Exploring a Jewish dilemma

DR. STEFAN BRAUN

We know the three Ds of the new antisemitism: demonization, delegitimization/divestment and double standards. We also know the big C, censorship, to combat it. But what do we know about “free speech alternatives” to hate censorship? And what is the relationship between these alternatives and hate censorship in combating the three Ds? Are they complementary strategies in a common cause, as most every hate husher in Canada and Europe assumes? Or are they mutually self-contradictory and, together, politically self-defeating?

Free speech alternatives to hate censorship are non-silencing strategies of public communication and associated activities for combating the three Ds. Think of them as the three Is: involvement, instruction and investment.

Consider involvement. Edmund Burke famously said, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Public indifference to the new antisemitism must be replaced with public involvement against it. No historically vulnerable community has ever tamed the menacing forces of demonization, delegitimization and double standards solely on the strength of its own voice. Not blacks. Not gays. Not First Nations. Not even a natural majority, like women. Without public sentiment morally onside, it is only a matter of time before diasporic inclusion, and historic Jewish gains, find themselves increasingly offside.

There is strength in numbers and power in connections. Engage, and involve, the non-committed. Pro-Israel alliances need be forged wherever positive partnerships can be found. Coalitions and associations of every sort should be sought out: religious, cultural, commercial, professional, social, ideological, moral, even recreational. Self-doubt is not an option. Blacks, feminists, natives, gays – every other existentially successful minority – did not fear to draw “too much public attention” to themselves, or their choices for help. Jewish opponents don’t. Should Jews?

Second, ponder instruction. The case for Israel is no longer “self-evident.” Palestinians pleading “Zionist occupation” do not look like self-incriminating, jack-booted, neo-Nazis (aka Ernst Zundel or James Keegstra) denying extermination ovens. Distinguishing victim from victimizer has become far more publicly ambiguous. This kind of antisemitism cannot simply be hushed, or hoped, away. It must be monitored, stalked, challenged and, ultimately, corrected. Public ignorance about the three Ds must be replaced with appropriate public education as to its true face. New challenges cannot be met with old tools and dated perceptions.

Think creatively of anti-antisemitism education here as instruction with evaluation and grades. Think more like Honest Reporting – an unselfconsciously resourceful Jewish media watchdog that both “fact” checks and “context” tests errant media for three-Ds bias on their own professed terms of journalistic standards, and publicly exposes repeat offenders that fail to get a passing grade – and less like hapless victims fearfully scurrying to the censors for hate offence. Then too, think of digital technology. Think of social media. Learn from the Arab Spring/Awakening. Cerebrally, and locally, engage global communities to emotively resonate with the Jewish plight.

Most important, think of anti-antisemitism education as public instruction with guts. No other historically persecuted minority condition their “public awareness education” on fear of losing gains made or allies won. But Jews do. If violated, Jews themselves fear to “instruct” the public equally boldly on their sensibilities and human rights as do other offended minorities on theirs, but why should anyone else do so for them? Truth won’t happen by default. Justice will not make itself. Jewish legitimacy can’t be hushed into existence. It must be publicly made, boldly packaged and fearlessly delivered.

Finally, think investment. If divestment is the delegitimization infraction, then investment is Jewish re-legitimization in pro-action. To have an invested interest in something is to have a personal stake in its welfare. Invest Canada in Israel’s welfare. When Canada’s future is bound up with Israel’s future, Israel’s future also becomes Canadians’ future. Answer hands-off public indifference with hands-on Israel investment. Think here of trade missions, cultural exchanges, sharing of scientific information, Israel visits and more. The more values-laden Canadian investment is in Israel, the stronger will be public identification with Israel’s plight as Canada’s concern.

The Bolsheviks found the weakest link to sever in the chain of capitalism. It was Russia. The West paid for their “social justice” victory with 70 years of Cold War. The “new” anti-Zionist human rights hypocrites of today have also found their weakest link to sever in the chain of “colonialist/capitalist” liberal democracies. It is Israel. As was true in targeting Russia then, so too with targeting Israel today. Today’s anti-Zionists have not made Israel their focus of a three-Ds attack because it is dispensable to Western security, liberty and democracy but because Israel is indispensable to them.

Today’s social revolutionaries know only too well what too many people in too many democracies do not know well enough: Western liberal democracies cannot afford to have Israel become the new antisemites’ sacrificial Russia. The utopian social dreams and duplicitous human rights promises of delusional social justice revolutionaries must not become the margin of error for the free world’s security. Our ancestors fought too hard and paid far too high a price for our freedoms, liberty and peace of mind to once again have them frittered away for ideologues’ self-righteous mistakes. Jew or non-Jew, no Canadian can safely just sit the three Ds out in blissful ignorance or steadfast indifference. If the free world cares about itself, it must do better in understanding this about itself. That is the message of the three Is.

So, what is the relationship between the big C and the three Is in getting this message out? Not what hate censors think. We need make a voice choice.

You can welcome and involve the non-committed to experience the truth, and the lies refute, or you can alienate them still more and public controversy try to mute. You can boldly instruct the skeptics and the true face of hate reveal, or you can distrust them and anti-Zionists’ duplicity conceal. You can invest the public to share in the Zionist cause and moral indifference flush, or you can divest the public of the Jewish plight and demonizers’ pious hypocrisy hush.

In short, you can step up to the three Is free speech plate. Or you can hide behind a dated C hate censorship fate. What you cannot do is both. At least, not without increasing self-contradiction and self-defeat. Muting and refuting, concealing and revealing, hushing and flushing are not complementary, but self-contradictory. The big C and the three Is work at cross-purposes to each other. There is a trade-off. More effective hate muting, concealing and hushing means less effective public involvement, instruction and investment in knowing, and protecting, the truth from lies. It’s time to choose. It’s time to work with, not against, ourselves. √

Dr. Stefan Braun JD, LL.M., MA, PhD (of the bar of Ontario) is the author of Democracy Off Balance: Freedom of Expression and Hate Propaganda Law in Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2004), a 2006 Harold Adams Innis Prize finalist for the best peer-reviewed English-language book in the social sciences in Canada. He is also a 2009 Simon Rockower Award winner for excellence in Jewish journalism, garnering first prize in the category of best single commentary for a piece that was published in the Jewish Independent.

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