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Feature AIPAC North Dan Freeman-Maloy October 9, 2006 The establishment of the so-called Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee (CJPAC) in late 2005, just in time for the federal election of January 2006, has elicited heated debate within Canada's Israel lobby. B'nai Brith Canada's Jewish Tribune, for instance, first reported the development under the headline "Mystery surrounds Jewish political committee CJPAC," and has since been harshly critical of the initiative. CJPAC claims to success following the election did little to change this. In a March 2006 story titled "CJPAC's wall of silence not in spirit of lobbyist's code of conduct," Tribune correspondent Julie Lesser blasted the organization for "continu[ing] to maintain a wall of silence surrounding the availability of basic information to the public." In early May (p.3), Lesser upheld the point, stressing that "CJPAC remains an organization that conducts business under a veil of secrecy." Amidst a mix of inattention and controversy, CJPAC is moving forward with its "multi-partisan" lobbying work. Exactly what this involves remains unclear. What is tolerably clear is that CJPAC constitutes yet another Canadian foothold for the U.S.-Israeli alliance. In fact, it appears to have emerged under the direct guidance of this alliance's North American powerhouse, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The creation of CJPAC is part and parcel of the dramatic restructuring which the Canadian Jewish establishment has undergone in recent years. This restructuring, which began in earnest in 2002, has weakened B'nai Brith's position in the community, hence the criticism from the Tribune. But the changes have been far from progressive. For decades, elements of corporate Canada represented by a fundraising federation structure closely tied with the United States and Israel have been increasing their control over mainstream Canadian Jewish organization. Newly organized as the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy (CIJA), they have now entrenched their position. Through the strength of the federation system, and under the direct supervision of CIJA, mainstream Canadian Jewish organization has been further centralized and, in significant part, converted into a streamlined "Israel advocacy" apparatus. This apparatus has been steered into close alignment with the U.S.-Israeli alliance. Its principal focus is an effort to weaken solidarity with the Palestinian people and solidify official Canadian rejection of basic Palestinian rights. However, it is active on a number of related fronts, and has been involved in supporting the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, helping to lay the political groundwork for possible aggression against Iran, and opposing progressive social movements at the grassroots level (particularly on campuses). Canada's new Israel advocacy apparatus has too strong a base in the Canadian establishment, and is too thoroughly supported from the United States and Israel, for its work to be stopped entirely. But its own polls reveal that Canadian public opinion is opposed to its agenda. Organized solidarity with the Palestinian people continues to persevere and grow. Predictably, the Israel advocacy apparatus is meeting this challenge with political attacks and institutional bullying. Those who take a principled stand in support of the struggle for democracy in Israel-Palestine - CUPE Ontario has, to its great credit, become notable in this respect - are faced with tremendous pressure to back down. This article seeks to broaden discussion of why mainstream Canadian Jewish organizations are helping to apply this pressure. More generally, it provides some basic context regarding the politics, strategies and institutions which define Canadian Israel advocacy.
The recent restructuring of mainstream Canadian Jewish organization has been dramatic. But it merely marks the culmination of processes that have been apparent for many decades. These include the weakening of working class organization within Canada's Jewish community, the expanding power of the community's corporate establishment, and the deepening institutional influence of both Zionism and U.S. structures over mainstream Canadian Jewish organizations. Before exploring the unfortunate culmination of these processes from 2002 onwards, their history requires some attention. Canadian Zionism: "an attractive 'package deal'" Given how central the development of Zionism is to this history, it is worth reviewing some basic features of the movement that resulted in the creation of the Israeli state. This movement emerged in late 19th century Europe, shaped by the twin realities of violent, racist persecution of Jewish communities within Europe, and European conquest of vast territories elsewhere in the world for settlement and profit. Zionism proposed an answer to Europe's "Jewish question." The Zionist movement would spearhead the creation of a European Jewish colony on a suitable piece of territory. Its leadership briefly flirted with pursuing its ambitions in Argentina or Uganda. But the first Zionist Congress set the movement's sights on what it described as "the colonization of Palestine,"[1] and it is around this plan that the movement actually developed. Zionism was a response to anti-Semitism, but hardly an anti-racist one. It generally accepted the idea that Jews are "alien" to the societies in which they live as a minority religion or ethnicity, a key premise of narrow, anti-Semitic nationalist movements. More clearly still, its answer to Europe's Jewish question relied upon a racist dismissal of the existing society in Palestine and the surrounding region. Theodor Herzl, the founder and lead organizer of the fledgling movement, stressed that the Zionist state in Palestine "should there form a portion of the rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization against barbarism."[2] This approach brought Zionist strategists into direct collaboration with the leading racist statesmen of the time. In European officials, including the most vicious anti-Semites, key Zionist leaders saw potential allies. Herzl, for example, met and dealt with the Czarist Interior Minister responsible for the infamous 1903 pogrom in Kishinev; the Zionist zealot Ze'ev (Vladmir) Jabotinsky repeated the pattern a few years after the First World War by dealing with the reactionary Ukrainian exile government that was responsible for massacring thousands of Jews. Jabotinsky's maneuvers gained nothing while associating the movement with a hated and collapsing government, and he was soon after removed from the Zionist Executive. But at the 12th Zionist Congress, he defended himself in words that would echo through much Zionist and Israeli policy: "In working for Palestine I would even ally myself with the devil."[3] This approach played out most successfully in relations with imperial Britain, putting Canadian supporters of the movement in an extremely comfortable position. In 1917, with the empire of Palestine's Ottoman rulers in collapse, British Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour declared his country's support for "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people."[4] British troops soon entered Palestine and subjected it to a new regime of military rule. The Zionist movement had secured a key ally, and Canadian Zionists began receiving official support. Thereafter, Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King would himself occasionally attend the annual conference of the Zionist Organization of Canada (ZOC), and otherwise generally sent either Cabinet ministers or a supportive telegram. As historian Gerald Tulchinsky explains, "Loyalty to Zionism, to the British Empire, and to Canada was an attractive 'package deal' for Canadian Jews, with no apparent drawbacks."[5] Canadian Zionism was extremely focused on fundraising. It leadership was dominated by the business community, its priorities set mostly from abroad. From 1921 on, the fundraising that defined the movement was managed through the Canadian component of a United Palestine Appeal (UPA) campaign directed by Keren Hayesod (the "Foundation Fund"), an agency responsible for financing and coordinating Zionist settlement in Palestine. Identification with Zionism was convenient, but did not encompass all Canadian Jewish organization. The urban Jewish establishment, such as it was, was only loosely associated with Zionism through the early 20th century. In the Jewish community's two main population centres, Montreal and Toronto, the federations representing this sector were established in 1916 as the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies, the precursor of Montreal's Allied Jewish Community Services (AJCS) and Toronto's United Jewish Welfare Fund (UJWF). Independent organizations also flourished amongst Jewish workers, particularly prominent in the garment industries of Montreal, Toronto and Winnipeg. These included mutual aid associations known as Landsmanshaften, unions of workers and the unemployed, and a rich variety of radical political organization. A more comprehensive organization also emerged briefly in 1919 before being stably reconstituted in 1934: the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC). The early CJC, which described itself as a parliament for all Canadian Jews, had a mixed class composition and a significant degree of political diversity.[6] Many Canadian Jews rejected Zionism as unfeasible, in favor of class solidarity, or out of loyalty to a project of internationalist struggle for progressive social change. Sometimes, these currents ran directly against the Zionist leadership. In 1937 Montreal, for example, a mass meeting of Jewish leftists and trade unionists denounced the "chauvinist propaganda" generated around Palestine's anti-Zionist revolt of 1936-1939, and called for "solidarity of the Jewish and Arab toiling masses."[7] Sentiments of solidarity based in class analysis offered limited, but important, support for anti-colonial struggle in Palestine. But class-based notions of solidarity between oppressed people remained weak on the question of indigenous struggle. Zionism, after all, reflected a broad European consensus regarding the moral soundness of colonizing inhabited territory. And in Canadian society, itself the product of just such a process, sustained resistance to this was rare. It became weaker still as the base of Canadian Jewish working class radicalism eroded. The shared Yiddish language and culture on which this base relied faded with generational turn-over. Cultural integration into the Canadian mainstream was furthered by the Canadian Jewish upward class mobility that drove a widespread shift from the manufacturing sector into the professions, particularly from the 1940s on. And Zionism continued to gain ground. Catastrophe and the growth of corporate Zionism As these processes took their toll, an independently terrible blow came from the tragic developments in Europe. The Nazi push towards genocidal anti-Semitism, culminating in the mass slaughter of 1939-1945, had a crippling effect on international Jewish political life. It annihilated the principal base for Jewish working class radicalism, and also the most relevant context for its largely progressive nationalist varieties. Jewish radicalism's East European centre of gravity was mostly obliterated. In the wake of this slaughter, thousands of survivors languished in displaced persons camps throughout Europe, and the West remained unwelcoming. Jewish immigration to Canada was prohibited during the time of the worst atrocities, and a 1946 Gallup poll put Jews second from the top of the list of immigrant ethnicities unwanted by the Canadian public (after Japanese).[8] Zionism offered an answer to the question of refugees' resettlement, and a perceived opportunity for Jewish national revival in the aftermath of tragedy. By the late 1940s, Canadian Jewish identification with the Zionist project had become extremely widespread. The thoroughly colonial parameters of this project were by this time well established, and it was within these that the Zionist state developed. The Zionist leadership clung to the idea of creating a Jewish demographic majority on lands where the vast majority of indigenous society was not Jewish. In the midst and under the cover of a war with neighbouring Arab states in 1948-1949, Zionist militias took this idea to its inevitable conclusion. More than 700,000 indigenous Palestinian Arabs were evicted from their homes in a campaign that involved both direct massacres - by the paramilitary Irgun and Stern Gang (as in the village of Deir Yassin) as well as by the Haganah, the precursor of the Israel Defense Forces (as in the village of Duwayma) - and the fostering of a general climate of panic. By 1949, Zionist forces controlled 78% of mandatory Palestine, declaring it the State of Israel. They razed some 400 Palestinian villages to the ground. This process remains infamous to Palestinians as Al Nakba (The Catastrophe).[9] The Israeli legislature, the Knesset, quickly entrenched Zionist aims for Palestine into the new state system. The Israeli state flatly denied the right of Palestinians displaced in 1948-1949 to return to their homes. It thereby violated the inalienable right of return, enshrined in international law for all refugees, while defying United Nations Resolutions 181 and 194, which specifically guarantee full residency and citizenship rights to the indigenous inhabitants of 1948 Palestine. Those who had been completely displaced from Israeli-controlled territory were barred from returning, their land and possessions expropriated as "absentee property." Those who had been displaced from their homes but remained in the State of Israel generally gained Israeli citizenship, but of a distinctly second-class variety. Many of these were internally displaced people who were prohibited from returning to their homes, and as their property was expropriated, these Palestinian citizens of Israel were classified as "present absentees" - present in the state, absent as far as their pre-1948 homes were concerned. As the Israeli government gained control of increasing territory, the Knesset ensured that this land would be settled in line with Zionist objectives. In its first few years, it passed legislation vesting the World Zionist Organization, the Jewish Agency (JA) and the Jewish National Fund (JNF) with quasi-state powers over immigration, settlement and land development. These agencies openly discriminated against indigenous Palestinians in favor of Jewish settlers. The Knesset further facilitated Zionist settlement by passing a "Law of Return" which granted any Jewish resident of any country in the world the right to settle Palestinian land in accord with a presumed ancestral title.[10] Canadian Jewish support for this colonization entailed moral and political disaster. It also strengthened the position of corporate interests in the community. The Zionist Organization of Canada, for its part, remained business-dominated, thanks in part to a mid-1940s purge of labor Zionist youth by ZOC president and wealthy Toronto stockbroker Sam Zacks. Longtime Zionists were also now joined by stronger rival organizations. In 1951, a National Conference for Israel and Jewish Rehabilitation was formed, bringing together ZOC, B'nai Brith, the Canadian Jewish Congress (then under the presidency of whisky tycoon Samuel Bronfman), and the Canadian Council of Jewish Welfare Funds (representing local federations). The conference launched a new umbrella fundraising campaign, the United Jewish Appeal (UJA). Despite attention to Jewish refugees' resettlement and local services, fundraising for the Zionist project quickly rose to the top of the list of UJA's priorities. Fundraising for Israel was still coordinated by the Keren Hayesod under its renamed United Israel Appeal (UIA) campaign. Canadian fundraising, principally through UIA, ensured a steady flow of financial support for the discriminatory settlement projects of the Jewish Agency and Jewish National Fund. In the coming decades, the Israeli state consolidated its base and moved to expand. In 1967, in the course of a war with neighboring Arab states, Israel occupied the remaining 22% of mandatory Palestine, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. The war was a major setback for the currents of pan-Arab nationalism anchored by Nasserite Egypt. As against rising international anti-colonial upsurge, the Israeli victory was widely applauded in the West. Post-war trends in Canadian Jewish organization thus intensified, out of identification with Israeli power and a desire to guard against backlash to the occupation of more Arab territory. A new lobby develops After 1967, fundraising for Israel skyrocketed. Bronfman coaxed increasing funds from the Jewish community's growing corporate establishment just as WASP Canadians made unprecedented campaign contributions. With the Zionist settlement apparatus restructuring towards expansion into the newly occupied territories, Canadian financial support for the deepening colonization of 1948-occupied territory proceeded apace. This fundraising also played an important international role. Canadian Zionism functioned as an organizational bridge between the U.S. United Jewish Appeal (UJA) campaign, to which its federations were linked, and the fundraising campaigns in Europe and elsewhere, conducted through Keren Hayesod (active in Canada through the UIA). This unique position allowed Canadians to play an important part in international Zionist work. But while redoubled support for Israel put renewed momentum behind fundraising, political advocacy around Canadian foreign policy also became a more serious consideration. Political lobbying was coordinated through a new Israel advocacy organization, the Canada-Israel Committee (CIC). The CIC was established as a tripartite alliance. One component was the new Canadian Zionist Federation (CZF), a representative of all of Canada's explicitly Zionist groups, formed after 1967 under pressure from Jerusalem. The second component was B'nai Brith Canada, which emerged as a force in coming decades both through CIC and through its League for Human Rights (LHR, the counterpart of the U.S. Anti-Defamation League). The third component was the self-described Canadian Jewish parliament, the CJC, preeminent in CIC lobbying though its partners formally had equal status.[11] Corporate influence defined the development of this new arrangement. The financial whims of the fundraising federation system determined the allocation of resources to CIC, CJC and other Canadian Jewish groups. Somewhat unreliable, this relationship was stabilized with the establishment in 1974 of a National Budgeting Conference (NBC). The NBC brought together Canada's eleven leading federations and the UIA to coordinate and manage the allocation of funds. This same decade, the Canadian federation structure folded into the U.S. Council of Jewish Federations (CJF). By 1978, the finances of mainstream Canadian Jewish organization were directed by NBC from the new Toronto headquarters of the CJF. In the 1980s, the federations also secured themselves formal representation within the CIC. Simultaneously, the federations strengthened their control by "merging" with local operations of the CJC. This effectively eliminated the possibility of challenging the fundraiser-dominated leadership from within the Jewish mainstream. When Toronto's UJWF made this move in 1976, Toronto Congress people blasted it as "a Welfare Fund takeover in disguise," sure to worsen the "situation in which the Ministry of Revenue became the dictator of Parliament." Retiring CJC Vice-President Saul Hayes likewise lamented "the narcissism and self-infatuation of the Welfare Funds."[12] Nonetheless, the merger took place, creating what has evolved into the United Jewish Appeal (UJA) Federation of Greater Toronto. Similar mergers took place elsewhere, from Winnipeg to Montreal. In the final decades of the 20th century, the United States and Israel moved into tight alliance. Every year from 1976 on, Israel was the lead recipient of U.S. foreign aid.[13] The U.S. supported Israel as it maintained its artificial Jewish demographic majority, attacked the refugee-led Palestinian resistance, and expanded settlements further into occupied territory. Israel continued the tradition of Zionist collaboration, joining the U.S. in supporting the contra war against Sandinista Nicaragua, the South African Apartheid regime, and brutal dictatorships from Zaire (Congo) to El Salvador.[14] Through the Jerusalem-based parent organization of Canada's United Israel Appeal, and through membership of the fundraising federations which directed it in the U.S. Council of Jewish Federations, the Canadian Jewish establishment was tied to both sides of this alliance. And as the century wound down, mainstream Canadian Jewish organization was pulled into increasing alignment with it. References: [1] "The Basle Declaration," passed at the First Zionist Congree (1897), as printed in Walter Laqueur and Barry Rubin's co-edited The Israel-Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East (Facts on File, Inc., 1985): p. 11. [2] Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State (Henry Pordes, 1993): p. 30. [3] Walter Laqueur, A History of Zionism (Schocken Books, 1976): p. 123; and Joseph B. Schechtman, Rebel and Statesman: The Vladimir Jabotinsky Story (Thomas Yoseloff, Inf., 1956): p. 399. [4] "The Balfour Declaration," as printed in The Israel-Arab Reader: p. 18. [5] Gerald Tulchinsky, Branching Out: The Transformation of the Canadian Jewish Community (Stoddart, 1998): p. 148. [6] On this organizational history, see, e.g., Tulchinsky, Branching Out; Daniel Stone, ed., Jewish Radicalism in Winnipeg, 1905-1960 (Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada, 2002); and Daniel Elazar & Harold Waller, Maintaining Consensus: The Canadian Jewish Polity in the Postwar World (Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 1990). [7] Tulchinsky, Branching Out: p. 125. [8] Ibid., p. 264. [9] For details regarding the Nakba, see Walid Khalidi, All that remains: the Palestinian villages occupied and depopulated by Israel in 1948 (Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992). [10] See Uri Davis, Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within (Zed Books, 2003). [11] On the development of this lobby, see David Goldberg & David Taras, ed., The Domestic Battleground: Canada and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (McGill-Queen's University Press, 1989); Ronnie Miller, From Lebanon to the Intifada: The Jewish Lobby and Canadian Middle East Policy (University Press of America, 1991); and Elazar & Waller, Maintaining Consensus. [12] Elazar & Waller, p. 213-214. [13] Noam Chomsky, The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians (Black Rose Books, 1999): p. 10. [14] See, e.g, Chomsky, The Fateful Triangle; and "Special - The Israeli Connection: Guns and Money in Central America, " NACLA Report on the Americas, March/April 1987.
Part II: The Emergence of CIJA In 1998, Canada's UIA and the CJF's Canadian region merged to form the United Israel Appeal Federations Canada (UIAFC). Under the increasing power of these groups, working class culture and organization had already been marginalized within the Canadian Jewish mainstream. A Toronto respondent to a study published in 1990 by the deeply conservative Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs explained that "there is little respect for the poor" in mainstream Jewish organization, "and not only are they not represented, they are not missed."[1] As for Israel-Palestine, the establishment's uncritical support for Israel had already been tested by the massacres of Palestinian refugees in 1982 Lebanon and the brutal repression of the 1987 uprising in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. It had held firm.[2] This support so thoroughly permeated mainstream organization that the same Jerusalem Center study identified "public support for the Palestine Liberation Organization cause" as a way for Montreal Jews to lose established community affiliation.[3] At the turn of the century, Canada's mainstream Jewish organizations thus found themselves under the consolidated control of a corporate establishment loyal to Israel and tied to the United States. Apartheid and rebellion Soon after the UIA/CJF merger, a new phase of Palestinian resistance was initiated in the West Bank and Gaza. This resistance must be understood in context. The preceding half century had seen the Israeli state develop a regime of systematic ethnic and national discrimination that is properly described as apartheid. With the Jewish "Law of Return" still in force, the Palestinian refugee population displaced since 1948 continued to languish in exile, living in refugee camps in neighbouring countries and in dispersion elsewhere. Non-Jewish indigenous inhabitants of the territory Israel had occupied in 1948 remained second-class citizens. While allowed to vote and run in elections for the Knesset, many such citizens were internally displaced people whose property had been expropriated. Palestinian citizens of Israel were kept under direct Israeli military governance until 1966, and targeted for discrimination through the system of settlement and development policies that privileged Jewish settlers from abroad above the land's indigenous inhabitants. Since 1967, moreover, Israeli policies of occupation and discriminatory settlement had extended further into territory including the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. (For a thorough analysis of the basic development of this system, see Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within, written by Uri Davis, a Jewish dissident of Israeli citizenship. For an online comparison with apartheid South Africa, see Chris McGreal's recent article for the Guardian.) Throughout this process, the indigenous people of Palestine demonstrated a steadfast determination to assert their human and national rights. With a strong base in the refugee camps of countries like Jordan and Lebanon, the Palestine Liberation Organization had earned itself a central place in regional struggles against imperial domination. The Palestinian national movement struggled in the harshest of circumstances. It faced brutal repression, including massacres of Palestinians in 1970 Jordan (during Black September) and 1982 Lebanon, then under Israeli occupation (at Sabra and Shatilla). Yet Palestinian resistance continued. In 1987, the population of the West Bank and Gaza launched a period of popular rebellion that included strikes, boycotts, organized defiance of curfew and stone-throwing at occupation forces, all sustained through the development of a solid foundation of popular organization. The rebellion was suspended in 1993 by the U.S.-brokered Oslo Accords, which established a new Palestinian Authority (PA) with limited authority in the West Bank and Gaza. Nonetheless, through the 1990s, Israel continued to confiscate Palestinian land, demolish Palestinian homes and expand Jewish settlements into the 1967-occupied territories. Oslo and the PA had brought the Palestinians neither sovereignty nor restitution. And in September 2000, they once again rose in revolt. The rebellion of 2000 onwards, the Al-Aqsa Intifada, drew renewed international attention to the Israel-Palestine conflict. It illustrated a striking picture. On the one side was a state based on systematic ethnic discrimination and endowed by U.S. support with the world's fourth-strongest military; on the other was a stateless people, its land occupied by tanks and soldiers, its communities under attack from helicopter gunships, its movements resisting further dispossession with the weapons of the poor. Official Western support for the former was strong, the more so as Israel positioned itself at the vanguard of the United States' post-9/11 "war on terror." But progressive social movements, including many in the West, chose to pick a different side. Canadian echoes The Canadian political scene reflected these split loyalties. The tension surfaced dramatically in the fall of 2002. Israeli repression of the Palestinian uprising was in full swing, and the Israeli military's virtual destruction of the West Bank city of Jenin the preceding spring was fresh in people's minds. In this context, the right-wing Asper Foundation sponsored a visit to Montreal of Israel's former Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu is an avid militarist, a proponent of Israeli expansion and an established lightning rod for opposition to Israeli Apartheid. In November 2000, a planned speaking engagement of his at the University of California, Berkeley, was effectively prevented by grassroots opposition. Through North America, the sentiments driving such opposition had begun to coalesce into a vibrant Palestine solidarity movement. In Montreal, this movement had taken hold quite strongly at Concordia University. Bringing Netanyahu to the campus in spite of this could have been a symbolic victory for opponents of the movement, and the Israel advocacy group Hillel invited him and scheduled an appearance. The scheduled date was the occasion for a massive Palestine solidarity demonstration at Concordia. Its strength forced the event's cancellation. UIAFC and its allies viewed this growing Palestine solidarity movement with great concern. At issue was a matter of fundamental Zionist strategy. Economically and politically, the Israeli system depends on its international base of support, without which it could not maintain its Zionist character against indigenous resistance. Put simply, local solidarity with the Palestinian struggle represented a potential challenge to Israel's Canadian base of support. By the time the Al-Aqsa Intifada erupted, this Canadian base of support had become quite significant. Beneath a thin cover of feigned neutrality, official Canadian support for Israel against the Palestinians had developed through various policies. For example, Canadian UIA and UJA fundraising was classified as "charitable" and tax-exempt, despite the fact that these funding drives provided financial backing for the campaign of ethnic discrimination being waged by Israel's JA and JNF authorities. Through the 1990s, the Canadian government had added to this an additional set of policies and agreements supportive of Israel, notably the Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement (CIFTA) and the Canada-Israel Industrial Research and Development Fund (CIIRDF). CIFTA, which minister of international trade Art Eggleton signed in 1996 with his Israeli counterpart (Natan Sharansky), is Canada's only free trade deal with a country outside of the Western hemisphere. As CIFTA's enabling legislation passed through the House of Commons, Eggleton testified to a House committee that the agreement applied to all Israeli-controlled territory, including the areas under direct military occupation since 1967.[4] CIFTA came into effect in January 1997, and the next month, Eggleton traveled to Israel (with the representatives of 50 Canadian corporations) where he signed the CIIRDF.[5] The Canadian and Israeli governments agreed to put an annual $3 million each into CIIRDF, which subsidizes Canadian and Israeli corporations working on joint projects.[6] A detailed analysis of Canada's pro-Israel trade policies is beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say that with Palestine solidarity growing, Israeli allies like UIAFC had much to defend. Particular concern had been generated by campus activism. Campus social movements did not have access to the policy-making establishment, but were gaining ground on the level of political culture and creating a potential long-term problem. As a result of grassroots Palestine solidarity campaigning, the director of Hillel Ottawa lamented, "Zionism is no longer a warm, fuzzy word." Moreover, the problem was spilling off of campuses and into society at large. The Israeli manufacturing base exemplified the very reality being challenged by movements against corporate globalization, and the Palestinian struggle was a clear point of reference for those sympathetic to moves towards resistance in the region. Israel's virtual integration with the United States also made it and its policies a natural target for movements resisting the U.S.-led military aggression raging from Afghanistan to Iraq. In alliance with these currents, Palestine solidarity continued to spread. Around the time of Netanyahu's botched visit, trade union involvement in the Palestine solidarity movement was also beginning to show promise. In late 2002, for example, the Centrale des syndicates du Québec (CSQ) joined in calling for a province-wide boycott of Israeli products. The threat that this could develop into a viable challenge to Canadian policy was apparent. For the likes of UIAFC, this challenge could not be allowed to develop unchecked. The tycoons respond Towards the end of 2002, UIAFC brought together a meeting of the community's leading tycoons. These included Israel Asper, CEO of CanWest Global; Gerry Schwartz, co-founder with Asper of CanWest Global and CEO of Onex Corporation; Heather Reisman, CEO of Indigo/Chapters Books; Brent Belzberg, owner of Torquest Partners; Sylvain Abitbol, president and CEO of NHC Communications Inc.; and a range of other powerhouses within the federation system. The group dubbed itself the "Israel Emergency Cabinet." It approached the polling firm Government Policy Consultants (GPC) under CEO Hershell Ezrin, and together, they developed a strategy.[7] At issue, as Hershell Ezrin explained, was how the "anti-Israel sentiment that has emerged in Canada over the past two years" could be beaten back. After months of closed-door discussions with the Cabinet, UIAFC president Maxyne Finkelstein unveiled their plan. It was a new "functional framework" for Jewish establishment advocacy and governance, involving the creation of new structures and the reorganization of existing ones. This would coordinate grassroots opposition to Palestine solidarity organizing and escalate lobbying efforts to maintain and expand official support for Israel in its fight against the Intifada. The centrepiece of the new arrangement would be a board of 18-22 people organized as the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy (CIJA). Finkelstein explained that "the emergency cabinet will continue to function in an oversight capacity until [CIJA] is running and it will morph into CIJA." By January 2004, this had taken place, and Ezrin was appointed as the new organization's CEO. To address UIAFC concern about "the growing anti-Israel agitation at universities," CIJA launched a National Jewish Campus Life (NJCL) initiative. Campus advocates were flooded with funds. The UJA Federation of Greater Toronto alone allocated $1 million for 2003/2004 campus advocacy work. NJCL centralized and coordinated strategy nationally, bringing together 30 Hillels and allied organizations to form the Canadian Federation of Jewish Students (CFJS); the group's founding conference boasted the attendance of Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham. Resources were channeled into training student organizers. By the summer of 2004, Brent Belzberg explained that "More than $200,000 has been spent subsidizing the visits to Israel of campus leaders." With the force of UIAFC resources, Israel advocates offered concerted opposition to Palestine solidarity and, by extension, to anti-war movements and the left generally. For the first time ever, Hillel got directly involved in student elections. To ensure student activities were in order, NJCL hired professional Israel advocacy specialists, one each for Montreal, Winnipeg, Vancouver and London, three for Toronto, and a national coordinator. Israel advocacy strategies varied. In certain instances, they were based on a high degree of militancy, indeed of militarism. This was apparent on campuses where the Zionist base was strong, such as Toronto's York University. York had a strong base of Zionist students, and the Israel advocacy apparatus had real institutional strength at the administration level. For example, York's fundraising body, the York Foundation, includes on its board of directors Julia Koschitzky, co-founder of the Emergency Cabinet and director of CIJA, Howard Sokolowski, who "raised an unprecedented $65,000,000 for the Israel Emergency Fund" through the UJA's 2003 campaign, and Honey Sherman, who went on to become the co-chair of UJA 2006. The York Foundation was founded in 2002 under the presidency of Paul Marcus, a former director of the B'nai Brith Institute for International Affairs. In late 2004, in fact, Marcus was personally joined by York president Lorna Marsden on a supportive visit to Israel. In the spring of 2003, a dynamic anti-war movement had taken shape on York's campus. The base of support for this movement was strong, and, like its organizing core, identified support for the Palestinian struggle with opposition to U.S.-led military aggression (as it was unfolding in Iraq). Elements of the Hillel structure organized a pro-war, anti-Intifada opposition in response. The momentum of this opposition was built up by UIAFC funds, which sent fully 500 York students on a 10-day subsidized trip to Israel in the summer of 2003 through a program widely regarded as "helping them better deal with anti-Israel agitation on campus." The academic year 2003/2004 saw many students around the campus wearing Israeli military paraphernalia. The year was kicked off by an "Israel Defense Forces Appreciation Day" in October, which featured the major of an illegal West Bank settlement speaking to an assembled crowd of students wearing Israeli military accessories. A militarist tone pervaded Israel advocacy at York throughout the year. Elsewhere, more sober strategies prevailed. Even at York, a common front approach to Israel advocacy was adopted to maintain a space for liberal Jewish students within the Hillel structure. 2003/2004 Hillel@York events regarding such topics as "Israeli feminism" and "Eco-Zionism" filled this role. On other campuses (and later at York), Israel advocacy took on an entirely different tone. "Peace is the word for national campus group" - so read the headline of a Canadian Jewish News story on NJCL strategy. The tactic was to diffuse grassroots Palestine solidarity with talk of "dialogue" and "peace," leaving aggressive advocacy to deepen Canadian support for Israeli Apartheid to professional lobbyists. According to the "peace and dialogue" strategy, a visceral connection would be created between students and Israel through a focus on Israeli music, culture, food and sports. This superficially depoliticized base of support for Israel neither relied upon nor could be shaken by the factual specifics of the Israel-Palestine conflict. This strategy for diffusing Palestine solidarity took hold early at Concordia. The same Hillel which had, the previous year, associated itself with the chauvinism of Netanyahu and shrugged off criticism of on-campus recruitment for the Israeli military, peppered the academic year 2003/2004 with events like "Coexistence Day." (The year before, when the Concordia Student Union suspended Hillel for engaging in campus recruitment for Israeli occupation forces, Hillel's lawyer had explained that such recruitment was fully in accord with "Jewish students' constitutional rights of speech, assembly and religion.") As students and their professional advisers escalated Israel advocacy work, coordination with faculty also began to formalize. In fall of 2003, the Canadian Jewish News reported that three Toronto professors - Ed Morgan and Kenneth Green from the University of Toronto and Irving Abella from York - "applied to the new Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy for seed funding" in order "to launch an organization to counter the upsurge of anti-Israel feelings on Canadian campuses." Morgan, appointed CJC national president in 2004, had helped to organize a series of speaking engagements by pro-war Canadian Alliance MP Stockwell Day during the previous spring's invasion of Iraq. (Day had appeared at a CJC luncheon, at York University and at the Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto, CHAT.) Morgan was not bluffing when he said the group would have to fight "the entrenched Canadian prejudice against arguments about world politics that do not denounce the United States." Abella, for his part, has since become chair of Hillel of Greater Toronto's central council. The structure of grassroots opposition to Palestine solidarity was beginning to fall into place. But for all UIAFC's desire to respond in kind to its grassroots challengers, the real object of its defense was the policy regime of Canadian support for Israel against the Palestinians. Through CIJA, lobbying efforts to maintain and expand this were therefore intensified. AIPAC and UIAFC's lobbying "agents" UIAFC's main base, recall, is one section of a U.S.-dominated federation system. (North American fundraising muscle is presently organized into the regional categories "West," "Southeast," "Northeast," "Central" and "Canada.") So it is no surprise that the prints of AIPAC - the lead U.S.-Israel advocacy group and head of a system of political action committees, PACs - were all over the new arrangement. CIJA's political advocacy arm worked directly under the AIPAC umbrella. It was established as the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy Public Affairs Committee, CIJA-PAC. Beginning in 2003, it attended each annual AIPAC conference. "AIPAC plays an advisory and mentoring role for CIJA-PAC," Canadian Jewish News reporter Paul Lungen later explained. The group's success was consistently measured against its mentor's example. By the fall of 2004, Sylvain Abitbol bragged that "with 2,000 members today CIJA-PAC is almost comparable on a per capita basis to the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee." Reliance on "charitable" dollars prevented CIJA-PAC from participating fully in electoral politics. But the "ultimate goal" of this lobby, Hershell Ezrin explained, "would be to act as a partisan entity that would support candidates." Existing mainstream Jewish organizations were made appendages to this system. The CJC, that self-described parliament, plunged still deeper below its high-sounding democratic rhetoric. Notwithstanding the continued inclusion of certain progressive groups in the rank-and-file, these were utterly disempowered, with CJC's leadership and its decisions put under the direct scrutiny and control of CIJA's tycoons. "It was absolutely clear," CJC-Quebec executive chair Victor Goldbloom explained, "that what was once a horizontal relationship between Congress and the federation structures would now be a vertical one." CJC affiliate Rivka Augenfeld, according to the Canadian Jewish News, added that "the whole turn of events confirms what so many already suspected: that 'people with money run the community. When people criticize the Jewish community for being like that, what are you going to say?'" While formalizing the elimination of CJC democracy, UIAFC also doubled its budget, and likewise for the Canada-Israel Committee. The Canada-Israel Committee was meanwhile disbanded as an alliance and reconstituted under a CIJA-picked board. Neither the Canadian Zionist Federation nor B'nai Brith were to have a formal role within the CIJA framework, and both were pushed out of the CIC. The CZF failed to raise a commotion. B'nai Brith kicked up an ineffectual but embarrassing fuss before signing a fall 2004 agreement of mutual respect and cooperation with CIJA (this has been far from stable). CIC national board member and former Quebec chair Thomas Hecht provided the following interpretation of the organizational shift: "it's the federations who are taking over and the heavy hitters in the federations who will have control of advocacy." UIAFC agreed, but downplayed the change by shrugging off the existing groups' pretense at Jewish representation. "They've always been our agents and that's what they are," UIAFC president Maxyne Finkelstein told the Toronto Star. "We've always had the ability to fund and not to fund … We actually have a contract with the CIC that we have the capacity to terminate or continue."[8] Whether out of arrogance or honesty, Finkelstein had made a crucial point that should not be forgotten. A warm reception from the establishment If, as Michael Benazon wrote for Canadian Jewish Outlook, this leadership was "alienating itself from the aspirations, values, and perceptions of Canadian Jews," it was aligning itself precisely with those of corporate Canada. As the National Post explained in its coverage of a 2002 opinion poll, "Canadian business leaders want increased integration with the United States."[9] Israel advocates championed this cause, and not just on Israel-Palestine. Consider the spring of 2003, when the Canadian government backed off from the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq (considering open support for the unpopular war too costly). National Post business section headlines reported corporate concerns under titles like "Strained U.S. relations 'need repair.'"[10] In this setting, three prominent Canadians joined to organize a pro-war rally. According to the Canadian Jewish News, they were showered with offers of corporate sponsorship. The trio were Richard Diamond, president of the Young Liberals and a member of UIAFC's national youth executive; Mark Waldman, a U.S.-Israel lobbyist with the group Access Middle East and co-founding director of CIJA; and Josh Cooper, a Canadian Alliance hopeful who would go on to head CIJA-PAC and its "multi-partisan" successor, CJPAC. Corporate support for their apparatus came readily. UIAFC's lobby was well-positioned. The Canadian political establishment emerged from the spring 2003 invasion of Iraq eager to make it up to its superpower ally. This commitment was apparent in the coming years (and nearly explicit) from Haiti to Afghanistan. With its rock-solid corporate base and call for integration with U.S. policy, the campaign to boost support for Israel boasted significant achievements. In early December 2004, Globe and Mail columnist John Ibbitson reported that the mix of U.S. pressure and CIJA advocacy had begun to generate results. "For years," Ibbitson wrote, "Canada has joined the overwhelming majority of nations in General Assembly resolutions criticizing Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories, its violence against civilians, its nuclear-weapons program." Ibbitson explained that while only a tiny cluster of U.S. allies voted with Israel against these resolutions, the Canadian government was moving into line with them. "Prime Minister Paul Martin has been under intense pressure to make Canada's Middle East policy more overtly pro-Israel," he continued, especially from lead campaign contributor Gerry Schwartz, "a financial backer of the powerful new Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy." Domestic corporate pressure worked in concert with President Bush's pending visit. "Air Force One was already en route to Ottawa, and the government was running out of time. … And so, this week, Canada voted against or abstained on resolutions affirming Palestinian rights and criticizing Israel, in each case breaking with the majority."[11] Canada's pro-Israel partisanship has steadily increased since. In addition to increasing its overt diplomatic support, the Canadian government expanded its system of preferential trade policies towards Israel. In April 2005, Israel's current Prime Minister (then Deputy Prime Minister) Ehud Olmert visited Canada. In Ottawa, he signed a five-year renewal of the CIIRDF with Industry Minister David Emerson. Two months before, officials from CJC's Ontario Region announced the hiring of two new lobbyists, one for Ottawa and one for Queen's Park, who no doubt worked to ensure that Israel made the most of Olmert's trip. Olmert visited Toronto, where he met Premier Dalton McGuinty at Queen's Park to sign an Ontario-Israel Memorandum of Understanding. He and McGuinty thereby established a regime of deepened economic cooperation through which at least a dozen joint projects would be launched. On the Toronto leg of his trip, Olmert made sure to reserve time for a public appearance at Chapter's Bookstore, where he was joined by Heather Reisman, the chain's CEO and a CIJA co-founder, Marc Gold, then chair of the Canada-Israel Committee, and Mark Waldman, then head of CIJA-PAC. When the Deputy Prime Minister visited Queen's Park, he publicly presented McGuinty with a gift. Joking to the assembled reporters, Olmert asked: "Do you want us to hug?" With the Canadian and Israeli establishments cozying up, there is good reason to credit CIJA for its role as matchmaker. [1] Daniel Elazar and Harold Waller, Maintaining Consensus: The Canadian Jewish Polity in the Postwar World (Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 1990): p. 196. [2] See David Goldberg & David Taras, ed., The Domestic Battleground: Canada and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (McGill-Queen's University Press, 1989); and Ronnie Miller, From Lebanon to the Intifada: The Jewish Lobby and Canadian Middle East Policy (University Press of America, 1991). [3] Elazar & Waller: p. 106. [4] Atif Kubursi and Michael Lynk, "Canadian-Israeli free trade: a step backward for peace," The Globe and Mail, November 5, 1996 (A17). [5] Reuters Staff, "Canada minister to lead trade delegation to Israel," Reuters News, February 17, 1997; David Israelson, "Trade mission to Israel aims at boosting business," The Toronto Star, February 17, 1997 (E3); and Enchin Harvey, "50 firms on trade trip to Israel: Bombardier, Spar seek contracts in [6] David Harris, "Israel, Canada sign research funding pact," The Jerusalem Post, February 25, 1997 (04). [7] York University professor David Noble deserves credit for initiating important research and discussion around this issue. See his "The New Israel Lobby in Action," Canadian Dimension, November/December 2005. [8] Oakland Ross, "Power struggle 'crisis' worries Jewish groups," Toronto Star, October 4, 2003 (A01). [9] Drew Hasselback, "CEOs call for greater U.S. integration," National Post/Financial Post, July 30, 2002 (FP1). [10] Peter Morton, with files from Theresa Tedesco and Tony Sekus, "Business event of winter season," National Post/Financial Post, with files from Canadian Press, April 8, 2003 (FP1). [11] John Ibbitson, Globe and Mail, December 3, 2004 (A4).
Part III: AIPAC North firms up its base As the Canadian establishment's support for Israeli Apartheid increased, the GPC polls conducted for and relied upon by CIJA showed that public opinion was lagging behind. The gist of their findings is expressed by a pair of Globe and Mail headlines from around the time of the Martin's government's pro-Israel epiphany at the UN: "Neutrality on Mideast favoured, polls find" (Jeff Sallot, November 2004); "Canadians don't share Ottawa's pro-Israel tilt" (Jeffrey Simpson, February 2005). Despite all UIAFC's talk of a grand "PR offensive," despite reported CIJA meetings with newspaper editorial boards, less than half of those surveyed (42%) considered Israel to be a democratic state. Moreover, the rhetoric about "security" had not entirely eliminated adverse reactions to Israel's open campaign of extra-judicial assassinations and collective punishment of Palestinians. GPC found that more than one third of Canadians (36%) believed that Israel was linked with terrorist organizations. The polls found that the more people knew about the conflict, the more likely they were to support the Palestinian cause. B'nai Brith public relations in this context were a reminder of why CIJA strategists keep the organization at arm's length. Around the time the time that these GPC polls were released, Adam Aptowitzer, Ontario chair of B'nai Brith Canada's Institute for International Affair, went on record with the following argument: "Terror is a tool, terror is a means to an end ... When Israel uses terror to … destroy a home and convince people to be terrified of what the possible consequences are, I'd say that's acceptable use to terrify someone." He continued, in words that have been widely quoted: "the truth is that terror is an option to be used by states in order to prevent deaths of their own citizens and others. Acts that take place in Gaza and [the] West Bank, you might want to classify them as terrorists sponsored by the state. But when that is being done to prevent deaths, are we going to say that is wrong?" Support for state violence is a mainstay of Israel advocacy. But clumsy honesty reveals a lack of strategic sense, and Aptowitzer was compelled to resign. His argument and agenda continued to press forward through more subtle means. Poetry, libraries and the anti-Israel menace Given long-term Israel advocacy strategy and concern over popular opinion, one strategic target was the school system. Where the Israel advocacy apparatus had strong control, its pedagogical approach was already on display. This was the case at the Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto (CHAT). In the spring of 2003, CHAT students were treated to a visit by an Israeli military operative. Second-in-command of a 600-soldier battalion, "Major Alon Harel says the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is fighting two battles," reported the Canadian Jewish News, "one against terrorism and the other against visuals that portray a Goliath army oppressing Palestinian children." One CHAT student commented that Harel "probably doesn't like those people with the orange identity cards very much," having learned how Palestinians are identified at Israeli checkpoints. Harel insisted he did not hate Palestinians, but explained that "he's even seen pregnant Palestinian women trying to smuggle explosives into Israel and it has become a challenge to convince soldiers to balance searches with civility at checkpoints when they know their lives are on the line." Supporters of Israeli militarism were thus cultivated at a young age. In fact, while CHAT is at least a secondary school, even much younger children at Israel advocacy events in Toronto - including many looking far ahead to puberty - are often dressed up in Israeli military paraphernalia. But long-term support for a Canadian foreign policy pitted against Palestinian human rights cannot be generated by internal community indoctrination alone. CIJA went on the offensive. Expressions of sympathy for Palestinian suffering or resistance in the public school system were subject to attack. In November 2004, CIJA's Canadian Jewish Congress learned that a performance at Toronto's Earl Haig Secondary School had "ended with a poem about Palestinian oppression by Israelis." CJC officials demanded that the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) brush up its censorship apparatus. TDSB sent a memo to all of its staff warning that "sometimes trips, performances and events that have been past practice for years may be insensitive because of programming changes, etc." As the Canadian Jewish News reported, "It cited as an example the presentation at Earl Haig Secondary School by ARCfest, a group that organizes a five-day human rights arts festival, which, the board said, failed to meet the standards held by TDSB policies." The memo was to CJC's satisfaction. A few months later, the Israel advocacy apparatus caught wind of another scandal: an elementary school student at an Islamic school in Ottawa had written a story that featured Palestinian fighters as protagonists. This was unacceptable; in the education system as in Israel-Palestine, Israel advocates support Zionist militarism while demanding Palestinian passivity. The student in question was a Palestinian child with relatives living under Israeli military occupation with those "orange identity cards." Learning that one teacher had assisted the student with the project, and that another had marked it with positive comments, CanWest Global's Ottawa Citizen attacked the school from its front page. The CJC demanded that the Education Ministry launch an investigation, which it promptly did. The two teachers were suspended and the school was subjected to a government probe. To cite just one further example from the elementary school system, consider the more recent attack mounted in Ontario on the liberal children's book Three Wishes: Palestinian and Israeli Children Speak. Author Deborah Ellis made a clear effort to construct a sense of symmetry between the Israeli and Palestinian experiences. Nonetheless, the basic relation of domination and subordination that characterizes Israeli Apartheid was not sufficiently downplayed for Israel advocates to be satisfied. B'nai Brith's League for Human Rights demanded that "all copies of the books be pulled from school library shelves immediately, pending a full review by the board of the content and use of the book." CJC applied its own pressure, and was informed that the TDSB "was pulling the book from the Ontario Library Association's Silver Birch reading program and removing it from school and library shelves. Children in Grade 7 and up will still be able to borrow the book from a librarian or school office." The book was censored to a greater or lesser extent in jurisdictions throughout the province. Since public knowledge about the Israel-Palestine conflict results in support for the Palestinians, CIJA had resolved to address the problem at its root. Copyrighting Jewishness CIJA coordinated similar offensives in various spheres of Canadian political life. In so doing, it could not rely solely on rhetoric about Israeli security and Palestinian terrorism. After all, Israeli violence dwarfs Palestinian violence in scope and intensity, and Aptowitzer's justification of Israeli terror does not always fall on receptive ears. To proceed with political force, Israel advocates were intent on maintaining the guise of Jewish community representation. True, UIAFC's own president had gone on record describing institutions like the CJC and CIC as "agents" of a corporate fundraising system. And the fact that B'nai Brith had been made to fall back on an independent fundraising base didn't make it much different in this respect. Still, representing a nexus of corporate-U.S.-Israeli power is not nearly as prestigious as representing the accumulated history of the Jewish people. So Israel advocates continued to lay aggressive copyright claims to the latter. The notion was bluntly expressed in a letter to the Jewish Tribune which denounced Naomi Klein's position regarding Israel-Palestine: "Isn't it time for the Jewish community to excommunicate her or at least have her cease to be a member of the Jewish community in good standing?" UIAFC operatives toed a similar line. On April 22 2004, for example, a Canadian Jewish News story quoted Zac Kaye, executive director of Hillel of Greater Toronto, regarding the situation at York University. "Kaye highlighted some of the stresses faced by Hillel@York. 'Many pro-Palestinian students at York are Jewish,' Kaye said. 'They're beyond the pale for us Jews and it can be quite frustrating.'" The category "us Jews" thus required not so much Jewishness as support for Israel. The confidence with which this definition has been applied is remarkable. Consider, in light of Kaye's remarks, the fact that a news story in the very next issue of the same paper began by declaring that York University's "Jewish students are putting up a united and organized front in promoting Israel." The story relied on quotes from Talia Klein, then director of Hillel@York. It is worth stressing the extent to which this effort comes from quarters that are not only Zionist, but chauvinist in the most extreme sense. At York, for example, UIAFC's involvement (through Hillel) in the student elections of 2003/2004 brought into the presidential office of York's undergraduate student union the head of Betar Tagar's York University chapter. (This individual had been a pro-war organizer and the host of IDF Appreciation Day, mentioned above.) The Betarim are the youth followers of Jabotinsky, the Zionist extremist who counted many open supporters of Mussolini among his followers, and whose early call for an "iron wall" between Zionist settlement and indigenous society would prove prophetic. Walter Laqeuer, a leading and quite sympathetic historian of Zionism, describes the origins of Betar as follows: "The stress on military training, leadership, discipline, and the whole ideology of 'conquer or die' gave it a certain similarity to the fascist youth movements of the 1920s and 1930s."[1] Talia Klein, director of Hillel@York through the height of CIJA activity on the campus, became national director of Betar Tagar in May 2006. Klein, formerly a national officer of the CJC and employee of B'nai Brith, wrote her thesis on Jabotinsky's ideas. On the relationship between Hillel and Betar, she told the Canadian Jewish News that "We're like two currents in a river. Sometimes we join up and sometimes we don't. … we're not by any means mutually exclusive." Israel advocates thus sought to redefine Jewishness as support for Israel, with the organization of this support dominated by corporate power and driven by politics veering to the ultra-nationalist right. Opposition to Israeli Apartheid was thereby smeared as anti-Semitic. As a 2003 Canadian Jewish Congress guide to campus advocacy put it (PDF p. 8), it "is in fact anti-Semitic … to deny the Jewish people its right to sovereignty in its ancestral homeland." To advocate the Palestinian right of return, then, is in fact racist. Jews, so the argument goes, cannot be subject to criteria that simply guarantee equal rights for all people wherever they live. It is instead necessary to acknowledge a mystical, overriding right to Palestinian land possessed by all Jews, as resulting from a perpetual ancestral bond; and on the flip side, to reject the residency and citizenship rights of the population indigenous to this land and evicted en masse since 1948. To criticize the system of open-air imprisonment maintained by Israel over the Gaza Strip, or to condemn Israeli plans to annex West Bank territory and wall Palestinians into enclosed ghettos (on the Gaza model), is itself to flirt with bigotry - to be guilty of "functional anti-Semitism," as the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies recently declared. What this Zionist argument lacks in logic it makes up for through the force of resources and constant repetition. In fact, the leadership of CIJA's CJC explicitly counted among its 2005 priorities "working with partners to educate Canadians about the links between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism."[2] But it does not end there. Having been stretched to fit the most anti-racist of Palestine solidarity activism, this elastic concept of anti-Semitism has been expanded even further. Immunity from criticism is conferred on not only an overriding "Jewish sovereignty" in Israel-Palestine, but also its reactionary allies. Hillel of Greater Toronto's Zac Kaye implied a move in this direction by justifying the arrest of key organizers of a March 5, 2003 anti-war student strike at York University as follows: "police were needed to protect Jewish students." Kaye was referring to pro-war Hillel organizers working through the local chapter of the Canadian Alliance. The issue was put more bluntly still by Canadian Jewish News columnist Lawrence Hart. As the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq began to set in (and anti-occupation politics spread), he argued that we need to take our cue from U.S.-Israel advocates and call "attention to the forces of anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, anti-racism and pacifism as major facilitators of today's anti-Semitism." The betrayal of anti-racist politics is both profound and explicit. Canada's U.S.-Israel lobby evolves In May 2005, the leadership of CIJA-PAC, CIJA's main lobby apparatus, once again joined AIPAC for its annual conference in Washington, D.C.. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice were both in attendance. The conference included discussion of foreign policy on Iran as well as on Israel-Palestine. The Canadian Jewish News interviewed Mark Waldman on the assembly: "Witnessing the way American lobbyists have created a bipartisan political support for Israel and contrasting that with the Canadian situation can be 'depressing,' Waldman said." But efforts were underway to address this disparity. AIPAC's conference "included a one-day event … aimed at helping Canadian and European communities develop the kind of grassroots organizational strength that AIPAC has shown over the years." That same month, Josh Cooper resigned from CIJA-PAC. At the end of 2005, Cooper re-emerged, now at the head of a new Canadian lobby group, the Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee (CJPAC). Much to the bewilderment of B'nai Brith (and anyone else with their eyes open), CJPAC denied any connection with CIJA or CIJA-PAC. Meanwhile, CIJA-PAC dissolved. CJPAC differs in important ways from CIJA's original and now-defunct lobby arm. The new lobby is not "charitable" but political, not "non-partisan" but "multi-partisan." It organizes direct financial and political involvement in all Canadian parties and the election process generally. It is worth recalling, in this light, the unprecedented cross-partisan support for Israel on display in the election of January 2006 (and since). Looking back on the election, the Canadian Jewish News reported the new lobby's satisfaction with its work under the headline "CJPAC claims success after federal election." Anti-Palestinian Canadian policy trends have continued to deepen since. A dramatic indication of this was provided by the new Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, which, soon after its election, beat even the Bush administration to the draw in sanctioning and cutting diplomatic ties with the Palestinian Authority (PA) in punishment for the resounding electoral victory of Hamas. The severity of this measure can only be understood against the backdrop of Israel's effective sabotage of the independent economic base of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza. This sabotage, accomplished through restrictive military orders, border closures and the like, forced broad sectors of Palestinian society into economic reliance on the PA. The decision to suffocate PA finances in punishment for the institution's shift away from Western-backed Palestinian leadership threatens humanitarian disaster for a people among whom chronic malnutrition was already dangerously widespread. Dov Weissglas, advisor to the Israeli Prime Minister, generated some hearty official chuckles with his joke about the situation: "It's like an appointment with a dietician. The Palestinians will get a lot thinner, but won't die." To justify Canadian participation in the effort, Harper has drawn from Israel advocacy rhetoric in crude (and clumsy) ways. In May 2006, for example, the Prime Minister gave a speech at an event sponsored by the Asper Foundation, B'nai Brith, CIJA, the CJC and the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies. He explained that Canadian suffocation of the PA was necessary, as was diplomatic maneuvering against Iran. Iran and the PA pose the same threat to Jews that was once posed by the Nazis, he declared, and we most join the U.S. and Israel in fighting them as such. Harper's zealotry is on even more dramatic display around Afghanistan, and his stance on Israel-Palestine cannot be attributed to domestic Israel advocacy alone. While Paul Martin's Liberals were eager to show loyalty to the U.S., the Harper government has taken this to new levels. Moreover, ideology must play a part in determining the stance. Theodor Herzl's vision of a proud Western outpost fighting off the barbarian, terrorist hordes of the Third World resonates with the Harper brand of Canadian nationalism. As leader of the Canadian Alliance, Harper had years ago embraced Israel as "part of our western democratic family" and called for "a stronger sense of Canada as a member of an alliance, a member of a family of western democratic nations." Note that much of Harper's base is heir to a form of Canadian nationalism that once solidly excluded Jews from its ranks. The Conservative party's former foreign affairs critic, Stockwell Day, is himself the son of a leading politician with Social Credit, the main electoral vehicle for mid-20th century anti-Semitism in Western Canada. The hangover of Social Credit anti-Semitism is apparent in the evangelical Christian support base around Day, which would see Jews congregate in Palestine only to be wiped out with the Second Coming of the Messiah. But for now - with Palestinians as clearly excluded from Harper's happy western family as those subversive foreigners from Eastern Europe once were - Israel remains an ally. In any case, Harper is hardly immune to domestic corporate pressure, and the base for Israel advocacy in Canada's economic establishment is undeniably solid. Consider a recent National Post report on the Words and Deeds conference co-hosted by CIJA and Toronto's UJA Federation in early 2006. "Packed to the gills with Canada's banking elite and philanthropists," the conference earned the Post reporter's praise as "the business event of the winter season."[3] One of the conference's anchormen was Gerry Schwartz, co-founder of CanWest Global, a fact which may have encouraged the Post reporter's praise. Nonetheless, the event did showcase an impressive foundation of corporate support. It was held partly in honour of Gord Nixon, president and CEO of Royal Bank Financial Group. Nixon addressed the assembled tycoons with confidence and pride: "CEOs are placed in a privileged position when it comes to raising money, promoting institutions and social causes and even influencing thinking on civic issues." It is not difficult to determine where this privileged corporate Canadian influence weighs in on the country's Israel-Palestine policies. Politically and institutionally, AIPAC North has firmed up its base. The anti-apartheid challenge persists But while Nixon may be right about the power of his class, the costs of letting it dominate Canadian political affairs are prohibitively high - and not just on Israel-Palestine. It is indeed interesting that just one month after finance minister James Flaherty took the spirit of Common Sense Revolution into federal government, eliminating the capital gains tax on "charitable" gifts made in the form of shares, a CIJA tycoon donated a near-record sum of $50 million to Toronto's UJA Federation. Policies of economic suffocation at home and abroad reflect a linked agenda. As recognition of this spreads, the challenge to Canadian support for Israeli Apartheid continues to pick up momentum. A recent indication of this vitality was provided by the Ontario wing of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), the country's largest union of public sector workers. On May 27 2006, CUPE Ontario's annual convention passed a resolution declaring support for the struggle against Israeli Apartheid in clear and strategic terms. In identifying the Israeli system as apartheid, CUPE Ontario highlighted the mainstay of this system, namely, the continued denial of full residency and citizenship rights to Palestinians displaced from their homeland since 1948. It also singled out for criticism a pillar of Canadian support for this system, the Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement. CUPE's Resolution 50 went on to commit the union to joining in the revival of the spirit and strategy which drove the movement against South African apartheid, based on a call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel until apartheid is dismantled. Willie Madisha, president of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, sent the union a message of solidarity via CUPE Ontario president Sid Ryan: "As someone who lived in apartheid South Africa and has visited Palestine I say with confidence that Israel is an apartheid state," Madisha agreed. Outlining some of Israel's more egregious abuses against Palestinians, he continued: "When the governments of the world turn a blind eye to these injustices; when they are seduced by apartheid Israel's justification of brutality through the pretext of 'security'; when they silence criticism of state terror through the canard of 'anti-Semitism' - then it is time for the global workers movement to stand firm against hypocrisy and double standards." The call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel having been widely endorsed in a July 2005 Palestinian national declaration, the Palestinian workers' movement united in sending CUPE messages of wholehearted support. These were endorsed by the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions as well as a wide range of sectoral unions. Support (of varying degrees) came from a further range of labour and community organizations, from the Nigeria Labour Congress to the Steelworkers Toronto Area Council, from the Canadian Arab Federation and Canadian Islamic Congress to the dissident Alliance of Concerned Jewish Canadians. Certain voices in the Canadian mainstream echoed this chorus, notable among them Linda McQuiag, and a dissident Israeli message of support garnered a long list of signatories, including academics like Tanya Reinhart and activists like Jeff Halper. Select messages of support are available online at the website of the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid. The reaction from Canada's Israel advocates was predictable and knee-jerk. B'nai Brith circulated a lengthy condemnation of CUPE Ontario and its position, while CanWest Global widely printed the online address for the denunciation through its National Post. The Post, as indeed the full range of CanWest publications, directly joined the anti-CUPE campaign, running a series of fevered attacks on CUPE Ontario and the union's president, Sid Ryan (this included an article written by Israel's ambassador to Canada). The National Post commentary editor himself weighed in under the headline "CUPE's bigoted agenda," going into conniptions over the threat that returning Palestinian refugees would pose to Israel's prized Jewish demographic majority, and writing longingly of the day when the Canadian government will "finally bust the nation's pampered unions." The CJC likewise complained that Resolution 50 "reads like a piece of propaganda." The Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies positioned themselves at the front and centre of the anti-CUPE campaign. Bear in mind that this organization had previously joined forces with Betar Tagar to oppose the "Israeli Apartheid Week" that is spreading across Canadian campuses, and that its president and chairman is none other than CIJA/CanWest co-founder Gerry Schwartz. The Canadian Friends of Simon Wiesenthal had already attacked the campaign against Israel's "Apartheid Wall" for its "functional anti-Semitism," and predictably set their sights on Resolution 50. The spirit of pan-imperial ("anti-terrorist") solidarity framed the institution's public relations. This avowedly "anti-racist" association declared that to support CUPE Ontario's position "is to turn a blind eye to the very same concerns and fate that Canadians are combating in Afghanistan and here at home." Chief of Defence Staff Rick Hillier has, after all, pledged Canadian support for attacks on the "detestable murderers and scumbags" of Afghanistan, so why fret over the treatment of their Palestinian counterparts? At the same time, the Israel advocacy apparatus kicked into gear at the grassroots level. For the likes of UIAFC, unionist legitimacy is hard to come by, but an attempt was made. The effort to put a working class hat on Israel advocacy produced amusing spectacles, as when Carolyn Roberts, president of CUPE Local 2137, drew upon the fine tradition of labor struggle in a National Post op-ed that blasted Sid Ryan as a "rabble-rouser." Unfortunately, the quest for corporate respectability on the part of certain labor leaders came through for the opponents of Resolution 50. Canadian Auto Workers president Buzz Hargrove, for example - with memories of the Stronach Castle (if not Schwartz's Fortress Onex) batting around in his head - dealt a further blow to his own credibility by writing an article for the Toronto Star which expressed "disappointment" in CUPE Ontario, while praising the steps towards "peace and resolution of the conflict" taken by such "brave leaders" as Mahmoud Abbas and Ariel Sharon. Nonetheless, despite Israel advocates' best efforts, CUPE Ontario has held the line. The opportunity to build upon this success remains extremely promising. The Palestine solidarity movement has much work to do. The Canadian policy package of support for Israel against the Palestinians - represented by partisan diplomacy as well as by agreements like CIFTA, the CIIRDF and the Ontario-Israel Memorandum of Understanding - is formidable. And CIJA, as Gord Nixon pointed out, can take comfort in enduring support from the Canadian establishment and its allies. But Canadian public opinion remains very mixed, and pressure for universities, pension plans and other institutions to adopt anti-apartheid policies can have an important impact. Government opposition to Palestinian rights, for its part, may be extensive, but is by the same token over-extended to the point of vulnerability. Challenges to this vulnerability will not go away. Those working to bring Canada's Israel-Palestine policy into line with popular opinion, let alone with demands for real justice, are not about to abandon their efforts. It is unfortunate that these efforts will be smeared and opposed by mainstream Canadian Jewish organizations. But it has become inevitable. The necessary course of action is simply to expose, confront and undermine those responsible for the smears, while escalating the challenge to their agenda.
This is not a matter of confronting an ethnic lobby. The racist imagination has long conjured up images of Jews subverting governments or controlling them, spreading communism or hijacking banking systems, and on down the list. Such hallucinations must be exposed and rejected in the clearest terms possible. Anti-Semitic diatribes about the mythical social power of Jews form part of a terrible tradition of delusion and bigotry, and should be denounced as such. But people of conscience cannot allow opposition to anti-Semitism to be reduced to a self-defense tactic for the Israel advocacy agenda. In downplaying the actual influence of their lobby while hiding behind disengenous rhetoric about "Jewish interests," Israel advocates find themselves buttressing anti-Semitic myths, not weakening them. By masking corporate and colonial structures under the guise of mainstream Jewish organization, the Israel advocacy apparatus obscures the fact that far from representing the Jewish community, it represents a limited (if powerful) political hierarchy. Denying the activities or influence of the associated organizations does not discredit anti-Jewish racism so much as it legitimizes it. Internationalist politics, grounded in principled and unwavering anti-racist and class analysis, remain the best defense against genuine anti-Semitism. It is, in any event, exceedingly difficult to take the Friends of Schwartz and Wiesenthal seriously as they try to lay claim to the history of Jewish ghetto suffering, all the while cheering for the open-air imprisonment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. The challenge to these maneuvers, and to the Canadian policy regime they are designed to defend, is not going to come from within this country's economic or political establishment. It is not going to come from UIAFC's "agents," and it will be crudely smeared by the likes of B'nai Brith. Nonetheless, many outside of these circles will persist in building this challenge, and all people of conscience in this country have a stake in seeing it strengthened. References: [1] Walter Laqueur, A History of Zionism (Schocken Books, 1976): p. 360. [2] This tactic has been in international use for some time. See Norman Finkelstein, Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History (University of California Press, 2005). [3] Amoryn Engel, "Business event of winter season," National Post/Financial Post, April 15, 2006 (FW4). [4] Samuel Huntington, American Politics (Harvard University Press, 1981), as quoted in Chomsky, "Domestic Constituencies," Z Magazine, May 1998. Dan Freeman-Maloy can be contacted at dfm@riseup.net. For more information on Palestine solidarity in Canada, see the websites of Al-Awda: The Palestine Right of Return Group, the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid and EndIsraeliApartheid.net. |
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