Globe editorial: How Ottawa ignored its own warning and made Canada’s refugee crisis even worse

2023/10/30 Leave a comment

Good policy advice, not listened to.

And it appears from a variety of public opinion research that this ill-advised policy change is likely one of the changes contributing to declining public support for immigration:

There is a thicket of bureaucratic language in the eight-page briefing document from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada on the upside and downside of waiving temporary visitor visa requirements to get rid of a massive backlog of applications.

…

Source: How Ottawa ignored its own warning and made Canada’s refugee crisis even worse

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Sean Speer: The Left has a self-policing problem

2023/10/28 Leave a comment

Yep:

A key feature of a political movement’s health is its ability to self-police against ideological excesses or reactionary forms of politics. It’s not easy to do. There are powerful incentives that tilt against it, including the risk of alienating prospective supporters, harming personal relationships, and granting political ammunition to one’s opponents. There are also practical limits in a distributive democracy where there are rarely points of authority that can plausibly claim to speak for a political movement as a whole. 

Yet just because it’s hard doesn’t mean that there isn’t some onus—particularly among elite actors—to call out and, where necessary, isolate radicalism within their ranks. 

At its apogee in the second half of the twentieth century, National Reviewmagazine played this role on the American Right. Its founder, William F. Buckley Jr., famously wrote the John Birch Society out of the mainstream conservative movement that he was assiduously building. He similarly published a scathing review of Ayn Rand’s book, Atlas Shrugged, by one of the magazine’s editors, Whittaker Chambers, that signaled to the world that Rand’s objectivism didn’t have a home in it either.

In the ensuing decades, the American Right has ceased to self-police. At this point, not only are its political leaders merely trying to stay ahead of their most radical voices, but within the adjacent world of conservative ideas and thought, it can at times be hard to distinguish between the elites and the fringe. 

Canadian conservatism has generally had less of a reactionary problem. There are doubtless various factors including the Westminster model’s emphasis on top-down leadership and party discipline, the country’s more moderate political culture, and its lower racial salience. 

The Hub has nevertheless, in the two-and-a-half-years since its launch, taken seriously a sense of responsibility for calling out conservative excesses including the reactionary parts of the movement that disposed Jason Kenney as Alberta’s United Conservative Party leader, the conspiratorial impulsesbehind some of the conservative criticism of the World Economic Forum, and the growing trend of online ideas and voices radicalizing young men. 

We know that these instances have antagonized some conservatives who believe that it’s a tactical mistake to cede any ground to the Left. They’ve probably cost us some number of donors and subscribers. We also recognize that there are inherent limits to our ability to neutralize some of these excesses. No one is asking our permission before tweeting or driving their transport truck onto Parliament Hill for that matter. But we still think it’s ultimately healthy for The Hub as an institution and conservatism as a whole to speak out when we feel it’s called for. 

This notion of self-policing is something that I’ve thought a lot about in recent years. I wonder what I would have done if I had been a Republican in 2015 and 2016. I don’t know. It’s easy to look the other way or rationalize bad ideas on one’s own side. 

But the lesson of the past several years in the United States is that even if there are downsides for those who are prepared to be self-critical, there’s not a lot of upside for those who aren’t. Ask Republican congressional leaders like Kevin McCarthy or Jim Jordan. Do their choices in hindsight look better or shrewder than Liz Cheney’s? The answer is self-evidently no. 

I share this context because the reaction of the Canadian Left to Hamas’s terrorist attacks against Israel has revealed a self-policing problem. It’s become clear that the movement’s intellectual and political leaders have permitted radical ideas and voices to occupy an outsized place in today’s progressivism. The consequences have alarmingly played themselves out in recent weeks on university campuses, the streets of the country’s major cities, and even inside our mainstream politics. Put bluntly: the Left has an antisemitism problem. 

Even that however doesn’t seem to fully capture the magnitude and nature of the problem. It’s not merely the fringe expressions of outright Jew-hatred that we’ve witnessed. It’s actually something far deeper and more mainstream that may be the bigger cause for concern.

The Left’s strong attachment to radical ideas such as “decolonisation”, “oppressor versus oppressed” frameworks, and the so-called “right to resist” has created an intellectual context in which acts of terrorism and violence can find affirmation and support. 

There are different factors that have contributed to the problem. One is that progressives have so convinced themselves that the rise of the so-called “far right” represents an existential threat that they’ve been prepared to make alliances with radical political figures and organizations (“no enemies to the Left”) or opted to overlook the rise of radicalism within their movement. To the extent that they may acknowledge it, there’s been a tendency to minimize these intellectual trends as merely a form of campus politics or faculty lounge theorizing. 

Another is that the problem on the Left is essentially the opposite of the one on the Right. For conservatives, self-policing is mainly about conservative elites trying to constrain the excesses of the right-wing masses. For progressives, the excesses are among left-wing elites themselves. Radicalism finds its strongest expression among university faculty, law school students, and the panoply of non-profit organizations that comprise the modern Left. It’s not obvious therefore who’s supposed to be doing the policing. 

But it needs to happen. North American scenes of anti-Jewish rallies and full-throated defences of Hamas’s horrific terrorist attacks rooted in left-wing theories of anti-colonialism and anti-settler resistance are signs that radicalism has spilled out from university seminar rooms into the streets. 

These protests and rallies—including ones that have targeted Jewish restaurants and cultural centres—have exposed these problems for everyone to see. They’ve forced us to confront the interrelationship between these Manichean ideas about identity and power promulgated by left-wing voices and antisemitism. This should lead to a reassessment of the public good case for subsidizing various forms of critical theory education and scholarship which often seem like a thin veneer of academic rigour for what is otherwise a set of retrograde intellectual propositions about race, gender, sexuality, and society. 

But that’s probably a necessary yet insufficient response to what has played out in recent weeks. This is in large part a progressivism problem that progressives themselves must address. Progressive elites who lament the rise of the far right need to reckon with the rise of the far left and their own role in galvanizing it. Self-policing is hard—especially when it requires serious introspection—but it’s necessary. It’s time for the Left to police its own side. 

Source: Sean Speer: The Left has a self-policing problem

Filed under Multiculturalism, Politics Tagged with , , ,

Kheiriddin: Pro-Palestine protesters ignore history — and their own causes pay the price

2023/10/28 Leave a comment

Valid questions for those who openly support Hamas and its actions, as distinct from those who support a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel:

By now, the world has been treated to countless demonstrations in support of Palestinian self-determination, most of which conveniently whitewash the Oct. 7 atrocities committed by Hamas as a justifiable “resistance” against Israel. The latest was a protest on Thursday by students in Toronto.

This mirrors another walkout a couple years ago, in which Toronto high school students were photographed holding a sign reading: “From the River to the Sea Palestine will be Free.” As a parent, that one felt the most disturbing.

Do these young people understand what that slogan means? Do they know who they are “allied” with by chanting those words? I suspect not. Kids know what they are fed on TikTok and Instagram, where disinformation is rampant and history, both recent and ancient, is conveniently ignored. And they aren’t the only ones who ignore it.

How is it that feminists can cheer a “resistance” that raped women so badly, they were found with their pelvises shattered, and that paraded half-naked, half-dead young women the streets? Perhaps because they conveniently ignore that violence against women is also endemic in Gaza: in 2019, the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics reported that 41 per cent of women there had experienced domestic violence.

How can LGBTQ+ groups shout and scream for a “free Palestine” when earlier this month, a gay Palestinian man was beheaded in Hebron, his head and torso dumped near his family’s home, for the “crime” of being LGBTQ+? How can they support an organization like Hamas, which killed one of its own commanders in 2016 after accusing him of having gay sex?

How can Black Lives Matter (BLM) post an image on Twitter of a paragliding terrorist with the caption, “I stand with Palestine”? (BLM subsequently took it down, but stated that, “We must stand unwaveringly on the side of the oppressed.”)

How is it that BLM turns a blind eye to Hamas’s Black slave trafficking in the early 2010s to fund its terror operations? Why don’t they mention that up to 800,000 Africans were trafficked to the Middle East during the late 19th and early 20th centuries — and that slavery continued to be legal in much of the Mideast as late as the 1960s?

Why? Because to concede any of these things would spoil the left-wing narrative that binds these “allies” together: oppression is solely the purview of white, heterosexual, colonizing westerners, and any group that is “west-adjacent,” such as the Jews. It also undermines their belief that any means, including terror, is justified in order to resist it.

What we are witnessing is intersectionality gone amok. It’s also a story that is over 200 years old, again buried in the mists of time.

The year was 1789, and the event was the French Revolution. The Jacobins and their allies revolted against the French ruling class, including nobility, clergy and anyone who smelled of privilege, on behalf of the peasants who were starving, miserable and oppressed.

But they didn’t just revolt. They launched the Reign of Terror, formally declaring in the French National Assembly that, “Terror is the order of the day.”

In the words of their leader, Maximilien Robespierre, “Terror is nothing more than speedy, severe and inflexible justice; it is thus an emanation of virtue; it is less a principle in itself, than a consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing needs of the patrie (homeland).”

For the next five years, the French terror crew gave Hamas a run for their money. They held public executions by guillotine, filling the streets with blood. They slaughtered entire towns. When they ran out of guillotines, they used cannons.

In the worst district, the Vendée, they slaughtered thousands of people, including women and children. They held mass drownings in the Loire River, where if victims managed to free their hands from shackles, troops in boats were there to hack off their arms. The latter event was even immortalized by artist Pierre-Gabriel Berthaul as one of the “great moments” of the revolution.

By the time the Reign of Terror ended in July 1794, 17,000 people had been officially executed, and as many as 10,000 had died in prison or without trial.

The left has copied this playbook consistently since then. The Bolsheviks deployed the Red Terror in Russia between 1918 and 1922; Stalin presided over the genocide of an estimated seven-million people in the ’30s and ’40s; Mao Zedong’s government sent between 500,000 and two-million Chinese to their deaths during the Cultural Revolution of 1966 to 1976. All justified in the name of overthrowing the “oppressors” to liberate the oppressed.

Today’s “allies” ignore this history. To them, the end justifies the means — even if those means contradict every social-justice principle they claim to espouse.

The irony, of course, is that the end they seek would not be the paradise they envision. It would not be a state where women, LGBTQ+ and Black lives are respected. It would not be one of equality and human rights.

A Palestinian state under Hamas would be no different than any other murderous theocratic or ideological regime, where the government uses terror and oppression to keep people in line. And where you can bet that kids wouldn’t be allowed to skip school and hold protests on the street.

Source: Pro-Palestine protesters ignore history — and their own causes pay the price

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Rioux: La tête et le coeur

2023/10/28 Leave a comment

Money quote: « Comment écraser la tête de l’ennemi sans qu’il nous dévore le coeur ? »

Dans leurs pires méfaits, les nazis ont toujours tenté de cacher leurs abominations. Ils brûlaient les corps, broyaient les os, enterraient les carcasses, tentant chaque fois de préserver un lourd silence sur l’horreur de leurs crimes. Avec un certain succès d’ailleurs, puisqu’il faudra des années après la guerre pour déterrer l’inimaginable au fond des sols endormis comme au creux des mémoires qui s’étaient dépêchées de faire le vide.

Pardon de revenir sur un événement morbide dont l’actualité frénétique voudrait nous laisser croire qu’il s’est produit il y a deux ans déjà. Un événement qui, à l’échelle d’Israël, a fait plus de victimes que le 11 Septembre. Car, il y aura un « avant » et un « après » 7 octobre 2023. C’est ce que le torrent de l’actualité tente habilement de nous cacher, avec la bénédiction de ceux qui croient béatement que toutes les horreurs se valent.

Après la guerre de Six Jours, en 1967, Israël était sorti du conflit avec la fausse assurance de sa supériorité militaire et d’être dorénavant le maître des horloges. Une assurance que commença à fragiliser dès 1973 la guerre du Kippour survenue à la surprise complète des états-majors. La seconde intifada, au début des années 2000, avec ses attentats kamikazes visant au plus près des familles innocentes et des enfants revenant de l’école, mettra fin dans les esprits à toute perspective d’État palestinien dans un avenir prévisible.

Une étape supplémentaire vient d’être franchie avec l’attentat sauvage du 7 octobre. Il a non seulement prouvé que les frontières d’Israël étaient vulnérables, mais aussi que le pire pouvait se produire sur son territoire. Oui, un vrai pogrom semblable à ceux commis au siècle dernier en Europe de l’Est où l’on égorgeait femmes et enfants. Et tout ça sur le territoire d’un pays créé de toutes pièces pour que ça n’arrive plus.

« Cela va rester le plus grand choc de l’histoire juive post-Shoah, déclarait dans Le Monde la sociologue Eva Illouz. C’est toute la réalité ontologique d’Israël qui a été remise en question. Les nazis essayaient de cacher les atrocités, pas de les diffuser. La mort elle-même est devenue un motif de propagande. Il y a là un changement de régime de l’atrocité. »

L’autre nouveauté de cette guerre, c’est qu’on a crié « Allah Akbar » aussi bien à Paris qu’à Berlin, Bruxelles et Melbourne. Ce qu’on a appelé la cause nationale palestinienne semble aujourd’hui pris en otage par une idéologie islamiste mondialisée provoquant en même temps une fabuleuse internationalisation du conflit qui le rend chaque fois plus insoluble. Car les revendications nationales palestiniennes n’intéressent pas plus les fous de dieu que les potentats arabes corrompus.

Si le président français, Emmanuel Macron, a eu raison de rappeler qu’il n’y aura pas de paix dans la région sans la création d’un État national palestinien, force est de reconnaître que cet État sera une utopie tant que le Hamas demeurera ce qu’il est et qu’il transformera cette guerre de libération nationale en un conflit religieux opposant les juifs de Palestine à l’Oumma tout entière. Or, le plus dramatique n’est pas tant de découvrir l’horreur dont est capable le Hamas — on savait depuis longtemps à quoi carburaient ces extrémistes religieux —, mais de prendre conscience que cette organisation terroriste qui instrumentalise la lutte nationale des Palestiniens au nom du prophète jouit du large soutien d’une population galvanisée. En Palestine comme ailleurs dans le monde.

« Il faut donc libérer la Palestine des Israéliens qui veulent la voler, mais aussi des “Arabes” et des islamistes qui veulent la vendre et l’acheter et lui monter sur le dos », écrivait avec courage Kamel Daoud. Et l’écrivain algérien d’ajouter qu’il faut en finir avec « cette solidarité au nom de l’islam et de la haine du juif […] qui ferme les yeux sur le Hamas et sa nature pour crier à l’indignation ».

Éradiquer le Hamas est un objectif noble et nécessaire. Mais il exigera une longue lutte où il faudra éviter le piège de l’après-11 Septembre, comme l’a subtilement rappelé Joe Biden à Jérusalem. Une lutte qui ne saurait se résumer à envahir Gaza pendant quelques semaines au prix de milliers de vies palestiniennes. Et pour rendre Gaza à qui ensuite ? Sachant qu’Israël ne souhaite pas administrer ce territoire depuis qu’Ariel Sharon s’en est retiré en 2005.

Qu’il faille écraser le Hamas, à la fois pour Israël et pour l’honneur même du peuple palestinien, ne devrait pas faire de doute. Mais comment le faire sans se déshonorer ? Toute la complexité de la réaction d’Israël tient à cette question tragique qu’a admirablement posée l’écrivain Fabrice Hadjadj : « Comment écraser la tête de l’ennemi sans qu’il nous dévore le coeur ? »

Source: La tête et le coeur

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Tasha Kheiriddin: Re-election is more important to Trudeau than supporting Canadian Jews

2023/10/27 Leave a comment

A bit over the top but yes, diaspora communities influence all parties and governments. But I fully expect the PM will visit Café Landwer and his initial messaging was strong. But of course the changing demographics have an impact. That 23 Liberal MPs called for an immediate ceasefire, along with recent mixed messaging, reflects, in part, that there are 114 ridings where Muslims form more than 5 percent of the population, compared to 13 ridings where Jews form more than 5 percent:

The Israel-Hamas War has shocked the world on many levels: the brutality of the Oct. 7 attacks against Israeli civilians, the propagation of disinformation by supposedly reputable news outlets, and the overt antisemitism on display in academia, politics and public demonstrations. The concept of decolonization, so fashionable in left-wing circles, has been turned against a people who for over a millennium have been persecuted, stateless, and the victim of racial hatred. Yet today, Jews are being cast as villains, in a manner that would make even Shakespeare blush.

In Canada, the conflict has also done something else. It has definitively exposed the true motivations for Liberal government’s seemingly incoherent and milquetoast foreign policy. Instead of standing for principle and the interests of our nation and its allies, the Trudeau Doctrine is dictated by diaspora politics and his party’s re-election prospects. This is true not only of its positioning on the current conflict, but on every major foreign policy issue in the past year.

It began with the Liberals trying at all costs to avoid a public inquiry into Chinese electoral interference. In February 2023, the Globe and Mail broke the story of how China implemented a sophisticated strategy to engineer the return of a Liberal minority government and defeat opposition Conservative politicians in the 2021 election. Allegations about this had been swirling for months, including reports on Chinese interference in the previous 2019 election.

But instead of seeking answers, Trudeau sought cover. He appointed “special rapporteur” David Johnston to examine the issue, effectively kicking the can down the road. Months later, Johnston quit in disgrace when the House of Commons demanded he resign after he had conveniently concluded that interference claims were based on “limited and partial intelligence” and thus did not warrant an inquiry.

Yet months later, when Trudeau was given information by CSIS that the agency was “actively pursuing credible allegations of a potential link”  between India and the killing of a Canadian Sikh separatist gunned down in the parking lot of a temple in Surrey, the government leapt into action.

Trudeau first raised the issue privately with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a G20 meeting in New Delhi. When that didn’t achieve the desired result, Trudeau publicly accused India of involvement in the crime in September, setting off a diplomatic firestorm that continues to burn. Canada’s trade mission to India was cancelled, 41 of our diplomats in India have been recalled, and our Indo-Pacific Strategy lies in ashes less than a year after it was unveiled.

Why did Trudeau act in such an incoherent way on these issues? Well, it’s math. A glance at the Canadian electoral map shows the importance of the Sikh and Chinese diaspora vote in both British Columbia and Ontario. There’s also the matter of Trudeau’s supply and confidence agreement with the NDP, led by Jagmeet Singh, who was strongly supportive of Trudeau’s stance.

And now, as war rages once again in the Middle East, there’s the Muslim vote to worry about, in electoral districts in Scarborough and the 905 belt around Toronto, as well as in Montreal. With the Conservatives soaring in the polls, ridings like Mississauga-Lakeshore, which the Liberals kept in the past byelection, could be in jeopardy if Muslim voters switch allegiances or stay home.

So once again, Trudeau is letting domestic policy dictate foreign policy. And this time, he’s not only throwing the Jewish community under the bus, but the values Canadians cherish, including the protection of minorities from hatred. And this weekend provided yet another example of that.

On Oct. 21, Trudeau visited a mosque and tweeted, “As members of the Palestinian, Arab, and Black Muslim communities gathered for prayer yesterday, I wanted them to know this: We know you’re worried and hurting. We’re here for you. We will not stop advocating for civilians to be protected and for international law to be upheld.”

Yet on the same day, a Jewish-owned business in Toronto was targeted by protesters waving Palestinian flags and screaming to boycott the “Zionist café.” Social media was flooded with images of hundreds of people mobbing the windows of Cafe Landwer while frightened patrons sat helplessly inside.

Trudeau’s response? We’re still waiting.

Source: Tasha Kheiriddin: Re-election is more important to Trudeau than supporting Canadian Jews

Filed under foreign policy, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Nicolas: Les mots et leur pouvoir

2023/10/27 Leave a comment

Of note:

Trois réflexions autour des mots et de leur pouvoir, alors que l’Histoire se joue sous nos yeux.

1. Liberté de presse. Trois journalistes israéliens comptaient parmi les victimes de l’attaque du Hamas du 7 octobre dernier. Depuis, un journaliste libanais a aussi été tué lors d’une attaque d’Israël contre le Hezbollah. Et 19 journalistes palestiniens sont morts à Gaza, pour la plupart dans les bombardements de l’armée israélienne. Samedi, Reporteurs sans frontières a lancé une alerte : « Israël suffoque le journalisme à Gaza ». Pourquoi ? En gros, parce que des journalistes sont tués, sévèrement blessés ou forcés de fuir en laissant tout derrière, mais aussi parce que des salles de nouvelles entières sont détruites par les bombardements et que l’on coupe une partie de l’accès à Internet sur le territoire. Résultat : les nouvelles qui nous arrivent de Gaza sont partielles, tout au plus.

Pourquoi les grandes salles de nouvelles, qui nous avaient assuré qu’elles étaient Charlie, restent-elles silencieuses sur cette question, elles qui sortent habituellement de leur réserve pour dénoncer les attaques contre la liberté de presse ?

2. Sentiment d’impuissance. Il est fascinant de lire entre les lignes des communications diplomatiques américaines. Depuis la semaine dernière, le président Joe Biden exhorte le premier ministre israélien, Benjamin Nétanyahou, à ne pas répéter les erreurs commises par les Américains au lendemain du 11 Septembre, alors que les États-Unis étaient « enragés ».

Mardi, Barack Obama, avec la liberté de parole permise à la retraite, allait plus loin. Il écrit, dans une déclaration publiée sur le Web, que « la décision du gouvernement israélien de couper la nourriture, l’eau et l’électricité à une population captive menace non seulement d’aggraver une crise humanitaire, elle pourrait aussi durcir les attitudes palestiniennes pour des générations, éroder le soutien international à Israël, faire le jeu des ennemis d’Israël et miner les efforts à long terme pour la paix et la stabilité dans la région ».

Son texte donne pour référence une chronique de Thomas Friedman dans le New York Times, qui pousse encore plus loin — un ancien président ne renvoie pas ses lecteurs à une chronique sans implicitement l’appuyer. On y écrit qu’il « n’y aura personne pour aider Israël à soutenir plus de deux millions de Gazaouis — pas si Israël est mené par un gouvernement qui pense et agit comme s’il pouvait exercer justement sa vengeance sur le Hamas alors qu’il construit injustement une société s’apparentant à un apartheid, menée par des suprémacistes juifs, en Cisjordanie ».

Entendons-nous : personne, parmi ces personnalités américaines, ne demande encore un cessez-le-feu, pourtant urgent. Cela dit, le changement de ton par rapport à Nétanyahou est notable. Et ce réajustement politique semble prendre racine dans une conscience de l’opinion internationale (et américaine) de plus en plus sensible à la souffrance palestinienne.

Plusieurs se sentent écrasés par un sentiment d’impuissance et se demandent si les manifestations ou les partages d’information sur les médias sociaux valent quelque chose. Quand on décode ce qui se dit sur les canaux diplomatiques, la réponse est oui, les expressions de solidarité ou d’inquiétude populaires comptent. Les gouvernements regardent les manifestations, voient ce qui se dit sur Meta et ce qu’on recherche sur Google. Les choses commencent à bouger. Trop lentement et trop tard pour tellement de vies de civils, mais peut-être assez vite pour en sauver d’autres.

3. Sensibilité à la critique. Cette critique montante d’Israël suscite beaucoup de douleur et de désarroi dans une bonne partie des communautés juives nord-américaines. Ce n’est pas tout le monde, bien sûr, qui se sent ainsi lié à Israël, au contraire. Mais ce lien est fort pour plusieurs, et il est important de chercher à comprendre pourquoi.

« Une terre sans peuple pour un peuple sans terre. » Cette expression sioniste populaire contient à la fois l’effacement du peuple palestinien et cette idée d’Israël comme refuge pour un peuple juif privé de sécurité durant des siècles. Le rêve d’Israël comme symbole de sécurité enfin possible est transmis à bien des enfants d’ici, dès le plus jeune âge. On comprend donc que l’émotion puisse être forte lorsqu’il en est question.

On comprend aussi pourquoi la critique d’Israël est souvent plus difficile ici qu’en Israël même. Dans toutes les diasporas, les langues se délient plus facilement dans la sécurité de l’entre-soi que lorsque l’on craint que nos mots soient récupérés par une majorité qui nous a longtemps opprimés. Pour voir l’état de conscience de la gauche israélienne, d’ailleurs, il faut aller lire les pages du Haaretz. Disons qu’on n’y mâche pas ses mots et que l’horreur de ce que font subir l’armée aux Gazaouis et les colons aux Cisjordaniens y est clairement nommée.

On en comprend que, si l’idée de sécurité est encore liée pour beaucoup à cet ailleurs, c’est notamment qu’il subsiste encore, ici même, un sentiment d’insécurité. Plusieurs m’ont écrit pour me dire qu’ils ne peuvent s’empêcher de sentir que le monde est en train de leur tourner le dos et qu’ils seront bientôt seuls, comme les Juifs l’ont trop longtemps été.

Il y a dans cette crainte de l’abandon imminent un trauma intergénérationnel hérité de l’Holocauste et des pogroms — et un constat de notre échec à nous, non-Juifs, à contribuer à un sentiment de sécurité communautaire ici même, au Canada, alors que l’antisémitisme est en hausse.

Je crois qu’il y a tout à fait de la place pour continuer à être témoin de l’Histoire, dénoncer la guerre là-bas, les morts de tous les côtés, ainsi que les déplacements forcés, et tout autre crime de guerre et abus envers les Palestiniens, vu notamment le déséquilibre inouï des forces entre les acteurs en présence, et, au même moment, refuser de laisser une partie des communautés juives d’ici se débrouiller seules avec leur propre douleur et leurs propres traumas ainsi réveillés, et renforcer notre engagement envers leur sécurité et leur dignité.

Non seulement il doit y avoir de la place pour le faire, mais ça me semble la seule chose juste à faire.

Anthropologue, Emilie Nicolas est chroniqueuse au Devoir et à Libération. Elle anime le balado Détours pour Canadaland.

Source: Les mots et leur pouvoir

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USCIS Changes H-1B Visa Lottery, Extends Cap-Gap For Students

2023/10/27 Leave a comment

Interesting proposed shift from multiple registrations per applicant to unique identifiers, among other proposed changes:

Employers, international students and H-1B professionals will like some elements of a proposed H-1B visa rule, although other measures will generate opposition and invite litigation. The most significant change for many individuals will be how U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services conducts the H-1B lottery. USCIS published the notice of proposed rulemaking on October 23, 2023, and it is subject to a 60-day comment period that could result in revisions. A proposed narrowing of the degrees that would allow a position to qualify as an H-1B specialty occupation might be the rule’s most controversial measure. (See article here.)

Changing The H-1B Lottery

USCIS uses a lottery when companies file more H-1B applications (or registrations) than the annual limit of 85,000 (65,000 plus a 20,000 exemption for advanced degree holders from U.S. universities). According to USCIS, registrations for FY 2024 increased largely due to multiple registrations submitted for the same individuals. Still, due to the low annual H-1B limit, USCIS would have rejected over 75% of H-1B registrations for FY 2024, even if beneficiaries with multiple registrations were excluded from the lottery.

USCIS proposes a solution—selecting H-1B registrations by unique beneficiaries—recommended in a May 1, 2023, Forbesarticle. Many employers will likely approve of the change.

“Under the proposed update to the random selection process, registrants would continue to submit registrations on behalf of beneficiaries and beneficiaries would continue to be able to have more than one registration submitted on their behalf,” according to USCIS. “Selection would be based on each unique beneficiary identified in the registration pool, rather than each registration. Each unique beneficiary would be entered in the selection process once, regardless of how many registrations were submitted on their behalf. If a beneficiary were selected, each registrant that submitted a registration on that beneficiary’s behalf would be notified of selection and would be eligible to file a petition on that beneficiary’s behalf.”

USCIS will use “valid passport information” to identify unique beneficiaries, and individuals would select among the employers that submitted H-1B registrations on their behalf. “DHS [Department of Homeland Security] proposes to require the submission of valid passport information, including the passport number, country of issuance, and expiration date, in addition to the currently required information. Registrants would no longer be allowed to select an option indicating that the beneficiary does not have a passport.”

USCIS anticipates a beneficiary could have more than one potential employer. “If multiple unrelated companies submitted registrations for a beneficiary and the beneficiary were selected, then the beneficiary could have greater bargaining power or flexibility to determine which company or companies could submit an H-1B petition for the beneficiary, because all of the companies that submitted a registration for that unique beneficiary would be notified that their registration was selected and they are eligible to file a petition on behalf of that beneficiary.”

USCIS will “extend the existing prohibition on related entities filing multiple petitions by also prohibiting related entities from submitting multiple registrations for the same individual.”

USCIS states, “The proposed change may also potentially benefit companies that submit legitimate registrations for unique beneficiaries by increasing their chances to employ a specific beneficiary in H-1B status.”

The controversy over multiple registrations obscures a stark reality for employers: H-1B registrations with only one employer increased by 66% between FY 2022 and FY 2024, illustrating the increasing demand for talent in the U.S. economy.

Extended Cap-Gap Protection For International Students

F-1 students, often working on Optional Practical Training, now receive “cap-gap” protection when changing to H-1B status. In a move students, employers and universities will welcome, the proposed rule provides automatic “cap-gap” protection until April 1 rather than the current October 1 (i.e., an additional six months). USCIS states this “would avoid disruptions in employment authorization that some F-1 nonimmigrants seeking cap-gap extensions have experienced over the past several years.”

Nonprofit Research Institutions

The proposed rule would allow more organizations to qualify as nonprofit research institutions. That would make them eligible to file H-1B petitions exempt from the H-1B annual limit. USCIS would change the definition of a nonprofit research organization from one “primarily engaged in basic research and/or applied research” to an organization with “a fundamental activity of” basic research and/or applied research. “This would likely increase the population of petitioners who are now eligible for the cap exemption and, by extension, would likely increase the number of petitions that may be cap-exempt,” according to USCIS.

H-1B Petitions For Entrepreneurs 

Due to the regulatory definition of an employee-employer relationship, USCIS rules make it difficult for entrepreneurs to qualify for H-1B petitions. USCIS recognizes this causes many high-skilled foreign nationals to not found a company or wait until they acquire permanent residence. “Nearly two-thirds (64%) of U.S. billion-dollar companies (unicorns) were founded or cofounded by immigrants or the children of immigrants,” according to research by the National Foundation for American Policy, indicating what the U.S. economy loses when restricting foreign-born entrepreneurship.

“DHS is proposing to add provisions to specifically address situations where a potential H-1B beneficiary owns a controlling interest in the petitioning entity,” according to the proposed rule. “One of the proposed conditions is that the beneficiary may perform duties that are directly related to owning and directing the petitioner’s business as long as the beneficiary will perform specialty occupation duties authorized under the petition a majority of the time.”

Initial approvals for H-1B petitions when the H-1B beneficiary “possesses a controlling ownership interest in the petitioning” business “will be limited to a validity period of up to 18 months.”

Codifying H-1B Petition Amendments

Beginning July 2015, USCIS required amended H-1B petitions when employers received a new labor condition application (LCA) from the Department of Labor. This followed the agency labeling the Simeio Solutions case an Administrative Appeals Office (AAO) precedent decision binding on adjudicators. The decision raised costs for many employers.

“Any change in the place of employment to a geographical area that requires a corresponding labor condition application to be certified to USCIS is considered a material change and requires an amended or new petition to be filed with USCIS before the H-1B worker may begin work at the new place of employment,” under the proposed regulatory language. An employer does not need to file an amended petition if the H-1B visa holder moves “to a new job location within the same area of intended employment as listed on the labor condition application.”

Requiring Compliance With Site Visit Requests

For many years, USCIS has conducted site visits at the employers of H-1B visa holders. However, attorneys argue the authority to conduct such site visits is suspect. USCIS seeks to change that with the proposed rule by mandating compliance with the agency’s visits.

“The proposals must be viewed in the context of how much the government will charge for access to H-1B visas,” said Lynden Melmed, a partner with Berry Appleman & Leiden (BAL) and a former chief counsel of USCIS. “The fee rule, which is expected to be released at any time, could be more impactful than any of the changes proposed this past week.”

Source: USCIS Changes H-1B Visa Lottery, Extends Cap-Gap For Students

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Lisée: Bonne semaine pour la haine

2023/10/26 Leave a comment

On “useful idiots” and fanaticism:

Au moment où ces lignes étaient écrites, les missiles israéliens avaient déjà quintuplé la mise. En riposte aux actes barbares du Hamas contre 1000 civils et militaires israéliens, les bombes de l’État hébreu ont fait plus de 5000 victimes civiles, hommes, femmes et enfants agonisant sous les gravats. À ce point du récit, et alors que se réunissent les conditions du débordement du conflit du Liban au Yémen à l’Iran, l’exigence d’un cessez-le-feu immédiat, suivi d’une mise sous tutelle de Gaza par l’ONU, semble à mon humble avis la seule posture prudente et humaine possible.

Il n’est pas étonnant que, sur le globe, les passions s’enflamment. Que, parmi les pro-israéliens, on entende des appels à éradiquer le Hamas, quoi qu’il en coûte en victimes civiles. Que, chez les propalestiniens, on mette en cause l’existence même de l’État d’Israël.

Dans le tumulte, les idiots utiles s’expriment. Telle la lettre où 74 étudiants en droit (en droit !) de l’Université métropolitaine de Toronto affirment « être solidaires de la Palestine et de toutes les formes de résistance palestinienne », ce qui, par définition, n’exclut pas les techniques infanticides du Hamas. Deux associations étudiantes de l’Université York, à Toronto, ont diffusé un communiqué similaire, comme l’ont fait plusieurs groupes étudiants d’universités américaines.

L’outrance épistolaire juvénile est certes condamnable, mais ces exagérations tendent à s’estomper avec l’âge. Plus graves sont les paroles et les gestes des foules multigénérationnelles ces derniers jours. À Toronto, toujours, une manifestation propalestinienne d’un millier de personnes se tenait la semaine dernière devant un immeuble où avait lieu une assemblée pro-israélienne. Dans la vidéo de l’événement, on entend clairement quelqu’un crier au micro : « Que fait-on avec les Juifs ? » Et des manifestants répondre : « On leur coupe la tête. » À répétition.

En Australie, sur les marches du magnifique opéra de Sydney, autant de manifestants ont scandé un slogan qui optait pour une autre abjecte solution : « Gazez les Juifs. » Samedi dernier, à Montréal, des manifestants propalestiniens ont lancé crachats, roches et briques en direction de manifestants pro-israéliens. La police a procédé à 15 arrestations. À Amsterdam, tous tabous tombés, quelques manifestants ont fièrement brandi d’énormes drapeaux noirs du groupe État islamique.

Le plus étonnant est de ne pas voir des images de pacifistes, égarés dans ces manifs, fuyant à toutes jambes lorsqu’ils entendent des appels à l’éradication d’un peuple et d’une religion. Il est vrai qu’une autre religion est présente, puisque parmi les slogans on entend aussi régulièrement « Dieu est grand », la divinité en question étant, toujours, Allah. Dans plusieurs villes européennes, et à Toronto, certaines manifestations se transforment en prières musulmanes collectives, dans la rue, devant un poste diplomatique israélien. C’est l’utilisation politique de la prière.

Je n’ignore pas que des actes antimusulmans abjects ont été commis, ici comme ailleurs. Mais on ne voit pas, dans nos villes, de foules réclamer l’annihilation de tous les Arabes ou de tous les musulmans.

L’appel par le Hamas à une journée de « djihad mondial » s’est soldé par une poignée d’attentats en Europe. On peut penser que le nombre de djihadistes prêts à passer à l’acte fut faible. Mais on doit constater qu’ils disposent d’un écho favorable plus important qu’on ne pouvait l’espérer. Après que l’un d’eux a assassiné un enseignant français à Arras, une minute de silence fut organisée dans les écoles de l’Hexagone. Le ministère de l’Éducation a relevé 500 cas de perturbations, par des élèves, au moment du recueillement. Parmi eux, 183 élèves ont été suspendus pour « menaces à l’encontre d’enseignants » ou « apologie du terrorisme ».

Au lendemain de l’assassinat par un djihadiste de deux touristes suédois en Belgique, des élèves musulmans d’une école voisine ont demandé à leur professeur de faire une prière… pour le tueur. L’enseignant d’une autre école belge rapporte : « J’ai été choqué de voir que les élèves s’échangeaient entre eux des photos des personnes tuées […] Ils rigolaient. »

L’école doit être le lieu premier de socialisation, mais des élèves musulmans sont en contact permanent avec un autre univers, explique ce prof. « C’est via TikTok et d’autres sites qu’ils fabriquent leur islam, leur religion. Ils écoutent des prêcheurs sur Internet. La mosquée, elle est sur leur téléphone ! » Manifestement, ajoute-t-il, « certains élèves sont fanatisés par les réseaux sociaux ».

À la télé française, l’entrevue d’un ami du tueur d’Arras a levé le voile sur le type de discussion qui se tient dans ces milieux. « On avait les mêmes idéologies, dit-il, sauf pour aller tuer les gens, ça ne m’a jamais intéressé. Et puis, ce n’est pas normal, sauf dans une guerre sainte. » Sauf dans une guerre sainte. Bon à savoir.

J’insiste sur la distinction entre l’opinion outrancière, qui peut évoluer, et la conviction religieuse, qui est par nature fixée une fois pour toutes — sauf si on en sort —, car dite d’inspiration divine.

L’écrivain roumain Emil Cioran le résumait ainsi il y a un demi-siècle : « Le fanatisme est la mort de la conversation. On ne bavarde pas avec un candidat au martyre. Que dire à quelqu’un qui refuse de pénétrer vos raisons et qui, du moment que l’on ne s’incline pas devant les siennes, aimerait mieux périr que céder ? »

Source: Bonne semaine pour la haine

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with ,

Diversity and inclusion on campus after the Hamas attacks – Inside Higher Ed

2023/10/25 Leave a comment

Reflections worthy of note, particularly the question: “How can campuses sustain some semblance of civility, forbearance and open-mindedness in the face of deep political and ideological divides?”

No easy answer but the last few weeks have demonstrated the necessity:

As tensions on elite college campuses flare in the wake of the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, and as many students and faculty members take sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, many worry that the earlier talk about diversity, multiculturalism and inclusion has turned out to be a fraud.

It’s easy, at this fraught historical moment, to worry that tolerance and pluralism on campus are fraying and that antisemitism, Islamophobia and other forms of ethnic tribalism, stoked by ideologues, extremists and zealots, threaten to rip our campuses apart.

Every day seems to bring another account of students assaulted on a campus for their political views or their religious identity and of fliers and posters being ripped down. We even have reports of a professor at major university expressing “exhilaration” about the flaring violence in the Holy Land and another “ruminating about killing ‘zionist journalists who spread propaganda & misinformation.’”

Isn’t that what we mean by a hostile educational environment?

You don’t need to be Jewish to worry about the circulation of antisemitic tropes, memes and sentiments on campuses and social media. Meanwhile, many Muslim students feel that their concerns and viewpoints are downplayed, disdained or dismissed.

All this is especially shocking because campuses, in recent years, have placed such a high premium on diversity and multiculturalism and campus leaders have expressed such a strong commitment to facilitating “difficult dialogues.”

Much of the public conversation of what’s occurring on campus has been framed in terms of free speech, doxing and faculty members’ right to academic freedom. But I think there’s an even more pressing issue: How can campuses sustain some semblance of civility, forbearance and open-mindedness in the face of deep political and ideological divides?

I myself fear far less about the future of free speech on campus than whether all students will feel welcomed and supported when their political or religious views or identities or personal opinions differ from their classmates’. I have witnessed intellectual bullying, guilt-mongering and deliberate provocations within my own classrooms. Those problems aren’t simply a Fox News–fueled fantasy.

I will offer some suggestions about what campuses can and should do to support a more inclusive campus environment, but before I do, I’d like to take a few moments to discuss the broader issue of tolerance, assimilation and pluralism in American history.

This topic presents us with a paradox. On the one hand, this country has had a long history of nativism, xenophobia and discrimination against outsider groups, punctuated by rancorous and ongoing debates over immigration policy. On the other hand, it’s also the case that the United States has been more successful than almost any other society in absorbing and integrating immigrants. I think it’s indisputable that, for all its failings, by almost every measure, including interracial and interethnic marriage, this society has made genuine progress in becoming more inclusive.

This makes the apparent decline in mutual acceptance on campus all that much more worrisome.

During the 20th century, the United States was described, at various times, as:

  • A melting pot, where immigrant groups shed their distinctive identities and melt into a single, unified culture.
  • A salad bowl, a metaphor that suggests that the United States consists of distinct cultural groups that maintain a unique identity while co-existing side by side and contributing to the nation’s character.
  • A nation of nations, in which each group retains its autonomy but all are united under a shared national identity.
  • A tapestry, with ethnic group maintaining its own distinctive characteristics, yet woven together to create a vibrant mixture of languages, traditions, music, foods and art.
  • A kaleidoscope, as a continually shifting pattern of cultures that change and re-form into new patterns, emphasizing the dynamism of American cultural interactions.

There are those, like John Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, who described an American as a “new man” who is distinctively individualistic, self-reliant, pragmatic and hardworking. Free to pursue self-defined goals, this new man rejects the ideological zeal and fixed identities that had characterized the Old World.

Then there are those who stress acculturation, the process through which individuals and groups absorb and adopt elements of the larger society. This doesn’t necessarily mean they fully assimilate; they can certainly maintain aspects of their original culture. And yet the tendency is to gradually adopt the customs, values and norms of the dominant culture—as a result, their original cultural identity fades or disappears.

Then, too, there are those who view the pressures for conformity and homogeneity much more negatively. This perspective looks at how schools, employers, mass media and the legal and political systems work together to suppress diversity and impose a high degree of cultural and linguistic uniformity—even as they nominally celebrate multiculturalism in cultural expression, dress, food and religion.

Assimilationist pressures can come from within or without: from a desire for social acceptance and belonging or economic advancement. From intermarriage, peer pressure, media influences and expectations in school and the workplace. From secularization, mass culture and consumerism, which have also contributed to a homogenized American identity.

Assimilation is, of course, a spectrum, not a binary outcome. Immigrants can adopt certain elements of American culture while retaining aspects of their original culture. I’d argue that the willingness to accept hybrid cultural identities, practices and traditions that has made assimilation easier.

Nor is American culture static. It is dynamic, undergoing a continual process of adaptation and change. In fact, one of American society’s distinctive features is a certain kind of cultural fluidity, adaptability and absorbative capacity.

Unlike France, the Western European country that, historically, was the most open to immigration, but which was also the most insistent on assimilation, the United States has been far less resolute in demanding that immigrants acculturate and its consumer industries far more eager to incorporate elements from the newcomers’ cultures, from foodways to music. Of course, this process was less a matter of cultural exchange than of cultural appropriation. The fact that the company previously known as Dunkin’ Donuts is the country’s larger purvey of bagels is telling.

Among this society’s most striking paradoxes is that largely in the absence of intensive “Americanization” campaigns, immigrants’ offspring became, within two generations, largely indistinguishable in attitudes, dress, language and politics from native-born Americans. Whether this pattern will persist in an age when it is far easier than in the past to maintain ties with one’s culture of origin remains uncertain. But rates of intermarriage suggest that it very well might.

It’s essential to emphasize that acculturation and assimilation co-existed with persistent discrimination and inequalities along lines of skin color. The burgeoning literature on the historical, social, legal and cultural construction of whiteness; on white privilege in terms of law enforcement, job prospects and access to educational opportunities, loans and health care; and on the normalization and invisibility of whiteness (and heterosexuality and maleness) as an identity remind us that identities are both fluid and profoundly consequential.

Which brings me to the topic of today: What can colleges and universities do to create a more civil and inclusive campus environment? After all, they’ve already taken certain obvious steps. Senior leadership has expressed a clear commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion and has asserted that these principles lie at the core of their institution’s mission and values. Campuses have mandated diversity training and established protocols for reporting instances of discrimination, harassment and bias.

In addition, institutions have incorporated multicultural perspectives into the curriculum, established cultural centers to support diverse students’ needs and promoted international food fairs and other activities and events to celebrate diversity. Many have acknowledged their historical ties to slavery, racism, colonialism, eugenics and other problematic aspects of their past and, as a result, have removed statues, renamed buildings and engaged in acts of restorative justice.

Nothing wrong with any of that. But, obviously, these steps haven’t been sufficient.

Not surprisingly, many wealthy donors want something more. As The New York Times opinion columnist Ross Douthat has written in a piece entitled “Why Big Money Can’t Easily Change Campus Politics,” many of these donors strongly object to the leftward ideological drift on elite campuses and the “administrative temporizing over the proper response to Hamas’s massacre of Israeli civilians and pro-Hamas statements by certain student groups.”

However, Douthat is right: their efforts to pressure college presidents and boards of regents are doomed to failure because, in the columnist’s words, an ideologically conformist, increasingly left-wing professoriate controls the curriculum, hiring and tenure and, he would no doubt add, an even a more staunchly progressive student life staff shapes the campus’s culture. The best donors can do, in Douthat’s opinion, is to:

  • Found or fund centers or institutes or programs or individual faculty members committed to heterodoxy and intellectual diversity and liberal ideals in some form.
  • Support smaller and poorer mission-driven institutions where their money might actually make a difference.
  • Give funds to student groups that do help those students who feel embattled and besieged and especially to student organizations that foster free debate.

Sounds good to me.

But let me add two other recommendations.

First, the college curriculum needs to treat diversity in a much more holistic, nuanced and comparative manner, especially at the lower-division level.

My students took U.S. history in fifth, eighth and 11th grades. I believe that they’d be better served by a course that looked systematically at various subcultures’ histories, traditions, values and challenges from a comparative vantage point and that looks at how these subcultures have interacted over time.

Wouldn’t undergraduates benefit from learning more, again from a comparative perspective, about these groups’ struggles for advancement and equality and the barriers they encountered?

Certainly, any course in comparative ethnic studies must avoid stereotyping, superficiality, tokenistic inclusivity and crude politicization. For some critiques of current approaches that lack the level of depth that I favor, see here and here. What we need instead is an approach that is truly analytical, fully inclusive and genuinely comparative.

Second, our campuses need to focus much more attention on local needs. I don’t believe there is a better way to foster a sense of community and connection on campus than by cultivating a shared commitment to addressing the problems that surround our institutions. Here’s how to do this:

  • Conduct a community-needs assessment. Identify the educational, environmental, health and other social problems and challenges that neighboring communities face.
  • Support research projects that address specific local challenges involving education, public health and environmental issues.
  • Increase engagement with local schools by offering tutoring programs, after-school activities, enrichment programs and mentorship opportunities.
  • Address local public health and social service issues and local environmental concerns by working with various local service providers.
  • Embed service-learning opportunities across the curriculum, for example, by awarding credit for community service in local schools, clinics and shelters or providing research and technology support to local organizations.
  • Host community events, forums, debates, workshops and theatrical events, art exhibitions and other performances on campus to foster constructive dialogue.
  • Expand continuing education opportunities tailored to the needs of the local community, including adult education classes, vocational training, English language courses and workshops on various topics, from computer literacy to financial planning, tailored to the needs of the community.
  • Research and acknowledge historical town-gown tensions and work toward reconciliation and trust-building.

Nothing I suggest here will address campus tensions over Middle East policy or the sense among many Jewish and Muslim students that their concerns are insufficiently acknowledged. But collaboration on issues of local concern might well advance cross-campus cooperation and communication, which are the essential underpinnings for positive interactions.

Steven Mintz is professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin.

Source: Diversity and inclusion on campus after the Hamas attacks – Inside Higher Ed

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Goldberg: With War in Israel, the Cancel Culture Debate Comes Full Circle

2023/10/25 Leave a comment

On the need for dialogue:

Nathan Thrall’s searing new book, “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama,” struck me as important even before the obscene massacres and mass kidnappings committed by Hamas this month lit the Middle East on fire. Today, with people still struggling to understand the contours of this deeply complicated conflict, the book seems essential.

An expanded version of Thrall’s widely praised 2021 New York Review of Books article of the same name, the book follows a Palestinian man named Abed Salama as he searches for his 5-year-old son after a deadly school bus crash in the West Bank, a search hindered by Israel’s restrictions on Palestinian movement. Thrall, the former director of the Arab-Israeli project at the International Crisis Group, uses his reported account of the Salama family’s tragedy to offer a panoramic look at life under Israel’s occupation. He is deeply concerned with Palestinian grief, but also writes rich portraits of Israelis, including Beber Vanunu, founder of a settlement in the West Bank, and Dany Tirza, architect of the separation wall that cuts through the territory.

The day before Hamas’s attack on Israel, DAWN, an organization founded by the slain Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi to promote democracy in the Middle East, published an interview with Thrall. In it, Thrall was asked about his depictions of Israelis, and whether he had qualms about “humanizing the occupation.”

“I was very glad to be asked that question,” Thrall told me. “Because that was absolutely the ambition of the book, to depict real people” rather than villains and saints.

Because I admire “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama” so much, I agreed to moderate a talk with Thrall this Thursday in Brooklyn. But I’ve been shocked to learn that several of his other events, both in the United States and in Britain, have been canceled, either because of security fears or because it’s considered insensitive, right after the killings and abductions in Israel, to dwell on the plight of Palestinians.

“How does one promote a program on this subject to a largely Jewish audience when people on all sides are being bombed, killed and buried?” Andrea Grossman, whose Los Angeles nonprofit called off an event with Thrall, said in The Guardian. American Public Media, which distributes content for public radio stations nationwide, even pulled ads for the book. “We aim to avoid any perception of endorsing a specific perspective,” an APM spokesman said in an email, insisting that airing sponsorship spots for Thrall’s book would be “insensitive in light of the human tragedies unfolding.”

Thrall is not alone; in recent weeks several literary and cultural events by pro-Palestinian speakers or groups have been either scrapped or relocated. On Friday, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen was supposed to speak at 92NY, a major literary venue in Manhattan formerly known as the 92nd Street Y. That afternoon, however, the talk was abruptly called off, apparently because of an open letter Nguyen had signed about the “violence and destruction in Palestine,” as well as because of his past support for the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel. (The talk ended up happening instead at a downtown bookstore.) The Boston Palestine Film Festival moved online, nixing its live screenings. A Hilton hotel in Houston canceled a conference of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, citing “security concerns.”

Part of me shudders to view the unfolding catastrophe in Israel and Gaza through the provincial lens of America’s cancel culture debate. In some ways, that debate has now come full circle, because pro-Palestinian voices were being censored long before the phrase “cancel culture” existed, one reason the left was unwise in recent years to prevaricate about the value of free speech. But if someone as evenhanded as Thrall now finds his talks being dropped, we’re in an especially repressive period. And in a time of war, particularly a war shrouded in fiercely competing narratives, free speech is more important than ever.

I don’t like the fact that the statement Nguyen signed gestured only vaguely at Hamas’s slaughter of Israeli civilians. In calling off his Friday evening appearance, 92NY, a Jewish organization, was playing by rules much of the left established, privileging sensitivity to traumatized communities ahead of the robust exchange of ideas. And supporters of Israel are hardly alone in creating a censorious atmosphere; particularly on college campuses, it is Zionists who feel silenced and intimidated. A professor at the University of California, Davis, is facing investigation by the university for a social media post calling for the targeting of “Zionist journalists,” which said, “They have houses with addresses, kids in school,” and included emojis of a knife, an ax and three drops of blood.

Nevertheless, a commitment to free speech, like a commitment to human rights, shouldn’t depend on others reciprocating; such commitments are worth trying to maintain even in the face of unfairness. “Art is one of the things that can keep our minds and hearts open, that can help us see beyond the hatred of war, that can make us understand that we cannot be divided into the human versus the inhuman because we are, all of us, human and inhuman at the same time,” Nguyen wrote on Instagram.

If the statement he signed didn’t live up to his own words’ generous spirit, 92NY would have been a good place to ask him why. The moments when dialogue is most fraught and bitter is when leaders most need to model it.

Source: With War in Israel, the Cancel Culture Debate Comes Full Circle

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