A challenge to the leaders of the Jewish community

Letters

Editor: Jews in Canada are under siege. Our positions are becoming increasingly unpopular and I strongly believe there will be dear consequences for us if we don't react. Jewish institutions in Vancouver must create ad-hoc committees in order to mobilize the community to tackle this issue, to educate and inform about Israel, the Jews and the danger of anti-Semitism. You merely need to see Roman Polanski's The Piano to understand that nobody is sheltered when things go wrong, no matter our political affiliations or friendships.

Recently, an important Canadian First Nations leader, David Ahenakew, exposed Jews to hate with an intensity rarely heard in Canada. The distinguished Lebanese ambassador to Canada also accused Canadian Jews and Zionists of dominating the press and determining Canadian international policy. Over the years, First Nations people have had very few relationships with Jews, which might explain Mr. Ahenakew's bigotry. However, there is no such explanation for the Lebanese, who are perceived by the general public as being among the most moderate of the Arabs.

I am concerned that the snake of anti-Semitism is becoming a real threat in our country. It feeds on public apathy and confers the licence to many politicians to take positions unsympathetic to Israel. They don't seem to take the Jewish vote seriously and I believe that this situation has to be confronted.

The public's perspective is based on the delusion that the Jews only arrived in Israel in 1948, where they displaced a teeming Arab population from its rooted homeland since time immemorial. The vast majority of Canadians view the spiral of horror as a wrestling match: the David-like Palestinian refugees crushed by the might of the Goliath-Israelis who want to dominate and confiscate their land with the help of settlers. This perception is fed by Arab propaganda, supported by their local friends from student unions and other pro-Palestinian organizations. This view has become so common that even we, ourselves, are sometimes caught off-guard and question Israel's position.

The truth however is that there really is no cycle of violence. Murders are perpetrated in cold blood and articulated by the Palestinian leadership. They try to gain political advantage by terrorizing Israelis. Little do they know Israel has a secret weapon – ein breira (no choice)!

In The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan tells a true story: A boy who threw a stone at a general's dog was arrested, stripped naked and, before his mother, torn to pieces by a pack of the general's dogs. "I say beforehand that the entire truth is not worth such a price," cries Ivan. "I do not want a mother to embrace the torturer who had her child torn to pieces by his dogs. Is there in the whole world a being that could or would have the right to forgive?" Such is the case of the Palestinians. In a world where Jewish blood is again cheap, we must not remain silent when children are murdered, torn to pieces and maimed by them. Supporting their armed struggle is moral bankruptcy and trying to justify it is being complacent. Every single Israeli deserves the right to live, no less than the Palestinians. Our obligation as individuals and Jews is to extend our solidarity, no matter our political opinions and unmask the defenders of Palestinian cruelty.

The media endorse the Arab version of the Palestinian refugee story. I believe that it is indeed a tragedy and every decent human being is heartbroken to see how Palestinian populations have suffered since the beginning of the intifada. However, all efforts must be made to educate the public of the story behind the story. For this we need perspective and I urge the leaders of the Jewish community to take up this challenge.

It sounds strange that, over the years, Arab propaganda has succeeded in manipulating the public to believe a false history. The propaganda has been swallowed whole.

The myth is that there was an Arab homeland in Western Palestine. The fact is that 100 million refugees moved around the world since the Second World War. Oddly, Arab refugees are seen in a different light from all the other, far more numerous, people who were also displaced. Who were the Arabs who were living within the borders of present-day Israel and where did they come from? Why are they seen differently from other refugees? Why have millions of refugees on this planet been integrated and welcomed but at the same time, the Arab countries have refused to do the equivalent for their Palestinian brothers? Whose interests did abandoning the Palestinians to their desolation advance?

Why is there a double standard where Israel is the concerned? Whose goals converge to de-legitimize Israel's existence and make her the pariah of the civilized world?

Around the time of the independence of the state of Israel in 1948, the overwhelming majority (over 90 per cent) of all the Jewish populations living in Arab countries were expelled and dispossessed by the Muslims and their property plundered. Some of these communities had been living in these countries for more than 2,000 years, long before the ascent of Islam. We are talking about the Arab Jews of Yemen, Aden, Iraq, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Syria, Lebanon and Libya. In all, more than 600,000 men, women and children were left homeless. For every Palestinian refugee, the same number of Jews were expelled from Arab lands.

The effectiveness of the Arab propaganda machinery, however, has obscured all common sense regarding the Arab-Jewish conflict and is based mainly on their success in alterating in the United Nations the definition of what constitutes an Arab refugee from Israel. In other cases, the more or less universally used description of eligibility included those people who were forced to leave "permanent" or "habitual" homes. In the case of the Arab refugees, however, the definition has been broadened to include any person who had been in Palestine for only two years before Israel's statehood in 1948. (Joan Peters, From Time Immemorial) This is a far stretch from the image of Arab people being pushed from plots of land inhabited by them from time immemorial! The truth is that Arab immigration to Palestine between the two world wars was huge.

It hurts to note how selective the awareness is towards human misery. The defenders of rights don't have much unease with China (which has occupied Tibet for more than 50 years), Russia (in Chechnya, Putin doesn't just occupy Grozny, he destroys it), Iraq (Saddam killed many thousands of his own Kurds, among others), Sudan (more than a million Animists and Christians murdered in the Nuba mountains by the Islamic regime in Khartum don't get one millionth the compassion given the 2,000 Palestinian deaths in the intifada).

The most recent act of the Arab propaganda machine is to link public feelings of compassion toward the Palestinian refugees to a vigorous anti-Semitic campaign. The strategy is illustrated by the Lebanese ambassador's interview where he spread the worst conspiracy theories of Jews wanting to dominate the world.

Our duty is to defend ourselves, educate and inform about Israel and the Jews and to confront the danger of anti-Semitism.

Georges Sommer
Richmond

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