From the Editor: Feel the Bern on antisemitism and Israel

Michael Regenstreif

By Michael Regenstreif

Editor

Since returning to work a year-and-a-half ago after open-heart surgery, daily exercise has been a priority and since my office is located in the Soloway Jewish Community Centre (SJCC), I am very lucky to have a first-class fitness centre just downstairs from my desk. The SJCC locker room is often the scene for impromptu and opinionated discussions on the news and issues of the day.

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders – who is currently campaigning for the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination – has been the centre of a couple of recent locker-room discussions. If nominated, Sanders would be the first Jewish candidate nominated by one of the two major parties for the U.S. presidency.

The first discussion was in early October after Sanders suffered a heart attack on the campaign trail and had a couple of stents inserted to open up his arteries. One of my locker-room buddies was angry that Sanders, whom he described as “pro-BDS, anti-Israel and antisemitic,” would have Israeli-made stents inserted.

I don’t know whether or not Sanders’ stents were made in Israel. I could find no mainstream media references to where the stents were made. Be that as it may, it is simply wrong to suggest that the leftist Sanders is “pro-BDS, anti-Israel and antisemitic.”

Sanders has spoken of his admiration for the Jewish state and for the ideals of Zionism, and has noted that he lived and worked on a kibbutz near Haifa as a young man in 1963.

While Sanders has consistently voiced his support for the State of Israel, including the right of Israel to defend itself from attacks, and for a two-state solution to the conflict with the Palestinians, he has been vociferous in his opposition to certain Israeli government policies, particularly the occupation and settlement expansion in the West Bank, and to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. On these matters, Sanders is in lockstep with about 75 per cent of the American Jewish community, as well as with millions of Israelis.

On BDS, Sanders has repeatedly rejected the call to boycott Israel. Earlier this year, he released a statement saying, “While I do not support the BDS movement, we must defend every American’s constitutional right to engage in political activity.”

The more recent locker room discussion about Sanders was on November 14 (I am writing this on the 15th), a few days after Sanders published an article in Jewish Currents on antisemitism – an article that has provoked much reactionin Jewish circles.

I was pleased to see Sanders write so eloquently about antisemitism, particularly about the lethal consequences of right-wing antisemitism as manifested by the white nationalist movement. As Sanders points out, “hate crimes against Jews rose by more than a third in 2017 and accounted for 58 per cent of all religion-based hate crimes in America.” That year, we saw what happened in Charlottesville, and more recently we have seen right-wing antisemitism lead to the tragic synagogue shootings in Pittsburgh and Poway.

But it was disappointing to see Sanders merely pay lip service to left-wing antisemitism, noting, “It is true that some criticism of Israel can cross the line into antisemitism, especially when it denies the right of self-determination to Jews, or when it plays into conspiracy theories about outsized Jewish power.”

While right-wing antisemitism has repeatedly proven lethal, the effects of left-wing antisemitism are also consequential. Look at how pro-Israel students are marginalized on many campuses. Look to the United Kingdom, where the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn, once overwhelmingly supported by British Jews, is now seen by many as an existential threat to the Jewish community. Or look to some of Sanders’ own supporters like Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who has apologized more than once for using antisemitic tropes, or Women’s March organizer Linda Sarsour, who claims that a feminist cannot be a Zionist.

Sanders’ generalized thoughts on antisemitism and his specific thoughts on right-wing antisemitism are correct. But he seriously underplays the extent and the effects of left-wing antisemitism.

From the Editor: The news is now stranger than fiction

Michael Regenstreif, Editor

By Michael Regenstreif

Editor

My column in our August 19 issue discussed the explicitly racist attacks of U.S. President Donald Trump on four rookie members of the U.S. House of Representatives, all of whom are women of colour. In the days and weeks after that issue went to press, there have been some downright bizarre developments to the story.

Two of the congresswomen, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, who both support the anti-Israel BDS movement, were scheduled to visit East Jerusalem and the West Bank in August. In July, despite a law allowing Israel to bar BDS supporters from entering the country, Ron Dermer, Israel’s ambassador to the United States (who is known to be extremely close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu), announced, “Out of respect for the U.S. Congress, and the great alliance between Israel and America, we would not deny entry to any member of Congress into Israel.”

That changed on August 15 when Trump tweeted, “It would show great weakness if Israel allowed Rep. Omar and Rep. Tlaib to visit. They hate Israel & all Jewish people, & there is nothing that can be said or done to change their minds.”

Immediately following Trump’s tweet, Israel announced that Omar and Tlaib would not be allowed to visit after all. Although Netanyahu and his ministers claimed the change had nothing to do with Trump’s tweet, few analysts believed that.

The decision was immediately condemned by mainstream American Jewish organizations including AIPAC, Jewish Federations of North America, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, the Israel Policy Forum, and J Street as contradicting democratic values.

Barring Omar and Tlaib may well have provided more PR value to the BDS movement than the visit itself would have.

Then the story got even weirder. On August 20, Trump proclaimed, “I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat; I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.” (According to the Pew Research Center, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton received 71 per cent of the Jewish vote in 2016, compared to 24 per cent for Republican candidate Trump. In the 2018 midterm elections, after two years of the Trump administration, 79 per cent of the Jewish vote went to Democratic candidates, compared to just 17 per cent for Republicans.)

Trump invoked the antisemitic trope about the loyalty of Jews – one of the most common expressions of antisemitism throughout history. In the following days, Trump doubled-down and tripled-down on the trope elaborating that Jewish Democratic voters (in other words, Jews who don’t support Trump) are disloyal to the Jewish people and to Israel.

“In my opinion, if you vote for a Democrat you’re being very disloyal to Jewish people, and you’re being very disloyal to Israel. And only weak people would say anything other than that,” he declared on the White House lawn.

And in a tweet, Trump quoted and thanked talk radio conspiracy theorist Wayne Allyn Root for his “very nice words”: “President Trump is the greatest President for Jews and for Israel in the history of the world, not just America, he is the best President for Israel in the history of the world and the Jewish people in Israel love him like he’s the King of Israel. They love him like he is the second coming of God.”

The nightly news – in these Trumpian times – is, indeed, stranger than fiction.

Thanks Stephanie

As Stephanie Shefrin notes in her column, she is stepping back from being a regular contributor to Modern Mishpocha, the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin parenting column she created six years ago. Stephanie’s insights and discussions of various family and parenting issues have made her columns compelling reading for parents, grandparents and others.

One of Stephanie’s innovations was to recruit other contributors to the column and we’ll continue to publish Modern Mishpocha columns from Jen Perzow and Shirlee Press. In the coming months, we’ll also introduce a couple of new contributors Stephanie has recruited.

Thanks, Stephanie, for making discussions about modern mishpochas a vital part of the Bulletin. I know I speak for many when I say we’ll look forward to any not-regularly-scheduled Modern Mishpocha columns you’ll contribute in the future when inspiration demands and time allows.

From the Editor: ‘A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian’

Michael Regenstreif, Editor

By Michael Regenstreif

Editor

No matter what one may feel about the policies of “The Squad,” four women of colour elected in 2018 to their first terms in the United States Congress, or even the antisemitic tropes that were tweeted by one of them, there was no denying the explicit racism employed by U.S. President Donald Trump in his attacks on them last month.

“So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” Trump tweeted on July 14.

And that was only the beginning of Trump’s tweet storm.

Just for the record, three of the four congresswomen Trump was attacking – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib – were born in the United States. The fourth, Ilhan Omar, was born in Somalia and was brought to the U.S. legally as a refugee when she was a child. Omar became an American citizen in 2000 when she was 17.

By the way, earlier this year when Jewish organizations and congressional colleagues came down hard on Omar for employing antisemitic tropes in criticizing Israeli government policies toward the Palestinians, she did apologize for them – even writing an op-ed in the Washington Post describing Israel as the “historical homeland” of the Jews and reiterating her support for a two-state solution to the conflict, calling for “internationally recognized borders, which allow for both Israelis and Palestinians to have their own sanctuaries and self-determination.”

So, while Omar did come to understand why Jewish people were hurt by her words, and apologized for them, Trump has shown no such understanding.

Even leaders of some of the U.S.’s closest allies took the unusual step of calling out the American president for remarks he made about domestic political opponents.

“The prime minister’s view is that the language used to refer to these women was completely unacceptable,” said the spokesperson for then-prime minister Theresa May of the United Kingdom.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she rejects Trump’s racist comments and stands in solidarity with the congresswomen he targeted.

“That is not how we do things in Canada. A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian, and the diversity of our country is actually one of our greatest strengths and a source of tremendous resilience and pride for Canadians, and we will continue to defend that,” said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Trudeau’s comments were inspiring to hear at that time. Our Canadian Jewish community, and so many other ethnic and religious communities in Canada, have thrived in a country that takes justified pride in its multiculturalism.

But, and it’s a big but, “a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian” is not necessarily true when Quebec, our second-largest province, encompassing nearly a quarter of our population, uses the notwithstanding clause to override the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to prevent people working in the public sector from wearing kippot, hijabs, turbans and other expressions of religious belief, including Stars of David.

For example, Minister of National Defence Harjit Sajjan is a Sikh whose religion mandates that he wear a turban – a turban that he wears in the House of Commons, a turban that he wore as a Canadian military officer serving on deployments to Bosnia and Herzegovina and three times to Afghanistan, and a turban he wore during an 11-year career as a Vancouver police officer and detective. Now, though, because of that turban, Sajjan cannot be a police officer in Quebec.

With a federal election two months away, are Trudeau and the other federal leaders and candidates willing to defend our diversity – in both official languages – and ensure that “a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian” is more than just a platitude?