CIJA celebrates a first

CYNTHIA RAMSAY

A capacity crowd – more than 300 people – chose to spend May 5, the hottest and sunniest day of the year so far, inside the Segal Graduate School of Business at the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs’ inaugural Western Regional Policy Conference.

With registration starting at 7:45 a.m. and breakfast at 8 a.m., the information-packed Sunday opened at 9 a.m. with a plenary featuring keynote speaker Dr. Gil Troy, author most recently of Moynihan’s Moment: America’s Fight Against Zionism as Racism. Welcomed by conference co-chairs Geoffrey Druker and Candace Kwinter and David Koschitzky, chair of CIJA’s board of directors, the audience was rallied by Troy to combat what he said Natan Sharansky termed the three Ds: the demonization, double standard and disproportionate criticism of Israel. “I add two Es,” said Troy, “Essentialism. What is bigotry? Bigotry says, ‘I’m not going to criticize Israeli policy, but I’m going to criticize Israel itself. I’m not going to criticize what a person does, but I’m going to criticize their essence.’ That essentialism is at the heart of much anti-Zionist antisemitism. And the second E ... is exterminationism, that underlying it is a lethality, a desire to wipe Israel off the map.”

Troy concluded with what could be learned from former Democratic U.S. senator and ambassador to the United Nations Daniel Patrick Moynihan – to let ourselves be angry, to be strategic and to be nudniks in the policy realm – but also to celebrate Israel and the “four Ms, if you will, of Zionism: masoret, tradition, being rooted somewhere; moledet, homeland, having a place that you can take your tradition and express it; mussar, an ethic; and, finally, the most important one I’m feeling today, the fourth M, mishpachah, family. And if we have those ... we will win.”

Following Troy’s address, Temple Sholom Rabbi Philip Bregman paid tribute to Pastor Gary Gaudin of South Arm United Church in Richmond, who has spoken out strongly against the United Church of Canada’s passing of anti-Israel resolutions at its general council meeting last August. Gaudin said, “This was an embarrassing moment for the denomination, and what it demonstrated was that the United Church general council meetings do have a significant problem with Israel. It is a problem based upon, I think, a terrible lack of understanding about what a Jewish state is, how important the connection between democratic states is across international boundaries, and what our obligations are as a Christian denomination looking at our history with the Jewish people. We have failed in so many ways as a general council to live that series of obligations out fully, so I also stand here on behalf of all those other United Church folks – the general council may have an issue but the vast majority of United Church people don’t – and I just want to say I’m sorry, that [the resolutions] should not have happened.”

The opening plenary concluded with a panel on the line between antisemitism and anti-Zionism. Moderated by Rabbi Dr. Robert Daum of Iona Pacific Inter-religious Centre, Vancouver School of Theology, the discussion featured Tamara Pearl of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, Dr. Catherine Chatterley of the Canadian Institute for the Study of Antisemitism and CIJA’s Shimon Fogel.

Pearl spoke briefly about her brother’s murder by terrorists in Pakistan in 2002: “Anti-Americanism, antisemitism, anti-Zionism and anti-journalism [were] all involved in Danny’s murder,” she said. She does not ever want to see the entire video of her brother’s murder, she noted, but she has seen part of it and, referring to his last words, in which he affirmed his and his family’s Jewishness, she said that the dignity he showed in that situation, and the dignity with which he led his life, “has inspired us [her and her family] to go on, and to be able to make something out of his death that is also life-affirming.” She mentioned the book her parents, Dr. Judea and Ruth Pearl, published in 2005, I Am Jewish: Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl, and described the foundation’s fellowships for Pakistani and other Muslim journalists.

Chatterley offered an overview of the history of antisemitism and anti-Zionism and how the former was introduced into the Arab world by Adolf Hitler. She spoke of the impossibility of generalizing because, while much anti-Zionism may be antisemitic, not all of it is. She stressed the need for courses at the university level – separate from courses on the Holocaust – on antisemitism and how this more than 2,000-year-old hatred has manifested and changed over time. “But the one thing that is consistent ... is the caricature of ‘the Jew’ ... it has nothing to do with real, existing Jewish people. This caricature is consistent and, without that caricature, I don’t see antisemitism. The caricature has to be there, and it’s there in a lot of the anti-Zionism, but it’s not in all forms, so the one positive potential solution ... is education.” She warned that Zionism also needs to be taught because students are being exposed to Zionism as racism: “that needs to be confronted on campus in an intellectual way,” she said, along with community investments in teaching non-Jews about “what the history of this political ideology is and how it functions in Israel today.”

For Fogel, antisemitism “comes down to things that are so much more basic and, admittedly, they may not meet all of the academic criteria, but, in real life, what resonates for me much more is what we’re confronted with.... For me, the test is not whether somebody rejects Zionist philosophy because they come from a post-colonial, anti-Western orientation on campus or because they’re a leader of the jihadist group somewhere in the Middle East or North Africa, or from a fellow who aligns himself with the Chassidic Neturei Karta, who reject Zionism in the sense that it’s a travesty against God.... Zionism in its basic form is nothing other than the nationalist aspiration of the Jewish people to be repatriated to their homeland ... treating that differently than any other nationalism is, by definition, antisemitic.” He concluded, “Fundamentally, anti-Zionism is an expression of antisemitism.... Here in Canada, we not only have to push back against that, we have to generalize it, and we have to recognize that the toxic impact of antisemitism in a generic form impacts on so many other groups. So, as we push back with one hand, we also have to reach out with another hand to other groups in Canada who are suffering, perhaps not as dramatic forms of racism, but of bigotry nonetheless; reach out, bring them close, understand and feel their challenges and, together, build the kind of coalition that will overcome, collectively, the notion of racism and its entrenchment here in Canada.”

For the remainder of the morning, conference participants went to a breakout session of their choice. Scheduled were sessions on the Middle East, with Paul Michaels of CIJA; advocacy, with Fogel; social policy, with the University of British Columbia’s Dr. Paul Kershaw, creator of Generation Squeeze; and the Arab-Israel peace process, with CIJA’s Steve McDonald and Prof. Ilan Danjoux, visiting professor at the University of Calgary.

CIJA Pacific co-chair Stephen Schachter began the plenary after lunch, introducing Dr. Chief Robert Joseph of the Indian Residential School Survivors Society, who is a special advisor to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which will be in Vancouver Sept. 18-21. Joseph told those assembled, “I think that all of you have the experience and the history that will bring great momentum to our cause here in Canada, as aboriginal people, and it’s really not about gaining ground, gaining rights and title, as far as I am concerned, it’s gaining peace, and dignity, and the notion that I as a human being have worth and value and purpose, and I could think of no other people that have stood for those virtues for so long that I really wanted to be here to talk about that.” He spoke of some of the shared beliefs between First Nations and Jews, such as the connection to the land, and of a new kind of dialogue that he believes is being created, “a new kind of commitment that says we’re going to listen no matter what the other person is saying, and we, in turn, will tell our stories. When we begin to share these stories ourselves, we’re going to begin to weave the thread of humanity among us, that can’t be that violent or hurtful or painful or dark. When we all recognize our deep, deep human value, that the Creator gave us these things, and we have a right to be who we are, to be different, to speak out on issues, to have our traditions, and I see a Canada that’s moving that way and I see a globe that’s going to move eventually that way.” In this vein, he highlighted one of his current projects – the group Reconciliation Canada, which is, among other things, intended “to create sacred space in which we can have these dialogues, like none before.”

Jewish Federation of Edmonton’s Russ Joseph introduced the panel on the challenges and opportunities facing Western Canadian Jewish communities, which was moderated by Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver’s Mark Gurvis, with Kershaw, Dr. Tsur Sommerville of UBC’s Centre for Economics and Real Estate and Lorraine Copas of the Social Planning and Research Council of British Columbia as speakers. They focused mainly on housing and other cost pressures facing community members. Noted Sommerville, “One of the things that’s a challenge for the Jewish community, and I think it’s a challenge for any minority community that wants to be concentrated in a geographic space.... When we think about different segments of the community, it is easier, for good reason, to mobilize resources and attention when we’re addressing the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable of our community, but the people that are going to be challenged with being part of the Jewish community because of the cost of locating near the Jewish community are going to be people who are either moderate income earners or young people who are early in the chain of their income path. And, if you’re asking someone to, say, you know what, you can live near the Jewish community in a one-bedroom condo but you can’t have kids and, if you do have kids, well, you can’t send them to Jewish schools because you don’t have $20,000 to pay for your two kids to go to Jewish schools, that is a real challenge, and that’s not a challenge that governments are going to address because that’s not the pressing issue from a government perspective, which is really people in poverty. But, for us as a community, figuring out how do we address the issue of people who are in between is really going to be something we have to think about, and it may require us to ask where do we want to be and how we want to be as a community.”

The plenary concluded with a moving, and often humorous, talk given by Eloge Butera, assistant to Member of Parliament Irwin Cotler. Introduced by Nina Krieger of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, Butera not only shared some of how he survived the Rwandan genocide, the horrors he witnessed and the losses he experienced, but also the story of his connection to the Jewish community and, in particular, mentors such as Holocaust survivor Robbie Waisman, with whom Butera has spoken to thousands of students over the years, most recently at the VHEC’s (high school) Symposium on the Holocaust last year. Butera concluded his remarks by saying about Waisman, and others who dedicate their lives to Holocaust education, that they “reminded me that the weight of history that I carry is not only a source of anger and pain, it’s also a source of great resilience, a source of great inspiration, that I owed it to all our loved ones to share this with the world and remind the world that we are not lost, that we didn’t vanish or disappear, that we still have something very powerful to offer, a world in which we do much better to them, in which we deal with ‘the other’ in a way that is way better than how they dealt with us. And those lessons live with me and propel me forward to this very day.” He said that working with the community has allowed him to “own and identify one of our greatest strengths – our capacity for compassion, our capacity to remember that once we were slaves in Egypt, but today, even in the halls of the most powerful Canadian [institutions] we remember to speak out for those most marginalized in this society, that our pursuit of justice is not a matter of slogans but it’s a way of life that informs every single living day for all of us. And that is the commitment that I have made, that I am imploring you to continue.”

In the afternoon, there were two sets of breakout sessions. Scheduled for the first set were Michaels on Iran; social policy with moderator Shelley Rivkin of JFGV and speakers Charlotte Katzen of the Jewish Family Service Agency, Susana Cogan of Tikva Housing Society and Sommerville; 21st Century Antisemitism with Daum moderating speakers Chatterley and Vancouver School of Theology’s Dr. Harry Maier; and McDonald on Israel. The second set was Danjoux on The Arab-Israel Conflict Through Cartoons; Relationships Matter – Friends and Future Friends with CIJA’s Sarina Rehal, Farid Rohani of the Laurier Institute board and Karen Joseph of Reconciliation Canada; Israel’s impact on the world, moderated by Dan Hadad, founder of Size Doesn’t Matter, and speakers Eyal Levy from the Washington State-Israel Chamber of Commerce board and Ted Zittell, an expert in retail branding systems, marketing communications and design; the Middle East with Michaels; and immigration policy in Canada with attorney Richard Kurland.

After dinner, the night’s plenary, which ran to almost 9:30 p.m., started with Fogel, who spoke briefly before welcoming the Hon. John Baird, Canadian minister of foreign affairs to the stage. After Baird’s speech, CIJA Pacific co-chair Paul Goldman introduced retired major general Edward Fitch, who honored Israel Defence Forces retired captain Arale Wattenstein, who was there as a representative of Hope for Heroism, a nonprofit created and run by Israeli army officers, in which injured soldiers help other injured soldiers; a video about the organization was screened prior to his talk. Israel’s Ambassador to Canada

Miriam Ziv then addressed the audience before Ambassador Dennis Ross capped off the day with an insightful analysis of the current situation in Iran and Syria and, in the question and answer period, a possible way in which to recharge the peace process between the Israelis and Palestinians.

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