Teens light candles on March of the Living. (photo from March of the Living Canada)
In April 2015, a group of 80 teens, under the guidance of three chaperones and a Holocaust survivor, arrived in Poland for a two-week journey exploring Poland’s tragic events and followed by the joy of celebrating the birth of the Jewish state on Yom Ha’atzmaut.
The mission of March of the Living is to pass the torch of Holocaust memory to new generations. The experience provides young people with an opportunity to bear witness to the Holocaust and to the stories of survivors, so that this important part of our collective history is never forgotten. It is also a unique opportunity to strengthen our children’s Jewish identity and to strengthen their connection to Israel.
The march itself took place on Yom Hashoah, and we marched from Auschwitz to Birkenau with nearly 10,000 other young people. The march commemorates the death marches that the last surviving prisoners were forced to take, where many perished, but a few survived thanks to the liberation by the Allies. It is the most powerful event imaginable, and one that unites all young Jewish and non-Jewish people across the world.
By the end of the trip, these beautiful young people were so open in their expression of their deepest and most profound insights and emotions. They were no longer afraid to show their vulnerability, because the support they received from each other throughout the trip was absolutely unconditional. It was a beautiful experience and a privilege to be a part of.
The commitment to Judaism and Israel that the participants acquire on this trip is so clearly represented in the following statements by March of the Living participant,
Barbie Clark:
“For me, March of the Living created an emotional connection to my tradition, enabling me to understand and appreciate the importance of remembering our history.
“During the trip, we witnessed firsthand the magnitude of mass destruction that occurred during the Holocaust. As we traveled around the country, we were constantly reminded of these horrors in every city, town and community that we visited. At the height of Auschwitz’s productivity, it was able to murder and cremate up to 12,000 Jews a day – a number greater than the mass of us who were able to complete the walk. To realize that every single one of us participating in the march could have been destroyed in the space of one day, defies understanding and description. Also, at Majdanek, we were witness to a horrifying monument containing ashes and bones of … 20,000 Jews killed in the Nazi’s Fall Festival of 1943. This monument is alarmingly large, reiterating the magnitude of what occurred. I found this terrifying and incomprehensible.
“The horrors witnessed in Poland are to be contrasted with what I experienced in Israel,” continued Clark. “While in Israel, I had the unique privilege to witness both Yom Hazikaron – Israel’s Remembrance Day for its soldiers – and Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israel’s birthday. On Yom Ha’atzmaut, the entire country is in celebration – the euphoria is palpable. Despite the sadness one is left with after [bearing] witness, I was left with contagious optimism and hope. Hope for a future without enemies; hope for the Jewish people and the Jewish nation surviving despite all previous oppression.
“The entire experience created for me a new sense of being connected to Judaism, in a way I never thought possible…. The trip symbolized for me all [the] adversity, intolerance and persecution of Jewish people, yet at the same time creating a sense of survival and the possibility of a better future, for not just the Jewish people, but for all mankind.”
Charlotte Katzen, co-chair, March of the Living committee, was a chaperone on the 2015 trip. This article was originally published in Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver’s Yachad. More information about March of the Living, click here. For information on the adult program – which is new this year – click here.
Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump upset AIPAC organizers when he criticized President Barack Obama. (photo by David Zam)
There were clear signs of discord in Washington, D.C., as representatives of AIPAC publicly rebuked presidential hopeful Donald Trump after he harshly criticized the sitting president.
At the pro-Israel organization’s policy conference last month, in front of some 18,000 attendees, visibly upset AIPAC president Lillian Pinkus admonished Trump on stage for his remarks a day earlier.
“Whatever policy disagreements we may have, we must not condemn the sitting president on stage,” she said. “There are people in our AIPAC family who were deeply hurt last night and, for that, we are deeply sorry.”
Chairman of the board Robert A. Cohen said that booing and clapping speakers when they attack another person was unacceptable at the event, and that “AIPAC doesn’t pick sides.”
Trump, who was cheered wildly for noting that it was President Barack Obama’s last year in office, said that “Obama rewards our enemies” and “Hillary was a total disaster as secretary of state…. Obama and Hillary have been very bad to Israel. Obama may be the worst thing to happen to Israel.”
Every major party candidate for president spoke at the dais, except the senator from Vermont, Democrat Bernie Sanders, who is Jewish. All candidates who spoke placed heavy emphasis on Iran.
GOP frontrunner Trump didn’t mince words. He called the Iran deal brokered by the P5+1 – the United States, China, Russia, France and the United Kingdom plus Germany – “awful” and “bad for Israel, the Middle East and the world.”
The $150 billion channeled to Iran in the agreement, by his reckoning, was “unbelievable” with “nothing in return,” and that the Islamic Republic will have a nuclear bomb within several years.
As president, Trump said he would “stand up to Iran’s aggression” because “I know how to deal with aggression and that’s why I’ll win.”
The Middle East’s terror activity has Iran’s fingerprints all over it, he continued, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, reward money for Palestinian terrorists, and influence in at least two dozen other countries.
“I will dismantle Iran’s global terror network,” Trump said. “We will enforce this deal like you’ve never seen a contract enforced before.”
The New York billionaire mogul and reality TV host took aim at two other threats to Israel, the United Nations and Palestinian terror activity.
“The UN is incompetent and no friend of Israel,” he said. “A [peace] agreement imposed by the UN would be a total disaster. And the U.S. must use our veto, which I will use 100%.”
The Jewish state, he said, has always been willing to strike a deal with its neighbors, noting that prime minister Ehud Barak in 2000 offered nearly the entire West Bank as a Palestinian state, but the offer was dismissed by then-PLO leader Yasser Arafat. Other times, he said, “Palestinian leadership has rejected very good offers.”
Trump noted that, under his purview, the U.S. embassy would move “to the eternal capital of the Jewish state, Jerusalem.”
Texas Senator Ted Cruz, trailing a distant second to Trump in GOP delegates, began his speech, “America will stand with Israel and defeat Islamic terror.”
He spoke about his three trips to Israel as senator, including a visit to Israeli hospitals that treated Syrian refugees. He noted that he had proposed legislation to ban the Iranian ambassador to the UN from entering the United States since he was involved in the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis. It passed in both the Senate and House.
Taking a jab at the Obama administration, he said it was “unjust” for them to impose a travel ban on Israel in the summer of 2014. He further called out Democrats for boycotting Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s speech last year at AIPAC.
At AIPAC, Democrat frontrunner Hillary Clinton advised a three-pronged approach to global security, focusing on Iran, extremism and the attempts to delegitimize Israel. (photo by David Zam)
Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential frontrunner, was taken to task for saying that Hamas fires rockets from civilian areas because Gaza is tight for space. “Rather,” said Cruz, “it’s because Hamas are beasts who use human shields.”
As for the “fundamentally immoral” Iran deal, Cruz said he will “rip it to shreds on the first day,” since the Islamic Republic won’t follow it anyway.
“Hear my words Ayatollah Khomeini: If I am president and Iran launches a missile test, we will shoot that missile down,” said Cruz. “And, in January 2017, we will have a commander-in-chief who says under no circumstances will Iran be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons: either you will shut down your nuclear program or we will shut it down for you.”
Cruz compared the Iran deal to the failed 1938 agreement between British prime minister Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler, which led to the Third Reich’s takeover of Czechoslovakia and allowed its continued military build-up.
If elected president, Cruz said he would move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, yank federal funds from schools that boycott Israel and veto any UN unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state.
Governor of Ohio John Kasich, running third in the GOP delegate count, noted his 35-year support for Israel and his role in helping erect a Holocaust monument in his state.
He called for the suspension of the Iranian nuclear deal, particularly after recent test missiles in contravention of international treaties. As president, he would “defeat ISIS and stop arms flows to Hezbollah.”
He also spoke out against the boycott, divestment and sanction movement, and antisemitism on campus. On Israel, he noted the “culture of death that the Palestinian leadership has promoted for decades,” and that “Palestinians cannot continue to promote hatred.” In sum, he called Jerusalem the eternal capital of Israel.
When she took to the stage, Clinton noted that the “the ideological gap between the parties has increased, but there’s still common agreement on Israel.”
She took a three-pronged approach to global security: Iran’s aggression, the growing tide of extremism, and efforts to delegitimize Israel. “The deal with Iran is making the world safer, including Israel,” she said. “The supreme leader still calls all the shots in Iran, but we should support voices who want to bring change in Iran.”
Regarding other parts of the region, she said that “ISIS must not be contained; it must be defeated.”
On the issue of Israel, she noted that Palestinian leadership has to stop inciting violence. “Children should not be taught to hate in schools,” she said, adding that she would oppose any attempts to “push a [unilateral two-state] solution,” including in the UN. “Palestinians should be able to govern themselves in their state,” she said, while adding that Israeli “settlements are not helpful to peace.”
She condemned BDS and said, “we have to fight against it” because “antisemitism has no place in American society.”
Meanwhile, U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden took a risk mentioning to the 18,000 attendees at the policy conference that Israeli “settlements are a barrier in the way of a two-state solution.” That risk was welcomed by a chorus of boos – despite attendees being cautioned by AIPAC leadership to not do so.
Biden insisted that, notwithstanding political differences, the United States is “united in our unwavering commitment to the Jewish state of Israel.”
However, “violent acts of retribution must stop,” he continued, “terror is terror is terror … and it must be stopped.”
The White House “stands with Israel against delegitimization” and believes that “Israel is stronger today because of the Obama-Biden administration,” he said.
Biden touted last year’s Iran deal as a “success,” explaining that many “Iranian facilities are dismantled and destroyed” and that “Iran is further away from the possibility of being nuclear. If Iran violates [the deal] there will be consequences.”
Speaking by video link from Israel, Netanyahu both criticized, and suggested salvaging, the U.S.-brokered Iranian nuclear deal.
“Those who worked for the deal and against the deal can work together to ensure that the deal is followed,” he insisted, noting that, in March, Iran tested a missile that posed a threat to Israel.
“The writing isn’t just on the wall; it’s on the missile,” said Netanyahu.
He said that Israel is singled out for condemnation at the UN and said he hopes the United States will continue its moral voting record at the Security Council.
With regard to Israel’s neighbors, he said Palestinian children are taught to hate, and showed a video of television broadcasts that illustrate his point.
“We cannot compromise with terror and must defeat it,” he said. “We need a two-state solution with a demilitarized Palestinian state.… We are ready for negotiations anywhere and anytime without preconditions.” But, he said, Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority, “isn’t ready or willing to come” to the negotiating table.
David Zamhas covered political, cultural and historical events for Landmark Report, including the 50th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery voting rights march as White House-approved press, two AIPAC policy conferences and several other political conventions. He has degrees in history and law.
Call It Democracy speakers, from left to right, Mira Oreck, Margot Young and Sharon Abraham-Weiss. (photo by Zach Sagorin)
“From the Holocaust, there is a lesson we can all agree about: ‘Never again.’ There are two paths: never again to us or never again to anybody,” said Sharon Abraham-Weiss, executive director of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.
Abraham-Weiss was speaking at the event Call it Democracy, held at Temple Sholom on March 14. She was joined by Mira Oreck, director of public engagement at the Broadbent Institute, and Margot Young, a University of British Columbia law professor, who served as facilitator.
About Israel, Abraham-Weiss said, “The Declaration of Independence from 1948 is the establishment for this democracy, promising equality for all its citizens. When I’m saying citizens, 20% of the citizens of Israel are Palestinian-Israelis, Arab-Israelis, people that were in Israel in 1948. Speaking about the occupied territories, it’s a different story.”
She said, in contrast to Canada, Israel “does not have a constitution … so, our toolkit, as lawyers, [is] the Basic Laws that we consider higher laws.” Additionally, she said, “We don’t have any separation between state and religion and this is something very important to understand.” For example, “the only way to get married … is in the Orthodox rabbinical system for Jews or other religious systems for non-Jews.”
Moreover, she continued, “In 1967, we occupied areas known today as ‘the occupied territories,’ Judea and Samaria, Palestine, you can name it. There are about two million people there, Palestinians. When I speak about democracy, it does not apply to the occupied territories. It’s different [there] because these people do not have the status of citizens, they are refugees.”
Oreck thanked the Coast Salish peoples, “whose territory we are gathered on tonight,” when she began her remarks. “I think it’s a relevant acknowledgement to the conversation around civil liberties, civil rights and human rights.”
Oreck described the notion of civil liberties as a political one. “These are political decisions that are made from country to country and we often think of civil liberties in a fairly narrow sense. What are the personal guarantees and freedoms that the government cannot infringe on by law?” she asked, listing freedom of conscience, religion, press, the right to security. “We don’t necessarily think about poverty and housing and other rights that we may think of more generally as human rights that don’t fall into our more narrow definition of civil liberties,” she said.
Young shifted the conversation to the balance between security and liberty.
“Can security reasons be justified by everything we are doing? Abraham-Weiss asked. “The answer from my perspective is no, not at all, it has to be balanced. Can we completely dismiss the idea of security reasons? And the answer is no.” She spoke about profiling at airports as an example. “It’s hard, for on one hand, we don’t want any terror attacks; on the other hand, 20% of our population belongs to the Arab minority. Can we generalize … that they are all suspects?” She said, “How do you bring your citizens to be part of the society when you always blame them? How do you bring your citizens to be part of the society when their schools, per capita, are less than the schools I am going to in west Jerusalem and other places?
“In 2010, the government of Israel joined the [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] and the OECD said that, if you want to be a member of the developed countries, you must show us better numbers of Arabs in the job market and better participation of ultra-Orthodox in the job market. [With] this incentive, we showed better numbers … and this, in a way, is balancing the security risks.”
In the Canadian context, Oreck referred to the passing of anti-terrorism Bill C-51, noting that the NDP was the only party that voted against it. “There are real conversations around how we address very real security threats and what the tension is,” she said. “But, also, what are we willing to trade away?… Frankly, who would be in violation of that security based on C-51?… Would people that are protesting pipelines, for example, be a threat to national security? And, if so, who are those people? Who is being threatened? Who is being protected?”
Another prominent Canadian security discussion has been about the Syrian refugees, said Oreck. “When the new government talked about bringing in Syrian refugees, well, what is the threat?… There are still many questions around what the screening process was, should men be able to come in, or should families be prioritized?”
In Canada, there is the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Young noted in changing the topic from security to equality. “We do have a lot of these questions being decided by our Supreme Court of Canada in an authoritative way,” she said.
In Israel, explained Abraham-Weiss, “Our main tool is the Basic Law of Human Dignity [and Liberty] and, when we take things to the Supreme Court … although it is about freedoms, the word that is not [there] is the word equality and the reason equality is not there, it is because … the Orthodox were against the word equality because of women’s rights.”
She explained how equality was written “into dignity” in the 1990s. “Humiliation and discrimination harms your dignity and that is how it was justified. It is a very famous case,” she said, referring to that of Alice Miller, who wanted to be a pilot in the Israel Defence Forces. “She was rejected because she was a woman. Now, the interesting story about her … is that she was a pilot already, she just made aliyah. She moved from South Africa and she was holding a civil pilot license and they told her she can’t be a pilot, and she said, I am.” Miller became Israel’s first female pilot.
In Canada, said Oreck, “we are probably also dealing with an outdated version of gender and needing to really reevaluate the way that we look at gender rights, what does that mean.” She pointed to some advances, commending “the work the Vancouver School Board has done around gender-neutral bathrooms.” She said, “What is once at the margins, eventually, becomes mainstream.”
“Our job as a human rights organization is to find out what is … marginalized, outlined, and bring it to the heart of the consensus,” agreed Abraham-Weiss. “I think especially as minorities, it’s important to be consistent and put question marks on things that can be taken for granted.”
Abraham-Weiss used the example of administrative detention. She said it “was used, traditionally, against Palestinians and, whenever we brought it up, they would say [for] security reasons. Now, recently, it is used against right-wing settlers, Israeli-Jewish settlers. Now we are consistent about it … we are consistent about the procedure and part of the reason we have success is that we are not partisan … we work in the parliament of Israel with various members of the political spectrum. So, on children’s rights, our best ally is from [Avigdor] Lieberman’s party, which is right-wing. On International Human Rights Day, we held a conference in the Knesset held by … two members of the Knesset, one was from the joint Arab-Jewish party … and the other was Likud.”
Abraham-Weiss said, “In terms of human rights, within Judaism, we are more tolerant, [but] we are still not doing good enough, with Ethiopian Jews for example.… It takes time, but I think we are moving to it.”
Young asked Abraham-Weiss and Oreck to discuss the “elephants in each of the country’s rooms, really, really tough issues that that people dance around on, but don’t always talk about.”
Abraham-Weiss said, “The elephant in the room is the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, so, while we have tolerance and multiculturalism within Judaism, we are less tolerant to multiculturalism with the Palestinian-Israelis and their culture and I have to admit … the last couple of years, we have been dealing with what we call the shrinking democratic space in Israel due to the conflict.”
During Protective Edge, the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict, Abraham-Weiss said, “We saw that there were voices against the war and, the voices, people were calling to marginalize them. So, they were opening Facebook pages calling to fire these people from their workplaces. Now, these are private places.… Look at the government. There were ministers saying: ‘Hey, don’t let anyone do demonstrations against the war, it is not a good time for demonstrations.’ When is a good time if this is the idea? Now that bothers me in a democratic country. In a pluralism of ideas, we have many voices. If you do have only one voice, you don’t call it a democracy anymore.… [Recently], there was an idea, a draft bill, to impeach the elected minority. So, the elected majority, the Jews, can impeach the elected minority, the Arabs?… I think this is a problem in a democracy.”
Oreck said, “Canada views itself and prides itself on being a multicultural country and yet … multiculturalism is, of course, from the ’70s … was about immigrants and was about new Canadians and it never dealt with First Peoples of this country and it never addressed the historical inequalities that we are dealing with now through reconciliation…. I think that, as a Jew anyway, that makes a challenge in some ways.
“For many of us,” she said, “Canada was a refuge and our families came here for safety and security and yet, at that exact time, of course, kids were being taken from their homes and sent to residential schools. So, how do you reconcile, how do you pride yourself on multiculturalism when, for many people that time was a very dark history.… We are still really addressing those challenges. I would argue that not having clean water on reserves is a failing of multiculturalism and I would argue that the Cindy Blackstock case on the underfunding of First Nations education is a failing of multiculturalism.… There is clearly still enormous work to do.”
Similarly, Abraham-Weiss said, “I can criticize Israel because I care about Israel. I want a better Israel and I think we all deserve a better Israel.”
Call it Democracy was co-sponsored by the New Israel Fund of Canada and Temple Sholom with Beth Tikvah Congregation, Ameinu, Hillel BC Society and Or Shalom. NIFC president Joan Garson concluded the event.
Canada’s foreign minister has called on the United Nations Human Rights Council to review the appointment of Canadian law professor Michael Lynk as its special rapporteur on human rights in Palestine.
Last week, Stéphane Dion tweeted (because that is how diplomacy happens these days): “We call on @UN_HRC President to review this appointment & ensure Special Rapporteur has track record that can advance peace in region #HRC.”
The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs has denounced the appointment of the University of Western Ontario academic, who has been associated with anti-Israel activities in Canada. Lynk has said that Israel should be prosecuted for “war crimes,” he accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing,” has spoken at conferences that reject a two-state solution and serves as a leader in a group that promotes Israel Apartheid Week.
While Dion questioned the wisdom of appointing Lynk, CIJA went further, arguing that the position itself is illegitimate.
“It is ludicrous that this is the UN’s only special rapporteur focused on the human rights of a particular community,” said Shimon Koffler Fogel, CIJA’s chief executive officer. “It is likewise shameful that the special rapporteur refuses to investigate the abuse of Palestinian rights by the Palestinian leadership, particularly Hamas in Gaza. In so doing, the special rapporteur obscures genuine human rights violations in the Middle East and the underlying obstacles to Israeli-Palestinian peace.”
A related conflict blew up in academia last week. Just as the appointment of an avowed anti-Zionist as UN rapporteur surely will not advance peace between Israelis and Palestinians, the complete disavowal of the existence of antisemitism on campuses will not promote intellectual discourse or peace.
In the wake of ongoing efforts by the BDS movement to boycott Israeli academics and force universities to divest from Israeli holdings, while occasionally nastily intimidating Jewish students on campuses across North America, the University of California board of regents recently passed a statement condemning antisemitism, along with 10 principles against intolerance as a whole. It is the result of several months’ research and consultation.
The statement that introduces the principles is an amended version of an earlier expression that would have condemned anti-Zionism. Instead, it condemns “antisemitic forms of anti-Zionism.” If the only state in the world targeted for elimination is the only Jewish one, it should be an uphill battle to continue the charade that anti-Zionism is not equivalent to antisemitism, or at least driven by it to a large degree. Nevertheless, the regents’ statement is a starting point for increased civility on campuses that have seen, they note, “an increase in incidents reflecting antisemitism…. These reported incidents included vandalism targeting property associated with Jewish people or Judaism; challenges to the candidacies of Jewish students seeking to assume representative positions within student government; political, intellectual and social dialogue that is antisemitic; and social exclusion and stereotyping.”
Some critics say the statement is designed to stifle opposition to Israeli policies. Others say it could harm free speech. Yet others say it didn’t go far enough, in that it didn’t condemn bigotry against other specific groups.
None of these objections holds water. While the working group’s report might have been initiated by concerns over antisemitism, the document speaks to many other forms of intolerance: “University policy prohibits discrimination based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, gender, gender expression, gender identity, pregnancy, physical or mental disability, medical condition (cancer-related or genetic characteristics), genetic information (including family medical history), ancestry, marital status, age, sexual orientation, citizenship, service in the uniformed services, or the intersection of any of these factors.”
As for free speech, including, presumably, that about Israel, the document stresses the importance of freedom of expression and of inquiry: “The university will vigorously defend the principles of the First Amendment and academic freedom against any efforts to subvert or abridge them.” And, it notes: “Each member of the university community is entitled to speak, to be heard and to be engaged based on the merits of their views, and unburdened by historical biases, stereotypes and prejudices.”
But: “Regardless of whether one has a legal right to speak in a manner that reflects bias, stereotypes, prejudice and intolerance, each member of the university community is expected to consider his or her responsibilities as well as his or her rights … mutual respect and civility within debate and dialogue advance the mission of the university, advance each of us as learners and teachers, and advance a democratic society.”
The UN – and many others – could learn a thing or two from UC’s regents.
Avi Benlolo, president of the Canadian Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre for Holocaust Studies, was recently quoted in the National Post saying that Jewish university-bound applicants should consider options other than Toronto’s York University. The reason? A faculty association executive proposal to divest from weapons manufacturers. The proposal didn’t mention Israel by name.
According to Benlolo, this is a “campaign of censorship against Israel and the Jewish people.” The organization also issued a statement declaring that, in the wake of the proposal, it was “concerned for the safety and security of [York’s] Jewish students and faculty.”
I recently combed through the 2015 report of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre on antisemitism on American campuses, headlined: “A Clear and Present Danger.” Over the 26-page document, I discovered a few antisemitic incidents over the eight preceding years. (I selected an eight-year period to represent two generations of students at a four-year university or college.)
As the report detailed, at Harvard in 2013, to raise awareness of Palestinian home demolitions, activists slipped mock eviction notices into dorm rooms. There was no evidence to suggest whether Jewish students were targeted. And, in 2014-2015 at University of California-L.A., Rachel Beyda, a Jewish student, was barred admission to a judicial position by the student council following accusations that her Jewish heritage made her biased. After an uproar, the administration pressured the council to reverse itself. A similar dynamic played out at Stanford in 2014, when Molly Horwitz was asked, “Given your strong Jewish identity, how would you vote on divestment?”
The report also noted a “decade” of “increasing hostility” at the University of California-Berkeley in 2015, “including “vandalizing Jewish property, spitting at Jewish students, threatening violence, and physically assaulting Jewish supporters of Israel.”
Incidents like these should be called out strongly. But every other event chronicled since 2007 in the Simon Wiesenthal Centre report described political activity directed against Israel or its policies – not instances of antisemitism.
The latest mudslinging debate in the antisemitism wars is more nuanced. It concerns a talk by gender studies scholar Jasbir Puar at Vassar College, an event that authors of a Wall Street Journal op-ed described as antisemitic and a blood libel.
In the talk (of which I received a transcript), Puar made two particularly jarring claims. About the bodies of 17 Palestinian youth that Israel kept for two months at the end of 2015, Puar said, “Some speculate that the bodies were mined for organs for scientific research.” (These youth, it is important to note, had been attacking Israelis. Puar described these Palestinian youth as having been involved in “stabbing” and as part of a “peoples’ rumble” but called their deaths “field assassinations.”)
Puar also suggested that Israel engages in “weaponized epigenetics, where the outcome is not so much about winning or losing nor a solution, but about needing body parts, not even whole bodies, for research and experimentation.”
Puar did not respond to my requests for comment or clarification regarding her accusations.
While academic freedom is a principle meant to protect scholarly speech from legal censure, there is an equally important norm requiring a scholar to provide evidence when making empirical claims. On this, Puar failed.
But is Puar’s scholarly breach antisemitic?
Joshua Schreier, an associate professor of history at Vassar and part of the steering committee of the Jewish studies program that was one of the co-sponsors of the talk, doesn’t think so. He attended the event. “It’s really important,” he told me, “to protect free speech and protect academic speech,” adding that “we have a responsibility, as academics, when we talk about speculation, to note … whether it’s substantiated, whether we’re trying to give new life to those rumors, or not, but none of that makes it antisemitic.”
Unfortunately, the unsubstantiated charge of using “body parts for experimentation” cuts close to the bone of blood libel myths. It is also uttered in the context of a cultural moment on campuses when most criticism of Israel is inappropriately being cast as antisemitic. This surely means that there will be fallout from the talk that will serve to distract debaters from the pressing issues around the ills of occupation. It also means that amid the hyperbolic rhetoric about antisemitism on campuses, actual antisemitism is becoming more difficult to spot when it does occur.
Meanwhile, hundreds of faculty members from across the United States have issued a statement to Vassar’s president asking her to “write a letter to the Wall Street Journal … condemning in no uncertain terms the unjustifiable attack on Vassar and on Professor Puar.”
For its part, the Anti-Defamation League had nothing more damning to say about Puar’s appearance at Vassar than that she has sometimes accused Israel of pinkwashing.
Ian S. Lustick, a professor of political science at University of Pennsylvania, told me by email that he signed the statement “to show solidarity against the campaign to restrict the space of politically correct discussion on anything pertaining to Israel and Palestinians.” About the claim of organ harvesting, Lustick said that “the speculations about horrific
Israeli behavior with respect to organ harvesting from Palestinian bodies are as unlikely to be true as they are likely to be circulated as long as Israel refuses to quickly return bodies of dead Palestinians to their families.”
Debate over campus discourse on Israel (and even on things like armaments, weirdly perceived by some to represent Israel) will continue. Vassar’s president, for her part, invited parents and alumni to an online forum to discuss “current issues and tensions within our community related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
As for whether actions on campuses over the last decade constitute antisemitism, the ledger is mixed. Verbal or physical harassment directed at Jews for reasons related to their ethnic or religious identity is antisemitism. Same with leveling dual loyalty charges against Jewish students.
But consideration of divestment from weapons companies is not antisemitism. Criticism of Israeli policy is not antisemitism. Criticism of the occupation is not antisemitism. Criticism of violence – whether it is state-sponsored violence or violence carried out by individuals or groups – is not antisemitism.
Presenting unsubstantiated claims against agents of a state in a public lecture is irresponsible. And, if the symbolism chosen for these non-evidenced charges quacks like an infamous antisemitic myth, it will, not surprisingly, be heard by many as redolent of that scourge. But that does not necessarily make it, in and of itself, antisemitism.
Mira Sucharovis an associate professor of political science at Carleton University. She is a columnist for Canadian Jewish News and contributes to Haaretz and the Jewish Daily Forward, among other publications. A version of this article was originally published on haartez.com.
תצפית אל דרום הכנרת מהכביש היורד מיבניאל. (צילום: אלה פאוסט)
ג’סטין טרודו: מברך את העם היהודי לחג הפורים, מתקומם על החרם נגד ישראל, אך מתנגד להתנחלויות בשטחים
ראש ממשלת קנדה מטעם המפלגה הליברלית, ג’סטין טרודו, מביע לאחרונה את דעתו בפומבי בנושאים שקשורים ליהודים ולישראל. שלא כמו קודמו בתפקיד, סטיבן הרפר, טרודו לא עומד אוטומטית מאוחרי ישראל בכל עניין ועניין והוא אינו חבר של ראש ממשלת ישראל, בנימין נתניהו, אבל עדיין נחשב לידיד קרוב של ישראל.
טרודו פרסם בשבוע שעבר אגרת ברכה לאזרחים היהודים בקנדה לקראת חג הפורים. בברכה נאמר: “חג הפורים מציין את סיפורה של אסתר המלכה והדוד שלה מרדכי, אשר הצילו את העם היהודי בתקופת פרס העתיקה. אירוע זה מזכיר לנו שוב את כוחו ועוצמתו של העם היהודי, אשר שרד וגבר על הרדיפה הבלתי הנתפסת הזו. בזמן שאנו קוראים את מגילת אסתר אנו מאשרים מחדש את המחויבות הקיימת שלנו לנקוט פעולה ולעמוד נגד האנטישמיות, נגד ביטויים אחרים של שנאה ואפליה בקנדה ומחוצה לה”.
רק לפני כחודש חזר טרודו על הבטחתו מקמפיין הבחירות שלו להתנגד לכל חרם על ישראל. טרודו ומרבית חברי המפלגה הליברלית שבראשותו תמכו ב-22 בפרואר בהצעת המפלגה הקונסרבטיבית מהאופוזיציה, לגנות את כל מי שמחרים את ישראל. הפרלמנט הקנדי אישר את ההחלטה הזו ברוב גדול של 229 מול 51 מתנגדים. לפי הצעת הקונסרבטיבים על הממשלה הקנדית לגנות כל ניסיון לקדם את תנועת החרם והסנקציות נגד ישראל בקנדה ומחוצה לה. עוד נאמר בהחלטה כי תנועת החרם הבינלאומית של ‘הבי.די.אס’ פועלת לעשות דה-לגיטימציה ודמוניזציה של מדינת ישראל. שר החוץ הקנדי, סטפן דיון, אמר מספר ימים קודם לכן בצורה ברורה כי העולם לא ירוויח דבר מהחרמת ישראל ויש להילחם באינטישמיות על כל צורותיה השונות.
לעומת כל זאת טרודו לא מהסס להעביר ביקורת פומבית של מדיניותה של ישראל בשטחים. הוא אמר לאחרונה כי ישראל עושה דברים מזיקים כמו למשל ההתנחלויות הבלתי חוקיות. טרודו: “יש זמנים שאנחנו לא מסכימים עם בעלי הברית שלנו, ואנחנו לא נהסס לומרת זאת בקול רם. זהו עניין שחברים צריכים לדעת לעשות. כמו למשל ההתנחלויות שהן בלתי חוקיות”. שר החוץ דיון אמר באותו נושא קודם לכן את הדברים הבאים: “ההתנחלויות פוגעות ביכולת להגיע לפתרון צודק באזור”.
בנושא טרודו והרפר כתב ניצן הורביץ בעיתון ‘הארץ’ בין היתר: “ראש הממשלה החדש הוא איש פתוח, מתקדם ובעל חוש הומור. תשע השנים הרפר היו די והותר לקנדים. הם הבינו שהמדיניות התקציבית המרסנת שלו וההסתמכות העיוורת על חברות אנרגיה הביאו אותם אל עברי פי פחת. לעומת זאת טרודו נמצא בצד הנכון של ההיסטוריה. הוא כבר הציג ממשלה שווה של נשים וגברים”.
האם פיצה גנובה טעימה יותר: שישה שליחי פיצה נשדדו בססקטון לאחרונה
שישה נהגים שמובילים פיצות בריכבם נשדדו החל מסוף פברואר ובמהלך מרץ בעיר ססקטון. באחד מסופי השבוע נשדדו ארבעה שליחים ולאחר מכן נשדדו עוד שניים. המשטרה המקומית מאמינה שיש קשר בין כל ששת המקרים בהם משתתפים שני שודדים. המשטרה קוראת לנהגים להגביר את הזהירות ואמצעי האבטחה. עדיין לא ידועה זהות השודדים שכנראה גם מכורים למגשי פיצות חמות וטריות.
השודדים כנראה ממוצא אינדיאני (בגילאי 18-20) לבושים בשחור ופניהם מכוסות במסכות, פועלים בשעות הבוקר המוקדמות וחמושים בשלל של כלים מאיימים: צמידים מברזל, מפתח צינורות, מוטות מברזל וסכינים. צמד השודדים מאיים על הנהגים המופתעים וגונב את הכסף שבידם עם חלק מהפיצות שברכבם.
Shavei Israel founder and chair Michael Freund greeted the five women from Kaifeng – left to right, Gao Yichen, Li Chengjin, Li Yuan, Yue Ting and Li Jing – at Ben-Gurion Airport on Feb. 29. (photo by Laura Ben-David courtesy of Shavei Israel)
Last month, five women from the ancient Chinese Jewish community of Kaifeng arrived in Israel to fulfil their dreams of making aliyah, thanks to the Jerusalem-based nonprofit Shavei Israel.
The women – Gao Yichen (“Weiwei”), Yue Ting, Li Jing, Li Yuan and Li Chengjin (“Lulu”) – have been studying Hebrew and Judaism for several years in Kaifeng. Upon arrival in Israel, they were greeted by Shavei Israel chair Michael Freund, who took them straight from Ben-Gurion Airport to the Western Wall (Kotel) so they could thank God for helping them return to the land of their ancestors.
“Kaifeng’s Jewish descendants are a living link between China and the Jewish people,” said Freund, who succeeded in obtaining the requisite permission to bring the Chinese Jews on aliyah after several years of struggling with the Israeli bureaucracy.
“After centuries of assimilation, a growing number of the Kaifeng Jews in recent years have begun seeking to return to their roots and embrace their Jewish identity,” Freund said, adding that, “These five young women are determined to rejoin the Jewish people and become proud citizens of the Jewish state, and we are delighted to help them realize their dreams.”
Believed to have been founded by Iraqi or Persian Jewish merchants in the eighth or ninth century, Kaifeng’s Jewish community built a large synagogue in 1163, which was renovated throughout the years. At its peak, during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the Kaifeng Jewish community may have numbered up to 5,000 people, but widespread intermarriage and assimilation, and the death of the community’s last rabbi, brought about its decline by the early 19th century. Today, the community claims between 500 to 1,000 members.
Despite the pressure to assimilate, many Kaifeng Jews sought to preserve their Jewish identity and pass it down to their descendants, who continue to observe Jewish customs. Today, the community is experiencing a revived interest in its roots, and Shavei Israel has been providing support while helping some immigrate to Israel.
“Being part of the Jewish people is an honor, because of the heritage and wisdom,” said Li Jing, who on a brief previous visit to Israel put a note of prayer in the Kotel asking to return and live in Israel. “Now, my prayer has been answered,” she said.
The last time Shavei Israel was able to bring a group of Chinese Jews from Kaifeng on aliyah was in October 2009, when seven young men from the community arrived in the Jewish state. The organization has brought a total of 19 members of the Kaifeng Jewish community to Israel.
The five women plan to continue their Jewish studies at Jerusalem’s Midreshet Nishmat – The Jeanie Schottenstein Centre for Advanced Torah Study for Women, with the support of Shavei Israel, which will also cover their living expenses and support them as they prepare to undergo formal conversion by Israel’s Chief Rabbinate. Upon completion of the conversion process, they will receive Israeli citizenship.
Shavei Israel is currently active in nine countries and provides assistance to a variety of different communities such as the Bnei Menashe of India, the Bnei Anousim (referred to as the derogatory “Marranos” by historians) in Spain, Portugal and South America, the Subbotnik Jews of Russia, the Jewish community of Kaifeng in China, descendants of Jews living in Poland, and others. For more information, visit shavei.org.
“I didn’t come here tonight to pander to you about Israel,” Donald Trump told the AIPAC conference Monday evening, before proceeding to do exactly that.
In his unique rhetorical way, Trump ticked off every box on the AIPAC agenda, and then some. He also ticked off a number of rabbis and other delegates who condemned and protested his presence at the event. Trump’s history of making statements that are sexist and racist, his sluggishness at disavowing the support of neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klanners, his making fun of a disabled reporter and a litany of other offences convinced some AIPAC attendees that Trump should be either disinvited or boycotted.
They were wrong, because this was an opportunity for Trump to clarify or otherwise explain his behaviors. Of course, he didn’t, which was an opportunity missed. Trump came on – uncharacteristically – with a prepared text distributed in advance to media. What he read was a fulsome reversal of his statement just days earlier that he would be neutral between Israel and the Palestinians.
Trump’s repeated invocation of the term “believe me” is almost a verbal tic and it belies a tendency to express the unbelievable.
“Nobody respects women more than I do,” Trump told CNN Monday night. If we were to believe him, women would be among the only people Trump seems to respect. When any individual criticizes him, Trump lashes out with the most juvenile, personal and insulting terms, not least repeatedly referring to his fellow Republicans Cruz and Rubio as “Lying Ted” and “Little Marco.”
Within days, Trump pivoted from “neutrality” to a no-holds-barred defence of Israel that would make Binyamin Netanyahu (whom Trump calls “Bibby”) blush. The response he received from the AIPAC crowd verged on enthusiastic. Yet his conversion to Zionism may reflect little more than some good advice, a comparatively competent speechwriter and the ability to unabashedly pander.
Trump promised to dismantle the nuclear deal with Iran and he trashed the United Nations. “When I’m president, believe me, I will veto any attempt by the UN to impose its will on the Jewish state,” he said.
He condemned the Palestinian incitement of children to hate Israel and Jews. “In Palestinian textbooks and mosques, you’ve got a culture of hatred that has been fomenting there for years,” he said.
He promised to move the American embassy to Jerusalem.
In what amounted to his first significant expression of foreign policy, Trump waded in deep. He wants to reduce American commitments to NATO, specifically citing NATO’s obligation to defend Ukraine. What he doesn’t understand or doesn’t care about is that the United States and Britain made a deal with Ukraine – then the world’s third-largest nuclear power – to eliminate its arsenal in exchange for a promise of protection. Global reaction to Russian aggression betrayed that promise and Trump wants to rub salt in the wound.
This is an example of Trump’s lack of awareness on international affairs. Yet it is unlikely to hurt him with supporters, who forgive his every error and offence and who sometimes seem to idealize a world free of non-Americans.
On CNN after the speech, Trump was asked about the expressions of support he has received from neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klanners and antisemites. “I don’t want their support,” he said, adding: “I don’t need their support.”
Trump is indeed creaming his opponents in the primaries, and it may be a minor rhetorical thing, but would he take their support if he did need it?
Asked by Wolf Blitzer whether he would condemn violence by his supporters, Trump replied, “Of course I would, 100%, but … I have no control over the people.” Then he went on to note that “these people” have been disenfranchised – they lost their jobs and earn less money now than they did 12 years ago, as though this justified violence.
Had Trump’s AIPAC speech occurred in a vacuum – if he had just landed from the proverbial Mars and not for months been spouting hatred toward Muslims, Mexicans, women and anyone who opposes him – the speech might have deserved the applause it received.
Instead, his words were diametrically opposed to what he has said in the past and, even if they weren’t, they are coming from an individual who has done egregious harm to social relations and human decency in public discourse. Even if Trump said everything Jewish people and other friends of Israel wanted to hear, this would not detract from the other things he has said and the other people – including every Muslim in the world – he has deliberately and maliciously affronted.
“I’m going to be great for Israel,” Trump declared, and maybe he would be. But at what cost to the social fabric of his country and the place of the United States in the world?
“When I say something, I mean it, I mean it,” he crowed, despite his blatant reversals. “Believe me, believe me.”
Sayed Kashua spoke in Winnipeg as part of the University of Winnipeg’s annual Middle East Week. (photo by Rebeca Kuropatwa)
On Feb. 25, as part of the University of Winnipeg’s annual Middle East Week, about 75 people came out to hear what guest speaker Sayed Kashua had to say on the topic The Arabs in Israel: The Inaudible Cry for Full Citizenship.
Born and raised in Tira, Israel, Kashua is an author and journalist. His three novels – Dancing Arabs, Let it Be Morning and Second Person Singular – have been translated into English, with the stories of his first and third novels being combined to become the film Dancing Arabs. Among other things, he is the creator of the Israeli TV show Arab Labor and the subject of the documentary Forever Scared. His 2013 talk in Vancouver sold out.
At the recent Winnipeg event, Global College executive director Dean Peachey and U of W president Dr. Annette Trimbee welcomed Kashua and the audience to the U of W’s Eckhardt-Gramatté Hall.
Kashua moved with his family to Champaign, Ill., a year and a half ago, finding the “noise” in Israel too distracting.
“When we arrived,” he said, “I taught my kids two things: that people here stand in line and that, if you’re asked where you’re from, just say you’re from Jerusalem … and, according to their response, you’ll decide if it’s east or west.”
When Kashua enrolled his kids at school, he found himself stumped by the forms when he came to the question about race, as Arab was not listed.
“I almost checked off ‘other,’ but I was so worried about losing my visa within three days of landing in the States…. I almost signed my kids as Asians, because I can easily prove that Jerusalem is part of Asia…. I didn’t know what to do. I raised my hand and the nice lady asked how she could help. I said I don’t know what my race is. She asked where I was from. I said Jerusalem. So, she said that I’m from the Middle East … so, I’m ‘white.’ That was the point that I knew I loved Champaign.”
For the first time, Kashua was part of the majority.
It was not until he went to the United States that he was asked about Islamophobia. As a secular Muslim, he had to think about the question, and he decided that the more important aspect to him was his nationality.
However, he recently found out at a parent-teacher meeting that his son was going to prayer. Kashua asked the teacher which religion or faith his son was following.
“The teacher said, ‘What do you mean? [He prays] with the Muslims. You are Muslims?’
“I said, ‘Yes, but I had no idea that my son prays.’ It was shocking for us, how the majority defines you, and how my son who is only 10 already realized he belongs to the group of Muslim kids in their school.”
Kashua then spoke of his greatest influence in becoming a writer – his illiterate grandmother who had lost her husband in the Israeli War of Independence.
“She was illiterate, but she was intelligent and sharp,” said Kashua. “She always told me bedtime stories. Maybe writing for me is just [a way] to keep telling myself bedtime stories. She told me wonderful stories, sometimes fairy tales. A huge part of her stories were about the war.”
According to Kashua, most Palestinians who became citizens of Israel after the war – farmers and those who remained in their villages – were or are illiterate.
“In 1948, most Palestinian villages, especially on the shore, were demolished,” he said. His grandmother had stories about her husband, “who was shot in the war, killed in 1948.” Kashua’s father was born in 1947, “so he was less than 1-year-old when his father was killed.
“She told stories about how she was trying to protect her son, sometimes running in the wheat fields, trying to cover him, when the bullets were whistling around her … escaping to the mountains,” said Kashua. These were, he added, “my childhood stories, and, to me, it’s history. It was never part of our education system, we belong to the Israeli education system. We are Palestinians, but also Israelis … became Israelis after the war of 1948. The war is never mentioned in our history books.”
It was not until after the war that Kashua’s grandmother learned that she no longer had land. To his family, he said, that was a bigger loss than losing their house.
“My grandmother, who used to have a lot of land, became a worker, picking fruit for Jewish bosses, sometimes in her own private land, picking fruit in fields she planted herself,” said Kashua. “That’s a very strong feeling I received as a boy, about being a refugee.”
When Tira became part of Israel people received Israeli citizenship. They lived under a military regime he said, until 1966, just a few months before what he described as “the occupation of the West Bank,” noting that “the military regime meant you couldn’t leave your village without permission from the military officer in charge.
“My father was telling us [that] only on Israeli Independence Day, you didn’t need a permit. Kids would jump onto trucks to go to another town, just to see, for a chance to go out. Of course, they were forced in their schools to celebrate Independence Day with Israeli flags.”
Even today, according to Kashua, conditions are different in east Jerusalem than in west Jerusalem. He said that Palestinian Israelis do not have equal rights, and are discriminated against in all aspects of life.
With Tira’s population at 25,000 now – growing from 1,500 in 1948 – Kashua said that poverty and crime there is hard to control.
“Maybe, at the beginning, people wanted to defend our identity, language, culture and tradition, but that’s no longer the case. We are trying to escape the ghetto, but there are so many laws that forbid us to do so. That’s the situation, you are completely segregated.”
Kashua described Israel as an “ethnocracy.”
“It’s democratic only if you’re Jewish,” he said. “If democracy is judged by how it treats minorities, Israeli democracy is facing a very big problem with the Arab minority…. We are still considered a national threat, a demographic problem.
“If you look at the history, you will see that, since 1948 until now, it was very rare that Arab citizens of Israel were activist against or being a real threat to the security of Israel. All Israelis know that reality and they know we are completely discriminated against when it comes to all aspects you can think of – land, the ability to move from your village. The sad thing is, sometimes the slave feels like he needs the master more than the master needs the slave. You have no idea how strong of a feeling it is when you don’t have even the ability to dream.”
Kashua was fortunate to find a Jew willing to sell him an apartment in west Jerusalem. They were the only Arab family living there and this was one of the reasons they moved to the United States.
Kashua believes that Palestinians want to be citizens of Israel and that they do not want to destroy the state, but they do want equal rights, as well as acknowledgement for the suffering they feel they have endured since 1948. This is something Kashua does not see as possible with the current leadership in Israel.
A screenshot from the trailer for Avi Does the Holy Land. The vlog will appeal to some more than others.
Good satire depends not only on distancing the viewer from the object of ridicule, but on making them identify with it, if only just a little. For North American Jews who’ve grown up with affection towards Israel, a new video blog (or vlog) does just that.
Avi Does the Holy Land is a sendup of sex-drenched Zionism, a vlog that purports to tackle various hot-button aspects of Israel – “the most contentious state in the Middle East!” in the words of Avi, a “Canadian Jewess” who “went on a Birthright trip and fell in love with Israel.” (Haaretz has since revealed that Avi is Aviva Zimmerman, originally from Calgary, and now an Israel-based filmmaker.)
Through a website, a YouTube channel and a Facebook page, Avi covers such topics as how to beat terrorism, whether Palestinians are really oppressed or not, what to pack for Birthright, and the accusation, by Israel’s critics, of pinkwashing.
And, while Avi is a cartoonish, lipsticked character who perpetually seems perplexed by the sincerity of her interviewees, many of us will no doubt identify with at least a sliver of her carefree naiveté.
“Did I just give a blow job to a guy named Dudu?” she muses in one segment.
In my kibbutz-loving period of the early 1990s, it wasn’t a guy with the unfortunate name Dudu I fawned over, but another whose name in translation meant “ploughed field.” Giggling over his agricultural moniker while in ulpan class, my pals and I idealized his Zionist credentials.
In another scene, Avi wears a pink T-shirt emblazoned with an Uzi, the kind that pepper tourist shops throughout Jerusalem.
While I never wore clothing depicting an actual gun, I did rummage through the kibbutz lost and found one day and select a worn, burgundy T-shirt from a paratrooper, the kind Israeli soldiers design when they finish their basic training. (This one, from 1984, was extremely tame next to the tasteless ones appearing in more recent years – ones that promote rape and anti-Palestinian violence.) I later found the owner – a different strapping kibbutznik whose name meant cedar tree – but never did return it. Why would I? It had the perfect mix of soft fibres and Jewish power pedigree. All the better to wear while painting metal beams and bantering with the workers over never-ending tea-and-toast breaks in the kibbutz welding shop.
Avi Does the Holy Land’s web episode “Pride vs. Pinkwashing” is the most cutting in terms of political messaging. It involves alternating scenes of Avi doing what she “does best” – “dancing on a truck” at Tel Aviv Pride – and interviewing Rami Younis, a Palestinian writer and activist, over charges of Israeli pinkwashing. Calling Israel’s critics “belly-aching leftist sh–heads,” Avi muses over Younis being “hashtag superserious,” and finally suggests to him that perhaps if he drapes himself in a rainbow flag, Israel will treat him better.
It’s probably fair to say that I move in circles that are highly critical of the occupation and that, while I’ve taken a nuanced position on pinkwashing, still take the claim seriously. But I, too, have enjoyed a Tel Aviv Pride beach party, trying to order a vodka cocktail from a shirtless bartender and, in my distraction, confusing the Hebrew word for cranberries with that for paratroopers and enjoying my private little malapropism – a symbol of Diaspora idealization of Israel – for weeks after.
So is Avi “other”? Or is Avi “us”? For those who are distressed by the occupation and feel a gradual distancing from Israel through decades of government intransigence and illiberal moves intended to silence and intimidate human rights activists, probably a bit of both. And for those who don’t have a single critical word in their lexicon for the Jewish state, I’m really not sure. But I’d love to see their reaction.
Mira Sucharovis an associate professor of political science at Carleton University. She is a columnist for Canadian Jewish News and contributes to Haaretz and the Jewish Daily Forward, among other publications. This article was originally published onforward.com.
