes and to make weekly phone calls. The peer counselor takes a 55-hour training course, and the callers and visitors take a 17.5-hour training course.

These trained volunteers come from every walk of life and different cultural backgrounds, and they speak many languages. They have a clean police record and they sign a confidentiality agreement. Their commitment to JSA is for at least one year. To date, we have more than 50 volunteers servicing more than 150 families.

JSA also provides referrals to seniors and their families, enabling them to access benefits and services offered by the municipal, provincial and federal governments. JSA’s bereavement support program helps seniors, either individually or in a group setting.

Last year, JSA trained 11 seniors to be ambassadors for creating awareness of senior abuse in homes and institutions. They talk to individuals or groups of seniors, and more than 300 seniors have benefited so far from this program.

Frankly, Joe, I shudder at the thought of what would happen if JSA were unable to provide these unique services in our community. We are in contact with 5,000 seniors, and we are doing our best to inform, educate and entertain them.

Seniors have the untapped power to help themselves politically. Unfortunately, this power is being wasted by either disinterest or failing to act. Only 650 to 700 seniors have chosen to be members of JSA, although it costs a mere $18 a year.

JSA must exist, grow and be able, with the support of the community, to provide these services. However, community involvement and financial support and interest are crucial. Without volunteers, nothing would be possible!

How about you Joe? You are not involved in anything right now – perhaps it is about time to start giving of yourself to our community?

Serge Haber is president emeritus of Jewish Seniors Alliance of Greater Vancouver. A version of this article was originally published in the June issue of the organization’s magazine, Senior Line.

A chance to educate

Monika Schaefer is a violin instructor in the Alberta mountain town of Jasper. She was also a candidate for the Green Party of Canada in the federal elections of 2006, 2008 and 2011. Last week, a video went viral of Schaefer declaring that, after “a great deal of time researching this topic,” she has concluded that what Canadians have been taught about the Holocaust is rife with “inaccuracies.”

“When I started to look at the evidence, and I researched, and I researched and I researched, and the lies are coming apart,” she told the CBC. “This house of cards is crumbling, and that is why there is this very fierce reaction against what I’m saying, because this lie, this public myth, has shaped our world.”

She calls the Holocaust “the six million lie” and “the biggest and most pernicious and persistent lie in all of history.”

With all the things happening in the world today, the misguided ramblings of a soundly defeated candidate for Parliament is far from the most crucial issue we face as a civilization. Yet, the incident deserves consideration.

Despite that the Green party is being rightly condemned for anti-Israel resolutions set for debate at its upcoming national convention, let’s not attribute to an entire group the poison of one of its (soon-to-be-former) members. Holocaust denial and antisemitism have been expressed across the political spectrum and no party has a monopoly on that. Green party leader Elizabeth May responded immediately and appropriately, condemning Schaefer’s comments and moving to have her membership in the party revoked. That is one positive outcome.

The most generous assessment of the video is that Schaefer herself, who is of German heritage, is a victim of the collective trauma of Nazism. As the director of community relations and communications for the Jewish Federation of Edmonton, Tal Toubiana, told the CBC: “I find it curious that a woman who allegedly faced bullying based on her country of origin would rather continue a cycle of irreflexive hate than reflect deeply on the wounded history and trauma the Holocaust did create.… The Holocaust is a historical event that is not only undeniable in regards to the facts and documentation of its existence, but in the collective trauma it created. Ms. Schaefer is a product of the very trauma she claims does not exist.”

This is a very insightful analysis. It is easy to dismiss the people who conjure such fabrications as irredeemably wicked, but to adopt a more humane response in the face of inhumane statements would invite us to wonder what personal circumstance would lead an individual to such a distorted and easily disprovable worldview.

This appears to be the first public utterance Schaefer has made on the subject and perhaps it will open the door for her to be confronted with facts and have the sources upon which her deeply flawed conclusions rest debunked. Whatever happens in this instance, little is to be gained by demonizing the individual even though we rightly demonize her words.

Each time such an incident occurs is an opportunity to return to the basics and realize that we still have work to do. We need continued vigilance and we must educate all people, especially young people, about history.

Googling Schaefer’s name confirms this. Her ideas attract some breadth of support in the dusty extremities of the internet, where she is lauded as a “truth revealer and free speech advocate.” It is, of course, impossible to tell whether the hordes of online comments coming to her defence represent a sizable cohort or a tiny but prolific cluster of keyboard pounders. What they certainly represent is an unadulterated reminder that shockingly inhumane ideas retain sway among some of our fellow citizens.

There are now human rights complaints lodged against Schaefer in the Alberta and Canadian human rights commissions and already Schaefer is positioning herself as a martyr.

“Right now, the issue for me is freedom of speech,” she told a Jasper news outlet. “Last I checked, I thought we had freedom of speech in Canada and suddenly I’m the criminal.”

Wrong again. By law, Schaefer is innocent until proven guilty, so she is not “suddenly” a criminal. Moreover, her research fails her once more. Canada has freedom of speech, but not without limitations. To become the criminal Schaefer contends she already is would require proof that she intended to incite hatred against an identifiable group. This is a very difficult motivation to prove.

Whatever happens in the quasi-judicial processes Schaefer faces, we should be heartened by the response of many of Schaefer’s fellow residents of Jasper and we should take the opportunity to recommit ourselves to sharing the truth.

A 22-year-old open wound

Every year on July 18, thousands of people gather to remember the victims of the AMIA bombing, and demand that justice prevails. (photo by Jaluj via commons.wikimedia.org)

After more than 20 years, an entire nation continues to search for answers and justice.

With an estimated population of 330,000, Argentina’s Jewish community is the largest in South America and, outside Israel, the sixth largest in the world. First arriving in Argentina in early days, Jews have continued to immigrate ever since. During its “golden era” (1900s to 1950s), an estimated 500,000 Jewish people lived there.

The vast majority of Jews in Argentina are Ashkenazi, from central and eastern Europe. From the start, this active, prosperous and engaged community has left its mark in local business, infrastructure, culture and politics. My family was part of this group; Argentina was the place we called home and where four generations of my family were born. AMIA (Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina or the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association) is the central support organization for all Jews in Argentina, tracing its roots back to 1894.

Everything changed the morning of July 18, 1994, at 9:53 a.m. While I was attending a history class, more than 600 pounds of explosives hidden in a vehicle were detonated in front of AMIA. The explosion was followed by a cloud of smoke and dust seen for miles. In seconds, along with the iconic Jewish organization in Argentina and everything surrounding it, the building housing all of Argentina’s rich Jewish history was, simply, gone. This tragedy was followed by panic, mayhem, sirens, ambulances, calls for help, deaths totaling 85 and hundreds more victims, severely injured and traumatized, transported to hospital.

At my school, phones started to ring. The principal rushed into our classroom to have a private word with our teacher, who then broke the news that AMIA in Buenos Aires was bombed. We were in shock. The same black dusty cloud that could be seen above AMIA descended upon the student body, the teachers and the administrative staff. Frantic activity ensued and, within a few hours, the school was deserted.

My first reaction was concern for my family and friends, many of whom worked at AMIA. I would soon learn that, although one miraculously survived under the rubble and a few others were spared, having not yet arrived at the time of the attack, three died in the explosion. I would learn of the tremendous cultural and historical loss of books, manuscripts, community records, art, pictures and more. I would learn of the disorientation felt by so many who could not comprehend the magnitude of the attack. And I would learn of the rage of those who survived their loved ones. To this day, I will never forget the conversations around the dinner table that revealed the pervasive feeling we were no longer safe.

Some of my friends were immediately withdrawn from the private Jewish school I attended and transferred to the public school system. I would learn of sentiments such as “Jews should be concentrated in one place and live together so innocent Argentines would not suffer.” Yet, in my mind, we were all Argentines.

Over the following years, as I transitioned from my teenage to adult years, I would learn of government cover-ups, of the miscarriage of justice, and of injustice done in the name of greed and corruption. I would also learn of Hezbollah, Iran and other terrorist elements suspected of involvement one way or another. And I would be constantly reminded of the pain of those left behind, and the impunity of the perpetrators, which reinforced the sense of insecurity that took over a proud and vibrant Jewish community.

In spontaneous reaction, hundreds showed up to the site where the AMIA building had stood. Many, my father was among them, were volunteering to assist in the rebuilding process. Those were dark days. The community needed to reorganize. Within a week of the attack at Pasteur 633, a community building a few blocks away began to function. As the temporary head office of AMIA, the Ayacucho 632 site became the place where families sought information about the victims of the attack and where AMIA resumed essential operations, especially those pertaining to social services and community relations.

The Ayacucho building also became the place in which I started my journey as a Jewish community volunteer and where I later decided to pursue a professional career serving the Jewish community.

Five years after the attack, on the original site, a new building was opened that symbolized the creative drive of a community willing to preserve the heritage of a cultural tradition that honors life and collective memory.

This July 18, as every year, the bombing was commemorated with a ceremony in front of the new, now heavily fortified, AMIA: This year’s ceremony marked 22 years since the attack, Argentina’s deadliest bombing ever.

The AMIA bombing was an assault on all society and one that has left deep political scars, not just upon Argentina’s Jewish community. It is a symbol of the entire Argentine state and a society still searching for the truth. And the truth – about a sophisticated terrorist act of mass murder that sent a brutal message of destruction and death – must come to light. The attack is a wound that remains open to this day.

I vow to neither remain silent nor rest until those guilty of these attacks are apprehended, and I hope that the Argentine government will make every effort to ensure that the terrorists responsible for this horrendous act are brought to justice.

Viviana, Cristian and Guillermo, I will never forget. Porque tenemos memoria, exigimos justicia. Because we have memory, we demand justice.

Nico Slobinsky is director, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, Pacific Region. He was born and raised in Argentina before immigrating to Israel and, later, to Canada.

Reacting to others’ suffering

Gun violence in America is an intractable, apparently unsolvable crisis. This month, it has intersected catastrophically with other tenacious American ailments: race and police violence. These issues have been inextricable in many ways for decades, of course, but the pervasiveness of video-recording and social media have helped turn what was once a matter of competing testimonies into irrefutable proof of police overreach, including murder.

The police killings of black civilians in Louisiana and Minnesota last week, followed by the revenge killing of five police officers in Texas, created a climate of crisis in the United States. Such times are, sometimes, opportunities for progress. The Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s was advanced by the widespread awareness among Americans of all races of injustices being perpetrated against black Americans. However, anything involving guns in America seems somehow impervious to reason.

Race is a unique flashpoint in American life and approaches to it have very often split directly along color lines. This may be changing, with more white Americans recognizing the injustices experienced by their fellow citizens of color. Like sexual orientation equality, issues of racial justice seem to be advancing because of a wider appreciation that transcends personal identity and relies on human empathy for those who are different from ourselves.

Still, Americans – and Canadians in somewhat different contexts, and all peoples – struggle to find balance and moral approaches to confounding issues. In response to the Black Lives Matter movement, a counter-campaign declares “All Lives Matter.” After the police killings in Dallas, “Blue Lives Matter” became a slogan. While the veracity of these statements cannot be refuted, they are nonetheless unhelpful and dismissive. Responding to Black Lives Matter with an appropriated variation is disrespectful. It is akin to the complaints by members of the majority when gay pride events occur and the question arises, “When do we celebrate straight pride day?” The answer, as empathetic people know, is that straight people (or white people) don’t need special days to celebrate their situation in society.

The insensitivity of such approaches has been slyly critiqued in social media recently, with one cartoon showing a house on fire while firefighters douse the house next door in water, declaring “All houses matter.” Similarly, a man in the doctor’s office with a broken arm is told, “All bones matter.”

The message should be clear: the perennial problems America has around race are particularly enflamed right now and attempting to dilute these through banal attempts to universalize what is a very particular problem effectively exacerbates the issue. Just last week in this space we noted that the specious way some people respond to any mention of the Holocaust is to note that Jews aren’t the only people to have suffered. Replying to the suffering of one group by an erroneous universalizing of race-particular situations is not a healthy response.

Another development seen recently is the attempt by “pro-Palestinian” activists in the United States to co-opt the Black Lives Matter movement and the recent catastrophes to their own narrow ends. Students for Justice in Palestine at New York University declared that those responsible for the “genocide” of Palestinians are likewise responsible for the “genocide” of African-Americans, a circle they attempt to square with the fact that a small number of U.S. police have received anti-terrorism training from the Israel Defence Forces.

There are plenty of issues competing for the attention of people of goodwill. There are injustices everywhere, God knows. There is racism, homophobia, antisemitism, Islamophobia and every range and permutation of human misery that deserve attention. Yet, when something as systemic and pernicious as the murder of African-Americans by those entrusted to protect American citizens becomes epidemic, this is not the time to elbow one group out of the way or try to co-opt their tragedies.

We must keep trying

No reasonable people contend that the Holocaust did not occur. However, a great many assert that it has been considered enough, that it is time to put the past behind and effectively close the book on that era. Similarly, discussion today about the Holocaust is likely to elicit a sort of comparative or competitive response: “The Jews are not the only people who have suffered,” or something similar. While such assertions are almost tautological in their obviousness, they betray a different sort of exceptionalism around the Holocaust: the Jewish people are not the only group in history to have suffered, but they are the only ones today being told to buck up and shut up about it.

Somewhere between these two responses – outright denial and exasperated acknowledgement – is a large swath of indifference. A great many people in Canada and elsewhere are aware of the history of the Holocaust, express appropriate responses to it and may utter rote pieties about preventing history from repeating itself. As a civilization, though, all of these responses have so far led to an unsatisfactory status quo.

Elie Wiesel, who died Saturday, believed that understanding the Holocaust is key to the crucial need to understand human capabilities for evil and possibly to provide its antidote. If Wiesel’s formula is correct, the briefest glance at the headlines today is all the proof necessary to show we have thus far failed to consider and understand that terrible history.

For decades, Wiesel was not only a global voice for survivors, but a sort of moral compass for a world that has not learned the overarching lesson of the Shoah. Speaking out again and again on issues of contemporary injustice and genocide – though some advocates for Palestinians have contended that he wasn’t as vocal on that issue – Wiesel at the same time expressed regret that his interventions should be necessary.

In an interview with the Independent in 2012, Wiesel lamented that all his efforts and those of other survivors have failed to create the ideal world free of hatred and genocide.

“Maybe, deep down, all of us who have survived have had a feeling, if we told the story, the world would change, and the world hasn’t changed,” he said. “Does it mean that we did not tell the story? Or not well enough? Simply, we did not find the words to tell the story? Had we told the story well enough, maybe it would have changed the world? It hasn’t changed the world.”

The outpouring of grief over the passing of Wiesel is the appropriate response to the loss of a great individual. But it also reflects a larger lament; it is a reminder that the generation of eyewitnesses is diminishing. For many of us – and for the world – Wiesel was the face of the survivor, the voice of the Holocaust experience. His unflinching writing on the subject defined the discipline of the eyewitness Holocaust narrative. Not only was Wiesel able to articulate and validate the experiences of survivors who could not express themselves for various reasons, more importantly, as he himself acknowledged, he had an obligation to those who did not survive.

It is this same sense of obligation that motivates survivors to regularly make the emotionally exhausting effort to share their experiences with audiences, particularly young people. As Wiesel acknowledged, the world has not responded adequately. But, in the same interview, he said failure would have been to not try.

When Wiesel was recognized in 1986 with a Nobel Prize in literature, it was a recognition of his contribution, certainly, but it was also an affirmation for all survivors – indeed, for all of those whose identities attracted the Nazis’ genocidal hatred – that their experiences were valid, legitimate and incontestable.

When Wiesel’s book Night was published in English in 1960, it was at the start of a global conversation of the Holocaust and its meaning for humankind. Wiesel rightly hoped, but perhaps should not have expected, that a catastrophe of this magnitude would be adequately understood or its lessons assimilated in the comparatively short span of a human lifetime. He was correct that understanding the Holocaust is a key to humanity’s future. By their actions, Wiesel and all the survivors who share their lived experiences have helped to lay a foundation for a world in which the key to peace and a better future can emerge. As the eyewitness survivors pass that responsibility along to the rest of us, it is our ambitious mission to build on that foundation and to extend their calls of compassion, humanity and reflection to a world in great need of perfecting.

Greens’ true colors?

Voters in the United Kingdom – well, in England and Wales, at least – have decided to quit the European Union. The referendum last week turned British politics, and world economic markets, upside down.

The potential for a Scottish withdrawal from the United Kingdom is again front and centre. More than this, politicians and commentators worldwide are extrapolating the vote’s meaning across Europe and North America to try to comprehend the potential impacts of a coalescence of disgruntled, anti-elitist, populist, nativist and xenophobic tendencies. Already, the result seems to have given licence to some people to act out on xenophobic hatred, with numerous incidents of verbal and physical assaults against visible minorities reported across Britain in just the couple of days following the referendum.

Among those who supported the losing “Remain” campaign are some who threaten to move to Canada. This is a default for Americans and now, apparently, Brits who dislike the democratic outcomes in their own countries. The Canada strategy is much talked about but rarely executed. Ironically, people from countries that move toward exclusionary practices and tightened immigration policies assume that Canada is an uncategorically welcoming place that would greet them with open arms. On Canada Day, of all times, we should take it as a compliment that our reputation is one of haven and acceptance.

And yet … while Europe may be aflame with xenophobia and demagoguery, Canada is not immune to strains of something nasty. The current example comes from none other than Canada’s Green party.

For a movement that ostensibly subscribes to the precept of thinking globally and acting locally, the policy resolutions for the party’s August convention are starkly parochial. Only two items proposed for consideration approach foreign affairs issues – and both attack Israel.

One resolution calls for the party to join the BDS movement to boycott, divest from and sanction the Jewish state. More hypocritically still, the Green party is seeking to have the Jewish National Fund of Canada’s charitable status revoked. That a Green party would target one of the world’s oldest and most successful environmental organizations is symptomatic of something irrational in the mindset of those who promulgated the resolution. Whether it advances to the convention floor – and what happens then – will tell us a great deal about the kind of people who make up the Green Party of Canada.

In a world where human-made and natural catastrophes seem unlimited, from the entire population of Green party members across Canada, only two statements of international concern bubble to the surface – and both are broadsides against the Jewish people.

Elizabeth May, the party’s leader and sole MP, said she opposes both resolutions but, since the determination of policy is made on the basis of one member one vote, there is a limited amount she can do. She met last week with Rafael Barak, Israel’s ambassador to Canada, and said the Green party’s support for Israel’s right to exist is “immovable.”

We’ll see.