{"id":21479,"date":"2016-10-07T00:31:05","date_gmt":"2016-10-07T07:31:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=21479"},"modified":"2020-07-02T12:58:57","modified_gmt":"2020-07-02T19:58:57","slug":"reflecting-on-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2016\/10\/07\/reflecting-on-election\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflecting on election"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the last federal election, Mira Oreck was the NDP candidate for the riding of Vancouver Granville. (photo from Mira Oreck)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Nearly one year after the Canadian federal election, I had a chance to sit down with Mira Oreck (by phone), the NDP candidate for the riding of Vancouver Granville. I had knocked on doors with Mira during the early days of the campaign while I was visiting Vancouver that summer and I was eager to hear her reflections, particularly from a Jewish community standpoint.<\/p>\n

Mira\u2019s Jewish community affiliations run deep. She attended Beth Israel Hebrew School and Camp Ramah, she was president of her United Synagogue Youth region and served on the USY international board. She later went on to serve as regional director of Canadian Jewish Congress. Today, she is a member of Or Shalom Synagogue. Mira recalled being \u201coverwhelmed\u201d by how \u201cmembers of the Jewish community connected with the campaign. People were genuinely curious and excited by the idea that someone from our community could be in Parliament.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unlike many other Canadian ridings, Mira said, the riding of Vancouver Granville was \u201cprimed for the conversation\u201d around Jewish and Israel issues. And, since she already knew many Jewish community members and leaders personally, she said didn\u2019t need to make cold calls to introduce herself. So, she was intrigued by a snippet of advice she heard someone give to one of her opponents who would indeed be making those rounds. The advice? The candidate should never mention the word \u201cpeace.\u201d Apparently, to more conservative Jewish ears, \u201cpeace\u201d is code word for being anti-Israel.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a fascinating tidbit to me, since my reference point in academic circles is the reverse: many on the \u201cfar left\u201d of the Israel-Palestine debate understand peace to be problematically \u201cpro-Israel,\u201d which is to say representing a complacent adherence to the status quo, without the hard work needed to challenge injustice. Whatever the correct referent is, this suggests how loaded is the discourse around Israel. It\u2019s hard for candidates to speak their mind, knowing that every phrase could be a landmine.<\/p>\n

But, on Israel, Mira insisted she kept her message consistent: against BDS, pro two-state solution. Her goal, as she put it to voters, was to \u201csee peace in my lifetime \u2026 and not try to perpetuate ingrained ideas of the \u2018other.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

As much as she didn\u2019t shy away from using the term \u201cZionist\u201d to describe herself \u2013 despite some on her campaign preferring she not \u2013 Mira tried to emphasize that single-issue voting (for example, on Israel) has its limits. \u201cI would say to voters that we are having an election in Canada and, first and foremost, my role as MP is to be concerned with the country we are governing.\u201d For that matter, Mira said there were not \u201cdistinguishable differences on party platforms regarding Israel and Palestine. I wanted to know from [voters] what they thought the significant differences were; often people couldn\u2019t name any.\u201d Still, the topic of Israel came up \u201ca lot less\u201d than she expected. Instead, people in the Jewish community, she said, talked \u201cabout Bill C-51, refugees, climate change, child care \u2026 overwhelmingly more than I heard them talk about Israel.\u201d The campaign, she said, \u201cwas a really good reminder\u201d that \u201cour community is not at all homogeneous.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sometimes, aspects of how politics played out as she engaged with members of the community saddened her. She recalled talking to a group of Jewish seniors, some of whom had been her Hebrew school teachers. They were Conservative party backers. \u201cThere was no amount of knowing me, coming from the Beth Israel synagogue and my connections to Israel, that enabled them to give me a fair hearing.\u201d It was hard, she said. \u201cI felt like they weren\u2019t willing to know me for who I was, or the values that I hold.\u201d<\/p>\n

And there were times in the campaign where Mira had conversations that alarmed her but left her feeling hopeful. When she met with students at King David High School, she was shocked by some inflammatory descriptions of Palestinians. These students said things \u201cthat didn\u2019t make sense, but were clearly coming from a very fear-based place,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Mira stood her ground. \u201cI was really tough with the kids; really challenging them. I wasn\u2019t trying to win over their votes; I was trying to have a real conversation with them about issues.\u201d Later that afternoon, Mira recounted, two kids showed up to volunteer on her campaign. \u201cIt was a reminder,\u201d she said, \u201cthat, while there were a few loud kids with strong opinions, others were thinking critically.\u201d<\/p>\n

Currently on maternity leave from being director of public engagement at the Broadbent Institute, a non-partisan think tank that describes itself as \u201cchampioning progressive change through the promotion of democracy, equality and sustainability,\u201d Mira \u2013 to me \u2013 represents the best our community has to offer when it comes to the sort of critical thinking she describes, and trying to make a difference, even if the nature of the electoral game means that one doesn\u2019t always come out on top.<\/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 <\/em>Jewish Daily Forward, among other publications.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the last federal election, Mira Oreck was the NDP candidate for the riding of Vancouver Granville. (photo from Mira Oreck) Nearly one year after the Canadian federal election, I had a chance to sit down with Mira Oreck (by phone), the NDP candidate for the riding of Vancouver Granville. I had knocked on doors […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[4146,1677,3597],"class_list":["post-21479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-op-ed","tag-federal-election","tag-ndp","tag-politics"],"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\/21479","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=21479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}