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June 28, 2013
Antisemites: loons, losers
Post editor Jonathan Kay addresses Federation AGM.
PAT JOHNSON
Canadian Jews have seen a revolutionary shift in discrimination trends, according to Jonathan Kay, to the extent that he declares Canada “the least antisemitic country in the world.”
Kay, an author and editorial page editor and columnist for the National Post, spoke June 20 at the annual general meeting of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver. While he cited Canada as an exemplar in defeating antisemitism, he also sees the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as a turning point in broader North American attitudes toward Jews. Events of 9/11 and thereafter have had a profound effect on the Jewish community’s relations with the broader society, Kay posited. Israel had been under attack by militant Islam for decades but it was only on 9/11 that Israel was joined for the first time by Western society, which came to identify militant Islam as the worst enemy of the United States and the larger West. Jews, who Kay described as being viewed in earlier generations as “counterfeit Americans,” were suddenly cast among the leading thinkers of the post-9/11 world and allies in the war on Islamist terror.
“Suddenly, the Jews were seen as hyper-patriots in the war against militant Islam,” he said.
This newfound attitude among many Americans helped create an atmosphere where protecting Israel from nuclear holocaust is considered a sacred obligation among many American foreign policy voices. At a Tea Party convention, Kay witnessed a Protestant minister bless the United States and Israel.
As the author of the book Among the Truthers, about conspiracy theories, Kay had the opportunity to meet all range of people. What drives his conclusion about the state of North American antisemitism is less its quantity than the quality of its perpetrators. The annual report of antisemitic incidents, from a Toronto organization Kay did not mention by name, is routinely seen as proof of resurgent antisemitism. But, Kay said, the difference is a qualitative one. “The antisemites out there tend to be marginalized loons,” Kay said. “They are the losers of society.”
Sixty or 70 years ago, he said, antisemites were controlling society, including law firms and sports clubs like the tennis club to which Kay now belongs. He has spoken to some of the first Jews admitted into the club in the 1960s and he read aloud a letter sent to a Montreal-area ski association in the 1940s from the father of a woman he knows at his tennis club. Given that most ski hills were privately owned, anti-Jewish restrictions made it very difficult for Jews to enjoy winter sports. The letter was a reasoned, polite appeal for acceptance and Kay views this sort of small act as one of a million that contributed to the defeat of antisemitism in Canada.
Even his own job, as an editor at a newspaper, would have been nearly inconceivable to Jews of Kay’s grandfather’s generation, he said, “unless it was a small Trotskyist newspaper.”
Incredibly, during a trip to the hospital for a minor emergency, Kay found himself in conversation with one of the most notorious white supremacists and Holocaust deniers in Canada, who was being treated for a broken arm. As the conversation progressed and Kay got a measure of the man, he found himself oddly uplifted. Kay was raised to speak out against the sort of things that this man promoted, but the man was so pitiable, Kay was unmoved. “This guy was so pathetic I didn’t have it in me,” he said.
“Antisemitism is now an incredibly marginalized creed,” he reiterated, promoted by people who are “obscure, discredited, marginalized.”
While researching his book, Kay was able to get a firsthand look at many of the most marginalized ideas in North America today. Even in these circles, he said, antisemitism has become taboo. At a convention of 9/11 conspiracy theorists, a speaker got up to repeat one of the popular antisemitic canards (these range from the idea that all Jews who worked at the World Trade Centre stayed home on 9/11 to the theory that the entire tragedy was an “inside job” perpetrated by “Rothschild Zionists”). Another person rose from the audience to declare this particular conspiracy theorist an embarrassment to the 9/11 “truth” movement.
Even among discredited fringe segments, Kay said, antisemitism is a discredited product in the marketplace of ideas. Consider the economic catastrophe that began in 2008, an economic downturn that in earlier decades might have spawned antisemitic scapegoating. There was effectively none, Kay said. Even the crimes of Bernie Madoff, whose financial fraud could have made him an ideal caricature in a Protocols-like narrative, Kay said, elicited almost no religious backlash.
Returning to the Canadian context, Kay cited as an example of this country’s advanced approach the fact that he used to hear about antisemitic incidents from reading Canadian Jewish News or receiving a message from Canadian Jewish Congress. Now, he said, the first he ever hears of antisemitic incidents in Canada is when he receives a message from Jason Kenney, the federal minister of citizenship, immigration and multiculturalism, condemning it.
The good news in Canada is, sadly, not a global phenomenon, Kay acknowledged. Antisemitism is flourishing in the Muslim world, with prominent figures promoting stories of Jewish control and conspiracy. This affects Jews worldwide, even in an accepting place like Canada, in a psychological way, he said.
Kay lives near Toronto’s flourishing Greek community and reflected on the connections of Toronto’s immigrant communities to their countries of origin. While older Greek men in the cafés on Danforth Street, like Italian, Portuguese and other expats across town, express great worry about what’s going on at home, none of them live in fear that their homeland will cease to exist, a fear that remains existential among Jews.
“They at least all know that Greece and Italy and Portugal will be there in 20, 30, 40 years,” Kay said. “They don’t go to bed at night thinking that their homeland could be destroyed by historical events.”
An audience member contended that antisemitism is alive and well on the left, among people who “loved Jews as victims, but not as victors.”
Kay disagreed. He views this sort of anti-Zionism not as displaced antisemitism but “displaced Marxism.” Although the model of Marxist government may have fallen with the Berlin wall, an entire generation of people was raised to see the world in terms of the haves versus the have-nots, exploited versus exploiter, colonialist versus colonized, winners versus losers, Kay argued. When Zionist activists try to show all of Israel’s successes, how it has built a flourishing society out of the desert, Kay believes they are barking up the wrong tree. These successes are exactly the sorts of things that those who delegitimize Israel don’t want to hear. In Kay’s view, Canadian groups like Queers Against Israeli Apartheid are made up of those who have won the battle for gay rights but have revolutionary energies that demand dissipation, so they take up a cause like Israel and Palestine.
Another audience member suggested that universities in Canada are rife with antisemitism in the guise of anti-Zionism. Kay again disagreed. He cited the 2002 riots outside Montreal’s Concordia University during a visit by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
“I was there,” he said. “It was the only riot I’ve ever been to.”
For the most part, he said, the rioters were foreign students. Moreover, there has been no repetition of such an incident since then. Part of this is police realizing the necessity for proper security and university administrators taking care to ensure that dialogue on campus does not take a dangerous turn.
“University administrators deserve more credit than we give them,” Kay said, adding that isolated groups on campus may espouse extreme ideas, but university officials have maintained overwhelmingly positive relations with the Jewish community.
Why is Canada a world leader in beating back antisemitism? Kay puts it down to multiculturalism.
“Multiculturalism gets a bad name,” he said. But if you look at everything Jews have achieved in Canada, this community is a model for how marginalized communities can become welcomed, integrated members of a multicultural society.
The AGM took place just days after Federation chief executive officer Mark Gurvis announced he was leaving Vancouver to take up a position as executive vice-president of Jewish Federations of North America. A formal thank you celebration for Gurvis and his family will take place before he leaves the city in September but, in paying tribute to the 11-year leader of the local Federation, Michael Fugman said that Gurvis’ promotion to one of the leading positions in the organized North American Jewish community was a symbol that this Federation, in a comparatively small community on the edge of the continent, is a model “recognized around the world.” During Gurvis’ term, Fugman said, Federation has created “strong, dynamic leaders” and “positive, collaborative relationships with our partner agencies.” Fugman, who has traveled with Gurvis around North America and to Ethiopia and Israel, said “when Mark speaks, people listen.”
Federation is expected to hire an interim chief executive officer while engaging in a search for a permanent replacement.
“It’s not going to be a short one and we’re going to make it right,” Fugman said. Bill Levine, chair of the University of British Columbia’s board of governors, will chair the selection committee.
In a video report to the AGM, outgoing president Mitch Gropper cited three areas of particular achievement for the organization. Advocacy in the community has been advanced by the opening of the Pacific regional office of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, he said. A new task force on Jewish education is guiding community strategies and resources for the long-range enrichment of Jewish education in Greater Vancouver. As well, services to seniors and youth at risk have been emphasized, along with a new young adult steering committee and special attention being given to the increasingly geographically dispersed community and to interfaith families.
Mark James, winding up three consecutive years as chair of the Federation annual campaign, noted that this year’s tally came up slightly below the $8 million goal, with a total of $7,648,000. But, given the continued economic conditions and the number of major capital campaigns taking place in the community, James said, this was an achievement.
Harvey Dales will take up the chairmanship of the campaign in 2013. Diane Switzer is the new chair of the Federation board.
Pat Johnson is a Vancouver writer and principal in PRsuasiveMedia.com.
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