Tag: Donald Trump

Racism at the root of BDS?

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers is again attacking Israel and urging its members to support the campaign to boycott, divest from and sanction the Jewish state. Last week, the union’s national president, Mike Palecek, sent a communiqué to members packed with boilerplate calls for attacking Israel economically and politically, including a call to end the Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement.

The BDS movement lays bare a stark moral dissonance among so-called “progressives.” In confronting almost every other conflict and issue, these are people who urge discussion, negotiation, compromise, dialogue, conciliation. Except when it comes to Israel.

Why is Israel treated differently in this, as it is in so many other realms?

Obviously, Israel is held to a higher standard, as so many critics have noted, because it is a democracy, it prides itself on human rights and rule of law. However, the standards to which the world holds Israel are impossible ones that no country could measure up to when faced with the continual threats and violence that the country has endured for nearly seven decades.

The Jewish country – given the Bible, the Holocaust, the principles upon which it was founded – is expected to be the quintessence of morality and humanity. Which it might have been capable of, were it not for the fact that those who seek its destruction recognize no parallel standards of morality or humanity.

BDSers and other extreme critics of Israel shield themselves in a blanket rejection of the idea that their ideology could in any way be influenced by negative perceptions of Jews. Be that as it may, Donald Trump, of all people, may have illustrated the situation perfectly while speaking with Jewish Republicans last December.

“Look, I’m a negotiator like you folks; we’re negotiators.… This room negotiates perhaps more than any room I’ve spoken to, maybe more,” he said.

To Trump, being an expert negotiator is a compliment, though compliments often have double edges.

The stereotype of Jews as unconquerable negotiators is a driving force behind BDS. It is so universal a stereotype that Trump didn’t even realize it might be offensive, just as so many BDSers are blind to the bigotry inherent in their worldview.

Consider Sept. 28, 2000. The Israeli-Palestinian peace process was proceeding and an independent Palestinian state was in reach. Then Yasser Arafat left the negotiating table and began the Second Intifada. A decade and a half of continued statelessness for Palestinians has followed, as well as endless violence and thousands more deaths. World reaction should have been to rear up against Arafat’s rejection of negotiation and his return to violence. It wasn’t. Despite all reason, the world nearly unanimously empathized with Arafat’s actions. Why? Because many in the world, consciously or not, hold to ideas that let them believe the Palestinians were never going to get a fair shake. Despite all evidence suggesting that negotiation was leading to a two-state solution, violence was completely understandable because, you know, no one bests the Jews at negotiating.

Of course, there is the other factor – that Arafat seems to never have wanted a two-state solution, but this does not explain the reaction of erstwhile progressives and peace-seekers around the world.

Other stereotypes of Jews also drive the tactics of BDS. Note the two primary targets of the movement. First, it’s about attacking Israel economically. Secondly, it’s about academic boycotts. First, hit them where it hurts: in the pocketbook. Then sock it to them in the intellect.

It is hard not to draw the conclusion that, at its root, BDS is a movement steeped in racism.

Let the American race begin

When Joe Lieberman was named Al Gore’s running mate in 2000, there was some discussion about the potential for America’s first Jewish vice-president. With the exception of the dustiest corners of the internet, the discussion was respectful and more curious than bigoted. It was probably less heated than the issue of America’s first Catholic president that came up when John F. Kennedy ran in 1960 and, because the Republican base is made up of a great number of evangelical Christians, probably even less significant than Mitt Romney’s Mormonism in 2012.

Now that Bernie Sanders is a leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for this year’s U.S. presidential election, there has been almost no discussion of the potential for America’s first Jewish president; the discussion has been far more about the potential for America’s first avowedly socialist president.

After a seemingly interminable campaign, voting begins next week, launching the process of elimination that will determine the Republican and Democratic candidates for president this November. Voters in the first caucus state, Iowa, will gather in church basements and town halls on Feb. 1. In New Hampshire, eight days later, voters will cast ballots in the first primary of the season.

While American politics has always had many differences from European politics, the U.S. version this year seems to reflect, to some degree, the trend in Europe away from the centre. The Republican candidates are largely clustered on the right side of the spectrum, if not the far right. Donald Trump, the leading candidate according to polls, does not fit easily into ideological boxes, but his many very extreme comments appeal to at least some of the people we would describe as far right.

On the Democratic side, Sanders, an erstwhile low-profile junior senator from Vermont, who self-describes as a democratic socialist, is fomenting what is no doubt a very unwelcome sense of déjà vu for the once-presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Clinton was to be the unbeatable Democratic candidate in 2008, until an almost unknown senator from Illinois caught fire and bolted into the White House on a wave of reformist zeal. While not a single ballot has been cast yet in the 2016 battle, Clinton’s inevitability has almost evaporated.

What is it that explains Clinton’s inability to seal the deal, even with voters in her own party?

Part of the issue is her gender. How could it not be? If elected, she would be the first female president. But is gender an advantage or disadvantage for her? Perhaps it is both. Part of the challenge and opportunity Barack Obama faced was around his race. Whether race or gender are, in the end, advantages or disadvantages depends on a huge range of factors, including time and place, and the individual embodying them.

However, perhaps gender, race or religion will be less significant in this election because voters seem to be craving something different altogether. Even left or right may not be such key factors as (apparent) authenticity.

After decades in the public eye, Clinton is a consummate politician. Yet consummate politicians, even exceptional diplomats, are not what Americans seem to be seeking right now. Quite the opposite. American voters, in both parties, seem to be gravitating to unorthodox figures who do not follow scripts. Clinton seems both orthodox and tightly scripted.

Say what you will about Trump, his xenophobia and verbiage seem absolutely authentic. On the other hand, whatever Sanders’ ability or inability may be to get elected and then get any sort of socialistic agenda through Congress, his channeling of Americans’ economic realities and fears appears equally authentic. Both men have captured something in the zeitgeist that scripted politicians have failed to exploit.

And, while the Democrats and Republicans battle it out, a third option looms. There has been talk that, should the Republicans nominate Trump and the Democrats Sanders, a third-party candidate might emerge, appealing to wide swaths of the centre and chunks of both the left and right. Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg – a Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-independent – is seriously considering a run and will announce his intentions by March, associates told the New York Times. Imagine a three-way presidential campaign – with two Jewish candidates. That would be an authentic landmark.

More or less immigration?

For political nerds, last week offered a cornucopia. A week ago Wednesday, 11 Republican candidates for president of the United States lined up in front of Ronald Reagan’s Air Force One and squabbled, insulted, demeaned and debated one another. The next night, the three leading candidates for prime minister of Canada lined up and, in a more Canadian manner than their American counterparts (albeit, perhaps, in a more American manner than most previous Canadian debates) did much the same thing.

There was plenty to differentiate the two events. The production values of the American version were Hollywoodesque. The Canadian debate looked high schoolish. With 11 candidates in the American debate, content took a back seat to quips and barbs. The Canadian debate was somewhat more substantive.

What was common between the two was an emphasis on immigration and refugees. With the refugee crisis in the Middle East and Europe making front-page news worldwide, and immigration a perennial hot button issue in the United States, candidates came at the topic through particular prisms.

The Republican candidates mostly clamored over one another to burnish their anti-immigrant cred. Who could build the highest, most impenetrable wall along the southern border, it seemed, was the worthiest candidate. The day after the debate, a pro-immigrant organization released a video that contrasted the current crop of candidates’ comments on immigration with those of Ronald Reagan, in whose presidential library the debate took place and who is generally venerated among Republicans.

Reagan, at least in his rhetoric, viewed America as a “shining city on a hill” to which people around the world aspired to come and where, presumably, they would be welcomed. Typifying the prevalent approach of current Republican candidates, Donald Trump said before the debate: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best.… They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

Emma Lazarus Trump is not. The American approach to immigration once – before the 1920s and at intervals since the Second World War – was idealized in Lazarus’ poem, affixed to the Statue of Liberty, and it clearly does not demand “the best” from other countries: “Give me your tired, your poor / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me / I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

It can still evoke chills. Chills that are different from those evoked by the language and views of some of today’s Republicans.

What was encouraging in the Canadian debate the next day was seeing our leaders similarly clamoring over one another, but in this case to burnish their pro-immigration cred.

We recognize that some of the people we welcome have endured great challenges, and need resources and programs to learn the languages of our country, develop or adapt their skills, perhaps recover from deep trauma. Piles of evidence prove that immigrants and refugees who come here succeed brilliantly.

Of course, Jewish Canadians especially may be torn between heart and head on this matter. Our families came here, more often than not escaping repression and violence, and we understand the life-and-death implications of immigration policies.

We also understand that many immigrants and refugees today are coming from places that deliberately inculcate antisemitism in their citizens, who have been known to then act out on these impulses once they move to places where Jews exist. However, the current crisis involves refugees who are fleeing violent jihad and are likely to be among those Canadians who are most vigilant against that form of hatred.

Above all, we need to understand that we are one world. We need to address security challenges at home and confront, with our allies, the sources of those challenges. This security imperative impacts on our immigration policy, but we should not delude ourselves or punish those who need refuge by pretending we can immunize ourselves from world realities by closing our doors.