Opinion – Page 86

Proudly in the middle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More to becoming an adult

It’s a bat mitzvah year in our family. We’ve booked the photographer, the caterer, the DJ and the invitation company. Our daughter is studying her parashah and learning to chant the Haftorah and maftir.

Now, it’s time to inject some social justice into the experience, in the form of what have come to be known as “mitzvah projects.” Coming of age in the 1980s, my generation was less social justice-oriented. So what exactly, I wondered, should a “mitzvah project” entail?

I turned to JEDLAB, the Jewish educators’ forum on Facebook. I discovered that there is an organization expressly founded to support kids in their mitzvah project strategies. Called Areyvut (Hebrew for “social responsibility”), the New Jersey-based group offers consulting services – from a free phone consultation to more extensive, fee-based ones – and direct organizing of an array of hands-on, direct-action-style activities in which party guests can participate. Called “chesed fairs,” these might include game-board painting for a social-services agency, hat-making for cancer fighters or cupcake-decorating for a local day centre. Clients need not live in the area, or even in the United States.

Elsewhere, Areyvut teams up with synagogues and youth groups to teach kids to be “mitzvah clowns” for residents of long-term care facilities.

I decided to take up Areyvut’s offer to engage in a free phone consultation on my daughter’s mitzvah project idea. She had chosen a complex topic – addressing the economic effects, particularly around access to housing, of urban gentrification. Talking to Areyvut’s staff reminded me that mitzvah projects need not be confined to financial giving. Advocacy and awareness can be just as important.

I decided to take some of these ideas to my own community. Through word of mouth, I initiated a b’nai mitzvah club to help develop mitzvah project ideas. At the first meeting, which we called “Hot Chocolate for Hot Issues,” I led a workshop to get the kids thinking about a given issue, how to identify deeper causes of the problem and how to consider the range of action one might take to address these problems.

For our mitzvah club this year, each child will identify a pressing issue around which he or she is passionate and then develop an action plan, a plan that should involve at least two of the following: fundraising, political advocacy, public awareness and direct action. Fundraising could involve donating a portion of bar or bat mitzvah gift money, or holding a bakeathon or danceathon. Political advocacy might involve letter-writing to elected officials. Public awareness could include an Instagram campaign increasing public understanding of the issue. And direct action means identifying a relevant organization at which the child can volunteer.

Sometimes, there is an identified need, but not an established organization dedicated to it. In these cases, Areyvut can support kids in being more ambitious – for example, in creating their own nonprofit organization. Billy’s Baseballs grew out of a bar mitzvah initiative where a child organized the sending of decorated baseballs to soldiers stationed abroad.

Daniel Rothner, Areyvut’s founder and director, puts it this way. As Jews, we are supposed to be a “light unto the nations,” engaged in making the world a better place, he told me. And the impact extends beyond the Jewish community, he added. He is also passionate about getting kids to think about the deeper causes. What of Dave, the homeless man who appears at the soup kitchen every week? Why does Dave need to come week after week?

Our own b’nai mitzvah club has come a long way from kids reciting the “today I am a fountain pen” joke. As my daughter said, the bar or bat mitzvah milestone means that “technically, you’re becoming a woman or a man and, once you are [an adult], you have a responsibility to help out with the issues in the world and in our community.”

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 condemned

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sanders – both prophet and king?

Bernie Sanders is the first Jew (and first non-Christian) ever to win a presidential primary and be seriously considered as a candidate for the American presidency. Reactions from the Jewish community have been mixed and mostly pretty quiet.

Sanders is very familiar to Ashkenazi Jews like myself: he is basically our socialist uncle. His passionate denunciations, clear-eyed vision of injustice and chutzpah are heimish, almost nostalgic. The progressive Jewish community has seemed hesitant to throw its weight behind him, perhaps because until recently they saw him as unlikely to succeed. Or, maybe, there is a fear of jinxing him: “Shhh, they haven’t really realized he’s Jewish yet.” As Sarah Tuttle-Singer wrote last month in the Times of Israel, one of the great things about Sanders’ ascension is that his Jewishness has been so irrelevant to Americans. Meanwhile, big Jewish financiers, such as George Soros and Donald Sussman, have been backing Hillary Clinton, not Sanders.

So, what is Sanders’ relationship to Judaism? He seems comfortable with his Jewishness and appreciative both of what he finds valuable in the tradition and of Jewish customs. Despite some claims that Sanders has downplayed his Jewishness, J.J. Goldberg recently proved otherwise in a comprehensive analysis published in the Forward Feb. 26. In an article on chabad,org, Dovid Margolin spoke of Sanders’ fight for Chabad’s right to light a public menorah on public property in a key court case, which paved the way for the now-common practice. And Sanders declared the Rebbe’s birthday Education Day in Vermont with words of praise for the Rebbe’s work to universalize education, as well as praising Maimonides (it happened also to be Maimonides’ 850th birthday).

Sanders himself, when asked, has made it clear that he is not a religious Jew. When late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel asked Sanders last fall whether he believes in God, Sanders responded: “I am what I am … and what I believe in, and what my spirituality is about, is that we’re all in this together.”

“Bernie’s Jewishness is not the Judaism of the shul but of the street,” said Rabbi Dan Moskovitz of Temple Sholom. “It’s not the Judaism of rituals but of the ethical tenets of Judaism: about the holiness code and how you treat others. Bernie is Jewish in his kishkes.”

Sanders is relentless and consistent in his criticisms of the financial elite, his calls for a political system free of legal bribery, and his defence of education and the need for fair wages and medical care. He wants to free Americans from debt and modern slavery, and pull America away from militarism and hatred of the stranger. All of these themes echo in dozens of verses and laws structuring the political vision of the Torah and run deep in Jewish consciousness.

Sanders has called for tougher pressure on Israel to make concessions in peace talks and is known to take J Street seriously. On the other hand, he has defended Israel from attacks from the far left, saying it has a right to defend itself and must be able to establish its own security and long-term viability as a state. He has been among a handful of Senate regulars at the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Recently, a video surfaced of Sanders giving a speech during the Gaza war in August 2014. Asked by an audience member about Israel’s shelling of Gaza, he agreed that too many civilians had died, but said Hamas had instigated the fighting by firing rockets at Israeli civilians and that Israel has a right to defend itself.

In Israel, Michael Oren has expressed concern about Sanders being overly critical of the Israeli government, while others, including Ravi Eitan, Dov Henin and Yoel Cohen Paran, have expressed a resonance with him, citing his social policies.

Clinton’s campaign has criticized Sanders for his pledge to “normalize” relations with Iran in the wake of the Iran nuclear deal. Sanders agrees that Iran is a “bad actor,” that it funds terrorism and human rights abuses and must not get the atomic bomb, and he has voted to condemn the behavior and rhetoric of the Iranian government several times. But, Sanders argues that normalization is likelier to create the conditions that would spur change. As he said in the last Democrat debate: “It is easy to talk to your friends. It is hard to talk to your enemies. I think we should do both.”

There is no question that ethics is central in Sanders’ mind. It is commonplace for him to make a point by citing a statistic about life in America and then ask rhetorically, “Is this right? Is this moral?”

The most common criticism leveled against Sanders is that he is unrealistic. In The Prophetic Imagination, Walter Brueggeman, a leading scholar of the Hebrew Bible, describes the prophets in words that could apply to Sanders: “The prophet does not ask if the vision can be implemented, for questions of implementation are of no consequence until the vision can be imagined…. The same royal consciousness that makes it possible to implement anything and everything is the one that shrinks imagination because imagination is a danger…. It is the vocation of the prophet to keep alive the ministry of imagination, to keep on conjuring and proposing futures alternative to the single one the king wants to urge as the only thinkable one.”

Sanders, of course, is trying to be king, as well. But the charges that he is not practical fail to adequately consider his decades of service as a senator and his time as an effective and popular mayor of Burlington. He was known both for idealistic stances and for taking care of the “nuts and bolts of the job,” as his former campaign manager Jim Schumacher stated. The real question is how Sanders would function in the presidency and with the Republicans in Congress. Time will tell whether we’ll have the chance to find out.

Matthew Gindin is a writer, lecturer and holistic therapist. As well as teaching holistic medicine, Gindin regularly lectures on topics in Jewish and world spirituality, and has a particular passion for making ancient wisdom traditions relevant in the modern world. His work has been featured on Elephant Journal, the Zen Site and Wisdom Pills, and he blogs at Talis in Wonderland (mgindin.wordpress.com) and Voices (hashkata.com).

Let’s talk about Nini …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Racism at the root of BDS?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paint away complexity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Foreign policy of fools

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NGOs should flaunt funding

The Transparency Bill, also known as the NGO Bill, received cabinet approval in December and is, therefore, closer to becoming law in Israel. The bill requires any Israeli nongovernmental organization receiving more than half its funding from foreign governments to disclose this in all written communications with elected officials; to declare it orally when meeting in places where public officials gather; and, perhaps most chillingly, to require these NGO representatives to wear a badge indicating this funding whenever they visit the Knesset. The government’s coalition members have already agreed to support the bill when it is presented to the Knesset.

It’s no wonder left-wing NGOs and their supporters are bristling at the bill, seeing it, rightly, as targeting them specifically. Right-wing NGOs tend to get their foreign funding from individuals (who are often more difficult to track) rather than from governments. Given the current composition of the Israeli government, right-wing NGOs also naturally seek to support and intensify existing government policies, whereas left-wing NGOs are more likely to challenge the government’s policies. The bill is also somewhat redundant, since all NGOs are already required to declare their funding sources.

Nonetheless, should the bill pass, NGOs should wear their scarlet letter proudly. Unlike the literary figure Hester Prynne who flouted her community’s norms by committing adultery, Israeli NGOs are not only upholding the democratic norms of their own country, but are indeed enacting the norms of a much larger world than their own: specifically, global international society.

Consider the foreign government funding sources of ACRI, Israel’s premier civil liberties association. These donor countries are exclusively democracies. Ditto the country donors to B’Tselem, Israel’s premier human rights organization. Adalah, New Israel Fund, Sikkuy: all of these rights groups in Israel receive funding not from authoritarian regimes who trade in tyranny and persecution, but from democracies.

What do democracies have in common? Namely, a mission to uphold the practices that define them: openness, transparency, protection of the individual and of minorities, human rights, civil liberties and freedom. Expressing these norms is one of the main explanations for one of the most enduring features of the international system: the tendency for democracies to never go to war with one another. In believing that fellow democracies act with similar degrees of openness and debate, democratic governments inherently trust one another to solve disputes peacefully.

Democratic governments also have another unique quality: by design, they speak for their majority. Right now, the donor countries to these NGOs are mostly European. (Some United Nations bodies are represented, as well as USAID.) Imagine if every democracy in the world chose to funnel some of their foreign aid budget to Israeli NGOs: these Israeli groups would then be acting as an extension of global democratic society writ large, the best slice of human capital the world currently boasts.

On the day of the vote, the Zionist Union wore protest tags declaring “a Jew doesn’t mark another Jew: a Jew doesn’t mark another human being.” Galei Tzahal, Israel’s army radio, has revealed that 98% of Netanyahu’s campaign donations are from donors abroad. An American petition is circulating urging “President Obama and Congress to support U.S. legislation and regulations that would ensure that similar restrictions to whatever is enacted in the Knesset against ‘foreign funding’ of Israeli human rights groups are applied in the U.S. to private U.S. funding of the Israeli right and the settler movement.” And now, a group of American citizens have filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Treasury, attempting to rescind the nonprofit status of 150 American NGOs that apparently send billions of dollars to the settlements and to the Israel Defence Forces.

These are understandable rearguard actions. But perhaps supporters of human rights and civil liberties are looking the wrong way.

The Israeli government worries about Israel being “delegitimized” in international circles. The best hope for Israel is for the country’s fellow democracies to believe in Israeli civil society enough to continue to boost it. Until the upholders of democratic values give up on Israel altogether – and I sure hope that does not happen – Israeli NGOs should boast proudly of their foreign democratic government funding. It follows, too, that the Israeli government should be grateful for it. Amid all the delegitimization stemming from Israel’s running of a patently undemocratic regime in the West Bank, which regularly flouts human rights and civil liberties, the good work of these Israeli NGOs – the cornerstone of Israeli civil society – is the best reminder that there is hope for democratic Israel yet.

Let the American race begin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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