בשבועות האחרונים מפגינים רבים יוצאים לרחובות בערים שונות ברחבי קנדה כדי למחות נגד הגעזנות והאפלייה בארה”ב, קנדה ובעולם כולו. (רוני רחמני)
קנדה התמודדה בשבוע שעבר עם פרשה הקשורה להפעלת כוח מופרז על-ידי שוטרים נגד בני מיעוטים. ראש הממשלה הקנדי, ג’סטין טרודו, הביע זעזוע עמוק מסרטון וידאו שפורסם ברבים ובו נראים שוטרים עוצרים תוך שימוש באלימות, את הצ’יף של הקהילה האינדיאנית האנדבוריג’ינית במחוז אלבטרה.
בסרטון, שאורכו שתיים עשרה דקות, נראים השוטרים בין השאר מכים את האיש, אלן אדם, בראשו. טרודו ציין לאחר שצפה בסרט כי יש לו שאלות רציניות בנוגע למה שקרה. הוא הוסיף שהחקירה העצמאית חייבת להיות שקופה ולהיעשות כך שנקבל תשובות. בה בעת שכולם יודעים שזה לא מקרה בודד. לדברי טרודו יותר מדי קנדים שחורים וילידים אינם מרגישים בטוחים בסביבת שוטרים. זה בלתי מתקבל על הדעת והממשלה חייבת לשנות את המצב הזה.
המחלקה האחראית על חקירת שוטרים במשטרת אלברטה בודקת כעת את האירוע. המשטרה הגישה נגד אדם כתב אישום בגין התנגדות למעצר ותקיפת שוטר. לדברי עורך דינו של הצ’יף, העימות כולו החל בגלל שפג התוקף של לוחית רישוי של רכבו.
בשבועות האחרונים מפגינים רבים יוצאים לרחובות בערים שונות ברחבי קנדה כדי למחות נגד הגעזנות והאפלייה בארה”ב, קנדה ובעולם כולו.
קנדה מתנגדת לתוכנית הסיפוח של ממשלת ישראל
סוכנות הידיעות הפלסטינית הרשמית (וופא) דיווחה לאחרונה כי קנדה הבהירה לרשות הפלסטינית, כי מתנגדת לתוכנית הסיפוח הישראלית של השטחים הכבושים. זאת כיוון שהסיפוח עומד בסתירה לחוק הבינלאומי.
על פי הדיווח של סוכנות הידיעות הפלסטינית, עמדת קנדה נגד הסיפוח נמסרה בשיחה בין שר החוץ של קנדה, פיליפ שמפיין, לבין שר החוץ הפלסטיני, ריאד אל-מאליכי.
שר החוץ הקנדי ציין כי אם קנדה תיבחר לחברה זמנית במועצת הביטחון של האו”ם, היא לא תחריש אלא תשמיע את קולה כדי לשמור על השלום והיציבות במזרח התיכון. וכן תפעל מול ישראל והפלסטינים כדי להשכין שלום בין הצדדים. בהקשר זה, קרא שר החוץ הפלסטיני לקנדה להמשיך בלחץ על ישראל כדי לסכל את תוכנית סיפוח השטחים, כולל באמצעות איום בסנקציות נגדה.
ראש ממשלת קנדה, ג’סטין טרודו, אמר לא מכבר כי העביר מסר ברור להנהגה בישראל בנוגע לתוכנית סיפוח השטחים הכבושים בציינו, כי קנדה סבורה שמהלך זה עלול לעכב את האפשרות להגיע לשלום בר קיימא במזרח התיכון ועל כן היא מודאגת מאוד מכך.
קנדה האריכה את איסור כניסת אוניות נוסעים לשטחה עד לסוף חודש אוקטובר
ממשלת קנדה האריכה את האיסור על פעילות אניות תענוגות בשטחה עד השלושים ואחד באוקטובר שנה זו. זאת עקב מגיפת הקורונה העולמית. שר התחבורה, מארק גארנו, הודיע על הצעדים המעודכנים בנוגע לאוניות התענוגות וספינות הנוסעים, וציין כי הממשלה מחויבת להגן על אזרחי קנדה, במיוחד בתקופה מאתגרת זאת. מסיבה זו הוא הכריז על צעדים עדכניים עבור אוניות תענוגות ואניות נוסעים אחרות בקנדה, שכוללים איסור פעילות של אוניות תענוגות גדולות במים קנדיים עד סוף חודש אוקטובר שנה זו.
על פי התקנות, אוניות נוסעים המובילות מעל למאה איש על סיפונן עם מקומות לינה לא יורשו להיכנס למים הקנדיים כאמור עד סוף אוקטובר. בנוסף אוניות נוסעים עם יותר משניים עשר איש לא יורשו גם להיכנס למימי החופים בקנדה (הארקטי, נונאציאווט, נונאוויק ולברדור) גם כן עד סוף חודש אוקטובר.
מעבורות, מוניות מים ואוניות נוסעים חיוניות אחרות צריכות ליישם התקנות חדשות, שלפיהן הן יפעלו עם מספר מופחת של נוסעים. ובנוסף עליהן לנקוט באמצעים שונים להתגוננות מפני המגיפה.
On June 4, New Brunswick resident Chantel Moore, originally from the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation near Tofino, B.C., was shot to death by a police officer sent to her home to check on her well-being. On May 27, Regis Korchinski-Paquet, an indigenous-black woman, fell 24 floors from her apartment during a police incident in Toronto.
In the United States, George Floyd died on May 25, after being pinned to the ground with a knee pressed into his neck for more than eight minutes by a police officer in Minneapolis. Breonna Taylor was killed March 13 in her bed in Louisville, Ky., in what amounts to a home invasion by police. Ahmaud Arbery was chased by three armed white neighbours and murdered on Feb. 23, while he was jogging in Georgia.
The challenge in compiling a list of names of black Americans and indigenous and racialized Canadians killed by police or lynched by vigilantes is choosing which from a horrifically long list of victims’ names to include. And the structural conditions that have led to this particular moment of upheaval are not new. Similar demonstrations have occurred after particularly egregious incidents, like the killing of Michael Brown by police in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014; Trayvon Martin, who was murdered in 2012 by a cop-wannabe; and the beating of Rodney King by police in Los Angeles in 1991. Again, the list of just the most familiar incidents could fill pages. And they are not limited to the United States.
Could this time be different? One thing that some Black Lives Matter proponents are noting is the apparently unprecedented engagement of non-black allies in this moment. Is this because we all have more time on our hands right now? Or have we reached a tipping point, when the lofty language of equality has finally penetrated deep into the mainstream of North American society?
There are parallel streams happening, from the issue of police violence to the broader matter of societal behaviour toward racialized people. These are exacerbated by the unpardonable conduct of the U.S. president. When Trayvon Martin was killed, then-president Barack Obama noted that, if he had a son, he would look like Trayvon. The current president tweets threats of violence and has police forcibly clear peaceful demonstrators so he can have a photo taken in front of a church he has never entered. In a country aflame, the president’s comportment is incendiary and perilous.
This is a time for our community, the Jewish community, to consider our complacency and complicity in upholding racist systems. It is, as American historian and author Ibram X. Kendi implores, not enough to be not racist. We must be actively anti-racist. We must stand in solidarity with those who are suffering and recognize that the pain of racism is also the pain of antisemitism.
The solidarity and support we crave when we are threatened is the solidarity and support we must give other communities when they are in need. Give your time to an anti-racism organization. Donate your money to support black-owned businesses and organizations working to support the black community. Pray for the healing that is so badly needed in our society. March for equality and justice (in a safe manner). Stand up when you see injustice or hear a “casually” racist remark. Sign your name to a petition asking decision-makers to step up and rein in the militarization of policing and the funding that gets diverted from community into the over-policing of racialized communities.
Interrogate Canada’s colonial history and the lived realities of indigenous communities. Ask our educators to explore with their students global histories and the untold stories of millions, including richer views of Jewish history and the experiences and contributions of Jews who are not of European descent. Read a work of fiction by a black or indigenous author. Learn about how black culture forms the bedrock of North American culture and from where those art forms come. Explore the history of the black community here in Vancouver and how the early Jewish community, along with other minorities, together have called Strathcona home.
Absorb the teachings of Abraham Joshua Heschel, who referenced the calls of the Hebrew prophets in the struggle for civil rights in the 1960s and who marched alongside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., for justice. If you’re already doing all of these things, share your knowledge and example with your family, your synagogue and the organizations and schools you support.
Some Jewish observers have expressed reservations about the Black Lives Matter movement, at least partly because the umbrella organization endorses the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel. This is an unfortunate and misguided move on their part, especially since BDS harms Palestinians in addition to Israelis. But the issue of black people – and people of colour in Canada and elsewhere – being murdered by police or lynched by racists must take precedence now. We can argue over Israel and Palestine later.
If one feels the need to prioritize Jewish or Israeli concerns at this moment, then let’s prioritize the safety of black Jews and Jews of colour. The vast majority of Jews are morally affected by what is happening in our society and black Jews are immediately and personally impacted both by what is happening in the world and by what is happening in our community around this issue.
Let us not pretend that this is not a “Jewish issue.” Rather, let us live by what is referred to as one of the “eternal religious obligations” of Judaism: “Justice, justice you shall pursue.”
Left to right: MP Joyce Murray, MLA Selina Robinson and Vancouver Councilor Sarah Kirby-Yung spoke at a June 3 webinar hosted by the Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee. (photos from the internet)
“Intense” was the word used by speakers from all levels of government to describe their experiences during the pandemic emergency.
In a June 3 webinar on Zoom, federal and provincial cabinet ministers and a Vancouver city councilor addressed COVID-19: What’s the New Normal? The event was hosted by the Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee.
Joyce Murray, member of Parliament for Vancouver-Quadra, is Canada’s minister of digital government, a role that took on sudden significance when even Parliament began operating virtually and almost all federal civil servants are being asked to work from home.
“It’s been an incredibly intense time,” she said. “I never thought I would work harder than I do as a minister in Ottawa, but I would say these last few months have been much more intense than I expected.”
A million Canadians were able to apply for the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) on the first day, which Murray said illustrates the scope and speed of the government’s electronic mobilization.
Responding to a question from an audience member, she acknowledged that there may be some inequities in the program – some people are earning more not working than a neighbour might earn on the job – but the decision was made to ramp up immediately, knowing that anomalies were likely.
The federal government has not decided when to reopen the U.S. border, Murray said. The current, extended closure ends June 21.
“Our primary focus is the safety of Canadians,” she said. “We’ll be taking the advice of public health officials and thinking about all of the different ramifications and make a decision when the time comes.”
The discussion was moderated by James Moore, a former Conservative MP, who pressed Murray on the unanticipated federal expenditures resulting from the pandemic.
“Fortunately, Canada entered this in a very strong fiscal position compared with most of its G-20 partners,” she responded. “So we were ready and able to respond and there is now approximately $150 billion in direct support to Canadians that has been put on the table. That makes it one of the most ambitious response plans in the world. But our view is that we had fiscal firepower, it was right to use it and it will help our economy emerge more quickly and more strongly when the pandemic allows us to do that safely. Our focus right now is on helping Canadians and getting that right.… We will return to a strong fiscal position when it’s time.”
Selina Robinson, British Columbia’s minister of municipal affairs and housing, noted that the provincial government stepped up with $5 billion in emergency funding.
“It would be very, very hard coming out of this if we had people who were evicted from their homes and couldn’t put food on the table,” said Robinson, who is MLA for Coquitlam-Maillardville. “I think everybody agrees that we needed to invest in people, so that they can continue to feed their families.”
Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry has warned that no pandemic in history has not had a second wave. Robinson said British Columbia and other jurisdictions are ready for that potential.
“I think we’re far better prepared for any future waves, given the experience we’ve had over the last few months,” she said.
Murray lamented the sharp rise in anti-Asian hate crimes, while Moore warned that U.S. President Donald Trump “is going to run for reelection against China, and not against Joe Biden” – he fears the repercussions for Asian communities in North America as a result.
Robinson said the Jewish community is uniquely placed to be allies to those affected by this phenomenon, as well as to racialized individuals during the parallel upheavals around race, police violence and Black Lives Matter.
“I’m really proud to be part of the Jewish community and knowing that our history as a Jewish community has historically stood up for these values, to make sure that there is space for everyone and for standing up when we see injustice,” she said. “We will continue to do that and I urge everybody who is participating to make sure that you use your voice however and wherever you can.”
Sarah Kirby-Yung, a Vancouver city councilor, also spoke from a personal perspective, noting that her immediate family is of Asian descent.
“I’m incredibly distressed when I hear from members of the Asian community, seniors and vulnerable people particularly, who are afraid to leave their home or go for groceries or are changing their pattern because of who they are,” she said.
Vancouver’s budget has taken a swift kick during the pandemic, but Kirby-Yung rejected the rumour that the city is approaching bankruptcy.
“We are looking at about a $150 to $200 million projected revenue gap for Vancouver through the end of 2020,” she said. “Vancouver is not going bankrupt. We are in reasonable shape, but it doesn’t mean that we don’t have to be very thoughtful about our spending in our decisions.”
Monday was International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Scrolling through social media, it was jarring to see the juxtaposition of images and ideas reflecting on that terrible history intermingled with the mundane and fantastical miscellany of everyday 21st-century life. This is the reality of our world: the grave realities of yesterday and today poking through the onslaught of witty memes, outrage over a vast range of real and imagined evils, cute kittens and the panorama of detritus and riches available to, and bombarding us, at every moment.
This is how it is. Even as we recommit ourselves to the promise of “never again,” still we carry on with our daily lives. Yet these realities are not, and should not be, disconnected from one another. The memory of the Holocaust and its victims, and the importance of listening to and learning from its survivors and its messages, are sacred obligations. But their lessons and meanings can and should be applied to the more commonplace events we experience. History is a prism through which we should view the present and the future.
Like the jarring extremes that can be found scrolling social media on Holocaust Remembrance Day, this collision of gravity and triviality is problematic. We recoil from inappropriate comparisons. Yet, in a world where legitimate causes struggle to be heard above the competing din, we often fall back on the most incendiary formulations, so every injustice becomes “fascism,” every leader we dislike a “Nazi.” This dilutes the seriousness of the history it invokes – and it also makes it more difficult to identify and draw attention to genuinely grave dangers, including literal fascism or fascist-adjacent ideas and actions emerging in Europe and closer to home.
The number of lessons to be drawn from the Holocaust are as innumerable as there are human behaviours. A relevant one for our time is the fragility of democracy and civil order. The actions of Raoul Wallenberg and Chiune Sugihara (click here to read story) are examples of a dystopic situation where good people are driven to break laws and norms promulgated by evil forces. In situations where democracy and social order are upended, goodness is criminalized and malevolence is institutionalized.
Democracy is under threat in much of the world right now. Human nature is such that we take for granted once-unimaginable wonders – gadgets in our pockets containing the breadth of human knowledge, the perceived right of every individual to live free from fear of tyranny – almost as soon as we access them. We forget that democracy is barely two centuries old and that it is not only imperfect but tenuous. With extraordinary ease, individuals of various stripes have managed to smother or at least severely disfigure nascent democracies in Russia, Poland, Hungary and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. A more established democracy in Turkey has been twisted away from its secularist, pluralist roots. The world’s largest democracy, India, is engaged in serious religious-based oppression.
In Israel, there are social forces and political parties pushing the extremes, as well. The Kahanist party, Otzma Yehudit, is aiming to again contest the March elections and has been rooting around the emerging electoral alliances for a slot. To his credit, Naftali Bennett, head of the New Right bloc and no raging moderate himself, rejects being in a tent with Otzma Yehudit and rightly warns other parties to steer clear.
And, in ways whose significance we may not yet be able to judge, the fabric of American democracy – checks and balances between branches of government – is being threatened. The president, indicted for attempting to extort our ally Ukraine to participate in political dirty tricks in exchange for desperately needed military funding to defend itself against the encroaching Russian military, seems destined to be exonerated by a Senate more concerned with party discipline than the rule of law, the constitution or human decency. If the probable outcome is realized, it will represent a blow to the grand ideals of the world’s oldest contemporary democracy.
Is raising this example itself a symptom of the problem we are discussing? Is it relevant and proper to discuss the American or Israeli situation in the same context as Russia, Poland or Hungary? Do we diminish the memory of the Holocaust by raising this topic in this perspective? Is it equally specious to assert that we won’t know, perhaps until it is too late, whether we should have been more or less vigilant when a man with little or no respect for norms of nicety or constitutionality ascended to the highest office in the democratic world?
This is the line we walk when we say “never again.” The magnitude of the history underpinning this promise is so enormous that we risk lessening it through invocation. Yet, if we isolate that history and its lessons, like good china saved only for the most special occasions, are we not conversely risking the very promise we undertake?
Actor and comedian Sacha Baron Cohen delivered the keynote address last month at an Anti-Defamation League conference. His words quickly went viral because he pinpointed fears and challenges shared by millions about the power of social media. He hit many nails on the head.
“Democracy, which depends on shared truths, is in retreat, and autocracy, which depends on shared lies, is on the march,” he said. “Hate crimes are surging, as are murderous attacks on religious and ethnic minorities. All this hate and violence is being facilitated by a handful of internet companies that amount to the greatest propaganda machine in history.”
He was referring to social media like Facebook and Twitter and platforms like YouTube and Google, whose algorithms, he said, “deliberately amplify the type of content that keeps users engaged – stories that appeal to our baser instincts and that trigger outrage and fear.”
Had Facebook existed in the 1930s, he went on, it would have run 30-second ads for Hitler’s “solution” to the “Jewish problem.”
Baron Cohen acknowledged that social media companies have taken some steps to reduce hate and conspiracies on their platforms, “but these steps have been mostly superficial.”
“These are the richest companies in the world, and they have the best engineers in the world,” he said. “They could fix these problems if they wanted to.” The companies could do more to police the messages being circulated on their sites, he suggested.
He’s correct about the problems. But the first problem with his solution is that he is asking a couple of corporations to judge billions of interactions, making them not only powerful media conglomerates, which they already are, but also the world’s most prolific censors and arbiters of expression. Of course, by abdication, they are already erring on the side of hate speech, but is the alternative preferable? If we think Facebook chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg has too much power now, do we really want to make him the planet’s censor-in-chief?
Yes, the platforms benefit from and, therefore, promote, the most extreme viewpoints. But, even if we could, would forcing those voices off the platforms make the world a safer place? There are already countless alternative spaces for people whose extremism has been pushed off the mainstream sites. Just because we can’t hear them doesn’t mean they’ve gone away.
Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian philosopher who declared “the medium is the message” died four years before Zuckerberg was born. He could have predicted that social media would change the way we interact and communicate. But has it fundamentally changed who we are? Or has it merely allowed our true selves fuller voice? Perhaps a little of both. Facebook, Twitter and the others are not agnostic forces; they influence us as we engage with them. But, in the end, they are mere computer platforms, human-created applications that have taken on outsized force in our lives. And all the input is human-created. Since the dawn of the industrial age, we have imagined our own inventions taking over and controling us, from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to 2001: A Space Odyssey’s Hal to Zuckerberg’s Facebook.
In all these cases, fictional or not, the truth is that the power remains in human hands. This is no less true today. We could, if the political will existed, shut down these platforms or apply restraints along the lines Baron Cohen suggests. But this would be to miss the larger point.
We live in a world filled with too much bigotry, chauvinism, hatred and violence. This is the problem. Dr. Martin Luther King said: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” And there are plenty of sites on social media that advance mutual understanding and love over hate. Are their messages as likely to go viral? Probably not. But that, ultimately, is determined by billions of individual human choices. A small but illuminating counterrevolution seems to be happening right now with a renaissance of the ideas of Mister (Fred) Rogers and his message of simple kindness. While much of the world seems alight in hatred and intolerance, a countermovement has always existed to advance love and inclusiveness. This needs to be nurtured in any and every way possible.
If Facebook were a country, its “population” would be larger than China’s. Bad example when we are discussing issues of free speech and the accountability of the powerful, perhaps, but illuminating – because an entity of that size and impact should be accountable. As a corporate body, it has few fetters other than governmental controls, which are problematic themselves. Concerned citizens (and platform users) should demand of these companies the safeguards we expect. We are the consumers, after all, and we should not ignore that power.
But neither should we abstain from taking responsibility ourselves. Social media influences us, yes. But, to an exponentially greater degree, it is merely a reflection of who we are. It is less distorted than the funhouse mirror we like to imagine it being. If what we see when we look at social media is a depiction of the world we find repugnant, it is not so much social media that needs to change, it is us.
Don Cherry and Ron Maclean on screen, in 2018. (photo by Ross Dunn/flickr.com)
For many Canadians, Don Cherry and his bombastic pronouncements about hockey, but, more importantly, about society and whatever pops into his head, have been like a tolerated, occasionally amusing uncle at the family table. An opinionated crank who seems like a throwback to an earlier, less refined time, Cherry has been coming into our living rooms for decades, part and parcel with our national pastime.
But there’s a limit.
Cherry was finally told to leave the family table Monday after a rant about “you people” – new Canadians, immigrants or, as people of his inclination might characterize them, “foreigners.”
“You people … you love our way of life, you love our milk and honey, at least you can pay a couple bucks for a poppy or something like that,” Cherry said on Hockey Night in Canada last Saturday, two days before Remembrance Day. His implication was that new Canadians do not wear poppies or perhaps do so in lesser numbers than Canada-born Canadians. The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council was inundated and paralyzed on the weekend by complaints from viewers. On Remembrance Day, Sportsnet, which broadcasts the program, pulled the plug.
Cherry was unrepentant: “I know what I said and I meant it. Everybody in Canada should wear a poppy to honour our fallen soldiers.”
But that wasn’t the context of what he said. His implication was clear: immigrants take the benefits of life in Canada but do not respect the sacrifices that built the country or those who made them. That’s a far different – and more xenophobic – thing than saying everyone should wear a poppy.
Already, of course, social media grumps and trolls are declaring this the latest case of “political correctness” run amok, akin to taking “all thy sons command” out of the national anthem and all the other modernizations that threaten the hegemony of the geezer class.
Times change. People adapt or they don’t. But there are consequences in either case.
“To keep my job, I cannot be turned into a tamed robot,” said Cherry.
On Sunday, vigils were held in many cities to commemorate the 11 worshippers killed at Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh on Oct. 27, 2018. The shooting was the deadliest attack on Jews in American history.
As we have mourned and taken greater measures toward protecting ourselves, we have, mainly, not let fear paralyze us or isolate us from our neighbours and the larger world. We have continued to live Jewishly, whatever that means to each one of us; whether it’s helping those less fortunate, lobbying for sound government policies, going to synagogue or simply being kind to the people we encounter in our day.
In Vancouver, community members and others could join two collective moments of remembrance on Sunday: the Jewish Federations of North America’s Pause with Pittsburgh, which included the livestreaming of a public memorial service, and a service at Congregation Beth Israel, organized by the Rabbinical Association of Vancouver with the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver, Hillel BC and the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver.
Over the weekend, Jews were also encouraged – as they were in the wake of the tragedy last year – to #ShowUpForShabbat, an initiative of the American Jewish Committee, calling for us “to honour the victims and raise our collective voice for a world free of antisemitism, hate and bigotry.”
Beth Israel’s Rabbi Jonathan Infeld, who grew up in Pittsburgh, told News 1130, “There are still many people who are frightened and worried about what took place a year ago…. There are people who are concerned about coming to synagogue and people who are concerned about antisemitism. Especially on holidays, one of the messages I deliver is that, unfortunately, antisemitism is on the rise in the world. But we have to remain strong, to have the courage to come to synagogue, and to not allow attacks like this to prevent us from being who we are and to deprive us of the benefits that come from being in a sacred space.”
Infeld also noted, “One of the aftermaths of the attack is that people in Pittsburgh didn’t feel this was an attack just on a synagogue, they felt it was an attack on Pittsburgh…. We have to understand an attack on any sacred space is an attack on an entire community, so we need to stand together as one community with the message that love is stronger than hate.”
While the situation is not as bad as elsewhere in the world, the number of hate crimes and the incidences of antisemitism in Canada, including in British Columbia, have increased worrisomely. Love has a long row to hoe. Not only to give us the courage to speak up in the face of prejudice, but also to confront and temper our own. Not only to make us self-assured enough to make space for those with whom we agree and for whom we care, but also for those with whom we disagree and whom we dislike. Not only to inspire us to dream of a better world, but to give us the imagination and resourcefulness to bring those aspirations into being.
Love can only be stronger than hate if we choose to make it so.
Marsha Lederman (photo by John Lehmann/Globe and Mail)
A few years ago, Marsha Lederman went with her mother, two sisters and a cousin on the adult portion of the March of the Living, which included a walk between the two main camps of the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex.
“The march from Auschwitz to Birkenau was somber and sorrowful, but it was also so empowering,” she recalled at the annual High Holidays Cemetery Service at Schara Tzedeck Cemetery in New Westminster Oct. 6. “We were marching with a statement to the world and a comforting message to the souls whose lives had ended so brutally on those grounds: ‘We are here, we are still living, we are multiplying, we remember you.’”
The family group proceeded to Radom, the town outside Warsaw where Lederman’s mother had grown up. The man who lived in the apartment where she had lived allowed them in and Lederman’s mother recounted her family’s years there.
“It was joyous,” Lederman said. “We were still on a high when we visited the memorial for the Radom Jews killed in the Holocaust. As I recall, it was in a fairly large square and seemed a little neglected. We were looking at this lonely memorial, the five of us women, when a group of, I would say, teenage boys began chanting something nearby. I don’t speak Polish, so I couldn’t understand what they were saying. But I did understand one thing: ‘Auschwitz-Birkenau.’ I don’t think they were offering their condolences.”
She reflected on the way she responded in that moment.
“We hurried away and said nothing. It was a safe thing to do, for sure. But, if that happened to me today, I would not walk away. I am done with walking away. Would I have put us in danger if I had turned around and confronted those boys? Maybe. But I know now that the real danger is in remaining silent.”
Lederman is the Vancouver-based Western arts correspondent for the Globe and Mail. Her father was born in Lodz, Poland, on erev Yom Kippur 1919. Her mother was born in Radom, Poland, in 1925. All four of their parents were killed in gas chambers at Auschwitz and Treblinka, as was Lederman’s father’s sister and little brother, and her mother’s little brother.
Lederman’s parents met in Germany after liberation and had one daughter there before moving to Canada, where they had two more daughters.
Lederman reflected on recent antisemitic incidents in North America and Europe, as well as her own encounters with antisemitism and racism, including a harrowing verbal attack on an Asian woman on the Skytrain at rush-hour, an incident in which Lederman was the only person to intervene.
“We have a duty to speak up,” she said. “We have a responsibility. This is our inheritance. I never had a bubbe or zadie to hug me or spoil me on my birthday or cook chicken soup for me. There’s nothing in my home that was theirs. I did not receive a single heirloom. But I did receive an inheritance – a duty to protect others from hate…. That is my inheritance and that is their legacy. Enough. Never again.”
She recalled being stunned during an interview with famed Vancouver photographer Fred Herzog, who died last month. Chatting after the main interview, Lederman asked the German-Canadian if he had experienced anti-German sentiment when he arrived here after the war. He launched into a discourse on the “so-called Holocaust” and said Jews died in the camps mostly because of lice and because Allied bombings prevented food from getting to them. Lederman agonized over whether to expose the admired photographer, eventually writing the story, for which she has been subjected to a range of criticism.
“Well, I have had enough,” she said. “And I’m going to fight to tell those stories and expose antisemitism and Holocaust denial and racism. I am not going to be quiet anymore. I think of all that was lost in the gas chambers; all the lives, of course, but also all the potential. With those millions of lives extinguished, what was lost with them? Poems were never written, beautiful artworks that were never painted, the cure for cancer, for Parkinson’s, the answer to the climate crisis?
“It was not just the people who were murdered that the world lost. It was all of their descendants and all of their descendants and all of that potential.… I talk about this because of what this leaves on our shoulders. I interviewed a Nisga’a poet, Jordan Abel, and he used a term to describe himself that I have adopted. He calls himself an intergenerational survivor of residential schools, which makes me an intergenerational survivor of Auschwitz. I do not take this lightly. With my parents’ survival came a hefty responsibility on me and on all of us who are descendants.”
At the service, Jack Micner, who led the ceremony and is also a member of the second generation, outlined a litany of antisemitic incidents and comments in Europe and North America in recent weeks.
“I suspect that those of our parents resting here in this cemetery would be furious to see what’s going on across the world,” he said. “We have to continue doing the type of work that VHEC [Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre] is doing in as many ways as we can think … it falls on us, because nobody’s going to do it for us.”
Rabbi Shlomo Estrin reflected on the loss of Chassidic communities during the Holocaust. Cantor Yaacov Orzech chanted El Maleh Rachamim.
Names were read of community members who have passed since the last High Holidays and a moment of silence was observed for the six million.
The Mourner’s Kaddish was recited by Jeremy Berger, a grandson of a Holocaust survivor. After the service ended, the Mourner’s Kaddish was also recited at the Holocaust Memorial in the cemetery.
The annual event is presented by the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre with Congregation Schara Tzedeck and the Jewish War Veterans, and with support from the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Vancouver.
Maxime Bernier’s performance at the federal leaders debate Monday night may have been unimpressive, and at times badgering, but no doubt some ears pricked up at his assertion that he is the only party leader whose position on immigration stands apart. True enough. He calls for about 150,000 immigrants annually, half the number now admitted.
The People’s Party leader was challenged at the get-go by a debate moderator who raised Bernier’s past comments about “extreme multiculturalism” and his use of the words “ghettos” and “tribes” to describe new Canadians.
Bernier will be lucky to win his own seat in Quebec and his actions in the debate probably didn’t win him a groundswell of supporters anywhere else. But the emphasis on immigration was notable. Slashing immigration in half, which could have detrimental impacts on the economy and growth of the country, would represent a huge number of people refused entry to Canada. But it’s not really about the numbers. It was the underlying message. Bernier was signaling to potential supporters that immigration is generally undesirable, with all the attendant impulses that message is intended to convey.
Hours before the debate, an Angus Reid Institute poll indicated that Canadians are split on the issue – and leaning in the direction of less immigration and tougher treatment for asylum-seekers. Forty percent of respondents said Canada takes in too many refugees, while 13% said we accept too few.
Bernier may not be the best messenger for the anti-immigration idea, but it is clear that there is a constituency in Canada for a politics that is exclusionary and plays on discriminatory tropes. All the main political parties are admirably standing firm against this impulse, for now. But it is worth keeping a close eye on this trend and reminding ourselves regularly that Canada is not immune from xenophobia.
Tony McAleer, who helped found the organization Life After Hate, spoke at Congregation Beth Tikvah last month, along with fellow Life After Hate member Brad Galloway. (photo by Pat Johnson)
A former leader in Canada’s far-right white nationalist movements says targets of white supremacist extremism should not be expected to “hug a Nazi.” But, as difficult as it may be, seeing the humanity in everyone and finding compassion for people who lack compassion may be key to reducing the problem of racist extremism.
Tony McAleer was a member of the so-called White Aryan Resistance and his early embrace of technology and the internet helped propel that movement into the digital age. He later helped found the organization Life After Hate and now works with others who want to leave the neo-Nazi movement. He shared his personal history at Beth Tikvah synagogue, in Richmond, on Sept. 8. He has also spoken at other synagogues and venues in recent weeks.
“While we condemn the activities, while we condemn the ideology, we don’t condemn the human being,” McAleer said of his organization’s strategy. “It’s coming from that place of compassion.… The hardest thing to do in the world is to have compassion for people who don’t have compassion. We do that as harm reduction – hurt people hurt people, and we can bring them back from that place of hurt so they don’t do it anymore.”
McAleer grew up in a stable, comfortable Dunbar home, which contradicts some stereotypes, he said. He attended private Catholic school but lost respect for authority figures when he caught his father with a woman who was not McAleer’s mother.
“Can anyone remember the day when God fell off the pedestal?” he asked. His grades fell, his behaviour deteriorated and he was regularly sent to the principal’s office for canings.
“When I look back on it, I don’t think that I’ve ever felt more powerless than I did in that office time after time after time after time,” he said. “It didn’t make my grades go up. I continued to tune out.… I went from listening to Elton John and Queen to the Clash and the Sex Pistols. I was angry and the music I listened to was angry. It eventually led me down the road into the punk scene and later into the skinhead scene. And, in the skinhead scene, I found an outlet for my anger.”
Ideology is secondary, at best, as an attractant to racist groups, he said.
“What we find in the young men and women who are drawn to these movements is there’s an underlying rage, underlying vulnerability that makes the ideology so seductive,” he said. “I want to be very clear here. I’m not for a minute blaming anything I did on my childhood. Everything I did I chose to do and I take accountability for that and I always will. I work for Life After Hate, do things like this to pay back for that.”
He shares the story of his early life as an explanation, not as a justification, he said.
“What I found in the movement, what I found from being a skinhead – I found a sense of power, a sense of purpose, a sense of meaning,” McAleer said. “I got power when I felt powerless. I got attention when I felt invisible and I got brotherhood, camaraderie and acceptance when I felt unlovable.… Those are the vulnerabilities that make the ideologies so seductive. If you have those in a healthy way, the ideology doesn’t make sense to you. But, for somebody craving those things, the ideology becomes something powerful, a false seduction.”
When he was 21 years old, McAleer’s girlfriend gave birth to a baby girl.
“For the first time, I connected to another human being. Up until that point, I was completely cut off from my heart, I was completely dehumanized,” he said. “I believe that the level to which we dehumanize other human beings is a mirror reflection of how internally disconnected and dehumanized that we are.”
That began the transformation. He had a son months later and was soon a single father being assisted by his mother who, he said, “never gave up on me.”
“It’s safe to love a child,” he said. “They see the magnificence in us when we can’t see it ourselves when we look in the mirror…. The more I can connect to my humanity, the more I can connect to the rest of humanity. I couldn’t connect to the rest of humanity because I couldn’t connect to myself.”
Though he was heavily involved in antisemitism, it wasn’t about Jews, he said.
“I was projecting my crap and I had a vehicle to project it onto – the Jewish people – and that’s what I did.”
The compassion Life After Hate promotes must be accompanied by healthy boundaries and consequences, he said.
“It doesn’t mean we let people off the hook. It doesn’t mean we don’t hold people accountable,” he said. “We do hold them accountable. It’s like tough love. But we need to see the humanity, even in someone whose heart is filled with hate. I don’t think we can afford to dehumanize anybody regardless of how inhuman their behaviour. I believe that nobody is irredeemable. It’s tough work.”
Brad Galloway, who is also a member of Life After Hate, joined McAleer at the event. Also a former white supremacist, Galloway is now completing a degree in the school of criminology and criminal justice at the University of the Fraser Valley. He researches extremism and participates in interventions with members of hate groups to help them leave the movements.
Galloway too came from a middle- to upper-class home. After a fairly typical adolescence and a period of struggling to find his identity, he ran into a childhood friend who was involved in the white power movement.
“I was looking for an identity,” said Galloway. “I was looking for something to belong to, something that I can call my own. He gave me the chance. We’ll give you brotherhood, we’ll back you up, we’ll be there for you … some sort of pseudo-support network which never, never came to fruition. They never provided any of those things for me.”
Brad Galloway (photo by Pat Johnson)
Like McAleer, it was fatherhood that made Galloway realize his extremism was putting his family at risk.
He also reflects on compassion he received from police and others during his time in the far-right.
“Why do these people care about me?” he wondered, adding that he began to recognize that individuals who were kindest to him were often members of the very cultural groups he demonized. After a gang brawl where Galloway was nearly killed, he saw compassion in action.
“I ended up in a hospital and I’m lying on the table and a doctor walks in and he’s an Orthodox Jew. I’m lying there with a swastika shirt on, blood all over me, thinking this guy should not help me. I do not deserve to be helped at all right now…. I felt like I was a terrible person and I didn’t feel I deserved this person’s time,” said Galloway. “He did not mention anything about me. He just did his job as a doctor and provided me exactly what I needed. That moment made me start to think about all these different times when minority communities had been good to me.”
Since the racist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, Life After Hate has been inundated with requests for help. About 300 new cases have opened, about half of which are people trying to leave the movement, the other half family seeking help to extricate their loved ones.
Cpl. Anthony Statham, one of two members of the RCMP’s B.C. Hate Crimes Unit also spoke, outlining the legal strategies employed to fight extremism.
McAleer’s book, The Cure for Hate: A Former White Supremacist’s Journey from Violent Extremism to Radical Compassion has just been released by Arsenal Pulp Press.
