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June 9, 2006
Peace forum coming to town
Questions remain over involvement of Jewish community.
KATHARINE HAMER EDITOR
The co-chair of the forthcoming World Peace Forum (WPF) in Vancouver
believes the event will provide a balanced view of the Middle East
conflict, one of the many topics under discussion when peace advocates
from around the world gather in the city June 23-28.
The forum is organized through a central board, but topics for workshops
have been decided via various working groups. In addition to working
groups covering topics of particular interest to women, First Nations
delegates and youth, as well as those addressing issues in Africa
and Asia, there has been a Middle East working group. As of press
time, its co-chair, Paul Tetrault, had not responded to requests
from the Independent for more information on the Middle East-related
workshops.
Though there has been concern in some quarters that the organized
Jewish community would be underrepresented at the forum, WPF board
co-chair Ruth Herman said, "I think there are going to be many
people who are Jewish who are coming to the World Peace Forum. My
understanding is that the program workshops that are being put on
with respect to Israel do have people from both Palestine and Israel
in them, so I'm not hugely concerened about the fact there will
be no people representing a point of view from Israel - keeping
in mind that there will be diverse points of view within Israel
itself."
As to the content of the Middle East workshops, Herman said, "We
are having a workshop on Iran, we are having a workshop on Iraq.
There is one major one on Israel/Palestine, so I think that the
Middle East issues will be dealt with through the World Peace Forum.
Certainly, I have every confidence that they will be dealt with
in a rigorous and balanced way. It is a peace forum and the issues
will be aired. I don't expect there will be any problems with the
type of discussion ... perhaps individuals may not agree with the
point of view put forward, but it seems to me there has been some
attempt to [include] people from different perspectives."
The major workshop on the "Israeli/Palestine" issue to
which Herman referred is a forum called Justice: The Road to Peace
in the Middle East, in which, according to a news release, "three
remarkable women discuss the Palestine-Israel conflict." Those
women are Israeli education professor Dr. Nurit Peled- Elhanan,
whose daughter was killed by a suicide bomber in Jerusalem in 1997;
Cindy Corrie, whose daughter died after being struck by an Israeli
bulldozer in Rafah in 2003; and Miryam Rashid, "who was involved
with Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations ... and has done extensive
research on human rights issues in the occupied territories."
Rashid, a Palestinian living in the United States, works with the
American Friends Service Committee, which in turn is part of the
umbrella organization U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.
In a recent piece on the AFSC website entitled "Effects of
Israel's Wall on Palestinian Farmers and the Olive Harvest,"
Rashid wrote: "Officially, Israel says it is building the Wall
[sic] in order to separate Palestinians from Israelis. However,
80 per cent of the Wall [sic] is being built inside the West Bank
which it has illegally occupied since 1967."
Peled-Elhanan dedicated a speech she made to the European Parliament
(posted on the Nakba 48 website), "to Miriam R'aban and her
husband Kamal, from Bet Lahiya in the Gaza Strip, whose five small
children were killed by Israeli soldiers while picking strawberries
at the family's strawberry field. No one will ever stand trial for
this murder."
The organizer of the event, Ken Hiebert, did not return phone calls
from the Jewish Independent.
The other events of Jewish interest include Jewish Chanting with
Lorne Mallin; the performance piece Palestine, Israel and Me:
A Power Play and the workshops Creating a Culture of Peace:
An Ethnographic Journey to a Jewish/Palestine Village and Building
Alliances Between Jewish and Gentile Activists (the latter presented
by the group United to End Racism).
Vancouver's main organized Jewish community groups – Canadian
Jewish Congress, Pacific Region, the Canada-Israel Committee, Pacific
Region, and the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver – will
not be participating in the WPF.
Representatives of all three groups began conversing with forum
organizers a year and a half ago. Congress engaged in some discussion
with interfaith groups, while CIC put forward eight proposals to
the Middle East working group, none of which were accepted.
"The content [of the forum workshops] could have benefited
from the acceptance of the actual proposals," noted Mark Weintraub,
chair of CJC, Pacific Region. "[They were] extremely benign
– for example, focusing on peace education for children. They
were not rejected based on content."
Michael Elterman, chair of CIC Pacific Region, said there was no
communication between his organization and the Middle East working
group until such time as he was informed the proposals had been
rejected.
The proposals, he said, "were of good quality and not controversial
... they were very much fitting in the tone of the peace forum,
but it seems they had a problem with the fact that we were from
the Canada- Israel Committee. I'm not aware of any other group that
has been turned away inexplicably because they are who they are."
Elterman said he feared there were people in the Middle East working
group "that are so anti-Israel that they wouldn't even entertain
the idea of us participating. It's really not going to allow a balanced
airing of views."
When asked if he felt there was any anti-Semitism at play, Elterman
replied, "Well, it's anti-Semitism to the extent that [they]
discriminate against one group and don't use the same treatment
against all the other groups."
"There was an attempt to resolve matters with the Canada-Israel
Committee and Canadian Jewish Congress with respect to having a
central program dealing with the theme of cities and communities
working together to prevent war, but the parties decided that was
not something they wanted to do at this time," said Herman.
"The [Middle East] working group was prepared to talk to us
about it, but the Canada-Israel Committee and Canadian Jewish Congress
did not want to do it, so we as a board decided we wouldn't proceed."
"I think what really happened here is that they turned us down
because the Middle East working group would not have us participate,"
said Elterman, "so the [WPF] board said, 'We don't want you
guys to feel that you have been rejected, so what we're going to
do is create a forum around the topic of cities for peace and that
way we won't have to deal with the Middle East working group and
the board will basically create a forum for just the CIC to present
their programs.'
"Basically, we said no because we felt that as a matter of
principle, it was like somebody coming to a restaurant and saying,
'Can you serve us?' and they say, 'We want to feed you but you'll
have to come around to the back door.' "
The cities for peace forum, he said, "was an attempt to basically
throw us a bone and we said 'No, we've been working on this for
a year – if you can't get the most logical place for us, to
have us participate, we are not satisfied to be fed at the back
alley.' "
"There's still a lot of ignorance about how the Jewish community
operates out there in the non-Jewish world," Weintraub observed.
"Our community is in favor of anything that advances peace.
We are supportive of a forum authentically committed to furthering
the understanding of peace."
Congress, CIC and Federation, he said, had engaged with forum organizers,
"to ensure that the content of this conference will be what
it is purported to be, namely, a respectful dialogue with respect
to peace issues."
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