Is criticism of Israel anti-Semitic? | My take

2014/03/21 Leave a comment

One of my recommendations on the approach to antisemitism from my piece in the CJN:

Secondly, we must strengthen messaging on the commonalities between anti-Semitism and other forms of hatred and intolerance. Some of the pioneering work by Jewish communities is being lost in the focus on anti-Semitism. More express links among all forms of hatred, racism and discrimination can help combat anti-Semitism through engagement of a broader range of communities. The activities of the Holocaust centres in Canada in educating our increasingly diverse population are good examples. Perceived exclusive government focus on anti-Semitism may undermine understanding and support among other communities.

Is criticism of Israel anti-Semitic? | The Canadian Jewish News.

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Jonathan S. Ostroff: Standing with Israel, but rejecting conscription | National Post

2014/03/20 Leave a comment

Reinforces much of the points made by Jonathan Kay (Shariah with a Jewish face), including the similarities with Muslim (and other) fundamentalism (e.g., expressions like “rampant immorality”):

Ben-Gurion and the other founders of the secular state of Israel wanted the army to be a melting pot for immigrants from all over the world. Haredi Jews did not, and still do not, want to be melted down. Living in an environment of rampant immorality and lack of commitment to Jewish observance is toxic to their youth. And yes, Haredim believe that marriage is between a man and a women; they do not want to serve in an institution that enforces the acceptance of homosexuality. Religious Zionists who consider it a great virtue to serve in the army complain that more than 20% of their youth loose their religious commitment during their service.

This is why many Haredi parents here in Canada and the United States refuse to send their sons to live in dorms in a co-ed secular universities. This is why Haredim have separate schools, separate newspapers, no television, no unfiltered Internet. They spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on education systems that isolate their children from secular culture.

Jonathan S. Ostroff: Standing with Israel, but rejecting conscription | National Post.

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Jonathan Kay: Shariah with a Jewish face | National Post

2014/03/14 2 Comments

Good piece by the parallel fundamentalism of the Haredim by Jonathan Kay:

What’s worse, Haredim exhibit a level of misogyny and sexual phobia that is more commonly associated with militant Muslim fundamentalists. Public spaces in Haredi communities are rigidly segregated by sex. In extreme cases, the women even dress in Jewish burquas (colloquially referred to as “frumkas,” a play on a Yiddish word indicating piety). What’s worse, Haredim have demanded that the wider Israeli society adapt to their primitive views — insisting, for instance, that bus lines offer sex-segregated service, that advertising should be free of female faces or bodies, and that beaches maintain separate areas for men and women.

Haredi publications routinely censor out women — including, in the most appalling examples, the faces of female Holocaust victims in reprinted photos from the 1940s. The editorial policies of such publications are dictated by a board of religious censors, much like in Saudi Arabia. Haredi communities even have their own Jewish small-scale versions of the ministries of vice and virtue imposed by the Mullahs of Iran and other Muslim theocrats. This is, in essence, shariah with a Jewish face. And it is destroying Israel’s hard-earned reputation as an island of Western values in the heart of the Middle East.

Jonathan Kay: Shariah with a Jewish face | National Post.

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Abe Foxman Looks Back at Changing — and Declining — Face of Anti-Semitism, Emily Hauser on BDS

2014/02/21 Leave a comment

Abe Foxman of the ADL reminds of the commonalities between antisemitism and other forms of prejudice and intolerance:

“There’s a lot of extremism in this country,” Foxman said. “We still have prejudice – against Hispanics, African-Americans, gays and lesbians, Mormons, Asians. The battle for a civil, respectful, tolerant society continues. We haven’t won that battle. We have not found an antidote, a vaccine. Until we find that vaccine, it’s going to be with us.”

Abe Foxman Looks Back at Changing — and Declining — Face of Anti-Semitism – Forward.com.

Emily Hauser notes the ironic synergy between the Israel PM Netanyahu,  some of the leaders of major Jewish organizations and the BDS campaign:

American Jews like Hoenlein and Israeli politicians like Netanyahu want to scare you, me, and the whole world off from even considering the possibility that the Israeli government is as human as any other and thus as worthy of examination as any other, because they want the occupation and settlement project to continue.

They are in fact served by BDS, because not unlike Hoenlein and Netanyahu, et al, the BDS movement blurs the lines between the democratic state of Israel that exists legally and legitimately within its recognized international borders and the military dictatorship that is the occupation; Hoenlein and Netanyahu (et al) are further served by BDS because every single day that we Jews get all wound up about BDS is another day in which the Israeli government can deepen its hold on Palestinian land.

BDS Is Not Anti-Semitism

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When anti-Israel sentiment shades into anti-Semitism

2014/02/15 Leave a comment

Interesting commentary on the links between anti-Israel sentiment and antisemitism from a South African perspective by RW Johnson:

But the unfunny side of all this is when (perfectly acceptable) criticism of Israel is used to encourage entirely unacceptable anti-semitism. If we’re frank about it, this is always likely to happen in South Africa simply because our lines of ethnic and community cleavage have been so envenomed over such a long period. Given the sheer historical fact of anti-black, anti-white or anti-Indian feeling – and the fact that so many still believe that the expression of such feelings is legitimate – it is only a small extra step to get to anti-semitism.

So, whatever the “Boycott Israel” or “Israel Apartheid” lobbies say – and they have a right to exist and to their opinions – if they are honest they must admit that wherever they operate they leave a trail of anti-semitism in their wake. They may say that this is not their intent, but they cannot be unwitting that this is what happens.

This means that an ineluctable burden lies on all our Vice Chancellors and other university administrators. They just have to think about the history of academic institutions and intellectual life generally in this country to know how precious and indispensable the Jewish contribution has been. So that even if the prevention of anti-semitism wasn’t a sacred duty for intellectuals anywhere, we have our own particular South African reasons to say that this simply shall not pass.

Politicsweb – When anti-Israel sentiment shades into anti-Semitism – FEATURES.

Hussein Ibish writes on the BDS campaign, and the need to limit it to the occupied territories, both in fact and in rhetoric. He does not mention the overtones of  antisemitism of BDS when the language includes Israel itself:

There is no question that Palestinians are onto a very good thing here, if they handle it right. And the Israelis clearly have a problem, as acknowledged by all of their sensible leaders. But, ironically, the biggest threat to this sudden and significant piece of leverage is the strident BDS rhetoric that makes pro-peace actions against settlements that are based squarely in international law look like anti-Israel initiatives that don’t square with the goals of either peace or a two-state solution.

If the rhetoric of strident BDS activists can be brought into line with the reality of anti-settlement boycotts, Palestinians could well acquire a significant and desperately needed new tool of leverage with Israel. If not, while demagogues may not be able to stop the growing international anti-settlement sentiment, they can certainly continue to provide apologists for the occupation with vital rhetorical ammunition for counterattack, and space for conflation and confusion, that they would and should otherwise be denied.

Harmful rhetoric can break the momentum of anti-settlement boycott efforts

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Israel’s dilemma: Who can be an Israeli? – latimes.com

2014/01/28 Leave a comment

As the Canadian government prepares to introduce its revisions to the Citizenship Act, and in the wake of the Prime Minister’s trip to Israel, interesting commentary on the different classes of citizenship in Israel:

 

Some 60 years ago, the prescient Jewish thinker Simon Rawidowicz declared that it is not only Jews who dwell on the land by right, not sufferance, but also the Palestinian Arab population of Israel. That principle is one consistent with the vision of Israel’s Declaration of Independence, which calls for equal rights for all of the country’s citizens and is the bedrock of Israel’s claim to democracy.

 

It’s time to apply that standard uniformly. Simply put, citizenship should not be divided into classes. Israel must begin to construct a meaningful sense of Israeli identity and confer an equal stake in the well-being of the society on all those entitled to call themselves citizens. Rights of residence and freedom in personal status issues should be the same for all citizens, whether they are Jewish according to religious law, Jewish only by citizenship or non-Jewish.

Israel’s dilemma: Who can be an Israeli? – latimes.com.

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Jonathan Kay: Even some Zionists should find the Tories’ Israel zeal to be disturbingly manic | National Post

2014/01/23 Leave a comment

Interesting commentary by Jonathan Kay of the National Post on the messaging of PM Harper and the Conservative government. Ironically, it is possible that such unqualified support may, over time, undermine support for the Government’s activities and initiatives against antisemitism, given the relative silence of the important linkages with other forms of discrimination that impact on a wide range of communities in Canada:

Perhaps the best adjective I can use to describe the Conservatives’ zeal for Israel — and, indeed for all things Jewish — is manic. In interpersonal terms, it reminds me of a couple that professes their status as soul mates — loudly, and very repeatedly — as they bask in the bloom of first love (as opposed to the occasional bickering that characterizes the long, solid marriage between Israel and the United States). In my email inbox, I have lost count of the number of messages from Jason Kenney advertising his government’s support of Israel, its steadfast opposition to anti-Semitism, and its diligent observance of some anniversary or memorial day honouring a figure connected to Judaism. Many times, whole days pass in which this is the only type of message I get from his office. In each individual case, the spirit is admirable. But the overall effect comes across as a sort of monomania.

This fixation is beginning to express itself in somewhat reckless gestures. One of the members of Harper’s official delegation in Israel, for instance, is a Rabbi who has offered public support to Pamela Geller, an anti-Islamic conspiracy theorist. When taken to task for the Rabbi’s inclusion, the PMO shot back with the lazy, apparently baseless, and possibly libelous charge that the Muslim group raising the objections has “ties” to Hamas. This is the not the way a serious government responds to the legitimate concerns of its citizens.

The Harper government is to be lauded for the overall tendency of its foreign policy — which is to offer full-throated support for democratic nations that share our values. But where the Jewish state is concerned, our support is crossing the line into a sort of emotional mania. And it has never been on fuller display than this week, during the Prime Minister’s trip to Israel.

Jonathan Kay: Even some Zionists should find the Tories’ Israel zeal to be disturbingly manic | National Post.

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Freedom of speech debate sparked by draft law to ban use of ‘Nazi’ in Israel | World news | theguardian.com

2014/01/21 Leave a comment

Interesting debate on freedom of speech and the proposed ban of “Nazi” in Israel. The US was often criticized in a variety of Holocaust and antisemitism fora for its invoking of the First Amendment as an explanation for not having hate speech laws unlike many countries in Europe and Canada. Always a fine line between freedom of speech and anti-hate speech, although generally better this be handled by social norms and discussion what is acceptable and what is not.

Freedom of speech debate sparked by draft law to ban use of ‘Nazi’ in Israel | World news | theguardian.com.

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PM Harper on Antisemitism at the Knesset

2014/01/21 Leave a comment

Full text in link below, section on antisemitism is stronger restatement than in Minister Kenney’s pre-visit interview (Canada has “moral obligation” to support Israel, stop anti-Semitism: Jason Kenney):

And in the garden of such moral relativism, the seeds of much more sinister notions can be easily planted.

“And so we have witnessed, in recent years, the mutation of the old disease of anti-Semitism and the emergence of a new strain.

We all know about the old anti-Semitism.

It was crude and ignorant, and it led to the horrors of the death camps.

Of course, in many dark corners, it is still with us.

But, in much of the Western world, the old hatred has been translated into more sophisticated language for use in polite society.

People who would never say they hate and blame the Jews for their own failings or the problems of the world, instead declare their hatred of Israel and blame the only Jewish state for the problems of the Middle East.

As once Jewish businesses were boycotted, some civil-society leaders today call for a boycott of Israel.

On some campuses, intellectualized arguments against Israeli policies thinly mask the underlying realities, such as the shunning of Israeli academics and the harassment of Jewish students.

Most disgracefully of all, some openly call Israel an apartheid state.

Think about that.

Think about the twisted logic and outright malice behind that: a state, based on freedom, democracy and the rule of law, that was founded so Jews can flourish, as Jews, and seek shelter from the shadow of the worst racist experiment in history, that is condemned, and that condemnation is masked in the language of anti-racism.

It is nothing short of sickening.

But this is the face of the new anti-Semitism.

It targets the Jewish people by targeting Israel and attempts to make  the old bigotry acceptable for a new generation.

Of course, criticism of Israeli government policy is not in and of itself necessarily anti-Semitic.

But what else can we call criticism that selectively condemns only the Jewish state and effectively denies its right to defend itself while systematically ignoring – or excusing – the violence and oppression all around it?

What else can we call it when, Israel is routinely targeted at the United Nations, and when Israel remains the only country to be the subject of a permanent agenda item at the regular sessions of its human rights council?

Read the full text of Harper’s historic speech to Israel’s Knesset – The Globe and Mail.

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Canada has “moral obligation” to support Israel, stop anti-Semitism: Jason Kenney

2014/01/18 Leave a comment

While most observers would disagree with Minister Kenney’s characterization of the Canadian approach to the Mid-East as “balanced,” his interview well worth reading as an overview of the Canadian government’s position on Israel and antisemitism, on the eve of the PM-led delegation to Israel.

Kenney was instrumental in increasing the focus on antisemitism, through participation in a number of international fora, hosting the Ottawa Conference of the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition Combatting Antisemitism, joining the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance,withdrawing Canada from the follow-up to the Durban Anti-racism conference,  and shifting general racism and discrimination programming to address specific forms such as antisemitism, among others.

While political parties always take into account the political advantage of positions (“shopping for votes”), this is more driven by beliefs, rather than electoral calculations (Stephen Harper’s deceased father a key influence in PM’s support for Israel).

Canada has “moral obligation” to support Israel, stop anti-Semitism: Jason Kenney.

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