Leah Goldstein

Small wins amid gloom

The rescue of four Israeli hostages from Gaza last week and their reunions with their loved ones is a bright spot amid much dismal news – though there remain 120 hostages whose reunions with their families we dream of and hope will happen soon.

This rescue has been a source of tempered joy for Israelis and others. In a time of tragedy and despair, these moments are worth appreciating. Amid the relief, we mourn the life of the Israel Defence Forces officer who died from wounds received during the operation and we mourn the lives of the many innocent Gazans lost. Holding this tension is weighing mightily on many of us, knowing that placing hostages among civilians is a deliberate and overwhelmingly cruel strategy of Hamas.

Closer to home, we are not without bleak news, but neither are we bereft of hopefulness.

The arson attack on Schara Tzedeck Synagogue two weeks ago is deeply troubling and scary. The outpouring of support and empathy from so many is a silver lining. Clergy, elected officials, multicultural community leaders and ordinary folks have expressed solidarity with Schara Tzedeck and the broader Jewish community.

A few less monumental but hopeful items crossed our desks recently.

The Vancouver Comic Arts Festival, which had earlier canceled the participation of artist Miriam Libicki, issued an apology for their actions – and announced that “the vast majority” of individuals who had perpetrated Libicki’s banning had resigned from the organization’s board.

Suffice to say, this is not the foremost news story this year. But it is surprisingly uplifting when a glimmer of common sense emerges where intolerance had once prevailed.

Libicki had been canceled ostensibly because she had served, once upon a time, in the Israeli army. IDF service was also the excuse used when inspirational speaker Leah Goldstein, a BC resident, was canned from an International Women’s Day event in Ontario in March.

Assertions that an artist (or performer or whoever) is being excluded because they served in a military that we see every day in the news engaged in a tragic conflict may seem legitimate, or at least not quite as blatant as, say, posting a sign that reads “No Jews allowed.” Notably, though, no such litmus test, to our knowledge, has ever been applied to any artist (or whoever) in Canada based on their service in any other national armed forces – and, given the diversity of our country, we can be pretty much assured that we have citizens who have served in many of the world’s most tyrannical and nasty, even genocidal, militaries.

Other excuses to ban Jews or pull Jewish- or Israel-related work from events, exhibits, performances, etc., have also included enough plausible deniability to steer just clear of indisputable antisemitism.

Goldstein’s cousin, local photographer Dina Goldstein (it’s sadly becoming a family affair), was recently removed from a group exhibition. In this instance, the gallery claimed financial considerations were the deciding factor.

Then there are cases where venues pull an event or performer based on security concerns, as the Belfry Theatre in Victoria did with their scheduled performance of the play The Runner. They had reason to fear violence – the theatre was vandalized amid the controversy. But cancelations based on security concerns, as valid as they may seem, give an effective veto to those who are potentially violent.

In the shadow of the Belfry decision, The Runner was pulled from the PuSh Festival in Vancouver, the stated reason being that another artist threatened to pull their work from the event if the play was mounted.

In addition to cancelations, there is plenty to raise alarm bells about anti-Israel bias in the public education system, as well, as we are forced to outline in discouraging detail elsewhere in this issue, with the BC Teachers’ Federation making some controversial decisions. But, again, here some reason prevails, though not from the BCTF.

The Burnaby school district took what it called “immediate action” when it became known that elementary students had been given an exam question asking them to make a case for and against the existence of the state of Israel. We could fill volumes with outrage about the unmitigated nerve of a teacher thinking this was a legitimate subject for grade sixers (if it was on the exam, one can only imagine what the same educator said in the classroom) but let’s take some solace that there were reasonable people in a position of authority to respond when this became public.

In further good news in the education realm, on June 1, the University of British Columbia’s Vancouver Senate soundly rejected (by a vote of 49 to 16) a motion urging the university to cut ties with institutions in Israel.

In challenging times, it is even more necessary to acknowledge and celebrate small victories and acts of decency. It is an act of individual and communal resistance to remain hopeful and steadfast in pursuit of peace and justice.

Danger in cancelations

Leah Goldstein was supposed to speak today at an International Women’s Day event but her invitation was rescinded. (photo from Leah Goldstein)

Leah Goldstein, a BC woman who is a professional road-racing cyclist and inspirational speaker, was supposed to be sharing her story with an audience in Peterborough, Ont., today, International Women’s Day. Instead, first she, then the event itself, was canceled, a byproduct of tensions around the Israel-Hamas war and its overflow into domestic affairs in Canada and around the world.

Goldstein, who lives in Vernon, was told her invitation to share her story – one of resilience and recovery following a devastating 2005 road accident that nearly ended her career – had been rescinded by the group organizing the IWD event in the city northeast of Toronto. The event had become the target of protests and threats after local activists learned of Goldstein’s service in the Israeli military.

“Their sponsor threatened to pull support after receiving threats from a small group of activists,” Goldstein told the Independent.

Goldstein spent most of her 20s first in the Israel Defence Forces teaching the martial art krav maga, then in elite Israeli spy and police agencies.

“I was made in Israel,” Goldstein said. “I was born in Canada.” The family made aliyah when Goldstein was a child, and she has dual Canadian and Israeli citizenship.

Perhaps in keeping with her martial arts background, Goldstein pulls no punches over her cancelation. In the climate since the start of the war, in October, it is not just Israelis who are being targeted, she said, but Jews.

“It’s not the IDF or whatever,” she said. “Even if I didn’t serve in the IDF, I still question whether they would’ve had me present.”

If the shoe were on the other foot, Goldstein said she would have no problem listening to a person with a different perspective.

“I can promise you this, though. If I were a Palestinian woman, I would not have been canceled,” she said. “As a Jewish woman, I would also not be offended listening to a Palestinian woman talking about her life. Why would I be offended?”

Whatever caused the organizers to disinvite her, whether her identity or the fact of her military background, Goldstein said, the content of her presentation would not have been controversial.

“I’m not political,” she said. “I’ve been speaking for 11 years. Not one time has anyone ever come up to me, my manager or the organization I work for and said they felt offended by anything I said. Not one time in 11 years. I speak about my athletic career, about my crashes, my recovery, some of the hardships that many women go through. That’s it.”

By focusing on her past, rather than her current message, Goldstein said, it is other people who are making Israel and Palestine an issue.

“They are almost forcing me to be political by making a comment or a statement,” she said.

Goldstein’s story is one of literally too many to keep track of recently, with anti-Israel activists targeting individuals, groups and businesses for cancelation or boycotts. In some cases – the defacing of a statue in Toronto of the late Canadian Jewish actor Al Waxman with Palestinian slogans – there is no pretence that the target is Israel rather than Jews.

Here in Canada, recently, other incidents are just this side of plausible deniability of overt antisemitism.

An anti-Israel march through the streets of Toronto took a moment to linger outside Mount Sinai Hospital chanting for “intifada.” After condemnations from Toronto’s mayor, Canada’s prime minister and other top officials, protest organizers insisted there was no antisemitic intent in targeting a hospital with a Jewish name founded by Jewish doctors.

“[Mount Sinai Hospital] just happens to be along our regular rally route, which we pass by on a usual basis, as we head to rally in front of the U.S. consulate,” they said in a statement.

If any form of racism was at play, they insisted, it was on the other side.

“The irony is that portraying the raising of the Palestinian flag as a hate-motivated act of antisemitism is itself perpetuating anti-Palestinian racism,” they contended.

Days later, an anti-Israel rally at McGill University in Montreal blockaded the Samuel Bronfman Building on campus, home of the university’s management department, accusing the faculty of a “long history of complicity in the occupation of Palestine.” The choice of location had nothing to do with the famous Jewish name plastered on the front of the building, they said.

Closer to home, Muslim organizations in British Columbia threatened that representatives of the NDP provincial government would not be permitted in Muslim spaces as long as Selina Robinson remained in cabinet because she made an offhanded remark about the arability of desert land three-quarters of a century ago. As one of the country’s most prominent (and only) Jewish elected officials and one who has unashamedly defended Israel, Robinson’s expulsion was a big coup for the activists.

These are all of a piece with similar reported events and, doubtlessly, many more such incidents unreported.

The Jewish-American singer (American, note, not Israeli) Matisyahu is currently in the midst of a kerfuffle in which concerts in Arizona and New Mexico were canceled. The venues assured the public that the concerts were canceled because of security concerns and short staffing, not because he’s a Jew.

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld was recently subjected to chants of “genocide supporter” and “Nazi scum” while leaving the State of World Jewry address by author Bari Weiss at New York’s 92nd Street Y. He got, perhaps, a better sense of the state of world Jewry outside the event than he did inside.

The group Art Not Genocide Alliance is calling to exclude Israel from this year’s 60th Venice Biennale. Officials at the Eurovision Song Contest are fine-tooth-combing this year’s Israeli entry to make sure there are no hidden political messages. Soccer governing bodies from 12 countries – almost all of them among the world’s worst human rights violators – are calling for Israeli teams to be excluded from FIFA, the international football entity.

In each of these instances, there is an argument to be made that the targets were not chosen because they are Jews (or are institutions founded or funded by Jews) but because they were at a Zionist event, or they made an impolitic remark or the people in the building are guilty of some unspecified Zionist infraction. This, though, is to unjustly justify their actions.

Whether Israel is being fairly or unfairly untreated is not the point here. Goldstein’s cancelation and the raft of similar examples are not targeting a country but Jewish individuals and entities. Yes, we are assured, these Jewish individuals and entities are also Zionist people and groups, a differentiation that is presumed to excuse this extraordinary singling out. Yet, we do not see performing artists from China, a country that is holding hundreds of thousands of Muslims in concentration camps, denied admission to Canadian or European cultural festivals. Citizens of Saudi Arabia, which holds mass public executions and subjugates the female half of the population, is not excluded from world soccer events. Citizens of the 50 or so other countries in the world that (unlike Israel) are categorized as “not free” or “partly free” are not subjected to slanders on the streets of New York or banned from speaking in Peterborough.

Never mind human rights abominations like North Korea or Iran. The brutalities perpetrated by their governments are almost entirely ignored by commentators and activists fixated on Israel. Again, though, that is only part of the problem. What we are seeing here is not an attack on official representatives of those countries. Rather, it is akin to screaming at people leaving an exhibition of Iranian art or boycotting a Chinese-Canadian-owned business. It is the sort of guilt by proxy that led apparently millions of otherwise decent Canadians to see little wrong in interning “enemy aliens” during wartime – except even that parallel fails because Canada is not at war with Israel but has longstanding and justifiably friendly relations and shared values with that country.

Agree or not with the approach, movements targeting a country and its official representatives operate in a realm of legitimate political discourse. There is something parallel but significantly different happening here. People and organizations perceived even remotely as associated with Israel are being targeted for boycotts – in some cases, to all appearances, merely being Jewish is enough to earn condemnation and cancelation. This is a textbook case (well, a codified illustration) of antisemitism.

Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel is one of the examples accompanying the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of Antisemitism. This is largely moot, though, because the very people who employ these tactics explicitly reject the definition because it is accompanied by precisely examples like these. (If you don’t like being accused of xyz, redefine the meaning of xyz.)

Ultimately, there is no way to prove motivation. We can say the people shouting outside a Jewish hospital or calling Seinfeld “Nazi scum” are antisemitic, they can say they’re not, and no one is any further ahead.

There is something irrefutable, though. The Overton window, the spectrum of ideas that are deemed acceptable in a political discussion, is widening. Every time a Jewish speaker is targeted or a Jewish singer is subjected to cancelation and the public responds with a yawn, the bounds of what is acceptable broadens. It is by no means hyperbolic to suggest that this is precisely the way a society begins a slide into despotism or mob rule.

The context or content of the complaints cease to really matter. Organizations issue diktats demanding the ouster of a Jewish politician, thugs threaten to disrupt a concert, a religious group threatens a governing party’s standing in a few swing ridings and political leaders, event producers and concert venues capitulate. Pretty soon, activists and malcontents of all sorts see that threatening violence or boycotts is the easiest way to silence their targets because middle-of-the-road people fold instantly behind valid concerns for safety.

Motivation and intent probably matter less than outcome. These targetings have the effect of isolating, sidelining and menacing Jewish people – call them Jews, call them Zionists, call them whatever.

This is, without overstatement, a dangerous threat to bedrock ideas of a democratic society.

Goldstein wins 5,000km race

Leah Goldstein is the first woman, and the first Israeli, to win Race Across America. (photo by Vic Armijo / RAAM)

Leah Goldstein became the first woman to win Race Across America in its 38-year history. The Vernon, B.C., resident also became the first Israeli to win the cycling tournament.

The 5,000-kilometre race – from Oceanside, Calif., to Annapolis, Md. – must be completed in under 12 days, and Goldstein completed it in 11 days, three hours and three minutes, rolling past the finish line at 9:41 p.m. on June 26.

“Race Across America (RAAM) is like no other race,” Goldstein told the Independent. “I’ve done the equivalent of the Tour de France for females. I’ve done major races and other ultra endurance races of 500, 800 miles, and nothing compares – because it’s not a matter of if, but when you’re going to experience all sorts of discomforts, back, neck, knee, constipation, diarrhea, swelling, some major saddle sores.”

This was the latest in a lifetime as a top athlete. Goldstein won the 1989 World Bantamweight Kickboxing Championship and was Israel’s duathlon champion. As a youth, she was a kickboxing champion and a Taekwondo champion. Later in life, she competed in a string of professional cycling events. That toughness carried forward to her becoming an officer in the Israeli commando and elite police unit.

This year’s race was particularly extreme, during a heat wave that punished riders with temperatures of more than 40°C; not just through the desert, but for the first eight days.

“That can break people down, where they almost feel defeated before they start, but that’s the thing with RAAM, those things are going to happen whether you like it or not, and you have to prepare for them,” said Goldstein. “It’s really something that pushes you far beyond your limits. You’re going to have more bad days than good days, and that’s just the challenge.”

During certain parts, she said she had hallucinations and her “brain felt like a potato.”

“I didn’t know what I was doing on my bike. I didn’t know where I was. And then you kind of snap out of it,” she explained. “It’s that element of the mental challenge of really pushing forward, knowing that whatever you’re doing, you just can’t get off the bike, no matter what the situation, the temperature, no matter what kind of pain you are in.”

It helped that this was her third RAAM, she said, and the crew was able to analyze past performance to build on it.

“We wrote down every single mistake that we made in 2019, with weather conditions, navigational problems, bike positioning, training, with sleep patterns, and we tried to perfect it as much as possible. And because of COVID last year, I had an extra year to prepare for this. I trained as if RAAM was still going to happen.”

Her onboard crew included a medic, a kinesiologist, massage therapists and nutritionists. “I think they know how I roll, and know how to read me on the bike, when I’m starting to fade or things are going sideways, or I’m low on nutrition,” she said. “We won as a team.”

photo - Leah Goldstein during the Race Across America — Leah Goldstein during the Race Across America. *(photo by Vic Armijo / RAAM)*

Whereas riders fought the heat this year, they fought “uncontrollable rain and hail” two years ago. The crew prepared her with specialized clothing and pre-tested water-resistant equipment, just in case those conditions would prevail again.

“Prepare for the worst that possibly can happen, no matter how fully prepared you think you are,” she said. “It’s a matter of how badly do you want it, and how much are you willing to sacrifice.”

And Goldstein has experienced severe challenges. In 2005, during the Cascade Classic, she was involved in what she calls “the mother of all crashes” – she landed on her face at 80 kilometres an hour, “breaking practically every bone in my body, ripping my face right off.” Doctors were astonished she survived. In 2008, she was hit by a car, ejected 25 feet in the air and, in an attempt to cushion the fall, put her arms out, breaking both of them.

Neither accident kept her down. She returned to the racing circuit in 2011, winning the women’s solo category of Race Across America, breaking the previous record by 12 hours.

In 2016 she published a memoir, No Limits, outlining the triumphs and tragedies of her athletic life.

While the naysayers – who called her “insane and crazy” – said she was “past her prime,” the 52-year-old proved them wrong.

“Don’t use your age as an excuse or your past experiences as an excuse,” she said. “We don’t get second chances. What we got is what we got and, if you have a desire to do it, goddamn do it. What are you waiting for?”

Because of the high temperatures, the latest race took her a couple of days longer than expected, but she said the next one she plans on doing in under 10 days – and she’ll keep competing until she can’t anymore.

“If I’m alive at age 90 and I can still pedal my bike, I’m doing that race,” she said. “That’s my biggest goal.”

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

More than physical strength

Leah Goldstein shares her life story in No Limits. (photo from Leah Goldstein)

Leah Goldstein put the “severe” into persevere. The physical demands and rigors she has experienced in her life include being a kickboxing champion, a Taekwondo champion, a professional road-racing cyclist, an officer in the Israeli commando and elite police unit, and a participant on the Race Across America, a 3,000-mile bike trek. The B.C. local recently published her memoir, No Limits, outlining the triumphs and the tragedies of her athletic life.

Lessons in fortitude and grit began with her grandparents – survivors of the Shoah – trickling down to her parents, who arrived in Canada from Israel with very little English and a hundred dollars to their name. To make ends meet, her parents worked opposite shifts.

“It’s just the determination of somebody wanting something that bad, and would do anything to get there,” Goldstein told the Independent.

That would be something of a mantra throughout her life, beginning with Taekwondo lessons at age 9. By 16, she achieved a black belt as National Junior Champion. She then moved on to kickboxing. While jugging high school classes, she became World Bantamweight Kickboxing Champion.

As a teenager, her coach had her follow a strict regimen of “no smoking, no drinking, no friends, no phone, no junk food, and seven days a week of training. I did exactly what he said and I didn’t have a teenage life,” recalled Goldstein, now 47.

She went on to win a slew of championships provincially, nationally and in the United States. “Those sacrifices were worth the payoff at the end,” she conceded.

That distilled willpower carried into her Israeli military service. She became one of a handful of women instructors of the elite commando division and, later, a krav maga self-defence trainer for special unit soldiers.

Goldstein was one of only two women to successfully complete the harsh commando training of Course Madaseem, and the only woman out of about 30 recruits to graduate from a then newly established special program at the Israeli Police Academy. She went on to work in the undercover narcotics division, the intelligence services, anti-terrorism department, violent crime investigations, and was an instructor for officials and field workers.

In one 20-hour long grueling military training session that she describes, recruits subsisted on 30 minutes of sleep, then had to repeat the exercise. While many “dropped like flies,” she learned that survival depended largely on what “happens in our mind.”

That was a lesson that went back to her tournament days as a youth. As a second-degree black-belt kickboxer, she had won virtually every bout, but an admitted inflated ego led her to be distracted, and badly defeated, in one match in particular.

“Refocus, and be humble,” she recalled her coach insisting. “And, with every opponent that I had, or any challenges, treat it like it’s your biggest threat.”

When she left policing, she shifted to professional cycling. While her law enforcement career left her emotionally tattered, it was cycling that left her the most battered and bruised physically.

In a Pennsylvania race just prior to the 2004 Olympics, she fell off the bike, breaking her hand. And then, in 2005, after winning nine of her first 11 races, she was involved in what she calls “the mother of all crashes” during the Cascade Classic – she landed on her face at 80 kilometres an hour, “breaking practically every bone in my body, ripping my face right off.”

Doctors were astounded she survived at all, she said.

More astounding was her outlook on the situation: “I actually came back out of that stronger than I was prior.”

It was in 2007 approximately when she started to consider taking David Spanner’s advice – he wrote a feature on her for the Province newspaper – to write a book for the purpose of inspiring others.

“I didn’t understand that at the time because, when you’re an athlete, you’re very self-absorbed and everything is about you,” she said.

The decision to write a book solidified as she did more public speaking engagements. Attendees were quite moved by her stories of resilience.

“I said, ‘Woah, if my story is really that powerful, and I can potentially change lives and help inspire, motivate people, then this book has to be written,’” she explained. “For many of us, it’s easy to be safe. We’re so afraid to fail. But part of succeeding is facing failure. I think it’s just having movement in life, and not watching great things that other people do, but starting to do great things and wowing yourself.”

Goldstein walked her talk or, rather, pedaled her talk, returning to the racing circuit in 2011, winning the women’s solo category of Race Across America, breaking the previous record by 12 hours.

“It’s really using your mind,” she said of perseverance. “When you feel every element of pain, and you’re exhausted and tired, and you just don’t want to be there – and then it starts raining and it’s minus-two degrees – it’s just all about being able to keep it together.”

Dave Gordon is a Toronto-based freelance writer whose work can be found in more than 100 publications globally. His is managing editor of landmarkreport.com.