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Politicians speak at AIPAC

Politicians speak at AIPAC

Clockwise, from top left: U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence, Joe Lieberman, Senator Marco Rubio and Senator Cory Booker address attendees of last month’s AIPAC Policy Conference. (photos by Dave Gordon)

U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence, in addition to other ranking American politicians, spoke of their unwavering support for the Jewish state to 18,000 people at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference, in Washington, D.C., March 24-26.

Speech themes revolved around recent rocket attacks against Israeli civilians, the Golan Heights being recognized as Israeli sovereign territory by the United States, and sanctions against Iran. Every official who mentioned BDS, the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel, condemned it.

Much was said about the Democratic congresswoman from Minnesota, Ilhan Abdullahi Omar. Her statements – including “Israel has hypnotized the world” and that AIPAC has influenced U.S. policy through money – have been interpreted as antisemitic by some Jewish leaders.

Pence said, “History has already proven [Donald Trump] to be the greatest friend of the Jewish people and the state of Israel ever to sit in the Oval Office of the White House.”

Among the pro-Israel bona fides of Trump, Pence said the United States shut down the Washington branch of the Palestinian Authority as a consequence for funding terror; ended tax dollar funding for United Nations-funded Palestinian schools; moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem; and recognized the Golan Heights as Israeli territory.

“We stand with Israel because her cause is our cause, her values are our values,” he said.

In addition, Pence talked about the end of the “disastrous nuclear deal with Iran” that has been replaced with “a maximum-pressure campaign” of sanctions, thereby causing Iran’s economy to dip.

“There’ll be no more pallets of cash to the mullahs in Iran,” he said.

In a swipe across the political aisle, Pence said, “It’s astonishing to think that the party of Harry Truman, which did so much to help create the state of Israel, has been co-opted by people who promote rank antisemitic rhetoric and work to undermine the broad American consensus of support for Israel.”

Without mentioning her name, he referred to Omar as “a freshman Democrat in Congress” who “trafficked in repeated antisemitic tropes.”

Former U.S. ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley’s first comments were about what she believes is the UN’s hypocrisy.

“You know, what’s interesting is, at the UN, I can guarantee you this morning it is radio silent,” she said, in reference to the rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel. “They are not saying anything about Hamas, they’re not saying anything about the lives lost, they’re not saying anything. But, if it was any [other] countr[y], they’d be calling an emergency Security Council meeting.”

David Friedman, U.S. ambassador to Israel, claimed that Trump is “Israel’s greatest ally ever to reside in the White House” and, to those who think otherwise, “please, take a deep breath and think about it some more.”

How America is now sanctioning Iran was one example of an Israel-friendly policy. Friedman criticized the previous administration for paying the Islamic Republic $100 billion in the hopes that country would “self-correct.”

“What did Iran do with all its newly found treasure?” he asked. “Did it build up its civilian institutions? Did it improve the quality of life of its citizens?” Instead, he said, it “doubled down on terrorist activity in Yemen, in Iraq and in Lebanon. It increased its stock of ballistic missiles and it invested in military bases in Syria, on Israel’s northern border.”

photo - Protesters at this year’s AIPAC Policy Conference, in Washington, D.C., last month
Protesters at this year’s AIPAC Policy Conference, in Washington, D.C., last month. (photo by Dave Gordon)

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu delivered an address via satellite, initially planning to take the podium in person, but returning to Israel to deal with the rocket attacks.

“The Golan Heights is indispensable for our defence,” he said of the recognition by the United States of the northern land seized by Israel in the Six Day War, in 1967. “It’s part of our history. When you put a shovel in the ground there, what you discover are the ruins of ancient synagogues. Jews lived there for thousands of years and the people of Israel have come back to the Golan.”

Netanyahu said he thought comments like Omar’s are antisemitic.

“Again, the Jews are cast as a force for evil,” he said. “Again, the Jews are charged with disloyalty. Again, the Jews are said to have too much influence, too much power, too much money. Take it from this Benjamin, it’s not about the Benjamins.”

In the session Canada’s Relationship with Israel, the panel included Liberal member of Parliament Anthony Housefather, Conservative MP Erin O’Toole and former Conservative foreign minister John Baird.

Housefather said he believes Israelis do not think there’s a negotiating partner for peace, but they share some blame in the conflict: “The more they create settlements, the less likely there will be peace … they should think carefully before expanding settlements.”

A questioner asked him when the Canadian prime minister would do something “real” for Israel and Housefather noted that, in recent weeks, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau forcefully condemned the BDS movement in a town hall meeting.

Another audience member asked why the Trudeau government continues to fund the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. While acknowledging that UNRWA has “curricula problems” that involve “anti-Jewish, anti-Israel comments, misogynistic comments and anti-gay comments,” he said that the $50 million in funding was just.

Housefather said he had spoken with the head of UNRWA and voiced his “concerns at the slow pace they are making changes in the curricula,” but added that their schools make children “a lot less likely to become terrorists against Israel.”

“Yes to helping them with UN aid programs; no to funding their schools,” said O’Toole. And Baird agreed.

On the topic of a peace plan, O’Toole said he “kept hearing from Palestinians their want for a ‘one-state solution,’” while their government “exerts violence, and does not take care of the needs of their people.”

“I think you’ll see from Israeli leaders that they’re prepared to experience real pain [in concessions],” Baird said, but “Palestinians have to stop the incitement” and the “hate-mongering.”

While several candidates for the Democratic party’s 2020 presidential nomination skipped the conference, leading Democratic figures were prominent at AIPAC, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who insisted no one will be permitted to make Israel a partisan wedge issue.

Dave Gordon is a Toronto-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in more than 100 publications around the world.

Format ImagePosted on April 12, 2019April 10, 2019Author Dave GordonCategories WorldTags AIPAC, Anthony Housefather, antisemitism, BDS, Binyamin Netanyahu, David Friedman, Diaspora, Erin O’Toole, Israel, John Baird, Mike Pence, politics
Iran dominates AIPAC talks

Iran dominates AIPAC talks

Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump upset AIPAC organizers when he criticized President Barack Obama. (photo by David Zam)

There were clear signs of discord in Washington, D.C., as representatives of AIPAC publicly rebuked presidential hopeful Donald Trump after he harshly criticized the sitting president.

At the pro-Israel organization’s policy conference last month, in front of some 18,000 attendees, visibly upset AIPAC president Lillian Pinkus admonished Trump on stage for his remarks a day earlier.

“Whatever policy disagreements we may have, we must not condemn the sitting president on stage,” she said. “There are people in our AIPAC family who were deeply hurt last night and, for that, we are deeply sorry.”

Chairman of the board Robert A. Cohen said that booing and clapping speakers when they attack another person was unacceptable at the event, and that “AIPAC doesn’t pick sides.”

Trump, who was cheered wildly for noting that it was President Barack Obama’s last year in office, said that “Obama rewards our enemies” and “Hillary was a total disaster as secretary of state…. Obama and Hillary have been very bad to Israel. Obama may be the worst thing to happen to Israel.”

Every major party candidate for president spoke at the dais, except the senator from Vermont, Democrat Bernie Sanders, who is Jewish. All candidates who spoke placed heavy emphasis on Iran.

GOP frontrunner Trump didn’t mince words. He called the Iran deal brokered by the P5+1 – the United States, China, Russia, France and the United Kingdom plus Germany – “awful” and “bad for Israel, the Middle East and the world.”

The $150 billion channeled to Iran in the agreement, by his reckoning, was “unbelievable” with “nothing in return,” and that the Islamic Republic will have a nuclear bomb within several years.

As president, Trump said he would “stand up to Iran’s aggression” because “I know how to deal with aggression and that’s why I’ll win.”

The Middle East’s terror activity has Iran’s fingerprints all over it, he continued, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, reward money for Palestinian terrorists, and influence in at least two dozen other countries.

“I will dismantle Iran’s global terror network,” Trump said. “We will enforce this deal like you’ve never seen a contract enforced before.”

The New York billionaire mogul and reality TV host took aim at two other threats to Israel, the United Nations and Palestinian terror activity.

“The UN is incompetent and no friend of Israel,” he said. “A [peace] agreement imposed by the UN would be a total disaster. And the U.S. must use our veto, which I will use 100%.”

The Jewish state, he said, has always been willing to strike a deal with its neighbors, noting that prime minister Ehud Barak in 2000 offered nearly the entire West Bank as a Palestinian state, but the offer was dismissed by then-PLO leader Yasser Arafat. Other times, he said, “Palestinian leadership has rejected very good offers.”

Trump noted that, under his purview, the U.S. embassy would move “to the eternal capital of the Jewish state, Jerusalem.”

Texas Senator Ted Cruz, trailing a distant second to Trump in GOP delegates, began his speech, “America will stand with Israel and defeat Islamic terror.”

He spoke about his three trips to Israel as senator, including a visit to Israeli hospitals that treated Syrian refugees. He noted that he had proposed legislation to ban the Iranian ambassador to the UN from entering the United States since he was involved in the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis. It passed in both the Senate and House.

Taking a jab at the Obama administration, he said it was “unjust” for them to impose a travel ban on Israel in the summer of 2014. He further called out Democrats for boycotting Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s speech last year at AIPAC.

photo - At AIPAC, Democrat frontrunner Hillary Clinton advised a three-pronged approach to global security, focusing on Iran, extremism and the attempts to delegitimize Israel
At AIPAC, Democrat frontrunner Hillary Clinton advised a three-pronged approach to global security, focusing on Iran, extremism and the attempts to delegitimize Israel. (photo by David Zam)

Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential frontrunner, was taken to task for saying that Hamas fires rockets from civilian areas because Gaza is tight for space. “Rather,” said Cruz, “it’s because Hamas are beasts who use human shields.”

As for the “fundamentally immoral” Iran deal, Cruz said he will “rip it to shreds on the first day,” since the Islamic Republic won’t follow it anyway.

“Hear my words Ayatollah Khomeini: If I am president and Iran launches a missile test, we will shoot that missile down,” said Cruz. “And, in January 2017, we will have a commander-in-chief who says under no circumstances will Iran be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons: either you will shut down your nuclear program or we will shut it down for you.”

Cruz compared the Iran deal to the failed 1938 agreement between British prime minister Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler, which led to the Third Reich’s takeover of Czechoslovakia and allowed its continued military build-up.

If elected president, Cruz said he would move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, yank federal funds from schools that boycott Israel and veto any UN unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state.

Governor of Ohio John Kasich, running third in the GOP delegate count, noted his 35-year support for Israel and his role in helping erect a Holocaust monument in his state.

He called for the suspension of the Iranian nuclear deal, particularly after recent test missiles in contravention of international treaties. As president, he would “defeat ISIS and stop arms flows to Hezbollah.”

He also spoke out against the boycott, divestment and sanction movement, and antisemitism on campus. On Israel, he noted the “culture of death that the Palestinian leadership has promoted for decades,” and that “Palestinians cannot continue to promote hatred.” In sum, he called Jerusalem the eternal capital of Israel.

When she took to the stage, Clinton noted that the “the ideological gap between the parties has increased, but there’s still common agreement on Israel.”

She took a three-pronged approach to global security: Iran’s aggression, the growing tide of extremism, and efforts to delegitimize Israel. “The deal with Iran is making the world safer, including Israel,” she said. “The supreme leader still calls all the shots in Iran, but we should support voices who want to bring change in Iran.”

Regarding other parts of the region, she said that “ISIS must not be contained; it must be defeated.”

On the issue of Israel, she noted that Palestinian leadership has to stop inciting violence. “Children should not be taught to hate in schools,” she said, adding that she would oppose any attempts to “push a [unilateral two-state] solution,” including in the UN. “Palestinians should be able to govern themselves in their state,” she said, while adding that Israeli “settlements are not helpful to peace.”

She condemned BDS and said, “we have to fight against it” because “antisemitism has no place in American society.”

Meanwhile, U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden took a risk mentioning to the 18,000 attendees at the policy conference that Israeli “settlements are a barrier in the way of a two-state solution.” That risk was welcomed by a chorus of boos – despite attendees being cautioned by AIPAC leadership to not do so.

Biden insisted that, notwithstanding political differences, the United States is “united in our unwavering commitment to the Jewish state of Israel.”

However, “violent acts of retribution must stop,” he continued, “terror is terror is terror … and it must be stopped.”

The White House “stands with Israel against delegitimization” and believes that “Israel is stronger today because of the Obama-Biden administration,” he said.

Biden touted last year’s Iran deal as a “success,” explaining that many “Iranian facilities are dismantled and destroyed” and that “Iran is further away from the possibility of being nuclear. If Iran violates [the deal] there will be consequences.”

Speaking by video link from Israel, Netanyahu both criticized, and suggested salvaging, the U.S.-brokered Iranian nuclear deal.

“Those who worked for the deal and against the deal can work together to ensure that the deal is followed,” he insisted, noting that, in March, Iran tested a missile that posed a threat to Israel.

“The writing isn’t just on the wall; it’s on the missile,” said Netanyahu.

He said that Israel is singled out for condemnation at the UN and said he hopes the United States will continue its moral voting record at the Security Council.

With regard to Israel’s neighbors, he said Palestinian children are taught to hate, and showed a video of television broadcasts that illustrate his point.

“We cannot compromise with terror and must defeat it,” he said. “We need a two-state solution with a demilitarized Palestinian state.… We are ready for negotiations anywhere and anytime without preconditions.” But, he said, Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority, “isn’t ready or willing to come” to the negotiating table.

David Zam has covered political, cultural and historical events for Landmark Report, including the 50th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery voting rights march as White House-approved press, two AIPAC policy conferences and several other political conventions. He has degrees in history and law.

Format ImagePosted on April 1, 2016March 31, 2016Author David ZamCategories WorldTags AIPAC, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Iran, Israel, Netanyahu
Trump at what cost?

Trump at what cost?

“I didn’t come here tonight to pander to you about Israel,” Donald Trump told the AIPAC conference Monday evening, before proceeding to do exactly that.

In his unique rhetorical way, Trump ticked off every box on the AIPAC agenda, and then some. He also ticked off a number of rabbis and other delegates who condemned and protested his presence at the event. Trump’s history of making statements that are sexist and racist, his sluggishness at disavowing the support of neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klanners, his making fun of a disabled reporter and a litany of other offences convinced some AIPAC attendees that Trump should be either disinvited or boycotted.

They were wrong, because this was an opportunity for Trump to clarify or otherwise explain his behaviors. Of course, he didn’t, which was an opportunity missed. Trump came on – uncharacteristically – with a prepared text distributed in advance to media. What he read was a fulsome reversal of his statement just days earlier that he would be neutral between Israel and the Palestinians.

Trump’s repeated invocation of the term “believe me” is almost a verbal tic and it belies a tendency to express the unbelievable.

“Nobody respects women more than I do,” Trump told CNN Monday night. If we were to believe him, women would be among the only people Trump seems to respect. When any individual criticizes him, Trump lashes out with the most juvenile, personal and insulting terms, not least repeatedly referring to his fellow Republicans Cruz and Rubio as “Lying Ted” and “Little Marco.”

Within days, Trump pivoted from “neutrality” to a no-holds-barred defence of Israel that would make Binyamin Netanyahu (whom Trump calls “Bibby”) blush. The response he received from the AIPAC crowd verged on enthusiastic. Yet his conversion to Zionism may reflect little more than some good advice, a comparatively competent speechwriter and the ability to unabashedly pander.

Trump promised to dismantle the nuclear deal with Iran and he trashed the United Nations. “When I’m president, believe me, I will veto any attempt by the UN to impose its will on the Jewish state,” he said.

He condemned the Palestinian incitement of children to hate Israel and Jews. “In Palestinian textbooks and mosques, you’ve got a culture of hatred that has been fomenting there for years,” he said.

He promised to move the American embassy to Jerusalem.

In what amounted to his first significant expression of foreign policy, Trump waded in deep. He wants to reduce American commitments to NATO, specifically citing NATO’s obligation to defend Ukraine. What he doesn’t understand or doesn’t care about is that the United States and Britain made a deal with Ukraine – then the world’s third-largest nuclear power – to eliminate its arsenal in exchange for a promise of protection. Global reaction to Russian aggression betrayed that promise and Trump wants to rub salt in the wound.

This is an example of Trump’s lack of awareness on international affairs. Yet it is unlikely to hurt him with supporters, who forgive his every error and offence and who sometimes seem to idealize a world free of non-Americans.

On CNN after the speech, Trump was asked about the expressions of support he has received from neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klanners and antisemites. “I don’t want their support,” he said, adding: “I don’t need their support.”

Trump is indeed creaming his opponents in the primaries, and it may be a minor rhetorical thing, but would he take their support if he did need it?

Asked by Wolf Blitzer whether he would condemn violence by his supporters, Trump replied, “Of course I would, 100%, but … I have no control over the people.” Then he went on to note that “these people” have been disenfranchised – they lost their jobs and earn less money now than they did 12 years ago, as though this justified violence.

Had Trump’s AIPAC speech occurred in a vacuum – if he had just landed from the proverbial Mars and not for months been spouting hatred toward Muslims, Mexicans, women and anyone who opposes him – the speech might have deserved the applause it received.

Instead, his words were diametrically opposed to what he has said in the past and, even if they weren’t, they are coming from an individual who has done egregious harm to social relations and human decency in public discourse. Even if Trump said everything Jewish people and other friends of Israel wanted to hear, this would not detract from the other things he has said and the other people – including every Muslim in the world – he has deliberately and maliciously affronted.

“I’m going to be great for Israel,” Trump declared, and maybe he would be. But at what cost to the social fabric of his country and the place of the United States in the world?

“When I say something, I mean it, I mean it,” he crowed, despite his blatant reversals. “Believe me, believe me.”

Format ImagePosted on March 25, 2016March 24, 2016Author The Editorial BoardCategories From the JITags AIPAC, elections, Israel, Trump
Elections will hold surprises

Elections will hold surprises

Tens of thousands, at a rally in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv on March 7, call for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to be replaced in the upcoming elections. The rally, organized by a group called Million Hands, had as its keynote speaker the former head of the Mossad, Meir Dagan. (photo by Ashernet)

Expect surprises in Israel’s March 17 elections, say experts. “If there’s anything we’ve learned over the last decade, it’s that there’s going to be a surprise,” said Yohanan Plesner, a Kadima member of the Knesset from 2007 to 2013 and an aide to prime ministers Ariel Sharon and Binyamin Netanyahu. “Usually the surprise is somewhere in the centre.”

Now president of the Israel Democracy Institute, Plesner was speaking last week at the AIPAC conference in Washington, D.C.

Parties that have defied predictions in recent years include Shinui in 2003, Kadima in 2009 and Yesh Atid in 2013. No commentators are suggesting that any group other than Netanyahu’s incumbent Likud or the coalition of the Labor party and Tzipi Livni known as the Zionist Union will finish first and second. But what happens beneath these two leading contenders will determine who emerges as the country’s next leader.

Kulanu, a brand new party headed by Moshe Kahlon, is one to watch, said Plesner. Kahlon may be poised for a breakthrough because, among other factors, he is renowned for breaking up the cellphone monopoly in Israel, lowering prices for consumers.

The other person to watch, he said, is President Reuven Rivlin. The president may have an extraordinary role this time, despite the fact that the president usually has very little discretion in determining who will form government. But, in 2009, Plesner pointed out, Kadima won more seats than Netanyahu’s Likud, but Netanyahu became prime minister. A similar scenario could happen if the president, in consultation with the smaller parties, concludes that the leader with the second largest number of seats has the greatest chance of forming a relatively stable coalition.

The scenarios are complicated, Plesner said, by the fact that, although Rivlin was seen as the “Likud candidate” for president, Netanyahu did everything to prevent him from becoming president.

Plesner, who served as chief whip of a coalition government, said that “each party has its own hatreds within,” making coalition scenarios unpredictable. Agreements may not fall directly on ideological lines.

A national unity government of the two largest parties, he said, is something both leaders have ruled out which, he joked, means it might happen.

Also in the race is Avigdor Lieberman’s Israel Beteinu party, which began as a largely Russian movement but has expanded to welcome other voters with hawkish views.

Naftali Bennett’s Jewish Home party, which gets most of its support from the national religious movement and settlers, is still something of a force on the right, while Meretz, a dovish left-wing party could take a half dozen seats or so.

Yair Lapid, who leads Yesh Atid, a secularist upper-middle-class movement, is another leader who could benefit from last-minute movement among the 20 percent of voters who remain undecided, most of whom, Plesner said, are in the centre. Plesner senses that Lapid will gain momentum on social and economic issues including the cost of housing.

The ultra-Orthodox parties include United Torah Judaism, which is Ashkenazi, and Shas, which is Sephardi. Yachad, which is trying to unite modern Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox, is viewed as outside the mainstream because it includes members of the ultra-nationalist (Meir) Kahane movement.

In terms of issues, security is significant, but not because of deep divisions.

“There is little if any dispute around most of the security issues of Israel,” Plesner said. Therefore, it becomes mainly a question of competence. “Who do Israelis trust?” he asked. And who can generate trust with international allies?

Another issue is support for “remote settlements” beyond the security barrier, which could prove the dividing line between left and right, he said.

On the issue of a united Jerusalem, Plesner said this is an area of disparity between what politicians think and what they say. Most do not see the issue beyond symbolism, he said, but there is a significant chunk of municipal Jerusalem that is not symbolically significant. After 1967, a conglomeration of annexed neighborhoods far bigger than historical Jerusalem was brought into the municipality beyond the Old City and the “holy basin,” including refugee camps. The municipality now counts 300,000 residents of Israel who are not citizens.

This election, the threshold for getting into the Knesset has increased to 3.4 percent of the vote, meaning parties that do not achieve that level of support will not elect a single member. As a result, the Arab parties have banded together under a single umbrella with the hope that they will get some traction.

Arab Israelis have far lower voter turnout numbers than Jewish Israelis, but if Arabs increase participation, Plesner estimates that the Arab bloc could get as many as 14 or 15 seats, which would tip the balance between the left and right blocs. However, the Arab parties have said they would not join a coalition, though they could help the president select the next prime minister.

Natan Sachs, a foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Centre for Middle East Policy, tried to explain the mindset of right-wing and left-wing Israeli voters. In addition to being generally hawkish, he said, the right is acutely aware of the dangers presented by long-term occupation and the potential for control over millions of non-citizen Palestinians, but they are sanguine about time and demography, he said, believing that Israel is getting stronger and there is no need to rush any potential resolution to the occupation. He said the left views the occupation of the West Bank as a crisis and believes something must be done quickly, whether ideal or not, rather than waiting and hoping for an ideal resolution. In general, Sachs said, the more talk there is about foreign affairs, the better it is for the right.

Other issues include the conscription of religious men for service in the Israel Defence Forces, which is “a huge issue of principle,” Sachs said, but also a practical matter of bringing the ultra-Orthodox into mainstream society and the economy.

Israelis vote on March 17, but it could take days (or longer) for a new government to emerge from the mix of results.

Pat Johnson is a Vancouver writer and principal in PRsuasiveMedia.com.

Format ImagePosted on March 13, 2015March 12, 2015Author Pat JohnsonCategories IsraelTags AIPAC, Israeli election, Meir Dagan, Natan Sachs, Yohanan Plesner
All ears on Netanyahu talk

All ears on Netanyahu talk

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu addresses AIPAC. (photo by Amos Ben Gershom IGPO via Ashernet)

Washington, D.C.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu addressed the AIPAC Policy Conference Monday, presaging his address to the U.S. Congress Tuesday. “Never has so much been written about a speech that hasn’t been given,” he joked, referencing the controversy around his visit.

Netanyahu said the speech was not intended to show disrespect to U.S. President Barack Obama. “I deeply appreciate all that President Obama has done for Israel: security cooperation, intelligence sharing, support at the UN, and much more, some things that I, as prime minister of Israel, cannot even divulge to you because it remains in the realm of the confidences that are kept between an American president and an Israeli prime minister,” he said. “I am deeply grateful for this support, and so should you be.”

He said his purpose in coming was to “speak up about a potential deal with Iran that could threaten the survival of Israel.”

As prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu said, he has a moral obligation to speak up. “For 2,000 years, my people, the Jewish people, were stateless, defenseless, voiceless. We were utterly powerless against our enemies who swore to destroy us. We suffered relentless persecution and horrific attacks. We could never speak on our own behalf, and we could not defend ourselves.

“Well, no more, no more,” he said. “The days when the Jewish people are passive in the face of threats to annihilate us, those days are over.”

Of the controversy that surrounds his visit, and the apparent rift it illuminates, Netanyahu took the opportunity to itemize a long list of historical disagreements between the two allies.

“In 1948, Secretary of State [George] Marshall opposed David Ben-Gurion’s intention to declare statehood. That’s an understatement. He vehemently opposed it. But Ben-Gurion, understanding what was at stake, went ahead and declared Israel’s independence,” said Netanyahu.

“In 1967, as an Arab noose was tightening around Israel’s neck, the United States warned prime minister Levi Eshkol that if Israel acted alone, it would be alone. But Israel did act – acted alone to defend itself.”

He noted, “In 1981, under the leadership of Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Israel destroyed the nuclear reactor at Osirak: the United States criticized Israel and suspended arms transfers for three months. And, in 2002, after the worst wave of Palestinian terror attacks in Israel’s history, Prime Minister [Ariel] Sharon launched Operation Defensive Shield. The United States demanded that Israel withdraw its troops immediately, but Sharon continued until the operation was completed.”

The reason he mentioned all this history, he said, was to make a point. “Despite occasional disagreements, the friendship between America and Israel grew stronger and stronger, decade after decade. And our friendship will weather the current disagreement, as well, to grow even stronger in the future. And I’ll tell you why. Because we share the same dreams. Because we pray and hope and aspire for that same better world. Because the values that unite us are much stronger than the differences that divide us. Values like liberty, equality, justice, tolerance, compassion.”

On Tuesday, Netanyahu addressed Congress, thanking Obama and the United States for support. “This Capitol dome helped build our Iron Dome,” he said.

The day before Purim, he made a parallel between Haman and Ayatollah Khamenei and outlined a litany of Iran’s sins. He warned that the agreement being negotiated “doesn’t block Iran’s path to the bomb, it paves Iran’s path to the bomb.”

If all else fails, the prime minister warned, Israel will do what it needs to do. “For the first time in 100 generations, we the Jewish people can defend ourselves,” he said. “Even if Israel has to stand alone, Israel will stand.” However, he added that he knows Israel does not stand alone because it has the support of the United States, an assertion that received an ovation from the combined senators and congresspeople.

Top of agenda

Fears that the controversy over Netanyahu’s speech to Congress could fragment the historic support for Israel across Democratic and Republican members of Congress pushed bipartisanship up the agenda of the 16,000-delegate AIPAC conference, which ran Sunday to Tuesday.

Former CNN anchor Frank Sesno interviewed Democratic Senator Ben Cardin and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham on stage at the conference, primarily about Iran’s nuclear program. Both politicians were emphatic that the pro-Israel consensus would withstand the tempest.

Cardin insisted that a final agreement must be transparent and allow inspectors on the ground throughout Iran. He favors increased sanctions on Iran if no deal is reached by the March 24 deadline. He said the only reason Iran is negotiating in the first place is because of sanctions and the economic isolation they have put on the country. “We’ve got to keep the heat on,” he said.

“Diplomacy would be the right answer, rather than war,” Graham said, adding that Congress should have the right to vote on the deal. “A bad deal is a nightmare for us, Israel and the world.” He warned that if Iran were to get a nuclear weapon it would lead to a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, with the Sunni countries seeking the same weaponry.

On the reactions to Netanyahu’s visit, the men were unanimous.

“Don’t lose focus,” Cardin said. “The bad guy is Iran.” He urged AIPAC delegates to put pressure on their members of Congress to support proposed legislation that would make it difficult or impossible for countries that boycott Israel to do business with the United States.

Graham, who is chair of the Subcommittee on the Department of State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs, received an ovation when he threatened to cut off money to the UN if vilification of Israel in the General Assembly continues.

The bipartisanship flag was waved again later in the day when Representative Steny Hoyer, the Democratic whip in the House of Representatives, and Representative Kevin McCarthy, the Republican majority leader in the house, spoke.

Lawfare not fair

The 1975 UN General Assembly resolution equating Zionism with racism is that body’s most notorious attack on Israel, said Brett Schaefer, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, but there have been 20 condemnatory resolutions against Israel just in this session of the GA alone, compared with three condemnatory resolutions for every other nation.

Likewise, the UN Human Rights Council, he said, has a disproportionate focus on Israel, while ignoring serious human rights abuses elsewhere. The council’s standing agenda has one permanent item on Israel and another item covering every other country on earth.

These institutional attacks on Israel began before the latest round of “lawfare,” Palestinian leaders’ attempts to gain international recognition without negotiating directly with Israel. Schaefer outlined a long list of successful and unsuccessful attempts by the Palestinians to gain legitimacy through the UN and its agencies. Yet such efforts are in direct violation of peace negotiations, which are premised on mutual recognition and negotiation, he said.

While Palestine has been recognized by UNESCO, the UN body on culture, education and science, Schaefer said Palestine is highly unlikely to be recognized as a full member of the GA because membership must be recommended by the Security Council to the assembly and the United States would likely veto such a move.

“What this is about is Palestinians getting what they want without compromise,” he said, noting that the Palestinian leadership has prepared their people to expect nothing less than complete victory and to view compromise as betrayal. However, Schaefer added, “They’ve been pretty successful so far.” The international community is “enabling Palestinians” in avoiding peace negotiations, he said. This includes the Obama administration, according to Schaefer, which puts pressure on Israel to compromise, but not on the Palestinians. “The Palestinians see no downside to what they’re doing right now,” he said, adding that there does not appear to be any reason to change course.

Gil Troy, a professor of history at McGill University, said the UN was founded as a great healing, redeeming instrument promoting the universality of human rights, but it is now a “Third World Dictators’ Debating Society.” A coalition of Soviet-led developing countries hijacked the UN from the democracies decades ago, he said.

With 193 member-states now, Troy said, the UN represents 193 forms of nationalism, but there is only one form of nationalism that is delegitimized by the GA – the Jewish nationalism called Zionism.

A conundrum for Israel in all of this is that the UN is widely respected worldwide. “The United Nations is the greatest social services agency the world has ever seen,” Troy said. For the overwhelming majority of the world, it is a great organization helping their daily lives, therefore, if the UN hates Israel, Israel must be evil.

Schaefer said Palestinian leaders have benefited from their position as something between a government and a figurehead. “Palestinians have achieved some aspects of self-government but they don’t have any of the responsibilities of government,” he said. UNRWA and other international agencies use foreign aid to run the health, education and civil infrastructure in Palestine, so the Palestinian leaders do not have to take responsibility for their people. He said the world should force the leaders to govern their people.

Schaefer suggested that the United States begin using its own power at the UN. “The United States needs to elevate awareness among other countries that their votes at the General Assembly matter,” he said. There used to be a rule about aid to countries that do not vote with the Americans consistently, but that has been rescinded, he said.

Canada, eh?

An AIPAC session on relations between Ottawa and Jerusalem drew a respectable audience – mostly Canadians but a significant number of Americans as well – and this itself is a sign of Canada’s changed roles in the world, said Jonathan Kay. “No one would have cared what Canada thought 10 years ago,” he said.

Kay, editor of The Walrus and former editor of the National Post’s comments section, was joined on a panel by B.C. author Terry Glavin.

While Prime Minister Stephen Harper is widely credited (or condemned) for shifting Canada’s position to be more pro-Israel, Kay noted it was former Liberal prime minister Paul Martin who changed Canada’s voting patterns at the UN. Kay said he sees this shift as one of the most abrupt changes in foreign policy he’s ever seen. Canadian voting policy had been in line with European nations, he said, which meant generally anti-Israel, but it is now the most “doctrinaire pro-Israel country in the world.”

Glavin said the shift did not come from the top down. Changes in the views of the Canadian general public have been seismic, he said. Canadians had clung to the idea that their country is one of “peacemakers, not warmongers,” an “honest broker” and “not those vulgar Americans.”

As well, the presence in the Liberal and New Democratic parties of a small group of vocal anti-Israel members went largely unchecked until after the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001, when there was a significant shift in what Canadians were willing to accept in terms of radical foreign-policy views, Glavin said. “Most Canadians had enough by about 2006, 2007,” he added.

The Conservative party that Harper leads is technically less than 20 years old. When the Conservatives won a majority in 2011, Glavin said, some Canadians were waiting for the creation of a “Pentecostalist Taliban State.” Instead, he said, the country has accepted thousands of gay refugees, increased aid to Palestinians and focused on maternal health in the developing world.

Kay put it more succinctly, calling the Conservatives socially liberal on gay rights and abortion in a way that has no analogue in the United States. He characterized Canada for his American audience as “like one big Vermont,” and said the Conservative government accepts gay marriage as a given and, “cats aren’t marrying dogs or whatever.”

On the Israel front, Glavin said Harper has made clear that the struggle is between “free people and tyrants,” not between Israelis and Palestinians. The engagement in Afghanistan has also changed Canadians’ views of foreign affairs, he added.

Kay believes that the 1956 Canadian “invention” of peacekeeping was a stale dogma that Canadians cherished but were eventually prepared to abandon as the country became more confident. As the threats in the world, particularly radical Islam, increased, Canadians took a different view of their own role.

Will things change if this year’s election is won by Justin Trudeau, whom Glavin said some Canadians view as a “foppish drama teacher snowboarder”?

Kay predicts Trudeau would essentially ignore the Middle East. “To the extent that he knows about stuff, it’s domestic stuff,” Kay said.

Kay credits the CBC for moderating what was once a reliably anti-Israel bias, but Glavin raised a recent incident in which CBC television host Evan Solomon asked then foreign minister John Baird if he thought it was OK to appoint a Jewish person, Vivian Bercovici, as ambassador to Israel. Glavin said that the prime minister recently appointed Kevin Vickers, the heroic sergeant-at-arms who killed the terrorist on Parliament Hill last year, ambassador to Ireland and nobody questioned the fact that an Irish Catholic was being appointed to Canada’s highest office in Dublin.

Baird reflects

Recently resigned foreign affairs minister Baird rejected the idea that strong support for Israel has damaged Canadian relations with other countries, saying that Canada has better relations with the Arab world now than it has had in years.

As foreign affairs minister, he said, his job was to promote Canadian values and interests. Supporting Israel, he said, is where those two intersect.

On Iran, Baird said, history should provide an object lesson. Hitler published Mein Kampf years before he began the “Final Solution.” The world was warned. Now Iran is promising to wipe Israel off the map.

“We’ve got to take that incredibly seriously,” he said.

Pat Johnson is a Vancouver writer and principal in PRsuasiveMedia.com.

Format ImagePosted on March 6, 2015March 4, 2015Author Pat JohnsonCategories WorldTags AIPAC, Barack Obama, Ben Cardin, Binyamin Netanyahu, Brett Schaefer, Gil Troy, John Baird, Jonathan Kay, lawfare, Lindsey Graham, Pat Johnson, Terry Glavin, UN, United Nations

Bipartisan support of Israel

The controversy around Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s speech to the U.S. Congress this week was so fraught with partisan rancor – or at least with punditry alleging partisan rancor – that the theme at the AIPAC conference in Washington, which immediately preceded the prime minister’s address, was “all bipartisanship all the time.”

Democratic U.S. Senator Ben Cardin and Republican Senator Lindsay Graham opened the event Sunday morning with emphatic assertions that American support for Israel overrides all partisan politics. The message was repeated later in the day by top Democratic and Republican officials from the House of Representatives. Messages of cross-partisan rah-rah for Israel were featured in many of the conference speakers’ messages and on the massive 360-degree screens encircling the U.S. capital’s cavernous convention centre. The American ambassador to the United Nations made the same case.

As the country’s greatest ally in the raucous Middle East, Israel is somewhat akin in the American political culture to the U.S. military – one can criticize policies and politicians, but it is de rigueur to restate philosophical support for Israel as a great ally and for the right of Israel to defend its citizens.

This sort of bipartisanship has not always been the case in Canada, which has a very different perspective on foreign affairs and, sometimes, on Israel. But that has changed, according to a panel of Canadians who addressed the conference.

Shimon Fogel, chief executive officer of Canada’s Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, moderated a session featuring Jonathan Kay, editor of The Walrus magazine and former comment page editor of the National Post, and Terry Glavin, a Victoria-based commentator and author.

“Israel has won the battle of ideas in Canada,” Kay said.

While many credit Prime Minister Stephen Harper with leading the change, both men see a deeper shift in public opinion. Glavin called it “tectonic.”

The change is due to a few things, the two commentators agreed.

Anti-Zionism comes in a grab bag with anti-Americanism, Kay said, and Canadian anti-Americanism is in freefall since Barack Obama became U.S. president and Stephen Harper became Canadian prime minister. (It’s hard to condemn Americans over, say, environmental issues when Obama vetoes the pipeline Harper backs.)

The rise of social media has also played a back-door role. The CBC was routinely criticized for being anti-Israel a few years back, but the social media backlash every time biased reporting occurred – aided by groups like Honest Reporting – has led to fairer coverage.

“I actually find the CBC’s coverage of Israel pretty good,” said Kay.

The 9/11 terror attacks also provided a major impetus for changing Canadian views of friends and enemies. But the Canadian military engagement in Afghanistan perhaps drove the major shift of opinion, said Glavin. Two generations of Canadians had not seen active wartime mobilization. The fight against radical Islam, in the form of the Taliban, changed perceptions of global issues, including Israel’s struggle against nominally different but ideologically parallel enemies.

Where anti-Zionism was most successful – on university campuses – most students now roll their eyes at the “trite and ritualized” debate on both sides, said Kay. In terms of professors supporting the BDS movement, he added, it is the “least consequential” academic organizations making the case. And gay rights groups opposing Israel are “underemployed” activists who have won most of what they were demanding.

Significantly, he continued, at the national level, the elements of the Liberal and New Democratic parties that once condemned Israel for every imaginable crime have been reined in by their parties. Notoriously anti-Israel NDP MP Svend Robinson is gone from the scene. His ideological successor in anti-Zionism, Libby Davies, has announced she will not seek re-election in Vancouver East, although Kay said she has already been “defanged” by party leader Thomas Mulcair, who Kay said makes no apologies for his support for Israel.

Glavin noted that the Arab Spring, which represented the rising of 300 million more or less enslaved people, made it “difficult to make the case that Israel is the big problem in the Middle East.”

Both men noted that the shift began with Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin, under whose leadership Canada changed its voting patterns at the United Nations. The pro-Israel position accelerated under Harper, particularly after the 2011 election when the Conservatives won a majority and John Baird was appointed foreign affairs minister. Baird, who left politics this year, was greeted with a hero’s welcome at the AIPAC conference.

While Canadians are proud to be different than Americans on many fronts, the consensus on Israel that has reigned in the United States is now dominant in Canada, as well.

Posted on March 6, 2015March 4, 2015Author The Editorial BoardCategories From the JITags AIPAC, Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel, Jonathan Kay, Terry Glavin

J Street uniquely set apart for exclusion

The self-aggrandizingly and inelegantly named Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations last week voted to bar J Street from membership in the umbrella organization.

There are 50 full-fledged members of the Conference and four adjunct members, representing a wide swath of ideology, from American Friends of Likud to Workmen’s Circle and American Friends of Peace Now. But no J Street. One might think that the criteria for membership in the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations might simply be that the organization is American, Jewish, major and has a president. Not so.

In an oblique statement after the vote, the Conference said it would continue to represent the “consensus” viewpoint of American Jewry. But that consensus may be crumbling. Opinion polls suggest half of American Jews do not believe Israel is doing enough to hasten peace. And more significant are the congealing of attitudes of younger American Jews.

Formed just six years ago, J Street has leapt into the conversation about Israel, seeking an alternative position to the longstanding AIPAC. J Street has often been critical of Israeli policies and sympathetic to Palestinian initiatives. Generally perceived to be a left-leaning entity, J Street has flourished especially among young American Jews, with 60 campus-based chapters now in existence.

Jewish young people in North America do not subscribe to the circle-the-wagons and don’t-make-trouble strategies of their parents and grandparents. As indicated by the Open Hillel movement, among other recent developments, young Jews demand less fettered discussion on topics of importance to them and to Israel.

The Conference may have made a very short-sighted decision that risks alienating more than just the swath of Jews (however large they may be) who subscribe to J Street’s ideology. They risk alienating Jews who subscribe to a more basic and profoundly Jewish precept: free-flowing debate. This is arguably a far larger demographic.

For some Jews, there is plenty to disagree with in J Street’s platform, as there is in the philosophy of many of the member organizations. Yet J Street, despite the wide spectrum of religious and political voices included under the Conference umbrella, is uniquely set apart for exclusion.

The vote reinforces the stereotype that the (North) American Jewish community is insular in its ideology and unquestioning in its allegiance to the policies of the government of Israel. This is a stereotype that is belied, on the one hand, by the range of ideologies already reflected in the Conference and by the diversity of debate nurtured in these pages and forums like it. Yet it is a statement of intolerance and narrow-mindedness, perhaps also of fear and parochialism, that the diverse voices under the Conference umbrella could not tolerate the voice of J Street.

The vote also negates the wholly pragmatic possibility that engaging with J Street could draw them closer to what the Conference claims are the mainstream Jewish American values. After all, J Street wants to be a part of the organization that claims to be the voice of the Jewish consensus.

Just as the uproar was reaching its crescendo, an utterly bizarre thing happened. On Monday, the Conference ran full-page ads in the New York Times and USA Today marking Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israel’s 66th birthday as a state. The costly ads were funded by the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust. Far be it for us to speak ill of the dead, but under the circumstances there was something delicious about the funding for this print media extravaganza. Leona Helmsley, who passed away in 2007, was a notorious and widely reviled New York hotelier dubbed by tabloids “The Queen of Mean.” In the 1980s, she was sentenced to 16 years in prison for more than 30 counts of tax fraud, mail fraud and other corruption offences. (She served 18 months.) During the trial, a former housekeeper reported that Helmsley had said, “We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.”

On her death, Helmsley left a $12 million trust fund to her Maltese dog, Trouble. The Helmsley Charitable Trust, which paid for Monday’s newspaper spreads, was estimated at her death to be worth between $5 and $8 billion and was to be allocated largely to the care of dogs.

It may seem a diversion to draw the dead hotelier into this debate, no matter how Cruella de Vil-lian she may have been. Yet under the circumstances, it speaks to the judgment of the Conference.

At the very moment when they are at the centre of a firestorm over their capricious determination of who and what constitutes “mainstream” American Jewish values, they make one of their most visible public pronouncements ever, in the process demonstrating their willingness to be associated in the broadest American public mind with the corrupt, notorious Leona Helmsley, but not with the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” J Street.

This is the consensus voice of Jewish America?

Posted on May 9, 2014May 8, 2014Author The Editorial BoardCategories From the JITags AIPAC, American Friends of Likud to Workmen’s Circle, American Friends of Peace Now, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, J Street, Leona Helmsley, Open Hillel
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