{"id":19683,"date":"2016-06-24T00:40:38","date_gmt":"2016-06-24T07:40:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=19683"},"modified":"2016-06-22T17:08:22","modified_gmt":"2016-06-23T00:08:22","slug":"bnai-brith-and-ijv-face-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2016\/06\/24\/bnai-brith-and-ijv-face-off\/","title":{"rendered":"B\u2019nai Brith and IJV face off"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Jewish community is seeing mud being slung again. B\u2019nai Brith Canada has come down hard on Independent Jewish Voices (IJV). The latest salvo, which came via email blast as the Jewish Independent<\/em> was going to press, contended that IJV has taken part in Al-Quds Day events in Toronto. Before that, B\u2019nai Brith claimed that IJV \u201cpromotes Holocaust denial.\u201d<\/p>\n

With regard to the latter accusation, B\u2019nai Brith, also via email blast, called attention to IJV having posted an article by blogger Alan Hart about antisemitism and anti-Zionism, which had been republished on a website called Veterans Today. That website \u2013 Veterans Today \u2013 evidently engages in Holocaust denial.<\/p>\n

A statement by IJV issued on June 8 takes responsibility for the error. \u201cWe thoughtlessly linked to Hart\u2019s article on the Veterans Today site. We acknowledge that our oversight in this respect was lax: we didn\u2019t verify the nature of the Veterans Today website.\u2026 For that, we apologize to our members and supporters for our carelessness. IJV has now removed that link.\u201d<\/p>\n

IJV campaigns coordinator Tyler Levitan told me by email that, \u201cwhile we are guilty of a very small number of regrettable social media posts over the years \u2013 out of thousands of articles we\u2019ve posted \u2013 that linked to decent articles reposted to indecent websites, this by no means makes us in B\u2019nai Brith\u2019s words, a \u2018fig leaf for neo-Nazis and antisemitism\u2019 [a quote which appeared in the Canadian Jewish News<\/em>]. That\u2019s pure slander. We are in no way connected to anything on the right, let alone the far-right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Levitan then came out swinging. \u201cB\u2019nai Brith, on the other hand, has had very close relations with far-right Christian fundamentalist groups and individuals, such as John Hagee, who promote homophobia and bigotry. Their CEO Michael Mostyn used to be the director of the neoconservative advocacy group Canadian Coalition for Democracies. Their connections to the far-right of the Canadian political scene are literal, not imaginary.\u201d<\/p>\n

In response, Mostyn told me by email, \u201cI am proud of my prior work with the Canadian Coalition for Democracies, especially its advocacy on behalf of persecuted groups such as North Koreans, Middle East Christians and Baha\u2019is in Iran.\u201d Mostyn added that B\u2019nai Brith Canada \u201cdoes not have any current affiliation with John Hagee.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following IJV\u2019s apology, B\u2019nai Brith issued another community-wide communications statement attempting to further impugn IJV\u2019s reputation. It didn\u2019t help that elsewhere Hart has apparently issued conspiracy theories. This, too, Levitan responded to, saying in the email interview, \u201cwe certainly do not subscribe to his political views regarding 9\/11.\u201d<\/p>\n

What seems to be going on here is a regrettable discursive war over Israel fought by other means. Dov Waxman\u2019s recent book Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict Over Israel<\/em> details the acrimony taking place on the topic of Israel across the American Jewish community. On this score, the Canadian Jewish landscape is little different.<\/p>\n

Better than issue smear campaigns against those who don\u2019t hew to the mainstream Jewish community perspective, the Jewish community should be debating the issues at stake. How to end Israel\u2019s 49-year long occupation of another people? What kinds of security assurances does Israel need in order to bring that era to an end? What are Israel\u2019s obligations under international law? How can the refugee issues be resolved in a just way? How can Israel institute full equality between its Jewish and non-Jewish citizens?<\/p>\n

These are issues that would be very worthy of more discussion. That said, two lessons can be learned here. First, organizations should be careful about with whom they associate. If conspiracy theorists are going to undermine the message \u2013 and, to most ears, they will \u2013 organizations should find other ways to raise issues than relying on questionable sources. And, if cozying up to the far-right is going to help portray an organization as being out of touch with its constituency, then it, too, should be careful about with whom it rubs shoulders. If, on the other hand, these allies are understood by the organization to be representative of their values, then that is also an important opening for discussion so community audiences can decide with whom to cast their lot.<\/p>\n

To this end, I would like to encourage IJV and B\u2019nai Brith Canada to take their feud out of the realm of email blasts and counterpunches and into the realm of policy questions. Perhaps a public debate hosted by the two organizations over mutually-agreed-upon questions with regard to Israel and the Palestinians would be apt. I know that I, for one, would tune in.<\/p>\n

Mira Sucharov<\/strong> is an associate professor of political science at Carleton University. She is a columnist for <\/em>Canadian Jewish News and contributes to <\/em>Haaretz and the\u00a0<\/em>Jewish Daily Forward, among other publications.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Jewish community is seeing mud being slung again. B\u2019nai Brith Canada has come down hard on Independent Jewish Voices (IJV). The latest salvo, which came via email blast as the Jewish Independent was going to press, contended that IJV has taken part in Al-Quds Day events in Toronto. Before that, B\u2019nai Brith claimed that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[1635,4136,4882,1245],"class_list":["post-19683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-op-ed","tag-bnai-brith","tag-bbc","tag-ijv","tag-independent-jewish-voices"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19683\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}