Where for Israel foes?

Editorial

The historical association between Jews and the left was the topic of the YIVO Institute’s International Conference on Jews and the Left this month.

Put simply, Judaism and socialism both have an important element of seeking a better world. Eclipsing this simplicity, the complexity of the Jewish relationship with the left was set out in a keynote address at the start of the conference, which made plain the difficulty and sometimes irrationality of Jewish adherence to the more radical elements of the left in the 20th century.

Stalinism should have ended Jewish infatuation with the left, many might say. The founding head of the very organization sponsoring the conference, YIVO – Der Yiddisher Visenshaftlekher Institut, or Jewish Scientific Institute, was murdered by Stalin’s Soviet regime. Yet, after the war, there was an enduring Jewish idealizing of the Red Army as the liberators of Hitler’s easternmost camps.

But the Soviet empire is gone, so what of the Jewish left today? From an American perspective, the idea that the movement is dead – or approaching it – seems folly given recent opinion polls suggesting Barack Obama is headed to receive two of three Jewish votes over Mitt Romney in the November election.

Adam Kirsch, who wrote about the YIVO conference for Tablet, has an intriguing take on this.

“Depending on your point of view,” Kirsch wrote, “the still-durable association of Jews with liberalism and the Democratic Party is a source of either pride or bafflement.... Looked at another way, however, the softening mainstream liberalism of American Jews can be seen as the feeble remnant of what was once a fiery and uncompromising leftism.”

Turning to the Canadian perspective, fiery and uncompromising may not be terms routinely associated with our history and politics, which have tended to be evolutionary, rather than revolutionary. Where some of the most fiery and uncompromising rhetoric has been seen in recent years, however, is over the very terrain inhabited by Jews – Israel, to be specific.

Conservatives under Stephen Harper have stood more fiery and uncompromisingly with Israel than previous governments, Canadian or perhaps any other. Left-wing figures such as Svend Robinson, Libby Davies and many trade unions have waxed fiery and ferocious against Israel.

But is this changing? The left’s incarnation in Canada, the New Democratic party, has just moved into the history-making role of official opposition and potential government. Opinion polls suggest they could best the Conservatives if an election were held today. (It won’t be held today, of course, nor for several more years.)

Subsequent to this history-making advancement, the party elected in Thomas Mulcair a new leader with a record of standing up for Israel in a party and movement where such a position has not been a winning strategy. Of course, this is not why the party elected him; the issue was essentially invisible in the leadership campaign. Be that as it may, the NDP is led by a man with a pro-Israel record.

If Harper’s support for Israel has dragged the Canadian mainstream consensus further toward his position, Mulcair may solidify it, using the issue to prove to Canadians that his party is not a harbor for fiery and uncompromising anti-Israel radicals. He may finally be able to put that fire out, which may make the radicals seek out a new home. But where?

Remember, it was when the NDP was at its lowest ebb that the anti-Israel groups really got their hooks into the party. Now that the Liberal party is at its lowest ebb, leader Bob Rae should be wary of anything that smells like an attempt to drive his weakened party toward radicalized anti-Israel positions. Rae’s record is better than his party’s as a whole, but the anti-Israel groups who radicalized the NDP’s positions were a grassroots movement. They might see the Liberal party as a potential new host.

Coincidentally, an interesting battlefront arose last week when an Ontario court threw out the results of the last federal election in the district of Etobicoke Centre, where Liberal then-MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj, founder of the Canada-Palestine Parliamentary Friendship Association and one of the Liberal party’s dependable critics of Israel, was defeated by 26 votes a year ago. Wrzesnewskyj reportedly spent $200,000 of his own cash on the legal case, suggesting he hopes to return to the now-weaker-than-ever Liberal caucus.

If Mulcair wants to attract many more Canadians to his party, he should hope that a few in his party depart. If the NDP makes a rapprochement with Zionists, it would represent a full-circle back to the Canadian left’s early pro-Israel position and force a reconsideration of the Jewish estrangement from the party. But it will also pose challenges for the anti-Israel elements – and for the Liberal party who may see attempts by disenchanted activists whose leftism is secondary to their anti-Israelism – to alter the traditionally wishy-washy Liberal policy toward Israel into something far more concrete and extreme.

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