{"id":23966,"date":"2017-04-28T03:49:34","date_gmt":"2017-04-28T10:49:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=23966"},"modified":"2017-04-26T12:31:09","modified_gmt":"2017-04-26T19:31:09","slug":"apartheid-impacted-views","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2017\/04\/28\/apartheid-impacted-views\/","title":{"rendered":"Apartheid impacted views"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Barkusky, Green candidate for Vancouver-Quilchena. (photo from Michael Barkusky)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Michael Barkusky was a teenager when he canvassed for Helen Suzman\u2019s anti-apartheid Progressive Party in South Africa\u2019s 1970 election. Now, he is the Green party candidate in Vancouver-Quilchena. An old friend told him, \u201cYou were always good at spotting trends ahead of time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought that was a great compliment,\u201d Barkusky told the Independent<\/em>. \u201cI\u2019m kind of used to being with small parties that everybody writes off as not really relevant yet that, over time, become very relevant.\u201d<\/p>\n

He has given a great deal of thought to the ethical behaviour of governments.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you were a morally aware individual, you kind of knew that there was this huge moral question about how the whole society ran in South Africa,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Barkusky left South Africa in 1980 and came to Vancouver to do a master\u2019s in business administration at the University of British Columbia. He obtained a certified general accountant designation in 1985, the same year he became a Canadian citizen. He has run an accounting practice since then, while also at times working for nongovernmental organizations like the Rainforest Solutions Project and the Coastal First Nations alliance.<\/p>\n

While he said the Green party is seeing a surge in the campaign \u2013 a recent poll showed the party in first place on Vancouver Island \u2013 Barkusky admitted his bid is a longshot. He is running in one of the safest Liberal seats in the province. Vote-splitting may result in interesting upsets in some ridings, but Quilchena would be a shocker.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve taken on a very tough riding,\u201d said Barkusky, who served with incumbent Liberal MLA Andrew Wilkinson on the board of the B.C. Mountaineering Club. \u201cWhat I want to do is have a very issue-oriented, respectful-of-my-opponents contest in which we talk about ideas and we talk about where the province is heading.\u201d<\/p>\n

He wants British Columbians to see the environment and the economy as inextricably related.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople often tend to think of the environment as a side issue, a minor issue in politics, and tend to say, well, the Green party is mostly for that, so it\u2019s not really concerned about the economy,\u201d he said. \u201cIn my view, these things are all very closely interconnected. We believe in an economic strategy that will give us prosperity but not at the expense of our future, and my worry is that the B.C. Liberals, in particular, with their focus on traditional economic indicators \u2013 particularly what will make the GDP go up the most \u2013 give up a tremendous amount in terms of stewardship of our natural capital, or the innate riches that make British Columbia such a spectacular place to live.\u201d<\/p>\n

Addressing recent incidents in Canada and elsewhere, in which Muslims and Jews have been targeted, Barkusky said there are opportunities for intercultural solidarity, adding that it is important that communities stand together at times like these.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of those who are threatening both vulnerable groups are the same people with the same racist attitudes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Confronting prejudice is a matter of education, but it can also be a matter of modeling behaviour, he suggested.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should look to what we can do through education because dealing with it through criminal law is really the last resort. It\u2019s what you do when all else has failed,\u201d he said. \u201cThe education area is where we should be most active. I think we\u2019re doing quite well, really, in teaching tolerance in the schools in a jurisdiction like B.C. I think we can perhaps model it a bit better in our public life and the way we conduct politics. A slightly less sneering, adversarial style of politics would be helpful. In the Jewish community, we can do that, too, in the way that we have our own internal debate as Jews about Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barkusky is well versed in the diversity of discourse in the Jewish community.<\/p>\n

\u201cI went to a Jewish high school in Cape Town, Herzlia High School, and our headmaster was probably more of a Likudnik than a labour Zionist, but my mother was more of a labour Zionist. So, there were always debates \u2026 about South Africa, about Israel, about other things that were going on in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Growing up in the apartheid era caused ambivalent feelings, he said, because Jews \u201chad to deal with our role in a society in which we were actually legally classified with the privileged.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a complex history because Jews were very prominent in the struggle against apartheid, but there were plenty of Jews who thought, \u2018thank God they\u2019re persecuting someone except us.\u2019 They were maybe not enthusiastically participating in making the lives of black people miserable, but they weren\u2019t too concerned about it and were more concerned about whether the establishment of the time might dislike them if they were too strong in their opposition. Those tensions ran through the Jewish community of South Africa the whole time that I lived there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barkusky has a nuanced perspective on the use of the apartheid label against Israel.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo me, apartheid wasn\u2019t just a monstrous system that I read about in a book,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a system that I saw in action.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even so, he rejects the idea that comparisons can\u2019t be made.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can compare anything to anything,\u201d he said. \u201cThe point is, what conclusions do you draw when you compare it?\u2026 I don\u2019t like a simpleminded comparison because the situation is different in a number of ways, the history is different, but I don\u2019t think it\u2019s something that should be silenced.\u201d<\/p>\n

There may, in fact, be something to be learned, he said. The way the current constitution in South Africa was arrived at may have some lessons for a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian situation, he suggested.<\/p>\n

On the issue of the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel, Barkusky said he doesn\u2019t agree, but avoids getting on a moral high horse about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI personally think it\u2019s not the greatest way to conduct politics,\u201d he said. \u201cPersuasion, discussion and education, thinking things through, looking at the evidence, makes much more sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

Boycotts can also harm the people they are intended to help, he warned.<\/p>\n

\u201cI continued to buy South African wines after I moved here from South Africa, not because I particularly wanted to support the government but because I thought that boycotting the wines would put farm workers out of work and the farm workers were mostly not white,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Barkusky blames the Israeli government for some of the criticism aimed at the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do find the current government in Israel so far to the right that it\u2019s very hard to not see them as, in some sense, the author of their own misfortune,\u201d he said, but added: \u201cI think a situation in which Israel is treated as the worst example of human rights abuses on the planet is really just ridiculous. It\u2019s just not in keeping with the evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Barkusky, Green candidate for Vancouver-Quilchena. (photo from Michael Barkusky) Michael Barkusky was a teenager when he canvassed for Helen Suzman\u2019s anti-apartheid Progressive Party in South Africa\u2019s 1970 election. Now, he is the Green party candidate in Vancouver-Quilchena. An old friend told him, \u201cYou were always good at spotting trends ahead of time.\u201d \u201cI thought […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23942,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[6422,3249,4613,4881,3597],"class_list":["post-23966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","tag-british-columbia","tag-elections","tag-green-party","tag-michael-barkusky","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\/23966","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=23966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}