Desmond Cole’s book sparked deep conversations among teachers about racism. Where is the introspection in media?

2020/05/21 Leave a comment

I expect part of the reason has to do with the shrinking newsrooms and employment insecurity compared to the stable number of teachers and job security that provide more time for these discussions:

If there’s one thing The Skin We’re In by Desmond Cole makes clear, it is how integral racism is to Canadian life. It winds its way through the justice system, military decisions, child welfare, the education system and of course, the media, and leaves in its wake a trail of destruction for many, but particularly cruelly for Black, First Nations, Inuit and Métis people.

The burden of educating society always falls on those with the least — not just the least amount of wealth but the least social capital, too. The people society is accustomed to ignoring have to make themselves heard, be taken seriously and then force a change in behaviour. This is gargantuan cross-generational work, and Cole’s national bestseller, much like Robyn Maynard’s Policing Black Lives, is also an ode to that resistance.

One example of that resistance, the work of influencing change, that The Skin We’re In inspired, was a series of conversations among Ontario teachers.

Colinda Clyne, an Anishinaabe woman and curriculum lead at the Upper Grand District School Board, had read the book and appreciated how Cole wove together colonial history and anti-Indigenous racism with anti-Black racism. “There are many great resources to support one or the other, but not often together, and rarely with the Canadian context,” she said. Late in March, she sent out feelers to see if fellow teachers would be interested in a discussion based on this book, expecting a discussion involving about 10 people.

Instead, she ended up hosting a weekly panel titled “Anti-Racist Educator Reads” on VoicEd Radio, an educational broadcast/podcast site, with more than 500 listeners on the fifth and final week, May 13, that featured Cole himself. (For those who missed the discussions, the episodes are online.)

The people tuning in, Clyne said, were “mostly white educators with thoughtful reflections on the learning and unlearning they were doing with the book and our conversations, and the actions they were willing to commit to. It gave me a boost of hope for this anti-racism work in a way that I have not felt in a long time.”

The discussions ran deep, including the impact of police presence in schools, how Canada’s “humble colonialism” plays out in society and schools, what ignorance on racism looks like and the easily dismissed but vital role of anger to bring about change.

A sketch note by educator Debbie Donksy of a panel discussion of Anti-Racist Educator Reads that aired April 22 on VoicEd Radio in which curriculum lead Colinda Clyne hosted Camille Logan, a superintendent of education, and Kevin Rambally, a social worker and former chair of Pride Toronto.

I listened with envy to these conversations between Clyne and other leaders in anti-racism education from various Ontario school boards such as Debbie Donsky, Pamala Agawa, Melissa Wilson, Tisha Nelson and Camille Logan.

The education system is nowhere near where it should be in terms of nurturing all students with care. But teachers are at least engaging in these critical and uncomfortable reflections. Clyne also seeks an action that teachers can commit to. While I’m not one to pat people for being at the “at least it’s a start!” stage, I raise it to make the point that other sectors are not even there.

A case in point is my own industry. Journalists are duty bound to demand accountability — but this is rarely focused inward. Race and attendant issues are an extra or an “inclusion” issue, maybe even as a new-fangled lens of discussion that could bring in new audiences. It’s why solutions look like hiring a journalist of colour or two, using images of racialized people to suggest representation or speaking to a few sources of colour.

As a journalist, Cole makes extensive references to media in his book. Of course, he mentions his fallout with the Toronto Star. His blunt reporting on CBC and CTV reporters’ rude — and chiefly arrogant — questioning of Indigenous elders and activists at a 2017 press conference on the inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Canada (MMIWG), should at least make every journalist squirm.

But I don’t hear of critical inquiry-based collective reflections in newsrooms based on that or on Cole’s highly contextualized reporting of Black Lives Matter shutting down the Pride Parade in 2016. For instance, “What role did white supremacy play in guiding our coverage on it?”

Or, “Did media, with our overwhelming whiteness, have the authority or even a balanced perspective in declaring the MMIWG inquiry’s conclusion of genocide as wrong?” Or, “Whose voices did we privilege in the Wet’suwet’en pipeline protests?”

No, journalists are supposed to be a bunch of eye-rolling cynics, the know-it-alls above self-reflection. There are, after all, “real” crises to be dealt with every day. Discussions on racism are usually held among journalists of colour, on the sidelines to the main business of journalism. In newsroom after newsroom, these journalists tell me, they struggle to be heard.

That explains why it’s taken weeks after Canada was hit by the global pandemic for media to start waking up to who was most badly hit — Indigenous and racialized people — and that too after relentless advocacy by rights groups and by the bravery of those risking everything to tell their stories.

In education, too, one of the issues raised through the VoicEd Radio episodes, “are the barriers constantly put in place in our systems, a big one being denial of white supremacy and that folks ‘aren’t ready’ to have the conversations and do the work of anti-racism,” Clyne said.

It’s worth reflecting, across sectors, on who these folks who aren’t ready are, and why, when lives are at stake, we feel compelled to wait for them at all.

Source: Shree ParadkarDesmond Cole’s book sparked deep conversations among teachers about racism. Where is the introspection in media?

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Saudi Arabia is buying shares of Alberta’s oil sands companies. The ‘ethical oil’ argument is dead.

2020/05/21 Leave a comment

As I worked with a number of those mentioned in the article, couldn’t resist reposting this. Alykhan Velshi, a really bright guy, has of course in a further irony, ended up shilling for Huawei despite the overall Conservative suspicion of China:

When Norway’s massive pension fund announced that it had sold its positions in major Canadian energy companies like Suncor and Canadian Natural Resources, Alberta’s premier came out swinging. “To be blunt,” Kenney told reporters last week, “I find that incredibly hypocritical.” After all, he said, Norway continues to develop its own oil and gas resources, including the 2.7 billion barrels that are contained in the new Johan Sverdrup field that is already producing 430,000 barrels of oil per day.

For those of a less pugilistic orientation, Norway’s decision might be seen as a prudent act of financial diversification; one that Alberta could easily emulate if it wanted to. If Norway is already producing oil and benefitting from the tax revenue and jobs it creates, there’s no need for them to double down by also investing their one-trillion-dollar nest egg in companies that also depend on the price of oil. This isn’t a philosophy that’s particularly popular in Alberta, mind you, given Alberta Investment Management Corporation’s well-documented history of being more heavily exposed to the energy sector than other pension funds.

But while Kenney was quick to call out Norway’s alleged hypocrisy in selling their shares of oil sands companies, he has so far remained silent about the news that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund was busy buying them. As Bloomberg reported last week, it now owns 2.6 per cent of Canadian Natural Resources, and two per cent of Suncor, which makes it the eighth and 14th largest shareholder in the two companies respectively. Ironically, it also added to its position in Equinor, the Norwegian company that’s developing the Johan Sverdrup field.

As Premier, Kenney has been at the forefront of recent efforts to paint Canadian oil and gas as more “ethical” and therefore more worthy of investment. This narrative, which was first advanced by Ezra Levant, has been deployed most visibly in the conversation about the Energy East pipeline and the decision by New Brunswick’s Irving Refinery to buy its oil from Saudi Arabia rather than Canada. But Kenney’s affiliation with it goes back much further than that. It was his former director of communications and parliamentary affairs, Alykhan Velshi, who created the “Ethical Oil Institute” in July 2011, and his former executive assistant, Jamie Ellerton, served as its executive director between January 2012 and April 2013.

Kenney is hardly alone in his fondness for Levant’s narrative, though. Its core tenets—namely, that Canada’s legal, environmental and regulatory standards make our oil more inherently virtuous—are practically articles of faith in the oil and gas industry. In an interview with the Calgary Herald, Nancy Southern, the CEO of Atco and a founding member of the Business Council of Alberta, was quick to invoke it: “I think it is time for people to stand up and demonstrate true moral leadership about the fact that the world is better because of petroleum products,” she said.

But if Saudi Arabia’s oil is a conduit for its anti-democratic and values, as ethical oilers like to argue, then what about its money? That money comes from the sale of its own ethically-challenged oil. Suncor and Canadian Natural Resources can’t prevent Mohammed bin Salman or the Saudi Public Investment Fund from buying their shares, but those who have been more than happy to bang the drum about Saudi Arabia’s moral and ethical failings could speak up here.

So far, though, they’ve been conspicuously silent. Take Eric Nuttall, a fund manager with Ninepoint Investments and a frequent purveyor of the ethical oil narrative. In a recent tweet, he sounded positively delighted by the development, and made no mention of the ethical dimensions of Saudi Arabia’s money. “So much for Canadian oil companies not being attractive to foreign investors!” He wrote. “We are 100 per cent invested in Canada given highly attractive valuations and improving takeaway capacity and it’s interesting that Saudi Arabia agrees with us.”

In fairness to the industry, it’s hardly alone in speaking out of both sides of its mouth about Saudi Arabia. The federal government recently renegotiated a $14 billion deal that will allow the sale of Canadian-made light-armoured vehicles to the kingdom (a deal that was originally struck by the Harper government back in 2014). And MBS hasn’t been shy about using Saudi Arabia’s wealth to buy its way into companies and communities throughout the west, including a recent bid to buy the English Premier League’s Newcastle United football club.

But if Canadian oil and gas companies are going to accept Saudi Arabia’s money, it’s probably time for their proxies to retire arguments about the immorality of their oil. After all, as Jason Kenney will tell you, nobody likes a hypocrite.

Source: Saudi Arabia is buying shares of Alberta’s oil sands companies. The ‘ethical oil’ argument is dead.

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‘GOD TV’ spat exposes tensions between Israel, evangelicals

2020/05/19 Leave a comment

Not surprising. Always was an uncomfortable alliance:

An evangelical broadcaster who boasted of miraculously securing a TV license in Israel now risks being taken off the air over suspicions of trying to convert Jews to Christianity.

The controversy over “GOD TV” has put both Israel and its evangelical Christian supporters in an awkward position, exposing tensions the two sides have long papered over.

Evangelical Christians, particularly in the United States, are among the strongest supporters of Israel, viewing it as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, with some seeing it as the harbinger of a second coming of Jesus Christ and the end of days.

Israel has long welcomed evangelicals’ political and financial support, especially as their influence over the White House has risen during the Trump era, and it has largely shrugged off concerns about any hidden religious agenda.

But most Jews view any effort to convert them to Christianity as deeply offensive, a legacy of centuries of persecution and forced conversion at the hands of Christian rulers. In part because of those sensitivities, evangelical Christians, who generally believe salvation can only come through Jesus and preach the Gospel worldwide, rarely target Jews.

When “GOD TV,” an international Christian broadcaster, reached a seven-year contract earlier this year with HOT, Israel’s main cable provider, it presented itself as producing content for Christians.

But in a video message that has since been taken down, GOD TV CEO Ward Simpson suggested its real aim was to convince Jews to accept Jesus as their messiah. The channel, known as “Shelanu,” broadcast in Hebrew even though most Christians in the Holy Land speak Arabic.

“God has supernaturally opened the door for us to take the Gospel of Jesus into the homes and lives and hearts of his Jewish people,” Simpson said in the video.

“They’ll watch secretly, they’ll watch quietly,” he added. “God is restoring his people, God is removing the blindness from their eyes.”

In a subsequent video, Simpson acknowledged that the channel was under investigation by Israeli authorities, saying that preaching about Jesus in Israel is a “very touchy subject.” He apologized for any offensive remarks and said GOD TV would comply with all regulations.

Freedom of religion is enshrined in Israeli law, and proselytizing is allowed as long as missionary activities are not directed at minors and do not involve economic coercion.

The Communications Ministry said it was investigating a “discrepancy” between the application for the license that was granted in March, which said the channel was focused on the Christian community, and its actual content, which appears to “target Jews and convince them that Jesus is the messiah.”

HOT said in a statement that it was not responsible for the channel’s content and has been “fully transparent” with authorities.

GOD TV was founded in the U.K. in 1995 and eventually grew into a 24-hour network with offices in several countries. Its international broadcasting licenses are held by a Florida-based non-profit. It claims to reach 300 million households worldwide, and Simpson was among the participants at a high-level Christian media summit hosted by Israel last year.

Simpson denied trying to convert Jews to Christianity. He said Jews who accept Jesus as the messiah can continue to practice their faith, a reference to Messianic Jews, popularly known as Jews for Jesus.

The Messianic movement, which emerged in its modern form in the 1970s, incorporates Jewish symbols and practices — including referring to Jesus by his Hebrew name, Yeshua — but is widely seen as a form of Christianity. All major Jewish denominations reject it, and Israel considers Messianic Jews to be converts to another faith.

“There’s no such thing really as the Messianic movement,” said Rabbi Tovia Singer, who leads an organization devoted to countering missionary activity aimed at Jews. “It’s a dog whistle, it’s a name that’s used by evangelical Christian Protestants.”

He said Simpson’s willingness to speak openly about conversion reflects the growing influence of evangelical Christians in both Israel and the United States.

“They feel bulletproof to say these kinds of things and what their real agenda is,” he said.

Rev. Malcolm Hedding, the former executive director of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, an umbrella group for Christian Zionists, said Christians only share their faith when asked, and denied they have any secret agenda.

“Evangelical support for Israel is not based on prophecies but on promises that God gave to Abraham 4,000 years ago,” he said. “We cannot, and should not, let the arrival of a TV channel in Israel impact negatively on the well-being of a movement that for decades now has brought about a new day in Jewish Christian relationships.”

At least one prominent evangelical supporter of Israel has criticized GOD TV for airing missionary content aimed at Jews, saying it encourages anti-Semitism.

“In recent decades, millions of Christians have felt the call to stand with the State of Israel and the Jewish people with no hidden agenda,” said Laurie Cardoza-Moore, a Tennessee-based evangelical who hosts a program called “Focus on Israel” that previously aired on GOD TV.

“Any attempts to convert Jews or downgrade their religion will only sow undue hatred at a time when we should unite in the face of darkness,” Cardoza-Moore said.

Daniel Hummel, the author of a book on evangelicals and Israel, says Christian Zionists have “more or less learned” that Messianic Judaism’s presence in the movement is “politically unwise.”

“The issue always continues to simmer, but the precedent was set (in the 1970s) and grew stronger that any Christian organization wishing to work in Israel or be at all close to the center of political action in the (Christian Zionist movement) would need to publicly disavow at minimum coercive evangelization.”

Simpson says GOD TV has hired lawyers to resolve the issue and is determined to stay on the air.

“The last thing we want to do is to cause division over there,” he said. “We love Israel.”

Source: ‘GOD TV’ spat exposes tensions between Israel, evangelicals

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COVID-19 and African Canadians: a festering, unresolved problem

2020/05/19 Leave a comment

Former Nova Scotia Senator Don Oliver. I would suggest, however, that any enquiry regarding COVID-19 failings and lessons learned include a focus better data regarding the impact on different minority and socioeconomic groups, not just focussed on African-Canadians:

COVID-19 has bluntly shown all of us that African-Canadian front-line essential workers have been disproportionally affected with this highly contagious and deadly virus, even without supporting comprehensive scientific data. We now know that visible minority researchers throughout Canada have been demanding the collection of race-based and socio-economic data for years, because it is required to determine future public policy and, specifically, now for the containment of COVID-19.

And throughout North America, as we now sit in the shadow of another serious wave in which thousands more people will likely die, we have no more time to waste before collecting the requisite demographic race-based data, and then formulating public policies that will build more socio-economic equity into Canada’s health-care system and thereby save precious lives. Many enlightened political leaders—from the governor of New York state, to the premier of Ontario—are now demanding that accurate scientific race-based data be collected and analyzed.

We’ve all changed. No more handshaking. No more hugs of sympathy and condolence. We must now observe a two-metre social distancing. And we’ve likely spent more time at home either alone or with family than any other times in our lives. And that, too, was something very different. When our economies reopen, what will it look like and what must be done to treat all citizens fairly?

Our new, somewhat challenging, reality is the result of the sudden eruption and spread of COVID-19, and so we are now facing one of the most contagious and deadly viruses our modern society has ever met. Thousands have died and, sadly, it will be months before the carnage subsides in Canada.

This is a new coronavirus, and very little is known about it and its behaviour. But we do know for certain that it is lethal and that there is no known cure. Leading medical experts around the world willingly admit they are learning on the job each week as they observe things, like the COVID-19 massive inflammation in certain patients’ lungs that even the best ventilators cannot manage. But the good news is that thousands of Canadians who have tested positive are now fully recovered.

The pandemic has raised many fundamental, but painful questions for me and I trust for all our governments, provincial and federal. These questions include: have all Canadians had equal access to our health-care system to fight COVID-19? Is social equity in short supply? Have the poor and the homeless had equal access to hospitalization, treatment, and cures? Are any Canadians being sidelined because of issues of gender, geography or race?  

I try to keep current with the efforts our excellent scientific researchers and medical teams. There were times over the last three months that I felt sadness and anger when each day I read of the gross injustices and intrinsic unfairness in the treatment of three distinct groups of Canadians: our seniors, including some with special health needs in nursing homes and long-term care facilities where the death rate is totally unacceptable; people of colour or African-Canadians, particularly front-line essential workers and the poor and disabled; and other front-line health-care workers, doctors, nurses, orderlies, janitors. 

Our seniors are entitled to the same medical treatment and care and social equity as other Canadians, notwithstanding their age and pre-existing medical conditions. The other two groups are putting their lives on the line for us every day and, regretfully, thousands of them across Canada are testing positive to the virus, and don’t even have the fundamental protective equipment for doing the job properly. I’m referring to basic gowns, gloves, face masks, shields, and sanitizers, all known as PPEs. 

The COVID-19 pandemic is not over yet, but in this period of post-pandemic planning all levels of government must pick up the reins and help design, develop, and implement some forward-looking, creative public policies that will ensure these gross injustices will stop, and cease to exist. These public policies must go to the root of the problems that seniors face, and embrace substantial, fundamental change even to the structure, architecture, and internal layout of long-term nursing facilities that can accommodate concepts such as social-distancing.  

I am delighted to see that many groups in the three levels of government in Canada have already made very extensive systemic changes into their long-term planning for the protection of the front-line health-care workers, by warehousing excess masks, gowns, gloves, etc.  

But stockpiling PPEs is only part of the solution for African-Canadians and visible minorities on the front lines. Reliable Canadian race-based data and statistics are hard to come by, but our Canadian circumstances are akin to our American brothers and sisters. We share long-standing health and socio-economic disparities that make us highly vulnerable to pandemics like COVID-19. 

Consider this. One-third of the people who have died from the coronavirus in the United States so far have been African American, and they only represent 14 per cent of the U.S. population today. When I began writing this piece, there were 2,900 deaths in Michigan, just to the south of our border. Some 40 per cent of those deaths were African-American even though they represented only 14 per cent of the population. And in St. Louis, 21 deaths and 64 per cent of those COVID-19 deaths were African-Americans. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s report on race-based data that was just released specifically pointed out a wide racial disparity: 83 per cent of patients with COVID-19 in hospitals it studied in Georgia were African American. In the U.S., the so-called front line is disproportionately Black and Latino. 

In Canada, it is likewise disproportionate Black and visible minority, particularly for our front-line essential workers. I’m not just referring to cleaners and janitors inside a hospital. I refer to front line: public transportation workers in buses, trains, subways; building and cleaning services, garbage collection, grocery and convenience store workers, courier services, postal services, food delivery services, etc.; areas where so many of our Blacks and visible minorities are such a significant part of the workforce, and  that, during the pandemic has been starved of essential PPE’s. The best contemporary example is the visible minority, essential, front-line workers in Cargill plants in Alberta. The infection rate and deaths are astounding.    

Why is it that African Canadians suffer long-standing health and socio-economic disparity? What are the three levels of government planning to do about it? Well, I have seen little, if any, government interest or initiative to make the systemic changes required to interrupt the structural racism that confronts our Black front-line workers. Where were their masks, gloves, and other protective gear required for their employment? Where are the rules and government regulations that make it mandatory that African-Canadians can participate in the social equity that is part of the Canadian mosaic?  

As I said earlier, community and national groups have been lobbying governments for years about the need for some demographic race-based data that could now include questions on the number of deaths; the number of hospitalizations; the number of those testing positive for COVID-19; and data to demonstrate African-Canadians disproportional medical access challenges. 

OmiSoore Dryden, the James R. Johnston Chair in Black Studies at Dalhousie University, was quoted recently by the CBC to have said, referring to the United Nations Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, that: “they specifically mentioned that during this pandemic we need to respond to the lack of representation in high-level decision-making specific health risks among Black communities, racial discrimination and implicit bias that may pervade and continue to pervade in pandemic policy-making.”

In a recent, powerful op-ed by Paul Deegan and Kevin Lynch, headlined “A Roadmap for Canada after the Pandemic,” they recommended inter alia the federal government set up committee of respected commissioners across the political spectrum under the Inquiries Act, to investigate, in a comprehensive way, five special heads, including taxation and the economy, but nothing specific to the systemic racial problems facing African Canadians. I recommend that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau establish, this June, a committee under the Inquiries Act to study the various systemic problems in Canada that make African Canadians more vulnerable to COVID-19. 

The inquiry could be headed by eminent Black jurist, Justice Michael Tulloch of the Ontario Court of Appeal. It could include other eminent Canadians, like Rona Ambrose, Jean Charest and John Manley, in addition to an equal number of eminent African Canadians and visible minorities, including Candace Thomas and Sharon Ross. Their preliminary report must be provided to the government no later than Jan. 31, 2021. The research division of the inquiry commission must include the finest researchers available in Canada. This inquiry is my personal vision for how we can eventually prevent so many innocent African Canadians from dying in such staggeringly high numbers from this and other contagious diseases. 

Prime Minister Trudeau should also immediately establish a new government Department of Diversity headed by an eminently qualified African Canadian to oversee and implement the various recommendations of the above commission and others that may report. This pandemic will be with us for some time, so we must act now to save more lives.  

Donald H. Oliver is a former Nova Scotia Senator who retired from the Senate in 2013. 

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ICYMI: Jewish Americans Say They Are Scapegoated For The Coronavirus Spread

2020/05/19 Leave a comment

Less than Asian Americans I suspect, but still of concern:

American Jews are finding themselves in a historically familiar position: Scapegoated for a plague.

Some of the first New Yorkers to contract the coronavirus were Jews in the Orthodox Jewish communities in and around New York City. In the weeks that followed, several Jewish weddings and funerals were held in violation of public health orders. Then came statements from public officials singling out Jews, and anti-Semitic threats on Facebook.

After New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio witnessed the NYPD break up a large funeral in Brooklyn for a prominent rabbi, the mayor tweeted: “My message to the Jewish community, and all communities, is this simple: the time for warnings has passed.”

De Blasio was condemned by fellowDemocrats and American Jews. There is no data indicating religious Jews are violating social distancing rules at a greater rate than other demographic groups. While there have been high-profile incidents of police disrupting Jewish gatherings, the NYPD has also made arrests of various sorts for failing to practice social distancing, like at a Brooklyn barbershop and at a Manhattan “marijuana party.” And pictures of throngs hanging out at parks and closely congregatingfor the Navy Blue Angels and Air Force Thunderbirds flyovers indicated that not social distancing isn’t a problem specific to a particular religious group.

De Blasio later said that he “spoke out of real distress that people’s lives were in danger.” He added: “I regret if the way I said it in any way gave people a feeling of being treated the wrong way, that was not my intention. It was said with love but it was tough love, it was anger and frustration.”

By some accounts, religious Jews in certain neighborhoods of New York City have been stricken by the virus at high rates. At the same time, Jews who have recovered from the virus have donated plasma in extraordinary numbers in an effort to save others.

In early March, Yaacov Behrman, a community leader and Hasidic Jewish activist, rushed to get ahead of the virus by marrying his bride, Shevi Katzman, after an engagement of just a week-and-a-half. They had a socially distanced wedding across two Brooklyn backyards — with a few siblings, no cousins, two witnesses and a rabbi, and 2,500 people watching on Facebook Live.

“I think that’s what’s so painful and upsetting about it, about the mayor’s tweet, [is] the vast majority of Orthodox Jews have given up [something] — I gave up a wedding,” Behrman said. “What are you generalizing for, Mr. Mayor? It’s like going to the park and saying, ‘My message to the yuppies,’ you know?”

Behrman said he does not believe the mayor is anti-Semitic, but Jews should not have been singled out.

“The organizers of the funeral [de Blasio tweeted about] were 100% wrong — it was an embarrassment, it was an embarrassment to me as an Orthodox Jew, it was an embarrassment to me as a New Yorker,” he said. “But I also want to make it clear, you look around New York, everyone is becoming lax unfortunately.”

Yet there’s a pattern of specifically highlighting Jewish offenders. In Lakewood, N.J., where early on in the pandemic police made arrests at large Jewish gatherings, a local news station reported that a school bus was carrying children to a Jewish school that was open, illegally. The reporter later acknowledged that the bus was just delivering food to homebound families.

In nearby Jackson Township, N.J., town council president Barry Calogero made a speech at a government meeting indicating that Judaism itself made Jews recalcitrant when it comes to following the rules.

“Unfortunately, there are groups of people who hide behind cultures or religious beliefs and put themselves, our first responders, and quite honestly all of Jackson and bordering towns at risk for their selfishness, irresponsibility and inability to follow the law put in place by President Trump and Governor Murphy,” he said.

Calogero said he was not anti-Semitic. But after criticism he resigned days later, citing health reasons.

And in Rockland County, N.Y., where there are large communities of Orthodox Jews, the county executive’s Facebook post about police breaking up a large Passover service was met by anti-Semitic comments.

Violations of health regulations by Orthodox Jews have been documented by public officials and media at a level of scrutiny that Jews say others don’t face. Eli Steinberg, an Orthodox Jewish writer in Lakewood, N.J., says it’s easier to generalize about those who wear traditional garb.

“We’re, ya know, we’re the guys dressed in black and white and we wear the hats, so it becomes a sort of more interesting story” when Jews violate health rules, he said. “But it’s not — it’s a story about people….People do dumb stuff.”

The problem, he said, is when it is made to seem as though the few who violate the rules are more widespread in a particular community.

“In a time of such uncertainty, which we’re going through now, when you can effectively scapegoat somebody or scapegoat a group of people about the issue that people are scared of…that’s a part of it that concerns me,” Steinberg said. “This moment where there’s the vehicle of Covid19 to use to spread hate, it just becomes that much more scary.”

Bari Weiss, author of How To Fight Anti-Semitism and a New York Timesopinion staff writer and editor, said given how anti-Semitism is at historic peaks in New York and around the country, public officials need to be “extremely specific” in criticizing large gatherings, instead of blaming “the Jewish community.”

“I think that there is a double standard often when it comes to the way that the Jewish community and Jews are talked about, whether it’s because we’re not perceived as a minority, even though we are,” she said. “It stands to reason that lots of people who already perhaps have animosity toward that community will be even more emboldened.

The Anti-Defamation League released a report this week showing that there were more anti-Semitic incidents in 2019 than at any year since it it began tracking in 1979.

“Anyone that’s been paying attention, or anyone that knows people inside of these communities, knows already dozens of stories of people that have been spit on, assaulted, harassed, had their head coverings pulled off, had their face smashed with a paving stone,” Weiss said.

Now, amid the coronavirus, the hate is more socially distanced — happening largely online. Last month the ADL documented how community Facebook groups are loaded with comments blaming Jews for spreading the virus, and calling for them to be firehosed, tear-gassed and denied medical care.

Already a New Jersey man was arrested for using Facebook to threaten to assault Lakewood’s Jews for spreading the virus. He was charged with making terrorist threats during a state of emergency. A county deputy fire marshall in New Jersey was investigated for similar Facebook comments. And in Queens, a couple was charged with hate crimes after attacking a group of Orthodox Jews — ripping their masks off and punching them in the face — for supposedly not social distancing.

“You Jews are all getting us sick,” the couple allegedly yelled.

This is all too familiar to Jews, Weiss says. For centuries Jews have been massacred for supposedly spreading plagues. Rats brought the black death to the European continent in the 1300s, “but rats weren’t blamed. Jews were blamed.” Thousands were slaughtered; entire communities were eliminated.

Jews today do not believe that violence at such a scale is imminent. But they remember their history.

“I think Jewish memory is always a gift, but it’s especially a gift in a moment of crisis because frankly, we Jews have lived through a tremendous amount in our centuries on this Earth,” Weiss said. “And whenever we ask could it get worse, we know the answer is yes, because we’ve lived through worse, or at least our ancestors have. So I think Jewish memory can help us be grateful and keep things in perspective.”

Source: Jewish Americans Say They Are Scapegoated For The Coronavirus Spread

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Prosecuting IS returnees in Germany requires the law’s longest arm

2020/05/18 Leave a comment

Interesting account of some of the challenges involved:

Taha A.-J.*, an Iraqi man believed to have belonged to the “Islamic State” (IS), has been standing trial in Frankfurt since late April on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. At the center of his trial is the death of a 5-year-old girl belonging to the Yazidi minority group.

The charges are based on statements by his wife, Jennifer W.*, a staunch IS supporter who lived with him in the Iraqi city of Fallujah. In 2018, she told a police informant that during her first stay in IS territory in 2015 she saw Taha A.-J. punish the girl, purchased as a slave, for wetting the bed. Jennifer W. alleged that he had chained the girl to a window in the scorching sun, where she died an agonizing death.

Jennifer W. has been on trial herself since April 2019, as she did nothing to save the girl. In that case, the girl’s mother — also a slave in the same household — testified that she was forced to watch her daughter die.

Unprecedented case

Taha A.-J. was arrested in Greece in May 2019 under a German arrest warrant and was transferred to Germany in October. His ongoing trial — the first against a former IS militant to deal with the IS genocide of the Yazidi — has attracted international attention.

Genocide is the most serious crime under international criminal law. But according to Alexander Schwarz, a Leipzig-based lawyer who specializes in international law, “the difficulty lies in proving that the individual perpetrators were actually determined to destroy an entire ethnic group.”

Schwarz told DW that Taha A.-J.’s trial is unprecedented. “For the first time, the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office is pursuing a purely international offense,” he said, pointing out that the alleged act was not committed in Germany, that neither perpetrators nor victims are German citizens, and that the accused wasn’t even on German territory at the time of his arrest.

International criminal law is becoming an increasingly important part of the work done by the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office. When the trial of the 35-year-old IS returnee Omaima A.* began in Hamburg on May 4, charges against her also included crimes against humanity. Omaima A., the widow of IS jihadi Denis Cuspert, who was killed in Syria in 2018, is also said to have kept a 13-year-old Yazidi girl as a slave.

After Omaima A. returned from the Syrian war zone in 2016, she lived a peaceful life in her hometown of Hamburg for three years. It wasn’t until investigative journalist Jenan Moussa, reporting for Arab television network Al-Aan TV, uncovered the necessary evidence against her that charges could be filed.

With thousands of photos and videos found on the phone Omaima A. used while living in Syria, Moussa was able to retrace her life in IS territory in great detail, eventually producing a documentary about the German IS supporter.

Not just housewives and mothers?

The photos shown in the documentary — introduced as evidence at Omaima A.’s trial — show her alone and with children, posing with an AK-47 assault rifle and other weapons. Moussa’s work also uncovered chat conversations with several men. These documents show that the perception of female IS supporters as passive, easily influenced victims needs to be reconsidered, said Schwarz, the lawyer from Leipzig. “Numerous returnees — female IS fighters — were armed, with automatic weapons, AK-47 rifles or pistols,” he said.

Many women also worked for the so-called morality police, controlling how other women dressed, behaved and lived under IS rule. According to Schwarz, the practice of keeping slaves was “an act that can be attributed to the female fighters, and was even predominantly practiced by them.”

In order to issue an arrest warrant and charges, Germany’s top judges have said that evidence of explicit support for IS, or proof that a person directly fought for the militant group, is necessary. Without this proof, suspects could go unpunished. It’s exactly for this reason that many IS returnees have repeatedly claimed they were only responsible for taking care of the household and the children, and that they had no knowledge of reported atrocities.

Slave ownership has featured in other cases against IS returnees, including that of Sarah O.*. Details of her trial, which has been ongoing since October, have been kept from the public, as she was said to have been a minor when she allegedly committed the crimes she’s been charged with. According to investigators, the now 21-year-old decided to move to IS territory in Syria at the age of 15.

In addition to slave ownership, Sarah O. has also been accused of having lived with her husband and children in apartments assigned to them by IS forces. That may sound harmless. Legally, however, this is considered a form of looting: if IS assigned jihadis to live in an apartment,  that meant the previous residents must have been expelled or killed. This is defined as looting, or pillaging — and is thus a violation of article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Targeting female jihadis

This interpretation of the law was first used in the trial against Sabine S.* in 2019. She was sentenced to five years in prison for war crimes, mainly for taking possession of two apartments. Since last year, Germany’s federal prosecutors have accused IS returnees of eight violations of the Rome Statute, with the looting charge particularly being used to prosecute female jihadis.

Lawyer Serkan Alkan, however, has been critical of the court’s reliance on this charge. Alkan has represented several IS supporters in German courts, and told DW that women had no say under IS rule. “The idea that you could stand there, as a woman, and say, ‘No, I will not take this house because it’s a violation of international criminal law’ — that’s a rather utopian perspective,” he said.

But federal prosecutors have been successful with this approach. Sibel H.*, from Aschaffenburg near Frankfurt, twice made the journey to IS territory, the first time in 2013. She returned to Germany the following year after her husband was killed, only to remarry an IS supporter and head back to the Middle East, where they had two children before she was captured. In spring 2018, she was transferred from a Kurdish prison in northern Iraq to Germany, where she was eventually arrested and charged with the looting offense under international criminal law. On April 29, 2020, she was sentenced to three years in prison in Munich, where she is taking part in a reintegration program.

In the past five years, 122 IS supporters have returned to Germany from Syria or Iraq, according to government figures reported in late 2019. Of those returnees, 53 have been classified as a “potential threat,” and 18 are considered “relevant persons,” that is supporters or even leading figures within IS. Relying on international criminal law, Germany aims to make these people responsible for their actions.

*Editor’s note: DW follows the German press code, which stresses the importance of protecting the privacy of suspected criminals or victims and urges us to refrain from revealing full names in such cases.

Source: Prosecuting IS returnees in Germany requires the law’s longest arm

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China ramping up bullying and intimidation of activists in Canada, report says

2020/05/14 Leave a comment

Ongoing concern:

Chinese government officials and supporters of the Communist Party of China are increasingly resorting to “threats, bullying and harassment” to intimidate and silence activists in Canada, including those raising concerns about democracy and civil rights in Hong Kong and Beijing’s mistreatment of Uyghurs, Tibetans and Falun Gong practitioners, a new report says.

A coalition of human-rights groups led by Amnesty International Canada says a timid response by Ottawa to this foreign interference is exacerbating the problem. “Chinese state actors have almost certainly become emboldened by the inadequate responses of Canadian officials,” the coalition writes.

The report, Harassment & Intimidation of Individuals in Canada Working on China-related Human Rights Concerns, also sounds the alarm over what it calls escalating intimidation and interference at Canadian schools and universities. “Consequently, academic freedom and freedom of expression of university students in Canada speaking out on China has been increasingly stifled, as many individuals fear that Chinese government or consular agents are monitoring their speech or their activities.”

The Canadian Coalition on Human Rights in China is calling for a public inquiry into threats at Canadian educational institutions and recommends that Ottawa set up a monitoring office to collect complaints of harassment and refer incidents to police.

“It takes place on social media, through surveillance, monitoring and hacking of phones, computers and websites … on university and college campuses, at public rallies and cultural events,” Alex Neve, secretary general of Amnesty International Canada, said. “Individuals responsible for the threats often remain anonymous or invisible, but make it clear that they are strong backers of the Chinese government, often leaving no doubt that they are directed, supported or encouraged by the Chinese government.”

He said the threats are “bullying, racist, bigoted and frequently involve direct threats of violence, including sexual violence and even death.”

The coalition is asking the federal government to expel Chinese diplomats where necessary or enact sanctions on them if the evidence warrants.

The coalition’s report documents incidents of Chinese harassment between July, 2019, and March, 2020, aimed at “suppressing dissidents and mobilizing overseas Chinese communities to act as agents of China’s political interests.

“The Canadian government must treat this issue with increased urgency, as it has resulted in insecurity and fear for human-rights defenders in Canada working on Chinese human-rights issues.”

Gloria Fung, president of Canada-Hong Kong Link, speaking Tuesday, recalled an Aug. 17 protest in Toronto last year in support of civil rights in Hong Kong, where more than 100 counterprotesters showed up, blocking the activists and chanting “One China.” They began insulting the demonstrators and taking photos in an apparent attempt to intimidate. When Ms. Fung and the activists sang O Canada, the counterprotesters booed them and sang China’s national anthem in return. “Our protesters needed a police escort to leave safely,” she said.

In a statement, Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne said the government welcomed the report and would study its recommendations closely.

“Reports of harassment and intimidation of individuals in Canada are deeply troubling and allegations of such acts being carried out by foreign agents are taken very seriously,” Mr. Champagne said.

“Chinese government representatives in Canada, like all foreign government representatives in Canada, have a duty under international law to respect the laws and regulations of Canada,” the minister said.

“Canada will continue to use every opportunity to call on China to uphold its international human-rights obligations, including in the areas of freedom of expression, freedom of association, and freedom of religion or belief.”

The Chinese embassy in Ottawa did not have an immediate response to the report.

Uyghur-Canadian activist Mehmet Tohti, speaking Tuesday, said telephone calls are another means of intimidation to stop people in Canada from raising concern about the hundreds of thousands of predominantly Muslim people locked up by China as part of a deradicalization campaign. “Chinese public-security officials are making direct phone calls to Uyghur-Canadians here and asking us to be silent or accept the danger our loved ones [in China] could face.”

Chemi Lhamo, a member of the Canada Tibet Committee and Students for a Free Tibet Canada, said Tuesday that mainland Chinese students studying in Canada face pressure, too.

“Imagine being a Chinese international student, paying four to five times more than a domestic student, only to be bullied here in Canada by the Chinese embassy to follow their party line and go protest against pro-Tibet and pro-human-rights events.”

Beijing’s attempts to dampen criticism in Canada of its authoritarian regime has been taking place amid a historic chill in bilateral relations that began in late 2018, after China jailed Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor in apparent retaliation for the arrest at the Vancouver International Airport of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou on a U.S. extradition warrant.

The report also urges Ottawa to consider passing legislation that would require the registration of Canadian citizens acting as agents for foreign governments, similar to what Australia has enacted.

The coalition says Chinese authorities “cannot be directly implicated” in many of the incidents highlighted in the report, but it “considers the scale and consistency of rights violations, over a prolonged period, to be consistent with a co-ordinated Chinese state-sponsored campaign to target political, ethnic, religious and spiritual groups and individual activists who raise concerns about China’s human-rights record.”

Source: China ramping up bullying and intimidation of activists in Canada, report says

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Canada’s pandemic plans must guard against the rise of racism

2020/05/14 Leave a comment

Of course, public officials should consider all impacts of policies and programs on different segments of the population to reduce the incidence of disparities and discrimination. Equally, better and race-based data on COVID-19 is needed.

But government officials at all levels have taken pains to speak out against racist incidents against Asian Canadians and by and large, Canadian policies and programs have been relatively balanced with respect to their impact on citizens, permanent residents and even some groups of temporary residents such as international students.

It would appear that the issue lies more with temporary workers and some permanent residents, working or living in crowded condition, with many of these being visible minorities (e.g., meat packing plants, personal support workers etc). Clearly, better regulation and improved working conditions are needed for these groups.

As for the various and unacceptable attacks on Asian Canadians, people need to report them to the police, police need to follow-up on these attacks and lay charges as much as possible (and ensure more accurate data that would be captured in the annual hate crime statistics.

But having been involved in government support for anti-racism programming, I remain sceptical that these programs will ever reach those with strong racist or xenophobic views. Some people, unfortunately, are unreachable:

The COVID-19 pandemic has come with virulent anti-Asian racism. Fear has led to the use of the term “Chinese virus,” the revival of the slur “Chink,” the perpetuation of myths that Chinese people eat bats, an increase in violent attacks against Asians and unwarranted blame placed on Filipino workers for the spread of the virus. All these incidents of racism have happened in a span of eight weeks, leading to a public health concern: people who are feared and stigmatized may delay seeking care, increasing the vulnerability of that racialized population. And no one should have to fear violence when they step outside their door.

Canada’s pandemic plan needs to consider the fear that accompanies any new contagion. When a virus’s origin is traced to Asia, the plan must include not only an evaluation of whether its measures encourage anti-Asian sentiment but also strategies to mitigate racist perceptions that equate Asians with the virus.

Racism driven by fear of infectious disease is not new. During the SARS outbreak, the public became fearful of Asians. Earlier infectious disease epidemics were associated with specific ethnic groups, too: the bubonic plague was linked to the Chinese in 1900, and the 1993 hantavirus infection was dubbed the Navajo disease. Past episodes demonstrate that fear of foreigners can also spread beyond the context of disease to influence immigration policies. Historically, Canada has selectively admitted some racialized persons as cheap labour while excluding others to pacify or appease anxiety among the White population. Chinese workers were allowed in, in the 19th and 20th centuries, but had to pay a hefty tax; Sikhs on board the Komagata Maru were turned away with tragic results in 1914.

Border restrictions are among the many layers in Canada’s response to the current pandemic. Initially the border was closed to all foreign nationals except US citizens, but the government had to walk back this exception. Canada currently admits temporary foreign workers, international students and refugee claimants while barring entry to almost everyone else, including US citizens and even immediate family members of Canadian citizens and permanent residents, unless they are providing essential services.

It is too soon to tell whether border closures have been effective in stemming the spread of the disease. But early government data do not show Asian travellers at the top of the list of carriers. As of April 7, 42 percent of all non-resident travellers entering Canada who had COVID-19 were from Europe, and 35 percent were from Asia. As of April 17, 404 people travelling from the US had COVID-19, as opposed to 5 people from China.

The border is not completely shut, and the measures do not directly prohibit the entry of Asians, but that does not mean the restrictions affect everyone equally. As in the past, the inclusion and exclusion of persons is selective. The exclusion of non-essential persons may be aimed, in part, at reducing fear and anxiety in Canada, reinforcing the narrative that foreigners — Asians — are the primary vectors of the virus.

Temporary foreign workers and asylum seekers have filled labour needs in essential services, most notably in health care, agriculture and food processing, where they are risking their lives. Yet they are being blamed for outbreaks in their workplaces despite the fact that it is their working conditions that are responsible for the virus spreading. Reports of exploitation and abuse of temporary foreign workers are not new but still troubling. Cramped and crowded living and working conditions, low pay and lack of safety or protection gear, for example, are the direct result of their temporary immigration status. Outbreaks on farms and in meat packing plants have been blamed on persons of Filipino descent. These experiences should reignite efforts to create permanent pathways for immigration for those working in essential services, not only to reduce abuse and exploitation of workers but also to prevent the misunderstanding that it is foreign workers who are spreading disease.

Policy-makers have many factors to consider. It’s not easy to deal with a new, unknown and unpredictable harm. Still, public health officials should consider whether any restrictive measures used to protect the public may also promote racism, stigmatization and discrimination. Pandemic plans should also include strategies to shape an accurate public understanding of how the virus is transmitted and reduce unfounded fears that can stimulate racist assumptions and perceptions.

For Asian Canadians, until there is a more pointed effort to address racism in the official response to the pandemic, we know that no matter what we do, fear will permeate public reaction and manifest itself in harmful ways. We can put our lives at risk serving on the front lines in health care or in ensuring our food supply is stable, and one of us can even serve as Canada’s top doctor, but relying on racialized persons to be model immigrants should not be a strategy. The responsibility to address racism should be borne not by the people experiencing it but by those shaping law and policy.

Scientific data show racialized persons are more likely to die from COVID-19 than White people and that the difference may not be caused by pre-existing differences in wealth, health, education or living arrangements. It’s a good first step that some governments are collecting race-based data on the impact of the disease, but more action is required. All governments must acknowledge that how people perceive the spread of this virus can place a disproportionate burden on racialized persons, and that racialized people will experience the pandemic differently, whether they are Asian, Black, Indigenous or Latinx. Race-based analyses must be part of all public health measures in a pandemic.

Source: Canada’s pandemic plans must guard against the rise of racism

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In Israel, Modern Medicine Grapples With Ghosts of the Third Reich

2020/05/14 Leave a comment

Interesting account of the ethnical and personal issues involved and their sensible resolution:

The explosion flung him skyward, legs first, before he crashed to the ground.

It was June 2002, at the height of the second Palestinian intifada. Dvir Musai, then a 13-year-old Israeli schoolboy from a religious Jewish settlement, was on a class cherry-picking trip in the southern West Bank. On his way back to the bus, he stepped on a mine laid by Palestinian militants and was gravely wounded, along with two other boys.

“There was a lot of smoke, clumps of earth falling, a smell of burning and gunpowder,” Mr. Musai, now 31, recalled.

Decades of agony followed. Mr. Musai’s right foot felt as if it were permanently afire. And then last year, a surgeon offered him hope — and a disquieting disclosure.

In pre-op at the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem, Dr. Madi el-Haj told his patient that the anatomical atlas he would use to guide him through the intricate nerve pathways had been produced by Nazis. Its illustrations are believed to be based on the dissected victims of the Nazi court system under Hitler’s Third Reich.

If there were objections, Dr. el-Haj told the Musai family, he could operate without it — but it would be harder. He noted that there was rabbinical approval for the book’s use.

Mr. Musai’s mother, Chana, had lost relatives in the Holocaust.

“She said, ‘If it can help now, we’ll use it,’” Mr. Musai recalled.

That gut-wrenching decision went to the heart of a longstanding debate about the ethics of drawing on knowledge derived from the Nazis’ expansive medical and scientific experimentation — and in this case, the ethics of using the textbook, “Atlas of Topographical and Applied Human Anatomy.”

The book, by Eduard Pernkopf, stands out for its accuracy and detail, and even in an age of state-of-the-art imaging, some surgeons, among them those who perform peripheral nerve procedures, still find its drawings invaluable.

In a perverse twist, the more advanced the relatively new field of peripheral nerve surgery becomes, the more reliant on the atlas some of its practitioners say they find themselves. That is because even high-tech imaging is of limited use to the complex discipline, in which doctors treat problems like chronic pain caused by nerves that are damaged or trapped.

Pernkopf began work on the atlas at the University of Vienna, where he became chairman of anatomy in 1933, the year he joined the Nazi party. With Hitler’s 1938 annexation of Austria, he became dean of the medical faculty, then president of the university.

The illustrators to whom Pernkopf turned to produce the atlas were also Nazi enthusiasts. Three of the four illustrators incorporated swastikas, SS lightning bolts and other Nazi insignia into their signatures — hallmarks of evil airbrushed out of later editions.

Less is clear about the people whose bodies were dissected so that the illustrators could produce their work. Over the years, there have been questions about whether some had been killed in Hitler’s death camps. Those questions remain unresolved, but many experts believe that most of the prisoners were Austrians condemned in the courts.

After the war, Pernkopf spent three years in an Allied prison camp but was not charged with war crimes. He continued work on the atlas until his death in 1955.

A two-volume edition was published in five languages, with the first American edition coming out in 1963. Elsevier, a European scientific publisher that currently holds the copyright, stopped printing it on ethical grounds, but the volumes can be found in private collections and purchased on eBay and Amazon.

Scholars first raised questions about the origins of the atlas in the 1980s as the Cold War’s “Great Silence” about the Nazis’ medical legacy began to crack.

By the 1990s, the controversy was drawing wider public attention.

Dr. Howard Israel, an oral surgeon at Columbia University who had routinely used the atlas, exposed the Nazi symbols in the artists’ signatures included in early editions of the book.

Then Dr. Israel and Dr. William Seidelman, a Toronto physician, turned for help to Israel’s official Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, asking it to press the University of Vienna to investigate the background of the atlas — and of the dissected cadavers its authors used. After some initial reluctance, the university agreed.

“Things started to unravel,” recounted Dr. Seidelman, who now lives in Jerusalem.

From 1938 to 1945, the university’s anatomical institute received more than 1,370 bodies of prisoners executed by the Vienna court system, according to the findings of an investigative committee. More than half had been political prisoners — people targeted by the Nazi regime. At that time in Austria, joking about Hitler was enough to warrant execution, often by decapitation.

Dr. el-Haj, the Hadassah surgeon, said he was first introduced to the atlas while studying under Dr. Susan Mackinnon, a pioneer in peripheral nerve surgery, at Washington University in St. Louis.

“She knew I came from Israel — she thought I was a Jewish guy,” he recalled.

That he was, in fact, an Arab Muslim from the Galilee changed nothing.

“I was shocked,” he said. “It’s a matter of humanity.”

Dr. Mackinnon bought her first copy in the early 1980s as a young plastic surgeon in Baltimore, and used it to guide many of her surgical procedures.

But troubled by the provenance of the illustrations, Dr. Mackinnon photocopied the first scholarly articles about Pernkopf’s past a few years later and tucked them into the book as a constant reminder.

In 2015, Dr. Mackinnon and her longtime associate Andrew Yee wanted to share drawings from the atlas on an online teaching platform, and sought an opinion from Dr. Sabine Hildebrandt, a Boston physician who has studied the Third Reich.

An international effort was already underway to determine how to handle unearthed human remains and medical specimens from the Holocaust era.

Dr. Hildebrandt took on Dr. Mackinnon’s query and consulted with other experts, giving rise to a special set of recommendations regarding the Pernkopf atlas in a document known as the “Vienna Protocol.” It was written by a prominent American rabbi and ethicist, Joseph A. Polak, and formally adopted by a 2017 symposium of experts at Yad Vashem. Under the protocol, the atlas can be used if there is full disclosure about its origins.

In a recent survey of an international group of nerve surgeons, Dr. Mackinnon and Mr. Yee found that 59 percent of the 182 respondents were aware of the Pernkopf atlas, 41 percent had used it at some point and 13 percent were currently using it.

But the debate is hardly settled.

Dr. Justin M. Sacks, chief of the division of plastic and reconstructive surgery at Washington University, said he had never come across the atlas until he arrived at the department this year. He argued that it was morally and ethically wrong to use it and that there were perfectly adequate substitutes available in print or online.

“I’m not looking to stir a controversy,” he said in an interview, “but I’m looking to put it where it belongs: in a museum.”

Dr. el-Haj said that while the alternatives might be good enough in other medical fields, when it came to peripheral nerve surgery, they were no match for Pernkopf.

One of eight siblings, Dr. el-Haj grew up in a farming village and aspired to become a nerve surgeon, he said, in the hope of helping his father, who as a young man was left with a paralyzed arm and leg by a work accident. After studying in the United States, Dr. el-Haj returned to Jerusalem with his own Pernkopf volumes in August 2018.

Around the same time, Mr. Musai, who had undergone dozens of operations since his injury, returned to his doctors. Now a married father of two, he could barely walk. His foot could not bear the weight of a sheet at night.

He was referred to Dr. el-Haj.

From his days as a medical student at Hadassah, Dr. el-Haj, 40, remembered Mr. Musai as an angry teenager in terrible pain who harbored a hatred of Arabs.

Mr. Musai acknowledges that was the case.

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USA: Minority-Owned Small Businesses Were Supposed To Get Priority. They May Not Have

2020/05/13 Leave a comment

Of note. Will be interesting to see eventual analysis of take-up by immigrants and visible minorities of the various COVID-19 support programs in Canada:

The first time Rosemary Ugboajah applied for a small-business relief loan, it didn’t go well. She needed the money for her small Minneapolis-based company, which has created ad campaigns for brands like the NCAA Final Four.

So she went to her credit union.

“They were hard to reach, but eventually I got through to someone and they emailed me back saying they can’t process the loan because they don’t process SBA loans,” she said. “I wasn’t aware of that.”

Lawmakers did set aside $30 billion for smaller lenders, in part with the aim of helping business owners of color — like Ugboajah.

But a new report from the Small Business Administration’s inspector general found that businesses owned by people of color may not have received loans as intended under the Paycheck Protection Program. There was no evidence, the report said, that the SBA told lenders to prioritize business owners in “underserved” markets, including business owners of color — something the CARES Act had specifically instructed the SBA to do.

The report also recommends that the agency start collecting demographic information. Without that information for past loans, it will be hard to know how well the program served business owners of color.

Some businesses owned by one person — such as some sole proprietorships, like Ugboajah’s Neka Creative — were only allowed to apply for funds one week after other businesses. That put them in the back of the line to get the money, which ran out quickly during the first round.

After trying and failing at two other banks, Ugboajah managed to find one that was accepting applications from new customers, and she quickly applied. But that also went poorly.

“The next week, I got an email from them saying, you know, the money’s running out. And they’re now just going to prioritize their clients that have borrowed before,” she said with a weary laugh.

Ugboajah has applied there again during this second round of funding but hasn’t heard back yet.

But she could use the money, and fast — her team is currently working through the pandemic without pay.

“We had a healthy pipeline coming into this year. And as soon as this came down, everything went on hold and then disappeared,” she said.

An additional problem for these owners is that their businesses are more likely to be sole proprietorships, according to Ashley Harrington, senior policy counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending.

“When we’re talking about businesses of color, most of them are very small businesses. So they’re sole proprietorships or they have less than 10 employees or in fact more likely to be a sole proprietorship than any of the other small businesses,” Harrington said.

Ugboajah has six people on her team — and they’re all contractors — making her business one of those one-person sole proprietorships. African American-owned businesses are particularly likely to be one-person firms.

And relationships with banks matter, according to Michael Roth, managing partner at Next Street, which works with local governments on small-business policy.

“Black- and Hispanic-owned businesses, because of their lack of access to capital from banks and financial institutions and friends and family, are far more likely to use personal funds to finance their businesses,” he said. “And generally, that’s run out of personal checking accounts.”

That could be a problem for some businesses in the program, because some banks would loan only to people with business accounts. So owners without those — who were, for example, running their businesses out of their personal accounts — were shut out.

Ugboajah says that if she doesn’t get the funding, it won’t take her business down completely, but it could make life harder.

“The main thing that we’re on the verge of losing is our office space. But, yeah, we won’t go out of business,” she said.

But it has already hurt the contractors who rely on her for income, she added: “One of my team members has taken a job with Amazon, for example. But we’re still pushing to get business in.”

For now, she says, they’re working on a new project: to make sure health information about the coronavirus can reach poor and immigrant communities, as well as communities of color.

Source: Minority-Owned Small Businesses Were Supposed To Get Priority. They May Not Have

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