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John Spencer: World’s “leading urban warfare expert” gives talk at Berney Theatre on September 11
By BERNIE BELLAN On Wednesday, September 11 an event was held at the Berney Theatre featuring John Spencer. The event was billed as “Hamas’ War: Truth and Consequences.”
Spencer, who retired from the US Army as a major, was described on the poster advertising the event as “the world’s leading urban warfare expert” and a “strategic adviser to world leaders.”
According to the website of the Modern Warfare Institute, which Spencer says he helped to create, “John W. Spencer currently serves as the chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute, codirector of the Urban Warfare Project, and host of the Urban Warfare Project Podcast. He is also a founding member of the International Working Group on Subterranean Warfare.
“He served over twenty-five years in the Army as an infantry soldier having held ranks from private to sergeant first class and second lieutenant to major. His assignments as an active duty Army officer included two combat deployments to Iraq as both an infantry platoon leader and company commander, Ranger instructor with the Army’s Ranger School, Joint Chiefs of Staff and Army Staff intern, fellow with the chief of staff of the Army’s Strategic Studies Group, and strategic planner and then deputy director of the Modern War Institute where he was instrumental in the design and formation of the institute.”
The email advertising the event that we received came from an organization known as “TAFSIK.” We have attempted to obtain more information about TAFSIK – and who’s behind it, but in response to two emails we sent to them asking them to describe who’s behind the organization, we simply got back a response that was a regurgitation of material already available on their website: “Tafsik organization emerged resolutely from the tragedy of October 7th, dedicated to combating Jew Hatred in Canada and beyond. By forging alliances with diverse communities—including Iranian, Indian, Christian, Yazidi, Venezuelan, and many other groups—Tafsik is uniting voices against Jew hatred on a global scale. The organization hosts significant events featuring prominent figures such as Douglas Murray, Gad Saad, Hillel Fuld, and Colonel John Spencer, to illuminate the challenges faced by Israel and the Jewish community worldwide. Additionally, Tafsik is leveraging cutting-edge AI technology to combat Jew Hate more effectively. As one of the fastest-growing grassroots organizations in Canada, Tafsik is committed to fostering understanding and solidarity in the fight against hatred.”
There were also names of three other organizations that were listed as sponsoring the Spencer event on the email received from TAFSIK: The Jewish Federation of Winnipeg; another organization called “Blue &”…something (the logo is unintelligible); and a third organization called Manitoba Israeli Coalition.
As well, during the event two other organizations were mentioned as having had some involvement: Winnipeg Friends of Israel and Bridges for Peace.
This event had an inordinate amount of security surrounding it. Registrants were told in advance that the actual venue would not be disclosed until shortly before the event. Here is what the email said: “Given recent threats and security events across Canada and elsewhere, we ask that you please keep this information confidential for security purposes…Filming and other recording will not be permitted.”
As it was, the venue turned out to be the Berney Theatre in the Asper Campus. When attendees arrived they might have seen one lonely protester, whose face was fully covered in a kaffiyah, holding a Palestinian flag. But there were also at least 20 Winnipeg Police Service members there – and at least five police cars. (There seemed to be even more police by the time attendees left the campus between 9:30-10:00 pm. The cost to hire all those police must have been exorbitant.)
Wow! We wondered what might be said that would be so sensitive as to prohibit recording – and how much money was spent in holding an event that was limited to only 200 individuals (the maximum capacity of the Berney Theatre), yet required a huge turnout of police.
To be honest, we didn’t hear anything from Spencer that one would think would have required a prohibition on recording the event – no discussion of military tactics or anything that he hasn’t already gone on the record as having written or said previously.
Spencer (who completed a 25-year period of service in the US Army infantry with the rank of “major,” but later was promoted to the rank of “colonel” in something called the “California State Guard”) focused largely on defending the IDF from accusations that its tactics merit criticism as, for instance, that they have been “disproportionate” to the level of threat posed by Hamas.
Interestingly, Spencer gave a full length interview to the Canadian Jewish News two days prior to the September 11 event in Winnipeg during which he went into a great more detail about Israeli military operations in Gaza than he did in the Berney Theatre on September 11. (You can read that entire interview at https://jewishpostandnews.ca/faqs/rokmicronews-fp-1/u-s-military-expert-john-spencer-to-speak-in-winnipeg-sept-11-argues-israel-isnt-committing-genocide-in-gaza/.)
As noted, the major point of Spencer’s talk, rather than being an analysis of military tactics employed by the Israel Defence Forces – which, I was rather hoping to hear, was a rebuttal of the accusation that has been levelled against Israel that what it is has been doing in Gaza amounts to “genocide.”
Here is some of what Spencer had to say during what was almost an hour-long talk:
“Just about everything that has been said about Israel and Gaza is a lie.”
There is a “global deficiency in understanding urban combat…There has been a long history of urban combat” but, until quite recently, urban combat has been about “fighting for cities, not in cities.”
Later, Spencer expounded upon this theme when he examined in some detail battles that took place in Manila (1945), and in Mosul (2016-17), in which cities were ravaged as a result of opposing forces trying to defend positions on the one hand, while other forces were trying to take those positions on the other – but in both cases, while there was a certain amount of underground fighting, the forces attempting to defend their positions were largely above ground and their ostensible purpose was to prevent the enemy from overtaking their positions. He contrasted those situations with what Hamas’s only goal throughout this war has been, which is “to survive the conflict.”
As for how to assess the current war in Gaza, Spencer suggested that “historians take about 20 years to write about combat,” so he was reluctant to weigh in on how successful Israel has been in achieving its goals.
He did say that he has been to Israel three times since October 7 and has been inside different Hamas tunnels on two different occasions. He did agree that the extent of Hamas’s preparations for this war – which were over “15 years” in the making, were quite impressive, but when it comes down to taking a position on whether Israel is actually winning the war, it was in his interview with the CJN that he was far more decisive in his opinion than he was during his talk in the Berney Theatre, when he didn’t take a clear position on that question. Here’s what he said during that September 10 interview:
“I wrote a Foreign Affairs article countering actually four major articles that have been published on ‘Israel isn’t winning. Israel is actually creating more terrorists than it’s killing’. All of these wrong frameworks.
“Israel absolutely is winning its war against Hamas in Gaza, because I taught strategy at West Point. Wars have a start, they have an end. They have political goals, which can change, although Israel hasn’t changed its three primary goals for the war against Hamas. Those are: number one, return the hostages. Number two, destroy Hamas, its political and military power in the Gaza Strip. And number three, secure the borders.
“There’s different wording for them, but those are the three goals. And Israel is absolutely [winning] all three of those. Especially with the hostages. They brought home over half the hostages to include over a hundred living hostages. But there is the myth that Israel could have brought them home a different way. It could have been negotiated in the beginning.”
In fact, during his talk Spencer paid scant attention to the situation regarding the hostages. It would have been interesting to hear from an urban warfare expert what he makes of the challenge presented by Hamas likely holding the remaining hostages in its network of tunnels. There have been several articles written – especially in the New York Times, detailing the enormous difficulties the IDF has had in going into Hamas tunnels. Like many other commentators though, Spencer noted that the number of tunnels Hamas had built came as a major surprise to the IDF.
A major part of Spencer’s talk, however, was given over to a rejection of various arguments that have been used against Israel, including that its response to the Hamas attack on October 7 has been “disproportionate,” and the suggestion that Israel has been engaged in “genocide.” Again – it would have been nice to be able to record Spencer’s talk so as to give you a more precise account of what he said, but during that September 10 interview with the CJN he made the exact same points in response to criticisms of Israel’s conduct of the war:
“Well, at the macro level, it seems for Israel, Gaza is where the truth dies. The accusation that Israel has been disproportionate, indiscriminate, excessive, or starving the population. While none of those are true, there’s actually a counterfactual huge body of evidence, actually real and physical. Like the “starvation”. I went to the Netzarim corridor, saw where the (U.S. humanitarian) pier used to be, and there were just mountains, a whole field of humanitarian aid that just hadn’t been picked up. But from the actual execution of war, like you said, for the IDF, there’s no comparison. So the IDF was being compared to other operations where just this tunnel challenge of being able to find and operate with an entire world underneath the urban areas.
“Hamas built this world underneath their civilians for the sole purpose of using everything on the surface to cause [criticism from] the international community. the destruction, the civilian casualties, everything, but all these lies about being disproportionate, proportionality–nobody’s faced this challenge in modern history. No military has.
“And then the other thing, which is what the prime minister and other Israeli officials or government use, which is backed up by data, is that in this execution of this war against Hamas, a defender who’s had 15 years to prepare for the attack of the IDF, Israel has done more and has implemented more civilian harm-mitigation measures than any military in the history of war, to include the U. S., Canada, the coalitions, to prevent civilian casualties and destruction. Like evacuating cities, like dropping [leaflets], the use of daily pauses, the use of certain munitions. There’s a long list that I go through. There’s actually over 10 civilian harm-mitigation measures that Israel has implemented, some that have never been created before in the history of war, like tracking civilian populations with their cell phones on or off and then restricting them. This is what I saw in Khan Younis, restricting the IDF operations because of that overriding aspect of preventing civilian harm, trying to get the civilians out of harm’s way, even though Egypt, which owns a lot of the destruction, the civilian casualties, and [took in] not a single refugee. So even that aspect of fighting a war against a military who’s trying to get their civilians killed without a complete area to move civilians to, into the Sinai, which would be really realistic. So the idea of how to find a way to create a safer zone within Gaza while still moving against Hamas.”
Spencer cited the claim that over 40,000 civilians have been killed during this war. He countered with the claim that, even if that figure is close to being correct – which he didn’t concede, over 13,000 of the deaths have been of Hamas fighters. (What Spencer didn’t do though, is offer an assessment of how strong Hamas remains. Recent reports that Hamas has been resurfacing in the north – which the IDF had previously claimed to have been rid of Hamas fighters, would tend to indicate just how difficult it will be to subdue Hamas militarily.)
Still, even if one were to accept the notion that there have been a large number of civilians killed during this war, Spencer suggested that one must take into account various criteria in evaluating to what extent a military force engaged in warfare with an enemy that is not only willing to use innocent civilians as human shields, it actually wants to see large number of casualties among its own population.
He offered these criteria for determining the level of responsibility one might attach to a military force when it is engaged in urban warfare where civilians are present:
• military necessity
• proportionality
• distinction (between civilians and combatants)
• humanity
• honor
Spencer noted that in the annals of warfare, even when tens of thousands of civilians have been killed as the result of urban warfare (or, as was the case in Manila in 1945 when the US Army fought to liberate that city from the Japanese and over 100,000 civilians died), the defending force did not deliberately want to see civilians die in order to turn world opinion against the enemy force – which is what he said, Hamas has been doing. Even ISIS, Spencer claimed, as brutal and savage as it was, was willing to surrender control of cities in situations where it was clear it was about to be defeated, rather than see entire civilian populations killed in order to enflame world opinion against the attacking forces. Hamas, he said, has as its clear goal, to survive – and if it can pressure Israel into accepting a ceasefire that will allow them to do that – even at the cost of seeing thousands of its fellow Palestinians killed as a result, then it will have achieved its aim, Spencer said.
And, as he said during the CJN interview, Hamas will want to pursue its goal of survival by having the international community exert pressure on Israel to accept a ceasefire that will allow Hamas to regroup only to attack Israel yet again – and again.
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Chesed Shel Emes panel delves into different aspects of death and dying
By MYRON LOVE They say there are two things you can count on in life – death and taxes. I don’t know about taxes – but no one escapes death.
When we are younger, few give much thought to dying. As we age though, we come ever closer to that final reality. The best we can hope for – in my view – is to live to a relatively old age in relatively good health and pass away quickly – preferably in your sleep.
So what would one consider a “good death?” That was one of the questions that was discussed by a panel of three experts on the subject who appeared together on Sunday, November 24, in a program at the Chesed Shel Emes titled: “The Last Stop – Reflections on Living and Dying”.
(The Chesed Shel Emes is our community’s non-profit Jewish funeral chapel; the only one of its kind in North America).
About 180 people were in attendance – both in person and online, as independent Rabbi Matthew Leibl, palliative care specialist Dr. Bruce Martin, and Dr. Harvey Max Chochinov, a psychiatrist who is one of the world’s authorities on the subject of the emotional aspects surrounding death and dying, shared their experiences and perspectives. Alison Gilmur, popular culture and lifestyles reporter for the Free Press. served as the moderator.
A “good death” – as opposed to a “bad death” – is important for patients and families alike, Chochinov noted.
“Is dying in your sleep a good death?” Rabbi Leibl asked. “That depends on both the individual and the family. It certainly doesn’t give the individual much time to think about it beforehand. I think the major concern for most people is that death be as painless as possible.”
“The problem is that you only die once,” Chochinov pointed out. “There is no rehearsal. Many fear the unknown. And you don’t know what the path will be, what it will be like for you. Or if you will still be you afterward.”
Gilmour asked the panelists what people fear most about dying? Chochinov cited the case of one woman who refused to take her medication because she feared it would make her confused – the way it had her mother prior to her death. Reassuring her that she was in capable hands allowed her to accept proper pain management and die peacefully.
Another anecdote from Chochinov concerned the case of a young woman who was facing death – with a young family and a young child at hand. “She was concerned that her little girl would have no memory of her,” Chochinov noted. “We completed something called Dignity Therapy, which allowed her to create a written legacy that would eventually be shared with her child.”
Rabbi Leibl referred to a member of the Shaarey Zedek who had been suffering for some time. She chose to die at home but, before her passing, she asked her children to leave the room. She and the rabbi talked.
“I asked if she was afraid,” he recalled. “She said that she wasn’t afraid, but that she worried that she would never see her family again.”
Dr. Martin noted that every death is personal. “There is no common thread,’ he said. “A last conversation can be profound or trivial.
“One concern for the dying is not being able to live to see their grandchildren grow up and the shared moments they will miss.”
Chochinov also added that some people are worried about the process of dying and what it may be like. “While dying is inevitable, suffering ought not to be”.
Gilmour asked what people can do to help comfort someone who is dying?
Chochinov’s answer was simple: “Be sure to show up”. “When you know someone is dying,” he noted, “for many the impulse is to stay away, to withdraw. You don’t know what to say,” he observed. “Don’t try to fix what can’t be fixed. But do show up and listen.”
Martin recalled a former mentor who suggested that the most important question that someone who is visiting someone who is terminally ill is: ‘What can you do to help?’ “
“People who are dying don’t need to be reminded about it,” Rabbi Leibl observed. “Although every case is different, a visitor should talk to the afflicted individual the same way you would talk to anyone else. You can talk about life, for example, or what you are reading, or a show you are watching together.”
Gilmour concluded her questioning by bringing up the issue of government-approved Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) – medically assisted suicide.
A number of liberal rabbis Are in favour of MAID, Rabbi Leibl noted. “Judaism however dictates that we must do everything we can to prevent death,” he pointed out.
“I have officiated at funerals for a few people who have chosen IAID,” he reported. “One such funeral was for a Holocaust survivor – in her 90s. I spoke with her the day before she died. She was at peace. I viewed what she was doing as courageous.”
Chochinov said it is also important to look at factors that can undermine a patient’s will to live, such as poorly controlled pain, limited access to palliative care and lack of supports, including respite.“MAID is driven by a desire for personal autonomy,” he observed. “It was originally designed as an option for patients who were suffering and facing a reasonably foreseeable death.” Eligibility criteria have been expanded, making patients not imminently dying, but suffering, able to request MAiD.He expressed grave concerns about extending MAiD for people who are mentally ill. “We simply can’t know which of these patients might improve with adequate time, support and care.”
In response to a later follow-up question from a member from the audience, Bruce Martin added that, in the case of people with dementia and MAID, the latter may prevent children and grandchildren from spending more time with the parent/ grandparent. After all, who then decides when the time is right?
The panelists were asked about talking about death and dying and how to cope. Martin noted that when he speaks to kids in schools, there is a lot of interest in the subject.
A question about planned giving elicited a comment from Chochinov about the importance of not only leaving a will, but letting family know what your wishes are. “It’s never too early to talk about these things”, he said, “but if you put it off long enough, there may come a time when it’s too late”.
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Jewish scholar and bibliophile provides overview of hidden treasures hidden in Chevra Mishnayes congregation library
By MYRON LOVE Most shuls have a library of religious texts – or genizah (storage space) for discards – often books that were either donated specifically to the congregation or private collections dropped off at the synagogue after the original owners passed away.
On Sunday, December 8, the egalitarian Chvera Mishnayes synagogue in Garden City hosted a Lunch and Learning program, the highlight of which was an overview of the books housed at the Chevra Mishnayes – including Chumashim, machzorim, various assorted Talmudic tractates and commentaries on the Torah and Talmud. The program featured a presentation by Justin Jaron Lewis, during which the Yiddishist, bibliophile and professor of religion, revealed subtle features of some of the books, unveiling clues revealing when and where they were published, some direct connections to Winnipeg’s Jewish community and other interesting features.
The Chevra Mishnayes dates back to 1906. It has been at its present location on Jefferson Avenue since 1966. The former Ohel Jacob congregation merged with the Chevra Mishnayes in 1971.
“It’s amazing what people brought with them from the old country,” Lewis commented.
He cited as an example a book from the Chevra Mishnayes collection which was identified as having been bought from a Jewish books store in Toronto, but which had been printed in Poland. He pointed out other books that were published in the 19th century in cities such as Lublin, Vilna and Warsaw – all cities with large Jewish populations.
“The Warsaw edition had Cyrillic writing (based on the Russian-language alphabet) in it,” he noted. ‘Warsaw, Lublin and Vilna were all part of the Russian empire at the time.”
He added that a fourth book was published in Lviv in Ukraine which was part of the Austrian Empire in the 19th Century. “Because the Russians used to tax books that were printed in Russia but were to be taken out of the country, some claimed that their books were published in Austria or another country to avoid the tax,” Lewis explained.
Of interest also, for Jewish geography enthusiasts, Lewis noted, were books with the owners’ names written in them. One book belonged to the family of the well known comedian David Steinberg.
In a second book, Grade 9 Talmud Torah student Israel Pudavick had written his name.
There were other books originally from the collections of a shoichet named B.M Yahweis and one Rev. Martin Weisman.
There are religious commentaries in the Chevra Mishnayes collection penned over the years by Winnipeg rabbis such as Rabbi Y. H. Horowitz, Rabbi Meyer Schwartzman, Rabbi Shmuel Polonsky and one Rabbi Zorach Diskin – who lived in Winnipeg in the early 1900s.
“Some of the books offer a glimpse into Jewish history,” Lewis pointed out. There is one, published in 1865 in Warsaw, which he pointed out, includes a paean to Jewish life in Russia.
Censorship was strict in Russia, he explained. You had to satisfy the censors.
Lewis pointed out that trying to figure out the date of printing for some of the books can be challenging. In some cases, he noted, the book may be a copy – and the copyright date may be the date of the publication of the original. In other cases the date is written in Hebrew letters – leaving researchers to have to translate the letters to their numerical equivalent. What was thought to be the oldest book in the collection, for example, and which was originally estimated to date back to 1819, on further study was determined to be published in 1918.
Lewis also delved into the artwork in some of the books. With the Jewish injunction against recreating human images or those of angels or heavenly bodies, one book in the collection does have a scene where angels are watching as Moses hold the ten commandments and light is streaming from his head.
Another has a scene with Moses and Aaron opposite each other with lions overhead and Roman numerals also in the picture – an example, Lewis suggested of cross cultural influences.
Other popular scenes include the hands of the Cohen doing the priestly blessing The print design and layout can also offer opportunity for artistic flair.
Lewis further note that some of the machzorim have prayers inserrted in Yiddish – for instance, asking for good health – or a good life – or a prayer for one who is ill.
Incidentally, for readers with older Yiddish books at home who are considering trying to find a new home for them, Lewis is one of a handful of Winnipeggers who are collecting Yiddish books for transfer to the Yiddish Book centre in Amherst, Massachusetts.
The book centre,, he reports, is dedicated to finding good homes for such books in university libraries, or the homes of other scholars or other private homes. “A lot of younger people,” he said, “are rediscovering Yiddish and writing songs and poems in Yiddish.”
As to the Chevra Mishnayes’ library, Lewis observed that, as is the case with many other modern shuls, there has not been much interest in more recent years in studying Talmud and Torah.
“Some of the older books are crumbling,” he reported. “Perhaps we should form a committee to cull some of the books that we don’t need and look into ways to better preserve the remainder.
Readers with Yiddish books they no longer want can contact Justin lewis at justin_lewis@umaniotoba.ca
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Representatives from The New Israel Fund of Canada come to Winnipeg to speak to Winnipeg audience
By BERNIE BELLAN In 1977, Menachem Begin became Prime Minister of Israel when his Likud Party was able to form a very narrow coalition with two other parties, thus ending 29 years of dominance by Israel’s Labor Party.
That event set in motion a series of changes to Israel’s political, social, and economic landscapes that are still reverberating to this day.
In reaction to the strongly conservative tilt of Begin’s government – which threatened to undo many of the democratic underpinnings of what Israel’s founders had attempted to achieve when Israel became a state in 1948, a group in California created what was known as the New Israel Fund. According to Wikipedia, “The New Israel Fund was established in 1979 in California and is credited with seed-funding ‘almost every significant cause-related progressive NGO in Israel’. Since its inception the fund has provided over US$250 million to more than 900 organizations. NIF states that while its position is that ‘Israel is and must be a Jewish and democratic state’ it says it was among the first organizations to see that civil, human and economic rights for Israeli Arabs is an issue crucial to the long-term survival of the state.’ “
In 1986, The New Israel Fund of Canada was established as a separate entity, with full charitable status in Canada. Since that time, “NIFC has contributed over $10 million to more than 100 organizations in Israel that fight for socio-economic equality, religious freedom, civil and human rights, shared society and anti-racism, Palestinian citizens, and democracy itself,” according to information taken from the NIFC website.
On Wednesday, December 11, two representatives of the New Israel Fund of Canada who were in Winnipeg spoke to a small group of individuals who braved a bitterly cold night to attend an information session held in the basement of Temple Shalom.
Those two individuals were: Michael Mitchell, a former Winnipegger and a longtime member of the board of NIFC; and Ben Murane, the executive director of NIFC. It was the first ever visit for Murane to Winnipeg and he said that one of the reasons he came here was to help make the work that NIFC has been doing in Israel more widely known to Winnipeggers.
Michael Mitchell introduced himself to the audience, saying that “the person who introduced me to the The New Israel Fund was (the late) Vivian Silver” (who, most readers are no doubt aware, was killed in the October 7 massacre).
Mitchell explained that the The New Israel Fund started “in the 1980s in a very small way, funding certain groups as the problems in Israeli society grew more severe.”
The New Israel Fund of Canada adheres very closely to the rules set out by the CRA for Canadian charities, he said. “We have agents in Israel supervising our projects.”
“NIF in Israel has an international board,” Mitchell noted, including Palestinians and representatives from NIF from other countries.
“NIF has money; they’re nimble, they’re quick,” Mitchell said, “to take nascent Israeli organizations and bring them along.”
NIF “has become much more sophisticated these past five years,” he suggested.
He cited as an example of how effective NIF has been in advancing the work of various Israeli peace groups the drastic decline in violence within Israel itself this past year between Jews and Palestinians, as opposed to what followed in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 massacre, when communities like Lod were riven by violent clashes between Israeli Jews and Arabs.
“If you’re in the middle of a war then you have to tamp down the violence between Jews and Palestinians,” Mitchell said. And a lot of the reasons for the decline in that kind of violence is attributable to the work done by organizations funded by NIF, he suggested.
Where NIF has achieved particular success, he continued, “is in organizing on the ground if you’re opposed to the messianic tendencies of the current Israeli government.”
“There’s a much bigger audience – both in Israel and abroad, that wants to see progressive goals achieved,” Mitchell argued.
As for where The New Israel Fund of Canada stands, Mitchell noted that “the Canadian Jewish community is going through what the American and British communities went through 15 years ago, which is to stop waiting for mainstream organizations to represent them.” A lot of new groups have been formed, he noted, such as “Women Wage Peace” and “Stand Together,” both of which helped to sponsor the December 11 event.
“Canadian Jews are not more conservative about Israel than American Jews,” Mitchell suggested, referring to the results of a survey of Canadian Jews for which NIFC was one of the sponsors. (For more on this turn to https://jewishpostandnews.ca/wjn/news-from-syria-shouldnt-distract-from-whats-been-going-on-in-gaza/.)
“There are at least 100,000 Canadian Jews who agree with us completely but are quiet because they don’t want to rock the boat.”
Ben Murane followed Mitchell, giving a lengthy presentation during which he fully outlined what the NIF is all about. He began by noting that “I am also making a pilgrimage to the place that made Vivian.”
Murane was just a youngster when Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995, he said. “A lot of the stuff I had heard about Israel – about how great it was, wasn’t quite true,” he noted.
Referring to the most recent Likud victory that returned Netyanyahu to the prime ministership in 2022, Murane said: “Let’s flash backward – a government got elected by a slim margin and announced a grand vision for rewriting Israel’s democracy. It was the first wave of what became a global populism.
“We (the NIF) started investing more in Israeli democracy projects.”
Two years ago, Murane reminded the audience, “hundreds of thousands of Israelis were on the streets” protesting what was then the Likud government’s attempt at judicial overhaul – which would have severely limited the power of Israel’s Supreme Court to intervene in cases where civil liberties were at stake.
“We (the NIF) were firmly there,” Murane said, helping Israeli civil liberties organizations to fight back at what the government was attempting to do.
Then, with the events set in motion by the October 7 massacre, Murane observed: “We knew what would happen. They (the Likud-led coalition) would use what happened as an excuse to advance the rest of their agenda.”
But, what happened after October 7 was the almost complete disappearance of many of the structures that held together Israeli civil society, Murane suggested.
Families were forced to evacuate from their homes near the Gaza Strip – with no support given by the government. Instead, groups that had sprung up in 2022 in response to the government’s attempted judicial overhaul stepped in to provide basic supports to those families, with food and housing. The NIF provided funding for many of those groups.
Something else soon became apparent after October 7, Murane said. “It was immediately obvious that the government didn’t care about the hostages…They weren’t their people.” (Many of the hostages came from kibbutzim that were strongly socialist in their orientation and not at all supportive of the right wing government coalition.)
In fact, Murane observed, within Israel’s current political atmosphere, the only opposition to the government is coming from “the organized support for the hostages.”
Something else Murane pointed out about the aftermath to October 7 is that “it wasn’t just Jews hurt on October 7.” There were members of other groups taken hostage, including Thai and Filipino workers, also Arab Bedouins.
The NIF has helped to provide support for evacuees ever since October 7, including to joint Jewish-Arab distribution centres that “have provided aid on a daily basis,” Murane noted.
“It is not Jew against Arab,” he said. “It is those who believe in life as opposed to those who believe in death…We will take care of each other. We will be the first to help civil society deliver aid.”
Murane suggested that there are several key components to what the NIF is attempting to do in Israel, including “pushback, partnership and peace.”
By “pushback,” he meant, pushing back at the narrative that the Netanyahu-led coalition has developed, which is that the hostages will not return until Hamas totally accedes to the demands put forward by the Israeli government.
“Freeing the hostages is a political matter,” he suggested. “The hostage families have been saying to Jews in the Diaspora: ‘If you want to support the hostages, then Bibi has to step down.’ “
As for “partnership,” Murane explained that “there are still many Jewish and Palestinian people who will stand together and find common cause.” He referred to groups such as “Omidm B’yachad” (standing together), whose members have been “protecting trucks bringing aid to Gaza” from Israelis who had been trying to stop those trucks from entering Gaza.
“We want to keep that flame of partnership alive,” Murane said.
He noted that on Yom Hazikaron (Remembrance Day in Israel) over “6,000 Jews and Arabs came together in one place to show compassion for one another.”
When it comes to “peace,” Murane pointed to the example of World Central Kitchen (an organization receiving funding from the NIF), which has been providing food to Palestinians in Gaza. Helping that group is “an act of morality showing people around the world Zionists giving support to their neighbours.”
Insofar as the road to peace is concerned, Murane suggested that “there are ways out of this mess.” He noted that the idea for the Abraham Accords, in which Israel signed peace agreements with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Sudan, in 2020, was actually first advanced by an Israeli peace group known as “MITVIM.”
Murane posited that a “reinvigorated Palestinian Authority” is one component that would lead to advancing the peace process, but “of course the Israeli government doesn’t want to hear about that.”
The NIF has been active in supporting many different Israeli peace groups, Murane noted, including “Breaking the Silence,” which is made up of IDF veterans who want to draw attention to what Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is truly like.
“The way out of this mess is not going to come from the government,” Murane suggested. “It’s going to come from civil society.”
Yet, time is short, he said. There will be another election in Israel within the next year or two. “We have two to three years to see who will win the civil war in Israel: the annexationist camp or the pro-democracy camp,” he said.
To that end, the NIF has greatly increased funding for many Israeli human right groups, Murane noted. (In 2023, the NIF provided $19 million in funding to over 234 different organizations in Israel, of which $1 million came from The New Israel Fund of Canada.)