Israel
Is the way the CMHR tells the story of one tragic incident during Israel’s war with Hamas in 2008-09 lacking in context?
By BERNIE BELLAN (posted March 21)
It began with a casual conversation with a friend, University of Manitoba Professor Irwin Lipnowski, at the Asper Campus a couple of weeks ago.
He asked me whether I had seen the exhibit at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights that referred to Israel and Hamas. I said that I had been to the museum several times but hadn’t seen anything about that.
I was told that one of the exhibits was lacking in context in that it tells the story of a Palestinian physician (Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, who lost three daughters and a niece during an Israeli operation in Gaza known as Operation Cast Lead in 2009). Irwin said he had been alerted to this particular exhibit by Haskel Greenfield, also a U of M professor (also acting head of the Judaic Studies deaprtment), who was angry over how the CMHR was presenting this particular story.
Here is what Haskel wrote to me, when I asked him what it was about the exhibit that he found so upsetting: “It was a disgusting one sided portrayal of a complex situation. It completely ignored the fact that Hamas used yards and roofs of residences and schools and hospitals to launch their missiles. The Palestinian family portrayed was a tragic example of collateral damage in a war started by their Hamas government. I spoke to the man who was explaining the exhibit to visitors and was appalled by his total lack of knowledge of the incident and the larger context.”
I decided to take a look at the exhibit myself and contacted the media relations department of the CMHR. I asked where I could find the exhibit in question. Louise Waldman (who, as a matter of fact, used to write for The Jewish Post & News), a media spokesperson for the CMHR, responded:
“In terms of Museum content, we have an exhibit in the Rights Today gallery that features the story of Palestinian doctor Izzeldin Abuelaish, who became a human rights defender and peace advocate after losing three daughters and a niece during an Israeli bombing. The exhibit tells Dr. Abuelaish’s personal story to examine broader issues faced by Palestinians in the region. (Also a heads up that Dr. Abuelaish is scheduled to speak at the Museum on the topic of reconciliation on April 20).
“Issues related to the Arab-Israeli conflict more generally are also examined in three additional exhibits throughout the Museum, including a reference to the Arab-Israeli War in the human rights timeline exhibit, a short film that uses the theme of media literacy to examine this conflict, as well as a youth-oriented exhibit that explores the initiatives of children and youth in Canada to bring together Palestinian, Israeli and Canadian youth to build understanding and foster reconciliation.”
I went down to the museum to take a look at this exhibit myself. I must say I had quite a bit of difficulty finding Dr. Abuelaish’s story. It turns out that it’s one of 17 different stories that can be viewed on the fifth floor Rights Today gallery, but it sure wasn’t easy figuring out how to find one particular story among 17. Even when I found it, I had to ask for help in viewing it, as there were no instructions given how to navigate the interactive display.
That being said, I did watch the story and, after watching it a number of times, decided to video it myself. I’ve posted the video I took of how the CMHR presents Dr. Abuelaish’s story on our website. I should have lingered over one crucial part of the story though, when a sign appears telling that three of Dr. Abuelaish’s daughters and a niece were killed by an Israeli projectile in the Abuelaish home on January 16, 2009. If you watch the video it may seem disjointed when it flashes from a sign saying “January 16, 2009” to a video of an Israeli newscaster, who was himself a friend of Dr. Abuelaish and who, on live television, received a phone call from Dr. Abuelaish screaming wildly over what he had just seen (the deaths of three of his daughters and a niece).
I won’t offer an opinion myself as to whether this exhibit is lacking in context. But, I thought I’d put it out there for viewers of our website and readers of our paper to consider. By the way, Haskel Greenfield had much more to say about other aspects of the museum that he found badly lacking. Perhaps we’ll get into those at another time.
In the meantime if you want to watch the video I took of the Dr. Abuelaish exhibit, you can see it on our website in the video section at the bottom of the home page or by going to: http://jewishpostandnews.ca/categories-media/72-israel-specific/197-izzeldin-abuelaish
Post script (March 22): I sent this story both to Haskel Greenfield and Irwin Lipnowski, asking them if either had any comments about what I had written.
Haskel responded:
“It is very clear to me that the exhibit is not about human rights at all. It is an opportunity for Israel bashing and subtle anti-Semitism. It ignores the human rights of Israelis of all ages, genders, religions, and races to live in peace in their own country. The exhibit only focuses on what Israelis have done to Palestinians (and in particular to one Palestinian family) without any context of why it happened.
“I am disappointed in you, as editor and journalist, by your standoffish view about how the museum has used Dr. Abuelaish’s tragic story as a means to bash Israel and to convey a message that the Jews are responsible for what happened to him and his family. To me, this is a clear violation of the mandate of the museum since it creates an environment of hostility toward Jews in Canada and elsewhere in the world. The recent targeting of Jewish Israeli tourists in Istanbul (and the almost total silence by Canadian media that it was a purposeful and targeted terrorism toward Jews) is a good example of what happens when only one side of a conflict is portrayed. Unfortunately, the on-the-ground situation is complex. I believe that most people in the region are caught up in a cycle of violence from which there is no escape in the short term. But it is unfair to Israel and Israelis to bash them in such one sided exhibits.
“Peace will come only when the leaders of Hamas in Gaza are ready to build a just society and use the resources at their disposal to better the lot of the people they govern. It will never come if they continue try to fire missiles into Israel and try to invade it through tunnels. Israel has no troops in Gaza and no Israelis have lived in Gaza since 2005. There is no occupation of Gaza or Israeli troops in Gaza. Israel invaded Gaza in 2014 only after being subjected to over 4000 missiles over three weeks being shot from Gaza. After the short war, it withdrew all of its troops. It continues to allow in food and goods and supplies Gaza with electricity for free in spite of the continued hostility of the Hamas government toward Israel. Egypt continues to keep its border with Gaza closed and allows almost nothing in. Hence, the museum’s use of such tragic circumstances to talk about human rights violation is a misrepresentation of a complex situation.
“My rights and that of my children were violated in the summer of 2014 when we were subjected to numerous missile bombings by the Hamas government while we were in Israel. My youngest has still not fully recovered from the awful experience of missiles exploding and sirens going off around him as he searched for bomb shelters. Where are such stories depicted in the museum – Not At All!”
Irwin Lipnowski added:
“I agree completely with Haskel’s outrage at the de-contextualization of the account of IDF harm to civilians, although I have not visited the CMHR to see it personally. lt is my understanding that under international law, using human shields is absolutely prohibited and this standard, outrageous and unconscionable practice of Hamas is not mentioned as part of any display, even though it is clearly an egregious violation of the human rights of civilian adults and children, as is Hamas’s unrelenting missile launches against Israeli civilians over the years preceding the Gaza war. I also believe that the ignorance, undertraining or misinformed level of awareness of the guides is absolutely inexcusable.
“Thank you again, Bernie, for your investigative reporting! Personally I would be very interested in hearing Gail Asper’s assessment of the CMHR. She was, after all, instrumental (pouring her body and soul and many dollars) into realizing her father’s dream, which was (originally, I believe) to build Washington’s Museum of the Holocaust of the North in Winnipeg. This is not the politically correct monument that we got. Of course, the need to seek government funding meant relinquishing control and unavoidably entailed a very significant erosion of Izzy’s vision.”
Post script (March 27)
Now, to be fair to the CMHR, if one were to watch Dr. Abuelaish’s presentation, which concludes with a slide showing the title of a book written by Dr. Abuelaish: “I Shall Not Hate”, one might conclude that Dr. Abuelaish is the very model of someone who is willing to forgive and move on.
But, after reading Haskel Greenfield’s withering criticism of the CMHR – and how the exhibit featuring Dr. Abuelaish is totally devoid of any context, I decided to do a little more research on Dr. Abuelaish – to see whether he is quite the noble and forgiving chap that he makes himself out to be.
I discovered two interesting things about Dr. Abuelaish: 1. He himself has come in for severe criticism from his own fellow Palestinians for being a traitor to the cause for even willing to consider “ending the hate”; and 2. Dr. Abuelaish’s characterization of Israel in a 2014 article written for the Globe & Mail is not quite as benign as one might expect from someone who wants only to work for peace and “end the hate”. The article was written in the midst of “Operation Protective Edge” in the summer of 2014, after Israel had borne the brunt of thousands of missiles raining down upon her from Gaza.
Here is what Dr. Abuelaish wrote back then: “How much more killing, suffering and pain can Israelis do and Palestinians endure. There have been hundreds of strikes recently by Israel, with more than 50 innocent people killed and 500 severely wounded. Gaza Strip is being bombarded. It is war against women and children, who constitute 70 per cent of the Gaza Strip population; it’s human genocide.” (emphasis mine)
“I feel anger and pain as history repeats itself. The blood of my three daughters killed in 2009 did not dry, and the wound did not heal.
“For that we need the courage to admit we suffer from a disease that is antithetical to respect, justice, and peace. Battles should be directed against the occupation, which is the threat and enemy to all of us as – Palestinians and Israelis.
“Israel’s leadership must be courageous and admit its failure to end the conflict by military means. The way is to end occupation.”
(You can read the entire article at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/i-feel-anger-and-pain-as-history-repeats-itself-in-gaza/article19532295/)
So, there we have it: Once more Israel is accused of the gross distortion of committing “genocide” and the way to the end the conflict is to end the “occupation”.
Now, I don’t have to be a Myron Love to see through the hypocrisy of Dr. Abuelaish. Even a weak-kneed liberal like me can seen how difficult it now is to accept Dr. Abuelaish as the noble crusader for peace that he would purport to be. Perhaps he was cowed into writing something as exaggerated as he did by accusations that he had betrayed his own people; we might want to ask him that when he appears here April 20 at an event organized by the CMHR. In the meantime, let’s not shy away from criticizing the CMHR simply because so many Jews played such key roles in having it built. If it’s going to serve as a paean to political correctness, let’s be brave enough to expose its failings for not having the courage to address the contradictions between two opposing narratives, such as exist when the Palestine – Israel conflict is discussed.
Israel
Hamas murdered their friend. Now, they help Israeli soldiers to keep his memory alive
By VIRGINIA ALLEN (The Daily Signal) David Newman sent a text to a friend the morning of Saturday, Oct. 7. Something terrible had happened. Word quickly spread among Newman’s group of friends, who had known each other since high school.
Newman, 25, had traveled the night before to the music festival in southern Israel, close to the border with the Gaza Strip. It was supposed to be a fun weekend with his girlfriend “celebrating life,” something Newman, who served with the Israel Defense Forces, was good at and loved to do, friend Gidon Hazony recalls.
When Hazony learned that Newman, his longtime friend, was in danger, he and another friend decided they were “going to go down and try and save him.” Trained as a medic and armed with a handgun and bulletproof vest, Hazony started driving south from Jerusalem.
Hazony and his friend ended up joining with other medical personnel and “treated probably around 50 soldiers and civilians in total that day,” Hazony recalls, but they kept trying to make it south to rescue Newman.
But the two “never made it down to the party, and that’s probably for the best,” Hazony says, “because that area was completely taken over by terrorists. And if we had gone down there, I think we would’ve been killed.”
Hazony later learned that Hamas terrorists had murdered Newman on Oct. 7, but not before Newman had saved nearly 300 lives, including the life of his girlfriend.
When the terrorists began their attack on the music festival, many attendees began running to their cars. But Newman and his girlfriend encountered a police officer who warned them to run the opposite direction because the terrorists were near the vehicles, says David Gani, another friend of Newman’s.
Newman “ran in the opposite direction with his girlfriend and whoever else he could kind of corral with him,” Gani explains during an interview on “The Daily Signal Podcast.”
“They saw two industrial garbage cans, big containers, and so David told everyone, ‘Hide, hide in those containers,’” Gani says. “And so what he did over the course of the next few hours is, he would take people and … he was this big guy, and he would just chuck them in that container. And then he would go in, wait, wait till the coast is clear, and then he’d go back out, find more people, put them in there.”
Newman’s actions that day, and the atrocities Hazony and so many others in Israel witnessed Oct. 7, led Hazony, Gani, and several friends to quit their jobs and set up a nonprofit called Soldiers Save Lives. The organization is working to collect tactical and humanitarian aid for the Israel Defense Forces, or IDF.
According to the group’s website, Soldiers Save Lives has supplied over 20 IDF units and civilian response teams “with protective and self-defense gear.”
Gani, board chairman, chief financial officer, and chief technology officer of Soldiers Save Lives, and Hazony, president of the organization, recently traveled to Washington, D.C., to raise support and awareness for their mission to provide IDF troops with needed supplies.
If you would like to find out more about Soldiers Save Lives or donate to them, go to https://www.soldierssavelives.org/
Reprinted with permission.
Israel
Our New Jewish Reality
By HENRY SREBRNIK Since Oct. 7, we Jews have been witnessing an ongoing political and psychological pogrom. True, there have been no deaths (so far), but we’ve seen the very real threat of mobs advocating violence and extensive property damage of Jewish-owned businesses, and all this with little forceful reaction from the authorities.
The very day after the carnage, Canadians awoke to the news that the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust had inspired sustained celebrations in its major cities. And they have continued ever since. I’d go so far as to say the Trudeau government has, objectively, been more interested in preventing harm to Gazans than caring about the atrocities against Israelis and their state.
For diaspora Jews, the attacks of Oct. 7 were not distant overseas events and in this country since then they have inspired anti-Semitism, pure and simple, which any Jew can recognize. Even though it happened in Israel, it brought back the centuries-old memories of defenseless Jews being slaughtered in a vicious pogrom by wild anti-Semites.
I think this has shocked, deeply, most Jews, even those completely “secular” and not all that interested in Judaism, Israel or “Zionism.” Jewish parents, especially, now fear for their children in schools and universities. The statements universities are making to Jewish students across the country could not be clearer: We will not protect you, they all but scream. You’re on your own.
But all this has happened before, as we know from Jewish history. Long before Alfred Dreyfus and Theodor Herzl, the 1881 pogroms in tsarist Russia led to an awakening of proto-Zionist activity there, with an emphasis on the land of Israel. There were soon new Jewish settlements in Palestine.
The average Jew in Canada now knows that his or her friend at a university, his co-worker in an office, and the people he or she socializes with, may in fact approve, or at least not disapprove, of what happened that day in Israel. Acquaintances or even close friends may care far more about Israel killing Palestinians in Gaza. Such people may even believe what we may call “Hamas pogrom denial,” already being spread. Many people have now gone so far in accepting the demonization of Israel and Jews that they see no penalty attached to public expressions of Jew-hatred. Indeed, many academics scream their hatred of Israel and Jews as loud as possible.
One example: On Nov. 10, Toronto officers responded to a call at an Indigo bookstore located in the downtown. It had been defaced with red paint splashed on its windows and the sidewalk, and posters plastered to its windows.
The eleven suspects later arrested claimed that Indigo founder Heather Reisman (who is Jewish) was “funding genocide” because of her financial support of the HESEG Foundation for Lone Soldiers, which provides scholarships to foreign nationals who study in Israel after serving in the Israeli armed forces. By this logic, then, most Jewish properties and organizations could be targeted, since the vast majority of Jews are solidly on Israel’s side.
Were these vandals right-wing thugs or people recently arrived from the Middle East? No, those charged were mostly white middle-class professionals. Among them are figures from academia, the legal community, and the public education sector. Four are academics connected to York University (one of them a former chair of the Sociology Department) and a fifth at the University of Toronto; two are elementary school teachers; another a paralegal at a law firm.
Were their students and colleagues dismayed by this behaviour? On the contrary. Some faculty members, staff and students at the university staged a rally in their support. These revelations have triggered discussions about the role and responsibilities of educators, given their influential positions in society.
You’ve heard the term “quiet quitting.” I think many Jews will withdraw from various clubs and organizations and we will begin to see, in a sense like in the 1930s, a reversal of assimilation, at least in the social sphere. (Of course none of this applies to Orthodox Jews, who already live this way.)
Women in various feminist organizations may form their own groups or join already existing Jewish women’s groups. There may be an increase in attendance in K-12 Jewish schools. In universities, “progressive” Jewish students will have to opt out of organizations whose members, including people they considered friends, have been marching to the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and similar eliminationist rhetoric, while waving Palestinian flags.
This will mostly affect Jews on the left, who may be supporters of organizations which have become carriers of anti-Semitism, though ostensibly dealing with “human rights,” “social justice,” and even “climate change.”
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg took part in a demonstration outside the Israeli Embassy in Stockholm on Oct. 22 in which she chanted “crush Zionism” along with hundreds of other anti-Israel protesters. Israel is now unthinkingly condemned as a genocidal apartheid settler-colonialist state, indeed, the single most malevolent country in the world and the root of all evil.
New York Times Columnist Bret Stephens expressed it well in his Nov. 7 article. “Knowing who our friends aren’t isn’t pleasant, particularly after so many Jews have sought to be personal friends and political allies to people and movements that, as we grieved, turned their backs on us. But it’s also clarifying.”
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown.
Israel
Former Winnipegger Vivian Silver, at first thought to have been taken hostage, has now been confirmed dead
Former Winnipegger and well-known Israeli peace activist Vivian Silver has now been confirmed as having been killed during the massacre of Israelis and foreign nationals perpetrated by Hamas terrorists on October 7. Vivian, a resident of Kibbutz Be’eri was originally thought to be among the more than 1200 individuals who were taken hostage by Hamas.
To read the full story on the CBC website, go to https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/israel-gaza-vivian-silver-1.7027333
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