New amalgamated group replaced Canadian Jewish Congress two years ago.
by Paul Weinberg
TORONTO, Feb 4 2013 (IPS) — Canada’s major Israel lobby organisation is running into conflict with critics who say it is betraying the historical liberal legacy of this country’s 380,000-member Jewish community.
The barely two-years-old Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) is supporting restrictive Canadian refugee legislation, Bill C-31, that has sparked opposition from traditional human rights groups including Amnesty International, the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers and the Canadian Council for Refugees.
Said Dr Phil Berger: “They are so manacled to the Conservative government that they have forfeited any notion of an independent organisation that represents the true interests and views of the Jewish community.”
For prominent downton Toronto Jewish refugee doctor, Dr Philip Berger, who counts refugees and people with AIDS among his patients, CIJA is rejecting traditional and historic sympathy in his community for people fleeing oppression. That included fellow Jews escaping Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 40s, when an earlier Canadian government under Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King adopted a “none is too many” policy towards these particular refugees.
“CIJA is a disaster for the Jewish community. It is actually starting to become evident a little bit already,” he told this reporter.
The new Canadian refugee law provides wide powers to Minister of Immigration Jason Kenney to designate countries as “safe” and “democratic” and thus more liable to generating “bogus” refugees versus those who are genuine.
The inclusion of Hungary on the Canadian government list — despite reports of the Budapest government’s failure to protect its Roma minority population from discrimination and physical attacks — is also upsetting some Jewish organisations, including the Toronto Board of Rabbis and the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre.
Says Alice Herscovitch, executive director of the Montreal Centre, “People should have access to a fair refugee system. There are countries that produce refugees despite the fact that they are democratic and have an elected government.”
But CIJA’s Steve McDonald counters that Bill C-31 makes “significant improvements toward protecting the safety and security of Canadians”, as well as “deterring human smuggling and dispensing with unsubstantial refugees fairly and quickly”. The centre is refusing to join others in demanding Hungary be taken off the safe list.
CIJA is not entirely onside with the new law. It has also unsuccessfully urged the Canadian government to rethink its decision to restrict health services to refugees from its designated list of safe countries.
“The uncritical alignment of the (Stephen) Harper government with the Israeli Right (ie Israel’s governing Likud party) has obviously created a much more welcome climate for aggressive AIPAC-style lobbying in Ottawa,” said political scientist Reg Whitaker.
This is not enough for Berger. “CIJA should be leading front and centre (on this issue),” he said. “They know damn well what is going on. They are so manacled to the Conservative government that they have forfeited any notion of an independent organisation that represents the true interests and views of the Jewish community.”
CIJA came into being even as Canadian foreign policy (first under the Liberals and now under the Conservatives) became decidedly more pro-Israel versus taking an even-handed stance between Israel and the Palestinians, notes University of Victoria political scientist and professor emeritus, Reg Whitaker.
“The uncritical alignment of the (Stephen) Harper government with the Israeli Right (ie Israel’s governing Likud party) has obviously created a much more welcome climate for aggressive AIPAC-style lobbying in Ottawa,” he told this reporter.
Whitaker was alluding to the US-based American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which he describes as having a higher profile in Washington than is the case with CIJA in Ottawa.
This is not for lack of trying on the part of CIJA, he added. Whitaker suggested that the powerful donors who decided to merge various organisations — including the century-old Canadian Jewish Congress — to create CIJA wanted a Canadian version of AIPAC to buttress the case for Israel in Canada.
“The effect of the takeover is to subsume the wider and diverse interests of the (Jewish) community, previously served by a variety of institutions and advocacy groups, under an aggressive AIPAC-style umbrella that conflates ‘Jewish’ interests with Israel’s interests – or in fact with the interests of the Israeli Right. The flip side of course is to automatically label any criticism of the Israeli government as anti-Semitic,” he said.
But CIJA has been clumsy at times, said Carleton University political science professor and local Jewish activist Mira Sucharov. She pointed to CIJA’s effort to discourage a US author, Peter Beinart, from addressing Jewish Hillel student groups on two university campuses in Ottawa and Montreal. He was on a tour advocating a boycott of products manufactured in illegal Jewish settlement on Palestinian lands under Israeli control.
Also calling for a similar action, Sucharov predicted in her Haaretz column that she too would be barred from speaking to the same students. “Through my annual donation to my local Jewish Federation’s annual campaign, I help fund both CIJA and Hillel, the very organisations that would seek to muzzle me and the many others who oppose economic support of the settlements.”
In its defence, CIJA contends that a boycott of settlement products plays a part in “delegitimize(ing)” the state of Israel.
“A boycott of Jews – no matter where they live – is not a tactic of debate or engagement. It’s a tool of conflict. One who calls for the singling out of our fellow Jews for punishment, economic or otherwise, has rejected an essential principle of people hood,” CIJA CEO Shimon Fogel said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Bernie Farber, who headed the old Canadian Jewish Congress before it was forced to merge with the new CIJA, refuses to be drawn into a criticism of the new governing Jewish body.
“CIJA did come out with a couple of statements in support of the Roma. Some feel that it wasn’t strong; some feel they should not have said anything,” said Bernie Farber. “It is typical of the Jewish community where you are going to have a number of opinions.”
“CIJA did come out with a couple of statements in support of the Roma. Some feel that it wasn’t strong; some feel they should not have said anything,” he told IPS. “It is typical of the Jewish community where you are going to have a number of opinions.”
Farber also maintained that Jews and Roma groups share a special historical bond because both were specifically targeted in Europe for genocide during the Holocaust by the Nazis.
And he recalled the significant legal and human resources that his organisation under this leadership invested in the past decades on behalf of the Roma in Canada. “There is no longer a Canadian Jewish Congress, but the (Jewish) community is still finding ways (to speak out), maybe not through its official spokesbody,” he said.
Steve McDonald defended the different emphasis at CIJA. “I have to say, in general, I’m not sure I can conceive a situation in which we take a position that isn’t met with some disagreement within the diverse landscape of Canada’s Jewish community. This goes back to our view that we should strive for unity of purpose rather than uniformity of viewpoint.”
Meanwhile, to discourage potential asylum seekers the Canadian government is paying for billboard advertising in the Hungarian city of Miskolc where many members of the Roma community reside.
“Virtually all Hungarian asylum claims are abandoned or withdrawn by the claimants themselves, or determined to be unfounded by the independent Immigration and Refugee Board,” said Alexis Pavlich, a spokesperson for Canadian minister Jason Kenney in an interview with the Toronto Star.
“Canadians have no tolerance for those who abuse our system and seek to take unfair advantage of our country at great expense to taxpayers.”
About Paul Weinberg
Paul Weinberg lives in Toronto. He is a freelance writer and Canadian correspondent for Inter Press Services. He also writes for NOW Weekly.
One Response to “Canada’s Israel lobby criticized on refugees”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
You are quite right about this issue demonstrating the divergence of the so-called leadership of the Canadian Jewish community (a self- appointed oligarchy of those with deep pockets, reminicent of the Family Compact of the days of Upper Canada) and the views of the community itself. Your examples of the Toronto Board of Rabbis and the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre are but two. Avrum Rosensweig, long-time Canadian Jewish News (CJN) columnist and founder of Ve'ahavta (Canadian Jewish Humanitarian and Relief Committee) is another important dissenter, as was Eli Weisel, who supported the Toronto Board of Rabbis' position. As fpor the demise of the Canadian Jewish Congress, that was entoirely engineered by the oloigarchs, who controlled the funds raised within the Jewish community across Canada through the United Jewish Appeal – Federations. The funds to run Congress at both the federal and the regional levels were turned down, then off. There was no "merger", rather .it was as Reg Whitaker said, a "takeover" in what I would characterize as a bloodless coup done in stages! It didn't happen wiothout resistance, which can be tracked in the relevant issues of the CJN. Congress had been a semi-democratic organization, in that any group of 50 Jewswho had organized themselves could apply for affiliation and send 2 voting reps to the National Executive meetings, which elected the executive. More recently, individuals could join, but this cleaverly diminished the democratic element because there was a gap in groups organizing among themselves to support or oppose particular policies – much stronger and effective way than individual voices. As for Bernie Farber, though he was turfed – or rather allowed to bow out more or less gracefully before Congress was shut down – he lost in the last federal election where he ran as a Liberal against a prominent Conservative incumbent..- and is now Senior V-P government and external relations, Gemini Power Corp., whose president is Dr. Michael Dan, a major UJA-Fed donor who is also president of Regulus Investments. Dan has been president of the Canadian Friends of Haifa University, and was awarded an honourary PhD by Haifa U, in Nov., 2009. Thus Farber must mind his "Ps 'n Qs", and one can judge for oneself how Farber's support of the Roma community's battle with Minister Kenney's changes to the Immigration Act has limitations, including a conflict with Kenney's receiving the very same honour last fall, "for his revered leadership as Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism". Indeed, Farber for all his help to the Roma community still attended the affair at which Kenney was awarded the degree (and his boss, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was the honourary "Patron"). It should also be noted that Dan has a good track record re supporting human rights causes, and that Dan's father (a noted philanthropist and supporter of Israel) came to Canada in 1947 as a teenager from HUNGARY! So you can see all the interlocking threads behind these things.