Opinion – Page 85

Case for a positive rethink

When speaking to Jewish audiences about advocacy, I often refer to my own background as a Jewish convert in making the point that we sometimes have to apply a fresh perspective – and have a collective “out-of-body” experience – to understand the reality of our own circumstances. Sometimes, we are too close to the situation to evaluate it with clear eyes and objectivity.

Among the many things that make me proud of my father is the fact that, early in his career, he chose to serve the public as a police officer. I have heard it said that police disproportionately interact with the most challenging and marginal elements of society, perhaps just five percent of the public, on a regular basis. Just as one in such a role knows their daily encounters are not representative of broader society, we as Jews – who understandably take notice of antisemitism and anti-Zionism – must be cautious not to attribute these toxic manifestations to the majority of Canadians.

I could write an entire series of columns on how we as a community have far more allies in the non-Jewish world than we often appreciate. Instead, I’ll offer two factors internal to the Jewish world that suggest pro-Israel advocates should be optimistic.

1. There is far greater unity of purpose – and welcoming of diversity – in the Jewish world these days. In the past, there was significant disagreement between Jews on the best means to secure the future of the Jewish people in an often hostile world. The community was split along various lines: between Zionists and non-Zionists, assimilationists and Orthodox Jews, socialists and capitalists.

Today, post-Shoah and post-1948, the overwhelming majority of Jews are Zionists in that they believe the state of Israel should exist and thrive as a democratic Jewish homeland. Among Zionists, there is extraordinary diversity: we are Labor and Likud, religious and secular, social activist and academic alike.

There is ceaseless debate over how Israeli policies can best secure the ideals of Zionism and how Diaspora Jews can engage Israel in a meaningful way. This is all healthy. We wouldn’t be Jews if we didn’t subject these issues to serious thought and debate.

But this occurs within a strong consensus that Israel’s existence is fundamentally just, a blessing to the Jewish people and the entire world, and, ultimately, the centrepiece of our collective future just as it is our ancestral homeland. These aren’t just clichés; they are ideals brought to life every time a young Jewish Canadian boards a plane for Birthright, challenges anti-Zionism on Facebook, downloads the latest Israeli music, or volunteers for the Israel Defence Forces.

2. Despite facing serious challenges, Israelis are far more successful, happy and optimistic than we might think.

While Israelis have suffered in every generation from war and terrorism, none of this detracts from the fact that the IDF has proven its capacity to provide Israelis with secure borders and an astonishingly high level of public safety. This is no mean feat in the Middle East, let alone for a country smaller than Vancouver Island.

At the same time, Israel has seen remarkable economic and technological success. From 1992 to 2013, Israel-China trade skyrocketed from $50 million to $10 billion annually. Israeli exports to Europe have nearly doubled since the boycott-divestment-sanctions movement was launched in 2005. Trade with emerging markets like India has likewise increased. Outside Silicon Valley, Israel now has the highest concentration of high-tech firms on the planet.

Success at a macroeconomic level doesn’t mean there aren’t serious challenges. The cost-of-living, for example, continues to be a burden for many Israelis. But, with each passing generation, Israel grows stronger economically and Israelis are afforded greater opportunities to learn, work and engage the world.

Israelis also enjoy a remarkably high quality of life. Israelis have the same life expectancy as Canadians (81) and Israel boasts a universal health-care system that typically beats Canada in international performance rankings. According to the OECD’s 2015 Better Life Index, which measures various social and life factors, Israel is the fifth happiest country in the world – ahead of Canada, the United States and most of Europe.

What would early Zionist thinkers like Theodor Herzl and his contemporaries say if they could read these statistics and walk the streets of Jerusalem or Tel Aviv today? How often do we forget how far we have come as a people?

I had the honor this February of leading a group of Canadian master’s-level students on a public policy study trip to Israel, one of many fact-finding missions we organize. (CIJA annually takes some 200 Canadians to Israel.) The students, all of whom are non-Jewish, were amazed at the innovation, diversity and vitality shown by Israelis despite living in the world’s most unstable neighborhood. They saw what we should never lose sight of: a country and a people from whom we can learn so much.

Indeed, Israel embodies so much of what’s right in the world today – and it is on this basis that we should share all that Israel has to offer with the world around us.

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

Reflections on Pesach

Passover is coming next week, yet it seems to have been with us in spirit a great deal this year. Many Jewish individuals and congregations in Vancouver and elsewhere have been involved in welcoming Syrian and Iraqi refugees fleeing tyranny and violence. And, almost inevitably, part of the justification for helping has been the Exodus story.

Through our religious teachings and rituals, we are engaged in applying the experiences of the past to the events of the present. The Pesach story is certainly applicable when a people is in need of refuge. So is the more recent, and less triumphal, story of the Jewish experience in the 20th century, which saw every nation on earth shut its doors to desperate refugees until it was too late. (See “Refugee policy evolves.”)

As we join together at seder tables around the city and around the world, let us continue to invite the lessons of the past to illuminate our path to the future.

At moments during the holidays, we are encouraged to seek out the transcendent values in our traditions and integrate them into our lives so that we can make a better world. It is clear from the work being done to aid refugees that these values are already well entrenched in so many individuals and congregations. Let this Passover be a time of rededication for all of us to the values that welcome the stranger, show gratitude, celebrate freedom and hasten the world we seek.

Pragmatic, dirty choices

Franklin Roosevelt famously replied to his secretary of state’s assessment of the Nicaraguan strongman Anastasio Somoza Debayle – “Somoza’s a bastard!” – with the rejoinder “Yes, but he’s our bastard.”

Politics makes strange bedfellows. International relations perhaps even more so. The world today is an intricate puzzle of interlocking and disparate pieces. It was, frankly, cleaner and clearer in the days of FDR, when there was just “us” and “them.” Let it not be overlooked though, that when “them” meant the Nazis, Stalin was among those counted as “us.” Stalin was evil, but he helped defeat Nazism. Is the Western world soiled by our partnership with him? Certainly. Would we choose an alternative history had we the chance? What alternative?

The Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau inherited from the Conservative government of Stephen Harper (among other things) a hot potato in the form of an arms deal with Saudi Arabia.

The previous Conservative government facilitated what is the largest single Canadian manufacturing-export deal ever. General Dynamics Land Systems of London, Ont., will provide light armored vehicles to the Saudi military – a military that helped crush Arab Spring-related uprisings in neighboring Bahrain and in the Shiite areas of eastern Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are also accused of indiscriminate killings in Yemen, where they are fighting Iran-backed Islamists.

It deserves to be said that Saudi Arabia relies on trade with customers like Canada because, despite being the world’s second largest oil-producing nation, the Saudis have failed to parlay that windfall into anything lasting. Canada still exports too many raw materials that could be processed at home and sold abroad at added value but, compared with Saudi Arabia, we are the model of a diversified economy. Since the Saudi oil boom began, the country has invested nearly nothing in anything else, unless exporting Wahhabism is a tertiary industry, which, actually, it seems to be.

Famous for publicly scything off the heads of political dissidents, adulterers and others who in the West would be described as next-door neighbors, Saudi Arabia is now pushing to step up executions of gay people because social media is “making too many homosexuals.”

Despite the cuckoo United Nations logic that says Israel is the world’s top human rights violator, Saudi Arabia is actually a perpetrator of some of the world’s most atrocious abuses of human rights, from the extreme (public beheadings) to the mundane (if you consider the right of women to drive cars or show their faces in public mundane).

Paraphrasing FDR, Saudi Arabia is a bastard.

This seems to be the general consensus and helps explain why the (comparatively) new Liberal government is awkward in its defence of the $15 billion arms deal.

Trudeau has said that annulling the deal would hurt Canada’s reputation and, indeed, a democratic government that reneges on the deals made by its predecessors is treading on ice. Future potential customers could well think twice if Canada had a reputation for backing out of major trade deals when the government changes.

On this side of the pragmatic divide, the deal also means about 3,000 jobs for 15 years in southwestern Ontario. So, the Liberal government has made little defence of its decision other than relying on economics and the decency of sticking with a signed deal.

In the National Post last week, Lawrence Solomon made a different case – a moral case – for sticking with the deal. He argues that Saudi Arabia, however repugnant its internal policies may be, is on the frontlines of combating terror in the form of ISIS, Iran and associated menaces and, therefore, deserves our support.

This is a comparatively novel idea. The Canadian government is taking refuge in excuses that the previous government made a deal, that Canadian jobs are at stake and that it has no option. A cartoon in the Toronto Star depicted Trudeau declaring, “My hands are tied” next to a blindfolded victim being led to his beheading, saying, “I know how you feel.”

Yet maybe Trudeau’s argument should have been more along the lines of Solomon’s. It is not impossible, using some creative logic as Solomon did, to make the case that selling military equipment to the Saudis is in our national interest. Do we wish it were not so? In an ideal world, all our allies would be righteous and all our enemies defeated. But, in a real world as fractured and dangerous as ours, choosing to support unsavory allies to defeat unsavory enemies may be something we need to learn to swallow.

The legendary FDR quote is held up as a model of foreign policy pragmatism, if not ruthlessness. Canadians – especially this lily-white new government – like to think of ourselves as above such sullying choices. If we want to have the impact in the world that Trudeau seemed to be referencing with his “Canada is back” sloganeering, he may have to admit that sometimes we need to get our hands dirty.

At the very least, tough choices should be confronted, not shirked. If it is immoral and wrong to sell military equipment to the Saudis, we shouldn’t do it, and damn the consequences. If it is justifiable on the grounds that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, then we should trade with the Saudis and make our moral case clearly. But we should not try to have it both ways, slapping down the Saudis with one hand while taking their money with the other.

Is it time to end IJV herem?

When Vancouver-based songwriter and musician Daniel Maté wrote on his public Facebook page that he had declined an invitation from Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver to accompany some singers on Yom Hazikaron, since he “couldn’t in conscience do that as long as we don’t honor the far more numerous victims of the terror ‘our’ side inflicts,” he received an invitation from an Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) member to get involved in their group.

Sarah Levine was that IJV member. “It’s important to me to stand with other Jews who are working for Palestinian human rights,” she told me. “I think we have a particular role as Jews to think critically about Zionism, since the state of Israel often claims that it does things ‘in our name’ and with our support.”

Along the political spectrum of Jewish groups in Canada devoted to matters pertaining to Israel and Palestine, IJV – which bills itself as a human rights organization – tries to carve out a space rejecting traditional Zionist principles. In an organized Jewish community where conservative positions on Israel prevail, this doesn’t make it many friends.

Writing in the Huffington Post, IJV campaigns coordinator Tyler Levitan cites the silent treatment he regularly receives from an array of Jewish institutions when he seeks to publicly debate issues including Jewish National Fund discriminatory land-lease policies and the boycott, divestment and sanction movement. IJV considers BDS “a last resort,” as the group’s website says, and, while most observers would characterize IJV as anti-Zionist, it says that it “does not define itself in terms of Zionism.”

I spoke with Levitan. “Eroding that support base [for political Zionism] would be weakening the glue that binds the community,” he said. “That’s the fear. But we at IJV feel that having difficult and honest conversations is what makes the community stronger.”

For several years, I’ve watched IJV operate from close quarters. As a self-defined progressive Zionist, I have not signed onto IJV’s platform. But, as someone who values serious debate within the Jewish community, I have twice participated in an IJV-hosted forum. Mostly, I find it a sign of community weakness that most of the engines of the Jewish community attempt to shut IJV out of the conversation entirely.

Some Jewish papers (namely this one and the Jewish Post & News in Winnipeg) are open to including IJV perspectives, but the Canadian Jewish News and the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin keep a wide berth around IJV. Yoni Goldstein, CJN’s editor, will not grant IJV editorial space. As Goldstein put it, “… even though we promote inclusion as a virtue, there are limits to how inclusive we’re willing to be. Abetting BDS and rejecting Israel’s future as a Jewish state crosses the line.” Goldstein added: “Independence has its benefits, but the comfort of community is not usually one of them.”

With the exception of the Peretz Centre in Vancouver and the Winchevsky Centre in Toronto, no Jewish community locale will host IJV events – or even rent space to them, according to Levitan. But they’re not giving up on trying to be heard within Jewish community walls. “We’re persistent,” he said.

To reject Zionism indeed does place IJV outside of the mainstream community tent. It is this way, but should it be?

Like all political “isms,” Zionism’s meaning comes from the effects of the policies with which it is associated. While the debate between statist Zionism and those who foresaw other possible arrangements for Jewish liberation in the early 20th century was robust and active, non-Zionist voices receded as Jewish statehood emerged. But now, almost seven decades later, Israel is in crisis. It may be time to ask whether Jewish privilege should be rolled back in favor of some more inclusive and democratic arrangement. A frightened community, however, may view this very question as akin to treason.

IJV’s adherence to the Palestinian right of return is the biggest stumbling block for those who support Israel’s identity as a Jewish and democratic state. But even here, consider the wording on IJV’s website: “Peace will only be possible when Israel acknowledges the Palestinian refugees’ right of return and negotiates a just and mutually agreed solution based on principles established in international law, including return, compensation and/or resettlement.”

Any solution – even a two-state one – will likely involve some return, some compensation and some resettlement. While IJV does speak in terms of “rights,” in practice we might see their call as somewhat more pragmatic than many assume.

The thing is, even reasoning out these complicated dilemmas as I’m trying to do here is well-nigh impossible as long as groups like IJV remain excluded by the sort of herem (excommunication) with which they’ve been saddled. One thing on which Levitan and mainstream Jewish community leaders seem to agree is that there’s a lot of fear. And, sadly, we know all too well the kinds of politics to which fear can give rise.

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.

Possibility of a better future

Teens light candles on March of the Living. (photo from March of the Living Canada)

In April 2015, a group of 80 teens, under the guidance of three chaperones and a Holocaust survivor, arrived in Poland for a two-week journey exploring Poland’s tragic events and followed by the joy of celebrating the birth of the Jewish state on Yom Ha’atzmaut.

The mission of March of the Living is to pass the torch of Holocaust memory to new generations. The experience provides young people with an opportunity to bear witness to the Holocaust and to the stories of survivors, so that this important part of our collective history is never forgotten. It is also a unique opportunity to strengthen our children’s Jewish identity and to strengthen their connection to Israel.

The march itself took place on Yom Hashoah, and we marched from Auschwitz to Birkenau with nearly 10,000 other young people. The march commemorates the death marches that the last surviving prisoners were forced to take, where many perished, but a few survived thanks to the liberation by the Allies. It is the most powerful event imaginable, and one that unites all young Jewish and non-Jewish people across the world.

By the end of the trip, these beautiful young people were so open in their expression of their deepest and most profound insights and emotions. They were no longer afraid to show their vulnerability, because the support they received from each other throughout the trip was absolutely unconditional. It was a beautiful experience and a privilege to be a part of.

The commitment to Judaism and Israel that the participants acquire on this trip is so clearly represented in the following statements by March of the Living participant,

Barbie Clark:

“For me, March of the Living created an emotional connection to my tradition, enabling me to understand and appreciate the importance of remembering our history.

“During the trip, we witnessed firsthand the magnitude of mass destruction that occurred during the Holocaust. As we traveled around the country, we were constantly reminded of these horrors in every city, town and community that we visited. At the height of Auschwitz’s productivity, it was able to murder and cremate up to 12,000 Jews a day – a number greater than the mass of us who were able to complete the walk. To realize that every single one of us participating in the march could have been destroyed in the space of one day, defies understanding and description. Also, at Majdanek, we were witness to a horrifying monument containing ashes and bones of … 20,000 Jews killed in the Nazi’s Fall Festival of 1943. This monument is alarmingly large, reiterating the magnitude of what occurred. I found this terrifying and incomprehensible.

“The horrors witnessed in Poland are to be contrasted with what I experienced in Israel,” continued Clark. “While in Israel, I had the unique privilege to witness both Yom Hazikaron – Israel’s Remembrance Day for its soldiers – and Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israel’s birthday. On Yom Ha’atzmaut, the entire country is in celebration – the euphoria is palpable. Despite the sadness one is left with after [bearing] witness, I was left with contagious optimism and hope. Hope for a future without enemies; hope for the Jewish people and the Jewish nation surviving despite all previous oppression.

“The entire experience created for me a new sense of being connected to Judaism, in a way I never thought possible…. The trip symbolized for me all [the] adversity, intolerance and persecution of Jewish people, yet at the same time creating a sense of survival and the possibility of a better future, for not just the Jewish people, but for all mankind.”

Charlotte Katzen, co-chair, March of the Living committee, was a chaperone on the 2015 trip. This article was originally published in Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver’s Yachad. More information about March of the Living, click here. For information on the adult program – which is new this year – click here.

In the UN, on campus

Canada’s foreign minister has called on the United Nations Human Rights Council to review the appointment of Canadian law professor Michael Lynk as its special rapporteur on human rights in Palestine.

Last week, Stéphane Dion tweeted (because that is how diplomacy happens these days): “We call on @UN_HRC President to review this appointment & ensure Special Rapporteur has track record that can advance peace in region #HRC.”

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs has denounced the appointment of the University of Western Ontario academic, who has been associated with anti-Israel activities in Canada. Lynk has said that Israel should be prosecuted for “war crimes,” he accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing,” has spoken at conferences that reject a two-state solution and serves as a leader in a group that promotes Israel Apartheid Week.

While Dion questioned the wisdom of appointing Lynk, CIJA went further, arguing that the position itself is illegitimate.

“It is ludicrous that this is the UN’s only special rapporteur focused on the human rights of a particular community,” said Shimon Koffler Fogel, CIJA’s chief executive officer. “It is likewise shameful that the special rapporteur refuses to investigate the abuse of Palestinian rights by the Palestinian leadership, particularly Hamas in Gaza. In so doing, the special rapporteur obscures genuine human rights violations in the Middle East and the underlying obstacles to Israeli-Palestinian peace.”

A related conflict blew up in academia last week. Just as the appointment of an avowed anti-Zionist as UN rapporteur surely will not advance peace between Israelis and Palestinians, the complete disavowal of the existence of antisemitism on campuses will not promote intellectual discourse or peace.

In the wake of ongoing efforts by the BDS movement to boycott Israeli academics and force universities to divest from Israeli holdings, while occasionally nastily intimidating Jewish students on campuses across North America, the University of California board of regents recently passed a statement condemning antisemitism, along with 10 principles against intolerance as a whole. It is the result of several months’ research and consultation.

The statement that introduces the principles is an amended version of an earlier expression that would have condemned anti-Zionism. Instead, it condemns “antisemitic forms of anti-Zionism.” If the only state in the world targeted for elimination is the only Jewish one, it should be an uphill battle to continue the charade that anti-Zionism is not equivalent to antisemitism, or at least driven by it to a large degree. Nevertheless, the regents’ statement is a starting point for increased civility on campuses that have seen, they note, “an increase in incidents reflecting antisemitism…. These reported incidents included vandalism targeting property associated with Jewish people or Judaism; challenges to the candidacies of Jewish students seeking to assume representative positions within student government; political, intellectual and social dialogue that is antisemitic; and social exclusion and stereotyping.”

Some critics say the statement is designed to stifle opposition to Israeli policies. Others say it could harm free speech. Yet others say it didn’t go far enough, in that it didn’t condemn bigotry against other specific groups.

None of these objections holds water. While the working group’s report might have been initiated by concerns over antisemitism, the document speaks to many other forms of intolerance: “University policy prohibits discrimination based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, gender, gender expression, gender identity, pregnancy, physical or mental disability, medical condition (cancer-related or genetic characteristics), genetic information (including family medical history), ancestry, marital status, age, sexual orientation, citizenship, service in the uniformed services, or the intersection of any of these factors.”

As for free speech, including, presumably, that about Israel, the document stresses the importance of freedom of expression and of inquiry: “The university will vigorously defend the principles of the First Amendment and academic freedom against any efforts to subvert or abridge them.” And, it notes: “Each member of the university community is entitled to speak, to be heard and to be engaged based on the merits of their views, and unburdened by historical biases, stereotypes and prejudices.”

But: “Regardless of whether one has a legal right to speak in a manner that reflects bias, stereotypes, prejudice and intolerance, each member of the university community is expected to consider his or her responsibilities as well as his or her rights … mutual respect and civility within debate and dialogue advance the mission of the university, advance each of us as learners and teachers, and advance a democratic society.”

The UN – and many others – could learn a thing or two from UC’s regents.

Antisemitism’s blurry lines

Avi Benlolo, president of the Canadian Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre for Holocaust Studies, was recently quoted in the National Post saying that Jewish university-bound applicants should consider options other than Toronto’s York University. The reason? A faculty association executive proposal to divest from weapons manufacturers. The proposal didn’t mention Israel by name.

According to Benlolo, this is a “campaign of censorship against Israel and the Jewish people.” The organization also issued a statement declaring that, in the wake of the proposal, it was “concerned for the safety and security of [York’s] Jewish students and faculty.”

I recently combed through the 2015 report of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre on antisemitism on American campuses, headlined: “A Clear and Present Danger.” Over the 26-page document, I discovered a few antisemitic incidents over the eight preceding years. (I selected an eight-year period to represent two generations of students at a four-year university or college.)

As the report detailed, at Harvard in 2013, to raise awareness of Palestinian home demolitions, activists slipped mock eviction notices into dorm rooms. There was no evidence to suggest whether Jewish students were targeted. And, in 2014-2015 at University of California-L.A., Rachel Beyda, a Jewish student, was barred admission to a judicial position by the student council following accusations that her Jewish heritage made her biased. After an uproar, the administration pressured the council to reverse itself. A similar dynamic played out at Stanford in 2014, when Molly Horwitz was asked, “Given your strong Jewish identity, how would you vote on divestment?”

The report also noted a “decade” of “increasing hostility” at the University of California-Berkeley in 2015, “including “vandalizing Jewish property, spitting at Jewish students, threatening violence, and physically assaulting Jewish supporters of Israel.”

Incidents like these should be called out strongly. But every other event chronicled since 2007 in the Simon Wiesenthal Centre report described political activity directed against Israel or its policies – not instances of antisemitism.

The latest mudslinging debate in the antisemitism wars is more nuanced. It concerns a talk by gender studies scholar Jasbir Puar at Vassar College, an event that authors of a Wall Street Journal op-ed described as antisemitic and a blood libel.

In the talk (of which I received a transcript), Puar made two particularly jarring claims. About the bodies of 17 Palestinian youth that Israel kept for two months at the end of 2015, Puar said, “Some speculate that the bodies were mined for organs for scientific research.” (These youth, it is important to note, had been attacking Israelis. Puar described these Palestinian youth as having been involved in “stabbing” and as part of a “peoples’ rumble” but called their deaths “field assassinations.”)

Puar also suggested that Israel engages in “weaponized epigenetics, where the outcome is not so much about winning or losing nor a solution, but about needing body parts, not even whole bodies, for research and experimentation.”

Puar did not respond to my requests for comment or clarification regarding her accusations.

While academic freedom is a principle meant to protect scholarly speech from legal censure, there is an equally important norm requiring a scholar to provide evidence when making empirical claims. On this, Puar failed.

But is Puar’s scholarly breach antisemitic?

Joshua Schreier, an associate professor of history at Vassar and part of the steering committee of the Jewish studies program that was one of the co-sponsors of the talk, doesn’t think so. He attended the event. “It’s really important,” he told me, “to protect free speech and protect academic speech,” adding that “we have a responsibility, as academics, when we talk about speculation, to note … whether it’s substantiated, whether we’re trying to give new life to those rumors, or not, but none of that makes it antisemitic.”

Unfortunately, the unsubstantiated charge of using “body parts for experimentation” cuts close to the bone of blood libel myths. It is also uttered in the context of a cultural moment on campuses when most criticism of Israel is inappropriately being cast as antisemitic. This surely means that there will be fallout from the talk that will serve to distract debaters from the pressing issues around the ills of occupation. It also means that amid the hyperbolic rhetoric about antisemitism on campuses, actual antisemitism is becoming more difficult to spot when it does occur.

Meanwhile, hundreds of faculty members from across the United States have issued a statement to Vassar’s president asking her to “write a letter to the Wall Street Journal … condemning in no uncertain terms the unjustifiable attack on Vassar and on Professor Puar.”

For its part, the Anti-Defamation League had nothing more damning to say about Puar’s appearance at Vassar than that she has sometimes accused Israel of pinkwashing.

Ian S. Lustick, a professor of political science at University of Pennsylvania, told me by email that he signed the statement “to show solidarity against the campaign to restrict the space of politically correct discussion on anything pertaining to Israel and Palestinians.” About the claim of organ harvesting, Lustick said that “the speculations about horrific

Israeli behavior with respect to organ harvesting from Palestinian bodies are as unlikely to be true as they are likely to be circulated as long as Israel refuses to quickly return bodies of dead Palestinians to their families.”

Debate over campus discourse on Israel (and even on things like armaments, weirdly perceived by some to represent Israel) will continue. Vassar’s president, for her part, invited parents and alumni to an online forum to discuss “current issues and tensions within our community related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

As for whether actions on campuses over the last decade constitute antisemitism, the ledger is mixed. Verbal or physical harassment directed at Jews for reasons related to their ethnic or religious identity is antisemitism. Same with leveling dual loyalty charges against Jewish students.

But consideration of divestment from weapons companies is not antisemitism. Criticism of Israeli policy is not antisemitism. Criticism of the occupation is not antisemitism. Criticism of violence – whether it is state-sponsored violence or violence carried out by individuals or groups – is not antisemitism.

Presenting unsubstantiated claims against agents of a state in a public lecture is irresponsible. And, if the symbolism chosen for these non-evidenced charges quacks like an infamous antisemitic myth, it will, not surprisingly, be heard by many as redolent of that scourge. But that does not necessarily make it, in and of itself, antisemitism.

Trump at what cost?

“I didn’t come here tonight to pander to you about Israel,” Donald Trump told the AIPAC conference Monday evening, before proceeding to do exactly that.

In his unique rhetorical way, Trump ticked off every box on the AIPAC agenda, and then some. He also ticked off a number of rabbis and other delegates who condemned and protested his presence at the event. Trump’s history of making statements that are sexist and racist, his sluggishness at disavowing the support of neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klanners, his making fun of a disabled reporter and a litany of other offences convinced some AIPAC attendees that Trump should be either disinvited or boycotted.

They were wrong, because this was an opportunity for Trump to clarify or otherwise explain his behaviors. Of course, he didn’t, which was an opportunity missed. Trump came on – uncharacteristically – with a prepared text distributed in advance to media. What he read was a fulsome reversal of his statement just days earlier that he would be neutral between Israel and the Palestinians.

Trump’s repeated invocation of the term “believe me” is almost a verbal tic and it belies a tendency to express the unbelievable.

“Nobody respects women more than I do,” Trump told CNN Monday night. If we were to believe him, women would be among the only people Trump seems to respect. When any individual criticizes him, Trump lashes out with the most juvenile, personal and insulting terms, not least repeatedly referring to his fellow Republicans Cruz and Rubio as “Lying Ted” and “Little Marco.”

Within days, Trump pivoted from “neutrality” to a no-holds-barred defence of Israel that would make Binyamin Netanyahu (whom Trump calls “Bibby”) blush. The response he received from the AIPAC crowd verged on enthusiastic. Yet his conversion to Zionism may reflect little more than some good advice, a comparatively competent speechwriter and the ability to unabashedly pander.

Trump promised to dismantle the nuclear deal with Iran and he trashed the United Nations. “When I’m president, believe me, I will veto any attempt by the UN to impose its will on the Jewish state,” he said.

He condemned the Palestinian incitement of children to hate Israel and Jews. “In Palestinian textbooks and mosques, you’ve got a culture of hatred that has been fomenting there for years,” he said.

He promised to move the American embassy to Jerusalem.

In what amounted to his first significant expression of foreign policy, Trump waded in deep. He wants to reduce American commitments to NATO, specifically citing NATO’s obligation to defend Ukraine. What he doesn’t understand or doesn’t care about is that the United States and Britain made a deal with Ukraine – then the world’s third-largest nuclear power – to eliminate its arsenal in exchange for a promise of protection. Global reaction to Russian aggression betrayed that promise and Trump wants to rub salt in the wound.

This is an example of Trump’s lack of awareness on international affairs. Yet it is unlikely to hurt him with supporters, who forgive his every error and offence and who sometimes seem to idealize a world free of non-Americans.

On CNN after the speech, Trump was asked about the expressions of support he has received from neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klanners and antisemites. “I don’t want their support,” he said, adding: “I don’t need their support.”

Trump is indeed creaming his opponents in the primaries, and it may be a minor rhetorical thing, but would he take their support if he did need it?

Asked by Wolf Blitzer whether he would condemn violence by his supporters, Trump replied, “Of course I would, 100%, but … I have no control over the people.” Then he went on to note that “these people” have been disenfranchised – they lost their jobs and earn less money now than they did 12 years ago, as though this justified violence.

Had Trump’s AIPAC speech occurred in a vacuum – if he had just landed from the proverbial Mars and not for months been spouting hatred toward Muslims, Mexicans, women and anyone who opposes him – the speech might have deserved the applause it received.

Instead, his words were diametrically opposed to what he has said in the past and, even if they weren’t, they are coming from an individual who has done egregious harm to social relations and human decency in public discourse. Even if Trump said everything Jewish people and other friends of Israel wanted to hear, this would not detract from the other things he has said and the other people – including every Muslim in the world – he has deliberately and maliciously affronted.

“I’m going to be great for Israel,” Trump declared, and maybe he would be. But at what cost to the social fabric of his country and the place of the United States in the world?

“When I say something, I mean it, I mean it,” he crowed, despite his blatant reversals. “Believe me, believe me.”

Must confront issues

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A satirical vlog on Zionism

A screenshot from the trailer for Avi Does the Holy Land. The vlog will appeal to some more than others.

Good satire depends not only on distancing the viewer from the object of ridicule, but on making them identify with it, if only just a little. For North American Jews who’ve grown up with affection towards Israel, a new video blog (or vlog) does just that.

Avi Does the Holy Land is a sendup of sex-drenched Zionism, a vlog that purports to tackle various hot-button aspects of Israel – “the most contentious state in the Middle East!” in the words of Avi, a “Canadian Jewess” who “went on a Birthright trip and fell in love with Israel.” (Haaretz has since revealed that Avi is Aviva Zimmerman, originally from Calgary, and now an Israel-based filmmaker.)

Through a website, a YouTube channel and a Facebook page, Avi covers such topics as how to beat terrorism, whether Palestinians are really oppressed or not, what to pack for Birthright, and the accusation, by Israel’s critics, of pinkwashing.

And, while Avi is a cartoonish, lipsticked character who perpetually seems perplexed by the sincerity of her interviewees, many of us will no doubt identify with at least a sliver of her carefree naiveté.

“Did I just give a blow job to a guy named Dudu?” she muses in one segment.

In my kibbutz-loving period of the early 1990s, it wasn’t a guy with the unfortunate name Dudu I fawned over, but another whose name in translation meant “ploughed field.” Giggling over his agricultural moniker while in ulpan class, my pals and I idealized his Zionist credentials.

In another scene, Avi wears a pink T-shirt emblazoned with an Uzi, the kind that pepper tourist shops throughout Jerusalem.

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While I never wore clothing depicting an actual gun, I did rummage through the kibbutz lost and found one day and select a worn, burgundy T-shirt from a paratrooper, the kind Israeli soldiers design when they finish their basic training. (This one, from 1984, was extremely tame next to the tasteless ones appearing in more recent years – ones that promote rape and anti-Palestinian violence.) I later found the owner – a different strapping kibbutznik whose name meant cedar tree – but never did return it. Why would I? It had the perfect mix of soft fibres and Jewish power pedigree. All the better to wear while painting metal beams and bantering with the workers over never-ending tea-and-toast breaks in the kibbutz welding shop.

Avi Does the Holy Land’s web episode “Pride vs. Pinkwashing” is the most cutting in terms of political messaging. It involves alternating scenes of Avi doing what she “does best” – “dancing on a truck” at Tel Aviv Pride – and interviewing Rami Younis, a Palestinian writer and activist, over charges of Israeli pinkwashing. Calling Israel’s critics “belly-aching leftist sh–heads,” Avi muses over Younis being “hashtag superserious,” and finally suggests to him that perhaps if he drapes himself in a rainbow flag, Israel will treat him better.

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It’s probably fair to say that I move in circles that are highly critical of the occupation and that, while I’ve taken a nuanced position on pinkwashing, still take the claim seriously. But I, too, have enjoyed a Tel Aviv Pride beach party, trying to order a vodka cocktail from a shirtless bartender and, in my distraction, confusing the Hebrew word for cranberries with that for paratroopers and enjoying my private little malapropism – a symbol of Diaspora idealization of Israel – for weeks after.

So is Avi “other”? Or is Avi “us”? For those who are distressed by the occupation and feel a gradual distancing from Israel through decades of government intransigence and illiberal moves intended to silence and intimidate human rights activists, probably a bit of both. And for those who don’t have a single critical word in their lexicon for the Jewish state, I’m really not sure. But I’d love to see their reaction.