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July 2, 2004
Working for a tolerant society
New CJC Pacific Region head Mark Weintraub says Jews "got
it right."
PAT JOHNSON SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN
The work done by Canadian Jewish Congress over the past half-century
has helped create a "firewall" in Canada that has prevented
a worldwide spike in anti-Semitism from reaching full force here.
That's the view of Mark Weintraub, the new chair of Canadian Jewish
Congress, Pacific Region. Weintraub, a Vancouver lawyer and longtime
community activist, met with the Bulletin recently to look
forward and back at the climate for Canadian Jews. His main message:
"I think you can say with some degree of confidence that the
Jewish community got it right, in terms of how to [if] not eliminate
anti-Semitism, at least erode it."
Since the Second World War, Weintraub said, Canadian Jewish Congress
has been among a number of groups at the forefront of advocating
for a comprehensive infrastructure of human rights. And while Congress
has fought against specific restrictive covenants and discriminatory
practices against Jews in particular, the organization also has
advocated for more general measures that prevent discrimination
against any group.
"We did it in a way that drew upon the roots of our Jewish
tradition," said Weintraub. "What we said was this: That
there's no place in a country like Canada for any kind of discrimination,
whether it be against Jew, or against Native Indian or Indo-Canadian
or Chinese. Therefore, our challenges were not specifically with
respect to discriminatory provisions against Jews, but we looked
at the overall structural system of Canada and said what kinds of
institutions do we need that can fundamentally shift our country."
Working with governments, advocacy organizations, civil institutions
and other ethnic organizations, Canadian Jewish Congress has played
an important role in bringing to life a whole range of institutions
that are now intrinsic to Canadian multiculturalism, including the
fundamental recognition that Canada is more than just English and
French.
"What we ended up with, if one takes a look at the last 50
years, is a very comprehensive system of judicial, legal, administrative
and educative structures, which have essentially been effective
in combating discrimination against minorities," said Weintraub.
"We advocated for the system of human rights tribunals both
federally and provincially on the basis that not all prejudice and
discrimination ought to be dealt with by the criminal law. Only
the most extreme forms of prejudice, namely the fomenting of hate,
which can lead to violence, ought to be criminalized. But there
have to be other structures to communicate to Canadians at large
that vile prejudice and discrimination have no place."
Congress also unequivocally supported the entrenchment of hate-motivated
crime in legislation, based on the assumption that crimes motivated
by discrimination are crimes of a different quality.
"When someone from a minority gets attacked by reason of their
status, it's really an attack on the entire fabric of the country,"
he said.
Weintraub credited his immediate predecessor at Congress, Nisson
Goldman, with a three-year struggle to convince the provincial government
to replace the eliminated funding for the provincial Hate Crime
Team. Though funding has not yet been restored, Congress has received
a commitment from Premier Gordon Campbell that it will be forthcoming.
Weintraub said his top priority is fulfilling the core mandate of
Canadian Jewish Congress, which has always been and remains combating
anti-Semitism and providing for the safety and security of the Jewish
community. This would have been his top priority even five years
ago, before the latest spike in anti-Jewish crimes, though it takes
an added urgency now, he said. But while acknowledging that the
situation for Canadian Jews is as difficult as it has been in decades
– a recent report by Canadian chiefs of police determined that
one-quarter of all hate crimes reported in this country were directed
at Jews – Weintraub insists things are better here than in
the United States and far better than the grave situation in places
like France.
"I think it's fair to say when there are expressions of anti-Semitism,
which in the United States might be permitted because of freedom
of expression and because they don't have human rights tribunals,
because they don't have criminalized speech, those expressions here
in Canada are immediately dealt with," Weintraub said. As examples,
he cited the recent publication of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories
in a B.C. newspaper, the Miracle, and the anti-Semitic expressions
of former Saskatchewan First Nations leader David Ahenakew.
"The response [to the Miracle] from the community was
quick and overwhelming – the mainstream community, the Muslim
community, the human rights community – and we had a venue
for dealing with it. We handed that document over to the Hate Crime
Team to see if it violated the criminal law," he said. "[In
the Ahenakew case], immediately the Assembly [of First Nations]
leadership, and leadership throughout the aboriginal community,
was very swift in its condemnation.
"So when, every once in a while, you have one of these eruptions,
we have created a climate in Canada wherein the leadership of the
various communities where the anti-Semitism might erupt from, recognized
that this is harmful not only to Canadian society, but harmful to
the Jewish community and harmful to their own community."
More than most countries in the world, Weintraub said, Canada has
a formally structured and highly sensitized response to discriminatory
behaviors and attitudes, not only through legal recourse, but in
educating people in the first place to challenge prejudice in themselves
and society.
"We've got structures in place that can deal with [acts of
discrimination] more swiftly and effectively," he said. "That
is the work that Canadian Jewish Congress is in the middle of and
sometimes, I think, in the forefront of."
Though the re-emergence of anti-Semitism in Canada has been jarring,
Weintraub added, "The eruption in the last three years was
not a huge surprise to those who are [working] in this area."
Members of CJC got a hint of what was coming down the pike three
years ago at the United Nations conference on racism in Durban,
South Africa.
"We saw there how the conference was turned against Israel
in a way that was very frightening," he said. "We saw
there what was indeed a strategy to turn Israel into the next South
Africa, the apartheid state. We saw it systematically being talked
about and how over the next number of years that campaign needed
to spread to the campuses and into the media and other institutions
and, sure enough, we saw it happen."
Weintraub said one thing the Jewish community in Canada and elsewhere
needs to investigate more and make the public aware of is the relationship
between extreme anti-Zionist activities and the extreme elements
of the Middle East.
"The campaign of anti-Zionism and of equating Zionism as racism
has emanated from some of the most reactionary and despotic regimes
in the Middle East," he said. "I'm not here to say that
we can trace right now the funding of this campaign, except to say
that we know as a fact that this attempt to delegitimize the state
of Israel has for decades and decades come out of countries like
Syria and Saudi Arabia and Egypt."
Weintraub added that the anti-Israel activists of the Middle East
may have made common cause with some of the darkest figures from
history.
"We do know that in the 1950s and the 1960s, a country like
Syria, for example, gave refuge to Nazi leadership fleeing Germany.
I think it behooves our community to spend more time in exposing
what are the links between Nazi and fascist ideology and the most
extreme anti-Zionist ideology that is coming out of the Arab countries.
If we bring that more into the centre, I do believe that people
will recognize that this extreme anti-Zionism is supported by people
that, on every other front, they would completely repudiate."
As Canadian Jews struggle against anti-Semitism, the communal bodies
of the community have undergone a major structural change. The Canadian
Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy was created in the past year
as an umbrella group to oversee the various advocacy agencies in
Canada. Weintraub welcomes the new body, especially since it has
explicitly promised greater support for CJC's work.
"The function of Canadian Jewish Congress has been maintained
and in fact we have been told that we need to have more funding
because what we're doing is good work and the collective Jewish
community decision-makers in this regard want us to carry on and
do more," he said.
Over his three-year term, Weintraub said, he will continue to improve
communication between the Jewish community and other ethnocultural
groups, especially Muslim communities, First Nations and Christians.
While advocating for Jewish Canadians is the core objective of Congress,
Weintraub noted it has always been in the interest of Jewish communities
to live in a society that is accepting of all peoples.
"We've always felt that what we want is the most peaceful,
tolerant society because it's the right thing and because it also
ultimately assists Jews," he said. "So we have this confluence
of what is good for the Jewish community is good for the overall
community."
Internally, he added, the Jewish community must continue to look
outward but also undertake an introspective look.
"The question which must engage Jewish leadership of every
organization is the future: What kind of Canada are we going to
have 20 years from now?" he said. Changing demographics will
have an impact on Canadian Jews.
"We have a declining Jewish community. We know the ravages
of intermarriage and assimilation," Weintraub said. "Where
is our Jewish community going to be 20 years from now?"
Pat Johnson is a Vancouver journalist and commentator.
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