anti-Israel

Isolated, tired, disappointed

A “Toronto for Palestine” protest Oct. 28, 2023. In the last six months, across Canada, such protests have often featured calls for violence against or the death of Jews. (photo by Sikander Iqbal)

In the past six months, protesters have targeted Jewish community buildings and synagogues in Montreal and the Toronto area. Jewish student group Hillel has also been a prime target for anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiment at Canadian universities, including in Vancouver. Similar protests caused the Art Gallery of Ontario to cancel an event with the Canadian and Italian prime ministers over security concerns. A man in Vancouver was charged with hate-related crimes over the defacing of Israeli hostage posters.

These are just a few examples of organized anti-Israel protests, often with calls for violence against or the death of Jews, on the streets and campuses across the country. Much of this activity is met with silence or borderline anti-Jewish remarks from many elected officials and leaders.

Trans and queer rights are also under attack in Canada with the premier of Alberta’s recent announcement of sweeping new anti-trans policies and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe’s use last year of the notwithstanding clause in the Charter to push through a law requiring parental consent for children under 16 who want to change their names or pronouns at school.

The confluence of these events and the ongoing need to carefully navigate the intersectionality of their identities has left many queer Jews feeling isolated, tired and disappointed.

Queer communities in Canada have long trended toward a pro-Palestinian point of view, often reflected in clashes over whether certain Jewish groups should be allowed to march in pride parades, Aviva Rathbone, board chair of JQT, a Vancouver-based Jewish queer and trans organization, told the Independent.

“Right now, what it means is that many of the Jews in the queer community, especially Israelis, but also Jews who would maybe call themselves Zionists or who feel complex about the situation in Israel and Gaza, are not welcome in queer communities,” she said.

“I did not know there was such thing as an anti-Zionist Jew until I moved to Canada,” said Ari Fremder, a 33-year-old who works in Vancouver’s animation industry. Fremder is originally from Zimbabwe.

As a trans person who is also autistic and introverted, Fremder said, they don’t leave their house very often anymore because of the anti-Jewish protests, posters and stickers – that frequently incite violence against Jews – in their neighbourhood.

They used to go to local queer events but said they don’t feel safe anymore, as many groups are pro-Palestinian and openly state Zionists are not welcome.

“I feel a lot safer being queer in the Jewish community than I feel safe being Jewish in the queer community,” said Jessie, a 21-year-old student and environmental activist in Ontario, who asked not to use their real name.

As one of few Jewish queer people in Halifax, Schuyler H. Smith said they are facing “more hate” than they’ve ever faced in that city.

The 33-year-old diversity consultant agreed that it’s more comfortable to be part of a Jewish than a queer community right now. They will, often with trepidation, reach out privately when they see antisemitic comments and remarks from queer community members, to try to dispel myths about Jews as white colonialists or as non-indigenous to Israel, for example.

Smith hopes one-on-ones can make people think twice before posting negative comments or memes about Jews.

Anti-trans policies in Alberta and Saskatchewan, attacks and protests at drag queen story times and other “parental rights” actions across the country are also taking a toll on members of the LGBTQ2S+ community.

“I’m scared, honestly, for young trans people who need this care and are being interfered with by politicians,” said Cas Allen, a 21-year-old university student in Victoria who says access to hormone blockers changed his life when he was 15.

Ezra, a 39-year-old trans teacher in Calgary, who prefers not to use his real name, said the government is pushing a lot of misinformation, but he’s heartened by the pushback from the queer community.

He’s committed to being a visible queer influence in his school, which has a high number of new Canadian immigrants.

“If there were any queer kids in the class, they could see themselves reflected,” he said, “and [I can give] them a safe adult to confide in [while] they decided who they are.”

Allen, who grew up in a religious Jewish family in Alberta, said since he transitioned, he has “recreated” his queer Jewish identity “from the ground up” but he’s once again finding it “complicated and messy” to reconcile both those parts of himself.

He said he feels isolated and unable to talk about his feelings regarding Israel and his Jewishness to the LGBTQ2S+ people he knows. He said the only person he can really confide in is his twin sister.

Queer spaces on university campuses tend to be very pro-Palestinian and are forcing students to choose between their Jewishness and being queer, said Rabbi Seth Goren, executive director of Jewish student group Hillel Ontario, which has a presence at nine universities in the province.

“I think that’s a choice that queer Jewish students shouldn’t have to make,” he said.

Many Jewish students feel like there is no place where the conflict isn’t swirling around them, added Rabbi Kylynn Cohen of Hillel BC. She said she’s had to help students who, after Oct. 7, couldn’t go to classes because of the anti-Jewish rhetoric, both from student groups and in classrooms.

Cohen said she sees more Jewish students hanging out in the Hillel building on the University of British Columbia campus, seeing it as a safe space. Many queer students have told her they go to straight bars to unwind now rather than congregating in gay spaces.

photo - Vancouver skyline at night — From Vancouver to Halifax, many queer Jews are feeling unsafe and isolated because of the increase in anti-Jewish and anti-trans sentiment since the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack on Israel and the ensuing Israel-Hamas war. *(photo by Maximilian Ruther / Pexels)*

Many student-run groups and education-related unions have come out with strong anti-Israel statements. Six Canadian universities are facing class action lawsuits over anti-Jewish hate speech, threats against Jewish students on campus, and the silencing of Jewish voices.

There are also dozens of reports of Jewish students being shouted at, punched and spat on by anti-Israel protesters at universities across the country. Ontario student Jessie said, even though they’re at a university with a large Jewish population, there is constantly an “uncomfortableness” between their two intersecting identities.

Like many LGBTQ2S+ Jews, their stance on Israel is multi-faceted but they said they’re frustrated and have lost friends in the queer community who aren’t open to the nuances of how different Jewish people are feeling or to seeing the Jewish community as anything other than homogenous “white settler colonialist[s].”

Jessie wears a Star of David necklace but said they now often hide or remove it, including during their local drag king performances at which other performers have made pro-Palestinian tributes. They say they’d be “canceled” if they shared their support for the hostages or Israeli citizens during a show.

“There’s no space even for me to mourn or to acknowledge my feelings and what’s happening,” said Jessie.

There are, however, some Jewish queers for whom the past few months have been a time of solidarity and community building.

Non-binary Toronto artist Sadie Epstein-Fine said they are Jewish but were raised as an anti-Zionist. They’re a member of a group called Jews Say No to Genocide, whose membership is almost all queer Jews. Since Oct. 7, they say they’ve been “entirely surrounded by queer Jews” in a busy, activist environment.

They admit to looking white and acknowledge the privilege that brings, also recognizing that antisemitism is on the rise but saying they’ve been fortunate not to have felt it personally.

“We’re more concerned about Palestinian safety than we are about our safety,” Epstein-Fine said of their group members.

Beyond campuses, the past six months have seen bomb threats and attacks against Jewish schools and businesses, as well antisemitic graffiti and a rising number of other hate crimes aimed at Jews across the country. Police forces in some cities have enlarged their hate crimes units and set up hate-crime reporting centres in Jewish areas.

Darren Sukonick, 53, a Toronto businessman who has been involved with Jewish charities and community groups for decades, said he was surprised and disappointed at how widespread and swift anti-Jewish sentiment was across Canada after Oct. 7. He said he never thought he’d ever experience levels of hate like he’s seeing now.

“It was like being on a hike, turning over a log and seeing all this vermin crawling out from under it. That’s what it felt like,” he said.

On the other hand, Sukonick said many non-Jewish friends have reached out and shown support.

Calgary teacher Ezra said he frequently hears racist and hate speech about Jews, but not aimed at him, from his Grade 7 students. When he hears it, he addresses it with the kids in an effort to get them to see different points of view.

Sometimes, it’s easier to get out of bed and deal with all the negativity being hurled at both the trans and Jewish communities, said Ezra. Other days, he said, it takes a greater toll on his mental health.

Gail J. Cohen is an award-winning Toronto-based writer, editor and communicator.

Protests, picketing alarm Jews

Screenshot of Nelson City Council’s Oct. 22, 2023, meeting. Left to right, Topaz Zafrir, Yael Finer and Judy Banfield of the Kootenay Jewish Community Association present their concerns about the rise in anti-Israel and antisemitic events to the council.

Last October, as tensions in Canada were mounting over the Israel-Hamas war, three members of the Kootenay Jewish Community Association in Nelson paid a visit to the city council meeting to convey a request: that the council refrain from taking sides when it came to the emotionally charged protest rally that had taken place the day before. Nelson residents Judy Banfield, Yael Finer and Topaz Zafrir said they were also there to ask the police to continue its protection of Jewish community events, as it had in previous years. “We are very grateful for that,” Banfield said. “Right now, our community is frightened.”

The week before the meeting, Hamas had called to its supporters for a “day of rage.” The response was swift in Nelson, a college town that has seen an escalation of pro-Palestinian sentiment and anti-Israel demonstrations in recent years. About a hundred people turned out to hear speakers who gave accounts of what they believed was happening in Gaza. According to Kootenay Jewish community leader Yael Finer, the presentations included assertions about Israel’s role in Gaza that had already been debunked. The purpose of the rally, she felt, was to incite antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment in the city. Finer, an Israeli-Canadian who moved to Nelson in 2016, told the council that one of the speakers also made a pitch on behalf of Hamas.

“A final speaker said, ‘Don’t hate Hamas. They’re our brothers, our sons, our fathers,’” Finer recounted.

“The event was supposed to be about peace and education,” she said. “I actually reached out to the organizer, asking to speak at the event as one of the Israeli or Jewish [residents].”

Finer told the council that she empathizes with the Palestinian people and shares concern over the current situation in Gaza. She had gone to the rally to learn. She said her request to speak at the event was denied.

Finer added that one of the speakers was a city council member, “creating a perception of legitimacy” for the demonstration. The mayor later released a statement clarifying that only the mayor’s office represented the views of the city government, including at public events.

Not a new phenomenon

Banfield, who is a former Selkirk College instructor and has lived in Nelson since 1990, said antisemitism isn’t a new phenomenon in the city. She said the planned speech in 2013 of Greta Berlin, an accused antisemite, put the community on edge. Eventually, the Nelson library rescinded the offer for her to speak, but she was later offered a venue at the United Church. Although the gathering remained peaceful, Banfield said anti-Israel and antisemitic behaviour have only grown more evident.

“I have been in Nelson a long time and we’ve always been very open that we’re here and inviting,” she told the Jewish Independent about the local Jewish community. She said that, until recently, religious celebrations used to be open to the Nelson public. However, a couple of years ago, demonstrators picketed a Jewish holiday celebration.

“People were picketing us, basically as being Jews, being responsible for what is going on in the Middle East,” said Banfield. Since then, she said, the community has had to ask for police protection at religious and other community events and to conceal their locations from the public. “We do not feel safe gathering together in an announced venue,” she told the Nelson council.

Last November, demonstrators held another rally, this time calling on the city to formally advocate for a ceasefire. According to several attendees, there were also calls for boycotting local businesses that were assumed or known to do business in or with Israel.

Jeff Shecter, another long-time resident and one of the Jewish community’s first leaders, said even more people turned out for that rally. He said the protests and “river to the sea” chants have unnerved the Israeli members of the community. “[They] were more shocked than the rest of us who were maybe used to it,” Shecter observed. While he said he is not afraid, “to have a demonstration supposedly in support of Palestine without anyone, not a single soul, denouncing what happened on Oct. 7 was a travesty.”

Zafrir, one Nelson’s most recent arrivals from Israel, told the council that the community isn’t trying to stifle anyone’s voice. “We’re not asking you to take sides,” she said. “The Palestinians and whoever supports them have the right to protest, as we have to do so, and still feel safe in our community. Any person in Nelson should feel safe, despite disagreement or place of origin.”

On Dec. 5, acknowledging that it had received numerous calls for action, the city issued a formal letter “calling for peace in Gaza” and appealing for a “cessation of hostilities from all involved parties.” While the information shared among council members briefly mentioned the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, the letter that was disseminated to the public did not. Nor did it mention the death toll from the terror attack or that more than 240 people had been abducted by Hamas and most were still missing.

Banfield said she is sympathetic of the pressure that the city council is under. “I mean, they did end up passing a resolution promoting a ceasefire. And I know there was a lot of discussion about it on council and they made it as lukewarm as possible,” she said. “And I guess at this point, the biggest thing for us is that they have given us protection.”

Asked whether she felt the city council understands the Jewish community’s concerns about safety at this time, Finer shook her head. “No,” she said, adding that she had hoped others would understand that anti-Israel protests and picketing of Jewish sites is alarming. “[Even] though there was no direct threat to the Jewish people in the town, it was implied. And that makes me feel terrified,” Finer told the council.

Still, Finer hasn’t given up hope that things could change in Nelson. As the new leader of the Kootenay Jewish Community Association, she’s already thinking about ways to bridge differences and enhance dialogue with those who don’t know, or don’t understand, Nelson’s small Jewish community.

Jan Lee is an award-winning editorial writer whose articles and op-eds have been published in B’nai B’rith Magazine, Voices of Conservative and Masorti Judaism and Baltimore Jewish Times, as well as a number of business, environmental and travel publications. Her blog can be found at multiculturaljew.polestarpassages.com.

Israel’s best revenge

In an email briefing this week, the English-language news platform Times of Israel declared: “UN releases 2nd damning report on Israel; real estate soars.”

These were two unrelated stories. The United Nations had unveiled another in its persistent condemnations of the Jewish state and, on a completely different issue, it reported that Israeli housing prices have spiked 19% this year over last – the largest jump in recorded history.

As curious as this combination of stories was, it could hardly compete with an adjacent mashup about two of Israel’s leading far-right politicians, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, the latter of whom, in an apparent effort at humanizing himself, appeared on a cooking program: “Ben-Gvir stuffs peppers and Smotrich proposes legal reforms.”

But, returning to the first items. The connection between UN condemnation of Israel and soaring real estate prices in Israel may be remote but perhaps not random. In any country, high real estate prices indicate a demand for housing that is larger than the supply, a situation due in part to rising economic prosperity (which is not generally shared equally, it should be said, and is too complex to fully discuss in this space).

The larger issues, for our purposes, are the curious parallels between this fact and the accompanying story, about yet another of the UN’s broadsides against Israel. Late last week, a report by the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory declared that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is illegal. Not a surprise considering the commission’s mandate, to say the least. Leaving aside whatever legitimacy that investment of resources may or may not have on the ground, it is safe to say it will have little impact on most Israelis beyond a déjà vu. UN condemnations against Israel come fast and furious.

In their 2009 book Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, Dan Senor and Saul Singer argue that Israel’s economic miracle is not despite the external and internal challenges the country and its people have faced but, to a large extent, because of them. Political and economic isolation bred a degree of self-sufficiency. Military and terrorist threats demand enormous investments, which have had the largely unintended consequence of building a range of high-tech and other industry sectors. The imposition on young adults just out of high school with life-and-death decision-making authority accounts in part for the risk-taking that drives Israel’s entrepreneurship.

On a daily basis, Israelis may not make the connection between their broad economic successes and the incessant rhetorical assaults it receives from the UN and self-appointed arbiters of righteousness worldwide. Even in times of war and other existential threats, Israelis have traditionally continued building their individual and collective futures. What is more, they are consistently ranked in surveys and studies as among the world’s happiest people.

Fighting inflation and inequality, resolving the ongoing conflict, addressing infringements of human rights and all of the other challenges facing Israel must be addressed – and, in the seemingly endless successions of national elections the country is mired, there is no shortage of inventive and outlandish suggestions for resolving every issue.

There is a saying: living well is the best revenge. The world, including the world’s ostensible parliament, can rail all it likes. We should not ignore criticism. But we should celebrate the achievements that others ignore or defame. The arrows aimed at Israel, whether we or the slings that shot them like it or not, seem to strengthen rather than weaken the resolve of its people.

Scientific breakthroughs

Scanning Israeli news this week has a feel of a sci-fi fantasy. Most eye-catching of all is the assertion by a Tel Aviv University researcher, in a peer-reviewed article, that hyperbaric oxygen therapy can “reverse aging” by lengthening telomeres, the structures found at the ends of chromosomes, by more than 20% on average.

“This means we can start to look at aging as a reversible disease,” Prof. Shai Efrati said, as reported in the Times of Israel. Some gerontologists are skeptical of the claims and some suggest it could open a Pandora’s box of related health issues, but, from ancient times through the 16th-century conquistador Juan Ponce de León to, apparently, contemporary Israel, humankind has dreamed of and sought out a figurative or literal fountain of youth. Whether Efrati’s research will fulfil that dream will be watched closely.

And there are other scientific headlines this week.

Also coming out of Tel Aviv University is news that scientists have destroyed cancerous cells in mice by pinpointing affected cells with “tiny scissors,” while leaving everything around them intact and with no side effects. With trials possibly to begin in humans within two years, they are hopeful that this could be a revolution that could effectively cure cancer.

A third scientific bombshell comes from Israelis in Canada. Eliav Shaked and Roy Kirshon, expatriate biomedical engineers working in Toronto, are developing a speedy, non-invasive diagnostic for patients who are likely decades away from showing symptoms of dementia. While there is no cure yet for dementias like Alzheimer’s disease, the pair believe that an early diagnosis will not only permit individuals to prepare for eventual care but allow doctors to study the progression of the disease and thereby gain valuable insights.

In these pages, we frequently highlight Israeli technological and medical advancements but the news this week really seemed like a dream sequence from a futuristic utopia. Of course, none of these initiatives is a sure bet but they read like a hat trick against some of the most damning health challenges facing our generations.

Is it a coincidence that these are all emerging from Israel? It is no secret that the tiny state is a locus of a massively disproportionate amount of the world’s achievements in a range of fields.

Some books, like Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, by Dan Senor and Saul Singer, and many other observers have posited that Israel’s successes are achieved not in spite of the adversities the country and its people have faced, but as a direct result of them. So many of the scientific, social and economic advances that have come out of Israel in recent decades are civilian benefits redounding from military research and development, though Israel is by no means the only country for which this is case.

No less significant are the social impacts of compulsory service in a national defence force that some have called the least hierarchical in the world. Individuals who made life-and-death choices for themselves and their colleagues at age 19 or 20 may be less timid in taking major entrepreneurial or other life risks at 25 or 30 than an average North American or European at that age. Not to discount the value of peace and all the benefits it would bring, the circumstances in which Israel exists have created a thoroughly unique social and economic environment.

Coincidentally or not, also in the news this week was a vote at the United Nations in which 163 countries, including Canada, voted for a condemnatory resolution against Israel; five voted against. It is one of 17 resolutions expected in this General Assembly session targeting Israel, while just seven country-specific resolutions are expected to be aimed at condemning every other injustice on the planet. Canadian Jewish organizations and pro-Israel commentators are furious at Canada’s vote, which directly contradicts pledges made by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, including during the last election campaign.

While many are appalled at the hypocritical obsession with Israel, and certainly Israeli diplomats are in the fray denouncing the vote, average Israelis, it is safe to say, remain sanguine. They have seen far worse attacks than that by the world community in the comparatively impotent global parliament that the UN General Assembly has become.

While it would be nice if the world judged Israel with moral measuring sticks commensurate with those we use for every other country, in the end it doesn’t seem to make much difference, thankfully. Even through the pandemic, Israelis have continued to try and turn science fiction into scientific reality. This week’s news alone included the possibility of cures for cancer, dementia and aging itself. And the benefits of such research do not accrue solely to Israelis, but to all of us – whether the nations of the world at the General Assembly recognize and appreciate that fact or not.

A testament to free speech

A new book on an incendiary topic turns out to be not quite as expected. The Conflict over the Conflict: The Israel/Palestine Campus Debate, by Kenneth S. Stern, may be the most comprehensive assessment of the (at least) 20-year battle on North American campuses between pro-Israel and anti-Israel forces.

Jewish and pro-Israel readers picking up the work might anticipate a litany of horrors, anti-Zionist if not antisemitic incidents, brawls, screaming matches, vandalism, boycotts and the like. There is that. But Stern argues that the perception that campuses are aflame in anti-Zionist rage is simply not true. More, he offers proof that the pro-Israel side is far from innocent of engaging in disgraceful tactics, too. There is ill will and there are bad actors on both sides. Most unexpectedly, as much as the book is about the conflict, it is more than anything an exercise in applied ethics on the topic of free expression.

Stern is the director of the Bard Centre for the Study of Hate, an attorney and an author. For 25 years, he was the American Jewish Committee’s expert on antisemitism and he was a lead drafter of the Working Definition of Antisemitism. He is also, it appears, something close to a free speech purist. As such, he rails against efforts by Israel advocates who have organized campaigns to censure (and censor) anti-Israel voices. He doesn’t let the other side off easily, either, calling out acts of harassment like drowning out pro-Israel speakers with the “heckler’s veto.”

The book, from New Jewish Press, an imprint of University of Toronto Press, begins with an empirical assessment. In institutions of higher learning in the United States, Israel is an issue in very few, he writes.

When speaking with Jewish audiences, Stern asks for a show of hands to gauge perceptions on anti-Israel attitudes. He asks for guesses on how many American colleges have divested from Israel.

“Many seem surprised when I say ‘zero,’” he writes. “There are relatively few campuses where Israel is a burning issue, and every year the number of pro-Israel programs … is usually at least double the anti-Israel ones. There are over 4,000 campuses in the U.S. – in the 2017-18 academic year, 149 had anti-Israel activity.… So the campuses aren’t burning.”

He does not dismiss the extreme tensions on a few campuses, however.

“[O]n some campuses where anti-Israel activity is prominent, pro-Israel Jewish students may feel marginalized, dismissed or vilified, sometimes with antisemitic tropes.” Identity politics and the conflation of Jewish people with “whiteness” creates racial conflict. “[T]he labeling of Jews as white becomes a problem when shared victimhood becomes a sacred symbol, a badge of honour, a precondition to enter a club of the oppressed. Antisemitic discrimination is rendered invisible.”

Though bigotry may play a role in the discussion, Stern does not see constructive resolutions in neologisms like trigger warnings, safe spaces and microaggressions.

“Faculty should have the right to give trigger warnings if they want, but I never do, and I think the idea is a horrid one,” he writes. “I teach Mein Kampf. It’s disturbing – get over it. College should prepare one to be an adult, and there are no trigger warnings after graduation day. Why are we encouraging students to be ostriches? Shouldn’t they, rather, be learning how to navigate things that will likely unsettle them over the rest of their lives?”

He quotes CNN commentator Van Jones, a strong civil rights proponent, who opposes “safe spaces” on campus: “I don’t want you to be safe ideologically. I don’t want you to be safe emotionally. I want you to be strong. That’s different. I’m not going to pave the jungle for you. Put on some boots and learn how to deal with adversity. I’m not going to take the weights out of the gym. That’s the whole point of the gym.”

Stern contends a fundamental error has been made in defining terms.

“We want campuses that are open to expression – including, perhaps even especially, difficult and disturbing ideas – but which protect students from real harassment and intimidation. Hate speech codes were efforts to say that ideas themselves can harass and intimidate. Ideas can and should make one uncomfortable (a comfortable college education is a wasted college education). But harassment is something different.”

Strategically, he argues, trying to censor hateful ideas is self-defeating and advances hate agents by martyring them.

“By trying to censor, rather than expose and combat, speech the students perceived as hateful, they were actually helping the alt-right and white supremacists,” writes Stern. “It’s no coincidence that the white nationalists in recent years have wrapped their racist and antisemitic messages around the concept of free speech. Why would progressives allow these haters to steal the bedrock democratic principle of free speech, disingenuously saying that this is what their fight is about? By trying to deny alleged racists platforms, progressives are helping white supremacists recast their vile message as noble protection of a right.”

Another strategic failure, he argues, is buying into the Palestinian narrative’s good/evil dichotomy.

“Israel’s case is best understood as inherently complex and difficult; playing into the ‘all bad’ and ‘all good’ binary of the other side renders those complexities invisible,” he writes.

The conflict on campus spills over, of course. Israel has created a list of 20 organizations, those that urge boycotts of the country, for instance, and bars their members from entering the country. Stern sees this as counterproductive: “You don’t make the case that blacklists (especially of academics) are proper if your goal is to oppose blacklists. You are conceding the argument.”

He gives an example of an anti-Israel campus activist who defends his group’s refusal to meet with Zionists “over cookies and cake” because “you Jews, in all due respect, you wouldn’t sit down with Nazis for tea and cake.”

He also reflects on the “Standards of Partnership” adopted by Hillel International, the Jewish campus organization, which proscribe engaging with groups or individuals that deny Israel’s right to exist, or who delegitimize, demonize or apply a double standard Israel, who support BDS or who exhibit “a pattern of disruptive behaviour towards campus events or guest speakers or foster an atmosphere of incivility.”

Writes Stern: “For those who are not yet ideological soldiers, but want to learn more, and want to do it around their campus Hillel, what sense does it make that adults are telling them they can only bring in certain types of speakers? Yes, the adults defined BDS as hateful. But does it make sense to tell students they have to go elsewhere than the Jewish address on campus to hear about it firsthand from those who support it?”

The litany of bad behaviours on all sides of the ideological divide is likely to make readers of Stern’s book uneasy, whether the reader is Zionist or anti-Zionist. But it is a rare and uncompromising testament to free expression that should give genuine free speech advocates an uplift, particularly in an era when ideologically driven regulation of expression and ideas, especially on campuses, has left many advocates of core liberal, academic values feeling beleaguered.

Two bads don’t make good

The United States Senate was expected to vote this week on a bill that would make it easier for state and local governments, as well as government agencies and perhaps other bodies, to refuse to do business with groups that endorse a boycott against Israel.

The bill comes after several state governments have taken steps against BDS, the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel. Florida’s legislators, for example, directed officials in 2016 to create a list of companies that engage in boycotts of Israel and instructed all government entities to divest from those companies. Two years later, the state passed a bill preventing companies that engage in boycotts of Israel from bidding on local or state government contracts. In all, about half of the 50 states have some form of statute on the subject, some simply making their opposition to BDS known, without adding punitive economic conditions.

Boycotting Israel is a dumb and self-defeating position, but so is the idea of governments boycotting the boycotters.

Opponents of the federal anti-BDS effort – and even some people with no horse in the race – are asking whether boycotts are covered by free speech legislation. Nobody is saying BDS should be illegal. But, when a company or individual applies to government for, say, a contract to build a road, there are numerous conditions. Non-unionized companies may be excluded, for example, or businesses may have to prove they adhere to government guidelines around equal employment. People are free to boycott Israel, and governments are free to prevent those people from obtaining contracts with them. On free speech grounds, we don’t really have a problem with the idea – and we’re pretty defensive about free speech.

To us, the discussion is less a legal one, or even a moral one, than it is a strategic one.

Despite their thuggish, bullying tactics, members of the anti-Israel movement love to position themselves as victims. While harassing Jewish students on campuses, shouting down speakers, making Jewish women unwelcome at women’s marches and disrupting venues where Israel and Palestine would seem to have little relevance, such as at a major LGBTQ conference in Detroit recently, they nevertheless depict themselves as tiny Davids fighting Goliath. With that in mind, legislation that punishes those who support BDS will give its advocates their first rightful justification for claiming victimhood. But there is a more important and obvious reason why we should not be legislating against BDS.

We shouldn’t need to tie the hands of BDS supporters behind their backs to win this fight. Our strength must be our ability to refute the lies, exaggerations, hypocrisies and prejudices of the BDS movement. There are a million arguments against BDS.

Ireland recently passed a wide-ranging Israel-boycott law and promptly realized that its high-tech sector, which is mostly propped up by American investment, could be imperiled if Ireland forces giants like Apple, Google and Facebook to choose between Dublin and Tel Aviv. While BDS is intended to be economically injurious to Israel, it can harm the very people who are advancing it. And it is more than economic damage BDS can self-inflict. Given the plethora of life-saving and life-enhancing innovations emerging constantly from Israel, boycotting that country could be detrimental to one’s health.

There are countless ways to counter BDS … like pointing out that BDS hurts Arabs. Not just Israeli Arabs or Palestinians, like those who famously lost their jobs when BDS forced the closure of a SodaStream plant in the West Bank, but impoverished residents of countries adjoining Israel, too. Seventy years of its Arab neighbours boycotting and isolating Israel has done nothing to harm the massive economic and social successes enjoyed by citizens of Israel. It has only ensured that the people of Jordan, Lebanon and other countries that snub Israel suffer from being deprived of these economic, technological and scientific achievements. Since the Arab boycott of Israel went global, the discrepancies have only grown. Israel’s GDP has doubled since 2005, when BDS started to take off.

The preoccupation of the BDS movement with academic boycotts is especially easy to confront: it’s the ideological descendent of book-burning.

We should also be conscious that even people who take positions we support may be using us to advance their own agendas. While the Republican party has been steadfastly pro-Israel – as have most Democratic party lawmakers – this anti-BDS measure is a bald attempt to sow division among Democrats by shining a light on some of the new elected officials who diverge from the traditional bipartisan consensus on the American-Israeli special relationship. Confronting those dissenters on the issues is justified – and is being taken up by a new group of Zionist Dems, called the Democratic Majority for Israel. But allowing one party to monopolize Israel for political advantage spells disaster for American Zionists and for Israel (despite the overt collaboration of Israel’s prime minister in the Republicans’ partisanship on this issue).

BDS is a bad idea. But, banning – or, more accurately, boycotting – BDS gives the appearance that Israel is indefensible on merit. That makes legislation to punish BDS supporters another bad idea.

At a time when there are plenty of bad ideas to go around, this is absolutely a case where two wrongs do not make a right. Defeating BDS should be done intellectually, not legislatively.

Stand up, be counted

Canada’s behaviour at the United Nations last week is being analyzed and found wanting by many Canadian Zionists. Canada abstained from a vote on a resolution that condemned Israel in a one-sided manner for the recent violence at the Gaza border.

The four-page resolution denounced the “excessive, disproportionate and indiscriminate force by the Israeli forces.” The resolution passed 120-8, with 45 countries, including Canada, abstaining.

An American amendment that would have condemned Hamas for sending rockets at Israeli targets was defeated 78-58, with 26 abstentions. Canada voted in favour of the failed amendment.

According to Canadian Jewish News, Canada’s ambassador to the UN, Marc-André Blanchard, said the abstention was due to the resolution’s failure to explicitly name Hamas.

“Hamas has been oppressing Palestinians. Hamas and other terrorist groups have been inciting violence and hatred and this should be clear in the resolution. The resolution explicitly names Israel, while failing to name any other groups involved,” Blanchard said.

The question, then, is why Canada did not vote against, rather than abstain, as Shimon Koffler Fogel noted.

“Ironically, Ambassador Blanchard’s explanation of the vote made the most compelling case for why Canada should have joined with the U.S., Australia and Israel in voting against the resolution,” said Koffler Fogel, chief executive officer of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs.

The larger issue is that the United Nations, created with such idealism and optimism after the Holocaust and the Second World War, has become beholden to ideological blocs dominated by dictatorial regimes. In a world with no shortage of humanitarian catastrophes, the General Assembly’s time and resources are wasted with obsessive attention on Israel.

Additionally sad is that the superb, irreplaceable work done by so many subsidiary agencies of the UN suffers by association with the actions of the General Assembly.

Some have suggested, in light of the UNGA silliness, that democratic countries should withdraw and form their own alternative UN-type organization. Whatever value that might have, walking away is not the right choice. Canada and other countries with common sense foreign policies should remain as a voice of reason.

Which is all the more reason why our choice to remain silent on the latest anti-Israel resolution is the wrong one. If we are going to serve as best we can in a flawed assembly, the least we can do is stand up and be counted.

Violence not solution

Last week, thousands were on the streets of Tehran for Al-Quds Day events, which consist of calling for the annihilation of Israel. Parallel events were held in other cities, including London, England, where Hezbollah flags flew amid posters bearing modern blood libels, and in Toronto, where a speaker called for the “eradication” of Israelis and Zionists.

Also difficult to ignore are the realities of the incendiary kites being sent over the border from Gaza affixed with flaming tails or petrol bombs. Some international observers have dismissed the incidents, contrasting the Gazans’ unsophisticated arsenal with Israel’s contingent of fighter jets and advanced weaponry. But Israeli firefighters report that 741 acres of forest and 4,500 acres of agricultural land have burned in the past two months thanks to at least 285 individual kite and helium balloon attacks. An estimated 500 kites have been intercepted before they could do damage. Experts say return of flora and fauna in affected areas will take years.

The ongoing hostilities at and near the Gaza border are the latest in the ongoing conflict that keeps the world’s attention focused on the region.

That attention turned to the world of soccer recently. A planned game between the Israeli and Argentine national teams was cancelled after pressure from the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel (BDS).

On social media, the BDS movement profusely thanked the Argentine team for cancelling the match. But the president of the team acknowledged it was not political considerations, but safety concerns, that led to the cancellation. The team – and specifically its megastar Lionel Messi – received threats of violence. As well, at the team’s practice facility in Barcelona, protesters waved Argentine soccer jerseys daubed with fake blood, and it wasn’t clear whether the blood was meant to symbolize Palestinians who have died or Argentine soccer players who might have been harmed if the game had been held as planned and the threats been realized.

There has been a shift from peaceful protest – that was the phrase repeatedly invoked about the conflagrations at the Gaza border – toward overtly violent rhetoric, threats and actions by Israel’s adversaries, who are both literally and figuratively “playing with fire.”

Nonviolent pressure, which is what BDS has claimed to advocate, is a tactic that could, one never knows, lead to some peaceful resolutions. But destroying farmland, endangering children, threatening people with harm and inciting genocide will only lead to more violence.

Antisemitism exposed

It recently came to light that Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom, was a member of at least one closed Facebook group where antisemitic rhetoric and hatred, including the most ridiculous assertions based on the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion and other such bunkum, was liberally purveyed.

David Collier, an independent British researcher, released an in-depth analysis of the kind of content that appeared in the group to which Corbyn and other leading Labour activists belonged. Members of the group routinely threw around phrases like “Jewnazi” and “Zionazi.” Members posted articles about the “Rothschild Empire,” the “Zionist agenda and New World Order” and “Jewish organ trafficking,” the latter, as the title implies, being a modern incarnation of blood libel.

About Mein Kampf, one poster urged: “Everybody should be forced to read it, especially Jews who have their own agenda as to why they were not liked.” Members have claimed that Hitler “supported Zionism” and that the Holocaust is being exploited so that Jews can oppress others – all the while shielding themselves with the assertion that “criticizing Israel isn’t the same as antisemitism.”

When caught, Corbyn, who has called Hamas and Hezbollah “friends,” defended his online association with antisemitism by saying, “Had I seen [evidence of antisemitism], of course, I would have challenged it straight away, but I actually don’t spend all my time reading social media.” In fact, even the most cursory glance at the page would indicate this is a site with which no legitimate public figure should be associated.

An older incident was made public about the same time, in which Corbyn defended the artist in a case where a local government opted to paint over an overtly antisemitic mural on a public wall. Later, Corbyn would claim he hadn’t really looked at the mural, which clearly depicts stereotypically Jewish looking men divvying up money on the backs of the oppressed, while the symbol of the Illuminati, a figment of the antisemitic movement’s imagination, hovers above them.

The fact that overt antisemitism, which has existed in the Labour Party for some time, has finally had a bright light shone on it, has brought some surprising reactions. Some MPs and other Labour activists have called for MPs who attended a rally against antisemitism to be blackballed from the party. You read that right.

Those whose dogged campaigning has brought the unseemly underbelly of antisemitism on the British left to light seem to now face the daunting task of ensuring that the blame for the problem – and the task of fixing it – falls to the perpetrators, not the victims.

Waters’ Vancouver talk

Martha Roth, left, and Itrath Syed. (photo by Matthew Gindin)

“I don’t get why people cannot look straight at what’s happening in the occupied territories and see it for what it is,” Roger Waters said to a full house at St. Andrew’s-Wesley Church on Oct. 26. “There’s a word for what is happening there: ethnic cleansing.”

The event took place a few days before the end of Waters’ cross-Canada Us and Them Tour, the final leg of a North American tour that kicked off almost a year ago. The primary songwriter behind Pink Floyd albums like The Wall and Dark Side of the Moon was invited to speak by Independent Jewish Voices (IJV). Among talk sponsors were IJV, CanPalNet, Seriously Free Speech, Not in Our Name, and Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights. Waters was interviewed by Martha Roth, co-chair of IJV Canada, and Itrath Syed, a professor at Langara College.

Many in the Jewish community were opposed to his speaking, accusing Waters of antisemitism and anti-Israel bias. B’nai Brith Canada made a documentary called Wish You Weren’t Here and followed him around Canada showing it in conjunction with his concerts. A week before the talk, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs sent out a mailing identifying Waters as “the rock musician obsessed with boycotting Israelis” who has become “the face of the hateful BDS movement.” An online petition called for the talk to be canceled.

At the church, Waters said his genesis as a BDS (boycott, divest from and sanction Israel) activist happened after a 2006 trip to Israel. “I was going to do a gig in Tel Aviv,” he said, “and I started to get emails from Palestinians and others who said that might not be such a good idea due to this very new movement started by Palestinian civil society called BDS, and they tried to prevail on me to cancel the gig. As an act of compromise, I moved the show to Neve Shalom, where they grow chickpeas and there are Jewish people living there, Arabs living there and Christians living there. All of their children go to school together, so it’s a lovely experiment in what can happen when people don’t fixate on all the things that we disapprove of in each other.”

photo - A small group of protesters met across the street from the church, draped in Israeli flags and carrying signs — A small group of protesters met across the street from the church, draped in Israeli flags and carrying signs. *(photo by Matthew Gindin)*

Waters returned the next year for a tour of the territories with UNRWA and became a convert to BDS. “Since then, I’ve tried to open my big mouth as often as I can,” he said. “It’s been a long, quite trying, difficult road, not nearly as hard and trying, obviously, as living under occupation. The blackening of my name is just one more way of obscuring the truth. They want to stop the public discourse where people tell the truth about what happened in ’47-’48, what happened in ’67, in ’73, what’s happening now.”

Waters praised young Jews opposing the occupation. He said, “If you look at polls now, you find that younger Jewish people are no longer looking at the situation and not seeing anything. They’re saying, ‘This is not what Judaism is about, this does not represent the way I feel, it goes against everything I believe in with my heart. I am a human being, I am humane, and I do not want my people or anyone who pretends to represent me to behave like this. It’s happening, and it lightens my heart every time I hear someone speak out. It’s great.”

Waters also discussed his communist mother’s tutelage of him as a social justice activist, his opposition to the Trump administration, capitalism and militarism, and the inspiration behind songs on his recent album Is This the Life We Really Want?

A small group of protesters met across the street from the church, draped in Israeli flags. One entered the talk and unfurled a banner reading, “Boycotts Don’t Scare Us – Am Yisrael Chai,” before being peacefully removed. A college-age Israeli protester held a sign saying, “Israeli Lives Matter” and told the Independent that what was going on inside was “just like Nazi Germany.”

IJV sent someone out to invite the protesters in afterward for dialogue. While they declined, one Jewish protester exchanged phone numbers with a Palestinian from Gaza who had approached the group, agreeing to meet later and talk.

Matthew Gindin is a freelance journalist, writer and lecturer. He writes regularly for the Forward and All That Is Interesting, and has been published in Religion Dispatches, Situate Magazine, Tikkun and elsewhere. He can be found on Medium and Twitter.