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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Black feminists in defence of Sarah Jama and Palestinian human rights

2023/10/24 Leave a comment

Remarkable demonstration of willful blindness and ideological blinkers. Not a word about the Israelis slaughtered by Hamas. And how can self-styled feminists be supportive of the Islamist and anti-feminist Hamas?

Most other commentary criticizing the Israeli government’s response to the Hamas attacks acknowledges the brutality of the Hamas killings and kidnappings.

Even the equally biased message from TMU law students (since taken down), “condemned Hamas’ recent war crimes killing 1300 Israelis” but then reverts to form by stating “Israel is therefore responsible for all loss of life in Palestine.”

That three academics at UofT failed to do so acknowledge Hamas’s brutality, will legitimately be used as an example of the “rot” in academia.

Sad:

We are Black women scholars writing with the strongest concern for the possible censure of MPP Sarah Jama at Queen’s Park. As Black women, we live with the enduring legacies of slavery and colonialism. We feel a responsibility, like many Black women before us, to oppose all forms of racist dehumanization.

We are outraged that Sarah Jama, a Black woman and Hamilton Centre MPP, may be silenced — unable to speak in the provincial Legislature — for the duration of her elected term. Jama has been targeted by Premier Doug Ford, and reprimanded by her own party leadership, in response to a statement in which she called for a de-escalation of violence.

The attack on Jama comes amidst deepening government repression of those who speak out in defence of Palestinian life.

Jill Dunlop, minister of Colleges and Universities, has named and condemned university students and faculty who authored or signed statements, even those who have defended Palestinian human rights on social media, calling for them to be disciplined for “supporting the atrocities that have been committed against innocent civilians.”

Are Palestinian civilians not also “innocent?”

We mourn the loss of all civilian life and we also stand with those who speak out in support of Palestinian human rights and against government efforts to intimidate and silence dissenting voices.

The siege on Gaza is a humanitarian disaster, described by UN experts as “collective punishment” and “ethnic cleansing”. Since Oct. 7 and of writing this article on Friday, the Israeli army has dropped over 6,000 bombs in Gaza, killing 3,478 people, with one Palestinian child killed every 15 minutes. Israel has launched 136 attacks on health-care services across Palestine, killing 28 medical staff. Over a million Palestinians have been displaced, with corridors for humanitarian aid closed. Human Rights Watch has documented the use of white phosphorus, a chemical that “burns at temperatures hot enough to melt metal.”

On Oct. 9, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced “a complete siege … no electricity, no water, no food, no fuel,” saying, “We are fighting human animals, and we act accordingly.” In a since-deleted tweet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the siege on Gaza as a “struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle.” These statements justify the ongoing attack on Gaza, constituting what Israeli Holocaust Scholar Raz Segal deems “an intent to commit genocide.”

Black people too have often been likened to animals and relegated to the realm of darkness and “the jungle.” Sarah Jama’s words emerge from a long tradition of Black women standing in support of Palestinian human rights and against apartheid, from Toni Morrison to Audre Lorde, Angela Y. Davis, June Jordan and Dionne Brand.

On our campus and in our movements, we work from Indigenous lands and across geographic and socially erected borders, with scholars of all backgrounds — including Palestinian, Indigenous and Jewish — to stand for justice and against dehumanization. Black feminists have not only the right, but the duty, to take a stand against genocide, militarism, and occupation, and to challenge the Canadian government’s complicity in it, whether in the current attack on Gaza, its initial failure to condemn South African apartheid or its leading role in the destabilization of Haiti.

Nobody should be censored or disciplined for condemning what the UN and Amnesty International have documented for decades: that Palestinians have been subjected to Israeli military occupation and apartheid and that Gaza has been under siege since 2007.

We cannot allow Sarah Jama to be silenced and we will not be silent or complicit with genocide. Our voices echo a global majority that supports an immediate ceasefire, as well as an end to the conditions that have been at the devastating heart of this issue: an end to apartheid and an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Robyn Maynard, Nisrin Elamin and Alissa Trotz are professors at the University of Toronto.

Source: Black feminists in defence of Sarah Jama and Palestinian human rights

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Israel-Hamas War Has Scrambled ‘Cancel Culture’ Tribes – The Daily Beast

2023/10/23 Leave a comment

Consistency is hard in practice…

After the tragedy, the farce.

While Israelis and Palestinians are burying their dead, pundits and activists in America are busy contradicting their principles to further their political claims.

Take America’s self-styled free speech warriors on the Right and the so-called intellectual dark web—you know, the ones who rail against cancel culture and woke censorship, making millions of dollars while complaining that they’ve been shut out of the institutions of journalism.

All of a sudden, now that it’s far-left voices being canceled, the response has been… mixed.

Meanwhile, the tactics and rhetoric of the left have contradicted everything progressives say they stand for in terms of solidarity and safety, at times spilling over into overt antisemitism.

Case in point: Harvard University, where a bunch of left-wing students issued (to my mind) an outrageous, shortsighted, and offensive statementholding Israel “entirely responsible” for Hamas’ massacre of more than 1,400 Israeli civilians, including the elderly, babies, and, as it happens, numerous peace activists as well.

There is much about this statement that is repellant: conflating legitimate resistance with kidnapping toddlers and grandmothers, denying moral agency to Hamas (after all, they can’t be expected to engage in moral reasoning), and not even mentioning the slaughtering innocent civilians part.

But even if the statement is wrong-headed, offensive, and even, in its gross insensitivity to the mass slaughter of Jews, borderline antisemitic, it is political speech, after all.

Yet in response, students have had job offers withdrawn, been doxxed by hard-right trolls (which has exposed them to death threats and harassment), and have faced calls from CEOs to have them blacklisted.

Meanwhile, Harvard, for the sin of not condemning the students (the president of Harvard did condemn the attacks and rightly noted that student organizations do not speak for the university), has itself been widely condemned, with donors and at least one Jewish foundation withdrawing their support. (Remarkably, in my online cohort of mostly liberal American Jews, there has been widespread support for this BDS-in-reverse decision.)

This is cancel culture writ large: unpopular political opinions being met with reprisals, firings, harassment, and worse. And it’s not just Harvard—similar controversies are also brewing at Columbia, Penn, and elsewhere.

And yet, “classical liberal” YouTube host Dave Rubin has called for pro-Palestine protesters to be deported, retweeting an asinine post analogizing the Jewish Voice for Peace protest this week at the Capitol to the Jan. 6 insurrection. (Another supposed free speech absolutist, Ben Shapiro, retweeted Rubin’s remark.) Newsweek senior editor-at-large Josh Hammertweeted a video of a protest outside the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., with the text, “Every single person here who is seen supporting Hamas and who is not a U.S. citizen should be deported posthaste.” (Meghan McCain gave it a retweet.)

To be fair, there have also been voices applying free speech principles even to objectionable speech acts. “Let the Activists Have Their Loathsome Rallies,” advised Thomas Chatterton Williams in The Atlantic. FIRE, the civil libertarian, heavily-Koch-funded free speech organization, has defended the right to free speech for pro-Palestinian voices and “recommended a pause” to the businesses seeking to punish students for exercising their free speech rights.

And Bari Weiss’ Free Press site ran a piece by Nadine Strossen (formerly of the ACLU) and Pamela Paresky entitled, “Even Antisemites Deserve Free Speech.” (Weiss herself seized on the latest extreme remark by Columbia professor Joseph Massad to continue her 20-year-long feud with him, and does not appear to have condemned the widespread canceling of left-wing voices.)

And because irony is truly not dead, the Center/Right has even tried to take a rhetorical trope from the Left, complaining that pro-Palestinian professors create a hostile, “unsafe” environment for Jewish students.

To be sure, this is sometimes true, as when a Stanford University instructor reportedly made Jewish students stand in a corner, alleging that this is what Israel does to Palestinians. Meanwhile, leftist students, who last month were focused on making sure every campus is a safe space for all, have harassed and targeted Jewish students in hideous ways. So much for “your opinions make me feel unsafe.”

It’s also true that some statements are not mere political speech, but are (potentially criminal) incitements to violence. For example, one UC Davis professor called for harassment or violence against “zionist journalists,” saying “they have houses w addresses, kids in school. They can fear their bosses, but they should fear us more.” That is chilling, and well outside the bounds of civil discourse.

But it is not the case that a professor’s support of Palestine is ipso facto hostile to Jewish students, who are depicted as snowflakes that melt at any exposure to anti-Israel opinions. Part of the problem is the efforts by some Jewish organizations (often catering to their right-wing donors) to define any speech that “demonizes” or “delegitimizes” Israel as antisemitic. But that is simply not true, no matter how often it is repeated.

Jewish Voice for Peace is an anti-Zionist Jewish organization. Are they all self-haters, trapped in some neurosis of internalized antisemitism? Or are they, in fact, sincere Jewish people with a hard-left political opinion?

To repeat, I found the Harvard student letter not only wrong-headed but personally painful to read, especially as it came out as I was doomscrolling through videos of murder and kidnapping at a festival site I attended a few years ago. But should all those students be canceled? Doxxed? Pilloried?

And conversely, is it not possible for left-wing activists to express solidarity with Palestine without equating all Jews with right-wing Zionists, harassing us, and taunting us while we are still reeling from the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust? The Left has done more to alienate progressive Jews in the last two weeks than in the last 20 years.

To be sure, neither left-wing activists nor American Jews are the real victims here. The victims are thousands of dead, kidnapped, orphaned, or traumatized Palestinians and Israelis who are caught between two extremist governments who reject the very notion of coexistence, and do everything to undermine it.

Seems like a lot of Americans are acting the same way.

Source: Israel-Hamas War Has Scrambled ‘Cancel Culture’ Tribes – The Daily Beast

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Nicolas: Devant la catastrophe, les mièvreries

2023/10/20 Leave a comment

Historical parallels. And of course, decolonization language, like land acknowledgements and “land back”, while helpful for some, are easier than addressing many of the underlying intractable issues. Concrete measures and policies are much harder to seek agreement and implement. Particularly, of course, given fanatic, unrealistic and weak leadership from all sides:

Depuis la frappe meurtrière de l’hôpital Ahli Arab et devant l’horreur des corps qui jonchent le sol de la bande de Gaza, le monde entier est en état de choc. Devant la catastrophe, le Nouveau Parti démocratique continue d’être le seul parti de la Chambre des communes à réclamer un cessez-le-feu immédiat. Une poignée de députés libéraux demandent aussi un terme aux bombardements, tentant visiblement de faire pression sur leur propre gouvernement.

Justin Trudeau a certes appuyé l’ouverture d’un corridor humanitaire au poste frontalier de Rafah en début de semaine. Mais face à l’horreur de la guerre, ce sont plutôt les mots que le gouvernement canadien ne prononce pas qui résonnent le plus fort.

« Crimes de guerre » : un terme qu’on avait tout de suite employé lorsque l’armée de Poutine s’était mise à bombarder les civils ukrainiens.

« Sanction collective » : un crime de guerre, plus précisément, qui peut prendre notamment la forme d’une coupure d’eau, de vivres et d’électricité à une population de plus de deux millions de personnes, dont la moitié est des enfants.

« Déplacement forcé de population » : un autre potentiel crime de guerre à avoir en tête alors que l’armée israélienne oblige un million de personnes à quitter la partie nord de la bande de Gaza pour se réfugier (pour l’instant) au sud du territoire, déjà surpeuplé et sans ressources.

Ces mots et tant d’autres, pourtant partout dans l’espace public, ne trouvent pas leur place dans les débats de la classe politique canadienne. Devant l’ampleur du décalage, une question : comment expliquer la faiblesse de l’empathie et du soutien de notre gouvernement au peuple palestinien ? Ci-bas une piste de réponses trop peu nommées qui complète l’analyse de la relation du Canada avec le reste du monde en explorant le rapport de notre pays à lui-même.

Le gouvernement canadien a maté les dernières grandes résistances militaires autochtones à la dépossession de leurs terres à la fin du 19e siècle. À l’échelle des milliers d’années d’histoire autochtone en Amérique du Nord, c’est hier. La plupart d’entre nous n’avons jamais entendu parler du mouvement de Tecumseh lors de la guerre de 1812. Et si on nous a rebattu les oreilles avec la pendaison de Louis Riel, on ne s’est pas étendus sur ce qui a suivi le rachat des prairies canadiennes à la Compagnie de la Baie d’Hudson par le gouvernement fédéral.

Le peuple métis a été chassé de ses terres et condamné à plusieurs générations d’errance. Les Premières Nations ont été enfermées dans des réserves dont le gouvernement d’Ottawa contrôlait chaque aspect de la vie quotidienne : l’accès à la nourriture et aux médicaments, le droit d’aller et venir. Puis, on a pris les enfants pour « tuer l’Indien » en eux. On s’est assurés de briser les âmes pour que de résistance militaire à grande échelle il n’y ait jamais plus.

Quelques décennies après que le danger de révolte s’est bien passé, on s’est mis à relâcher les règles et à « moderniser » la Loi sur les Indiens peu à peu. Mais quand on voit, par exemple, quelles ont été les réactions populaires et politiques à la crise d’Oka, on se dit que nos fantômes collectifs ne sont pas encore bien loin. Depuis quelques années, du haut de la sécurité des vainqueurs, on nous parle de réconciliation — préférablement que symbolique, s’il vous plaît.

On pourrait faire une série de cartes du Canada et des États-Unis où l’on pourrait voir les territoires sur lesquels les Autochtones peuvent circuler et vivre librement, rapetisser, puis rapetisser encore. Bien que chaque contexte historique compte toujours son lot de réalités uniques, on ne peut pas s’empêcher de penser que ces cartes ressemblent, à bien des égards, à celles qu’on a l’habitude de nous montrer d’Israël et de la Palestine en 1948, en 1967 et aujourd’hui.

Déjà, depuis plusieurs années, il y a un écart important entre le territoire théorique de la Cisjordanie et la réalité sur le terrain. L’entreprise de colonisation et d’occupation des terres, accélérée par le gouvernement de Nétanyahou, ne laisse plus grand-chose aux Palestiniens.

Ce n’est pas un hasard que la grande puissance qui nous a donné l’âge d’or d’Hollywood et tous ses films de « cow-boy et d’Indiens », où l’on glorifie la dépossession violente, soit la plus incapable de sens critique aux décisions de Benjamin Nétanyahou. Il est tout à fait logique que le Canada et les États-Unis, où l’on refuse encore de réfléchir un peu sérieusement à l’origine de la souveraineté de l’État sur le territoire, adoptent des postures morales sur la scène internationale en cohérence avec leur propre histoire.

Une bonne partie des militants propalestiniens les plus fervents, d’ailleurs, peinent encore à saisir pleinement qu’en immigrant au Canada, on s’inscrit de facto dans un projet colonial qui n’est pas si dissemblable de celui qu’ils condamnent. Plusieurs sont issus de familles venues ici pour fuir la guerre (ou les conséquences structurelles du colonialisme, plus largement) dans leur coin du monde. Le mouvement sioniste, lui, a pris racine dans le trauma de siècles de pogroms, puis de l’Holocauste en Europe.

Partout, le rêve de sécurité des uns s’assied sur la dépossession des autres. S’attarder à cette question, c’est perdre quelque peu sa posture de supériorité morale, réfléchir de manière moins abstraite à la proximité humaine dans une « colonie de peuplement », envisager d’autres formes et possibilités de paix. C’est prendre acte qu’on est tous inéluctablement liés et pris dans le grand bourbier de l’Histoire humaine.

Il y a bien sûr plusieurs grandes différences entre la conquête du « Wild West » canadien et américain et la colonisation en Cisjordanie et l’occupation de Gaza, notamment. Aucune comparaison n’est parfaite. L’une de ces grandes différences, c’est qu’ici, on a plus d’un siècle de distance émotive depuis la fin des grandes résistances militaires autochtones.

À moins de renverser la vapeur — et peut-être sommes-nous à un moment décisif de l’histoire —, on peut imaginer un jour des événements officiels israéliens s’ouvrant avec de belles déclarations de reconnaissance des territoires traditionnels plus ou moins cédés. Ce sera probablement très émouvant.

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

source: Devant la catastrophe, les mièvreries

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Coren: Peace is possible in Israel and Palestine — if enough genuinely want it

2023/10/18 Leave a comment

Money quote:

If I had the ability I would silence the Islamists, the Jew-haters and the predictable Marxists who know nothing of humanity; as well as the fundamentalist Israeli settlers, the extreme Zionists, who care for nobody other than their cause, those diaspora Jewish people who are more extreme than most Israelis and their right-wing Christian friends who want to fight the end times war to every last Jew and Arab.

Well said:

I’m a Christian priest with three Jewish grandparents. So, to an antisemite I’m a Jew. Even worse, I’m an infiltrator, trying to destroy the church from within. Believe me, when I’m attacked on social media that abuse becomes abundantly and repeatedly clear.

My family fled Russian pogroms in 1900, then lived in the east-end of London during the threat of pre-war fascism. They had direct, physical confrontations with Nazis.

I’ve also visited Israel and Palestine numerous times for 40 years and have dear friends on all sides of the debate. I studied there, lived there, and unlike so many sudden and instant experts, genuinely understand the region, its history and complexities.

Because of this I refuse to play the sordid game of triumphalism and exclusive truth, will not stand with Israel or with Palestine and won’t utter platitudes and simplistic slogans about a situation that demands so much more than that. If I stand with anything, it’s justice and peace. Let the extremists roar but I will not be moved.

There are simultaneous truths that have to be made clear and they really aren’t so difficult. First, the Hamas slaughter of the innocents was barbaric and grotesque. To refuse to condemn it, let alone condone it, is a moral outrage. No relativism, no excuses, no infantile radicalism. Just explicitly reject rape, infanticide and the murder of blameless people.

Second, the open wound of injustice toward Palestine and Palestinians remains and until that is addressed there can be no lasting solution. Of course, there are lies and distortions, of course the local as well as the super powers are hypocritical and exploitative and of course the Palestinian leadership has often been disastrous. But none of that changes the reality of the Palestinians losing their homes and homeland.

Third, while Israel’s campaign in Gaza may well destroy Hamas as a threat, it will come at the cost of countless innocent lives and will also achieve little if anything in the long run. Revenge is not policy, and an Israeli child killed by a blood-lusting terrorist is little different from a Palestinian baby pulled from the rubble after an Israeli missile attack. It will create another generation of young people eager to martyr themselves to attack Israel, it will alienate world opinion, but most of all it will bring further agony to a people already living in appalling conditions.

If I had the ability I would silence the Islamists, the Jew-haters and the predictable Marxists who know nothing of humanity; as well as the fundamentalist Israeli settlers, the extreme Zionists, who care for nobody other than their cause, those diaspora Jewish people who are more extreme than most Israelis and their right-wing Christian friends who want to fight the end times war to every last Jew and Arab.

They hold the edges of a great net and caught in it are the mass of ordinary Israelis and Palestinians. I’m not naïve, not inexperienced in the ways of conflict and tribal bitterness, but I also know that most on both sides want to live in dignity and safety and are willing to make the compromises that are vital if anything of value is to be achieved. I’ve seen it repeatedly and know it can happen. My God, it won’t be easy, but then little that is worth achieving ever is.

Just a few weeks ago I sat in a small house in Belfast with a man whose father had been shot dead by a paramilitary gang. The murdered man wasn’t involved in politics, just of a different religion to those who killed him.

For many years my host had wanted revenge, then he gave up, then he devoted his life to peace and reconciliation. Now he lives in a country where there is a peace nobody ever thought remotely possible. Actually, it always is. Even in Israel and Palestine. If enough genuinely want it.

Rev. Michael Coren is a Toronto-based writer. @michaelcoren

Source: Coren: Peace is possible in Israel and Palestine — if enough genuinely want it

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , ,

Nicolas: La vérité, le temps, le pouvoir et la paix

2023/10/13 Leave a comment

Balanced and relevant reflections:

Quatre choses fondamentales semblent nous filer entre les doigts et échapper à notre vue, alors que le monde tente de prendre acte de la violence en Israël et à Gaza.

La vérité. Nul besoin de s’étendre face au malheureux mélange du journalisme en crise, de l’explosion de l’intelligence artificielle et de l’effondrement de Twitter (renommé X). Les petits crochets « vérifié » ne garantissent plus la crédibilité de personne, les services de modération du contenu et de vérification des faits des plateformes ne sont d’aucune efficacité et les fausses informations abondent. Résultat : il n’a jamais été aussi difficile de s’informer en ligne d’un conflit où les actions — et les morts — évoluent d’heure en heure.

Le temps. Bien des observateurs ont comparé l’attaque du Hamas contre des civils israéliens, y compris beaucoup d’enfants, samedi, à Pearl Harbour ou au 11 septembre 2001. Ce qu’on essaie de transmettre par cette image, c’est le sentiment d’une brèche. Il n’y a jamais eu autant de morts du côté israélien, tout comme les Américains n’ont pas l’habitude d’être attaqués sur leur propre sol. Les États-Unis ont disposé de temps pour entrer en deuil national, puis réagir : la guerre du Pacifique qui s’est soldée par deux bombes atomiques d’un côté, la guerre en Irak et la déstabilisation du Proche-Orient de l’autre.

On ne dispose pas, ici, de temps. La contre-offensive de l’armée israélienne à Gaza est déjà en cours. Le nombre de civils décédés monte d’heure en heure, dont là aussi, beaucoup d’enfants. Vu le déséquilibre des forces en présence, on craint ce qui suivra.

La quasi-totalité de la classe politique canadienne a condamné les manifestations propalestiniennes du week-end, comme si chaque personne dans la rue était là pour « célébrer » l’attaque du Hamas, et donc des morts juives. Bien qu’il y eût, certes, parmi les organisateurs, des personnages aux objectifs hautement condamnables, bien des participants en étaient mal informés et se montraient plutôt profondément inquiets, ainsi que solidaires du peuple palestinien, plus largement.

Comment peut-on vouloir envoyer ce message de soutien aux Palestiniens alors que les corps des victimes du Hamas sont encore chauds ? Parce qu’il n’y a pas de temps, justement. Toutes les préoccupations, les peurs, les colères et les deuils s’empilent les uns sur les autres, se blessent et s’enterrent les uns les autres. Dans un conflit où les émotions sont aussi à fleur de peau, le manque de temps envenime tout.

Le pouvoir. C’est une chose de souhaiter une couverture médiatique équilibrée et qui met de l’avant une représentation juste des points de vue de chaque partie impliquée, de chercher à traiter avec respect chaque victime de la guerre. C’est indispensable, même. C’en est une autre de gommer, de perdre de vue, ou de feindre de ne pas remarquer comment le pouvoir et ses iniquités affectent différemment chacun des camps.

Un exemple criant, parmi tant d’autres. D’un côté, Gaza fait l’objet d’un blocus depuis des années, et l’Égypte ne permet la sortie que de quelques personnes au compte-goutte au poste frontalier de Rafah, qui est d’ailleurs bombardé par Israël depuis le début de la semaine. De l’autre, on planifie avec l’appui de la communauté internationale des évacuations de l’aéroport de Tel-Aviv, où une proportion importante des Israéliens a une double citoyenneté, et d’où on peut circuler dans le monde sans visa.

Tout le monde cherche à fuir devant la peur, la peur atroce, la terreur, les morts. La peur peut être aussi grande de chaque côté. La peur est propre à chacun. La peur ne se mesure pas. Les moyens de fuir, eux, se mesurent.

La paix. J’ai le sentiment que chaque reportage, chaque entrevue doit se terminer sur un « avez-vous l’espoir de voir la paix un jour » ? Non seulement c’est cliché, mais il est aussi irritant de voir la paix présentée comme un processus qui appartient à une poignée d’hommes qui accepteraient un jour de parlementer autour d’une même table.

La paix n’est pas qu’un état politique, c’est une action que l’on peut choisir de mener, ou non, chaque jour. La paix est un moteur derrière nos gestes et nos paroles aussi.

On se souvient tous du « soit vous êtes avec nous, soit vous êtes avec les terroristes » de George W. Bush au lendemain du 11 septembre. C’était là une logique guerrière, qui a mené tout droit à la guerre réelle. Cette logique est manichéenne. Elle prend toute entreprise de contextualisation comme une injure, et est persuadée que de chercher à comprendre les actions du camp adverse, c’est les justifier, les excuser ou même s’en solidariser.

Cette logique guerrière pullule. Elle accélère la droitisation de la société civile israélienne et prend sa gauche, qui souhaite une Palestine libre, en étau — alors que cette gauche est essentielle aux efforts de paix. Elle mène à des tensions douloureuses au sein des communautés juives d’ici, et rend d’autant plus ardue et coûteuse le partage de perspectives qui dissonent d’avec celles des grandes associations. Elle soutient tout autant le processus de radicalisation qui a permis l’émergence du Hamas et marginalisé le leadershipde l’Autorité palestinienne. La logique guerrière refuse de faire la distinction entre le soutien à une Palestine libre et un cri de ralliement terroriste. Elle ramène du même souffle toute la population d’Israël, et même tout le peuple juif, à l’administration de Nétanyahou.

La paix, comme choix à la portée de tous, c’est le choix de faire de la place dans son esprit et dans son coeur à plusieurs émotions et vérités en même temps. La paix cherche à comprendre à la fois le rôle du trauma de l’Holocauste et des siècles d’antisémitisme dans la charge symbolique que porte Israël, les 75 ans de délocalisation, d’oppression et de marginalisation du peuple palestinien, le rôle du colonialisme dans le contrôle britannique du territoire palestinien au moment où il a été donné à Israël et le pouvoir continu de l’Occident sur la région depuis. La paix cherche à écouter tout, entendre tout, faire assez de place pour tout.

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

Source: La vérité, le temps, le pouvoir et la paix

Filed under foreign policy, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

John Ivison: Tolerating the glorification of terror and slaughter is societal suicide

2023/10/12 Leave a comment

Of note:

Sukhdool Singh, an alleged gangster, was gunned down in Winnipeg last month, in a tit-for-tat killing between rival gangs.

Singh was wanted in India for extortion and murder, and was alleged to have links to the Khalistan Tiger Force, which has been designated a terror organization by the Indian government. He is said to have escaped to Canada on a forged passport in 2017 and India has been trying, unsuccessfully, to extradite him ever since.

Singh’s case is instructive because it is at the heart of the dispute between Canada and India. The Indians say Canada has offered a safe haven for Khalistani terrorists in return for votes from the Sikh community.

Canada says that its hands are tied because freedom of speech is protected under the Charter of Rights.

By its actions, the Canadian government has also endorsed the recent findings of the House of Commons justice and human rights committee that concluded suspects could be abused and tortured if returned to India and a host of other countries. Only six people were extradited to India between 2002 and 2020 and none of them were suspected Khalistani terrorists.

Canada is seen as being soft on terror, with some justification.

Its record on clamping down on terror financing is abysmal, as noted by B.C.’s Cullen commission into money laundering, which found that the federal Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre (FINTRAC) is ill-equipped to share intelligence with law enforcement. Proof of FINTRAC’s impotence is the lack of any charges laid between 2009 and 2016, even though it uncovered 683 transactions linked to terror financing

The government is in the process of beefing up its efforts against money laundering and terror financing, with a number of proposed legislative changes aimed at giving FINTRAC and law enforcement more powers.

But Canada’s perennial balancing act with rights and freedoms leads to much hand-wringing. For example, the Canada Revenue Agency has been accused of unfairly targeting Muslim-led charities, leading to calls for the agency to suspend its terror-financing investigative unit. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressed his sympathy for what he called the systemic Islamophobia in the CRA.

However, the atrocities that the world has witnessed over the course of the past weekend in Israel may tilt that balance away from the indulgence that has prevailed.

The scenes that played out on Saturday night in Mississauga, with joyous crowds cheering and honking horns, as if their team had just won the World Cup, were abhorrent. This was the glorification of the mass murder of children, such as the 40 dead babies discovered at the Kfar Aza kibbutz in southern Israel. This was celebration of Hamas’ deliberate and systemic targeting of civilians to kill as many as possible.

To his credit, Trudeau renounced such scenes in his remarks at a Jewish community centre in Ottawa. “The glorification of death and violence and terror has no place anywhere, especially here in Canada. Hamas terrorists aren’t a resistance, they’re not freedom fighters, they are terrorists and no one in Canada should be supporting them, much less celebrating them.”

Canada has a law against displaying hate — Section 319 of the Criminal Code, which says that anyone who incites hatred against an identifiable group where incitement is likely to lead to a breach of the peace is guilty of an indictable offence.

But such is the power of section 2b of the Charter when it comes to freedom of expression, it has been used sparingly — just 20 times between 2001 and 2019.

That is a good thing. I am proud to live in a country where truth cannot be put down by persecution. As John Stuart Mill said about free speech, conflicting doctrines often share the truth between them.

But it is quite another thing to witness fellow citizens lionize rape and murder.

In 2015, the Senate committee on national security and defence released a report in the wake of the terror attack on Parliament Hill.

It made a number of recommendations that were never enacted, including establishing a “no visit” list of identified ideological radicals and working in Muslim communities to create an effective counter-narrative to Islamic fundamentalism.

But one conclusion that it drew has special resonance today — that our hate laws should be updated to ban the glorification of terrorists, terrorist acts and terrorist symbols. The committee said it recognized issues with the Charter of Rights but noted that France and U.K. have similar laws.

There are clearly issues with what constitutes “glorification” — a grey zone where there may not be specific calls for action. France’s law appears to go too far: one 25-year-old man was handed a suspended sentence for scribbling “Vive Daesh” (aka ISIL) on a toilet wall.

Yet, antisemitic chants calling for the destruction of Israel, or in the case of Canada’s Khalistanis, building a carnival float that celebrates the assassination of Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi (as happened in Toronto in 2023) create the conditions for violence. The British law includes a clause that specifically says the offence occurs when members of the public might reasonably be expected to infer that what is being glorified is being proposed as conduct that should be emulated.

The introduction of such legislation may go a long way to healing the rift with India — and that cannot be done quickly enough.

We are entering a period of what historian Niall Ferguson has predicted will be a “cascade of conflict,” where Russia, Iran and China will do their best to overturn the international order by testing a fiscally overstretched America in three theatres: Eastern Europe, the Middle East and the Far East. It will be no surprise to anyone if China makes an illegal move in the South China Sea in the coming weeks.

Canada needs to recognize that, in W.B. Yeats’ words, anarchy is loosed upon the world and innocence is drowned; that “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

We need to stand with our allies, even if we don’t often like what they do. India’s Narendra Modi is a thin-skinned chauvinist; Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu may be corrupt and is certainly incompetent.

As the former Shin Bet chief, Ami Ayalon, told Le Figaro, the Netanyahu government is largely responsible for the divisions that created an opportunity for Hamas, with its controversial push for justice reforms and a policy that marginalized the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

But these flaws pale in comparison to the what the great autocracies would have in store for us.

I’m haunted by a quote in Avi Shavit’s superb history of Israel: My Promised Land, where he talks about the vitality of the nation. “And yet, there is always the fear that one day, daily life will freeze like Pompeii’s.”

For too many Israelis, life did indeed freeze this weekend. The existential threat there is palpable. Canada cannot allow pluralism and reasonable accommodation to plant the seeds of our self-destruction.

Source: John Ivison: Tolerating the glorification of terror and slaughter is societal suicide

Filed under Multiculturalism, Radicalization Tagged with , , , ,

Sean Speer: Shocking pro-Hamas, anti-Israel rallies lay bare the limits of Canadian pluralism

2023/10/11 Leave a comment

Expect to see more similar commentary. The formal limits are essentially our laws and regulations with informal limits even harder to enforce consistently. Without getting into “both side-ism,” the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and repression of Palestinians draws insufficient coverage and commentary. But the barbarism of Hamas needs to be condemned without reservation:

As Palestine supporters continue to organize themselves in different Canadian cities to effectively demonstrate in favour of Hamas’s abhorrent attacks on the State of Israel, the inherent tensions and limits of pluralism have been laid bare for everyone to see. 

Pluralism is a key part—arguably the key part—of Canada’s conception of itself and our common citizenship. The country’s basic promise is one of peaceful co-existence. Our institutions, norms, and practices are set up to accommodate a multiplicity of viewpoints and persuasions concerning the most fundamental questions about justice, human flourishing, and what constitutes the good life. 

Pluralism is also a key—arguably the key part—of my own worldview. Although, as I’ve grown older, I’ve become more comfortable in my own thinking about these questions, I’ve also grown less comfortable with the idea of imposing my answers on others. Our own limitations (what Kant referred to as our “crooked timber”) invariably constrain the individual pursuit of truth. The public square should therefore be a crowded, complicated, and contentious marketplace of ideas. The state must resist imposing a singular conception of truth on the society. 

Yet pluralism cannot be an open-ended promise either. Just because our ability to discern the truth may be imperfect and incomplete doesn’t mean that we should give into an empty relativism. Some ideas are bad and wrong. We cannot permit our pluralistic commitments to provide license for those who reject our society’s basic values or even wish to do it harm. Pluralism cannot be a one-sided surrender to illiberal and reactionary forces. 

We’ve witnessed in recent days these tensions and limits inherent to Canadian pluralism. While most of us mourned and lamented the inhumanity of Hamas’s terrorist attacks on Israel, a small minority among us have defended and even celebrated them. These individuals and organizations have relied on Canada’s promise of freedom to countenance and glorify the indiscriminate violence of a group designated as a terrorist organization by our own government. 

There have been pro-Palestinian demonstrations across the country that have effectively affirmed Hamas’s terrorism. The videos from these pro-Hamas rallies in cities such as Mississauga and Montreal have been shocking. It must be said that rallies in support of a terrorist organization that has carried out a systematic campaign of killing women and children are incompatible with Canadian values.

Meanwhile, groups such as the Muslim Association of Canada and National Council of Canadian Muslims (which according to online records have received more than $1.34 million in federal funding between them since 2018) may be more careful in their messaging, but they’re still ultimately equivocal about what the world has witnessed. Their tendency towards “two-sideism” and other prevaricating devices have obscured the extent to which they implicitly affirm Hamas’ narrative. If in the face of overwhelming evidence of brutality and cruelty against Israelis your first instinct is to lament “the tyranny and terrorism of the Zionists” or criticize Israel’s democratic leadership, you’ve for all intents and purposes exposed your true character. 

Which it must be said is fair enough as far as some pluralistic protections go. One can oppose the current Israeli government or even critique the State of Israel itself and of course still find him or herself able to avail Canada’s protections of freedom of conscience or expression. We cannot and should not police one’s thoughts per se. But it certainly doesn’t mean that radical groups are entitled to taxpayer dollars or that individuals who cross the line from reasonable disagreements to the promotion and glorification of violence shouldn’t face sanction. 

These basic observations shouldn’t in and of themselves be controversial. Our commitment to pluralism must be uncompromising up and until it comes to undermine the basic security and stability of our own society. As my former boss Brian Lee Crowley has often said: “[we cannot permit] our list of freedoms to become our suicide note.”

Drawing these lines is of course complicated. Our default assumption must be highly permissive. Just because an idea is controversial or at odds with the majority’s views isn’t a reason to exclude it from the public square. The health of our society is measured in part by our willingness to protect ample space for such views. Imposing parameters around the public square therefore comes with great risk. Those parameters can be misapplied, misread, or even wielded by those whose primary goal is to constrain ideas that don’t match their own preferences. Just because it’s hard, however, doesn’t mean that it’s a task that we should shrink from. 

There are perspectives that should rightly be denounced, marginalized, and precluded from receiving public dollars. Even if one is squeamish about laws and policies that criminalize acts like the glorification of terrorism, there ought to be a minimum agreement that we have a collective responsibility to condemn such behaviour in order to effectively raise its social costs and signal to those inside and outside of our society that our pluralism isn’t a license for depravity or violence. 

Canada has essentially bet its future on pluralism. As our population gets more and more diverse, the multiplicity of views will grow and pluralism will be crucial for managing our diversity. I think it’s a good bet. Unlike some conservatives, I’ve tended to disagree with the instinct to mock Prime Minister Trudeau’s assertion that “diversity is our strength.” I think it’s broadly true. But if our pluralism isn’t principled, if it doesn’t involve some limits, then diversity will cease to be our strength and may eventually become the source of our undoing. 

Source: Sean Speer: Shocking pro-Hamas, anti-Israel rallies lay bare the limits of Canadian pluralism

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Portugal to Consider Changes on Time Required to Obtain Citizenship This September

2023/09/12 Leave a comment

Interesting the large number of Israels who have taken advantage of the Descendants Policy to become Portuguese citizens, mainly citizens of convenience as most are non-residents:

The Parliament is considering a change in the current legislation, which would enable foreigners who already live in the country to obtain Portuguese citizenship more easily.

According to Journal Jurid, all foreigners who have spent a certain time necessary to achieve naturalisation can be subject to this potential change. The Parliament is expected soon to analyse the current legislation and propose changes to the time required for a foreigner to stay in the country to acquire naturalisation, SchengenVisaInfo.com reports.

“Currently, a foreigner residing in the country has his time count reset when receiving formal authorisation to stay in Portugal,” the Journal Jurid points out.

The interest in Portuguese nationality has risen in the past few years, as the local media report that in 2022, around 37 per cent more people have filed their applications. According to the Foreigners and Borders Service (SEF), the total number of applications during this time reached 74,506.

Out of this total, the respective authorities issued 64,040 opinions, with only 911 of those being negative, while the majority received a positive answer. As per the origin countries, the majority of those who obtained Portuguese citizenship in 2022 came from Israel (20,975), followed by Brazil (18,591) and Cape Verde (3662).

However, for the acquisition of nationality in terms of marriage or de facto union, the majority of applications were filed by Brazilian nationals (9,435), followed by Venezuelans (1,536) and Cape Verdeans (900).

Israeli nationals, who are the main nationality group that applied for Portuguese citizenship in recent years, have overtaken Brazil as the largest nationality group that wants to acquire Portuguese nationality, despite the fact that the European country and the South American country have longstanding ties in culture, linguistics as well as history.

What is really interesting about Israelis in Portugal is that, more than often, they don’t reside in the country after obtaining their citizenship. Only 569 Israeli citizens are Portuguese residents despite 60,000 Israelis having Portuguese nationality as of 2022. As per  Brazilians, 239,744 of them continue residing in Portugal after obtaining citizenship.

Some of the benefits that Israelis can enjoy after obtaining Portuguese citizenship include paying less taxes, having better living costs and, in general, spending a less stressful life compared to other countries. However, as pointed out, some disadvantages are the language barrier and lower income.

But one of the greatest benefits of Portuguese citizenship is travelling in the Schengen borderless zone, which Israeli passport holders are still subject to talks for the EU and US visa waiver programmes.

“This was a big deal for Israelis as carrying an Israeli passport is much more restrictive. This general conversation also touched on higher education. The academic prerequisites for state universities in Israel are high, and private schools are costly. In the EU, however, the terms of acceptance are more relaxed, and the cost is lower if you are an EU national. This general discussion motivated many families with European origins to apply for EU nationalities,” Lior, an Israeli national who now has Portuguese nationality, pointed out.

However, the number of Israelis applying for Portuguese citizenship might experience a decrease as 2022 was the last year when they could apply for nationality under the Descendants Policy – a programme that enables Israeli nationals with descendants in the country to acquire Portuguese nationality easier compared to other nationalities.

Source: Portugal to Consider Changes on Time Required to Obtain … – SchengenVisaInfo.com

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with ,

Cohen: American Jews are loudly protesting Israel’s anti-judiciary law. In Canada — not so much, Juneau: Canada must rethink its friendship with Israel

2023/07/29 Leave a comment

Significant contrast:

On the day Israel’s Knesset passed the Reasonableness Standard Law — a frontal assault on the independence of its judiciary — something strange and wondrous happened among America’s fractious Jews: they agreed, broadly speaking, that the law is a mistake and said so.

The chorus of disapproval came not just from progressive Jews but organizations representing mainstream Jews, and some conservative ones, too. The American Jewish Committee issued a statement expressing “profound disappointment” and lamenting that the new law was “pushed through unilaterally by the governing coalition,” causing “discord” in Israel and “straining the vital relationship” with the diaspora.

The committee argued that “dramatic changes” to the judicial system should come from “a deliberative and inclusive process” respecting checks and balances, minority rights and judicial independence. Other mainstream U.S. organizations echoed the criticism. The Anti–Defamation League said the law “could weaken Israeli democracy and harm Israel’s founding principles.” The Jewish Federations of North America was “extremely disappointed” the law had been passed “without a process of consensus,” despite “serious disagreement across Israeli society” amid strenuous efforts to forge “a compromise.”

Pointedly, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, among the most stalwart pro-Israeli organizations, did not comment. But Democratic Majority for Israel, a pro-Israel committee within the Democratic Party, said it was “a serious mistake” for Israel to ignore the protests of “the majority of its citizens …”

This displeasure of the Jewish establishment, though not as strong as in other quarters, shows an evolution among American Jews. Criticizing Israel was once heretical among these groups. No longer.

None of these organizations is as angry as many among this country’s 5.8 million Jews, who are increasingly skeptical of Israel. A growing number think it’s time that President Joe Biden lean heavily on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his old, unreconstructed adversary. “Bibi” has fallen in with the hard right on judicial reform, from settlers who want to annex the West Bank to orthodox Jews who want to enshrine exemption from military service.

Biden has issued appeals but no threats. He never raises, for example, the $3.8 billion U.S. in assistance Israel receives annually from the United States. Interestingly, Israel, a wealthy country more secure than ever, no longer needs the money. Still, it is seen as untouchable.

While Jews in Britain, Australia and other countries have joined those here in opposition, it’s entirely different in Canada, an unserious country, where only progressives see the danger.

“This is a dark day,” declared Joe Roberts, chair of JSpaceCanada. “I cannot begin to explain how gutted I am.” He and others worry about an emasculated court that can no longer protect the rights of Palestinians, migrant workers, women and the LGBTQ+ community in Israel against an oppressive government.

The New Israel Fund of Canada has issued an urgent appeal. “Today we need you more than ever,” said executive director Ben Murane. “We will never back down.”

Astoundingly, though, from the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), the “advocacy agent” that “represents the diverse perspectives and concerns of more than 150,000 Jewish Canadians,” there was not a peep of protest. Maybe it missed the news.

Then again, the director of CIJA’s office in Jerusalem is David Weinberg, who supported the judicial reforms in a published commentary. These are his personal views, CIJA insists. But it’s likely they are equally those of CIJA’s unelected and unaccountable executive, especially CEO Shimon Fogel. He knows that these are not those of Canadian Jews but hasn’t the courage to say so.

It raises the question: Why doesn’t CIJA stop hiding and come out and support the reforms? At least that would be honourable. For its part, the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto issued yet another purée of platitudes. It is concerned that Israelis are divided and hopes for “compromise.” What we need is more dialogue, it urges, finding solace in earnestness and ambiguity.

Oh. Lord. As Israel’s Supreme Court prepares to hear petitions on the new law — which may well spark an unprecedented constitutional crisis there this autumn — behold, once again, the sad silence of Canada’s Jewish establishment.

Source: Cohen: American Jews are loudly protesting Israel’s anti-judiciary law. In Canada — not so much

Thomas Juneau asking a needed question:

This week, the Israeli parliament approved a controversial law that constrains the Supreme Court’s ability to provide judicial oversight of government actions. According to many critics, this is only the first step in a plan by the coalition government led by Prime MinisterBenjamin Netanyahu to concentrate power in the executive branch. The Netanyahu government, which includes Jewish supremacists and is the most extreme in the country’s history, has also taken steps, and will likely take additional ones, toward Israel’s further annexation of the West Bank.

This raises difficult questions for Canada: should we stand by as the assault on democratic norms and Palestinian rights continues? The easy answer would be to muddle along, perhaps offering timid condemnation. The status quo, however, is increasingly unsustainable.

Like its allies, Canada’s position is to support the two-state solution, according to which Israel and an eventual Palestinian state would co-exist. Yet it is now difficult to see how this outcome can be achieved. On the Israeli side, intransigent governments have expanded settlements in the West Bank, largely closing the door on a viable Palestinian state. The road has been further blocked by the fragmentation of the Palestinian leadership, with the incompetent Palestinian Authority barely governing in the West Bank and the extremist Hamas ruling the Gaza Strip with an iron fist. In the meantime, the status quo is deeply unfair to Palestinians and destabilizing for the region.

The case can certainly be made that maintaining the fiction of the two-state solution is the least bad approach given the absence of viable alternatives. It is one thing to recognize that the two-state solution is dead; it is another to come up with a better, realistic alternative. Moreover, proponents of the status quo argue that Israel is and should remain a close friend. This is partly valid: There is no serious proposal to jettison the partnership, which indeed is beneficial for Canada. To their discredit, some supporters of the status quo far too easily launch accusations of antisemitism in response to criticism of Israeli policies. This is dishonest and stifles constructive and necessary debate. The question here is not to reject Israel’s right to exist, but to criticize some of its policies and ask whether Canada’s current approach is optimal.

The broader objectives of Canada’s foreign policy matter. It is inevitable that Canada’s focus on the Middle East will diminish. Ottawa simply has other priorities: The most important one, and one which could come under severe strain in the near future, remains the management of its relations with the United States. In addition, Canada needs to boost its presence in Asia, while the war in Ukraine shows the necessity of continuing its contributions to transatlantic security. The remaining bandwidth, for the Middle East and other areas, will shrink.

In this context, Canada should publicly state that it refuses to deal with the more extremist ministers in the Netanyahu government. It should vocally express its opposition to the proposed reforms and freeze or reduce co-operation with Israel on some issues. Ottawa should also boost its support for Palestinian civil society and increase pressure on the Palestinian Authority to reform itself and organize fresh elections. More concretely, Canada should evaluate whether its longstanding mission to train Palestinian security forces should continue since doing so entrenches the status quo by allowing Israel to delegate to the Palestinian Authority the day-to-day administration of the occupation in the West Bank. Ottawa should also suspend its policy of almost systematically voting with Israel at the United Nations General Assembly on resolutions dealing with the conflict.

Given its marginal influence when it acts alone, Canada should also engage in serious conversations with like-minded allies and partners, including through the Group of Seven, about options to change the status quo in relations with Israel and the Palestinians. Canada’s partnership with Israel has been premised on shared values, and with Israel’s government now dominated by extremist elements who are undermining the two-state solution, we can’t keep acting like it’s business as usual.

Source: Canada must rethink its friendship with Israel

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