Nov 07, 2004 - Vancouver, B. C.
Strategies in Combating a Resurgent AntisemitismBy: Mark Weintraub, Chair, CJC Pacific Region
On November 7, 2004, Canadian Jewish Congress, Pacific Region Chair Mark Weintraub delivered the keynote address at the 32nd Triennial Meeting of the Canadian National Council of Jewish Women. His remarks are reprinted here in their entirety.
Winston Churchill once said of Lord Charles Bereford's impromptu speaking:
"He is one of those orators of whom it was well said: Before they get up they do not know what they are going to say; when they are speaking, they do not know what they are saying and when they have sat down, they do not know what they have said.
A scripted delivery may go some way to avoiding a similar chastisement, but is no guarantee that the listener will leave knowing what was said. So let me at the outset say as succinctly as I can what it is I am saying.
The struggle against antisemitism is really a fight for the dignity of each individual living in a harmonious world. Antisemitism consists of the corrosive vapours of envy, fear, ignorance and hatred. These are harmful states of being and emotions which are not just directed to the Jews. By directly confronting antisemitism we assist not only in providing security for the Jewish community, we also help bring about conditions for a more peaceful world anchored in an unshakeable understanding of a vision of our common humanity. That is really the underlying theme of my presentation this afternoon.
Antisemitism is a word which encompasses prejudice, violence and ultimately genocide against our people. It is the one word which signals emotionally our collective place in the world as outsiders and victims. From social bigotry to the inconceivable destruction of the European Jewish community in our own time.
So one of the challenges in talking about antisemitism is to deal with it in a manner which doesn't leave the audience despondent and confused. By it's very nature the subject is replete with pain and irrationality. It appears to many of us to defy explanation notwithstanding all of the attempted explanations. How do I present this vast and painful subject attended by wonderfully committed people at a lovely lunch in a beautiful city in a way, which doesn't sugar coat but also doesn't move us towards futile anger or sadness?
There is, furthermore, the question of perspective and how that affects our ability to rationally analyze and respond. We are the post-Shoah generation with many survivors still in our midst; how can we, no doubt collectively traumatized, living in the immediate shadow of our own phys-ical annihilation have a full historical perspective?
Since we lack the historical perspective, how future historians will precisely record this period of Jewish history is anyone's guess; what we can be assured of is that the three monumental modern Jewish experiences; the Holocaust or in Hebrew the Shoah; the establishment of the State of Israel and the establishment of a free and prosperous Jewish community in the Western world will no doubt dominate future histories of the Jewish people in the same way that the destruction of the Temples, the Babylonian exile and the Golden age of Spain are several of the pivotal markers in our distant past. If nothing else, I think we need to constantly have an awareness of the great historical time in which we are living and recognize that our answers will only be partial because we are right in the middle of monumental history making.
This also goes to the issue of intellectual humility; can any of us really have the definitive answers as if what we are dealing with is the subject of the physical sciences? Obviously not, and therefore we must be careful in our assessments. Yet there have been some very cogent explanations for antisemitism in general and the Holocaust in particular although few agree as to the precise importance of each factor. For example; was the Shoah the final culmination of 2000 years of the teaching of contempt for Judaism by Christianity; the antisemitism of countries such as Canada refusing to grant Jews refuge and sending a message of indifference to Hitler; the greed of the leadership and citizenry in seeing the opportunity for appropriating Jewish wealth? Or was the receptivity to the Final Solution an indirect rebellion against the Christian layer of morality imposed upon a resentful militaristic Teutonic culture that saw Christianity as, in fact, a Jewish creation?
Some thinkers who try to provide over-arching theories for anti-Semitism see Judaism as a value system of ethical accountability and the affirmation of life, which threatens so many destructive ideologies such that Jews, as the carriers of hope for a better future are seen as the number one enemy.
Put another way, Jews for various historical and sociological reasons have always been engaged in the struggle over ideas and the vision for an improved society; and therefore will always be in the forefront of ideological struggle, whether Left or Right, secular or religious and thus open to greater attack. Other thinkers see antisemitism as the direct result of corrupt governance that has permitted those in power to divert attention from their own exploitation of the people; this is one of the more persuasive explanations for the pernicious antisemitism emanating from Christian Europe and the contemporary Middle East.
Religious explanations abound. Some on the fringes of religious fundamentalism would see the Holocaust and other manifestations of anti-Semitism as the instrument of God punishing the Jewish people for sins, similar to the prophetic interpretation of the destruction of the Temple; others, even in the mainstream, see antisemitism as almost like a divinely ordained principle which provides the necessary glue that maintains Jewish unity.
Notwithstanding the welter of explanations, the consensus of post-Holocaust advocacy organizations has been to embrace a view that antisemitism is a social phenomenon that can be checked through the creation of liberal democratic societies that are based upon principles of economic equality, the rule of just law, an accountable policing system and the overriding belief in a common humanity.
I think you can, therefore, appreciate how difficult the task becomes today, when Israel, a vibrant multicultural democracy, with a powerful judicial system and open media, is cast as a racist state by her enemies and as such ought to be dismantled. Advocates against antisemitism see us as proponents of a just society with Israel as the expression of nation-al self-determination; yet too much of the world sees Israel as an oppressive state. This creates a serious challenge on many levels and yet upon reflection has it not always been thus, even before the State of Israel?
Jews and their friends considered our traditions to be a carrier of great universalistic ideals; our opponents, even without a State, depicted us as enemies of humanity. So the underlying problem may not have changed, we now just have to deal with greater complexities on two fronts. Further, while the challenge is somewhat more complicated than, for example, pre-1948 or pre-1967 advocacy efforts, Israel, in my view has permitted the Diaspora communities to be more self-confident in claiming our rightful place in Western societies. We need to always remember the pride with which Israel has instilled in us as the hope and refuge for threatened Jewish communities such as the Russians and Ethiopians. As we ourselves become increasingly embroiled in the intensified efforts to delegimitize Jewish national self-determination.
Given my prefacatory remarks, I am sure it will come as no surprise that I wish to put in perspective Canadian antisemitism in the context of the attacks on Israeli citizenry these last years and in the context of the central place of Israel in any discussion of antisemitism. No matter how painful and severely troubling the cemetery desecrations, physical attacks on Jews, the hostile environment on some campuses towards anyone or any program supportive of Israel, the despicable firebomb attack on the Montreal Day School, the musings of the President of the Canadian Islamic Congress about the propriety of killing Israelis, and here in Vancouver the advocacy by Sheik Kathrada of jihad against Jews, it has been Israelis that have to date borne the brunt of violence towards the Jewish people.
It is a heroic tale of Israeli endurance, courage and optimism. Tourism has rebounded, life is more normalized and there is a sense in Israel that they have weathered with great resilience another period of devastating assaults. No one knows what the withdrawal from Gaza and the death of Arafat will bring, but if history is the predictor of the future, Israelis will continue to maintain phenomenal strength in the face of unprecedented adversity.
All of you know that Jewish communities around the world are facing an increased virulence of antisemitism not seen since the Holocaust. That is why I was asked to speak. Some call it the new antisemitism, but what is meant I think, is a new intensification.
Supreme Court of Canada Justice Rosie Abella addressed this resurgence in her 2003 Vienna address to the European Organization for Security and Co-operation. She said:
"What appears to have replaced the antisemitism that led to quotas, employment discrimination, and political invisibility is what Irwin Cotler calls the new antisemitism. This time it is antisemitism, not just against the Jews, but against the Jewish state."
Aspects of the new antisemitism in fact differ little from the old in that defamatory conspiracy theories of overwhelming Jewish power continue to be pumped out with astonishing regularity. The deceit is astounding in variety; some lies are crude and some are cleverly subtle, some may be even inadvertent; Jews masterminded September 11th; Jews control Bush and are responsible for the invasion of Iraq; Jews dictate to the Democratic Party, Jews have a lock on the media and world finance, Jews invented the Holocaust, and on and on the canards are spun out.
But the new antisemitism has found renewed vigor in castigating the Israeli State. This is a form of Jew hatred which is finding increasing acceptance in the universities, in governments, media and in populations around the world.
While we all remember the infamous Zionism as Racism U.N. resolution of the 70's, with it's subsequent repeal and the optimism borne of the Oslo accords, many in the community thought that the lethal anti-Zionism unleashed by the propagandists of various Arab countries would be relegated to the dustbin of history. Not so.
Indeed, at the so called anti-racism Conference in Durban in 2001, we identified the strategic planning by a coalition of representatives of repressive states and anti-Israeli activists for an invigorated campaign to identify Israel as the new South Africa; the new apartheid state deserv-ing of dismantling.
So now we see the increasing acceptance of an attack on the rights of Israel to be a nation. Israel continues to be the surrogate Jew within the United Nations and in many academic and other forums. With the new antisemitism, Israel is the collective Jew amongst nations, vilified and therefore dehumanized as a new demonic state; a successor state to the Nazis.
Then there are the more subtle double standards; media and government in many parts of the world taking seeming satisfaction singling out Israel for any deviation from the highest ethical norms. Israel is held to impossible standards and therefore must fail. Israelis are judged in accordance with abstract ideals in isolation. Even more moderate criticism sometimes has an accusatory backdrop not seen in respect to the critiques of other nations.
Now, of course, Israel must be held accountable for any actions in violation of international law or norms. But that is the point. Equality before and under the law should be the maxim, not the discriminatory treatment Israel receives. There is a fundamental difference between criticism and demonization.
The second point to all of this is that since most Jews are Zionists of some form, Jews are sometimes accused of supporting racism. This plays on the old defamations of Jews as clannish and selfish. As a result, what we have under the guise of fighting racism is the articulation of antisemitism as a moral imperative such that it emerges as a cause similar to the 19th century antisemitism that claimed to be protecting good and decent European values from Jewish contamination. This is one of the reasons we are seeing increasingly unabashed expressions of antisemitism. The propagandists have been so successful that they have been able to engage the old hatreds with a new legitimate and fundamentally important rallying cry, that of anti-racism. Of course, I don't need to point out to this audience the astounding irony of anti-racist ideology turned against the Jews.
It sounds grim, and it is grim, but Jews under siege is an old story; and the fact remains that Israel is moving into it's 7th decade as a nation state; as an energized democracy. The Jews are an enduring people and some would say that never before has the Jewish condition looked so hopeful. There are Jews inhabiting the same land as our ancestors thousands of years ago, speaking their same language and Jews throughout the world draw their values from the same Torah. In Canada, we have had many successes in achieving integration into all levels of society by successfully combating antisemitism and, therefore, sober optimism is not necessarily out of place.
I would now like to make a few general observations of what we have accomplished in Canada in relation to the struggle against antisemitism, identify some initiatives on the world stage and conclude with some points on strategies for dealing with the future.
The Canadian Jewish community in the past has overcome significant antisemitism through the development of highly evolved protective statutory, judicial and law enforcement infrastructures. That is a mouthful and could bore but these are structures that go to the heart of our protections and that have permitted our successful acceptance into a society that not too long ago was thick with bigotry.
In my view, it is no coincidence that illustrious Canadian lawyers and jurists, including Chief Justice Bora Laskin and McGill Law School Dean Maxwell Cohen, were associated in various capacities with CJC and other institutions of the organized Jewish community. Professor of Constitutional Law, Bruce Elman, has written that:
"The Canadian Jewish community has a rich history of involvement and advocacy on constitutional issues particularly the protection of minority rights."
Trudeau himself commented on the significant contributions that our organizations and individuals have made to the development of human rights protection, not least of which has been the Charter.
We have been at the forefront of human rights and multiculturism advocacy, we have left not one serious expression of religion, ethnic, or race based hate go unchallenged - whether white supremacist, neo Nazi, or holocaust revisionist in nature. Zundel, Keegstra, The Heritage Front; Dial for Hate telephone lines such as Liberty Net, Ahenakew, anti-Semitic columnists such as Doug Collins; each step of the way, there was anguish as to whether the challenging of these bigots and racists was restricting freedom of speech; each step of the way the legal system is engaged for the formulation of the correct balance of rights and responsibilities in a liberal democracy.
As a result, there is a comprehensive body of tribunal, judge-made law and statute, charting a uniquely Canadian path in balancing the precious freedoms of expression with the freedom from being hated and reviled by reason of religion, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation. Our Jewish community has played an important role in this rapid legal evolution which has assisted not only in our acceptance as full citizens but which has also assisted all minorities in this country.
This is our collective inheritance and like good stewards of any valuable inheritance, it should be acknowledged, treasured and enlarged. So what does the future portend?
In a recent survey,1400 Canadians identified that, while three quarters believe that antisemitism is rapidly spreading, here in Canada antisemitism, as a general societal phenomenon is reducing in intensity from previous decades. There are, however, still unacceptably large numbers of Canadians who in some form do not like Jews and the incidents of dislike of Jews is higher in Quebec, in Canadians over 65 and amongst new immigrants. Yet, when all types of antisemitism are taken as a whole, antisemitism is lower in Canada than in the United States and, by some accounts, 25% lower (although the data is complex and one must exercise caution in interpreting it). Not surprisingly antisemitism in Canada is substantially lower than in Europe, which one would suspect, given recent highly publicized occurrences.
Irving Abella, a York University academic and author of ?None is Too Many,? who must surely be seen as one of our leading Canadian experts on antisemitism, has concluded after reviewing the data that the comprehensive legal and human rights structures consisting of the criminalizing of hate, Human Rights Acts, The Charter, hate crime teams, and a constitutionally enshrined multiculturism all collectively act as a "firewall" against some of the more incendiary forms of antisemitism seen in other jurisdictions. This conclusion is that Canada is far from perfect but there are few places where it is better.
We have here in Canada an intellectual and political climate which accepts that hate crimes are an assault on the very dignity of every person; an assault on the fragility of our multicultural fabric. For example, the House of Commons recently passed an unheard of unanimous reso-lution condemning antisemitism. And amongst other Parliamentarians it was a Quebec Bloc member Richard Marceau who has undertaken important work in bringing to the House concerns regarding the spread of antisemitism.
When Justice Minister Irwin Cotler addressed Canadian Jewish Congress at it's National Convention last Spring, he articulated a 12 Point Action Plan to combat antisemitism and reduce racism overall. All of which will resonate with our organizations as an endorsement of the accomplishments of human rights advocates to date. Some of the Points are as follows:
1) Continued education to the effect that hate crimes are not just ordinary crimes but crimes that assault our democratic fabric. 2) The need for unequivocal condemnation of antisemitism by political leadership. 3) Continued awareness of the linkage between hate crimes and terrorism and the advocacy of genocide against Israel and the Jewish people. 4) Gaining universal acceptance of the credo zero tolerance for hate; zero tolerance for terrorism; zero tolerance for antisemitism. 5) Cross -cultural round table to discuss such issues as terrorism and human rights. 6) Continue to ensure that Internet hate sites which we now estimate in excess of 5000 are targeted by the world community as a priority. 7) Increased holocaust education, antisemitism education, multiculturalism education and human rights education. 8) Specifically he also called for the adoption of a day in honour and commemoration of Raoul Wallenberg.
So it would appear that both Professor Abella and the Justice Minister's analysis is that we have been on the right track. If we intensify our efforts, but we also have to acknowledge the increased complexity that I referred to earlier. It is one thing to unite against hate, but is it anti-semitic to denounce Israel as an apartheid state? It is, if the implications are that the Jewish people are denied their national homeland in their ancestral lands. Is it antisemitic to continue to draw attention to the Palestinian issue to the exclusion of so many other important issues? It is, if a double set of standards are applied, about which I will have more to say.
Part of the reason many of us have no difficulty in answering in the affirmative to questions like the above, is in part the original source of certain types of these critiques. Many of them have come from the worst autocratic regimes. Some of whom, like Syria, gave home to escaping Nazis and generally have been strongly influenced by fascist ideology towards Jews. Those who are involved in the study of antisemitism tell us the continued links between Islamicist terrorists and neo-Nazi organizations are more than tenuous and part of the constant stream of anti-Israel tirades have emanated from these dark corners, only to be picked up by less radicalized and hate-filled groups and articulated in a language that could even resonate with moderates.
But it is critical to get this part of the analysis correct and I think we are still in the process of formulating a principled and rational set of criteria for determining what is within acceptable bounds when it relates to critiques of Israel and what constitutes antisemitism, let alone hateful incitement.
Let me tell you a few of the many initiatives that the organized community has embarked upon in response to our current situation and then I will conclude with some overall recommendations for both individual and organizational actions.
One of the most significant developments in response to resurgent antisemitism are organizational attempts to define antisemitism, and then educate and advocate. There are numerous international conferences on antisemitism at which leadership throughout the world is coming together to share and shape responses. Various European Union securities related structures and the United Nations are several forums at which we are attempting to get the message through.
Last June 21, Columbia Law Professor Anne Bayefsky addressed a United Nations Conference set aside exclusively to deal with antisemitism. Her remarks, to the consternation of some, were dedicated exclusively to the United Nations as a birthing room for much of international antisemitism. Her speech was a devastating critique. Her submission, which attempts to identify double standards in the treatment of the Jewish people and Israel, is part of our collective organizational attempt to define the difference between legitimate criticism and critiques that have an antisemitic motive behind them.
Her opening remarks were blunt and I quote:
"This meeting occurs at a point when the relationship between Jews and the United Nations is at an all-time low. The United Nations took root in the ashes of the Jewish people, and according to its charter was to flower on the strength of a commitment to tolerance and equality for all men and women and of nations large and small. Today, however, the U.N. provides a platform for those who cast the victims of the Nazis as the Nazi counterparts of the 21st century. The U.N. has become the leading global purveyor of antisemitism -- intolerance and inequality against the Jewish people and its state."
She went on to note that there has never been a U.N. resolution specifically on antisemitism or a single report to a U.N. body dedicated to discrimination against Jews, in contrast to annual resolutions and reports focusing on the defamation of Islam and discrimination against Muslims and Arabs. Instead there was Durban, the 2001 U.N. World Conference "Against Racism," which was a breeding ground and global soapbox for anti-Semites. Then Professor Bayefsky identifies the issue squarely as follows:
"Antisemitism is about intolerance and discrimination directed at Jews, both individually and collectively. It concerns both individual human rights and the group right to self-determination, realized in the state of Israel. What does discrimination against the Jewish state mean? It means refusing to admit only Israel to the vital negotiating sessions of regional groups held daily during U.N. Commission on Human Rights meetings. It means devoting six of the 10 emergency sessions ever held by the General Assembly to Israel. It means transforming the 10th emer-gency session into a permanent tribunal, which has now been reconvened 12 times since 1997. By contrast, no emergency session was ever held on the Rwandan genocide, estimated to have killed a million people, or the ethnic cleansing of tens of thousands in the former Yugoslavia, or the death of millions over the past two decades of atrocities in Sudan. That's discrimination."
She could have easily referred to the most recent catastrophe in the Darfur region of Sudan where millions more are at risk of murder, mayhem, rape and starvation, while the United Nations once again shows it's paralysis in supporting the victims of a militaristic Islamicist regime. Please note I have not said Islamic regime because the people who are being targeted in Darfur are themselves Moslems; the regime which threatens them is a military group who give obeisance to what may be referred to as a perverse distortion of Islam and what some are calling Islamo-fascist ideology.
But returning to Bayefsky's indictment of the U.N., she went on to articulate that the language of human rights has been hijacked not only to discriminate but also to demonize the Jewish target. More than one quarter of the resolutions condemning a state's human rights violations adopted by the Human Rights Commission over 40 years have been directed at Israel. In 2003, a General Assembly resolution concerned with the welfare of Israeli children failed (though one on Palestinian children passed handily) because it proved impossible to gain enough support for the word Israeli appearing before the word children.
Her concluding words were directed to the Secretary-General:
"I challenge the Secretary-General and his organization -- if they are serious about eradicating antisemitism: Start condemning human-rights violators wherever they dwell -- even if they live in Damascus. Stop condemning the Jewish people for fighting back against their killers. And the next time someone asks you or your colleagues to stand for a moment of silence to honor those who would destroy the State of Israel, say "NO...?
The World Jewish Congress has identified fundamentalist Islamic terror as the main progenitor of hatred against Jews and Israel and therefore sees the war against terrorism as an important bulwark against antisemitism.
Within the larger debate of Islamic extremism there are those who say that fundamentally the solution to the problem of antisemitism must come from within the moderate Moslem community. Support for moderate Moslems is a key plank of our collective strategy in combating antisemitism. In perhaps the first really encouraging sign of moderates finding their voice, the Saudi newspaper Arab News recently reported that over 2500 Muslim intellectuals from 23 countries signed a petition sent to the United Nations Secretary-General calling for an international treaty banning the use of religion for incitement to violence. This is a significant new development. Many of us consider this type of response from the Islamic community to be the most important type of check to contemporary antisemitism.
Several world and local events perhaps best illustrate our current initiatives. Our community has undertaken raising awareness on the humanitarian disaster in Darfur as an absolute priority. Here in British Columbia, we have contacted every federal leader for the purposes of communicating to the political leadership that this is an issue that goes right to the heart of the integrity of the United Nations. Intuitively, our community knows that if there is another genocide in Africa, our mantra of ?Never Again? will ring hollow. That rallying call was not intended only to ensure no more atrocities against the Jewish people, but no more genocides against any people. The anti-genocidal work of our community organizations including Holocaust awareness, demands that we as a community are in the forefront of persuading our political leaders to act. I use this platform to once again call upon all of you to phone or write your political leadership on this issue. Today in Toronto, there is a rally co-organized by CJC, Ontario Region intended to continue to bring this issue to the forefront of the Canadian agenda.
I now wish to conclude with several points on strategies as we move forward. Some of these follow from the Justice Minister's various planks. As you listen to these ideas, perhaps you can think about the role your organization can play in advancing any of these initiatives, or how you as individuals can meaningfully participate:
Firstly, I want to refer to long term planning to anticipate what our Canada may look like 20 years down the road. One of the most important programs we can undertake is a comprehen-sive nation-wide strategy to better promulgate Canadian civics and the internal embrace of Charter values of freedom and equality rights. That has in fact already begun with a series of conferences on Civil Discourse funded by Heritage Canada and implemented by Canadian Jewish Congress with the active support of CIJA. The first one was held in Toronto last week with participants from numerous religious and ethnic communities, including many participants from the Muslim community. The next will be in Vancouver.
The focus is how to craft the ground rules for a Canadian approach to dealing with explosive international issues such as the Middle East so that they do not spill over into hatred, contempt and violence. Philosophy Professor Kingswell was the keynote speaker and articulated a number of principles, such as a thick liberalism which is robust in it's defence of virtues such as civility, willed restraint, openness to challenge, respect and toleration, not as wishy-washy concepts, but as virtues in the old-fashioned sense of the word where virtues connote a disposition to action. The day long conversation which followed amongst leaders of the different religious and ethnic communities was enlivening and shows clearly that we are beginning to chart a course in this new domain called civil discourse, I hope you will be hearing much more about this in the years to come as an important additional approach in dealing with a renewed antisemitism.
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Secondly, and in the shorter term, and as part of the first point, we can certainly do more to educate our own Jewish community on the importance of human rights, Charter values, multiculturalism and the concepts of shared values and Jewish contributions in this regard. I doubt that most of our community has ever heard of Bora Laskin even though he, as a Jew and as Supreme Court Chief Justice, did important work in advancing the status and welfare of all minority communities.
Here is the opportunity to instill great pride from knowledge of our contributions, our endurance, our hope and optimism. Every young Jew who understands the connection between our struggle for Jewish dignity and human rights becomes a more engaged Canadian and a prouder Jew. I would like to see a curriculum in this regard piloted in our Jewish schools.
And while we put emphasis on the horrors of the Holocaust, and rightfully so, how much emphasis do we place on educating about those peoples who resisted the hate and protected the Jews. Some, but perhaps not enough. Denmark and Bulgaria's record in this regard should be known by each of us - not just as a matter of historical record or as an antidote to cynicism towards the human condition, but as a primer in learning which cultural or historical conditions can immunize populations against antisemitism. When we look at the laboratory of actual human experience, why not look to those places where antisemitism was successfully resisted.
Bulgaria was at the cross-roads of Asia and Europe. There was exposure to numerous religions and ethnicities and therefore many Bulgarians couldn't understand why their Jews were being singled out by the Nazis. As a result, almost all Bulgarian Jews were saved during World War II.
When you see your neighbour as fundamentally different, it is easier to be infected with contempt. The courage of various individuals and certain countries in standing firm with threatened Jewish communities supports our domestic agenda that the way to dissolve antisemitism is to link that struggle with an overall vision of a common humanity.
We must continue to try and ensure that antisemitism does not advertently or inadvertently creep into the mainstream political ideologies. This has so many aspects, from encouraging civil discourse on campuses to ensuring that student press organs are not taken over by extremist groups.
One of the best ways in addressing this latter challenge is to draw upon the good intentions of many political activists to achieve world betterment by articulating that antisemitism is not just another problem. It is like a noxious poison and affects all of us; threatening to derail many important initiatives for world improvement because it so dominates those international institutions necessary in the fight against environmental degradation, disease, and poverty.
We must get the word out comprehensively and effectively that the amount of energy at international conferences devoted to demonizing Jews and Israel has been an unmitigated disaster for various initiatives for world betterment.
I have been speaking primarily on the organizational level, but on the personal level one must first make a decision whether you wish to engage personally. If you decide to personally engage, it should be an informed engagement and I do not see how that can happen without a continual feeding from Jewish newspapers, periodicals and books.
Just by way of passing, if you wish to gain an exposure to the full scope of views on the antisemitism of our times, you might well wish to read the newly published work by Ron Rosenbaum entitled ?Those Who Forget the Past: The Question of Antisemitism? which contains over 50 essays from a wide spectrum of thinkers.
As we face a resurgence of malevolent hatred against both the Jewish state and Jewish Diaspora communities we shudder wondering what might be in store; hoping beyond hope that the circumstances that created the Shoah, the circumstances that created such enmity towards Israel will not be repeated in North America.
Yet let's try and take a hard look at this antisemitism in Canada. While there are revulsions, outrage, and anger at the swastika daubings; the hate-filled statements and horrendous firebombing in the Montreal Day School; the fact is, most of us go on about our daily lives untouched by this resurgence and do not in any real way feel impaired by contemporary antisemitism.
We need to know that in Israel, our brothers and sisters do actively feel the trauma of the continued assaults and there are peoples here in Canada whose lives have been ravaged by racist policies and whose living standards are many times below those of the average Canadian.
When we demand that our political leaders do something about antisemitism, also give serious reflection to those First Nations peoples who every day wonder why there is still so much inequity in Canadian society.
First Nations peoples still feel disenfranchised; as a Canadian society we are responsible for a monstrous repudiation of great hospitality and openness shown to the first European settlers. There is an injustice of such significant proportions in which we are still implicated that I think it is absolutely critical, if for no other reason than our own collective integrity and credibility, for each one of us to totally transform our thinking around the treatment of indigenous peoples in this country so we are ourselves are not guilty of the same indifference or overt discrimination and prejudice which we say the world has shown us. We have done some initial work in this regard, but much more needs to be done.
In my discussion today about the dissolution of anti-Semitism, I want to make these links - I want to suggest that our ultimate security lies in an even greater outward reach to these communities who are in a place of suffering that must command our full and immediate attention. For many reasons, it goes to the integrity of our call for the implementation of Jewish values; it goes to our credibility when we say where was the world and where is the world; it goes to the benefits of making alliances in our quest for a just society and creating conditions for antisemitism not to flourish.
So this is the theme for my presentation today. In a word discovering and nourishing our common humanity so as to create fewer places of hatred wherever they may manifest.
Here we are in Vancouver, a more beautiful place doesn't exist. The birthplace of so many positive forces in our country. If antisemitism is a word which encapsulates hate, fear, lies, irrationality, envy and pain; what is on the other side of antisemitism? Acceptance of people who are different; understanding of people who are different, promotion of harmony amongst different people, empathy with the oppressed and a determination to effect change.
And this means more education, more contact with others, greater enlightenment, broader perspectives and, ultimately, greater places of peace and respect for the dignity of each of us. But it is a two way street- we cannot demand that our dignity be respected and not work diligently for the dignity of the most oppressed.
It is, of course, a task that will not be finished by our generation. To paraphrase one of our time-honoured teachings, t we are not obligated to finish all of the work, but we are certainly obliged to do our part.
All of you, by being at this National Conference, are showing your passion for and commitment to the work that needs to be done. I look forward with great anticipation in seeing each of us contribute in the most powerful way that our potential permits.
Thank you for the honour of addressing this wonderful group of women.
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