Speech at Darfur Rally

"Good Afternoon. I am Mark Weintraub, Chair of the National Darfur Committee of the Canadian Jewish Congress.

Friends.

We all know we should not be here today.

We all know that the tragedy of Darfur was condemned several years ago as a genocide in the making.
We all know that various United Nations bodies and committees and officials who are confronted with seemingly limitless tragedies, nonetheless declared Darfur as the worst humanitarian disaster confronting the world; the worst massive human rights.

So why are we here today; at least a year after a world concensus that the carnage in Darfur had to stop.

Why are we here today many months after former Prime Minsiter Martin declared protection of people in Darfur as a national priority.

Why are we here today after the previous government, with the active support of all our political parties pledged and actually delivered over 200 million in aid to the African Union to help with the peace?
We are here today because that 200 million, even though it was the largest single contribution of any nation, has been insufficient in stopping the murders, starvation rapes and homelessness. For a period of time we were cautiously optimistic that perhaps the the worst excesses would cease but any basis for optimism has now been crushed. The deaths appear to have doubled in the last year and the Sudanese regime seems intent on carrying the conflict over to Chad and over neighbouring regimes.

So why are we here? Why were the efforts of so many last year seemingly for naught?
The answer is clear. The money wasn’t enough, the will of the United Nations was not enough; the West has not demanded enough; the Chinese government, refuses to rein in a government from whom it buys huge amounts of oil, and the Russian government imposes no restraint on a regime which it supports militarily.

And the vast millions of people who are energized to take to the streets for any number of other causes and and issues have remained silent.
We are here today because we have all failed to do that which was necessary to give meaning to the post-Holocaust anti-genocidal cry for Never Again.
But at least we are here.

We are here in Vancouver, and in Toronto and in Washington D.C. and you will see media coverage especially of the Washington D.C. rally, because finally the American people have been aroused to take to the streets. If only the people in Russian and in China and in Europe could also be so provoked to take two hours of their day to call for a moratorium on the killing and the raping, we could stop this in a moment.

But at least we are rallying today, and the fact is that I ask the question why we are here today, because there were many advocates in Canada beginning several years ago which resulted in Canada taking a lead role in Darfur. And there continue to be many advocates. And even though it is depressing to have to be here after so much time has lapsed, you are here today; and that it is critical. Because while we have been too late for the 400,000 who have already perished, we are not to late for the next 400,000. And your presence and your voices can be heard in Ottawa. And just this last month, as we have all stepped up our advocacy, the voice is beginning to sound like a lion’s roar.

The Jewish community living in the shadow of our own genocide determined several years ago that we had to advocate long and hard for an end to the ethnic cleaning; the humans rights violations and indeed let us call it for what it is; the genocide in Darfur.

At the Victoria Legislature just this last Tuesday, we commemorated the Holocaust but we insisted that the Legislators wear green ribbons to bring awareness to Darfur. And indeed during the ceremonies and in the Legislature sitting Darfur was on the lips of all speakers. That in turn received coverage in our media. Let me read from one of the interviews.

And the green ribbon campaign which Canadian Jewish Congress took to the Ontario legislature and Parliament also precipitated an editorial in the Toronto Star this week demanding our government do more; and then an editorial in the Globe followed; and then there were statements in the various legislatures and Parliament not only about the horrors of the Holocaust; and the strength and resilience of the survivors but of the necessity to demand an end to the mass killings in Darfur. And so there will be a discussion in the House this week.

And so as well there is a buildup political activity through the efforts of so many such that I was pleased this morning to read the following in the Province.

Yes we should not be here today; our advocacy should have succeeded a year ago, but it did not not and so we are here again; and this time there is a greater anxiety in the world as the numbers increase and this time perhaps this time all of the efforts will succeed. And your presence here today are part of those efforts; and for that we thank you for taking time to be here; and we thank you for the petition you will sign and the letters you will write; we thank you for raising the issue in your mosques and your churches and your synagogues and we thank you for phoning your Members of parliament to demand that Canada continue to play a lead role and that this government clarify precisely what it intends to do with its Sudanese policy.

We must combine a knowledge of what we have done; what we can do with the fact that other nations must play their part as well; we have been too silent in demanding that Russia and China reign in their client state; The Russian people and the Chinese people know well horrific suffering; they have ancient moral teachings and we have no reason to believe that their leadership wants to see unecessary suffering; the oil can still flow to China without the devastation of milllions of people. The arms can still be sold but need not be used on millions of innocents.

I want to thank the organizers of today's rally and specifically our good friend Clement Aapak who has worked with Canadian Jewish congress staff on various projects over this year. Clement came with us to Victoria to mark Holocaust Remembrance day and has distinguished himself as a steady and constant and often frustrated voice to raise awareness for the people of Darfur. His colleagues and friends in his organization who have helped with this day are very dear to us and on behalf of all of us thank you.

Let me conclude in recognizing two other British Columbians who are not not here but who have worked tirelessly for the people of Darfur. Nouri Abdalla of the Darfur Association has been in Abuja for the peace talks. If he were here today he would be speaking but he sends his regards and is hopeful for a breakthrough in the peace talks and urges us all to keep advocating.

Senator Mobina Jaffer was the former Special Envoy to Sudan. She travelled on numerous occasions to Sudan and to the peace talks and was a highly respected voice in Africa for her work in bringing more women into the peace process and raising the Canadian profile as a moral force in the region.

We owe her a great debt gratitude for what she has done on our behalf for several years.

Thank you friends."

Justice Institute Speech

Speech addressed to Justice Institute, November 2005

Ladies and Gentlemen. I am honoured to have the opportunity to present my thoughts on issues related to hate crime to a group so dedicated to it’s eradication. I wish to first acknowledge our presence here on the traditional lands of the Musqueam people and express our thanks and gratitude.

This symposium is being held two days after the passing of the famed Nazi hunter, Simon Wiesenthal. It is therefore incumbent upon me that I preface my remarks by recognizing the enormous contributions he made to the post-holocaust world in which we live. Simon Wiesenthal was one of those individuals who helped us as a war torn world restore at least a modicum of faith in ourselves after the demonic years of the second world war. After surviving five Nazi death camps he insisted that war criminals be tracked down, apprehended and brought to justice and otherwise dedicated his long life to combating anti-semitism and other forms of prejudice in all of it’s ugly manifestations.

Wiesenthal demanded that the world not sink into denial and let the guilty ones slip away into the night; he fought against clandestine revenge killings, he demanded that these most vicious architects of mass hate face justice with all of the safeguards of an honest judicial system. He often said that his actuating passion was a personal responsibility to those who perished to bring the murderers to account, so that if he met them in “ the next world” he could say he had done everything within his power to ensure that the guilty would not go free; but he also wanted to teach the world that through the rule of just law, that the destructive impulse of human beings may in some small measure be checked. He was born a Jew and suffered only because he was a Jew but his message of the pursuit of justice was for the benefit of all of humanity.

All of us at this Conference have committed to this path that Simon Wiesenthal embarked upon some 60 years ago. I was one of those young university students who upon discovering the great courage of this man was inspired to try in at least some small measure to make a contribution to confronting genocide and I know there were thousands of others who were similarly humbled and motivated by his heroism.

I want now to discuss the eradication of hate in the largest context because I think it critical that we try and always appreciate that we are part of an ongoing historical process which demands continual reflection.

Our century brings into focus, perhaps more harshly than at any time in the past, the elastic quality of human nature; our capacity for great acts of creativity and compassion and our capacity for seemingly limitless destruction. For while extreme and massive acts of barbarism have characterized much of human history, never before has technology reached such a sophisticated level that we can now talk of the mass extermination of human beings. Technology, mass communication, mass ideologies and a revolutionary rate of change has all too frequently been a fatal combination in the modern era..
Hitler’s remark “Who today remembers the destruction of the Armenians?” was made in the context of the anticipated destruction by the Nazis of the European Jewish community. It demonstrates with full clarity that the lack of response by the world community to one set of crimes against humanity only encourages the killers into believing quite correctly that they can get away with other such crimes.

In the conflict in Europe only a few short years ago, two thirds of Europe’s Jewish population was destroyed; over two million babies and children perished along with a two thousand year culture, this in the heart of modern Europe. The Allied forces were ultimately victorious but the war against the European Jewish community was won by those who so skillfully exploited a time-honoured tradition of the teaching of contempt towards the resident Jewish populations. And of course the Nazi’s murder machine did not stop with the torture of the Jewish people. It included amongst other incomprehensible tragedies the Nazi brutalization of the Polish nation, the genocide of the Roma, the persecution of gays, those with mental and physical disabilities and ultimately the self-destruction of Germany itself.
But despite the sadistic Nazi cruelty and the complicity of nations, institutions and millions of “ordinary” citizens, we also witnessed an altruistic response in the heart of this darkness which compels us to reject pessimism as the final answer. We know that against all odds there were some high officials and a different type of “ordinary” citizen who were prepared to sacrifice their lives to save Jews. There were countless awe-inspiring acts of heroism and decency and we must continue to highlight this nobility of the human spirit. The haters amongst us would rather let us believe that we are all guilty as human beings; they would prefer us to believe that to be either passive or maniacal is innate to the human condition, for if all are guilty, then no one is truly guilty.
The record of Denmark and Bulgaria in protecting all of their Jews is part of the Holocaust narrative which must be trumpeted as an alternative path, not utopian, but very much attainable. Few know, but it is now indisputable, that tens of thousands of Bulgarian Jews were saved the fate of their European brothers and sisters because various church, political, business and labour leaders insisted that “their” Jews would not be transported. The historical and other reasons for this success are fascinating and bear much attention, for in Bulgaria and Denmark we see the triumph of national courage over fear, greed and hate. These countries were incubators of decency and if we study what occurred we can perhaps identify the necessary factors to create hate-free societies.
Notwithstanding the mind numbing, heart stopping catalogue of infamy of the Nazi era we are also heirs today of some of the post–war attempts to extract meaning from that evil- there have been affirmative responses to the Nazi horror including the establishment of the United Nations, the development of International Human Rights Codes, anti-genocide declarations and in our own country, the establishment of human rights tribunals, the criminalization of hate and the dismantlement of some, but still not all of the existing racist infrastructure which characterized pre- World War II Canada.
Our collective sanity requires that we relentlessly search to extract meaning from chaos and to always to live in the crucible of hope. In religious terms this is sometimes cast as the concept of redemption- to redeem means to rescue, to make whole and holy, to vest worthiness in that which might otherwise have been discarded.

Other than the weekly Sabbath, the most sacred day of the Jewish calendar is approaching: Yom Kippur, a 24 hour period for personal and collective redemption and the culmination of the celebration of the Jewish New Year.

It is a day wherein each Jew annually takes stock of his or her actions and misdeeds as a necessary pre-condition for a reconciliation with one’s fellow human beings and ultimately God. But the reconciliation must firstly be with our fellow human beings and we are mandated to seek forgiveness from those individuals we have harmed- only then do our traditional teachings tell us we are entitled to seek a restorative relationship with God. Yom Kippur is also a day, when the police are on special alert for attacks against our synagogues; for the haters exist amongst us still and on the days when the Jewish community gathers together in the greatest numbers, we need extra protection.

I refer to these oncoming days of Jewish reflection not to focus on the security needs of our community, but to provide an analogy for what I urge us to do collectively as a society. Our own secular New Year’s process of making resolutions emanates from the Jewish tradition of soul –seeking and affirming a new path but unfortunately the transformative power of the ancient tradition has been diluted. But on Yom Kippur we still strain to seek authentic redemption; we are exhorted to take account of the past; confront it honestly and then commit to change with powerful action; for our present moment in time and space cannot be disconnected from the past or the future. Analogizing to our current Canadian condition, if we are to learn from the past, if we are to embrace hope instead of pessimism in the struggle to dissolve hate, we must be bone deep honest in our evaluation of why there is hate in our society.

There is much that has changed in the larger social and political Canadian climate which now accepts on a certain level that hate crimes are an assault on the very dignity of the victim in ways that are even more searing than other crimes. The individual feels singled out and vulnerable for his or her identity which creates a bewilderment and shock; such attacks also must be seen as deeply anti-social because they fray the fragility of our multi-cultural, democratic fabric. We recognize this now and have implemented hate crime teams; statistics gathering and special provisions for sentencing. All of these steps are far from comprehensive and there is significant question as to how effectively the tools available to our judicial system are actually being used but nonetheless we have achieved substantial progress in creating a legal and ideological underpinning of respect for diversity and this should be properly acknowledged and the work of previous generations in breaking new ground be recognized with gratitude.

However, I do think that sometimes we tend to be too self-congratulatory and slide into denial. So, if the reference to Yom Kippur’s demand for penetrating self-reflection is apt for a larger societal introspection, then how can we talk about how “evolved” we are in terms of diversity, respect for others and progress in combating hate-motivated crime when we fail to recognize that in our own U.N. best ranked city we have had multiple disappearances and murders of females, economically disadvantaged and disproportionately Aboriginal with too little expressions of individual and institutional concern from most of us. We have lacked respect for our most marginalized fellow citizens- where was our love, our respect as a nation when we collectively insisted that First Peoples be dispossessed of all they held dear and then discarded to be barely tolerated on the margins of this fabulously wealthy country. And the contempt continues; now the focus is on the aboriginal inability to assimilate; the failure of aboriginal leadership- there seems to be always something deficient from the dominant perspective in the Aboriginal ways- from Europe’s first contact, the colonizing powers always had the first and last word in pronouncing judgment. I think we must face up to this, be truthful about it and in our own spheres of influence and power redouble our efforts to communicate this tragic reality.

There is nothing new in these statements; they have been said countless times in the past and they are beginning to make impact; but it is only in the last decade or so that the courts have begun to redress this horrific reality of attempted genocide and only most recently that our Premier has publicly acknowledged the need for a new relationship- reversing a hundred years of greedy, self-serving, dishonest and exploitive dealings by too many of those in power. Previous generations permitted the most vicious and rapacious dishonour to reign to such an extent that there are few if any aboriginal people today who do not bear the scars of the attempted decimation of the foundations of their way of life. It should not be a shocking statement to say Canada has and in too many respects continues, to manifest hatred to the land’s indigenous peoples.

Hate against First Nations must always be discussed as a unique and urgent matter separate and distinct from other challenging race and ethnicity issues because it still looms as our greatest unresolved shame. In my view, whether as Jew, Sikh , Christian, Muslim Buddhist, Hindu, newly arrived or 5th generation Canadian we must be stopped frozen in our tracks by our individual and collective neglect, our recklessness, our arrogance and for some of us, the fact that we have let our hearts turn to the hardest of stone.

During the Yom Kippur day of redemption, Jews in each of their own congregations publicly recite a list of errors and mistakes, not because we each necessarily committed the entire catalogue of misdeeds, but we say them publicly so as not to isolate individuals from the community and to communicate that we are all bound together in our actions; one of the “sins” we publicly seek redemption for is being “xenophobic” -fearful of strangers-, and another, (from a list of hundreds) is the sin of “betrayal”.

Juxtaposing these two I think it not a very controversial conclusion to note that too many of us have been fearful of the “stranger”-of the Other -and we have betrayed our own “Western” and Canadian oft stated ethical principles to treat well the stranger in our midst- indeed to begin to see the stranger as not strange at all but part of us – the one great human family. And need I make the point any more clearer to underscore that the stranger in our midst- the indigenous peoples of the Americas were actually very much home here; they were neither strangers to the Land nor did they treat the first colonizers with fear or contempt; for the most part they were greeted well and many an explorer and colonizer was saved through the generosity of an Indian- that is not a romantic version of what occurred; the historical records are unambiguous in their gratitude for First Nations knowledge and help- and therefore the sin of betrayal plays out on even more levels; not only the betrayal of our own stated principles; but betrayal of peoples who trusted our forefather’s words only to see treaty after treaty; promise after promise breached or modified. For the sin of xenophobia, for the sin of greed, for the sin of arrogance, for the many layered sins of betrayal, should we not be seeking redemption and thank ourselves fortunate that generosity within Aboriginal communities is still available to meet any sincere attempt at reconciliation with open, albeit with understandably guarded arms? In any discussion of hate and racism and discrimination, I am increasingly of the view that our relationship with Aboriginal peoples be examined first.

If we are to vest real meaning in our claim to Canadian values of decency, courtesy, social concern; if we are to take seriously our own religious or philosophic or country of origin traditions as having any kind of wise or compassionate wellsprings, we must demand from our leadership that we be directed to a place of redemption; a place of searing honesty; a place of such intense discomfort that we vow not to be complacent until we have addressed this malevolent dimension to our history and contemporary reality and we must demand with the most powerful voices we can muster that our political, educational and religious leadership take us to this new place with the greatest urgency, indeed with an almost panicked sense of urgency. aboriginal children aboriginal women, aboriginal men; aboriginal elders… each one bears what should be heart rendering witness to a dominant culture of superiority, of high regard for our own and low regard for the other.

So vested with the responsibility of speaking on behalf of the Jewish community’s central advocacy organization, I, with the support of the organized community insist that by reason of our own history and by reason of who we claim to be as Canadians, that aboriginal justice not be simply an add-on to the list of concerns when advocating on issues related to racism and hate crime; aboriginal justice must be at the heart and center of all of our work. That is not to say that the concerns of the Jewish community are not palpable; they are- we continue to be a targeted community and must vigorously seek all necessary protections; this does not mean that racism directed to Indo-Canadians and those of other Asian origins is not a critical issue for our organization – of course it is; neither does this mean that gay bashing and other forms of denigration based upon sexual orientation is not of grave concern- for it is and continues to be a much uglier problem than our media and schools and leaders would admit- gay men still continue to be the victims of the most violent attacks simply because of who they are. What I am saying is that we need to reverse the tendency to add racism against aboriginal peoples at the end of the list of concerns and congratulate ourselves for even thinking about these issues, but rather think about how relations were first structured with Aboriginal people as perhaps the template, or forerunner of how subsequent minorities were treated. To what extent there is a causal, or other link, reasonable people can disagree, but I am certain that since the contempt goes so deep, that at a minimum, we must put aboriginal justice at the core of our concerns as part of our critique and simultaneously acknowledge that the issues are also so fundamentally different that they deserve special and separate treatment apartment from our discussion of other types of racism.

Personally, I do believe that there is a deep nexus linking historical anti-semitism, the near genocide of indigenous peoples and intolerance, prejudice, and ultimately hateful violence against other vulnerable and essentially powerless minority groups-but whether or not one agrees with this type of analysis, few could cogently disagree that it is incumbent upon us to continually raise the question- why are Jewish places of worship desecrated, a Jewish school firebombed and Jewish individuals cowardly attacked for just being Jews? why are members of the Filipino community targeted by others? why are women still beat up and murdered in the sex trade; why does being gay mean you must risk bodily harm if you disclose who you are? why do we continue to force aboriginal people to fight alone for their dignity and turn our backs to the ravages of racism wreaked on First Peoples of Canada? Why must elderly Indo-Canadians now wonder whether they are safe on our streets, in our parks or even in their homes with hooligans wandering around looking for someone to torment? And why is that so many Canadians of Chinese ancestry still feel, after over a hundred years of meaningful contribution to our society that many of European descent still treat them with disrespect, and contempt. Why do Muslims register one of the largest number of reported hate crimes?

The questions could be posed on many more different levels and the answers multiple and not always unambiguous. These are extraordinarily complex issues and no one should dare to suggest that there is one correct or true or accurate analysis or approach. But the reality is there and begs for comment and discussion and one partial answer I would like to focus on is the structural societal foundations of our society as well as the all too human emotions and states of being like fear, greed and arrogance.I subscribe to the view that hate crime is only the most overt expression of a society still structured around the superiority of some over others, whether it be ethnicity, race, religion gender, sexuality or economics; there are many explanations for these hierarchies; we know certainly that the entire complex of hatred defies simple explanations and we will be discussing some of it’s dimensions later today- but I think as part of the discussion we must ask the fundamental question not only from a cultural or political or economic perspective but also from a, spiritual or philosophical perspective ; however you wish to frame it – why are we are not a culture of love or at least respect? Why are we are not a world defined by actualized love; why is it that we have these hierarchies of race and ethnicity that promulgate hatred?

And by referring to love I am not referring to transient emotional states but love in her greatest profundity – love that flowers in the pursuit of justice, love as understood and explained by the greatest spiritual teachers, by the greatest philosophers and by our greatest of leaders such as Gandhi or Martin Luther king, or Rabbi Abraham Heschel; or some of the Bahai, Islamic, Jewish and Christian and aboriginal leaders. There are thousands of others from myriad traditions and my omission is only by reason of time and the need to identify several who are most familiar to us. We do not truly embrace the dignity of each individual and so the question must be asked ..why not? generationally transmitted ideologies of superiority of one religion or people over another? Greed?

Why in the year 2005 do we still have too much public indifference; public indifference to the Hindu temple daubed with a swastika; public indifference to the killers of Aaron Webster; public indifference to the vulnerable position of those from the Filipino community; this relative indifference does not evince a commitment to the upholding of the dignity of each individual.

Where is the outrage, where is our passion; where is our sense that our neighbour is our extended family. These are questions that are rhetorical in nature but I pose them to permit me to stand back for a minute and say – this is absurd; this is irrational this is bizarre that human beings too often have permitted leadership to institutionalize in a myriad of ways the enshrinement of a culture of hate instead of a culture of love or at a minimum a culture of respect.

To illustrate the point however, that when we talk of a culture of love we are not talking about being naïve or idealistic; all of us promoting greater awareness of hate crime would vigorously argue that being indulgent to the perpetrators of hate or other crimes is not upholding the dignity of each individual; a society which permits abusers of the most vulnerable to receive greater leniency than the perpetrators of certain property crimes does not uphold the dignity of the individual so a culture of love does not mean permissiveness- it does mean recognizing and acting to protect the inherent dignity of each of us.

Protecting the vulnerable by well funded and well trained law enforcement; well paid and trained prosecutors; fair but firm sentencing and no nonsense parole terms do enhance the dignity of the individual; listening to the First Nations of this country is an act recognizing the dignity of the individual and ought to have occurred hundreds of years ago- perhaps then the wholesale confiscation of lands, the intentional obliteration of spiritual traditions, the devastation of disease and the intergenerational physical and emotional damage inflicted by the residential schools would have been avoided- our forefathers and foremothers apparently did not have sufficient teachings to choose the love ethic wherein the dignity of fellow human beings is respected – indeed revered. We now bear the consequences and must have courage and resolve to change directions.

We are afraid to talk about love; men perhaps more than women are socialized to be squeamish about love; we fear love because we think it means being soft and exposed; we are taught that love is not something for the real hard world, but I say that our most transformative leaders have been those who have helped us understand that love of our fellow being is not to be feared - that to live in a culture of love instead of violence or fear or hate can be our human destiny and can be the propelling force for each one of us as individuals and ultimately for our larger societySo what might actualized love look like in a society; isn’t love in part the recognition that no individual can rest contented if our fellow citizen is in a markedly deprived, humiliated or otherwise marginalized or alienated state; and isn’t it a place of being that moves from the philosophical or intellectual so that one’s entire consciousness is infused with the dedication to making improvement in the lives of our family, community, nation and world and that it this recognition that ultimately makes live worth living? Isn’t it ultimately premised on the ethic?

And if that consciousness is attained we will not then recoil in shame by what we see has been done to our disenfranchised and marginalized and be motivated by righteous anger that indignities could be committed against the most vulnerable in our name in the country we call Canada by the most powerful.

I can think of no better to place than talk about the obverse of hate and prejudice than Vancouver- one of our most beautiful cities and the birthplace of many positive forces in our county- for if racism and homophobia and anti-Semitism and similar type descriptive words encapsulate fear, lies irrationality, envy and ignorance – what is on the other side? Acceptance of people who are different; understanding of people who are different and ultimately empathy; promotion of harmony amongst different peoples and a deep seated unshakeable conviction to uplift those who are most compromised through historical structural forces and ideologies.

This means more education, more contact with others, more funding for the institutions such as the police and courts who are on the front lines and more leadership to bring about greater sanctuaries of peace.

The Canadian Jewish community through vehicles such as Canadian Jewish Congress and B’nai Brith envision a Canada as comprehensive mutual support system, a Canada united by a passion for the attainment of a just open and democratic society, free of threatening words and violent deeds and committed wholeheartedly to justice for First Nations; eradication and discrimination against our brothers and sisters whether they be Muslim, Indo Canadian, Filipiono Chinese, gay or disabled

This is the visioning but we in our own community and as part of the larger society must continually re-evaluate why discrimination is still too pervasive and why hate erupts against the vulnerable while the love ethic is so often absent. For once actuated by the love ethic we will be motivated as much to speak out on behalf of our fellow British Columbians who are subjected to indignities as we might for ourselves if experiencing a similar affront.

Our law enforcement officers are on the front lines and I know I speak for all of us here from minority communities that we are grateful for your commitment in combatting hate and we will continue to advocate for more funding so that you may have the adequate resources and the most trained resources to make your work even more effective.

I want to thank the organizers of this Conference who through setting the stage for today’s discussion are contributing to the creation of increasingly more expansive sanctuaries of personal dignity and harmony so that our magnificent commonalities and differences may flourish. It is of course a task that will not be finished in our generation but to paraphrase one of our time honoured teachings; we are not obligated to finish all of the work of the world, but we are certainly obliged to do our part.

Thank you for the opportunity to address this committed group of my fellow citizenry.

Western Jewish Bulletin: B'nai Brith 668 no more

June 25, 2004

B'nai Brith 668 no more

The end came Sunday for 94-year-old organization.

PAT JOHNSON SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN

As the sun set out the window behind her on the last day of spring Sunday night, Rivka Arieli, the president of B'nai Brith Lion's Gate Lodge, presided over a small meeting that ended an era for British Columbia's Jewish community. B'nai Brith Lion's Gate Lodge voted itself out of existence.

B'nai Brith has had a presence in this province since 1910, when Samuels Lodge #668 was formed. A second lodge, Lion's Gate #1716, was formed in 1948 and the two lodges amalgamated in 1985 into Lion's Gate Lodge #668. But a year of desperate rebuilding and struggling to find relevance amid the changing world of the local Jewish community resulted in the conclusion by Arieli and her few remaining members that there was no interest in continuing the organization. Less than a dozen members were present when the lodge unanimously voted to dissolve.

Despite the unexpected drama – the decision to dissolve came just in the few days before the annual general meeting – neither the B'nai Brith name nor the charitable work that the group has pioneered in the province will disappear. Though the lodge ceases to exist and the membership-based structure ends, the core objectives of the group will be rolled over into the B'nai Brith Foundation of British Columbia. The foundation will undertake a narrower mandate, leaving behind the meetings and social events that once defined the lodge.

Originally founded as a social organization for Jews, the mandate of the group has changed. Nobody is interested in a bowling league or holiday dances anymore, said Arieli. The work of the lodge has evolved toward more social action, with a special emphasis on fighting hate. B'nai Brith Lion's Gate has provided financial and volunteer support to numerous court cases and public awareness efforts against neo-Nazi and other extremist anti-Semitic brush fires over the years. The foundation will continue to advance the objectives of the international B'nai Brith movement by providing awards for community service, organizing an annual anti-hate month, and continuing to support the Interfaith Brotherhood, a cross-cultural organization that has embodied B'nai Brith's commitment to multifaith dialogue.

Arieli noted that the choice of guest speaker for the final meeting of the lodge – Mark Weintraub, the new chair of Canadian Jewish Congress, Pacific Region – represents the foundation's commitment to working closely with Congress and other Jewish community organizations. (Weintraub's provocative presentation of the successes and failures of fighting anti-Semitism in Canada and the world will be featured in a profile of the new Congress leader in a future issue of the Bulletin.)

In her remarks to the membership, Arieli noted the realities that led to the fatal decision.

"B'nai Brith Lion's Gate Lodge has come to a time of completion and to a time of change," she said. "During the last year, our executive assistant, Tamara Segall, and I have discovered that despite our best efforts, few are interested in joining B'nai Brith Lion's Gate. We have only 30 paid members. Old members are not attracting their children or friends. We are unable to find anyone interested in working on the administration and building of B'nai Brith Lion's Gate Lodge."

Yet, even in the twilight of the organization, Arieli was able to point out the panoply of contributions the lodge has made to the B.C. community. The lodge has served as a sort of incubator for some of the most successful stand-alone organizations in the Jewish community here. Partly because the lodge has never had a legal charitable status, the organizations it has formed to fulfil its mandate have become independent offsprings of the parent body.

"B'nai Brith Lion's Gate Lodge has done a remarkable job over the many years since its founding," said Arieli. "The works of B'nai Brith Lion's Gate Lodge are far too numerous to acknowledge completely at this time, but the major projects which are now mature and independent include the B'nai Brith Building Society, with two seniors homes, and other housing in several apartments; the non-sectarian food bank; B'nai Brith Youth Organization with an international board; [the campus Jewish organization] Hillel; [and] the B'nai Brith Foundation of British Columbia."

Also formed originally under the auspices of B'nai Brith but operating independently are groups such as Shalom BC, which welcomes Jewish newcomers to the province, the free loan fund and Jewish Women International.

"Much of the work of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver was inspired and begun by the B'nai Brith Lion's Gate Lodge," Arieli added.

For several years, the financial operations of the lodge have been conducted under the auspices of the B'nai Brith Foundation of British Columbia, which is a registered charity. The foundation will now become the primary vehicle for B'nai Brith's work in the province.

"To go forward with the B'nai Brith name in British Columbia, we must do so in a different way," Arieli told the meeting. "To better address the changing needs of our community, we must no longer be a membership-focused organization, but an action-focused, nonprofit, charitable society, which continues the work of B'nai Brith."

The dissolution of the lodge coincides with a number of other structural changes. For example, B'nai Brith's B.C. chapter has always been an anomaly, being part of the Evergreen chapter of B'nai Brith – an American branch of B'nai Brith International – and strangely divorced from the rest of B'nai Brith Canada, which covers the other nine provinces. That anomaly will change somewhat, as current (and any future) members will be encouraged to either join the Canadian or the international B'nai Brith organizations, or both. The foundation will strengthen its association with the Canadian arm of the international B'nai Brith body.

An event later in the summer is expected to bring together members of the now-defunct lodge to mark its passing, and to educate about and celebrate the new mandate of the foundation.

Pat Johnson is a Vancouver journalist and commentator.

Speech: War Crimes and Redress: the Perspective of a Canadian Jew

Address

of

MARK WEINTRAUB

Authored by Manuel Prutschi Executive Director of Canadian Jewish Congress National Community Relations Committee and Mark Weintraub National Chair of Community Relations of Canadian Jewish Congress

to

International Citizens’ Forum on War Crimes and Redress: Seeking Reconciliation and Peace for the 21st Century

Conference Day Three, Panel Symposium IV

December 12, 1999

Tokyo, Japan

“War Crimes and Redress:
the Perspective of a Canadian Jew"

Fellow members of the panel; ladies and gentlemen:

Our century brings into focus, perhaps more sharply than at any time in the past the elastic quality of human nature; our capacity for great acts of compassion and our capacity for absolute evil. For while extreme acts of barbarism have characterized much of human history, never before has technology reached such a sophisticated level that we can now talk of extermination or liquidation of human beings like they were insects. Technology; mass ideologies and the revolutionary rate of change in which our world has plunged since the industrial revolution have been a fatal combination for our century.

The European Jewish community was the subject of the first hideously successful experiment by which 20th century systems of efficient bureaucracy and advanced technology were combined with the propoganda of dehumanization to destroy a civilization.

The Holocaust, or in Hebrew Shoah, was potentially devastating to the very survival of the Jewish people. So let me talk of some of the practical responses of our community to the Holocaust. Immediately after the War, when the full significance of the Holocaust was realized, elements within the world community and the Jewish community were in great shock. Some did not want to hear the survivors’ stories and many of the survivors felt that their stories would not be believed or were too terrible to tell. Individually they somehow carried on with their lives; they married - had children and tried to suppress their memories. Over time however, the survivors started telling their stories and this courage was a major factor in enabling our community as a whole to begin to respond.

Our communal leadership started advocating for the establishment of human rights legislation in different jursidictions. There is no question that one of the principle factors in the passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was the Holocaust. As a community, our efforts in working for the establishment of the State of Israel were redoubled so that persecuted Jews in other countries would always have a refuge. And in the 1960’s the cry of Never Again inspired the work of thousands of students and other activists to free Soviet Jews community and other dissidents. The memory of the Holocaust was also the inspiration for the world Jewish communities’ work in saving the tens of thousands of Black Jews in Ethiopia and bringing them to safety in Israel.

In aid of these efforts on the human rights and rescue fronts were the generously funded documentation centres, memorials, museums, Holocaust studies programs in Universities and the reconstruction of synagogues and other Jewish infrastructure in Europe. The Jewish community funded youth trips to the concentration camps and scholarships for the study of Judaism and summer experiences in Israel.Volunteers recorded the oral histories of survivors; indeed efforts are being made to attempt to identify every Holocaust victim for the purpose of some form of memorialization - for while our people were mass murdered we are intent on rescuing their individuality.

In summary, I think it is fair to say that in the last 50 years the response to the Holocaust has engaged Jewish communal political leadership, the artistic community, philospohers, theologians historians and educators, all in their different spheres of expertise.

So, as the Jewish community responded in these different ways how did the perpetratror European states respond?

West Germany initially responded more adequately than any other jursidiction. It replaced Nazi totalitarianism with a strong consitutional democracy. It brought and continues to bring its own Nazi war criminals to justice. It banned through legislation any manifestations of its Nazi past including making the display of the swastika illegal and criminalizing the denial of the Holocaust; not only for concern for Jewish sensibilities but out of the recognition that Nazism brought down the entire nation of Germany. The new Germany institutionalized the Holocaust with official days of remembrance and museums. It confronted its citizens with the ugly reality of what transpired through the promotion of visits by Jewish survivors back to their former homes. The new Germany established strong relations with Israel almost from their mutual beginnings and Germans of all ages, but particularly youth, regularly visit and do volunteer work in Israel.

Germany has also been at the forefront of an elaborate and expanding system of Holocaust redress for the Jewish State, the survivors and the heirs of the victims. The first wave of compensation had a clearly established recipient in the State of Israel, which absorbed so many of the survivors. A subsequent initiative involved government reparations to the survivors themselves. To discuss the evolution of the payment of compensation and the successes and failures is beyond the scope of these remarks. But let me at least highlight some of the issues.

The essential question was that posed by the Canadian journalist and author of Hitlers’ Silent Partners, Isabel Vincent, who succinctly asked: “ How do you bring about justice for the expropriation and murder of a civilization?” The answer of course is we cannot bring about justice but steps towards partial justice are possible and that in fact has occurred.

The process began immediately after the war when Dr. Chaim Weizmann, perhaps one of the most highly regarded Jewish leaders and later to become Israel’s first president, wrote to the Allies in September, 1945 calling for German redress. Six years later, Konrad Adenauer, Germany’s Chancellor addressed his Legislature as follows:

… unspeakable crimes have been committed in the name of the German people, calling for moral and material indemnity… The Federal Government [is] prepared, jointly with representatives of Jewry and the State of Israel… to bring about a solution of the material indemnity problem, thus easing the way to the spiritual settlement of infinite suffering.

Negotiations between Chancellor Adenauer and Nahum Goldmann, then President of the World Jewish Congress, produced a first agreement, which primarily indemnified the State of Israel. This was confirmed by the Luxembourg Treaty of September 10, 1952 between Israel and West Germany.

There were Jews in Israel and the Diaspora who, on principle, opposed accepting any damages payments from Germany. There are those who do see the logic in Israel having accepted these payments, since the State at the time was badly in need of funds to cover the costs of resettling hundreds of thousands of Holocaust survivors. There does continue to be members of the Jewish community who decry, apart from Israel, the receiving of any indemnification, as “blood money.” They would agree with the views expressed by the commentator Roger Rosenblatt who has written:

The Holocaust not only lies beyond compensation; it also lies beyond explanation, reconciliation, sentiment, forgiveness, redemption or any of the mechanisms by which people attempt to set wrong things right. In a way, that fact is as much a sign of its unique enormity as the monstrosity itself. All moral thought is grounded in the possibility of correction. Yet here is a wrong that will never be set right, and people are left groping for something to take the place of the irreplaceable.

The majority of the Jewish community, however, agrees with the view of Edgar Bronfman, the current President of the World Jewish Congress.

… each dollar recovered represents a little piece of dignity, not just for the survivors who will benefit but for all mankind, who will have demonstrated that it remains morally unacceptable for anyone to profit from the ashes of man’s greatest inhumanity to man. … Financial redress, therefore, has been a central element of the post-Holocaust world. Germany, the central perpetrator, began the process with the Federal Indemnification Law, continued it with the Hardship Fund, and followed it with the Article 2 Fund and the Central and Eastern European Fund. Each new fund brought a new set of Holocaust survivors into the indemnification system. Austria subsequently somewhat followed Germany’s lead.

Today, not only members of the former Axis are involved in restitution. Included are the governments of the occupied and/or collaborator countries such as France and the various central and Eastern European states, as well as those ostensibly neutral states such as Switzerland. It does not merely involve governments but also members of the financial and business infrastructure. Redress is for the suffering inflicted, the forced and slave labour, the gold stolen or indeed extracted from Holocaust victims, the confiscated property and the stolen art, as well as the bank accounts and insurance death benefits not honoured. More and more, the governments, industries and financial institutions across Europe are being called to account for collaborating with Nazi Germany or otherwise providing the funds and resources to wage war, perpetrate the Final Solution, and plunder two thousand years of Jewish life on the continent.

The Holocaust was directed against millions of individual Jews but, at the same time, it was an assault on the Jewish people as a whole and on Judaism itself. One controversy that remains within the Jewish community concerns the distribution of redress funds. Should the focus be on specific individuals for suffering and loss, or on the needs of the collectivity as a whole. It is likely that this contradiction is not resolvable. On the one hand, after all, it was individuals who were victimized, but on the other, the Jewish whole is greater than the sum of its Jewish parts.

The most recent stage is wide-ranging with responsibility shared by government and the country’s entire infrastructure- (all elements of which profited from the catstrophe inflicted upon the Jewish people). Redress is puny in comparison to the slave labour exploited from the victims; the robbery of their property and even exploitation of their body parts for profit after death.. but at least Germany proceeded on a course of partial justice and that must be fully and properly recognized. Some have estimated that in total over 60 billion dollars in some types of compensation have been paid by the German State or institutions but we must be careful of numbers here. I am not certain that this is a correct amount, but certainly we can say that substantial sums have been paid over 50 years though they represent a very tiny fraction of the value of that which was robbed.

Germany, after the war, also assumed with some degree of seriousness the prosecution of its Nazi war criminals. Many, nonetheless, have escaped punishment. The collaborator and/or occupied countries have been much less forthcoming on accountability for mass murder. Even the Allies have been far from vigorous in bringing to justice the criminals that fell under their jurisdiction or ended up in their midst. Between 1945 and 1948, paralleling and flowing from the two International Military Tribunals, for Europe and the Far East, there were trials of some of the major transgressors. But the momentum for such prosecutions quickly dissipated after 1948.

The experience of Canada, which we know best, provides a good example. My country’s refugee policy denied safe haven to Jews fleeing Nazi Europe throughout the 1930’s. Researchers have shown that after the war, it was easier for the Nazi victimizers to enter Canada than it was for those of their victims who managed to survive. Few would question that hundreds if not thousands of Nazi criminals gained refuge.

Canada, nonetheless, in 1948, unreservedly complied with a secret memorandum, in which the United Kingdom directed its Commonwealth partners to cease war crime trials. The Deschenes Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, established in February, 1985, not surprisingly thus reported that “Canada devoted not the slightest energy to the search and prosecution of war criminals.”

Today, the Canadian picture is somewhat brighter. In the last three to four years there has been a 180-degree turnaround. The government hired a former director of the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations as a consultant. It further demonstrated its new-found determination by committing an additional 12 million dollars specifically earmarked for the prosecution of Nazi criminals. And only two months ago the Minister of Justice initiated steps for new legislation which will facilitate the criminal prosecution of war criminals to supplement the process of revocation of citizenship and deportation. The current War Crimes Unit has a number of active files being pursued in the courts and more new cases are promised. The Government has not been able to win all of its cases, but the will to pursue justice seems to be firmly in place and the government has allocated ample resources to get the job done.
Over half a century has elapsed since the commission of the crimes in Asia. Japan does not have another 50 years to get the process underway. The biological clock is ticking for defendants, survivors and witnesses. It is a matter of the utmost urgency that justice be done now, otherwise justice delayed will undoubtedly mean justice denied.

For justice to be meted out fairly and swiftly there must be the confluence of three positive wills: the political, the bureaucratic and the judicial. One only can bring about this confluence if the Japanese people realize that to move successfully from the “Era of War” to the “Era of Reconciliation, Peace and Co-Existence,” it is absolutely essential that war criminals be brought to justice. This is not a matter of revenge but an issue of fundamental human rights. As the late Arnold Fradkin, a past member of Canada’s War Crimes Litigation Unit in the Department of Justice put it: “Justice does not mean revenge. It means redress according to principles of law, as imposed by courts of law after a fair and impartial trial according to law.”

Mankind, for centuries if not millennia, has set constraints so that war, inhuman by definition, is conducted within certain delimited parameters. This was the expectation in what came to be known as the “Law of Nations” and which was enshrined in pre World War II international agreements such as the Geneva Convention of 1864 and the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907. Combatants have obligations towards civilians and prisoners of war. Those who fail to uphold these obligations are termed by the community of nations to be “hostes humani generis,” i.e. “the enemies of mankind.” The precedent setting Nuremberg Tribunal of 1945, followed by a vast corpus of reports, resolutions, conventions and declarations by various trans-national organizations certainly mandated legal action against those who carried out war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Ideally the international community must function in such a way that crimes against humanity are stopped before they happen. However, when they do happen, the world must bring those responsible to account.

The Japanese Imperial Army during the Second World War (and in Asia that war can be said to have started in 1930’s with the aggression against China) committed monstrous crimes which went far beyond the most callous and hard-hearted definition of normal wartime activity. It is a moral outrage that these war crimes have gone unpunished.

The message must go out, for the sake of the memory of the victims and the survivors who continue to bear witness, that no one has the legal license to engage in the persecution, torture and slaughter of innocent civilians or defenseless prisoners. War criminals not answering for their crimes constitute a rejection of a country’s commitment to the principle of the rule of law. Past war criminals are vindicated and new war criminals encouraged. This gives comfort to those possessed by chauvinism and interested in a renewed militarism.

So what can we learn from the Jewish experience? There are both differences and similarities in the historical contexts. The Jewish communities’ response has not been a coherent response. We staggered to our feet and slowly bit by bit regained our dignity by drawing upon the courage of the survivors, the support of our friends in the non-Jewish community and through seeing the establishment of Israel as a State. We ensured that members of our community funded projects and we linked our near demise as a people to the failing of a world communities’ response to massive human rights violations. Our artists responded and have given us hope, despite the degradation. We have tried to emphasize not only the suffering and helplessness but the courage of Jew and non-Jew caught in horrific circumstances.

I think in dealing with this issue with the Japanese government your approach is a correct one. Continue to emphasize the Japanese contributions to world peace through her strong support of the United Nations while strategically countering the forces opposed to meting out justice in all its forms. Continue to reach out to your friends. Certainly I can tell you that the Jewish community stands as your good friend in solidarity with you….. For your remembrance is our remembrance; your struggle for justice is our struggle for justice and as we link ourselves together we collectively can show that the dogged, resolute and unflinching pursuit of justice is indeed the most powerful of all human forces.

Thank you very much.

Taken From: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/alpha/speech/Weintraub2.htm