The Editorial Board

Countering lies and hate

Peter Julian, the New Democrat member of Parliament for New Westminster, recently tabled a bill to address what he suspects are algorithms that encourage online extremism. B’nai Brith’s annual audit of antisemitic incidents, released recently, said three-quarters of antisemitic incidents last year took place online. And, as the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs notes in their Not On My Feed campaign, “Online hate leads to real-world violence.”

Few people would disagree that online hate and incitement are problems. How we confront it – that’s where we get into the weeds.

It is possible to control what people read on the internet – countries like China and Iran have demonstrated that, in anti-democratic and oppressive ways. Democracies like Canada should not join the high-tech book-burning that is internet censorship by government. Governments and regulatory bodies, of course, do have a role, however. Setting parameters for acceptable online behaviour and then enforcing these to the extent possible must be a role authorities take on. Staffing limitations are obviously a challenge, but several precedent-setting cases could send a message to others.

Social media behemoths like Facebook and Twitter should take action where they can to delete the most dangerous incitement. These corporations have proven themselves either incapable, unwilling or incompetent at this task. Governments need to incentivize vigilance by making lack of response financially unsustainable. In Germany and France, for example, social media platforms have 24 hours to take down hate speech or risk fines. Likewise, internet service providers (ISPs) have a responsibility to monitor the independent sites housed on their networks, the places where hate groups recruit and train.

Interventions like these are important, but of limited impact. For example, ISPs are based everywhere and every country has different rules around online content. Even Canada and the United States – countries perhaps as comparable as any two on earth – have dramatically different ideas about limitations on freedom of expression.

Attacking online hate and incitement is a perpetual game of Whac-A-Mole. However, just because a task is difficult does not mean we should shy away from it. On the contrary. We must do more of what is difficult.

We are a mere two generations into a connected civilization. We are still babes in the online woods. Yet, in many ways, we behave as though we are in the world we once knew.

We are no longer in a world of three TV networks and two daily papers. We are on a planet of nearly eight billion people – and anyone with an internet connection has an ability to reach audiences exponentially greater than the most powerful voices of a century ago.

It is simply not possible to effectively police online content – though we are correct to monitor and identify the worst of the worst.

There are two things that democratic societies that seek social peace and coexistence must strive toward. First, we need to empower individuals and organizations to counter untruths with truths. We must make it as easy to access the facts as it is to stumble upon misinformation and disinformation.

Google News, for one, has taken to adding a fact-checking section to their search results pages. The site Snopes.com provides a compendious analysis of online truths and fictions (although it has had its own veracity issues, involving a plagiarism controversy in 2021.) On issues of antisemitism, a veritable constellation of organizations exists to identify and correct misinformation, including HonestReporting, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) and the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

But we also need to attack this problem at the other end, on the “consumer” side. We must do a better job of educating and equipping people in democratic societies to critically discern fact from fiction, news from commentary, legitimate criticism from unfounded bias and hate. In a time when parents and others are concerned that education systems are not effectively teaching what are collectively, if imprecisely, called “the basics,” anyone asking teachers to also become instructors in the complexities of media bias and online incitement is going to come up against preexisting groups calling for more life skills training, more “three Rs,” more economic literacy, more mathematics and science, more physical fitness, etc. There is only so much that can be fit into a six-hour school day.

We live in a time and place where one of the most watched “news” networks routinely feeds falsehoods to viewers, even if a cost of doing business is a legal settlement of $787 million. Those lies led to an insurrection that tested the strength of American democracy more than anything probably since that country’s Civil War. That was an early warning signal for every democracy about the price of disinformation. We cannot hope this problem goes away, because what is likely to go away in such a scenario are our most cherished societal values.

We must do more of everything we are already doing. We must confront and contest the lies and hatred online (and in other media). We must allocate our philanthropic funds to organizations that counter lies and incitement. We must include everywhere we can – in formal and informal educational settings – lessons on identifying facts from falsehoods.

In an online world where conflict and hatred get algorithmic kicks to the front of the line, we must teach the young (and the older and less tech-savvy) to value that which unifies and enriches. In the simplest formulation, we need to remind our children, our grandchildren and ourselves of that old truism: don’t believe everything you hear or read.

Measuring happiness

Amid the miasma of glum news from Israel is a light to be celebrated.

A scan of the headlines reveals existential worries. Proposals from the governing coalition of Israel are derided as threatening the democratic foundation of the country, an overthrow of the rule of law and a move that gestures to a dictatorship. The strife, which includes hundreds of thousands of Israelis protesting in the streets for more than 14 weeks, now is piled upon by more conflict – a resurgence of the intermittent terrorism that plagues the country and its peoples. Individual acts of terror against civilians, as well as cross-border violence in the form of rocket fire from Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, have unsettled Israelis already distressed by domestic affairs. Conflict in Jerusalem between the Israel Defence Forces and Muslims who barricaded themselves inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque disrupted Passover, Ramadan and Easter commemorations over the weekend.

And yet, when an annual report on the happiness measurements of citizens around the world was released last month, Israelis had spiked to become the fourth happiest people in the world, up from ninth last year. Admittedly, the data were from 2020-2022, and so were not collected during the current upheavals, but they do cover the worst years of the pandemic and implicitly take into account other periods of terror, political turmoil and challenging times.

“The happiness movement shows that well-being is not a ‘soft’ and ‘vague’ idea but rather focuses on areas of life of critical importance: material conditions, mental and physical wealth, personal virtues and good citizenship,” according to Prof. Jeffrey D. Sachs, who is director of the Centre for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and is involved with the study. (Simon Fraser University’s Dr. Lara Aknin is also part of the World Happiness Report team.)

For the sixth year in a row, Finland topped the list as happiest in the survey, which measures life expectancy, GDP per capita, social support, corruption levels, generosity, people looking after each other, and freedom to make key life decisions. Canada came 13th.

One of the world’s foremost academic experts in the science of happiness is the Hebrew University’s Prof. Yoram Yovell, who is a well-known figure on Israeli TV and who visited Vancouver in 2019. Canada ranks high (though not as high as Israel), along with the Nordic countries, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, he explained during his visit here, in part because they share a developed world economy with social stability, fundamental freedoms, basic infrastructure like clean water, and supportive social welfare and healthcare systems.

Happy people, Yovall has noted, also tend to experience a sense of social cohesion and purpose. In Israel, some of that cohesion comes from the shared experience of military and national service and, for many, the decision to live in the Jewish state, which reinforces membership in a collective identity.

There may be something reassuring to Diaspora Jews about the happiness of our Israeli cousins. Many of us read the news and fret over the well-being of our family and friends overseas. It is a curious comparison to see Jewish Canadians wringing our hands while the objects of our concern are leaving us in the dust when it comes to the annual happiness rankings. Of course, it is not quite so clear-cut. A sense of well-being, happiness and overall contentment are slightly varying concepts and are not the same as carefree bliss. The meaning of life is a life of meaning, it has been said, literally or in effect.

As we celebrate the 75th anniversary of renewed Jewish self-determination in the state of Israel, despite all the concerning news, we can be happy that Israelis – and Canadians – consider themselves, overall, to be happy. And we can contemplate the conditions that contribute to happiness – and what changes are needed to improve those measures in other countries. Everyone has a right to well-being.

Gallup poll concerning

A Gallup poll released last week shows that, for the first time, Democratic voters in the United States sympathize more with Palestinians than with Israelis.

Among Democratic voters contacted, 49% sympathize more with the Palestinians and 38% with Israelis. Among Republicans, sympathy for Israel remains overwhelming, at 78%.

The poll should raise concerns – but not only for the most obvious reasons.

Halie Soifer, head of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, hit the nail on the head when she told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the question paints a false dichotomy. (First, though, she noted that the Democratic Party’s leadership is overwhelmingly pro-Israel, whether that is reflected across the grassroots or not.)

“Democrats – from President Biden on down – strongly support Israel’s safety and security,” she said. But, crucially, she added: “There is no contradiction between being pro-Israel and supporting Palestinian rights, which is why Democrats continue to support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as security assistance for Israel and humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a zero-sum game, and thus polling that presents it as a binary choice is inherently flawed.”

Calling people on the telephone at dinnertime to ask them how to solve an intransigent international conflict is not likely to advance the most constructive ideas for resolution. Simplistic formulations are inevitable, nuance flies out the door. Questions become self-reinforcing, a sort of unintentional “push poll.” (A push poll is an unethical strategy used sometimes in political campaigns intended not to gauge public opinion but to influence it: “If you knew that Candidate A had a history of drowning puppies and pulling wings off flies, would that make you more or less likely to vote for them?”)

This is not to blame Gallup, an established and respected polling firm. Their question unfortunately, reflects a common narrative, an either/or. That, as Soifer said, is a false dichotomy.

To be genuinely pro-Israel demands we be pro-Palestinian because finding a resolution to 75-plus years of conflict requires some sort of resolution to the statelessness of Palestinians. Equally, being pro-Palestinian demands we be pro-Israel, because compromise and coexistence is the only thing that will result in Palestinian self-determination.

Of course, acknowledging this is the easy part. How to behave in “pro-Israel” and “pro-Palestinian” ways is the muddy part. Those who call themselves “pro-Palestinian” often behave in ways that preclude the very thing they claim to advance. By denying Israel’s right to exist, for example, they ensure that compromise is taken off the table and, since that is the route to Palestinian self-determination, they betray the very definition of “pro-Palestinian.”

Those who are “pro-Israel” also need to temper their extremes. It is fair to say that, during the Oslo process, Israelis demonstrated a consensus toward coexistence that has understandably waned since the violence of the Second Intifada. But, for example, the common and senseless mantra we see from some commentators on social media that “there is no such thing as a Palestinian people” is a fruitless – and racist – squabble. Deny their history, reject the legitimacy of their land claims – there are still people there whose present and future demands a serious form of address and dignity.

To be clear: the sometimes-stated idea that the status quo cannot hold is simply not true. It has, by and large, held since 1967 and it could continue for another generation or more unless mutual compromise emerges to change that. The status quo arguably harms Palestinians more than it harms Israelis, which has led to an assumption that Israel must be in favour of the status quo. As a consequence, overseas activists have blamed Israel for the situation on the assumption that, as the perceived powerful party, it is the only one that can break the impasse. This is partly, if not mostly, untrue. Compromise must come from both sides and chants like “From the river to the sea …” and “Intifada! Revolution! There is only one solution!” the latter of which echoes Nazi slogans, will not “free Palestine.” They will, however, influence public opinion.

We should be concerned by the results of the Gallup poll – it indicates that decades of building multilateral support for Israel’s security among Americans (and, by extension almost certainly Canadians and Europeans) is failing. But, we should be concerned for another reason. It reinforces a false belief that we can only call ourselves pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian. Until we can legitimately call ourselves both, none of us deserves to call ourselves “pro-peace.”

About this year’s Passover cover art

For the this year, Steveston, B.C., artist Merle Linde, chose to create a Haggadah cover that would look old and hand drawn. To achieve this authentic feeling, Linde used Taiwan linen paper, traditional Chinese watercolour paints and brushes.

The calligraphy letters in solid black Hebrew-like text feature peacock blue flashes, often seen in antique manuscripts. Yom Tov candles sit on candleholders that borrow their design from ancient Egyptian columns. The traditional Four Cups of Wine are inspired by a set of old silverware featuring raised grapevine leaves and grapes. And a silver seder plate holder has space for the three traditional shmura matzot, the shank bone, the burnt egg, haroset, bitter herbs, green vegetable and salt water for dipping.

Chag Pesach sameach.

Standing by our family

If a member of your family were in crisis, would you abandon them? Even if the crisis were partly self-inflicted, of course you would stand by them.

In a metaphorical way, this is the issue facing Diaspora Jews in considering Israel right now. Whether you agree or disagree with the direction of the new government, it is undeniable that Israel is in a crisis. Each weekend, for several weeks, between 100,000 and 300,000 people have marched in the streets in opposition to a range of government policies, particularly proposed judicial “reforms” that many critics view as a threat to the fundamental democratic character of the country.

Watching from afar, these events are discouraging and worrying – and these emotions mingle with what might already be a degree of ambivalence, disappointment and many other sentiments. It is not always easy to be a supporter of Israel overseas. We have struggled in the face of decades of condemnation, some legitimate, some outlandish exaggerations. It would be easier, for some of us, to walk away.

Israelis do not have the luxury of walking away. And if one looks at Israel today and says, “That does not reflect my Judaism, my politics, my values,” remember: it does not reflect the Judaism, politics or values of most Israelis either.

The Israeli government we see today is the result of a tail wagging the dog, a reality facilitated by coalition politics and the desperation of Binyamin Netanyahu to regain power at almost any cost.

In many instances, people who voted based on concerns about national security find themselves appalled at policies around women’s equality, LGBTQ+ rights, the place of minorities in the country, the treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and, of course, the overriding threats perceived in the attempts to meddle with the infrastructure of the Israeli judiciary – the wellspring from which much of Israel’s liberal character has come.

Most Israelis did not knowingly vote for leaders who would see the settler violence against Palestinians in the village of Huwara and endorse it, vindicate the perpetrators and incite further, even more destructive and possibly murderous violence. This latter example – of politicians (or anyone else, for that matter) openly celebrating and inciting racist violence – should disgust everyone, no matter their political stripe.

Overseas organizations that are connected with Israel – not least the Jewish Federations of North America – have spoken out officially in ways that are unprecedented in the history of Israel-Diaspora relations. Some of these statements have been comparatively mild in the minds of many observers, who view this as genuinely a time for full-throated disapproval. The fact that they are speaking out at all, however, is significant.

One of the side effects of all this is the debunking of the popular accusations that the tendency to keep negative comments within the family reflects “uncritical support for Israel.” This idea, that Zionism is a form of congenital disorder unrooted in reason, has never been true but it is now discredited. For what that’s worth.

Relatedly, individuals and groups who for years have been slandering Israel with hyperbole are now learning that they have exhausted the arsenal of vocabulary when actual events call for some strong language.

There is some reason for optimism. Isaac Herzog, Israel’s president, who has been cast by events into a role unlike the relatively ceremonial function that the office usually carries, said this week that a compromise may be in the offing on the contentious judicial reforms. Moreover, the resignation from cabinet last week of Avi Maoz, a far-right extremist, appears to be evidence that the government is wearying of fighting a multiple-front war. It is believed that Maoz realized the government wasn’t going to impose his racist, misogynistic and homophobic policies and so took his marbles home. There are reports of more turmoil in the ranks, which could drag the government and the country back toward a little sanity.

On the one hand, this should not invite a slackening of the pressure. There is a movement afoot among Diaspora Jews (and others) to discourage world leaders from meeting with extremist members of the Israeli government. Whether or not that will have much effect on anything, it is a valuable expression of revulsion for people who, like Bezalel Smotrich, incited (and then walked back) his call to “wipe out” the Palestinian village where Jewish settlers recently attacked innocent civilians.

On the other hand, anyone who is considering walking away from Israel, of abandoning the emotional energies of this fight, should consider who it is they would be abandoning in the process. A government is fleeting – although the lasting damage a single government can do is significant. But, Israel is the embodiment of the Jewish people’s national self-determination. To walk away from that is to walk away from more than bad government policy. It is to walk away from history. To walk away from everything that one’s ancestors hoped for, prayed for and built.

More importantly, it is to abandon to their own devices the very people in Israel with whom we probably most closely agree, who are struggling nobly to preserve the vision of Israel that many or most of us believe to be an ideal.

When a family member is in crisis, we do not abandon them. We engage. We help. We confront and intervene, if necessary. We do not walk away. In fact, this is precisely the moment when we dig deepest into our resources and do everything we can to make right what is wrong.

Calling out antisemitism

When news broke that a Jewish person had been shot near a Los Angeles synagogue on Wednesday a week ago, the police statement said there was “no evidence” that the shooter had been targeting Jewish people. When another Jewish person was shot the next day, near the same synagogue, police repeated that these appeared to be separate incidents and that there was again no evidence that Jews were being targeted. Both victims were injured but survived.

When a single suspect in both shootings was arrested Friday, it turned out he has a long history of bombarding Jewish acquaintances and others with violent antisemitic threats.

There is nothing to be gained by having police or anyone else speculate on motives during or in the immediate aftermath of a crime. But if police are going to venture in that direction anyway, why err on the side of randomness? Denying the possibility of antisemitic intent until evidence makes it impossible to do so is a too-common response. It has happened around the world.

In 2015, two days after terrorists murdered 12 people at the offices of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, ISIS-affiliated extremists took hostages and murdered four people at a kosher supermarket in Paris. Then-U.S. president Barack Obama referred to the attack on an explicitly Jewish store as “a bunch of violent, vicious zealots who … randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris.” There was, of course, nothing random about the “deli” that was chosen.

It happened again during an antisemitic attack in Jersey City, N.J., in December 2019, when six people were murdered. Police initially said they believed the kosher market was randomly chosen and there was no evidence of terrorism. Within hours, they acknowledged that the perpetrators had “targeted the location they attacked.”

In 2022, there was an 11-hour hostage-taking at a synagogue in Colleyville, Tex., in which there were thankfully no casualties but the perpetrator. A police spokesperson said immediately after the incident that the hostage-taker’s demands were “specifically focused on issues not connected to the Jewish community” and, two days later, officials amended this to “a terrorism-related matter, in which the Jewish community was targeted.”

The reality was less oblique. The perpetrator chose that synagogue because it was closest to the federal penitentiary holding a terrorist he sought to free. He chose a synagogue because that would be the surest way to get his demands met since, as he told the hostages, the U.S. “only cares about Jewish lives” and because “Jews control the world.”

What is this instinct to deny that antisemitism is a cause of antisemitic violence until the evidence makes denial untenable?

In her book People Love Dead Jews, Dara Horn posits that efforts at Holocaust education in recent years may be having the opposite of the intended effect. Rather than making people sensitive to anti-Jewish ideas or crimes, it may set the bar too high. When a few people are murdered in Paris or shot in Los Angeles, after all, it’s not the Holocaust. If the only thing a person (or a society) knows about antisemitism is the Holocaust, then cases of hate crimes involving a couple of people are, well, nothing to get too concerned about.

There may be a denial not only of the magnitude, but of the very existence of the phenomenon itself. We are in a time of reckoning about race and racism. These issues are a central fact in our collective discourse. But antisemitism does not fit neatly into this narrative. When skin colour is the defining factor, white-passing Jews are excluded from the discourse and non-white Jews are made even more invisible than they too often already are. Moreover, the outcomes by which racism is measured are, to some extent, economic inequities. Proof of racism is seen in reduced economic outcomes: higher unemployment, lower household wealth, fewer opportunities. These are not, collectively, how antisemitism manifests. Ergo, in some eyes, this means antisemitism does not exist – or does not have the serious, quantifiable impacts other forms of racism have.

Antisemitic incidents, including violent crime, are at alarming levels, according to every survey and measure available. The least that law enforcement, media and ordinary people can do under the circumstances, when a Jewish individual or community is attacked, is avoid retrenching into a defensive position that defaults to the assumption that anything but antisemitism is at work.

Happy Purim 5783 / 2023!

A complex problem

In British Columbia last year, 2,272 people died from toxic drugs, according to information released last week. More than 11,000 people have died of drug toxicity in the province since a public health emergency was declared in April 2016.

While many people associate these tragic deaths with the troubles of the Downtown Eastside, the reality is that Vancouver Coastal Health – the region that includes that neighbourhood as well as much of Metro Vancouver – accounted for 14% of the drug-related deaths in the province last year. Rural communities are disproportionately affected. Most disproportionately affected of all are Indigenous communities. The First Nations Health Authority reports that, while making up 3.2% of the province’s population, First Nations people comprised 15% of all toxic drug deaths in 2021 and 2022.

It is worth remembering that, while people have died from toxic drugs on the streets, they also have died in the living rooms of our most exclusive neighbourhoods, and they have died everywhere in between.

The City of Vancouver just announced $2.8 million for the hiring of 58 mental health workers and expanded programs to address frontline issues and public safety responses, according to Mayor Ken Sim. Also, this week, a new policy went into effect in British Columbia, under which possession of some illegal drugs will not result in arrest or charges. This is an innovative effort to reconsider the problem as a health issue, not a legal one.

While there may be disagreements and concerns about the approach the city, the province and the federal government are taking on the problems that plague individuals and communities around mental health, addictions, crime and safety, there has also been a degree of unnecessary and unwelcome cynicism. Too many seem to view the problems – and the people they affect – as an inconvenience to be swept away rather than as complex social issues requiring comprehensive responses.

In the search for explanations and solutions, there has been too frequent a tendency to blame the victim, to drive through troubled neighbourhoods in our city and province and condemn not the problems, or the context of those problems, but the people they affect.

In many instances, people suffering represent the contemporary impacts of policies and practices past and present. Land acknowledgments and efforts at reconciliation mean little to nothing if they are not accompanied by truth and by compassion for the long-term effects of these wrongs. Coming to terms with the impact on Indigenous peoples of residential schools, intergenerational trauma and generalized discrimination and lack of opportunity has opened many eyes to how these historical and contemporary realities have affected communities. Perhaps we have not done as well in recognizing how these impacts manifest in individuals.

People experiencing the harms of the drug poisoning crisis, Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike, come from a place of struggle and suffering. Really, every person is impacted in some way by circumstances of their social context, as well as their experiences. Some of the problems we experience are a result of individual health or vulnerabilities and others of systemic discrimination or falling through cracks in the education system or social safety net. Whatever the causes, they each require us to come together to address them.

Of course, these issues are not at all limited to our city. Across North America and elsewhere, urban and rural communities are troubled by substance issues and other problems, including a lack of safe and affordable housing, which is foundational to individual and communal well-being. If anyone had simple answers, they would have been adopted and implemented by now. This is an enormous challenge we must attempt to address humanely, compassionately and effectively without victim-blaming.

Organizations and many individuals in the Jewish community have been committed to these issues for some time and those collective efforts reflect the core Jewish value of tikkun olam, repairing the world, but they also reflect hakaim takim imo, “you shall surely lift him [and her] up.”

The tragic statistics confirm what we already know. They are a reminder, though, that a great deal remains to be done to address the problems and to reduce the social causes of the crisis. Trying new approaches that focus on compassion and justice is a right course. They may not work. But the cost of not trying is far too high.

Obligation to criticize

Last Saturday, Israel’s ambassador to Canada announced he was resigning over differences with the new government back home.

Ronen Hoffman has served only about a year in the role. He was appointed by the last government and, before that, had been a Yesh Atid party member of the Knesset under the leadership of former prime minister Yair Lapid. So, Hoffman was a political appointee, which makes his resignation significant but not the bombshell it would have been had he been a career diplomat.

Nevertheless, this was perhaps the most conspicuous example in Canada of ripples of response to what media around the world have taken to calling Israel’s “most right-wing government ever,” which was sworn into office under the once-and-then-again-and-now-again Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu Dec. 29.

Having alienated, via policies or personality, a great number of potential allies on the centre and right, Netanyahu cobbled together a parliamentary coalition that includes some of the most extremist voices in Israeli society. As we mentioned in this space last issue, some of the approaches the new government seems bent on are not merely matters of policy but structural tampering with the fundamental tenets of Israeli democracy, including the courts, definitional foundations of citizenship, possible assaults on LGBTQ+ rights, as well as what appears to be a new bull-in-the-china-shop approach to governance and settlements in the West Bank.

In this issue of the paper alone, two separate Canadian organizations express concern about the impacts that perceptions of the new government in Israel will have on their work here.

Some Diaspora voices have been saying that this is the time for overseas allies to express in whatever ways possible to their Israeli counterparts, family and friends the impacts that certain policy approaches there will have on Jewish people here, and on relations between Jews in both places.

There is no doubt that the people who have made a cottage industry of attacking Israel in the past will continue to do so, using as fuel any evidence that the state of Israel is abandoning its commitments to human equality, democracy and pluralism. Haters gonna hate.

But there is another possibility, a conceivable glimmer of light shining through the cracks of Israeli-Diaspora relations.

There has always been a rhetorical disconnect between “anti-Zionism,” which by definition seeks the elimination of the Jewish state, and “criticism of Israel” or “criticism of particular policies,” which tends to be more nuanced. There has also been a casual accusation that pro-Israel voices are “uncritical” in their support for Israel, that there is a tendency to turn a blind eye toward things taking place in Israel that deserve condemnation.

Recent developments put these various positions in stark contrast.

There are now many issues and policies that probably the vast majority of Jews outside Israel (as well as inside Israel, as enormous protests in recent days have shown) find disagreeable, even abhorrent. For those who support Israel’s right to exist and for those who don’t, these issues and policies present an opportunity.

It is now especially necessary for supporters of Israel and allies to be absolutely clear that it is possible and reasonable to be emphatically, unequivocally supportive of the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in the form of the state of Israel while at the same time pointing at very specific policies with which we disagree vehemently.

There has often been far too much vagueness in this discussion, allowing people with unreasonable positions to appear reasonable, to allow people who would like to see Israel wiped off the map claim they are only criticizing “policy.” On the flip side, while there has always been a vibrant discourse among Diaspora Jews on events in Israel, critics have somehow been able to ignore that vibrancy and claim a monolithic Zionist hegemony of ideas. (This is, ironically, a conspiracy theory masquerading as a conspiracy theory.)

As this Israeli government proceeds with its agenda, and recognizing that Israeli voters have the final say, overseas Jews who for generations have supported and helped build the Jewish state have a right to express our opinions. We also have an obligation to be specific. There has perhaps never been a time when it has been easier to be clear: Israel has a right to exist. But efforts to chip away at the foundations of Israel’s judiciary, human rights and citizenship definitions are unacceptable, and it is right for Israelis and their overseas allies to say so in our loudest voices. Criticizing policies and being steadfast defenders of Israel have never been contradictory impulses. Now, more than ever, these are our obligations.

Democracy in danger

A pageant of pandemonium consumed the United States House of Representatives last week as it took 15 votes to confirm Kevin McCarthy as speaker. The chaos was caused by a group of far-right congresspeople representing less than five percent of the total House membership. Eventually, McCarthy triumphed – well, squeaked through – by cutting backroom deals that will empower the extremists and weaken the office of the speaker.

Although the holdouts are on the far-right fringes of American society, personality was a major factor in the weeklong deadlock. The opponents have issues with McCarthy as a person and a politician as much as they have with his policies. To succeed, McCarthy had to agree to concessions and cough up inducements that defile the dignity of his office and put the House of Representatives in jeopardy of being hopelessly deadlocked and dysfunctional.

An analogous situation is unfolding in Israel, where Binyamin Netanyahu has returned to the prime ministership. To do so, he had to make some very grubby deals with some very distasteful people.

Here, too, personalities were at play, as much as policies. There is a swath of centre-right politicians who would have joined a coalition that was not headed by Netanyahu. As a result, to regain power, Netanyahu was forced to make deals with far-right figures who should never have been considered for inclusion in a democratic government.

Both of these situations speak to an unfortunate reality of parliamentary democracy. When a bloc fails to attain a comfortable majority, they can find themselves dependent on the support of narrowly focused, ideologically driven extremists that represent very few voters. In many cases, the extremist tail ends up wagging the dog.

This is regrettable and it is sometimes inevitable. Democracy is by no means without its downsides. In fact, Winston Churchill’s aphorism – “Democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried” – resonates here.

The foundational piece of democracy is free elections and the peaceful transition of power, a cornerstone that was attacked on Jan. 6 two years ago at the U.S. Capitol. That cornerstone is now under siege in Brazil, in a striking parallel – as if the supporters of defeated former president Jair Bolsonaro directly stole the playbook of the American Republicans’ “stop the steal” scheme to subvert the 2020 U.S. election.

Violent protesters ransacked Brazilian government buildings this week, stealing weapons and artifacts and vandalizing facilities. Brazil does not have as long a history of democratic infrastructure as Israel or the United States, which could make it more vulnerable to attack. One core difference in the Brazilian case, versus the Israeli or American situation, is that the threats, at this point, are coming from outside the government – the protesters are supporters of a defeated (and possibly self-exiled) former leader. In the United States, the insurgents have an apparent stranglehold on one of the houses of Congress and, in Israel, are fully in charge.

The biggest concern in a democracy comes when the extremist tail that wags the dog not only influences policies but actually begins chipping away at the institutional underpinnings of democracy itself. This is a legitimate concern in Israel, as some partners in the coalition are threatening the judicial system, the functioning of police and the very definition of Israeli citizenship. The vote for U.S. House speaker did not itself represent a threat to democracy, though the final votes poignantly took place on the second anniversary of the insurrection that was the greatest attack on American democracy since the Civil War – a moment from which the country and its democratic foundations still reel. And continued dysfunction in the House portends a difficult road ahead for U.S. democracy as voters tire of do-nothing legislative bodies and what some perceive as broken political systems.

Both Israel and the United States are on unprecedented precipices. (Brazil, ironically, probably less so.) However, in both Israel and the United States, entrenched civil society organizations and strong parliamentary opponents are in place to monitor and bolster the fundamentals of their societies. Those on the (geographical and/or ideological) outside should support in every way we can the movements for democracy, pluralism and tolerance in Israel, the United States and everywhere in the world where these values are threatened, including if we see dangers to them here at home.