Now welcoming CIJA

Editorial

News came last Friday, via a press release, that Canada has a new “foremost Jewish advocacy organization.” The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs is the latest incarnation of several old incarnations of Jewish and Zionist advocacy organizations in Canada, including what CIJA used to mean, the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy.

The release heralding CIJA arrived in our inbox a week after the new name appeared on Facebook and days after a front-page story in the National Post lamenting the apparent end of the formerly foremost Jewish advocacy organization, Canadian Jewish Congress, z’l, (1919-2011). Several weeks ago, the Independent requested information on what was then being called “CIJA 2.0,” which, on July 1, officially superseded CJC, the Canada-Israel Committee and other advocacy bodies funded by Jewish Canadians. At the time, we were thanked for waiting patiently, and our reward has come.

“We are the one-stop shop and singular public policy voice for the organized Jewish community,” David Koschitzky, chair of CIJA, said in the release. (No longer let it be said that for every two Jews there are three opinions.)

In the same release, Shimon Fogel, chief executive officer of CIJA, acknowledged the task before him. “While our community faces a number of challenges, I am grateful that we have an outstanding team of lay leaders and professional staff who will enable us to succeed in our mission,” Fogel stated.

In addition to the outstanding lay leaders and professional staff, we assume CIJA will also be enabled to succeed by the unmentioned (but, we are sure, not forgotten by CIJA) tens of thousands of Canadians who fund and depend on CIJA to represent us. This is, indeed, a portentious time for Jews in Canada, Israel and everywhere, and this version of CIJA was (re)created in order to respond to these challenges.

There is an obliquely acknowledged supposition surrounding this entire organization that too many chefs spoil the broth; that effective advocacy necessitates a streamlining to eliminate the sort of slow, pesky democratic processes that once typified CJC. As we ventured on this page earlier this summer, we think this strategy is misguided and that CIJA is conceived wrongly but, because of all that is at stake, we hope that they are right.

However, the declared efficiencies have yet to make themselves apparent. For example, in addition to the lack of a coordinated announcement of CIJA’s coming out, the organization’s homepage still describes CIJA as overseeing and coordinating the advocacy work of CJC, CIC et al. On the same page, it states that all those groups have been “discontinued and that CIJA will handle Canadian Jewish advocacy,” and that, “In the near future, the website will be overhauled and expanded to reflect this enlarged mandate.” Those mixed messages have been there for weeks.

As for tangible public-relations successes to date, CIJA has had a couple at least. On Sept. 1, CIJA posted a video of an Aug. 28 Al-Quds Day Rally in Toronto that had speakers describing Israel as a “cancer” that must be killed and Israelis as “inhuman” and “barbarians.” It truly is, as CIJA calls it, “a disturbing video,” and CIJA was at the forefront of bringing it to Canadians’ attention.

However, its other main accomplishment is less impressive. On Sept. 2, both in a press release and online, CIJA took credit for having the Ontario provincial election leaders’ debate rescheduled so as not to conflict with Rosh Hashanah. Were this debate to go ahead as scheduled on Sept. 27, according to Fogel in the release, “over 200,000 members of Ontario’s Jewish community would be effectively disenfranchised from enjoying full participation in the election.”

Scheduling a major public policy event like a leaders’ debate to conflict with a major religious holiday is bad, but CIJA’s self-congratulation at the rescheduling is not much better. This tempest presumes that 200,000 Jewish Ontarians do not have the technology to record television or to watch the debate online at a convenient time.

CIJA was not the only group being “vigilant in monitoring all situations that would potentially limit the community’s ability to participate in the political and public policy process.” Twenty-seven minutes after the news came to us of CIJA’s great triumph in a teapot, we were interrupted from our fête by a news release on the same subject from “the Jewish community’s foremost human rights agency.” In an effort to keep our foremost agencies and our singular voice straight, this one is B’nai Brith Canada. Its CEO, Frank Dimant, claimed the victory as well: “We are pleased that the leaders of the three major provincial parties took heed of the needs of the Jewish community, which we alerted them to in a letter earlier this week.”

Admittedly, we are making light of the situation because if we didn’t laugh, we’re afraid, we would cry. CIJA is asking us to put all our advocacy eggs into their singular one-stop basket and trust their expertise, even as the organization’s rollout has given little reason for optimism. We wait patiently once more.

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