refugees – Page 5

Ready to welcome refugees

As of Nov. 24, the Government of Canada was processing 4,511 applications for privately sponsored Syrian refugees (not including Quebec, which has its own procedure). The map shows communities where private sponsors have submitted an application. (image from cic.gc.ca/english/refugees/welcome)

Vancouver’s Jewish community is mobilizing to welcome refugees from Syria. The federal government has announced that 25,000 Syrian refugees will come to Canada before the end of February. While most of those will be government-sponsored, groups of Canadians, including many in the Jewish community, are leaping at the opportunity to be a part of the resettlement project.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Anglican church to streamline the process. The federal government has a number of sponsorship agreement holders, which are established, experienced groups that are engaged in aiding refugees on an ongoing basis. To expedite the process, the Jewish community is primarily working through the partnership with the Anglican Church of Canada so that synagogues and other Jewish groups that may want to sponsor can do so efficiently.

“The Anglican diocese, rather than setting up a separate relationship with each of the synagogues, proposed that there be one memorandum of understanding with the Jewish community,” said Shelley Rivkin, Federation’s vice-president for planning, allocations and community affairs. “We will be the holder of the memorandum of understanding so the synagogues will raise the funds and issue a tax receipt. The funds will then come to us and be in a restricted account and, as those funds are distributed, they will go directly through us so that the diocese is not having to deal with multiple parties.”

Or Shalom Synagogue has already raised two-thirds of the funds necessary to sponsor three families. Natalie Grunberg, a member of the Or Shalom Syrian Refugees Initiative, said they are expecting their sponsored refugees as early as January. The group has launched a series of events, including a concert of Syrian music, to raise awareness and money for the project. The federal government estimates the cost of sponsoring a refugee family for a year to be about $30,000, but Vancouverites involved in the process are working on an assumption of about $40,000, based on housing costs here.

Or Shalom is working through existing partnerships they have built over the years. Rather than going through the Anglican church, they are working with the United Church of Canada. Grunberg acknowledged that some in the Jewish community have differences with the United Church’s stand toward Israel, but the priority was to expedite the refugee sponsorship process and they believed working through existing relationships would be most effective.

Grunberg is noticeably proud of her congregation’s efforts so far.

“We’re a very small synagogue and we’re sponsoring three families,” she said.

Through existing relationships with the Syrian community here, Or Shalom will focus their sponsorship efforts on reunifying families that already have some members in Metro Vancouver and also on members of the LGBT community.

Temple Sholom is also rallying for refugees. Almost immediately after announcing the idea during the High Holidays, the synagogue raised enough money to sponsor one family.

“We’ve now decided to sponsor a second family,” said Rabbi Dan Moskovitz.

He acknowledges that there have been some anxieties among his congregation about bringing Syrian refugees here.

“I met with every person that voiced that concern to me,” he said. “I met with them personally. We talked about it. We talked about the people that we are bringing in – they were concerned about terrorists coming across – we talked about the difference between private sponsorship, as we are doing, and what we’ve been seeing in Europe with refugees flooding across borders … that we were sponsoring families with young children, that our sponsorships were family reunification, so they would have real roots here in B.C., particularly in Vancouver. We acknowledge the fears but at the same time we also recognize that this is a crisis and that the Jewish tradition teaches us quite clearly to love the stranger. Israel is doing things for refugees on the Syrian border right now with their hospitals and we had to do our part.”

Moskovitz cites Torah as the basis for his enthusiasm.

“Thirty-six times in the Torah, in the Bible, it says to love the stranger because you were once strangers in the land,” he said. “The Jews were once refugees ourselves and this goes all the way back to the land of Egypt and the slavery of the Israelites under Pharaoh, where we were running for our lives; in that case from the famine, according to the biblical story, and the Egyptian people welcomed the Jewish people, welcomed us in and gave us food and shelter and we lived there for 435 years, according to the Bible. From that and so many other times in the Bible, the most often-repeated commandment in all of Jewish tradition is to love the stranger, to love the immigrant; love the stranger, because that was you once.”

More modern Jewish history is also a factor, he added.

“We are largely still here even though throughout our history people have tried to destroy us because at critical times in our history some people took us in,” said Moskovitz. “We like to think we did it all by ourselves and there is no doubt that there is a tremendous resiliency of the Jewish people but, at the same time, we have been the beneficiary of others sheltering us at times of mortal danger.”

Congregation Beth Israel has created a task force to look into possibly sponsoring a Kurdish Syrian refugee family. Executive director Shannon Etkin said the group will analyze the resources available within the congregation community to provide for a family beyond the minimum requirements set out by the federal government.

Other synagogues, organizations and individuals who may not have the resources to directly sponsor a refugee or family are being encouraged to support on-the-ground efforts by the Joint Distribution Committee, which is aiding refugees in Turkey and Hungary. This support is being organized by the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver.

“They’re doing a lot of direct aid for women and children and also doing some work with frontline responders,” Rivkin said.

Comparing refugee response

While American political discourse around whether to accept Syrian refugees smolders under the embers of xenophobia, Canadians have been opening their hearts and their wallets to bring in Syrian refugees.

Canada is one of the only countries with a private sponsorship option, which means that groups of ordinary citizens can provide funds and demonstrate their intention to provide emotional and logistical support to refugee families for one year, thus enabling the absorption of refugees whom the government might not otherwise have been able to afford.

Like many faith and neighborhood communities, Jewish communities, especially through synagogues, are on the frontlines of this effort.

It’s not often that a rabbi’s sermon gets reprinted in the daily newspaper of a major city, but such was the case for Rabbi Lisa Grushcow of Montreal’s Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom. “For too long, we have thought of religion in passive terms, counting how many people are sitting in the pews or paying dues,” she wrote. “All this is necessary but not sufficient. I want us to count how many lives we change, how many people we help, how many hearts we touch.” Her synagogue is sponsoring at least one refugee family.

Meanwhile, a sermon delivered on Kol Nidre this year by Rabbi Dan Moskovitz of Temple Sholom in Vancouver helped capture the hearts and minds of his congregants. “Tonight, I want to ask you to do something great. I want to ask you to save a life, the life of a stranger – because we were once strangers in the land, because we are human beings and that is the only similarity that we really need.” It didn’t take long for the congregation to come up with the $40,000 necessary to sponsor a refugee family. They are now fundraising to bring a second. Other synagogues across the city – including the Jewish Renewal Or Shalom, which is sponsoring three families – have followed suit. (See story, page 1.)

In Toronto, Jewish Immigrant Aid Services, one of nearly 100 organizations across the country that enjoys sponsorship agreement holder rights, has been flooded with sponsoring requests.

I spoke to Ryan Friedman of Darchei Noam and to Pippa Feinstein of First Narayever Congregation, two Toronto-based synagogues that are sponsoring refugees. Feinstein in particular noted that, while wanting to “ensure a safe place for any refugee family who is looking to come to Canada,” her congregation is aiming to launch “parallel awareness-raising activities” around the plight of persecuted minorities in the region.

Among those minorities are the Yazidi people of Iraq, who are being faced with a genocide – in the words of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights – at the hands of ISIS. In collaboration with other faith groups, Winnipeg’s Jewish community has spearheaded an effort to sponsor multiple Yazidi refugees. As Belle Jarniewski described it, “When I saw the article about the mass grave [of the Yazidis], I really responded to it viscerally. It reminded me that we keep talking every year “never again” and, as Jews, we talk about this all the time, how important it is … and what are we doing about it?”

In my own city of Ottawa, Lori Rosove and Dara Lithwick of Temple Israel launched a community-wide effort to sponsor a refugee family. As Rosove explained it, “It’s the human thing to do.”

I, too, have helped launch a cross-denominational grassroots sponsoring effort, working through both Jewish Family Services of Ottawa and the United Church of Canada. Since a handful of us gathered in a neighbor’s living room in early September, we now number 250 participants and have raised $150,000 so far, enabling us to sponsor six families. So as to provide the suggested “soft-landing” that settlement agencies advise, each family will live with a neighborhood host for the first couple of months.

And what of pushback from community members? Moskovitz explained that, while 95% of his congregants have been enthusiastic, a few were not. “I met with each individual or group who registered a concern,” explaining the “rigorous UN screening and the Canadian screening [process].”

For their part, American Jewish groups have been doing what they can. There was the statement of moral clarity issued by 10 Jewish organizations. And there is a rabbis’ letter drafted by HIAS, urging their elected officials to “welcome the stranger.” In addition to lobbying Congress to accept refugees and supporting local resettlement agencies in their efforts, the U.S.-based Religious Action Centre of Reform Judaism has taken the initiative to help American congregations partner with Canadian ones in order to support their neighbors’ efforts. As RAC head Rabbi Jonah Pesner told me: “To sit at our [Passover] seder tables every year and [tell] the story, [starting with] ‘my father was a wandering Aramean,’ and to live through 5,000 years as a community of refugees, not to model for the world what it means to welcome the stranger would be an abdication of our legacy.”

So, while the U.S. Congress wrings its hands over whether to accept a meagre 10,000 souls, Canada (one-tenth the population) has pledged to receive 25,000 Syrian refugees by February, of which 10,000 are expected to be sponsored privately. When private citizens are empowered to help people from across the globe, the bluster and rhetoric can be bypassed while the real work of saving lives and opening hearts can take place.

Mira Sucharov is an associate professor of political science at Carleton University. She blogs at Haaretz and the Jewish Daily Forward. A version of this article was originally published on haartez.com.

יהודים בקנדה עושים מעשים חיוביים

מחנה הפליטים הסורים זעתרי בירדן. (צילום: U.S. Department of State via commons.wikimedia.org)

יהודים בקנדה עושים מעשים חיוביים: עוזרים בשיפוץ מסגד שנשרף ומסייעים להביא פליטים מסוריה

בדרך כלל שוררים יחסים טובים בין קהילות היהודים והמוסלמים בקנדה בניגוד למקומות אחרים בעולם. לאור הימים הקשים, המאורעות במזרח התיכון ואירועי הטרור שמשפיעים גם על קנדה, נתרמים בהקהילה היהודית באזורים שונים ברחבי המדינה לעזור לאחרים, ובמקרה זה מדובר במוסלמים.

חברים בקהילה היהודית וראשי בית הכנסת ‘בית ישראל’ שבעיר פטרבורו במחוז אונטריו נרתמים בימים האחרונים לעזור קהילה המוסלמית המקומית, שהמסגד היחיד שלה נפגע בשריפה בשבוע שעבר. מדובר בפעילות פלילית שמוגדרת על ידי המשטרה כפשעי שנאה, לאור פעולות הטרור של דאע”ש בפריז. עלות השיפוץ של המסגד נאמדת בשמונים אלף דולר ובקהילה יהודית עוזרים בהשגת מימון לפרוייקט, שיימשך מספר שבועות. כן הוצע למוסלמים להשתמש במתקן בית הכנסת לקיום תפעילותיהם עד שהמסגד יהיה כשיר לפעילות מלאה.

במקביל וללא קשר מספר קהילות יהודיות בקנדה נערכות לעזור לקליטת פליטי המלחמה בסוריה. זאת לאור החלטת הממשלה הליברלית החדשה ברשות ראש הממשלה, ג’סטין טרודו, להביא לקנדה עשרים וחמישה אלף פליטים עד לסוף שנה זו. בימים הקרובים הממשלה תפרט את תוכנית העבודה לקליטת הפליטים שעלותה מוערכת בכמיליארד דולר. עלות הבאת וקליטת משפחה בת ארבע נפשות מוערכת בין שלושים עד ארבעים אלף דולר בשנה. ארגונים כמו הג’ואיש פמלי סרוויס משתפים פעולה עם הכנסיה המאוחדת של קנדה להקצאת משאבים ומתקנים לקליטת הפליטים. קהילת היהודים של קמפלוס ברשות הג’ואיש קומיונטי סנטר המקומי החלה במגבית לגיוס כספים לעזור לפליטים מסוריה, בשיתוף ארגונים מקומיים אחרים. ואילו בית הכנסת ‘טמפל שולום’ בוונקובר קיים מגבית לגיוס כספים לפליטים. במגבית גוייסו תוך מספר ימים כארבעים אלף דולר.

אבדה ונמצאה: טבעת אירוסים שנעלמה בחוף הושבה לבעליה

את טקס האירוסים שלהם דרין ריימר ואשתו לעתיד קתלין מקולי לא ישכחו. האירוע שהתחיל יפה וכמעט הסתיים בעוגמת נפש גדולה, נגמר בסוף טוב. רמייר (34) הזמין את בת זוגתו בחמש השנים האחרונות מקולי (27), לארוחת ערב חגיגית בעיר החוף טופינו שבוונקובר איילנד. אחרי הארוחה השניים ירדו לחוף הסמוך כשגשם ירד כמעט ללא הפסקה. הם החלו ללכת על החול הרטוב ופתאם ריימר נעצר, ירד על ברכיו, הוציא טבעת מכיסו ואמר למקולי: “הינשאי לי”. מקולי ששמחה מאוד אמרה “כן” ומייד הוסיפה: “אוי לא”. ומדוע, כי הטבעת שריימר ענדה על אצבעה הרטובה החליקה ונעלמה בחול כשבחוץ שלטה החשכה. לאחר שהתעשתו, השניים החלו לגשש בעזרת ידיהם על החול הרטוב בסמוך אליהם ולא מצאו דבר. הם המשיכו בחיפוש אחר הטבעת האבודה כמעט לאורך כל הלילה, עד שהתייאשו וחזרו לבית המלון, כשהם רטובים, עייפים ואצבעות ידיהם קפואות. למחרת בבוקר המשיכו השניים בחיפוש ולא מצאו את הטבעת. תושבי טופינו ואפילו השוטרים ששמעו על דבר הטבעת שנעלמה, פתחו במבצע חיפוש נרחב בחוף. לאחר מספר שעות הצליח אחד מהתושבים בעזרת מגלה מתכות למצוא את החפץ היקר. ריימר ומקולי הנרגשים שמחו עד דמעות. ריימר ניקה את את הטבעת מהחול ושוב ענד אותה על אצבעה של מקולי, אך הפעם בזהירות רבה, תוך שהוא בודק היטב שאין סיכוי שתיפול.

ריימר סירב להגיד מה עלות הטבעת שלא הייתה מבוטחת, אך ציין כי מדובר בטבעת הזהב לבן עשויה בהזמנה אישית, ועליה ציור של שושנה ולהבות מזהב צהוב, וכן מוטבעים מסביב מספר יהלומים. הוא הוסיף שסיפור הטבעת שאבדה חיזק את הקשר בין השניים, לאחר שהתמודדו בהצלחה עם מצב לחץ קשה.

Refugee system doesn’t work

According to David Matas, former president of Canadian Council of Refugees (CCR), changes that have been made to this country’s refugee system within the last few years have made it more difficult to sponsor refugees.

photo - David Matas is a vocal proponent of changing Canada’s immigration system — David Matas is a vocal proponent of changing Canada’s immigration system. *(photo from David Matas)*

“We set up a sponsorship system in ’78 and it was used in ’79 and ’80 and years around there to bring in the Vietnamese refugees,” said Matas. With the different sponsorship programs developed over the years, mixed with the growing willingness of people to sponsor, visa offices no longer have the capacity to process the amount of sponsorship applications, he said.

“The response of the government, in my view, should have been to increase the resources to match the sponsorship need, but that’s not what happened,” he said. “Instead, what they did is put visa caps on the offices with the biggest numbers, as well as an overall local cap for private sponsorship through sponsorship agreement holders. Then, they divided the global cap amongst the sponsorship agreement holders.”

According to Citizenship and Immigration Canada, “A group of five (G5) is five or more Canadian citizens or permanent residents who have arranged to sponsor a refugee living abroad to come to Canada. All of the group members must be at least 18 years of age and live or have representatives in the area where the refugee will settle.

“The group must agree to give emotional and financial support to the refugee(s) for the full sponsorship period – usually one year.”

They couldn’t cap the G5 applications in the same way as the other, so what they did instead, said Matas, “was insist that anybody who sponsored through group of five had to get prior approval … through the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which is much more overwhelmed and under-funded than the Canadian government.”

The CIC website explains that, effective Oct. 19, 2012, “a G5 may only sponsor applicants who are recognized as refugees by either the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) or a foreign state, unless you are applying to sponsor a Syrian or Iraqi refugee.”

According to Matas, the caps made the lines longer, forcing people to reapply year after year, making it so that anybody who applied had to wait years before sponsorship came through.

“But, obviously when you’re dealing with refugee people marching across Europe, they can’t wait years,” he said. “And, what’s more, there is a direct connection between people leaving and the failure of the sponsorship. Because, if people know they’re putting in an application and, if they hang around, it will succeed, they’ll stay. But, if it’s going to take five or 10 years, there is no point in waiting.

“So, there’s a direct connection between this exodus that we’re seeing now, the failure of the Canadian sponsorship scheme and the absence of any European sponsorship schemes.”

Matas believes that if we had kept our Canadian sponsorship scheme as it was, then we could have advised Europe to do the same and, if Europe had agreed, all this mass migration could have been avoided.

Recent turmoil has simply shined a spotlight on the issue. “It’s just like water pressing against a dam,” said Matas. “In the beginning, it doesn’t have any impact. It’s only when it breaks, or the water overflows the dam, that you notice the dam isn’t working or that the dam is a problem.”

The current situation does not come as a big surprise to him, with visa offices being “under water” for years. But, instead of giving them more “air” (staff), they were further strained by the capping system, which artificially controlled the number of refugees going through the system, regardless of need.

“With the failure of the Canadian system, there wasn’t a picture to show the Europeans how it is done and ask them to do the same,” said Matas. Instead, “We have a system that collapsed. Well, not completely, but it ceased to be functional.”

According to Matas, the caps need to be removed and the system resources increased “to match the private sponsorship, so we don’t have the generosity of Canadians being frustrated.”

In early September, Matas spoke at a public rally about refugees organized by the Kurdish community of Winnipeg.

“The refugee sponsorship and resettlement community has been against these changes from the first minute they were discussed,” he said. “I am not presenting a new idea here. I’m reiterating a stand that has been taken many times in the past by the refugee support, resettlement, integration [and] advocacy community.”

The topic became an election issue, with candidates talking in terms of numbers – but not in terms of fixing the mechanics of the system. However, said Matas, “Presumably, with the numbers will go the capacity to process them.”

While many of the refugees arriving in Europe are Syrian, many are not, said Matas. “While the situation in Syria is terrible, it’s not the only place in the world that’s terrible,” he said.

About the Canadian government’s decision to not have Canadian visa officers apply the UN refugee definition to 10,000 Syrians, thereby allowing these 10,000 to enter Canada on a first-come, first-served basis, Matas said, “The government, with the recent announcement, did nothing to fix the system,” said Matas. “Rather, it acknowledged, indirectly, its failure, by deciding not to apply it to 10,000 random Syrians who may or may not be refugees. As far as I am concerned, that is not much of a response to the global refugee crisis or even, for that matter, the Syrian one.”

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Join the effort to help refugees

For me, it was those little blue shoes. In the picture of little Alan Kurdi, laying there like he was sleeping on the beach in Turkey. Only he wasn’t sleeping, I had been sleeping, we have been sleeping.

It was the shoes that woke me from my slumber, from my disregard for the suffering of the Syrian people in the midst of the greatest humanitarian refugee crisis since the Second World War. More than 10 million people have fled from chaos … into chaos. There are 360,000 refugee children under the age of 11 in Turkey alone.

But it only took one. It was those tiny shoes, on those tiny feet, with their tiny toes. I know those shoes, those feet, those toes, my own children have them. They should not be laying there lifeless on the beach – they should be running through sandcastles, stomping in puddles, chasing the tide in and out.

Two hundred thousand people have died in the fighting, or while running or swimming for their lives, many of them children like Alan and his brother Galib. Millions of children are suffering from trauma and ill health. A quarter of Syria’s schools have been damaged, destroyed or taken over for shelter. More than half of Syria’s hospitals are destroyed.

But “it’s the children that catch us,” wrote Sarah Wildman for the Jewish Daily Forward. It’s the children who “bring those dizzying numbers into full focus. Their eyes round, their faces tired or hidden behind a parent’s legs. They are asleep on their parents’ shoulders; they walk beside them or are strapped to their bellies, legs dangling, as their mothers or fathers stride ever forward.

“They are far younger than the Syrian conflict so many of them flee. They have been trapped the entirety of their young lives, and now we see them, lying lifeless on beaches.”

Jonathan Sacks, Britain’s former chief rabbi, wrote: “I used to think that the most important line in the Bible was ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’ Then I realized that it is easy to love your neighbor because he or she is usually quite like yourself. What is hard – is to love the stranger, one whose color, culture or creed is different from yours. That is why the command ‘Love the stranger because you were once strangers’ resonates so often throughout the Bible. It is summoning us now.”

Sacks suggests a modern-day kindertransport, like that which was organized to save Jewish children on the eve of the Shoah.

But “save the children” is not “love the stranger.” To love the stranger, you have to take the parents, too. To love the stranger, you have to love the Syrians, who were taught to fear and hate Israel, to fear and hate Jews.

“Love the stranger” does not mean you have to open wide the borders to Islamists, fundamentalists or terrorists. But, in these numbers the world is dealing with, how many innocents will die while we carefully screen for the next Osama bin Laden?

I hear the concern, the alarm, the plaintive note of caution in our community and beyond.

“Think before acting.”

“It’s a Muslim problem, let those countries come to their aid. They hate us anyway.”

“Allowing millions of Syrians and others from the Muslim Middle East into Europe will end up as a catastrophe for Europe and, therefore, for the West.”

I read these statements and I can’t help swapping the word Muslim for Jew. Re-read them that way and they are indistinguishable from the statements that were issued when it was our people, the Jewish people, trying desperately to get out of Europe ahead of the Nazi menace.

Jews were desperate to leave. Yet country after country shut its doors. Nation after nation, in effect, said it wasn’t their problem. Or, more precisely, said they didn’t want it to be their problem.

We know well the tragedy of the St. Louis, one of the last ships to leave Nazi Germany in 1939 before Europe became involved in the Second World War. Denied entry at every port from Cuba, to the United States, to Canada, the ship sailed back to Europe and the Jewish passengers ended up in Nazi concentration camps, a third of them died there.

We know the infamous response of an unidentified Canadian immigration agent who, in early 1945, was asked how many Jews would be allowed in Canada after the war. He replied, “None is too many.”

This is not the Shoah, thank God.

What’s happening in Europe is a humanitarian crisis of the first order, but it’s not genocide. It shouldn’t need to be said that the Holocaust was the determined effort by one of the world’s leading industrialized powers to murder all the world’s Jews in the course of a nearly successful effort to conquer the globe.

Raising images of the Holocaust may help draw attention to the crisis. But it also shuts down reasoned discourse, and thus drowns out urgent questions that need airing.

“If the borders are opened wide, how many millions will want to flee the world’s no-longer-liveable regions for the safe haven of a continent that works?”

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, rightfully, reminds us that Israel is a small country that lacks geographic and demographic depth – it cannot take in masses of Syrian refugees. Yet Israel is not standing idly by. Quietly, so as not to endanger those it is helping, Israel is treating hundreds of Syrian wounded on its northern border.

“But,” as J.J. Goldberg wrote in the Forward, “in an atmosphere where every dinghy is the St. Louis, where refrigerator trucks smuggling migrants into Austria become boxcars transporting Jews to the gas chambers, where numbers thoughtlessly scrawled on refugees’ forearms in felt-tip pen by Czech police frantically trying to keep track of the human tidal wave are transformed into numbers tattooed on death-camp inmates – in such an atmosphere, there’s nothing left to discuss.”

Is Canada the best place for Syrian refugees? No, it would be better to keep them near their homeland so that, when troubles are over, they are in position to return to rebuild. Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan have taken in two million; the rest of the oil-rich Gulf States have refused – they need to do their part.

But, as Irwin Cotler reminded us at the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver campaign launch, quoting Rabbi Tarfon from the Mishnah (2:16): “It is not our responsibility to finish the work [of repairing the world], but we are not free to desist from it either.”

On the Thursday between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur (Sept. 17), five Vancouver synagogues, their rabbis and lay leaders met with the Jewish Federation and our interfaith partners in the Anglican Diocese and the immigrant aid service agency

MOSAIC to explore the possibility of each synagogue sponsoring a refugee family. We will meet again after the federal elections to continue our planning and due diligence in preparation for family sponsorships.

This will not be a small project. We will be responsible not only for raising enough money to show the Canadian government that we can support a family for a year; we will also be responsible for everything from meeting them at the airport to finding them a place to live, from helping them learn English to helping them find work and schools. If you are interested in getting involved, I urge you to contact your rabbi or the Jewish Federation and offer your support to those who are in desperate need.

We will be responsible long after their images and stories have disappeared from the headlines of our news. But we will stand together with other synagogues – and people of other faiths – across North America, stepping forward to do what we can, to love the stranger because we were once strangers.

This is an excerpt from a sermon delivered by Rabbi Dan Moskovitz on Kol Nidrei 5776 at Temple Sholom. The full sermon can be viewed at youtu.be/2cHd_FV2MWs.

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.

ראיון עם טימה כורדי חלק ב

טימה כורדי (צילום: Facebook)

בראיון הטלוויזיה מול ביתך בראשית החודש האשמת את עצמך בטביעה של האחיינים שלך וגיסתך כיוון שאת נתת להם כסף שישלמו למבריחים, שהעבירו אותם מטורקיה ליוון דרך הים. “זה נכון. אני נתתי לאחי עבדאללה חמשת אלפים דולר עבור המבריחים. לא יכולתי לתת לו חסות שיעבור לקנדה, כיוון שהתחלתי עם האח הבכור מוחמד, ואין לי את היכולת הכספית לעזור ליותר מאח אחד כל פעם. עבדאללה צריך השתלת שיניים דחופה כיוון שאין לו שיניים בפה, וזה עולה כסף רב, אך החלטנו שקודם כל הוא יעבור עם המשפחה למערב אירופה. ואחר כך נמשיך. לצערי לא יהיה המשך”. כורדי נחנקת מדמעות ובוכה על מר גורלם של שלושת בני המשפחה שניספו. “הוא סיפר לי איך החזיק את שני הקטנים בידיו בניסיון להציל אותם, מאיימת הים. מי האמין שזה יהיה סופו של המסע. כמה עבדאללה מסכן עכשיו. הוא רוצה להישאר ליד קברם של ילדיו ואשתו. אני לא יודעת כמה זמן יקח לו להתאושש, אם יתאושש בכלל. ואם אביא את כל המשפחה לכאן וגם אביא אותו, כיצד הוא ירגיש כשהוא לבד, וכל האחים מלווים בילדיהם. גם אני שבורה לגמרי ולא מסוגלת לתפקד. אני לא יכולה לאחזור לעבודה כרגע. אני גם אני לא יודעת כמה זמן זה יקח לי לחזור לעצמי. קרה לנו אסון גדול שאני לא מאחלת לאף משפחה, לאף הורים”.

טימה אני שואל בקושי רב, כיצד הרגשת כששמעת שהילדים ואימם ניספו בים? “התחלתי לצרוח כמו משוגעת ולא ידעתי מה קורה עימי. איבדתי את השליטה על עצמי. השכנים שמעו אותי ורצו בבהלה לראות מה קרה לי. ונדמה לי שאף הזעיקו את המשטרה. ביום רביעי בערב הלכתי לישון והיה לי חלום מאוז מוזר. חלמתי על אימי שיושבת מול המחשב ומקבלת הודעות מוזרות ומתחילה לצעוק, שכולם דואגים וכולם בוכים. כולם במשפחה ובין החברים ידעו שעבדאללה היה הילד החביב ביותר עליה. היא כמובן אהבה את כולנו מאוד, אך הוא היה הילד המיוחד שלה, ותראה מה קרה לו. כהתעוררתי בחמישי בבוקר ראיתי המון המון הודעות בטלפון, והבנתי שמשהו לא בסדר. עבדאללה יצא עם משפחה למסע בן חצי שעה ואף אחד לא שומע ממנו יומיים? התקשרתי מיד לאחותי בדמשק וקו הטלפון היה גרוע מאוד. אך הבנתי שמהו רע מאוד קרה לעבדאללה, והתחלתי לצרוח בטרוף. בעלי והבן שלי (בן ה-22) שגר למטה, התעוררו מייד ובאו אלי בבהלה. לא הייתי מסוגלת להתקשר שוב לאחותי וידי לא נענו לי. ביקשתי מבני שיחייג אליה. היא בכתה ושאלתי מה קרה. תגידי לי מה קרה עם עבדאללה צעקתי. לבסוף היא אמרה לי את האמת המרה מכל, שהוא איבד את אשתו ובניו בים. איזה אסון גדול קרה לנו. אני יודעת שבהתחלה הוא האשים את כל העולם במה שקרה לו. אחר כך הוא נרגע ונסגר תוך עצמו. אני מנסה לדבר איתו וזה נורא קשה. כשהוא הגיע לבית החולים לשם הובאו גופות אשתו והילדים, הוא ישב בחוץ והחזיק את בגדי הילדים ולא הפסיק להריח אותם. זה הזכרון האחרון שיש לו מגאליפ ואיילאן. איזה מסכן”. (היא שוב בוכה).

טימה: האם את בטוחה שהתמונה הקשה של גופתו של איילאן שנמצאה על החוף תשנה משהו, תעיר מישהו, הרי מאות ילדים נהרגו כבר בסוריה ולאף אחד כנראה זה לא איכפת? “כן. אני מאמינה שזה מסר מאלוהים. הוא לקח את שני הילדים ואימם לגן עדן. הם בטוחים עכשיו שם ויש להם חיים טובים יותר. והמסר הוא שיש לעצור את האלימות ולהפסיק את המלחמה הנוראית הזו. אני מקווה ובטוחה בעצם שכל העולם יתעורר ויתעשת, ויפסיק את המלחמה. זו השליחות של איילאן לעולם וזה המסר שהוא הביא עימו בטרם נלקח על ידי אלוהים”.

כשדברתי עם בעלך יום קודם לכן, הוא הסביר לי שהיה חשוב שתסבירי לעולם באנגלית, מה המשמעות של התמונה הקשה של אלייאן שוכב שם על החול. כורדי: “כן היה לי חשוב ביום הקשה הזה בחיי לנצל את ההזדמנות שניתנה בידי, ולהסביר לעולם כולו איזה סבל נוראי קורה שם בסוריה, וצריך למנוע את ההרג ושהורים נוספים יאבדו את ילדיהם. אנו בטוחה שכולם יתתעוררו עכשיו ויסיימו סוף למלחמה הקשה הזו. מותו של אלייאן הוא מחיר כבד מאוד למשפחה, אך אולי הוא יביא למשהו טוב. אולי יצא מזה משהו חיובי”.

לסיום אני שואל את כורדי האם יש לה מה להגיד על הצעתו של יו”ר האופוזיצה יצחק (בוזי) הרצוג, לאור משבר הפליטים באירופה, שגם על ישראל לסייע במאמץ לקלוט פליטים מסוריה. “אני גרה כאן עם בעלי האיטלקי והחשיבה שלי היא כיום מערבית. זה ידוע שישראל וסוריה נמצאים ביחסי עויינות ולא ברור לי אם אפשרי בכלל, לקלוט פליטים סורים בישראל. אך אם זה אפשרי בכך ניתן לעזור לפליטים, אין סיבה שזה לא יקרה. אגב אני שמעתי כבר לא פעם שישראל מטפלת בפצועים מסוריה”.

Kenney discusses priorities

Jason Kenney, Canada’s minister of national defence and minister for multiculturalism. (photo from forces.gc.ca)

Jason Kenney, Canada’s minister of national defence and minister for multiculturalism, says this country should prioritize Christian refugees and other minorities who constitute the most imperiled of the millions fleeing Syria and Iraq.

“Some people are in an understandable wave of emotion … telling me that we should just send C-17 aircraft over there to refugee camps and load them up and bring them to Canada,” Kenney told the Independent. But the refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) that Kenney sees as most vulnerable are not even in the United Nations refugee camps, he said.

“I know these issues extremely well and I can tell you that there are certain vulnerable Syrian and Iraqi minorities who cannot and do not even go to the UN camps,” said Kenney. “Why? Because they are the persecuted minorities. Ismaili Muslims, Druze, Chaldeans, Assyrians, Syrians, Armenians – e.g. the Christians – do not go to the refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey because they’re afraid of their minority [status], the implications of that. These are the people who are living in urban slums in Amman, Jordan, in Beirut, Lebanon, and some in Ankara, Turkey, who we have said we will focus our refugee resettlement programs on.”

These minorities are less likely, Kenney said, to harbor individuals who could pose a threat to Canada.

“These are the victims of the doctrine of armed jihad,” he said. “I can tell you that these people, when they come to Canada, they want to keep us safe from what drove them out of their homes. This is why I think we need to be intelligent about refugee resettlement.”

Kenney emphasized that he wishes peace and protection to all of the refugees and IDPs regardless of their faith or political views. But, he added, “I’ve been to the camps, alright? When I go into people’s tents and I see there’s very few young men, I’ve asked in Turkey and Lebanon and in Jordan: where is your father, where is your husband, where’s your son? I see the pictures in the tents.”

The response he has received often, he said, is that the men are off fighting with the al-Nusra Front or other Islamist militias.

“This is a vicious stew of violence and we must ensure that that cult of violence doesn’t inadvertently come to Canada,” said the minister, who is running for reelection in Calgary. “So that’s why we need to be careful and prudent about security screening and, I think, ensure that to the greatest extent possible the refugees who we welcome to Canada are those who are amongst the most vulnerable.… I don’t apologize for saying we should focus on the most vulnerable and on Canada’s security at the same time.”

Kenney, who has been the Conservative government’s point person for ethnic communities, spoke with the paper as the image of Alan Kurdi, the Syrian-Kurdish refugee child whose body washed ashore on the Turkish coast, was animating the world to act on the refugee crisis.

“The image of that boy represents thousands of others who die in human smuggling operations and the tens of thousands who have – excuse me, the hundreds of thousands – who have died in the Syrian civil war and as victims of the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria,” said Kenney. “It galvanizes collective attention on the total humanitarian catastrophe in Iraq and Syria.”

Canada is the largest per capita resettler of refugees worldwide, Kenney said, welcoming one in every 10 resettled refugees in the world. (CBC and Global News have both analyzed this claim and note that it refers to refugees resettled from an asylum country like Lebanon or Jordan to a country that has agreed to take them as refugees. Because most refugees flee to an adjacent country – or, as seen in recent months, trek to European countries – the news outlets assert that Canada is not first, but 41st, in the world. Canada accepts one in 10 resettled refugees, but most refugees remain unsettled, they claim, making Canada’s acceptance rate of total refugees about one percent, not 10%, of the world’s refugees.)

In any event, the enormity of the problem, Kenney said, means “resettlement is not a solution.”

This is where Kenney differentiates the Conservative government’s position from those of the opposition parties. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees cites 15 million Iraqi and Syrian refugees and IDPs, he said.

“It’s a cruel myth if we think we can solve a humanitarian crisis with 15 million IDPs and refugees and here’s the key thing – new refugees are being created every single day,” he said. The world needs to address the root cause of the massive refugee problem, he said, which is the genocidal terror of ISIS (also called ISIL or the Islamic State).

“We have a moral obligation to play a role in degrading and ultimately defeating ISIL in its campaign of terror,” he said. “And, we also need to provide humanitarian support to the IDPs and refugees, which we are doing…. We’ve contributed between the two countries over $810 million in emergency humanitarian assistance. We will do more.”

The defence minister took a shot at New Democratic party leader Thomas Mulcair and Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, both of whom oppose Canadian ground troops in the fight against ISIS.

“What we’re doing is important,” Kenney said. “The military contributions that we are making through our airstrikes and the training of the Kurdish Peshmerga in northern Iraq are making a meaningful difference but, in the grand scheme of things, are relatively modest contributions. So, for the Liberals and NDP to suggest that we should completely withdraw even from the air campaign or, in the case of the NDP, from training, is, I think, morally irresponsible and reprehensible. If the world is moved by the images of the Kurdi family on the Turkish beach, we must recall that these were people who fled the violence of ISIL and there will be more Kurdi families unless and until the world stops this genocidal terrorist organization. That’s why we believe there is a moral obligation and a security imperative for us to participate in the international coalition degrading and, hopefully, ultimately defeating ISIL.”

On the issue of domestic security, Kenney also lashed back at critics of Bill C-51.

“If you look at the additional security powers included in Bill C-51, they are modest compared to most of our liberal democratic peer countries,” he said. “Most of the new powers included in Bill C-51 are actually invested in the courts, the judiciary, not in the police or intelligence agencies and certainly not in the hands of politicians. And many of those additional powers themselves are very modest.”

Kenney said RCMP were keeping an eye on Martin Couture-Rouleau, the “lone wolf” terrorist who killed Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent in Quebec last year.

“The RCMP went to the prosecutors and said we want to apply for a preventative detention order or peace bond to restrict this guy’s movements because we think he’s going to do something crazy and violent,” said Kenney. “The prosecutor said, sorry, but we just do not have the legislative, the statutory, tools to do this. We would have to prove to a court that he will commit a terrorist offence and there’s no way to do that.”

Under the new law, said Kenney, police can go to the prosecutor, who in turn can go to the court, and the court determines whether an order for preventive detention can be issued.

“And, by the way, the maximum order for that can be seven days,” he said. “In Britain, it’s 28 days. It’s why I say the powers here are relatively modest.”

Another example of what Bill C-51 does, he said, is to allow the Canadian Security Intelligence Service to interrupt a possible terrorist event.

“What does this mean practically? If CSIS is observing that a 15-year-old kid’s spending hours every day on terrorist websites, instead of just waiting for him to blow up metaphorically, they can go to his parents now and say, ‘Are you aware that your son appears to be in the process of radicalization?’” Kenney said. “Is this a violation of civil liberties? No. As the prime minister says, the most important civil liberty is the right to live safely and securely.”

Kenney described the idea that C-51 could be used to infiltrate or disrupt civil society protests against things such as oil pipelines as “rubbish.”

“I think the criticisms of Bill C-51 have been massively overblown,” he said. “If they advocate going and blowing up pipelines, yes, possibly. But protesting the construction of pipelines? Absolutely rubbish. No police officer would be interested in that, no prosecutor would bring a charge on that, no court would accept it. It is ridiculous.”

The Conservative government has often been alone on the international stage in defending Israel’s right to defend itself, a position that has been criticized on several fronts, including accusations that the Tories have turned Israel into a partisan political issue. The Independent asked if the government’s vocal position is driven by theology, politics or ideology.

“What drives that is principle,” Kenney said. “Israel is not a normal state. Israel is a moral cause. Israel is the refuge of the survivors of the Shoah and, therefore, the world has a moral obligation to ensure the protection of that refuge, that one and only Jewish homeland in the world.”

He dismissed political expediency as a factor, noting that fewer than one percent of Canadians are Jewish – and that not all of them are committed Zionists – and Canada has little of the Christian Zionist movement that exists in the United States.

“So, it’s not political,” he said, adding that it is also not based on “some kooky Christian reconstructionist millennial theology.”

“I have never heard a Conservative political actor in Canada make reference to Christian Zionist theology in articulating our support for Israel,” he said. “That’s a phantom for some paranoid minds on the left. The truth is this … we see Israel as an emblem, a symbol, a surrogate for Western civilization in the Middle East, by which we mean that Israel is predicated on the belief in human dignity, which is manifest in a liberal democratic political system, protection for human rights, religious freedom and pluralism.”

He said Israel’s enemies are motivated by what they view as “an unacceptable presence of those Western civilizational values in the Middle East, but secondly because the enemies of Israel are motivated by a deep and irredeemable antisemitism.”

“Most of Israel’s enemies do not seek a conventional peace – negotiations toward a two-state solution or a conventional political solution to the conflict there. They seek one thing, which is the elimination of the so-called ‘Zionist entity’ and the driving of the Jews into the sea. A second Holocaust.”

In addition to foreign affairs, Kenney said he wanted to remind Jewish Canadians of programs the government has undertaken domestically.

“We’ve taken a zero-tolerance attitude to antisemitism here domestically and that’s not just rhetorical,” he said. “We’ve paid a price for it. I’ve defunded organizations that were receiving grants – perversely – to provide integration services to newcomers, like the Canadian Arab Federation and Palestine House, whose leadership were openly antisemitic. I’ve been sued for it, our government’s been sued for these decisions, but we did the right thing.”

The government, he said, has also funded security infrastructure projects to upgrade security at synagogues, Hebrew schools and Jewish community centres.

On the issue of whether Canada is in a recession, Kenney said there was a sectoral contraction in oil that’s affected Alberta.

“No doubt about it, Alberta is in a recession due to the crash in oil prices,” he said. “But the rest of the country and the other industry sectors are growing. Employment remains strong. This is hardly a recession by any broadly understood definition and, according to the June StatsCan report, we’re back into a growth phase of two percent annualized growth. The dumbest thing we could do would be to act as though there is a serious, deep recession by going out and borrowing tens of billions of dollars as the other parties [would] do, which constitute deferred taxes. We think fiscal discipline, low taxes [and] expanded trade markets continue to be the right recipe for growth.”

The Independent has interviewed Liberal leader Justin Trudeau and has invitations out to NDP leader Thomas Mulcair and Green party leader Elizabeth May. The federal election is on Oct. 19.

ראיון עם טימה כורדי חלק א

(צילום: Facebook)

רציתי לדבר עם טימה כורדי ולשמוע קצת על תחושותיה הקשות, לאחר שאיבדה בראשית החודש את שני האחיינים שלה וגיסתה, עת ניסו לחצות עם אביהם עבדאללה כורדי את הים התיכון, בסירה עמוסה בת 16 פליטים של מבריחים, מטורקיה לאי היווני קוס. המסע הפשוט כיביכול שהיה אמור לקחת כחצי שעה, הפך לאחד האירועים המשמעותיים ביותר בתקשורת העולמית בתקופה האחרונה. וזאת לאור תוצאותיו ההרות אסון. האם ריהאם ושני בניה הקטנים גאליפ בן החמש ואיילאן בן השלוש טבעו למוות, ביחד עם עוד כ-12 פליטים סורים, לאחר שהסירה התהפכה בים הגועש. לאחר מכן, גופתו של איילאן נמצאה שרועה על החול בחופה של עיר הנמל הטורקית בודרום, והתמונה הזאת שתיזכר לעד, מסמלת יותר מכל את הטרגדיה האנושית עצומת הממדים של מלחמת האזרחים, שמתרחשת כל יום בארבע וחצי השנים האחרונות בסוריה, וגבתה כבר מחיר נוראי של למעלה ממאתיים אלף הרוגים, בהם ילדים רבים. גם הים התיכון עשה את שלו ולפי הערכה למעלה מאלפיים פליטים סורים טבעו בו.

שלא מרצונה הפכה טימה כורדי לדמות מבוקשת על ידי כל אמצעי התקשורת בעולם. זאת לאחר שחשפה את זהותה מול מצלמות הטלוויזיה, בראשית החודש, עת הזדהתה ואמרה כי היא הדודה של גאליפ ואיילאן הקטנים, ויש לה מה להגיד לעולם.

כורדי בת הארבעים וארבע עברה לקנדה ב-1992. היא נשואה כיום לקנדי ממוצא איטלקי בשם רוקו לוגוזו, ומחזיקה בסלון ליופי בעיר מגוריה קוקוויטלאם.

התקשרתי לביתה של כורדי ולוגוזו ענה. ביקשתי לדבר עימה ולאחר שהוא בדק איתה, ענה לי בנימוס, כי כורדי עייפה מאוד וכבר אין לה כוח לדבר עם התקשורת, לאחר שעיתונאים מכל העולם פונים אליה. הוא סיפר לי בקצרה מה קורה עם משפחתה הקרובה של כורדי, שיש לה שלוש אחיות ושני אחים ואב. אמה נפטרה לפני למעלה מעשר שנים. האב ואחת האחיות גרים בדמשק, ושאר האחים והאחיות שגרו בעיירה הכורדית קובאני שבצפון סוריה (הסמוכה לטורקיה), נמלטו עם המשכם של הקרבות הקשים וההרס הרב, ועברו לטורקיה. האח המבוגר במשפחה מוחמד (48) נמצא כרגע בגרמניה (בזמן שאשתו וחמשת ילדיו שוהים עדיין באיסטנבול). כורדי ניסתה להשיג אשרת הגירה לקנדה במעמד של פליטים למוחמד ומשפחתו, וזו נדחתה על ידי מחלקת ההגירה והאזרחות של הממשלה הפדרלית. בניגוד לפרסומים בתקשורת, היא לא הגישה בקשת הגירה לאחיה השני עבדאללה, שאיבד את משפחתו בים האכזר.

עם סיום השיחה, לוגוזו ואני סיכמנו שאנסה להתקשר שוב למחרת, ואולי אז כורדי תהיה במצב קל יותר ותוכל לשוחח עימי.
ואכן זה מה שקרה. התקשרתי למחרת ולוגוזו שוב ענה. הוא אמר לי שבדיוק הגיעו עכשיו אורחים לביתם. פלטתי שאולי אנסה להתקשר מאוחר יותר, אך הוא הספיק במהירות להתייעץ קצרות עם כורדי והעביר לה הטלפון. הרגשתי לא פשוט אחרי כל מה עבר עליה. כורדי כבר ידעה שאני עיתונאי ישראלי כך שלא היה צריך לפתוח בהסברים מי אני ואפשר היה לגשת מייד לשיחה. ביקשתי ממנה לספר לי על תחושותיה לאחר שאיבדה את שני אחיינה הקטנים וגיסתה. כורדי: “בדיוק אמרתי עכשיו לחברתי שהגיעה לביתנו, שאני לא יכולה לתאר לעצמי איך עבדאללה מרגיש עכשיו, לאחר שאיבד את כל משפחתו. הלוואי והייתי יכולה להיות איתו עכשיו בשעה הקשה הזו שלו. כואב לי מאוד מאוד כשאני חושבת עליו. הוא נורא שקט עכשיו ונמצא לבד בקובאני, היכן שילדיו ואשתו נקברו לפני מספר ימים. אני רוצה להוציא אותו משם ולהביא אותו אלינו בקנדה. אני רוצה לעזור לו. אבל מאוד קשה לדובב אותו. הוא נסגר בתוך עצמו”.

שאלתי את כורדי מתי היא ניפגשה לאחרונה עם האחיינים הקטנים גאליפ ואיילאן, והיא ציינה כי אף פעם לא ניפגשה עימם. “אבל כמעט כל יום הצלחתי לדבר עימם בטלפון, ולנחם אותם. הייתי מעורבת בחיים שלהם”. לפני קצת יותר משנה כורדי הגיעה לטורקיה כדי לפגוש את עבדאללה שהיה שם לבד, כיוון אשתו והילדים גרו אז בקובאני. עבדאללה הוא עבד בטורקיה והיה מבקר את משפחתו בקובאני בערך כל חצי שנה. מדוע הוא עבר בכלל לטורקיה אני שואל? “היו לו קצת קשרים שם והוא הצליח למצוא עבודה ולשלוח כסף למשפחתו. בקובאני המצב הלך ונהיה רע מיום ליום. המלחמה פגעה קשה מאוד בעיר והיה זה כמעט בלתי אפשרי עוד לשרוד בה. בדיוק בספטמבר אשתקד כאשר חזרתי מהביקור לקנדה, אשתו והילדים עזבו את קובאני ועברו אף הם לטורקיה, לגור עם אחי, ממש כאשר דאע”ש נכנסו לעיר והרסו את כולה”.

ומדוע עבדאללה רצה פתאם לעבור למערב אירופה, לגרמניה או למדינה אחרת קרובה? “מוחמד שהה כבר בגרמניה ואז עבדאללה חשב שאולי עדיף לעבור לשם, או נדמה לי שהוא תכנן לעבור לשוויץ, או אולי לאיטליה. זה לא היה ברור לי בדיוק. הוא האמין שבאחת המדינות האלה יהיה קל יותר להשיג עבודה, ולגדל את הילדים יותר בקלות. לגאליפ הייתה מחלת עור שלא מצאנו לה פתרון, והוא כל הזמן התגרד. לא יכלתי להביא אותם לכאן, ועבדאללה חשב שהמעבר לגרמניה או למדינה דומה יקל על הילדים הקטנים ויהיו להם חיים טובים יותר, לאחר שכל הזמן הם היו חולים וחלשים. וכן ימצא ריפוי למחלה של גאליפ”.

Migrants fleeing for their lives

Interior ministers from the 28 member-states of the European Union will meet next week to address the crisis of migrants flowing into the continent from across the Mediterranean. But just what constitutes a crisis – and whose crisis is it?

Some politicians and commentators allege that the migrants are primarily “economic refugees,” people just seeking economic advancement. But Britain’s Guardian newspaper reports that 62% of the refugees who made it to Europe by boat in the first seven months of the year were from Syria, Eritrea and Afghanistan, with more coming from Darfur, Iraq, Somalia and Nigeria, all places where mere survival in war-ravaged zones supersedes economic advancement on the hierarchy of needs.

Fears stoked by the stream of migrants have led some, such as the British foreign secretary, to warn that the entire European social order is endangered. In fact, the 200,000 migrants who have made it to Europe so far this year represent 0.027% of the total EU population. Compare these numbers with the situation in Lebanon, a country of 4.5 million people currently hosting 1.2 million refugees from the Syrian civil war.

There is no question that much of the social unrest in Europe these days and a vast proportion of its antisemitism derive from immigrants from the same parts of the world from which today’s migrants originate. That is not a problem to be easily dismissed. But neither is it a justification for ignoring a humanitarian crisis.

Addressing the small proportion of radicalized or Jew-hating individuals within groups is an issue that Europe must confront and address – and it has so far not done an exemplary job. But the problem facing the migrants in their places of origin makes the “crisis” faced by the places in which they hope to settle pale in comparison.

Europe just happens to be the nearest beacon of freedom and peace these people can reach and, therefore, they are clamoring to make their way to the continent. But it is the responsibility of all of us, Canada included, to accommodate a share of people seeking escape from violence and war.

Israel has also been a destination for African migrants and the treatment of some has rightly raised concerns of refugee watchdog groups and, last month, the Israeli Supreme Court. The court ruled that the migrants who had been held in a sort of low-security detention facility, about 1,200 people from Eritrea, Sudan and Darfur, could not be held longer than a year. They were not confined to the encampment, but were required to be present twice daily for a roll call.

In all, Israel has about 45,000 asylum-seekers, the vast majority from Eritrea and 9,000 from Sudan. Most made their way by foot through the Sinai into Israel’s southern frontier. Most have been given visas that allow them to stay but not to work, which puts them in a predictably difficult position.

Meanwhile, countries like Hungary are rolling out razor wire along the southern border, an entry point to the European Union, beyond which migrants are comparatively free to travel throughout the 28 countries of the EU.

Recent days have brought particularly horrendous news, with 71 refugees, including a baby, found dead in a truck in Austria, victims of profiteers exploiting the desperation of migrants trying to reach Europe. In Libya, more than 100 bodies washed ashore after a boat sank filled with people trying to cross the Mediterranean. At least 2,600 people are known to have drowned this year in similar incidents.

It is a sign of the desperation that drives this mass migration. Most of these people leave behind everything they have to make their way to what they hope will be a peaceful and prosperous future. They are met with suspicion, incarceration, violence and worse.

It is a striking reversal of the Jewish people’s own history of the 20th century, when those trying to flee Europe were denied entry at every turn, including to what was to become the Jewish homeland in the Middle East. Now, thousands of people from the Middle East are fleeing to Europe and facing every obstacle.

It should not be ignored that many of the refugees are coming from places whose education systems and popular culture instil suspicion and hatred of Jews (and Western culture), and this will be no consolation to the remaining, beleaguered Jews of countries like France. But that underlying problem – and it is a significant one – must be addressed over the long term both in Europe and in the countries where cultural norms breed intolerance and antisemitism. In the meantime, thousands of people are fleeing for their lives and the world cannot turn our backs.