genocide – Page 5

Hillel BC to Rwanda, Israel

The Hon. Jody Wilson-Raybould, minister of justice and attorney general of Canada, centre, addressed Project Tikkun participants at Hillel BC on March 13. (photo from Hillel BC)

As the academic year winds down on university campuses across the province and students gear up for exams and summer jobs, 15 student leaders from the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University are also preparing for a totally different experience: a 16-day experiential learning and service trip to Rwanda and Israel.

Project Tikkun was developed by Hillel BC to challenge students to “understand the essence of hate by breaking down stereotypical thinking.” It is a yearlong program of learning that allows participants to explore the root causes of racism and antisemitism, culminating in a service trip to Rwanda and Israel between May 3 and 18.

The overseas component will enable participants to bear witness to how the diverse citizenry of two relatively young nation-states have grappled with a legacy of genocide. It will provide a firsthand examination of conflict resolution and reconciliation through the humanitarian work and activism pursued in each country to build durable and bonded communities.

According to its website, Project Tikkun brings together “undergraduate students of different ethnic backgrounds, religious practices, sexual orientation and personal beliefs to establish a caring and committed community of change-makers.”

Rebecca Recant, program director at Hillel BC, noted that the intent of the project is also to “build a local community of allies that can support each other when a [hateful] incident comes up, no matter which community.”

Student interest in the program exceeded the limited number of spaces and, last fall, a diverse group of 15 participants was selected. The group includes students of Chinese, Taiwanese, Indian, Korean, Persian and Rwandan backgrounds and a mix of the Jewish, Sikh, Baha’i and Christian faiths. The religious affiliation of the Jewish students varies – some come from secular homes whereas others were raised Orthodox; some have visited Israel and, for others, this will be their first trip to Eretz Yisrael.

Over the course of the year, the participants have been getting to know each other and examining their biases through intensive group learning sessions in which they have explored the history of Canada, Rwanda and Israel. A number of guest speakers, ranging from academics to community activists, have facilitated discussions. Of note, Dr. Andrew Baron, an assistant professor of psychology at UBC whose research examines the cultural and cognitive origins of unconscious bias, structured tests for Project Tikkun participants based on the Harvard Implicit Bias Test that he helped create. Jordana Shani, managing director of Hillel BC, explained that the testing of participants’ level of bias takes place at three different intervals: at the outset of the program, prior to departure and one to two months after return to Canada. The testing provides a way “to measure what we’ve done and how effective the program has been,” she said.

Certainly, much time, effort and money has been channeled into the program, especially the service trip. The journey begins in the capital city of Rwanda, Kigali, where local guides will accompany the students on a tour that will highlight the many landmarks and memorials of the 1994 genocide. The students will then travel to the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village (ASYV), where they will spend the bulk of their time. Established in 2008 as a residential community-home to protect and nurture Rwandan children who were orphaned during and after the genocide, ASYV now cares for approximately 500 of Rwanda’s most vulnerable high school-aged students. It is modeled after Yemin Orde, an Israeli youth village founded in 1953 to care for orphans of the Holocaust, and it provides a family-like environment for at-risk youth.

The Rwandan students “grow up in this youth village hearing about the youth aliyah village in Israel that [ASYV] was based on,” said Recant. “It’s an Israeli model that is part of the connection between the two countries. They even know Hebrew words, like tikkun olam.”

At the youth village, Project Tikkun participants will learn and live side by side with the ASYV students and volunteer in the classrooms, on the farm and in the kitchen. They will accompany the ASYV students during their foray into town to fulfil a weekly community service commitment.

Libia Niyodusenga, a second-year UBC economics and geography student who was raised at the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village, is looking forward to returning to Rwanda as part of Project Tikkun. “I think the country itself has the best ways and methods of teaching people through so many organizations that are based in Rwanda and so many history-based sites that you can learn from,” he said.

From Rwanda, Project Tikkun participants will travel to Israel, arriving on Yom Ha’atzmaut, where they will celebrate Israel’s independence in Jerusalem. Later, they will commemorate the victims of the Holocaust at Yad Vashem, tour the Old City and observe Shabbat before moving on to explore other parts of the country, including the Yemin Orde Youth Village. All the while, participants will learn from and volunteer with Israelis who are committed to combating intolerance and inequality – political, religious, ethno-cultural and socio-economic – to effect positive change within Israeli society.

The Israel portion of the trip will demonstrate that complex issues – both regional and domestic – defy the simplistic characterizations often portrayed by the media and that “you can love the country and be critical of it at the same time,” said Shani. The participants, she added, “will meet with people who believe in the right of Israel to exist and who are engaged to make it a better place.”

Jasmeet Khosa, a fourth-year student of international relations at UBC whose Sikh parents immigrated to Canada from Punjab, India, said: “I know that this project focuses on Rwanda and Israel as case studies [for conflict resolution and activism], but what I’ve learned so far is that this extends far beyond – [the message] is universal.”

By all accounts, Hillel BC is pleased with the results of the project thus far. Participants are inspired to help create positive change both at home and abroad and have developed a profound sense of strength through their diversity. As Khosa observed, “… the great thing is that we come from such different backgrounds – academically, culturally, religiously – that everyone brings their own perspective and we get a really great mix in that everyone has something unique to contribute to discussion and friendships, in general.” Niyodusenga added that the connections between program participants are already “deep and intimate.”

In reflecting on the many experiential learning and service trips that she participated in during university and how integral they were to forming her identity, Recant said, “Trips like this are life-changing.”

Shani and Recant are grateful for a grant from the Diamond Foundation that made Project Tikkun possible. While participants will pay a fee, the cost of the program is heavily subsidized to ensure that finances do not pose any obstacles. However, because of the decrease in the value of the Canadian dollar, Hillel BC is continuing to seek financial support for the program. For more information about Project Tikkun, visit projecttikkun.hillelbc.com; to make a donation, call 604-224-4748.

Alexis Pavlich is a Vancouver-based freelance reporter.

Perspective gained at camp

On a logging road near Smithers, B.C., the Unist’ot’en people occupy their traditional land in order to stop work on the 11 pipeline projects that would run through the area. Located beside Wedjin Kwa (Morice River), the camp is one of the only places left in the world where it is safe to drink directly from a natural body of water. Add to this the rustling trees, abundant huckleberries, countless wildlife and more, and it is clear why it is worth fighting for this land.

The Unist’ot’en maintain a checkpoint where all visitors must answer a series of questions posed by a member of the clan to assess the level of support for the clan’s action before being allowed into the territory. Supporters and allies have been allowed into the camp, as well as loggers with preexisting contracts; however, pipeline workers and helicopter crews arrive often and are reminded that they have not followed the appropriate channels to be permitted to do work on the land.

During my visit, the camp was on high alert after a tip that police planned to raid and demolish the camp, and arrest people living there. Stories around the campfire included many accounts of police misinformation and aggressiveness from veterans of the land defence struggle since the Oka crisis in 1990. There were also accounts of police following members of the camp when they went in to town, and of helicopters and surveillance drones flying overhead more than six times a day.

As those telling stories began to reminisce about siblings and parents in the residential school system, I saw the patterns of trauma visible in my own family and community emerge. The way that pain is passed through generations reveals an eerie overlap. I see remnants of the Holocaust in the way my grandparents raised my parents, my family’s relationship with food and eating, and the way they remember and guard their identity because someone once tried to take it away. With new research into genetics and epigenetics, we now know that trauma during a person’s lifetime can be passed to their children through their genes. This means that both habits and practices built during a lifetime, as well as genetic responses to stress, can be passed on.

An authority that once promised to keep them safe has betrayed both my ancestors and the people at the camp. When one elder spoke about watching as his siblings and childhood friends disappeared at the residential school, it echoed the blank pages that are so many Jewish family trees since the 1930s. I also see similarities between the Holocaust and the genocide of First Nations peoples through the reserves and the residential school system, the devastation caused by smallpox and alcoholism, much of which was propagated by the state. Not to mention continued racism.

I understand that the situations are not identical but there is enough commonality that it warrants a deeper look. I do not understand why peoples who have gone through cultural and physical genocide don’t come together in dialogue and support for each other’s survival. Throughout the last 70 years, we have promised repeatedly to “never forget,” but First Nations peoples still suffer discrimination, and this should command our attention. When there is injustice for some, there is no justice for anyone, and who better to stand in support of equal rights and freedoms, than a people who also has a long history of being oppressed and having to fight for survival.

Ariel Martz-Oberlander is a theatre artist, activist and poet living in Vancouver, Coast Salish territories. She is grateful every day for the people who work to make the world a more lovely place to be.

Call to genocide (yawn)

Sheik Omar Abu Sara gave a rousing call to genocide on Nov. 28, during a sermon at Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. “I say to the Jews loud and clear: The time for your slaughter has come. The time to fight you has come. The time to kill you has come…. Please do not leave in our hearts a single grain of mercy towards you, oh Jews, because when the day of your slaughter arrives, we shall slaughter you without mercy.” His audience is heard responding with amens.

At the same spot a few days earlier, another speaker called for the elimination of “the Jews, the most vile of creatures.”

The Abu Sara video was translated and made available by MEMRI, the Middle East Media Research Institute, an organization that works to bring to light many of the worst things being said about Jews and Israel in the region – including, in this case, in the heart of Jerusalem. The people at MEMRI must wonder sometimes what the point is, though, for all the work they do in shining a torch into these moral recesses, most of the world responds with a yawn. Reactions to this sort of rhetoric among many Jews in Israel and the Diaspora, however, are founded on the knowledge of where this sort of talk can lead, a cultural and historical reality that is dismissed as just more of the persecution complex for which we are stereotyped.

Still, the fact that this sort of exhortation even makes the news is news of a sort. Warnings of an impending mass murder of Jews are so common on the internet, in certain sectors of Arab societies, among extremist Islamists and even among “mainstream” leaders of Palestinian society that it has become just a sort of white noise.

But there are plenty of people who are very capable of following through. This sort of rhetoric undoubtedly motivates people like those who have used vehicles, screwdrivers and knives to attack and kill civilians in Israel recently and, earlier this month, at the Chabad headquarters in New York.

Leaders of the anti-Israel movement might be expected to tsk-tsk these words, if only to preserve some political legitimacy for their BDS campaign. But they can’t even be depended on to do that. While some in that movement might draw the line at calling Jews “the most vile of creatures,” that is precisely the message they direct toward Israelis.

Those who strive for any sort of mainstream political relevance are careful to distinguish between Israelis and Jews. In most of the world, such niceties are quaintly unnecessary. While rose-tinted observers like to imagine the undeniable growth of antisemitism simply as a temporary, possibly unfortunate mutation of anti-Zionism, the reality in most of the world – where the language is most violent and the violence is most real – is exactly the opposite.