antisemitism – Page 3

Fighting antisemitism

In Toronto, Yoseph Haddad, left, with Daniel Koren, founder and executive director of Allied Voices for Israel, which sponsored Haddad’s Canadian tour. (photo by Dave Gordon)

In recent years, Arab-Israeli activist Yoseph Haddad has become known for his efforts to fight antisemitism and present Israel’s perspective to international audiences, and he has taken up this mantle with much greater emphasis since Oct. 7, 2023. This month, Haddad’s Canadian tour, organized by Allied Voices for Israel, took him to Montreal, Calgary, Toronto and Vancouver.

At Toronto’s Shaarei Shomayim Synagogue, Haddad, who leads the Israeli nonprofit Together Vouch For Each Other, which works to bridge the gaps between Arabs and Jews in Israel, covered a few topics. He spoke about how his army service changed his life, how he protested anti-Israel agitators with pro-Israel Concordia students, and what he believes is Canada’s complacency towards antisemitism.

Though he was not obligated to serve in the Israel Defence Forces, Haddad voluntarily enlisted in the army in November 2003, more emboldened to do so after the terrorist bombing of Maxim restaurant in Haifa that left 21 dead and 60 injured. According to Haddad, Maxim was an establishment where the co-owners, employees and patrons were Arabs and Jews. It was an emblem of coexistence in Israel.

Haddad said it was the name of Israel’s army, the Israel Defence Forces, that helped him further understand that the force was defending all people in the country, not just Jews. During his service, he was a commander over Jewish soldiers, and he offered this as one of many examples that punctures the lie that Israel practises apartheid.

He related a story about when he was accused at a public speech of being an “idiot,” of being used by the Jews, and that he would be eventually “thrown to the garbage.” He had an easy rejoinder, he said.

While fighting in the 2006 Lebanon War, he suffered a life-threatening injury four days before the ceasefire, when a Hezbollah antitank missile exploded nearby and severed his leg. At risk to their own lives, his battalion carried him to safety. After treatment and extensive rehabilitation, he can even play soccer. He told the audience, if his unit wanted to throw him away, that would have been the time to do it.

Haddad warned of refugees and immigrants from the Middle East, some of whom, he said, bring extremism to Canada.

“Instead of adopting Western values, instead of adopting Canada’s laws, they’re actually trying to change it to Sharia,” he said. “And that’s the biggest problem.”

Canadian authorities, he said, are “ostriches” who have their heads in the sand.

“When it comes to dealing with extremism and terrorism and terror supporters, zero tolerance [should be the response], and that’s what Canada should do,” said Haddad.

It’s also a lesson for Israel, he added. In June 2023, he said, Hezbollah “infiltrated” Israel and set up in Israeli territory, a situation that Israel dealt with diplomatically. But this gave the terror group the sense that Israel didn’t care much for the land, didn’t care that an enemy had squatted on it, and that Israelis were “scared,” Haddad said. It contributed to Hezbollah’s perception on Oct. 8, 2023, when firing rockets, that “they thought that we are weak, because we presented ourselves as weak.” He said that, if he had been in charge, he would have flown F16s over the tents and bombed them.

The United Nations and the International Criminal Court are “really obvious for bias,” in ignoring the crimes of North Korea, Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, Syria “and other countries who have zero human rights,” said Haddad. The UN “is adopting the narrative of a terrorist organization” when citing casualty numbers from the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health, he added.

Haddad encouraged Israel advocates to speak out on social media: “If you see content which is anti-Israeli, report it. Leave a comment. Leave an Israeli flag. And if you see a pro-Israel comment, support it, share it, show it to other friends, take part in that, because we’re out there.”

Haddad is active on multiple platforms, including YouTube, and he posts content in Hebrew, English and Arabic, with nearly two million followers.

Haddad said he remains optimistic. What uplifted him especially was having seen IDF soldiers in Gaza last summer who included “all the identities of the Israeli society.” They were, he said, united in two missions: find and free the hostages, and eliminate the terrorists. “And the only way that we can be supported,” he said, “is by being united, left and right, Jews and Arabs, secular and religious. And, I promise you, if society is united, there isn’t one single terrorist organization that can beat us.”

At the Toronto talk, journalist and activist Raheel Raza, a Pakistani-Canadian, was honoured for her decades-long allyship to the Jewish community.

At the Vancouver event, which took place at Temple Sholom, speakers included Daniel Koren, founder and executive director of Allied Voices for Israel, and students Zara Nybo and Ben Morrison. Jaime Stein, whose uncle, Dr. Steve Stein, was title sponsor for the cross-Canada tour, also addressed the audience. Grand Chief Lynda Prince, AVI Allyship Award recipient, spoke of Jewish indigeneity and connections between Indigenous Canadians and Israel. David Bogdonov spoke on behalf of the Ronald S. Roadburg Foundation.

Nybo, a University of British Columbia student, is the president of the Israel Club on her campus, though she herself is not Jewish.

“Israel is fighting a seven-front war. We, as students, are fighting on the eighth front of that war – on college and university campuses,” she said. “I am going to war with my peers, my professors, the administration and even the UBC president. I don my hostage pin and head out the door every day into an unknown battlefield of anti-Israel rhetoric, terrorist supporters, and antisemitism.”

Nybo said students are “being brainwashed and fed purposeful disinformation about Israel and the history of the Middle East every single day” while a “prominent” history professor for Middle Eastern studies at UBC wears a keffiyeh on campus, joins pro-Palestine rallies “and encourages his students to do the same for extra credit.”

She said, “I am standing here sounding the alarm about the bias ingrained in the university academic system.”

This “overwhelming systemic issue,” she said, can be confronted with education and by empowering students, as she was. Nybo had a campus media fellowship with AVI and HonestReporting Canada. This helped her hone her writing and editing skills, and her pro-Israel articles have been published in the National Post, Jewish Independent and Algemeiner. She was subsequently accused by a professor as being “employed by Zionist entities,” she said.

But challenges such as these can be faced when students are brought together, she said, “under the banner of allyship, building bridges and empowering students to speak out, all while providing community reinforcement.”

Dave Gordon is a Toronto-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in more than 100 publications around the world. His website is davegordonwrites.com.

We are in crisis, says Lyons

The federal government’s designated point person on antisemitism raised alarm bells for Canadians following attacks on Jews last month in Amsterdam.

Deborah Lyons, Canada’s special envoy on preserving Holocaust remembrance and combatting antisemitism, spoke to the Vancouver Jewish community Nov. 12, in a special online conversation with Ezra Shanken, chief executive officer of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver.

Lana Marks Pulver, chair of the Jewish Federation, explained that the briefing was organized after the attacks on Israeli football fans in Amsterdam Nov. 7.

The antisemitism problem is both local and global, said Lyons, but Canada has a particular problem.

“We were one of the first countries to demonstrate on the streets,” she said. “On our university campuses, unfortunately, certainly online and in some of our other institutions, [there has been] a level of antisemitism that we had never, ever expected to see in Canada.”

People were phoning her from abroad asking what’s happening to Canada. This is a country with a strong democracy and rule of law, she said, and yet 70% of all religiously motivated hate crimes target the Jewish community, which makes up 1% of the population.

photo - Deborah Lyons, Canada’s special envoy on preserving Holocaust remembrance and combatting antisemitism — Deborah Lyons, Canada’s special envoy on preserving Holocaust remembrance and combatting antisemitism (photo from international.gc.ca)

“We need leaders stepping up and a full court press to address the challenges in front of us,” she said. “This is not just about our Jewish community. This is about what kind of country we want as Canadians. I consider this a crisis that we are in that really needs a crisis response.”

Oct. 7, 2023, “shook the world,” Lyons said. “Frankly, what happened in Amsterdam, on another level, has also shaken us. I think we were hoping that, in this past year, since October 2023, in our own countries, we were putting in place some remedies, some actions to address the antisemitism that we were seeing rising in our country and in so many other, particularly Western, countries. But I think what happened in Amsterdam has been another shockwave that I think causes all of us to say we need to double down.”

Canadians may be complacent, Lyons suggested, because we believe in our historical, if possibly mythological, tolerance.

“We’ve got an incredible country, solid governments and good rule of law,” she said. “I have lived in countries that can’t even come close to that description. And we are on the island of North America. We’ve had a pretty good ride. I think that maybe we weren’t paying enough attention to some of the ills within our society.”

When a society or its economy is under stress, antisemitism inevitably rises, said Lyons.

“We already had, before October 2023, an increase in antisemitism in Canada,” she said. “Where we are now, after October 2023, is a level of antisemitism that is completely unprecedented in our country. What do we do with that? Well, clearly, we fight it. But we also have to take this as an opportunity and say, alright, some of that was lying beneath the surface. It’s now very much exposed. We have the opportunity. We need to turn this into a catharsis. We need to take this moment when all of this is exposed, when no one can deny that antisemitism exists, when no one can deny that it requires intensive effort to combat it and that it requires a systemic approach.”

She congratulated British Columbia for committing to mandatory Holocaust education, but that is a step in the right direction, not an end, she said.

“We need to do work on not just Holocaust remembrance but on antisemitism itself and making sure that teachers and school boards and faculty actually have the right perspective as they are trying to help the children understand what the Holocaust means, not just historically but in terms of today,” she said.

Those combatting antisemitism need to be doing more work with law enforcement, she said, noting that Vancouver Police and RCMP in British Columbia recently underwent training with Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre. Prosecutors also need to be empowered, she added.

“We need to do work on social media and we’ve got a campaign underway there,” said Lyons, noting that the federal government is working on an online harms bill, which could strengthen data collection, among other steps.

Noting positive signs, Lyons cited information that, “by far and away,” a majority of Canadians support the Jewish community and support Israel’s right to exist.

Exceptions emerge among younger Canadians, she said, “our 18-to-24-year-olds, kids who might not have adequate knowledge of the Holocaust, have a tendency to be disposed toward antisemitism.”

Lyons recently met with the president of the University of British Columbia and the chancellor of Simon Fraser University.

“I think university presidents and university administrations struggled after Oct. 7 in a way that many of us struggled,” she said. “It was almost a shock to see the reaction on a number of the campuses. I think we saw that with other leaders in other segments of society, that people almost needed time to get their bearings, to try to figure out what was the right response. We all want freedom of expression, we all want freedom of speech, we all want our young people to be … debating new ideas and pushing the envelope. But it has to be done in a respectful environment. It has to be done with a certain dignity and sense of acknowledgment of the other’s point of view.”

Among the shortcomings that emerged in the past year, according to Lyons, was an absence of recourse to deal with concerns from Jewish students.

“What we found was there was not the recourse in place, the systems in place, for the university administrations to actually follow up on the concerns of our students in what I would consider to be a substantive way,” she said. “I think there are better systems being put in place now to make sure that every student who has a concern or feels an unease can make their feelings known and can have that responded to substantively and with respect. I think also the presidents in many cases were challenged with their own codes of conduct and how they were to be implemented. I think that, over the last several months, particularly over the summer when they had a bit of a pause, there’s been this understanding that these codes of conduct really do need to be administered.”

Lyons is one of about 35 national envoys addressing antisemitism worldwide.

“We work together to share experiences in our countries and also to identify some remedies,” she said. “We’ve just recently published, this past summer, the global guidelines for fighting antisemitism.”

Lyons’ office and the broader federal government recently released the Canadian Handbook on the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism, which she said is a vital tool. It is based on an earlier European Union document and the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism. She urges Jewish people, but especially potential allies, to use it.

“Learn about antisemitism. Try to understand it. Try to understand what’s happening in our country,” she said.

A visit to the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre is a place to start for people who seek to be allies to Jews, she said. Then, she urged people to step outside their bubbles.

“Get to know your Jewish neighbours and stand up if you see something happening that you think isn’t right,” said Lyons.

Shanken noted that Lyons is not Jewish and asked how she ended up in this role.

“I grew up in rural, northern New Brunswick and community mattered,” said Lyons. “And people mattered. Your neighbours mattered. Looking after one another mattered.”

She also remembered as a child hearing about the Holocaust.

“I can remember how it marked me, how I could not believe that the humanity that I belonged to had created, planned and carried out such horrors over such a long period of time,” she said. “So, years later when, as a diplomat, I was leaving one post and getting ready to go to another and I got the call that I could go to Israel [as ambassador, 2016-2020], I jumped at the chance, because I thought, what an incredible opportunity to really engage in a country that I’ve always been fascinated by and with a people that I have huge admiration for. My time in Israel, I think, even deepened my experience as, I suppose, an ally.”

Human rights, democracy

Left to right: Haleema Sadia, Emily Schrader, Christine Douglass-Williams and Goldie Ghamari formed the panel of the Dec. 4 event in Toronto called The Head of the Snake, the Islamic Republic of Iran. (photo by Dave Gordon)

American-Israeli journalist Emily Schrader believes it took years for Canada to designate the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps a terror group, as it did in June, because of “moral cowardice.”

She said other Western countries have “refuse[d] to stand up for moral values and their countries and civilizations” and that is “all the reason to vote for those who will protect democracies and freedoms in Canada.”

Schrader spoke in Toronto at the Lodzer Centre on Dec. 4. She was part of a panel with cofounder of TAG TV Haleema Sadia, Iranian-born Ottawa-area Member of Provincial Parliament Goldie Ghamari, and journalist Christine Douglass-Williams, in a talk called The Head of the Snake, the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Schrader is an anchor on ILTV in Israel, co-hosts a panel show on Jewish News Syndicate, and is a contributor to ynetnews.com. In her opening remarks, she spoke of growing up “nominally pro-Israel” until her time at the University of Southern California as an undergrad student. “I didn’t realize how much people passionately hate Israel and Jews until I went to university,” she said.

Her first time “really seeing this visceral, irrational obsession with the Jewish state, which really is an obsession with Jews,” was during an Israel Apartheid Week, held by Students for Justice in Palestine. She said she was “irritated” by the “lies they spread across campus.” She joined Students for Israel in response to “this obsessive hatred towards Israel.”

“I always joke that Students for Justice in Palestine – the best thing they ever did was make me the biggest Zionist in the world,” said Schrader. “I would not be Israeli today if it was not for Students for Justice in Palestine. So, I guess I have them to thank for that.”

It was only after making aliyah that Schrader became aware of the historical connection between Iranians and Jews, going back to Cyrus the Great (circa 590 – 529 BCE), who allowed the Jewish exiles to return to the Holy Land. Iranians and Israelis are “really fighting the same evil,” she said.

photo - American-Israeli journalist Emily Schrader spoke in Toronto on Dec. 4 — American-Israeli journalist Emily Schrader spoke in Toronto on Dec. 4. *(photo by Dave Gordon)*

In 2024, Schrader founded the Israeli Iranian Women’s Alliance (IIWA) to promote women’s advancement and democratic values.

She said Iran’s human rights violations have gotten worse. “There are more restrictions and gender apartheid than we have ever seen before.” She added: “The world is not paying attention because of everything else that’s been going on.”

Ghamari said Canada has been “courting the Hamas votes,” meaning immigrants from countries with “fundamentally different values than Canada.”

Schrader added that “the left overestimates the values of these voters” and “they are against the West – whether it’s a right or left government – so courting them is a fundamental mistake.”

“One of the best ways to support Iranians is to support our king,” Ghamari said of exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi – son of the late, deposed shah – who visited Israel in April 2023. “He is the one true voice of the Iranian people. He has 90% support,” she said.

A way to battle the anti-Israel forces is to build connections with like-minded allies, said Douglass-Williams. “They want the outreach just as much as the Jewish community.”

Ghamari seconded that: “All your support gave me the motivation to speak out and speak up.”

Sadia’s advice to win hearts and minds was to “multiply the voices” on social media.

Douglass-Williams alerted the audience that Venezuela has now sold a million hectares of land to the Iranian regime. “The IDF says they are developing weapons there that could reach America and Israel,” she said.

The Dec. 4 talk was organized by the Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation, OneGlobalVoice, Allied Voices for Israel, Tafsik, and Canadians for Israel.

In an exclusive interview with the Jewish Independent, Schrader said the new Trump administration will be “excellent” on cracking down on Iran. She believes that moral-minded countries need to “de-recognize” the Islamic regime and ramp up sanctions. “It’s going to be a tall order,” she said of countries who have economic ties.

As for the wave of anti-Israel protests, they are primarily concerned with “support for terrorist organizations and an attempt to infiltrate and undermine Western values and the West,” Schrader told the JI.

If they cared about Palestinians, she said, they would protest the estimated 4,000 Palestinians killed in Syria by the Assad regime during that country’s civil war, she said. The Islamic regime’s “vast majority of the victims” are Arab and Muslim, but again, these protesters are silent.

Law enforcement, she believes, is to blame for allowing “multiple antisemitic assaults and attacks,” because “there’s zero accountability for these crimes that are being committed with a racist, hateful, pro-terror agenda.”

“You have to deter it, or it will only grow,” said Schrader. “And we see that happening. It’s a year after Oct. 7 and, I would argue, that it’s worse.”

Dave Gordon is a Toronto-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in more than 100 publications around the world. His website is davegordonwrites.com.

Resilience of Portugal’s Jews

King Manuel I of Portugal (1495-1521) had a problem. To marry Princess Isabella of Spain, he consented to the request of her parents – Ferdinand and Isabella – to rid Portugal of its Jews. But Manuel wanted to keep the Jewish citizens close by, for their economic benefits (money and skills). His solution? In 1496-7, he forced Jews to convert. (He also expelled the country’s Muslims.)

Manuel believed that New Christians – this population is likewise referred to as conversos, anusim or Crypto-Jews; marranos is a derogatory term that should not be used – would continue to boost the country’s economy. It should be noted that Jews in Portugal already paid a special poll tax and a special property tax.

Even after they were forcibly converted, Portuguese Jews could not live wherever they wanted. They lived in separate quarters referred to as judiarias, what we might call ghettos. They worked as artisans and rural labourers, weavers, tailors, cobblers, carpenters, leather tanners, jewelers, and every branch of the metal industry, ranging from ordinary blacksmiths to armourers and goldsmiths.

Several Jews nonetheless reached prominence in medieval Portugal. Among them was Abraham Zacuto, originally from Spain. Portuguese King John II invited Zacuto to be the royal astronomer. The king wanted Zacuto to chart a sea route to India. Unlike most of his fellow religionists, Zacuto managed to flee Portugal after King Manuel imposed conversion on the country’s Jews.

There was also Isaac Abarbanel, who was King Afonso V’s treasurer. Yehuda Even Maneer was the richest Jew in the kingdom and, for that reason, was appointed Portugal’s finance minister. Master Nacim, a Jewish eye doctor, was accorded certain privileges because of his professional skills.

Before King Manuel decreed the forced conversion, the Jewish community of Tomar built a synagogue, in spite of attacks orchestrated against them and other Jews in the country. Unfortunately, the building was used for its original purpose for only a short period, after which – for years and years after the forced conversion – it was used by the Church. The town itself became one of the sites of the Inquisition tribunal. Today, the synagogue has been renovated and is considered a national monument.

Crypto-Jews continued to covertly practise Judaism. In the town of Porto, for example, the Crypto-Jews secretly operated a synagogue, hiding it from the Inquisition.

photo - In 2013, a renovation project at a facility for Portuguese senior citizens turned up a Torah ark, carved directly into the stonework separating the building from its neighbour — In 2013, a renovation project at a facility for Portuguese senior citizens turned up a Torah ark, carved directly into the stonework separating the building from its neighbour. *(photo by Deborah Rubin Fields)*

In 2013, a renovation project at a facility for Portuguese senior citizens turned up an amazing find. Hidden behind the eastern wall of the dining room was a Torah ark, or aron kodesh, carved directly into the stonework separating the building from its neighbour. There were two compartments, a square space topped by a slightly larger arched tablet-shaped opening, with space for approximately six small Torah scrolls. Besides this relatively recent discovery, we have the 16th-century testimony of Immanuel Aboab, a native of Porto. (The late Yom Tov Assis, who was a professor at Hebrew University, had likewise been trying to locate where such an aron kodesh was located in the area.)

It was common among Crypto-Jews to light one Shabbat candle in a secret cabinet. There was also an emergency tool for snuffing out Shabbat lights if it was suspected that a Christian neighbour was spying. To make Shabbat different from other days, these secret Jews ate no meat. Purim was marked by three days of fasting beforehand. Passover was celebrated two days late, so as to throw Christians off the track. Other secret Jews took the risk of undergoing circumcision.

Within limits, these Crypto-Jews read psalms and recited the Shema, didn’t work on Shabbat, didn’t eat pork and fasted on Yom Kippur. Manuel (Abraham) de Morales passed out manuscripts of what he thought were important points to know about Judaism. But most of the Jewish customs were orally transmitted from mother to children.

Not surprisingly, the period before the forced conversion was not totally free of tension between Jews and Christians: Franciscan and Dominican clergy walked through judiarias, ready to convert Jews. Moreover, Portugal’s new merchant class was apprehensive about the influence of the Jewish citizens and their capital. Under the reign of João I (1385-1443), new laws obliged Jews to wear an identifying sign on their clothes and imposed curfews on the judiarias. There were scattered outbreaks of violence, like the attack on the Lisbon judiaria in 1445, in which many died.

photo - Jew Street in Lisbon, Portugal — Jew Street in Lisbon, Portugal. *(photo by Deborah Rubin Fields)*

After the forced conversion, New Christians would be charged with being infidels, not heretics. These New Christians generally adopted Christian given names and Old Christian surnames. They probably did this to deflect attention. But harder times still followed for Portuguese Jews, with the massacre of 2,000 conversos in Lisbon in 1506 and the Portuguese Inquisition, which began in 1536. Inquisitors would come to a town and tell the gentile population that they were looking for secret Jews. They would present a list of suspicious behaviour to look for.

In medieval Portugal, turning in New Christians became a profitable venture. Arrested conversos had their assets seized by members of the Inquisition. Occasionally, Church officials would accept bribes for temporary pardons.

Apparently, if a New Christian approached an inquisitor, he had a chance of redeeming himself by admitting that his family lit Shabbat candles or washed sheets for Shabbat. On the other hand, if an Old Christian accused a New Christian of still practising Jewish rituals and the latter denied the observances, he would face a worse outcome from his trial.

The number of Inquisition victims between 1540 and 1765 is estimated at 40,000. Punishment included being raised by a pulley with one’s hands behind one’s back. Convicted infidels were then burned at the stake.

Cells where Crypto-Jews were held before their Portuguese Inquisition trials. *(photo by Deborah Rubin Fields)*

The cruel punishments passed down by the Portuguese Inquisition drew large crowds of spectators. The crowds were akin to those who would come to watch bullfights.

Trials ceased after about 250 years, although Portugal’s Inquisition was not officially abolished until 1821.

Jewish informers should also be mentioned. These people, as can be imagined, found an open ear among Portugal’s prejudiced secular and religious leaders. If these traitors were discovered by the Jewish community, they might have had their eyes gouged out, their tongue removed or been put to death for putting the community at tremendous risk. So serious a crime was acting against one’s own people that even Maimonides condoned Jewish informers.

The impact of the forced conversion and the Inquisition continue to be felt. Take, for example, Belmonte, located in the northern part of Portugal. It has a small Jewish community that has retained the rituals of Judaism despite all the hardships and persecution. In the 1990s, when the idea of building a synagogue was raised, some Jewish community members were against it. Why? Because being a member of the anusim community was their cherished identity. Almost 200 years after the Portuguese Inquisition had been abolished, they couldn’t imagine living openly as Jews.

Estimates are that at least 20% of Portugal’s current population has anusim roots.

Deborah Rubin Fields is an Israel-based features writer. She is also the author of Take a Peek Inside: A Child’s Guide to Radiology Exams, published in English, Hebrew and Arabic.

Hope for best outcomes

Every election leaves a portion of the electorate thrilled and another group disappointed. The more polarized the electorate, the more intense these emotions. Two elections recently were certainly examples of this – and they were elections that could hardly have been closer.

The British Columbia provincial election returned the New Democrats under Premier David Eby to office – but just barely. A single seat assured a majority government but that is a most precarious victory. Eby will need to be vigilant to ensure not a single member of his caucus steps out of line on a confidence vote or becomes disgruntled enough to bolt the party. This is almost certainly part of the reason Eby gave every member of his caucus a special title (along with added pay for the responsibilities).

Eby has a reputation for centralizing power in his office – to be fair, almost every leader in our parliamentary system does, but apparently Eby is a master at micromanaging – and this is a double-edged sword. He does not lack the skills to keep potentially wayward sheep in line, but excessive domination tends to incite rebellion.

Jewish voters especially will be watching a few things. The new mandatory curriculum for Holocaust education is to be rolled out next year. Given behaviours of the BC Teachers Federation and the potential for individual instructors to go rogue, the possibility exists for this curriculum to be weaponized against Jewish people. There are already dispiriting anecdotes about anti-Israel activism among some teachers. The introduction of mandatory Holocaust education could open the door to reactionary activism among those who think the Holocaust should not be privileged over other human catastrophes, as well as conversations that could turn in inappropriate directions because they lack the language or support for context. We hope that the province’s curriculum experts have anticipated this potential and worry that it is a nearly impossible task to monitor. We should be looking for various types of evaluation to guide these educational programs.

The back-from-the-grave BC Conservative Party, now the official opposition, has promised to introduce adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism among its first acts in the new Legislature. This will put the Jewish community and our issues in the centre of political drama immediately – not a welcome or comfortable situation for our minuscule demographic; the debate is sure to engender opposition and recriminations.

In the broader scope of 2024 history, though, our provincial election will be a footnote next to the election that took place a few days later. The reelection of once and now future US president Donald Trump will almost certainly have exponentially more dramatic effects.

The reelection of Trump turned out to be not as close as every poll suggested, but also not as commanding as some commentators say it was. He won the popular vote this time by about 2.5 million votes, which, in terms of the raw vote margin, is the fifth-lowest since 1960 – but, compared to having lost the popular vote by almost three million votes when first elected in 2016, the 2024 margin points to a swing in the electorate that cannot be ignored.

Trump’s recent election seems to have been met by opponents with a fatalistic sense of déjà vu. His choices of cabinet appointees suggest his second term will be no less a circus than his first and quite possibly more damaging in many ways.

According to exit polls, Jewish voters in the United States supported the Democrat, Vice-President Kamala Harris, over Trump by a margin of almost four-to-one. (Israeli voters, if they could have voted, would have backed Trump by almost mirror-image landslide margins, according to at least one poll, a disparity that deserves discussion some other time.)

Support for Trump’s stated pro-Israel positions is premised on the presumption that what he says is what he will do. This is true for all politicians of course, but it is especially true for an individual as volatile and unpredictable as this one. (Whether his positions are actually good for Israel and Jews is also a topic for further analysis and discussion.)

Whichever parties or candidates we support, all of us should hope for the best outcomes. Much depends on it, if in significantly different magnitudes – the government of BC does not, for example, have nuclear weapons – but polarized partisanship does not serve the majority well.

As a Jewish prayer for elected officials says, “May they be guided with wisdom and understanding to serve all its inhabitants with justice and compassion. Strengthen their resolve to protect freedom and promote peace, so that harmony and tranquility prevail among all who dwell here.”

Against their best interests

Writers often get submission calls saying “Sorry, we cannot pay you, but our publication is widely distributed. You’ll get great exposure!” I don’t bother, thinking something like “No, thanks. I live in Manitoba, Canada. We can die of exposure.”

For most, writing isn’t lucrative. If I sell an article, sometimes the cheque covers the grocery bill. Years ago, I decided that I don’t work for free. I avoid residencies and literary submissions with reading fees. Even a well-appointed writer’s residency often costs money for travel, food or lodging. Meanwhile, I pay for utilities and care for my kids, so I write at home. It’s cheaper. Same for reading fees. Although small publications need support, if I pay them to read my submission, it conflicts with my goal to get paid. It’s common sense when trying to make a living.

In early November, I read Winnipeg Free Press editor Ben Sigurdson’s column about writers, books and awards called “Paper Chase.” The headline read “Authors, artists boycott Israeli cultural orgs.” It summarized a petition signed by “thousands” of writers, listing by name some with Manitoba connections. These writers choose to avoid working with Israeli cultural and literary institutions, publications and festivals because they are ostensibly “complicit in violating Palestinian rights.” The petition doesn’t mention Hamas, which governs Gaza. It doesn’t hold Hamas or Egypt accountable for their contributions to the crisis or mention Oct. 7. There’s no reference to the wider global conflict, which includes Iran and Hezbollah, among others.

By withdrawing their work, these authors want to punish non-political Israeli entities. They assume that, with their great literary fame, they’re important enough that their choice matters. They wish to deprive Israelis of hearing or reading their work. Due to their moral outrage, these authors won’t earn money from Hebrew translation rights, appearances at Israeli universities, conferences, festivals or book signings.

I noted that Sigurdson’s column removed the name of Jonah Corne, a Jewish University of Manitoba professor, from his list of Manitobans who boycott Israel’s literary scene. I don’t know why he did that.

Some suggest these protests are against Israel, where half the world’s Jewish population resides, but not against diaspora Jews. Why then leave a Jewish Manitoban off the “notables” who joined the boycott? Is it a mistake, or a tell? This protest conflates all Jews and Israelis, no matter one’s political beliefs or where one lives.

Writers fail to look after their own self-interests, be they monetary or ethnic, with this type of activism. Signing a petition could bring an author’s work attention, assuming “any publicity is good publicity.” Yet not all Manitobans on the petition got that dubious editorial publicity. Omitting a Jewish Canadian from the list of Manitobans who signed the boycott smells fishy.

Sigurdson also didn’t mention the long list of authors and creatives who signed a counter-petition by the Creative Community for Peace. This group is against discriminatory cultural boycotts. They support free expression for all. This list includes many recognizable names, from popular and intellectual circles, including Ozzy Osbourne, Mayim Bialik, Bernard-Henri Lévy and Gene Simmons, among others. Professors, actors, directors, musicians, Pulitzer-winning journalists and Nobel Prize-winning authors populate this list. These creative communicators, against boycotts and for free speech, include Jewish writers, but also allies.

This connects to the commotion about Canada’s Giller Prize. Jack Rabinovitch started this prize in honour of his late wife, the journalist Doris Giller. This award is Canada’s largest literary fiction prize, which comes with $100,000. The prize highlights Canada’s diversity and literary excellence and is sponsored by Scotiabank. It’s now fashionable to protest the prize and Scotiabank’s investment in Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems. The petition lists others, including Indigo and Audible. Many authors now protest and boycott the jury. Others pull their work from consideration and sign petitions against the Giller via “Canlit Responds.”

The Globe and Mail’s Marsha Lederman writes that, if Scotiabank were sufficiently pressured, it might withdraw sponsorship from the prize rather than fully divest from whatever financial investment offends the protesters. No other sponsor would be likely to take on a prize that comes with so much protest baggage. The largest Canadian literary fiction award would disappear. Have these protesting authors thought this through? If the Giller Prize collapses, Canadian fiction authors can no longer benefit from it.

Rabinovitch and Giller were Jewish Canadians. This prize celebrates Canadian literature. In 1972, Giller, as a Montreal Star writer, worked as a correspondent in Israel, but this couple lived in Canada. Protesters forget to be grateful. The generosity of this prize and the positive attention it brings Canada’s literary scene shouldn’t be underestimated. Lederman writes that protesters haven’t targeted other large literary awards with financial ties to Israel or many other businesses on the boycott list. Is this protest about financial ties to the Middle Eastern conflict, or is it about bias against Jews, even if they live in Canada?

Practically, writers must make money if they want to work in their field. Publicity for political pet causes might make money from literary appearances, book signings, sales, or translations. But boycotting financial opportunities and suppressing access to books doesn’t help writers support themselves. Many readers support worldwide free expression and won’t purchase the books of those who boycott. Some readers won’t support those who hold Israeli cultural institutions, literary events or citizens responsible for a conflict that spans the Middle East. We don’t hold the Giller Prize, a literary award, responsible for North American political conflicts and policies. Why hold it and Israeli literary institutions responsible for a war started by Hamas and Iran?

In Canada, we celebrate diversity. The 2024 Giller Prize jury writes: “Writers of fiction imagine … what it means to be another: to be marginalized, to be suppressed, to be guilty – to be joyful! – or simply not seen.” Writers remain unseen and marginalized when readers don’t buy or read their work.

Further, Canadians have marginalized Jews, both in Canada and worldwide since Oct. 7, 2023, failing to condemn Hamas or antisemitism. For those who choose boycotts, that “othering” and marginalization of the world’s small Jewish population remains acceptable. Some now believe that, when it comes to the cultural contributions of Jewish Canadians, “none is too many.”

Cutting communication with the Israeli literary scene threatens Canadian cultural institutions. A political boycott also threatens half the world’s population of Jews, those in Israel. It doesn’t embrace free expression or bring peace. As Lederman suggests, it’s unlikely to help any Palestinians.

Boycotts allow writers to shoot themselves in the foot. Writers can’t pay for essentials when they aren’t paid for their work. Without big awards, even famous writers sometimes can’t pay for groceries. Limiting readership limits income. It’s noteworthy that, while past Giller winners protest, the media hasn’t reported on anyone returning that $100,000 prize.

Choosing diversity means including all Canadians, even Jewish Canadians who create opportunities like the Giller Prize. When it comes to how we behave, cause and effect still matter, even when writing and selling fiction.

Joanne Seiff has written regularly for the Winnipeg Free Press and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

Book a cautionary tale

Selina Robinson will release her memoir, Truth Be Told, in a special launch event on Dec. 18. Robinson, who served in senior cabinet portfolios in British Columbia’s government, was fired earlier this year after offhand remarks about the land on which Israel was founded.

In Truth Be Told, Robinson tells the behind-the-scenes story of what happened as she worked with the Jewish community to confront the antisemitism that erupted after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks on Israel. Dubbing herself the “Jew in the Crew,” Robinson was the voice of the BC Jewish community in government.

Then, when anti-Israel protesters and a group of Muslim clergy threatened the government unless Robinson was fired, Premier David Eby called a meeting of the entire New Democrat caucus – except for Robinson herself – and immediately afterwards she was told that she needed to resign.

The book is a cautionary story of the dangers to ethnocultural communities, multiculturalism and democracy itself when leaders stay silent – or worse, capitulate – in the face of coercion and place expediency ahead of principles.

Robinson will launch the book in conversation with Global BC legislative reporter Richard Zussman at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 18, in Vancouver. The specific location will be shared the morning of the event for security reasons.

There is no charge to attend the event, but registration is required at selinarobinson.ca. Copies of the book can be reserved on the website and will also be on sale at the event, with Robinson on hand to sign copies.

– Courtesy Pat Johnson

Mobilizing against Jew-hatred

Ysabella Hazan said phrases such as “the West is next” imply “exactly what the enemies of Israel accuse us of – being a Western outpost in the Middle East, a settled body, which is not true.” (photo by Dave Gordon)

Rage Against the Hate in New York on Oct. 31 had the goal to “gather Jewish organizations, and to find ways to start fighting back, to retake the streets, to retake the campuses, to retake social media, to combat antisemitism in a way that we haven’t,” said Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, president of the Israeli nonprofit Shurat HaDin Law Centre, organizers of the full-day conference.

photo - Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, president of Israeli nonprofit Shurat HaDin Law Centre, which organized the Rage Against the Hate conference in New York Oct. 31 — Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, president of Israeli nonprofit Shurat HaDin Law Centre, which organized the Rage Against the Hate conference in New York Oct. 31. *(photo by Dave Gordon)*

More than 30 organizations were conference partners and keynote speakers included radio host/author Dennis Prager, attorney Alan Dershowitz, actor Michael Rapaport, activist Shabbos Kestenbaum and NGO Monitor’s Gerald Steinberg.

Dershowitz, 86, said that after speaking to Jewish high school students, he was “stunned by their lack of knowledge” about Israel. To fill the void, he will be giving away a million copies of his latest book, The 10 Big Anti-Israel Lies and How to Refute Them with Truth, to 1,000 universities and high schools across the United States. He lambasted what he called the “educational malpractice” pervasive on college campuses, where professors “give disguise” to Jew-hatred through diversity, equity and inclusion policies, and oppressor-versus- oppressed beliefs.

“I offered $1,000 to anybody who could find me a single protester in any of these protests on university campuses that has ever called for a two-state solution. Nobody has taken me up on it. No protester wants to see an Israeli state,” he said to the audience of 300.

He added that “we are in a fight for our lives. We are in a fight for the future,” because these students will become politicians, corporate executives, media influencers and other types of leaders, and they will have all “been brought up with this kind of knee-jerk anti-Zionism.”

Darshan-Leitner characterized Students for Justice in Palestine as a “propaganda arm of Hamas.” She believes their activity is “actually providing material support to a terror organization” and, in doing so, contravenes the Anti-terrorism Act in the United States.

Kestenbaum – who, last January, became the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against Harvard University, alleging systemic antisemitism, and has testified before Congress about antisemitism on college campuses – told the Jewish Independent: “Jewish students are fighting a really remarkable fight with limited resources, with limited help and limited funding. It’s the Jewish nonprofits, who raise billions of dollars each year, who could be in a position to do a lot more. And so, I would encourage the Jewish nonprofits not to say, ‘What can the students be doing?’ but to ask themselves, ‘What can I be doing?’ to help students.”

“It is imperative that larger organizations actively support grassroots initiatives that can manoeuvre and mobilize quickly and efficiently, whereby large organizations cannot,” said Amir Epstein, director of Tafsik, a Jewish civil rights group that fights Jew-hatred in Canada and more broadly.

“Hundreds of millions of dollars are donated to large organizations, so it isn’t unreasonable for them to contribute considerable monetary aid to empower these grassroots efforts, so we can create a united front to combat the degradation of our Jewish community’s safety, and address the unprecedented antisemitism we face in universities, K-12 schools, media, politics and the arts,” said Epstein.

Montrealer Ysabella Hazan, who started the movement called Decolonized Judean, said phrases such as “the West is next” and “Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East” do not resonate with the younger generation. “They do not speak about us, convey our story or address the accusations that we are facing on the world stage,” she said. “And they indirectly prove exactly what the enemies of Israel accuse us of – being a Western outpost in the Middle East, a settled body, which is not true.”

Columbia business professor Shai Davidai, who has earned renown for calling out Jew-hatred on campuses, told the audience that antisemites have “created the new normal” by making students feel uncomfortable being visibly Jewish.” He said, “If we don’t fight back in the court of public opinion and in the court of law, we’re not going to win this war.”

photo - At the Rage Against the Hate conference Oct. 31, Dennis Prager offered an idea of how to counter the delegitimization of Israel — At the Rage Against the Hate conference Oct. 31, Dennis Prager offered an idea of how to counter the delegitimization of Israel. *(photo by Dave Gordon)*

Prager, who did graduate work at the Middle East and Russian institutes of Columbia’s School of International Affairs, said, “I was basically taught by moral idiots, but they were giants compared to who’s teaching in Columbia today, or at Harvard or at Princeton.”

An argument he proposed to use against the delegitimization of Israel is to draw a parallel to the creation of Pakistan, born the same year as the modern Jewish state. “There were two Israels in history,” said Prager, “but there was no Pakistan in history. When it was created, it was wrenched out of India. Nobody ever challenges the right of Pakistan to exist.”

Rapaport, known for his social media posts about Israel, advised: “Fight with your heart, fight with your prayers, fight with your genius, brilliant, Jewish, Zionist minds. Fight ferociously and do not take a step back,” he implored, while also encouraging Jewish education: “The more that I learn about our fantastic, magical history, the prouder I become.”

Journalist Douglas Murray, who is not Jewish, and Darshan-Leitner, shared a question-and-answer session.

Murray lamented how “very senior politicians” and “a generation of Americans” have bought into the “delusion that, if you were to solve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, peace would break out, not just in the region, but around the world.” But a state of Palestine with Hamas leadership “will be another Iranian proxy state nearer to Israel,” he said, and it’s “an obscenity that more people don’t realize that.”

He also said this is “a great opportunity for alliance-building,” and reminded the audience “not to forget the Christian communities” and others “who have been so supportive of Israel.”

Winnipeg attorney Lawrence Pinsky told the Independent that the conference was “inspiring and helpful,” and he plans to create a community “situation room,” he said, “just so that we can have a multi-directional approach to any problem. These will be individuals who may or may not be parts of organizations, who actually want to do, and can do.”

He said the conference helped him realize that activism should involve “no ego,” and that people should jump into action, not feeling they “have to reinvent the wheel.”

Dave Gordon is a Toronto-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in more than 100 publications around the world. His website is davegordonwrites.com.

Israel’s war is unique

French writer, filmmaker and human rights activist Bernard-Henri Lévy was in Vancouver at Schara Tzedeck Synagogue Nov. 6, in conversation with the National Post’s Tristin Hopper. (photo by Pat Johnson)

Bernard-Henri Lévy, a public intellectual so well-known in France that he is generally referred to simply as BHL, has thrown his energies into an “emergency” effort to defend Israel in a moment of history when the world has turned against the Jewish state.

Lévy was in Vancouver at Schara Tzedeck Synagogue Nov. 6, in conversation with Tristin Hopper, a writer for the National Post.

Throughout his career as a reporter, commentator, filmmaker and activist, Lévy has written and spoken extensively about humanitarian crises in Bangladesh, Darfur, Rwanda, Bosnia and many other flashpoints. Now, he said, “I am pleading with all my energy for Israel and for the defence of Israel.”

His latest book – his 47th or 48th, he thinks – is Israel Alone.

Israel’s war is unique, he said, because it involves enemies who are not driven by ideas but by the nihilistic aim of destroying a nation and a people. The differentiation between antisemitism and anti-Zionism is irrelevant to Hamas and Hezbollah, said Lévy, noting that many of those killed on Oct. 7 were among Israel’s leading peace activists.

“Those crimes have nothing to do with seeking a political solution to the suffering of Palestinians,” he said. “They don’t care about peace. They don’t care about a two-state solution. They don’t care about the fate of the old people. They only care about killing Jews. [The victims] could have been right-wing Jews. It happens that they were left-wing Jews, but they just don’t care. For Hamas, there is not left-wing or right-wing Jews. There is just Jews who deserve to be hated, tortured and, if possible, killed.”

Lévy urges the world not to be misled into thinking that Hamas and Hezbollah are national liberation movements. “They are the proxies, the puppets, of a very powerful country, which is Iran,” he said.

Lévy is optimistic because Israel is winning the war.

“What makes me a little less optimistic, and even pessimistic, what sometimes discourages me, is the reaction of the world,” he said. “Instead of saying bravo to Israel, instead of saying thank you to Israel, instead of standing at the side of Israel, who is waging an existential war for [itself] but also a useful war for the rest of the world – instead of that, the rest of the world, sometimes the allies of Israel, mumble, object, groan, accuse and ask, demand, beg, require from Israel ceasefire, compromise, negotiation.

“When you think about it, I don’t see any precedent of a just war, a fair war, which is treated by the allies of the country that is waging it, with such strange behaviour,” said Lévy. “It is unique.”

The West is responding like cowards to the threat of Iranian-backed Islamist terror, he argued, which has formed an alliance with Vladimir Putin’s Russian regime. Part of this refusal to stand with the victims is an ingrained tendency in Western civilization, he said.

“There are a lot of people in the West who love Jews when they are victims, who love to support them and to shed tears on their face when they are beaten, wounded and sometimes killed,” he said, “but who don’t like to see them proud and strong and behaving with heads up.”

On the positive side, Lévy believes, most people in Europe and North America are not irreversibly antisemitic or anti-Israel but are influenced by biased commentary. His new book is a tool for these people and those who engage with them, he said. “Those [people] can be addressed with reasonable arguments, with historical facts, and … can be not only addressed but convinced, I’m sure of that. That is the aim of this book.”

Canada has been a safe haven for generations of Jews, he said. But now, Canadian Jews hear fellow citizens calling for their destruction.

“What is the future of the Jewish communities in France and in Canada?” he asked. “I will tell you one thing. I know very few Jews who do not have, somewhere in the back of their mind, the precise or vague or very vague idea that they could go one day to Israel. This is the state of Jewry since 1948. To be a Jew means to be a good Canadian citizen, a good French citizen, but to have somewhere, even remotely, in the mind, the idea that Israel could be an option.”

The global condemnation of Israel is a reincarnation of a long-familiar trend, Lévy said. “The new argument of antisemitism, the new form, the new phase, the new name of the virus is anti-Zionism,” he said.

The best and “only efficient way to be antisemitic today” is to be anti-Zionist, he argued. Blaming Jews for deicide or some of the other historical justifications for antisemitism is no longer effective, he said. “If you say that today, honestly, you will not meet with great success. If one wants to hate with efficiency the Jews, there is only one way left.”

Israel has few supporters among non-Jews, he said, even among ostensible allies, whose support he described as often coming with conditions.

Lévy called the former and future president of the United States, Donald Trump, “a true ally of Israel, for sure, no doubt on that.” But he also reminded the audience of an incident in the election campaign, during which Trump warned a Jewish audience that he would blame them for his loss if he were defeated.

“And if you are responsible for my defeat, within two years, Israel will disappear,” Lévy paraphrased Trump. “It was a slip of the tongue probably. [But it meant that, in Trump’s mind], the Jews deserve to be protected, but conditionally, if they supported [Trump], if they were good guys and good ladies, if they gave him victory.”

Schara Tzedeck’s Rabbi Andrew Rosenblatt welcomed the audience and acknowledged members of the Ukrainian, French and other communities in attendance. He also credited Robert Krell and Alain Guez for Lévy’s visit to Vancouver.

Update on taskforce

Since Oct. 7, 2023, many members of the Jewish community have experienced antisemitism in some form or another. Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs have been addressing these incidents, as well as progressing on a strategy to combat it.

A taskforce on antisemitism was appointed last November. Phase 1 was an emergency response in the months directly after Hamas’s attack on Israel. Phase 2, well underway, is about protecting the local community, strengthening relationships with allies, expanding education and raising awareness. This second phase includes an examination of how antisemitism is preventing community members from thriving, and research on how other communities have responded to similar challenges. It seeks to answer the questions, what can we learn from others and what are the best practices for combating antisemitism?

The taskforce is composed of volunteer professionals with different subject matter expertise from across the Jewish community. Between now and April 2025, they will examine manifestations of antisemitism in various sectors and how community members are responding to it. In April, they will deliver findings to the Federation board, with a formal presentation scheduled for the annual general meeting in June. The goal is to develop insights that will ensure the Jewish community can continue to thrive.

“We’re looking at different aspects of community life, including schools for children K-12, Hillel and campus life, the unions and the experiences of new Israelis coming to Vancouver,” said Mijal Ben Dori, vice-president, community planning, partnerships and innovation at Federation. “For example, new-to-Vancouver Israelis are having challenges finding jobs because they have to answer questions about whether they’ve served in the IDF and if they were in Israel after Oct. 7. Based on their answers to these questions, fewer Israelis are passing through the human resource departments of firms in BC.”

Emet Davis, director of Community Organizing Against Antisemitism, at Federation, said the taskforce has identified key areas that are particularly egregious “In the K-12 school system, school boards and teachers unions are engaged in rewriting history or the erasure of the Jewish experience in curriculum and lesson planning,” said Davis. “At post-secondary institutions across BC, antisemitic tactics this year have been more vitriolic and widespread, posing safety threats to our Jewish students. These are areas where we really have to focus our attention.”

The arts community is another concerning sector. “Groups like the BC Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts are using DEI criteria to issue grants, which excludes Jews,” Davis said. “That’s not the only area where Jews are being excluded based on DEI criteria.”

This three-to-five year phase of Community Organizing Against Antisemitism will require a budget of $10 million, for staffing, fight-back advertising and a legal resiliency fund. The hope is that funding will come from private foundations, the Jewish and broader communities.

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond.