News – Page 39

Robinson out of cabinet

Screenshot of the Jan. 30 B’nai Brith Canada panel discussion during which Selina Robinson spoke her controversial words.

Selina Robinson, who has called herself “the Jew in the crew” that is British Columbia’s cabinet, is out. The minister of advanced education and future skills resigned Monday after a torrent of protest following comments she made last week during a B’nai Brith Canada online panel discussion, in which she referred to the area that would become Israel as “a crappy piece of land.”

Premier David Eby announced Robinson’s departure from cabinet, saying her comments were “belittling and demeaning.”

“The depth of work she needs to do is substantial,” said Eby. “What has become apparent is the scope of work, the depth of the hurt. As a result, we came to the conclusion together – she needed to step back.”

The announcement came after protesters threatened to disrupt New Democratic Party events, forcing the cancelation of a major fundraising gala Sunday night and a government news conference Monday. A network of Muslim societies issued a statement over the weekend that no NDP MLAs or candidates would be permitted in their sacred spaces until Robinson was removed from cabinet.

Robinson will not run for reelection as member of the Legislative Assembly for Coquitlam-Maillardville, a decision she says she made earlier.

Response from Jewish community leaders was fast and critical.

“The removal of MLA Robinson, who apologized for her comments and promised to do better, sends a chilling message that Jewish leaders are held to a different standard than non-Jewish ones,” said Nico Slobinsky, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs’ vice-president for the Pacific region, in a statement. “In the past, when BC NDP politicians and staff have made antisemitic comments, the Jewish community has been asked to accept their apologies and – on every occasion – we have. As a show of goodwill, we never publicly demanded their resignations and, instead, placed our trust and faith in the premier and the BC government when he said that his team would learn from the incidents and not repeat their egregious errors.

“When, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day – a day to commemorate the six million Jews slaughtered in the Second World War – one of Premier Eby’s staff tweeted that ‘we stand with the Muslim community,’ we were asked to accept that stunning gaffe as a mistake. And we did.

“We were also asked to work with a Parliamentary Secretary for Anti-Racism Initiatives who made remarks that were deeply hurtful to our community,” Slobinsky said. “And, despite her repeated offensive actions, she continues to remain in her role.”

This reference to Vancouver-Kensington MLA Mable Elmore alludes to a history of problematic remarks, from claiming before her election that her union was dominated by “Zionist bus drivers” to more recently using a speech in the legislature ostensibly about transgender rights to call for Israel to end the war with Hamas.

Slobinsky added: “Today, as the Jewish community in BC is confronted by an alarming increase in antisemitism and by frequent pro-Hamas protests calling for the Jews of Israel to be eradicated, the loss of MLA Robinson is especially distressing, as we no longer have our strongest advocate – who understands the challenges and sensitivities of the Jewish community – at the table.

“The community is both offended and hurt by what has happened to a great ally and British Columbian, and it has seriously undermined the confidence of the Jewish community in the Government of British Columbia. Given this obvious double standard and loss of Jewish representation in cabinet, Premier David Eby must share what steps he is going to take to repair the relationship and restore the community’s trust in him and his government.”

“Facing an unprecedented increase in hate, the Jewish community in BC is hurting,” Ezra Shanken, chief executive officer of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, said in a statement. “The level of online vitriol aimed at Selina Robinson leading up to her resignation – which mirrors the reality faced by much of the Jewish community since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks committed by Hamas – shows worrying trends in our public discourse. We are saddened to have lost one of the strongest advocates fighting against antisemitism from within cabinet – especially at a time when it is needed most.

“It is shameful that Premier David Eby has bowed to pressure from a loud minority whose campaign to discredit MLA Robinson was centred in anti-Jewish bias and lacked the offer of grace they demand when others falter.

“We need stronger leadership from this government to bring our communities together – not divide us,” said Shanken.

The Rabbinical Association of Vancouver sent a letter to the premier, signed by nine rabbis, expressing disappointment.

“We believe you have capitulated to a small but loud group of people,” the letter read. “Now it feels like you have given in to bullies for political expediency. We will remember this day the next time you ask for our trust and support.”

At least one voice in the Jewish community was pleased with Eby’s decision. “The decision to remove former MP [sic] Selina Robinson from office is a crucial win for organizers including IJV-Vancouver and our allies, who stood firm and united against anti-Palestinian racism,” tweeted Independent Jewish Voices. “The rhetoric we all heard was shameful. Thank you to all who helped hold BC accountable.”

B’nai Brith Canada told the Independent they are grateful for the work that Robinson undertook to combat antisemitism on BC’s post-secondary campuses as minister.

“It is unfortunate that comments she made last week have resulted in her feeling compelled to step down from her ministerial position,” Richard Robertson, director of research and advocacy for B’nai Brith Canada, said in an email. “We believe her apology was sincere and that MLA Robinson will work to regain the confidence of the constituents who were offended by her remarks.”

“B’nai Brith Canada believes that this incident underscores the need for the province to take further steps to combat racism and hatred,” said Robertson. “One such step, amid rising levels of antisemitism, is for the BC government to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism.”

United in grief and resilience

Bassem Eid, right, addresses those who gathered Feb. 4 for the event United, as fellow speakers Virág Gulyás, left, and Yuval David listen. (photo by Pat Johnson)

Yuval David knew 32 people who were murdered on Oct. 7. Among them were 10 friends who gathered to celebrate a birthday and headed to the Nova music festival.

“All 10 …” he said, struggling to maintain his composure. “Not one made it out of that celebration.”

David was speaking Sunday night at United, one of the largest community gatherings since the events of Oct. 7 and probably since before the pandemic. About 800 people gathered at Temple Sholom, where three diverse speakers brought their perspectives to an audience of Jews and non-Jewish allies.

The Feb. 4 afternoon event was the brainchild of Megan Laskin, a community leader who organized a similar event last November geared to women, who were asked to bring their non-Jewish friends; hundreds attended. Sunday’s gathering was presented by Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, Jewish National Fund of Canada, StandWithUs and Temple Sholom. David, an American actor, filmmaker and activist, who is gay, was joined by Palestinian advocate and media commentator Bassem Eid, and Virág Gulyás, a Hungarian-born former diplomat who grew up with what she described as typical antisemitic stereotypes and has become a leading voice for the Jewish people and Israel. The audience alternated from rapt silence to thunderous ovations.

Since Oct. 7, David has been thinking about his grandparents, Holocaust survivors who saved others in the camps. His grandfather was known as the “Magic Man” for somehow obtaining desperately necessary medications and helping others out of life-threatening scenarios.

“When I was a little child in Israel, I couldn’t walk more than a few steps with them in public without somebody rushing up not only to them but to me, to say, ‘Do you know who your grandfather is? Do you know who your grandmother is?’ And they would lean down to me and they would say, ‘If it wasn’t for what your grandparents did, I would not be here today,’” he said. “As a little child, holding their hand, walking in the street, I knew that I was walking with heroes. I knew that I was walking in the footsteps that I must walk someday.”

His grandparents instilled chutzpah in him, he said, for precisely this moment in history.

“I was raised to understand what it means to have chutzpah because I was raised to understand what it means to not have chutzpah,” he said. “I was raised to understand what ‘never again’ actually means.”

His worldview and his Zionism were reframed by Oct. 7, he said.

“But it was also reframed by Oct. 8,” he said, referring to global reaction to the events of the day before. Not only did he lose friends on Oct. 7 and others who have died in battle during the war, but another friend, who survived the Nova festival, recently committed suicide because she could not live with the memories. Closer to home, in a different way, he says he has lost most of his friends in the United States.

“I also lost two-thirds of my friends in my life in America who revealed themselves,” he said. “Revealed that they were not my true friends, revealed that even though they came to my Shabbat dinners and they came to my film screenings and they were plus-ones at fabulous events, especially if they were gift bags … crickets. Where are they?”

Some even sent him photographs of themselves protesting against Israel.

“These aren’t pro-Palestinian marches,” he said. “Whoever calls them pro-Palestinian marches is a liar. These are pro-Hamas, pro-terrorism, anti-Palestinian, anti-Jewish and anti-democratic events, he said.

“I used to be woke,” he said of his years as a progressive activist. “Now I’m awake.” He calls his former allies who condemn Israel and side with Hamas “fauxgressives.”

“If you are going to be ‘pro,’” he said, “then do something good for the people. If you are pro-Palestinian, help create businesses, help create schools, help refugees – do something that helps somebody’s life. But, if all of your fake ‘pro’ activity is to be ‘anti,’ is attacking, is subjugating, is belittling, then you are a racist bigot. Shame. We must name and shame.”

Gulyás is an academic and former European Union diplomat who devotes much of her time contesting anti-Israel and antisemitic narratives. She spoke of how she confronted the anti-Jewish biases she was raised with in Hungary. She noted that anti-Israel street eruptions began on Oct. 8, before Israel’s military had responded to the pogrom – worldwide, she said, activists were prepared.

“They had all the slogans, all the flyers, all the social media posts, all the hashtags ready,” she said. On the other hand, most Canadians and others in the West do not subscribe to the hatred and anti-Israel vehemence seen on the streets, yet remain silent.

Would large numbers of people have reacted as street activists and social media keyboard warriors have if any other sovereign country were invaded by terrorists with the intention to mass murder, she asked.

“Unless you’re a psychopath, you wouldn’t,” she said. “But, somehow, when it comes to Jews and Israel, we remain silent, we look at the other side and with this we normalize Jew-hatred.”

Eid is a rare Palestinian voice in international media against the defamation of Israel and the corruption and ideology of the Palestinian regimes. He shared a story of a friend who lives in the northern Gaza Strip, who told Eid that Hamas representatives knocked on his door at night. They told him they wanted to pay him $50 a month – a windfall – to build tunnels under his home. Eid asked him how he replied to the request.

“He said, ‘My answer was, “Please try to build four tunnels and give me $200 a month,’” Eid recounted. This is how Hamas exploits the poverty of its people to meet its objectives, he said.

The high Palestinian death toll, Eid told the audience, is due partly to Hamas officers forcing civilians back into the homes and neighbourhoods the Israel Defence Forces has warned them to evacuate.

At the expense of millions of dollars in foreign aid, Hamas has built hundreds of kilometres of terror tunnels, he said. “But, in the meantime, Hamas didn’t build one shelter for their own people.”

When you ask Hamas why they don’t protect their people, Eid said, they reply that keeping Palestinians safe is the responsibility of the United Nations and the Israelis.

Eid blamed the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which has recently been under fire for its employees’ involvement in terrorism, for holding Palestinians hostage for more than 75 years.

“Peace is possible between the Israelis and the Palestinians,” said Eid. “But it is impossible while Hamas is still ruling the Gaza Strip. This is the first thing that we should have to get rid of. The day after the war, the first thing is how to trash UNRWA from Gaza.”

Temple Sholom’s Rabbi Dan Moskovitz opened the event. Laskin, who conceived the event, spoke of the grief of this time.

“As the war goes on and more innocent lives are lost on both sides, it is hard,” she said. “But let me be clear. We can strongly support Israel and the Jewish people and also express sympathy for the innocent Palestinians who are suffering. They are not mutually exclusive. We are mourning for all innocent lives lost. You can take a side though, and that side is against Hamas.”

A plea for the hostages

A screenshot of former Israel Air Force pilot Uri Arad speaking at the Jan. 20 Bring Them Home rally in Jerusalem.

***

Weekly rallies have been held in “Hostages Square,” the plaza in front of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, since the Oct. 7 terror attacks by Hamas, who killed 1,200 people and kidnapped 240 that day. Every week, thousands gather in the square and in other locations, calling for the release of the 136 hostages still being held in Gaza, at least 32 of whom are now believed to be dead. At the Jan. 20 Bring Them Home rally in Jerusalem, one of the speakers was Uri Arad, a former pilot who was held in captivity in Egypt for six weeks during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Arad is not related to Ron Arad, an Israeli Air Force officer missing in action since 1986, who Arad mentions in his speech. The remarks below were translated into English by Rahel Halabe, a Vancouver translator and educator, who is a family friend.

***

I was asked to speak here today because I have been a prisoner of war. Until recently, I had avoided talking publicly about my captivity or even identifying as a past captive. The reason I stand here today and talk to you stems from my deep empathy with the hostages and their families, my fear for the hostages’ fate and the need to join the call for their immediate release.

Indeed, I can testify from my experience that captivity is a very difficult experience, physically and mentally. Still, it is important for me to emphasize that, as difficult as my experience was, it is not the same as what our hostages in Gaza are going through. As a pilot of the air force, I was totally aware of the possibility of falling into captivity and I was prepared physically and mentally to cope with the experience. This is not the same for innocent civilians who are kidnapped out of the blue, without any previous preparation. As time goes on, it shows that the hostages are indeed going through hell.

Moreover, being held captive by a state is not the same as being held captive by a murderous terrorist organization. Being held by a state, I did not feel the constant existential threat on my life – I knew that, eventually, I would return home. This is unlike the hostages in Gaza, who are in constant existential fear of being murdered by their captors, or even killed by our own forces. It is, therefore, a much more difficult experience than what I went through.

I shut my eyes and imagine Noa Argamani, the Bibas family, Amit Buskila, Elyakim Libman, Yusef and Hamza Alziadneh, Liri Elbag, and all the other hostages, and my heart is shattered. Here in Israel, there are so many tormented families who are suffering from uncertainty and worry for their loved ones, some of them after experiencing losses without the ability to properly mourn. It’s just horror. We have to say clearly and loudly: we have reached a stage in which every day that passes is like Russian roulette in the life of the hostages. Therefore, it is necessary to do everything, everything, to bring them home now!

When people ask what reassured me most and helped me get through my time in captivity, I answer without any hesitation: I knew that the state would do all that it could to bring me back home. The ability to cope with torture, difficult interrogations and the uncertainty of my fate mostly came from my belief in the contract between me and the state, from knowing that I would not be abandoned. This confidence is what accompanies all soldiers who are ready to give their life for the state. This is the Israeli ethos of solidarity, the most sublime expression of which is that those injured on the battlefield are never abandoned, even if their rescue may involve losses, and that the state goes above and beyond to bring its captives and hostages home.

This is why I came here today, to say in a clear voice: the return of the hostages is the most important mission, maybe the only one, that should guide decision-makers at this moment. This is the necessary condition for our ability as a nation to recuperate from the horrendous disaster that hit us on Black Saturday. All of us are tormented knowing that Ron Arad never came back. It is, therefore, important to say it is unthinkable that there will be tens more of “Ron Arads.” If we don’t regain our composure and immediately bring the hostages home, this will happen. Some of the hostages will return in coffins, others will be forever lost.

But, I am asked, how do we bring them back? Don’t they keep telling us that the objective of destroying Hamas is not less important, that there have been great attempts to bring them back, that both objectives are interconnected and that we must keep putting military pressure on Hamas to bring the hostages back? It must be said, at this point in time, as Gadi Eisenkot expressed so well two days ago, this is senseless. The truth is that, today, these two objectives contradict each other. And the evidence is that – except for one hostage – all the hostages who have come back were returned in the framework of a deal. The military operation not only did not help in the return of the hostages, but it even cost the life of a few of them, and every day that passes just increases the danger to their lives. The conclusion is clear and sharp: the only way to bring the hostages back alive is through a deal. Now!

There are those who object to stopping the war, claiming that it would be a repetition of the same mistake that brought Oct. 7 upon us, and that it will eventually bring upon us many more Black Shabbats and an existential danger to the state in the long run. They mistakenly think that the destruction of Hamas is just around the corner. This is a delusion! Today, it is clear to all who are reasonable that the destruction of Hamas is an extremely difficult goal, which will require years to achieve. It is important to understand that what really hides behind this claim is the willingness to give up on the hostages. In the clash between short-term and long-term interests, those who claim the above prefer the long-term. I say, first, we must bring back the hostages! In the long-run, we will be able to continue weakening the terrorists through both military pressure and political initiatives, while striving for comprehensive agreements that will bring an end to the conflict.

I know that the thought of being forced to stop the fighting and, on top of that, pay the heavy price of a mass release of terrorists, is difficult for many people. I, too, have found it hard to swallow and say this grudgingly, but there is no escape. It is necessary to internalize that the hostages are the major asset Hamas has in its hands, and that [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar will not give up this asset except in exchange for the end of fighting. The strategic failure of Black Shabbat puts us, after more than 100 days of fighting, in a position in which we are forced to clearly make a decision and pay the price. The Israeli government, therefore, should initiate a deal of “all for all,” including a stop to the fighting. Now!

Binyamin Netanyahu refused to take responsibility for what happened on Oct. 7, but has been “gracious” enough to declare that he is responsible for all that will happen. If so, it must be clearly said: Netanyahu is responsible for the fate of the hostages. From here, I would like to address the prime minister and say: Netanyahu, you have brought upon us the worst catastrophe in the history of the state. This will be your legacy; you will be inscribed in history with shameful disgrace. Still, you have a chance to somehow soften history’s judgment, if you bring the hostages back alive. This is the time to rise above the political considerations that have led you and initiate a deal for the return of the hostages. Now!

Finally, I would like to say: continuing the current policy will cause a rupture, impossible to repair, in Israeli society. Israel will lose its soul, one of its most significant elements. We will never again be able to say that we hold human life sacred. This is an unbearable price. Therefore, bring the hostages back in exchange for stopping the fighting. Now!

Thank you all.

Commemorating the Shoah

Richmond RCMP Chief Superintendent Dave Chauhan, left, lights memorial candles with survivors David Schaffer, Sidi Schaffer, Amalia Boe-Fishman and Ilona Mermelstein, and Richmond Mayor Malcolm Brodie at a commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, at the Bayit, in Richmond, on Jan. 25. (photo by Pat Johnson)

Amalia Boe-Fishman was born in Leeuwarden, in the Netherlands, days before the start of the Second World War. Her mother’s parents and siblings had made aliyah to Israel in the early 1930s, but her mother, Johanna, stayed behind to pursue a career in nursing. Working in the Jewish hospital, she met Arnold van Kreveld, a patient who had been in a motorcycle accident, and they fell in love.

The couple married in 1935 and their first child, David, nicknamed Dik, was born in 1937. Amalia arrived Aug. 23, 1939.

“We had a good life, family, friends and neighbours,” Boe-Fishman said. But then, in May 1940, the German army invaded the Netherlands.

Boe-Fishman shared the story of her family’s survival at a commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, at the Bayit, in Richmond, on Jan. 25.

After the Nazis overran the Netherlands, her father’s parents and siblings were deported to Westerbork, a Nazi transit camp in the Netherlands, on Sept. 3, and on to Auschwitz, where they were immediately murdered, on Sept. 7.

Her father was a scientist and his young research assistant, Jan Spiekhout, a member of the Dutch resistance to the Nazis, would save the lives of the entire van Kreveld family.

“Jan Spiekhout found immediately an address for my father to go into hiding,” Boe-Fishman recalled. “He then found different hiding addresses for my mother, another address for my brother and then one for myself.”

Amalia was not yet a year old and her parents knew they might never see their children again.

“My mother gave me a special doll to keep me company and a letter I brought with me so my new family would understand her little girl a little better,” said Boe-Fishman. “In the letter, [she] told them how fond I was of my older brother Dik. If my parents would not survive the war, the Holocaust, to send us together to Israel to stay with one of my mother’s sisters.”

Amalia was taken to the home of Spiekhout and his parents, Durk and Froukje Spiekhout. The crowded and deeply religious Dutch Reformed household already had six children, of which Jan was the eldest. The younger Spiekhout children were told that Amalia was the daughter of a sick aunt in Rotterdam.

“They became my family,” said Boe-Fishman. “Father Spiekhout took a great risk bringing me into his household. He was a policeman. After all, policemen were supposed to work for the Nazis and round up Jews.”

She learned later that he instead warned Jewish neighbours of impending Nazi roundups.

“My father, typically Jewish looking, with dark hair, went from hiding place to hiding place – at least 26 different addresses,” Boe-Fishman said. “All at night and all arranged by Jan Spiekhout. My mother, not so typically Jewish looking, did not need to flee so often.

“As for myself, I don’t know what I remember or what I was told later on,” she said. “I was not allowed to go outside and I had to stay indoors for three years.”

On April 15, 1945, Canadian forces liberated Leeuwarden.

“What did that mean for me?” she asked. “Liberation should have been a really happy time for me. I was told that I could go outdoors. I didn’t know what to expect, what was waiting for me outdoors. Indoors had become my entire life. Indoors was where I felt secure and safe. Indoors was all I knew.”

Greater change was to come.

“I was told I had a real family and I was told I was going home,” she said. “But who were those people, who were those strangers? I did not want to leave the family Spiekhout. They were my real family and I loved them. My own father and mother were patient with me. They would come over to visit and I would run away or hang onto Mother Spiekhout screaming, ‘I don’t want to go home!’”

Dik, who was now 7-and-a-half, was also a stranger to little Amalia. Most incredibly, and at profound danger, a younger sibling had been born in hiding, a baby named Jan, in honour of the family’s saviour.

The name Jan has profound resonance in the family. Amalia’s oldest son, who joined her at the commemoration, was born in 1962 and is also named Jan.

That the entire immediate family had survived the Holocaust – had grown, in fact – was almost inconceivable. Dutch Jews had one of the lowest survival rates during the Holocaust. The van Krevelds owed everything to the Spiekhout family who, in 2008, were recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem’s Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority. Boe-Fishman and her children attended a ceremony honouring the Spiekhouts in The Hague in 2009.

In 1961, Boe-Fishman (then van Kreveld) went to Israel trying to find her Jewish identity. The Eichmann trial was taking place at the time, which cracked open consciousness of the Holocaust not only for most of the world, but for survivors, including her family, who had remained almost entirely silent on the subject. In Israel, she met and married a Canadian Jew from Vancouver and settled here becoming, among other things, a devoted speaker to class groups and others about her Holocaust experiences.

photo - Amalia Boe-Fishman and son Jan Fishman. Boe-Fishman shared her survivor experiences at the memorial event — Amalia Boe-Fishman and son Jan Fishman. Boe-Fishman shared her survivor experiences at the memorial event. (photo by Pat Johnson)

Rabbi Levi Varnai of the Bayit contextualized Boe-Fishman’s presentation.

“I think that this year – every year, but this year maybe more than any year – with all the craziness in the world, this event is even more important than ever before,” he said.

Keith Liedtke, president of the Bayit, served as master of ceremonies and credited Michael Sachs, now regional director for Jewish National Fund of Canada, for starting the tradition five years ago of inviting the mayor to recognize Holocaust Remembrance Day annually.

Cantor Yaakov Orzech chanted El Moleh Rachamim. Richmond’s Mayor Malcolm Brodie read the proclamation and reflected on Boe-Fishman’s experiences. RCMP Chief Superintendent Dave Chauhan joined the mayor and survivors in lighting memorial candles. Liedtke read a message from Steveston-Richmond East Member of Parliament Parm Bains. Kelly Greene, member of the Legislative Assembly for Richmond-Steveston, brought greetings from Premier David Eby. Also in attendance were Richmond South Centre MLA Henry Yao and Richmond city councilors Chak Au, Andy Hobbs and Bill McNulty.

In addition to the Bayit, the event was presented with the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, Kehila Society of Richmond and Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver.

ICJ ruling ‘nonevent’: lawyer

Screenshot of the Jan. 30 HonestReporting Canada discussion on the International Court of Justice ruling on whether Israel is perpetrating genocide. Jonas Prince, chair of HonestReporting Canada, emceed and speakers were Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kohavi, former chief of general staff of the Israel Defence Forces, and Natasha Hausdorff, a British specialist in international law and a former clerk for the president of the Supreme Court of Israel.

The International Court of Justice ruling on whether Israel is perpetrating genocide means little, according to a legal academic speaking to Canadian audiences last week.

“This was a complete nonevent,” said Natasha Hausdorff, a British specialist in international law and a former clerk for the president of the Supreme Court of Israel. “There was nothing substantive found and nothing substantive required or ordered as part of the provisional measures because there is no evidence that Israel is engaged in genocide; quite the contrary.”

Hausdorff was speaking in a webinar Jan. 30 alongside Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kohavi, former chief of general staff of the Israel Defence Forces. The event was presented by HonestReporting Canada, which describes itself as “an independent grassroots organization promoting fairness and accuracy in Canadian media coverage of Israel and the Middle East.”

Jonas Prince, cofounder and chairman of HonestReporting Canada, emceed the event.

“The words war crimes, genocide, proportionality, siege, humanitarian crisis have been weaponized by the media, as well as Israel’s enemies,” said Prince. “The Iron Dome defence against these verbal missiles is knowledge.”

Where Hausdorff brought legal acumen to the discussion, Kohavi offered the perspective of a top military official who has been on the ground, making life-and-death decisions in some of the most ethically dicey situations.

World reaction to the international court’s judgment, which was released Jan. 26, has been mixed, if not confused. The court notably did not call on Israel to end the war and neither did it rule, ultimately, on whether genocide is happening or seems imminent.

The court handed down “provisional measures” that it said Israel was obligated to undertake, including that Israel should do everything possible to avoid killing Palestinians or causing serious bodily or mental harm, creating intolerable conditions, or deliberately preventing Palestinian births. The court also called on Israel to “prevent and punish” public incitement to genocide, citing comments from Israeli officials as examples.

Hausdorff dismissed the last item, contending it was clear that the statements made by Israeli government officials that the court cited were referring to Hamas terrorists and not to Palestinian civilians. With respect to the other aspects of the ruling, she and Kohavi both essentially argued that Israel is already doing what the court demanded.

The wide-ranging discussion focused on Israel’s rights under international law and attempted to correct what the speakers said were misunderstandings of legal terminology. The expression “proportionality” is an example, Hausdorff said, with many people believing that the greater Palestinian death toll is proof of “disproportionality.”

“That is grotesque,” she said, “not least because the corollary of that analysis is often that not enough Jews have died to justify Israel’s response.” It also encourages Hamas’s tactics of using civilians as human shields, she said, “driving up the civilian casualty count as a means of putting pressure on Israel to desist with its lawful military activities.”

Proportionality, she explained, involves military commanders making assessments on whether the military advantage sought by a strike is proportionate to the anticipated collateral damage.

Kohavi emphasized that disparities in death tolls are due to a significant extent to Israel’s defensive technologies – Iron Dome – as well as the secure rooms and bomb shelters constructed for decades in Israeli buildings.

“We have taken steps and measures in order to protect our citizens and that’s why the numbers on our side are relatively low,” he said. “Now, I do not expect Hamas to build their [own] Iron Dome, but they could build shelters. Instead, they have been building their tunnels for their perpetrators, not for civilians.”

For 15 years, Kohavi said, Hamas has embedded its military operations seamlessly throughout the Gaza Strip’s dense urban populations. Israel’s precision targeting technologies allow the military to destroy terrorist targets while harming as few civilians as possible, he said.

Despite a global outcry over the estimated 27,000-plus Palestinians killed, Hausdorff and Kohavi took exception to these figures on several fronts. It is in the interest of Hamas, which compiles the statistics, to maximize them, said Hausdorff. She cited the notorious example of an alleged Israeli bombing of a Palestinian hospital killing 500. Later evidence said it was a Palestinian missile that caused the explosion and that the death toll estimates were exaggerated, possibly by a magnitude of 10. The cumulative casualty tally kept by the Gaza Ministry of Health was never altered downward after initial reports in that case were debunked, Hausdorff said.

The figures also make no differentiation between combatants and civilians, both panelists said. While lamenting all civilian deaths, they said that even in the confined theatre of the highly urban Gaza Strip, civilian deaths tolls are probably significantly lower than in parallel military engagements.

Other data suggest 1.8 civilian deaths to every killed combatant in the current conflict, Hausdorff said, compared with the macabre accounting of the United Nations, which calculates that, in the context of urban warfare, civilian casualties average nine to every combatant death. American figures in wars Iraq and Afghanistan saw civilian death tolls of 3-to-1 and 5-to-1 respectively, she said.

In the circumstance, Hausdorff said, it is “utterly unparalleled” that Israel has kept civilian deaths to the numbers it has “despite every effort that Hamas has made to increase civilian casualties and inflate that toll.”

The court case, which was brought by the government of South Africa, is “extremely problematic,” Hausdorff said, “not just for Israel but for all law-abiding states, for those who uphold and prize the rule of law, that the International Court of Justice would be entertaining this.”

She accused the International Court of Justice of “essentially doing the bidding of a terrorist organization.”

South Africa likes to paint itself as a champion of Palestinian rights, Hausdorff said.

“South Africa is a champion of Hamas, an internationally proscribed terrorist organization,” she said. “No individual who cared about Palestinian rights would be seeking to prop up Hamas given that the Palestinian people have borne the brunt of their brutality and their corruption and their slaughter and torture over the blast 16, 17 years.”

Readers can watch the HonestReporting Canada event at youtube.com/watch?v=FwksgmYqXBs.

Journalists partly to blame

Journalist Tristin Hopper speaks with an audience member after his talk at Congregation Schara Tzedeck Jan. 14. (photo by Pat Johnson)

Canada has plenty of dark chapters in its history. But, in terms of sheer malice, nothing compares to the celebration of mass murder seen in this country after Oct. 7, according to National Post commentator Tristin Hopper – and he says the media bears part of the blame.

Hopper, who lives in Victoria, spoke at Congregation Schara Tzedeck Jan. 14. He said he massively misjudged Canadian reactions to the violence perpetrated by Hamas and its collaborators, sketching out how he says he thought things would play out.

“I thought there would be ‘Pray with Israel’ placards displayed conspicuously outside mosques and Muslim community centres,” said Hopper. “I thought there would be Israeli flags seamlessly hung next to Ukraine flags in windows of public buildings and public libraries. I thought that Arab and Palestinian Canadians would gather in impromptu ‘Not in our name’ rallies to condemn Hamas. And then, after about a week or two, I thought this whole thing would basically disappear from the headlines.

“You’ll forgive my startling naïveté because obviously very little of that happened and in many cases the exact opposite happened,” said Hopper. “Canada was instead greeted with the largest and most sustained outpouring of hate in our entire history.”

Hopper, who clarified that he was not speaking on behalf of the National Post, said he writes frequently about the darker moments in Canada’s past, such as Japanese-Canadian internment, race-specific land covenants, Indian residential schools and the pro-fascist and antisemitic sentiments that Canada’s longest-serving prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King shared in his diary.

“In all that, you never once, in all our 160 years, had what we saw in the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7,” he said. “We’ve had KKK rallies, anti-Catholic rallies by the Orange Order, race riots, pro-terror demonstrations by extremist Khalistanis, but not like this. Coordinated rallies in every single time zone, whose sole motivating purpose was to celebrate the deaths of civilians.”

This surprised him, Hopper said, but it did not surprise his Jewish friends.

“They had been telling it to me for years,” he said. “Did I think that Canada had antisemites? Yes, lots of them. But if you had asked me three months ago, I would have told you that however large a constituency of antisemites, they were Canadians and a Canadian knows that this is a place where primal hatreds are repressed and prejudice is not welcome.”

Hopper chastised the media for failing to dig into the nature of the groups organizing rallies in Canada.

“You may have heard of these peace rallies that keep blockading roads, desecrating war memorials and [that] intimidated Christmas shoppers [and assumed] they are just concerned citizens who want an end to violence,” he said. Instead, the social media feeds of some of these groups are packed with celebrations of violence, antisemitism and calls for the destruction of Israel.

Among the problems, he contends, is that there are some Palestinian advocacy organizations that exaggerate or lie and media repeat their statements without challenge.

“You refer to terror detainees as political prisoners, you call Israel an apartheid state, you obfuscate or deny every Palestinian terror attack, you circulate faked photos, you launder terrorist propaganda,” he said of some Canadian activists. “You don’t merely misrepresent Israeli actions, you invent Israeli actions that never existed. You use the word ‘genocide’ so often that it’s basically punctuation. Any time someone is killed who had a minor communications role with Hamas, you refer to them as a journalist. This is a level of brazen mendacity that you just do not encounter from any other political movement. You’ll get exaggerations, you’ll get omissions, you’ll get disingenuousness, faulty premises, but you’re probably not going to encounter someone who just lies about everything.”

He is not without sympathy for the journalists.

“How are you going to cover that in a typical 500-word piece of he said/she said news story?” he asked.

He read from one news report: “City Hall today saw 100 people gathered for a ‘stop the genocide’ rally. Demonstrators at a counter-rally said they support Israel.”

“OK, you got both sides there,” he said. “But if you are looking to tell the truth here, you would need an extended essay on how the genocide accusation is utterly unhinged from reality and overlooks how the people who organize this rally handed out candy on Oct. 7.”

There is no context of the larger geopolitical situation or how this particular conflict started, he said.

“You’re not getting into the history of rejected peace offers, why Hamas is subject to repeated blockades, repeated rocket attacks, none of these are in these stories,” Hopper said, adding that voices supporting terrorism are given equal time with voices defending Israel. “The extremist line on this issue is either favoured or at least equated as being morally equivalent to Israel.”

In a country where the vast majority of Jews support Israel, he said, media will enthusiastically give platforms to those who don’t.

Hopper believes that Canadian journalism is experiencing a replica of what he sees as having happened in academia.

“An activist element took over and are now, in the words of one critic, wearing the institution like a skin suit and demanding respect,” he said.

He was speaking just after the PuSh Festival announced they were canceling The Runner, basically because it featured a Jewish Israeli protagonist. In the arts community, Hopper said, activists with an agenda have infiltrated different organizations and bodies in a way that he compares with interest groups who get themselves elected to school boards because few people pay attention to such things and then parents suddenly discover their children are being taught creationism instead of evolution.

Hopper’s appearance was sponsored by the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs and Schara Tzedeck, whose Rabbi Andrew Rosenblatt introduced the program. Shelley Rivkin and Raquel Hirsch had the idea to invite Hopper to speak after being encouraged by his columns in the aftermath of Oct. 7.

More aid sent to Israel

The Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver has made a new transfer of more than $1 million from its Israel Emergency Campaign (IEC). This is its fourth transfer of funds and brings the total transferred to Israel to approximately $7.5 million.

It has been 125 days since Oct. 7 and Israel is facing challenges that continue to evolve and deepen as time goes by and the war continues. The IEC allocations committee, chaired by Stephen Gaerber, has reviewed funding proposals with great care to ensure that this latest round of allocations addresses the developing needs on the ground.

To give local community members a sense of what Israelis are facing at this stage, Federation asked Rachel Sachs, director of its Israel office, to provide this summary:

“As the army continues to fight in Gaza, the loss of soldiers’ lives and the ongoing state of captivity of 136 Israelis in Gaza is a growing and unbearable burden that is taking its toll on Israelis across the country. In the last few weeks, many reservists have been released from duty, with the understanding that they may get called up again. Their return home, after months in the battlefield, has sparked a new set of challenges in their families, their professional paths, academic journeys, and more.

“The evacuation of approximately 130,000 Israelis from the north and the south continues. Some remain housed in hotel rooms across the country, often miles away from home. Some residents of these frontline communities remain determined to return home the minute they will be allowed to, some remain determined that they will never go back, and others are trying to determine what it will take for them to return, both in terms of their sense of security, and actual security itself.

“Many of the devastated communities of the Gaza Envelope have either found, or are seeking, sites to which they can relocate together. Until their home kibbutzim are rebuilt, that is. They have been taken in by communities across the country, where they are, hopefully, experiencing a small sense of home for the first time since they fled their real homes months ago.

“The mental and emotional toll of this extended situation is growing, as the need for ongoing care and therapy for survivors, bereaved families and evacuated communities continues in multiple locations across Israel.

“In our partnership region of the Upper Galilee, the state of emergency continues.

“There is great uncertainty and concern over when the ‘day after’ will be and what will it look like. There is ongoing outreach to evacuated residents, with the understanding that community resilience is a critical factor in bringing people back home and offering them a hopeful future, together, in the north.”

Funding for this round of allocations is focused in four areas: emergency and humanitarian needs, respite for evacuees, economic support, and targeted populations. The following organizations are recipients of this round of IEC allocations:

Adler Institute: support programs for returning reservists and their families to address the specific needs related to returning from service, as defined by the reservists themselves.

Haruv Institute: a leader in training professionals who treat children suffering from trauma, abuse, and neglect, the institute is providing training for Eshkol Region healthcare professionals who are treating children.

Yeelim Centre at Ein Yael: nature therapy for survivors of the Nova festival, families of soldiers, evacuees, and more.

Ziv Medical Centre: funding to expand the centre’s emergency mental health work, so the hospital – itself in the line of fire and operating in emergency mode – can respond to the evolving needs and growing numbers of patients.

Kiryat Shmona Psychiatric Unit: currently operating from a temporary location in Tiberias, funding is to build a safe room at the Kiryat Shmona facility to ensure they can keep up treatment with patients when they return home.

Upper Galilee Hospice: support for terminally ill evacuated patients and their caregivers.

Yozmot Atid: support for the growing number of businesswomen who have been evacuated, some of whom also have spouses who have been serving as reservists for the past three months.

Israel Diving Federation: therapeutics diving excursions for survivors and evacuees from both northern and southern Israel.

Taglit-Birthright Israel: week-long respites for residents of the Eastern Galilee.

Road to Recovery: transportation for evacuees from across the country to reach their treatment sessions in their home regions, which are now often miles away.

Hannaton Education Centre: support for Kibbutz Hannaton to continue to house families of asylum seekers from Sderot, who were evacuated and have nowhere else to go.

Beit Issie Shapiro: rehabilitation and therapy programs for displaced families of individuals with disabilities.

To donate to the Israel Emergency Campaign and for a full summary of the support given to date, visit jewishvancouver.com.

– Courtesy Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver

Games help ALUMA counseling centre

Some 130 women came out to play mahjong, bridge or canasta at National Council of Jewish Women Canada, Vancouver section’s Games Day on Feb. 15, raising almost $8,000 for the Israeli nonprofit ALUMA Counseling Centre. (photo by Adele Lewin Photography)

Last month, 130 women gathered for a Games Day Fundraiser for Israel, hosted by National Council of Jewish Women Canada, Vancouver section. Almost $8,000 was raised for the Israeli nonprofit ALUMA Counseling Centre.

The afternoon event on Jan. 21 was held at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver and featured mahjong, bridge and canasta, offering participants a chance to connect with one another, while raising funds for ALUMA, so that help can be provided to the many families who need to start the healing process from the Oct. 7 terror attacks.

ALUMA, also known as IFCA, Israel Family Counselling Association, was established in Tel Aviv in 1954 and joined forces with NCJWC in 1973, said NCJWC national president Linda Steinberg.

“Golda Meir had the idea of twinning Israeli organizations needing financial assistance with women’s organizations abroad,” explained Steinberg. Dorothy Reitman, as president of NCJWC at the time, was contacted and this twinning was arranged through Carol Slater, who then lived in Israel. Slater was the chair of NCJWC’s Israel project ALUMA for 15 years.

ALUMA is a centre for counseling and treatment of couples, families and individuals, regardless of their place of residence, origin, religion or economic circumstances. It was a pioneer institution, the first such centre in Israel, said Steinberg. Most people receiving therapy pay what they can, if anything, and the professional therapists are volunteers, receiving little if any remuneration.

Steinberg noted that ALUMA is dependent on donations and NCJWC is the only Canadian organization providing financial support for the nonprofit. National members have supported ALUMA through fundraising teas, brunches and other events, and by yearly contributions as NCJWC members.

Oct. 7 has increased the need for trauma support in Israel and ALUMA has developed several models to meet this growing need, said Steinberg. “Most recently, their therapists have been training and mentoring new volunteers to help.”

photo - Left to right are event co-chairs Lisa Boroditsky, Juleen Axler, Jordana Corenblum (NCJW Vancouver president) and Sandy Hazan. (Co-chair Jane Stoller is missing from photo) — Left to right are event co-chairs Lisa Boroditsky, Juleen Axler, Jordana Corenblum (NCJW Vancouver president) and Sandy Hazan. (Co-chair Jane Stoller is missing from photo.) *(photo by Adele Lewin Photography)*

Gadi Lifshitz, NCJWC’s contact and spokesperson for the staff at ALUMA, wrote a letter to Lisa Boroditsky, who was one of the chairs of the local games day event, along with Juleen Axler, Sandy Hazan, Lola Pawer and Jane Stoller. NCJWC Vancouver’s president is Jordana Corenblum.

“Dr. Orly Rubin, the director of the institute, and, on my own behalf, I want to thank your wonderful community for the continued contribution and support of ALUMA,” wrote Lifshitz. “First, I will tell you about a treatment process in which Dr. Rubin and I provided a group therapy to five friends in their 30s who, on that cursed Sabbath, simply decided to go to the kibbutzim that were under attack and help as much as they could,” wrote Lifshitz. “Without weapons and without orders from any official authority, they decided that they are going to help. During those hours, they witnessed terrible sights, helped evacuate the wounded and dead, and all this while helping each other and supporting each other.

“About two weeks after the events, they contacted us for help. We quickly developed for them a trauma intervention model for a group therapy. We accompanied them through several group and personal meetings until we felt that their emotional state had stabilized and that they could return to their day-to-day ‘life.’

“It was a very powerful process, which required a lot of commitment, sensitivity and thought from all of us,” wrote Lifshitz. “This is just one of the many examples of the effort we invest in ALUMA in supporting all the many trauma victims who contact us.

“We need your continued support in our journey to expand our services to those, the many, who need them and us today.”

To donate to the ALUMA Counseling Centre or other NCJWC projects, go to give-can.keela.co/NCJWCVAN.

– Courtesy NCJWC Vancouver

Law seminar on antisemitism

At the daylong legal seminar being held at Congregation Beth Israel on Feb. 15, Howard Mickelson, KC, and Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim discuss the legal implications of adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism. Mickelson, left, spearheaded the event.

Congregation Beth Israel will be holding a full-day seminar, titled The Legality of Combatting Antisemitism, on Feb. 15. Topics will include defining antisemitism, combatting and addressing antisemitism on campus and in the workplace, examining the Charter implications of fighting antisemitism and the constitutional implications.

“Attendees can expect a top-notch group of speakers providing legal insight on, and addressing, a critical issue of our current troubled times,” said Howard Mickelson, KC, of Gudmundseth Mickelson LLP, who is spearheading the seminar. Mickelson has been a lawyer for more than 30 years.

The daylong event takes place four months after the Hamas attacks on Israel that killed approximately 1,200 people and saw about 240 people taken hostage. More than 130 hostages are still in captivity, with at least 32 believed dead. Since Oct. 7, there has been a dramatic rise in hate crimes in Vancouver, as well as the rest of Canada. A disproportionate number of these crimes have targeted Jews.

According to information released by the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) on Jan. 16, tensions from the Israel-Hamas war have fueled increases in protest activity and hate crimes in the city. Of the 47 antisemitic hate incidents reported to VPD in 2023, 33 occurred after Oct.7. In all, antisemitic incidents increased 62% in 2023 compared to 2022, when there were 29 incidents reported.

“The topic of the seminar is a result of the rise after Oct. 7 of antisemitism,” Mickelson told the Independent.

Mickelson, along with Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim, will discuss the legal implications of adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. Sim promised during his 2022 mayoral campaign to push for the adoption of the IHRA definition by the city and Vancouver city council voted for the definition shortly after he assumed office.

In 2016, the IHRA created a non-legally binding definition of antisemitism, which reads: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

Jewish groups are hoping that other jurisdictions, such as the provincial government, will follow Vancouver’s lead. In June 2022, former British Columbia Premier John Horgan issued his support of the definition in a letter. His successor, David Eby, has made several statements confronting antisemitism but his government has yet to adopt the definition. The federal government has adopted it, as have the provinces of Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador.

Rob Phillip, executive director of Hillel BC, Beth Israel’s Rabbi Jonathan Infeld and Dr. Jay Eidelman, PhD, who is a professor in the history department at University of British Columbia, will present the seminar’s opening session, What is Antisemitism?

Russell Brown, who served on the Supreme Court of Canada from 2015 to 2023, will focus on the Charter implications of combating antisemitism. Prior to his appointment to the Supreme Court, he was an associate professor and associate dean at the University of Alberta faculty of law and is the author or co-author of numerous legal works.

On the topic of Combating Antisemitism on Campus, one of the scheduled speakers is Prof. Cristie Ford of the Peter A. Allard School of Law at UBC. Colleges and universities across the province and the country have witnessed a sharp uptick in antisemitic incidents over the past four months. Jewish students have reported feeling unsafe on several campuses due to anti-Israel rhetoric and hostile behaviour from other students, as well as faculty.

The session Addressing Antisemitism in the Workplace is a roundtable moderated by Claire E. Hunter, KC. It features Reut Amit of Southern Butler Price LLP, Erin Brandt of PortaLaw and Abigail Cheung of Harris & Co.

The final topic, Mooting the Constitutional Implications, will be taken on by Marshall Rothstein, CC, KC, Osler Russell Brown; S. David Frankel, KC; Geoffrey Cowper, KC, Fasken; and Greg Allen, Allen/McMillan.

About the seminar as a whole, Mickelson said attendees can expect “legal guidance in a variety of areas, such as employment, campus life and criminal law, to deal with the heightened levels of antisemitism post-Oct 7.

“It is, of course, highly distressing to our community and especially our children,” he added. “As a lawyer, this is the best way I and the others assisting me on this, particularly Claire Hunter, KC, can do something constructive and educational to feel less helpless.”

Mickelson noted that Congregation Beth Israel has put on other topical daylong continuing legal education seminars, with assistance and insight from Infeld, including two separate trips to Israel with members of the bench and bar.

The cost for the Feb. 15 seminar, which runs 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., is $360 for professionals and $180 for students. Breakfast, snacks and lunch are included. The event is worth six continuing professional development (CPD) credits, including two ethics credits. For more information, visit bethisrael.ca or write info@bethisrael.ca.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

2024 public speaking contest

The Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver’s Public Speaking Contest has been happening annually in Vancouver since 1989 and is open to students in grades 4 to 7. The registration deadline for this year’s event – which takes place March 7, 7 p.m., at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver – is Feb. 26.

For the contest, students are asked to prepare a speech of three minutes or less, choosing from a variety of topics connected to Judaism and Israel. Speeches are delivered on the evening of the contest in front of an audience, with two judges who assess the speeches based on content and presentation.

Prizes are awarded to the top three speeches in each age group. While there are winners in every section, participation is valued above everything else, and all participants receive a prize and a certificate.

Those students who are Hebrew-speaking or interested in the Hebrew language are encouraged to deliver their speech in Hebrew. Hebrew speeches have their own grouping and are judged on effort and content, not on their level of Hebrew fluency.

The contest is a great learning experience, good preparation for bar or bat mitzvah, and a skill increasingly needed in our present political climate. For a flavour of the contest, there is a film on YouTube, posted by Larry Barzelai, which was commissioned for the 13th anniversary of the contest in 2018. Barzelai established the contest in memory of his father, a few years after his brother established one in Hamilton, Ont. (See jewishindependent.ca/young-speakers-deliver.)

The topics for the Public Speaking Contest are:

1. Talk about one person from either Tanach or the Talmud and highlight one important life lesson we can learn from them.

2. What makes a piece of art or music Jewish? Is it Jewish just because the person who created it is Jewish or does it have to have something Jewish embedded into it (i.e. a Jewish symbol, tradition or value)?

3. If you were to create a TikTok highlighting the Vancouver Jewish community what would it be about?

4. There are many different ways for Israelis to serve their country. Select one way Israelis do this and discuss why it is important to the country.

5. What is in a name? Talk about your name, what it means and why your parents chose that name.

6. We all have experience where we are the only or one of the only Jewish people. Talk about what it is like to be the only or one of the only Jews in your school, in one of your afterschool activities or at camp.

7. You are planning a trip to Israel. Name one place in Israel that you would like to visit and explain why you would like to visit that place.

8. Rambam (Maimonides), in his eight levels of tzedakah, says the highest form of giving is to enable someone to support themselves. Why do you think this is the highest form of tzedakah?

9. We have a continuing concern about climate change and the environment. What does the Torah say about caring for the land and how can we integrate Jewish values with environmental protection?

10. Topic of your choice.

For more information about the contest, contact Lissa Weinberger at lweinberger@jewishvancouver.com. To register, visit jewishvancouver.com/psc2024.

– From jewishvancouver.com