Black Power and Pride: Sephardic Style (Part Two)

Black Power and Pride: Sephardic Style (Part Two)

In my first in a three-part series of blogs on Black Power and Pride, I wrote about Tommie Smith and John Carlos and their Black Power salutes at the 1968 Olympic Games. In part two, I sought to point out that Sephardic Jews are the "black Jews," although many of them don't necessarily look black. This "black Jew" label can be especially applied to Sephardic Jews in Israel: A political, socio-economic, and cultural proletariat vis-a-vis European Ashkenazi Jews since Israel's foundation in 1948.

In today's blog entry, I will highlight the various Sephardic Jewish communities throughout the world, major Sephardic figures of yesterday and today, and how Sephardic Jews hold a key for Middle East peace.

The largest Sephardic community in the world is in Israel, the country of my birth. I was born in Beersheba, a town in the Negev desert with a substantive Moroccan Sephardic population. It is estimated that there are about 800,000 Sephardic Jews in Israel, although the figure is probably much higher, if we include all non-Ashkenazi communities in Israel. The second biggest Sephardic Jewish community will surprise many people: France with 350,000. I have relatives on my mother's side that live in France and came their from Morocco. Unlike its Ashkenazi counterparts that sought to demonstrate that they were Frenchmen and women of the "Mosaic persuasion" for centuries, the Sephardic Jewish community in France was extremely assertive about its Judaism beginning in the 1980s. When a Sephardic Jew, Ilan Halimi, was murdered in a brutal slaying in 2006 they made it clear to political and police authorities that the crime should be classified as a race killing.

The Americas have the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh largest Sephardic communities in the world: the United States (80,000), Canada (60,000), Argentina (60,000), Brazil (60,000), Mexico (40,000), Venezuela (35,000), and Uruguay (30,000). Other sizable Sephardic communities in the world include: Italy (30,000), Turkey (25,000), United Kingdom (18,000), Spain (12,000), Greece (8,000), Bulgaria (5,000), Colombia (5,000), Morocco (3,000), Cuba (3,000), and Serbia (3,000). There are also small Sephardic communities in the Netherlands, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Portugal, Gibraltar, Tunisia, Peru, and Puerto Rico, numbering 600 to 3,000 individuals.

Historically, Sephardic Jews have made many contributions to all fields of human existence from literature to politics and medicine to astronomy. If you take a look at the photo above, we have Maimonides (12th century Spanish Jewish philosopher, physician, and rabbi), Isaac Abrabanel (15th century Portuguese Jewish statesman and financier), Baruch Spinoza (17th century Dutch philosopher of Portuguese Jewish descent), David Nieto (Italian-born philosopher, astronomer, physician, and leader of the Portuguese and Spanish community in London in the early 18th century), Daniel Mendoza (English boxing champion from 1792-5), and David Ricardo (world famous political economist who lived from 1772-1823).

The second row in the picture has more prestigious figures: Moses Montefiore, Benjamin Disraeli, Sabato Morais, Emma Lazarus, Benjamin Cardozo, and David de Sola Pool. In order these figures are: A world renowned financier, a 19th century British prime minister, a Leghorn-born Italian Jew and founder of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City, the famous American poet, a US Supreme Court judge from 1932-1938, and a renowned London-born US rabbi.

And finally the third row of Sephardic who's who includes: a famous Jewish philanthropist, a French politician and prime minister, a singer, the founding father of philosophical deconstruction, Israel's Chief Sephardi rabbi since 2003, and an American film and television actor.

Now my claim at the outset was that Sephardic Jews are a key to peace in the Middle East. Peace between Israelis and Palestininans, Jews and Arabs, Muslims and Jews (and Christians) must come one day. We will wake up and see our common humanity. We will wake up and stop preaching ideologies of hatred, division, and war. And as Sephardic Jews lived and soaked Arab and Muslim cultures, they can assist in the process of peace in Israel between Israelis and Palestinians. Even within Israel proper itself between Jews and Arabs. Sephardic Jews are the bridge of many world cultures: Jewish, Arabic, Berber, and various European cultures. It is this cultural melange that is the future of humanity. A culture melange that is open to different cultures and yet proud and strong of its own cultural richness and identity.

Peace will come! Shalom, salam, paix, and paz will ring in the Middle East. And Ashkenazim and Sephardim both understand that it is necessary for the future of the Jewish people and for the spiritual improvement of humanity. I stretch my hand of peace to my Arab brothers and sisters from Palestine to Morocco to take the path of peace. The path of two peoples, two sovereign peoples, with two states. And I ask Europeans and Americans to help us in this fundamental "peace of the brave." We are tired of the dead on both sides. One dead Jew or Palestinian is too much. One dead Jew or Palestinian is a loss for all of humanity.

Tamir Bar-On

Black Power and Pride: Sephardic Style

Black Power and Pride: Sephardic Style

In my last post, I spoke about Tommie Smith and John Carlos and their powerful Black Power salutes at the 1968 Olympic Games. Without the audacity of Smith and Carlos, there would probably be no "audacity of hope." There would be no Barack Obama. There would be no black US president in 2009. The Black Power and Pride of Smith and Carlos paved the way for President Obama. Obama, of course, did not cause the same fears in white America as Smith and Carlos, but those were different days in which black upward mobility in politics, academia, and the media were not yet acceptable in the mainstream.

Today I will write about another type of Black Power and Pride, namely, Sephardic Jews. You might be scratching your heads. Jews and Black Power and Pride? Well, I am a Sephardic Jew, a Jew that traces his family origins to the expulsion of Jews from Spain with the infamous Alhambra decree in 1492. My family found refuge in Africa: Morocco. Sephardic Jews took with them their Judeo-Spanish dialect, Ladino, to Morocco, Sarajevo, Istanbul, Salonika, and other locations in and around the Mediterranean basin. Many lived among Muslim Arab rulers for centuries in Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and Libya. While they were culturally Jews in a minority situation like their Ashkenazi European Jewish counterparts in Germany, Poland, Belarus, and Russia, they were deeply influenced by the cultural milieu of the Arabs and Berbers. Sephardic Jews often spoke Arabic (as well as Spanish or French), engaged in Arab-like hospitality, picked up Arab customs like saint worship and various superstitions such as the evil eye, and maintained a joie de vivre that is common in warm climates.

Like the Ashkenazi Jews that faced constant harassment from Christian authorities and second-class status in Russia, Poland, or Belarus, Sephardic Jews were at the mercy of Muslim rulers. In the Spanish Golden Age, when Spain was under Muslim control before the 1492 expulsion decree by Queen Isabella I and Ferdinand II (which also applied to Muslims), they were special political advisors, doctors, brilliant poets, scientists, and philosophical giants of their times. They were a tolerated minority, but when rulers changed they were sometimes subject to pogroms like their European counterparts.

When Israel was created in 1948, it was a project that was devised largely by European-based Ashkenazi Jews in the 1890s. This did not mean that the Sephardic Jewe were not Zionists before Zionism's birth in the 19th century. Through the poetry and philosophy of Halevy and Ibn-Gabirol, as well as their prayers, Sephardic Jews longed to go back to Jerusalem and shake off the yoke of Arabo-Islamic oppression. So my parents, like other Sephardic Jews from Morocco to Turkey, settled in Israel with great pride after the state's hopeful birth in 1948.

Yet, because Zionism as a political movement was largely pushed by Ashkenazi Jews (with Sephardic Jews naturally sympathetic), Sephardic Jews became the "black Jews" of Israel. Pierre Vallieres, the Quebecois nationalist of the 1960s, called francophones Quebecois the "white niggers of North America." Like francophone Quebecois until the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, Sephardic Jews were for years kept out of the political and cultural establishment controlled by an Ashkenazi European elite that thought they were superior because they came from supposedly civilized Europe. This racism, paternalism, and condescension was what my parents lived through in Israel. It made us change our name from the Moroccan Jewish Bitton to the more Ashkenazi Bar-On. If Arabs were suspect, Sephardic Jews were also suspect because they came from the Arab world. Moroccan Jews gained a sterotypical reputation in Israel for delinquency, theft, and low socio-economic status in Israel's early years. They rioted in 1959 in Haifa because they truly were the "Jewish blacks of Israel" with low educational opportunities, high rates of unemployment, and delinquency. Like blacks in the United States, Moroccan Jews in particular were stigmatized as a lost cause that resisted European cultural greatness.

I suspect that part of the reason we left for Canada was the stigma faced by Moroccan Jews in particular and Sephardic Jews in general in Israel. My parents remained fervent Zionists. My dad saw the best and the brightest killed in three wars he participated in for Israel's existence. Like the blacks of the United States, Sephardic Jews understood that Israel could do better. That whether you were Ashkenazi, Sephardic or none of these (Iranian Jews, Indian Jews, Georgian Jews, or those that remained in Palestine for centuries before Israel's creation, etc), your true worth is your character, intelligence, knowledge, spirit, determination, and willpower. That merit matters and can win the day above ethnic cliques or nepotism. The struggle was hard. Gains have been made, but like for black Americans, some of the old stigma and racism remains vis-a-vis Sephardic Jews.

Contrary to the history of anti-Moroccan and anti-Sephardic sentiments among Israel's Ashkenazi establishment, Sephardic Jews have a heritage of rich traditions and personnel that rivals its Ashkenazi counterparts. So in homage to a different Black Power and Pride, here is my list of famous Sephardic Jews that have influenced history in different domains of life:

Moses Maimonides, Yehudah Halevy, Baruch Spinoza, David Ricardo, Benjamin Disraeli, Emma Lazarus, Pierre Mendes-France, Jacques Derrida, Yossi Benayoun, Shlomo Ben-Ami, Albert Cohen, Helen Cixous, Salvador Luria, Amedeo Modigliani, Yitzhak Navon, Georges Moustaki, Francis Salvador, Norman Podhoretz, Haim Saban, Siegfrid Sassoon, and Emilio Segre.

In the next post, I will comment on these prominent Sephardic figures (see photo above) and others. These figures include Nobel prize winners, writers, philosophers, rabbis, business magnates, singers, politicians, economists, painters, and footballers. In addition, I will tell you where Sephardic Jews live today and why they are a fundamental ingredient in the elusive search for peace in the Middle East.

Tamir Bar-On

Black Power and Pride

Black Power and Pride

It is hockey and basketball playoff time and it made me wonder how so few of our professional athletes have any political balls! It was the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City. And two black American sprinters, Tommie Smith (centre) and John Carlos (right) had just won Olympic medals in the 200-metre sprint. Tommie Smith set a world record with a blazing time of 19.83 seconds, while Australia's Peter Norman (left) finished second and John Carlos third.

Yet, what they did shocked Mexico, the United States, and the world. Under the influence of the black sociologist Harry Edwards and the Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR), Smith and Carlos picked up their medals in black socks only, to symbolize black poverty. Smith wore a black scarf as a symbol of the new black pride movement. Carlos decided to unzip his jacket to show solidarity with all US blue collar workers. He also wore a necklace of beads in honour of "those individuals that were lynched, or killed and that no-one said a prayer for, that were hung and tarred. It was for those thrown off the side of the boats in the middle passage." Both Smith and Carlos raised their hands defiantly in Black Power and Pride, while Norman sympathized with the two black athletes by wearing an OPHR badge. They bowed their heads, as they raised their clenched fists.

There is a funny moment to the story. Note that the athletes are raising two different hands, with Smith raising the right and Carlos the left. It turns out both athletes were to wear black gloves, but Carlos forgot his in his room. Smith gave him one of his gloves. Norman suggested Carlos wear the glove on his left hand. Traditionally, the Black Power salute was with the right hand. As the US athletes left the podium, they were booed. Smith later said the following about their powerful gestures: "If I win, I am American, not a black American. But if I did something bad, then they would say I am a Negro. We are black and we are proud of being black. Black America will understand what we did tonight."

The two athletes were expelled from the Olympic Games. The mainstream US media treated Smith and Carlos like pariahs. Smith and Carlos ended up being professional football players. Smith took the post of Assistant Professor of Physical Education at Oberlin College in 1995. Carlos became a high school track coach. Norman's story was more tragic. He was derided by the Australian media and Olympic authorities for supporting Smith and Carlos. He was not picked for the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, despite finishing third in his time trials. He kept running, but got gangrene in 1985 after a terrible Achilles tendon injury. His life was never the same, as the leg was nearly amputated. He drank heavily. In 2006, he died of a heart attack. In a wonderful spirit of solidarity, Smith and Carlos were the pallbearers at his funeral.

At the 2008 Olympic Games, British athletes refused to sign a gag letter that would have prevented them from making political statements. Contrary to the stereotypes, athletes are not always mental automatons. Smith and Williams spoke out for the deep pain and anguish of their people, for pride in their blackness, and to make the US the country that it could be in fighting racial inequality and socio-economic marginalization. The Brazilian soccer star of the 1980s, Socrates, began a campaign for democratization in Brazilian soccer that later spread to the country's political realm and undermined military rule. Ajax Amsterdam, the Dutch football club from a multicultural city, defiantly wears the star of David as part of an anti-racist campaign against racist soccer hooligans.

Soccer governing bodies like FIFA or the International Olympic Committee don't like the political involvement of athletes because they threaten business-as-usual. They threaten the money-making goliaths and sponsorship deals of these organizations. It should be all about the circus! Forget about the bread, the butter, the issues that matter in our lives. But athletes are organically part of a larger political milieu. They will speak. They will not be silenced. I just lament that there are not more Smiths and Carlos in athletics today, aside from rare cases like the Canadian basketball star Steve Nash. This speaks to the poverty of our political involvement. This speaks to the poverty of our political imagination. I am not a black man, although for some I might look like one. But I will always salute the courage, heroism, pride, and spirit of defiance of Smith, Carlos, and Norman. I salute their spirit of dissent. If only we had less steriods and more models like them today!

Part Two will be continued in the next post!

Tamir Bar-On

The Toronto Quarterly and Exile

The Toronto Quarterly and Exile

The latest issue of the Toronto Quarterly (volume 3, Spring 2009) is out! It is a Toronto-based poetry magazine edited by Darryl Salach. You can download the entire issue, which includes my poem "Exile" and materials by renowned Toronto poets Desi Di Nardo and Ewan Whyte:

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/the-toronto-quarterly-issue-three/6774479

Also, check out The Toronto Quarterly's blog:

http://thetorontoquarterly.blogspot.com/


Although I have been writing poetry since 2005, I just decided to publish my stuff this year. In particular, I thank a brilliant poet-friend from Serbia living in Toronto for many years, Nebojsa Vasovic, for encouraging me by meticulously going through my poems. He, too, is an exile and so will understand the sentiment of the poem. A toast of Havana Club rum to him and to life! "Exile," which appears in the new issue of The Toronto Quarterly, is my first published poem. Here it is below:

EXILE

They say that exile ended in 1948,
the birth of the state,
the springtime of its hopes.
Now we are in the diaspora
wandering in the desert for forty years,
wondering when it will end?
But should I return,
would I not again be an exile in my own land?
Would I not long for the dream palaces of Granada,
or the azure-domed synagogue at Kensington Market?
Would I not lament what the state had become,
the new exiles in our midst caught by barbed wire?
Exile is deep pain like being pulled from the roots of an ancient tree.
Exile is the exodus of freedom.

by Tamir Bar-On

Of Facebook, Holocaust Denial, and Dissent

Of Facebook, Holocaust Denial, and Dissent

I am a dissident, forever a dissident, marching to my own drummer. No Canadian newspapers can quench my appetite for real debate and dissent in the spirit of an open, liberal pluralism. No doubt, I find great pieces in The National Post, Globe and Mail, and sometimes even the Toronto Star. Yet, more open political debate occurs in the blogsphere today than in Canada's national newspapers. And Canada's newspapers are not alone, from Le Monde to the New York Times, I can almost predict the editorial positions and certainly what particular columnists will say. This is not debate for me, but mere ritualism, like reciting a profession of faith when you rise each morning with the sun. I love ritual, don't get me wrong. But the ritual repetition of the same poliical platitudes by left and right is tiring, dogmatic, and masks substantive political debates.

So I guess I was secretly excited when Facebook recently said they would remove a few Holocaust denial groups from its site. Then we discovered that there were more Holocaust denial groups on Facebook. And that Facebook has a policy that prohibits hate against identifiable groups, yet is now defending the right of the Holocaust deniers to air their noxious positions. I am a Facebook user and I was secretly excited because it is with the toughest of "free speech" issues like Holocaust denial that we come to know our collective values as a society. We come to know the degree to which free expression is an authentic value, or a rhetorical ploy used by those with power to be the guardians of morality and the shifting winds of political correctness.

Some Jewish groups and Holocaust survivors and their relatives have pushed Facebook to chase out the Holocaust denial sites. The Holocaust denial groups use the mantra of free speech, while they are merely interested in using Holocaust denial as a platform to finish the job the Nazis began when they came to power in 1933. Free speech advocates can be divided into two classes: Radical libertarians where all is fair game (including Holocaust denial) and more nuanced free speech supporters. The latter included a former professor when I was studying at York University, Aurel Braun. Braun correctly pointed out that there is a distinction between free speech and political speech that veers into action and can cause "imminent harm and danger." I am not talking about hurting morals, sensibilities, worldviews, or your comfortable conception of the world. I am talking about Rwanda's Hutu-led government in 1994 getting on public radio to call for the "cutting down" (extermination) of Tutsis. I am talking about the Nazi Party in inter-war years Germany calling for the annihilation of world Jewry. This is the terrain of Holocaust denial and this is what makes it so tricky.

So I stand for free expression, even noxious free expression, and the collision of radically different worldviews, which is the essence of politics. Yet, I am the author of a book on neo-fascism in Western Europe, Where Have All The Fascists Gone? (Ashgate, 2007), which argues that generally fascists in Europe are no longer of the Holocaust denial type. They are no longer open fascist or Nazi sympathizers. They have changed their clothes, as all good wolves do. And this has made them more effective in an "anti-fascist" and even "post-fascist" age. In short, I am sympathetic to the people that argue in favour of legal sanctions for those that call for the extermination of particular groups. If I threaten someone with murder on the street, I can certainly go to jail. If I threaten the annihilation of Jews, blacks, Arabs, blue people, or the green-eyed, have I not entered the terrain where acceptable speech ends and the incitement to genocidal murder begins?

Facebook understands that Holocaust denial is an entire industry with millions of worldwide followers from Iran and Egypt to Russia and the United States. Anti-Jewish conspiracies have also grown in the post-9-11 climate. And supposedly smart people eat them up like a delicious corned beef sandwich, but one that gives indigestion to the eater and the society in question. And Facebook knows that if they act more vociferously against the Holocaust deniers, they will say: "We told you so. Jews control the world. They control the media. They control what we can say and what we cannot say."

So what to do about mad people that want to restart Auschwitz? What to do about the Holocaust hoaxers on Facebook? I have 12 suggestions:

1) Combat blatant falsehoods with social truths. This is the surest path to victory. This minimizes the use of creeping authoritarian legislation and protects free expression. As Deborah Lipstadt, the author of Denying the Holocaust, notes: "I am not happy when censorship wins, and I don't believe in winning battles via censorship… The way of fighting Holocaust deniers is with history and with truth."

2) Educate people about the "crime of crimes" (genocide), the Holocaust, and genocides in the 20th century. An excellent starting point is Samantha's Power's "A Problem From Hell" because it also highlights our worldwide indifference (as well as US governmental indifference) vis-a-vis six genocides of the 20th century: the Armenian, Holocaust, Cambodian, Iraqi Kurd, Bosnian, and Rwandan.

3) Tolerate some denial in civil society as it is out there in abundance on the Net and will not be stopped. Yet, legally punish those that veer into action by inciting for the wholesale destruction "in whole or in part" of identifiable ethnic groups in the here and now. This is certainly more important with those in positions of state power, although the Nazis began their ascent as an insignificant national socialist party in 1920. In this respect, Ahmadinejad's Holocaust hoax theories are far more troubling than a Texas lone wolf Christan, racist patriot that spews Zionist Occupation Government (ZOG) garbage on Facebook.

4) Jail individuals and leaders that actually engage in violence against particular ethnic, cultural, or religious groups. And jail them without amnesty. Remember Hitler wrote his venomous Mein Kampf in jail after a failed coup. His amnesty and political rehabilitation should have been foiled by German political and legal authorities.

5) Know that Holocaust denial is a species of an ancient passion, anti-Semitism (or the "socialism of fools"), which cannot be fully defeated because of human hatred, envy, jealousy, and negative mimetic behaviour. It expresses the real powerlessness of people in a globalized world where capitalist institutions, states, and ordinary people have less power to determine their sovereign political affairs. Jews are the convenient scapegoat for the loss of power of all, whether in authoritarian or liberal democratic contexts. If the Jews were not around, as the French royalist anti-Semite Charles Maurras once said, they would need to be invented. The Jewish scapegoat is an easy answer for all of our grave ills from the current banking crisis to the loss of national identity, and from 9-11 to world poverty. I suppose Jews are also to blame for radical Islamism, Nazism, and Stalinist communism. Yes, the anti-Semitic conspiracy cranks really go that far!

6) Provide more positive models for humanity than the Holocaust deniers. Provide examples of positive cooperation and unity between Jews and Christians, Jews and Muslims, and Arabs and Israelis. Or show how love, spirituality, and cultural understanding rather than Holocaust hate can help us heal the world.

7) Mainstream cultural and political organizations, Jewish or non-Jewish, do not necessarily need to be so defensive and whiff out anti-Semitic abuses everywhere at all times in all places. When a madman howls at the wind, do we need to inflame him with our incendiary commentary? When we call for the banning of the Holocaust deniers, we give them the oxygen of publicity they so crave. Sometimes silence is more powerful than outright condemnation. This is something to be considered on a case-by-case basis. The decisions are indeed difficult and complex ones.

8) If we err, we ought to err on the side of speech, dissent, the right of even cranks of all political camps to have their say.

9) When banning begins of one political camp, it will never end there. Before you know it, the state will be determining your thoughts, acceptable worldviews, and movements. My family did not come to liberal democratic Canada to be policed by a nanny state.

10) Know that Holocaust denial is both a free speech issue and simultaneously a test case for the limits of political speech. Yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre is illegal because it will cause "imminent harm and danger" to people in the theatre. When political authorities start to call for the physical elimination of certain cultural or religious groups from our universe, their right to speech has crossed into the toxic river of genocidal murder.

11) Know that Holocaust denial is sometimes a terrible provocation against those that are tired of perceived media control of political debate by the same newspapers, columnists, and editors.

12) Know that in the end humanity, the spirit of dissent, and the memory of the victims of the Holocaust can be preserved with our vigilance. But also know that as the Holocaust survivors will all soon be gone. The deniers of the world will count on time, the loss of political memory, ignorance, and hatred to continue the legacy of denial. The truth and the memory of the Holocaust dead should hang permamently in all our hearts as a testament to humanity's inhumanity. The lesson is applicable for Jews and non-Jews alike.

Tamir Bar-On

Something's rotten in the state of Canada

Something's rotten in the state of Canada

Canada is a country that is world-renowned for Anglo-French biculturalism, legally enshrined multiculturalism, increasing Native autonomy gains, and the championing of peace through the multilateralism of the United Nations. In 1957, future Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson was awarded the prestigious Nobel Prize for his role in the creation of UN peacekeeping missions. Canada’s international reputation has always positively differentiated it from both continental European nations and its superpower neighbour the United States. Given this record, one might expect for Canadians to be honest brokers in respect of the Israeli-Arab and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts.

Yet, Canada increasingly tolerates intolerance, the silencing of political foes, and annihilationist ideologies on its university campuses. Unfortunately, government and civil society alike have participated in the denigration of Canada’s once healthy liberal democracy and the lack of even-handedness. Canada has the most pro-Israel government ever under Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, yet the undercurrent of Canadian society is increasingly a left-wing progressivism that views the struggle against Israel as the most potent human rights struggle of our age.

Let me offer some examples to illustrate this dichotomy between official Canadian government policy on Israel, one the one hand, and the anti-Israel chorus in civil society, on the other hand. Canada has declared Hamas an illegal terrorist organization, refused to participate at the recent UN conference on racism because it considers it an anti-Zionist, anti-Semitic “hate-festival,” and unambiguously spoken out against violence against Jewish students on Canadian campuses. The Canadian government recently banned British MP George Galloway from entering the country on the pretext of material support for Hamas. They gave a marginal figure untold numbers of new supporters in Canada and around the world.

The picture in Canadian civil society is radically different. Despite his support for child “martyrs” (suicide bombers), claim that the Holocaust was a “fairytale exploited by Israel,” and his admission of “rage towards the Jews,” on April 5 2009 Sheikh Ekrima Sabri, the former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, addressed Canadian Arabs near Toronto. The head of the Canadian Arab Federation since 2006, Khaled Mouammar, has radicalized a once tolerant organization by openly opening his heart to genocidal Islamists such as Hamas and Hezbollah.

Between 2006 and 2009, resolutions calling for boycotts of Israeli academics at Ontario universities found a welcome ear with student organizations at Toronto’s Ryerson University and the president of the powerful Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) in Canada’s largest province. Ryan manipulatively compared an Israeli bomb that hit the Islamic University in Gaza to Nazi burnings. In a McCarthyite moment, Ryan outlandishly argued that unless Israeli academics condemned Israel for the 2008-9 war against Hamas in Gaza they should be banned from Canadian campuses.

In 2006 and 2008 respectively, conservative pundits Marc Steyn and Ezra Levant were threatened with censorship by Muslim organizations as a result of complaints to human rights commissions. In 2006, Steyn penned “The Future Belongs to Islam,” in Canada’s leading political magazine Maclean’s. He argued that Muslims in North America and Europe represent a potential Islamist political constituency due to demographic assertiveness and clashing values.

Levant, the editor of conservative publication the Western Standard, reprinted the infamous Danish cartoons depicting Muhammad on his website in 2008. Syed Soharwardy of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada launched a complaint against Levant for spreading hatred. Levant was farcically dragged to the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission to respond to the complaint. Levant taped the proceedings. The video catapulted to You-Tube cult status as Canadians were made aware of how the government gurus of anti-racism chillingly participated in the silencing of political speech. The complaint was eventually dropped.

In 2003, student rioters at Montreal’s Concordia University violently intimidated the administrators to the point that they shamefully cancelled the speaking engagement of current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Even Ehud Barak, the current Israeli Labour leader, could not set foot on the Montreal campus due to the hooligan tactics of the anti-Zionist protestors.

I am a product of the Canadian university system. I completed my BA and MA at Toronto’s leftist hotbed York University. Crude anti-Marxist, anti-Zionist, anti-imperialism prevailed in the late 1980s, but open displays of anti-Semitism and calls for the liquidation of Israel were practically taboo. When I completed my Ph.D. at Montreal’s McGill University in 2000, I was involved in amicable Jewish-Arab dialogue groups attempting to solve conflicts in the Middle East.

Today I am a professor of political science at Wilfrid Laurier University, an anglophone university in Waterloo (Ontario) graciously named after Canada’s first French-Canadian prime minister. I have witnessed our campuses degenerate into institutions of greater intolerance. New lines of political toxicity have been crossed. Authentic political discussions are stifled. Righteous, moral sloganeering wins the day. Racism and anti-Semitism are more openly expressed today. Intimidation and harassment have multiplied against Jewish students. Hate against Israel is expressed like the latest Che Guevara fashion accessory.

At times, the hate is open. Most often it arrives in coded language such as “Zionist imperialism” or “international Jewish lobby.” The campuses are not alone. On April 7 2009 left-wing Toronto Star columnist Linda McQuaig wrote lines that shockingly smacked of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The 19th century anti-Semitic forgery insisted a tiny Jewish cabal insidiously destroys national governments and rules the world. Reacting to the infantile banning of Galloway by the Canadian Conservative government, McQuaig writes “it seems likely Israel had a hand in the decision to ban Galloway from Canada.” McQuaig forgets that Israel itself did not prevent the British MP from entering its country. Galloway’s ban was allegedly “influenced by a foreign government,” insists McQuaig. Presumably Israel, not superpower United States. As a G-8 country, why would Canada need Israel to make a decision about a British MP? McQuaig calls a 2008 security pact between Canada and Israel a “secretive management committee,” which might have a detrimental impact on Canada’s Arabs and Muslims. McQuaig provides no proofs for her allegations. If Canada is doing the bidding of a “foreign government,” would it not make more sense to back Arab governments with their massive oil reserves?

McQuaig is not considered a crank in Canada. Along with another fierce critic of Israel, Naomi Klein, McQuaig is one of the stars of Canada’s anti-globalization left. She is the author of It’s the Crude Dude: War, Big Oil and the Fight for the Planet (2004), which simplistically argued that the US invasion of Iraq was principally about securing a steady stream of petroleum.

Klein, the author of international anti-corporate best-sellers such as No Logo (2000) and The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007), recently signed an anti-Israel petition, “Jewish Canadians Concerned About Suppression of Criticism of Israel” in leading Toronto left-wing weekly Now (March 19-25, 2009). She was joined by 160 Canadian Jews, who tragically insist that “false charges of anti-Semitism” are utilized to block dissent against Israel. The anti-Zionist signatories claim that Israel does not act in self-defense and “causes immeasurable suffering and injustice to the Palestinians.” Despite the manifesto’s claim that it combats all forms of racism and anti-Semitism, there is not a word about the genocidal anti-Semitism of Hamas, Iran’s role in killing 85 Jews at a Jewish centre in Buenos Aires in 1994, growing anti-Semitism on Canadian campuses or European cities, or the disproportionate demonisation of Israel among the community of nations. Not a word about real genocide in the Sudan today. Yet, there is a tasteless insinuation that “Never Again!” from the post-Holocaust era “means never again for all peoples.” The ringing conclusion: Palestinians suffer a new genocide akin to the Holocaust, which must be unambiguously blamed on Israel.

When did Canadian civil society become so virulently anti-Zionist? For me, the tip of the iceberg was the birth of “Israeli Apartheid Week” (IAW) through the efforts of Toronto-based academics in 2005. The fact that IAW is increasingly tolerated by universities across Canada reflects profound and frightening changes in Canada’s political climate. According to IAW organizers, by 2009 IAW comprised 42 participating cities, with a staggering 13 in Canada. I was immensely troubled by IAW at my own university and campuses throughout Canada. IAW presents one-sided anti-Zionist, anti-Israel events where moderate voices for a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict are silenced. At IAW in Canada, there was not a single pro-Zionist speaker. Is this what passes for debate on Canadian campuses today?

Writing in the National Post on March 10 2009, Judy Rebick and Alan Sears insisted IAW is a free speech issue in respect of Palestinian rights. All states, including Israel, should be legitimately criticized in the international arena. In reality, the aim of IAW is not merely criticism, but to compare Israel to formerly apartheid South Africa. The dubious label ends debate. It leads to the conclusion that, like one of the most heinous regimes of the 20th century, Israel ought to be eliminated. Irwin Cotler aptly points out that the aim of IAW is to deny the collective Jew (Israel) the right to statehood among the community of nations. Yet, the deeper question I ask is why have Canadian universities been at the forefront of dubbing Israel an “apartheid state”?

The clues to the answer are provided by “All’s well in the kingdom of Canada” (March 8, 2009), penned by Toronto Star columnist Haroon Siddiqui. Siddiqui offers a sanitized and inaccurate picture of IAW. He insists that IAW is “anti-racist” and disingenuously compares its supporters to the multicultural peaceniks of the 1960s anti-Vietnam war movement. Unfortunately, the legitimization and proliferation of IAW on Canadian campuses means that something’s rotten in the state of Canada. University administrators, professors, and students have failed to sufficiently speak out against IAW because the cause is branded as “progressive” and “anti-racist.”

IAW is a step backwards akin in its annihilationist goal to the infamous Zionism equals racism resolution passed by the UN in 1975 and revoked in 1991. IAW calls for equal individual rights under one national state for Israel’s Jews and Arabs (over one million legal citizens of allegedly “apartheid Israel”), as well as Palestinians in the territories of Gaza (Hamas-controlled), the partially occupied West Bank (Palestinian Authority and Israel), and foreign refugee camps. For Canadians, this sounds appealing. But do Jews who were expelled from Arab lands not also have the right of compensation or return to Libya or Egypt? Moreover, IAW seeks to extinguish the right of Jews to exist as a national community. Would a more appropriate solution not be to recognize the right to self-determination of Palestinians and Jews living in peace with their respective viable states?

Speaking to Jewish students from Wilfrid Laurier University to University of Toronto, I know they no longer feel safe on campuses supporting Israel, even if they also support the creation of a Palestinian state. IAW has made them more afraid. Through IAW Canadians are fed the false mythology that destroying “apartheid Israel” is the most “progressive” human rights struggle of our age. In jumping on the IAW bandwagon and speaking the language of “Israeli apartheid” and “genocidal Israel,” Canadian campuses participate in perpetuating what English philosopher Jeremy Bentham might have called “nonsense upon stilts.” They also cheapen the memory of the victims of South African apartheid and genocide victims from Armenians and Jews to Tutsis and Darfuris.

Canadians are being deluded by IAW as a straightforward anti-racist, human rights struggle with evil Israel on one side and eternally good Palestinians on the other side. Canadians are proud of their human rights tradition, but Canada’s political culture is increasingly de-politicized and deep historical knowledge of unique conflicts weakened by a sloganeering moral righteousness. This is perhaps why too many Canadians uncritically support IAW.

Would Canadians rally to the IAW cause if they understood that in destroying “apartheid Israel” they would destroy the most vibrant civil society and democratic state in the Middle East? Or, that Israel with all its warts can be a model to end centuries of authoritarianism in the Arab and Muslim worlds?

Canadians and others around the world should reconceptualise what it means to be “progressive” and “anti-racist.” IAW created strange bedfellows: left-wing “progressives,” radical Islamists, and rabid anti-Semites of the far right and left. Prominent anti-Zionist Jews support IAW’s one-state solution. They are in dubious company sandwiched between Hamas and Libyan autocrat Muammar Qaddafi.

Sadly, Canadian “progressives” fail to see the raging storm that has begun with Israel’s absolute demonisation will not end with it. Canadians should be under no illusion that the aim of IAW supporters, sometimes unwittingly, is annihilationist vis-à-vis Jewish and democratic Israel. Should they succeed one day, the impact will be felt beyond Jews. Liberal democratic ideals and their supporters will also be threatened with elimination.

An Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), who died in a government-controlled Fascist prison after years of incarceration, clearly understood that liberal democracies engender mass consensus based on common ways of seeing in civil society. Consensus is moulded by common sense, as well as shared attitudes and worldviews. The repressive apparatus of the state, Gramsci argued, is less important in liberal societies than the creation of mass consensus, which legitimizes capitalism and the parliamentary system. Governments come and go, but the underbelly of long-term power rests in cultural power shaped by civil society in the media, universities, voluntary associations, and think-tanks.

If we pay attention to Gramsci, we can predict that Canada’s most pro-Israel government in history does not hold the key to durable power. Civil society holds the key. In respect of Israel, Canadian civil society is increasingly alienated from the mantra of Canada’s current Conservative government. The danger of the rising anti-Zionist tide is that it will become “self-evident” to ordinary Canadians that Israel is an “illegitimate Zionist entity” fit for the dustbin of history. And then will not Canadian governments have to follow suit? It might not be long before Canada’s civil society’s hatred for Israel rivals that of France, Greece, or Venezuela. It would still not rival the Jew and Israel hatreds of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian Authority, and other Arab bastions of freedom. Already Hamas and Hezbollah banners are openly displayed at anti-Israel marches in multicultural havens such as Toronto and Montreal. Israel’s foes in Canada wait to regularly and legitimately scream “Death to the Jews!” at “anti-racist,” anti-Zionist marches. Their “progressive” anti-Zionist friends on the faux left do not dare open their mouths. Perhaps they hope to be naively spared from the coming storm.

Tamir Bar-On

McCarthyism Cuts Both Ways

McCarthyism Cuts Both Ways


Joseph McCarthy (right) is one of the most infamous American senators of all-time. He served as a Republican U.S. Senator of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957. McCarthy was the representative of U.S. anti-communist hysteria during the Cold War. He insisted that the U.S. federal government was filled with communist subversives and spies. The term McCarthyism today extends beyond anti-communist fear-mongering to include under its ambit extreme ideological dogmatism, unsubstantiated accusations against people or their characters, and public questioning of the patriotism of individuals. McCarthyism is also associated with demagoguery, shrill intolerance, and the silencing of political debates in the defense of ultra-nationalist values.

McCarthy is dead, but indeed McCarthyism lives. And it is not merely practiced by the right, but also by the left and other political outfits across the political landscape. A Toronto-based artist, Reena Katz (left), is at the centre of a political controversy with McCarthyite overtones. Katz had a project, "Each hand as they are called," slated to open on May 14 at Toronto's Jewish-run Koffler Centre of the Arts. The project was politically benign, telling the history of Toronto's Jewish community in historic Kensington Market and the multicultural evolution of one of Toronto's most vibrant neighbourhoods. When the organizers discovered that Katz supported Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW), they decided to pull their name and support from the exhibit but let Katz keep her $20,000 project fee.

Katz's plight has received great media attention in Toronto and beyond. JVoices.com published a piece from MuzzleWatch, "More McCarthyism in Toronto." The "more" was probably an allusion to the way British MP George Galloway was banned from entering Canada for a speaking engagement in Toronto on March 30 because of his material support for Hamas, an outlawed terrorist organization in Canada. The "more" was also an allusion to IAW, which took place in 13 Canadian cities and 42 locations around the world from March 1-8. Local Toronto Jewish organizations such as B'nai Brith called for the banning of IAW because they termed it a "hate-festival" directed against the collective Jew (the state of Israel). They insisted that IAW masks anti-Semitism under the rhetorical fog of anti-Zionism, while increasing hate attacks against real flesh-and-blood Jews. The IAW poster was unfortunately banned at Carleton University in Ottawa.

I am a professor of political science at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, about a one and a half hour drive from where I live in Toronto. The characterization of the Katz incident by MuzzleWatch as "McCarthyism" is indeed an accurate one. Yet, what Katz and political outfits across the ideological spectrum fail to understand is that McCarthyism cuts both ways. If Katz is a supporter of IAW, why did she not openly extend the right of Zionists to speak at the events? In 13 IAW participating cities in Canada, there was sadly not one pro-Zionist speaker. Is this what passes for debate on our campuses? Is this not McCarthyism in action practiced by the left? And where was the progressive left in Canada in 2003 when violent pro-Palestinian protests at Montreal's Concordia University led administrators to shamefully cancel the speaking engagement of current Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu? Even Labour leader Ehud Barak, who favours a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, could not set foot on Concordia.

So McCarthyism is alive and well in Canada, on the left, right, and beyond. In 2006 and 2008, Muslim organizations like the Canadian Islamic Congress sought to silence Canadian magazines Maclean's and The Western Standard for alleged anti-Muslim xenophobia. The latter media outfit, led by Ezra Levant, went before the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission to answer a complaint of anti-Muslim bias. Levant's testimony before the human rights commission was a You-Tube sensation. See it here:

http://www.youtube.com/EzraILevant

Levant's testimony showed how the guardians of anti-racism, tolerance, and multiculturalism in Canada are also the McCarthyite haters of free expression. In 2006, Levant reprinted the infamous Muhammad cartoons published by a Danish newspaper, which set off a wave of anti-Danish, anti-Christian, and anti-Western Muslim protests and violence around the world. It echoed the Salman Rushdie affair, another McCarthyite event with global implications. Who can forget Khomeini's pathetic and shrill fatwa on the British author?

Let me make it clear. What the Koffler did is not acceptable in terms of defense of artistic values and free expression. Yet, we are increasingly policing ourselves through media outlets like Facebook, the site that has played a key role in the Katz controversy. Don't like that view, won't hire that academic. Those pictures are too explicit, perhaps you're not trustworthy. Don't like your politics, won't show you the money. We have entered a dark, Kafkaesque world where the guardians of thought are policing everywhere at all times. And post-Cold War, post-9-11, the deceased senator from Wisconsin would have been proud that his McCarthyite methods are being carefully expanded and refined. Reena Katz was caught in the McCarthyite web.

But the reality is that we are all caught in the McCarthyite web. We check for peoples' political affiliations all the time in all fields of human existence, sometimes subtly and other times more conspicuously. I pride myself on being a dissident against the establishment right and the left. So I empathize with Katz. But I must tell Katz that her lack of political realism strikes me as naive and disingenuous. Did she never hear the word realpolitik? And did she think it was free from the hip arts scene, academia, journalism, or governments? Let's assume Katz ran the Koffler. A stretch, I know! Would Katz allow a Holocaust-denier artist to be funded? Or, how about a rabid right-wing ultra-nationalist of a Greater Israel variety? How about a Christian fundamentalist that hates gays and lesbians?

My point is that McCarthyism is wrong from the perspective of a pluralistic liberalism, but McCarthyism cuts both ways. You cannot support McCarthyite political projects like IAW and then expect that you will not be the victim of McCarthyism. If we are against McCarthyism, then we ourselves must not practice it, or support organizations and movements that practice it. IAW is more interested in winning the war of public opinion by peddling falsehoods about Israel than solving the tragedy of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Katz's statements, in light of the Koffler's decision, highlight her lack of realistic political instincts. She plays the ritualistic role of the artistic victim with no role in the unfolding drama: "It repulses me that I have to justify my practice here, as I sit falsely accused. I am as Jewish as they come, and not the Jew the Koffler claims me to be." Perhaps Katz does not know the type of Jew she sits accused of by the Koffler? Katz is a gay artist working to bridge cultural divides. Noble ideals, no doubt. Yet, Katz fails to see how she follows rather than leads. She is led by a self-declared anti-racist, multicultural, progressive left that does not practice what they preach. The IAW crowd is the same one that supported Durban and unwittingly Ahmadinejad's recent anti-Israel, anti-Zionist UN diatribe.

To be on the progressive left in Canada means that you must ritualistically recite the anti-Zionist mantra. To be on the left in Canada, in the arts, academia, or government bodies, is good for academic and artistic careers. And those same people are McCarthyite experts in chasing out perceived racist, anti-feminist, anti-multicultural voices from their organizations. Or, chasing out those that don't like the abstract, dogmatic labels that characterize you by your politics rather than the merits of your ideas.

Yet, Katz and IAW supporters cannot see how the causes they support, particularly among anti-Zionist Jews, are imbued with a dark McCarthyite spirit. 161 anti-Zionist Jews in Toronto recently signed a petition in March, saying they were tired of silencing of criticism of Israel through the distorted lenses of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. Tasteless but legitimate political debate. Yet, not a word about growing anti-Semitic murders in Paris, police vigilantism against Jews in Caracas, the beatings of Jewish students on Canadian campuses, Hamas or Hezbollah rockets and suicide bombings, or Iran's role in killing 85 Jews at a Jewish centre in Buenos Aires in 1994? Why the omissions by Jews concerned with racism? Because they are intolerant of a diversity of political perspectives. They want to show their leftist brothers and sisters that they are good Marxists by even taking on their own cruel, apartheid co-religionists in Israel. They are a left that is about winning, black and white dualism, and the silencing of alternative voices. They also cannot get their facts straight about IAW, as Katz shows below:

Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) and its organizers do not act to delegitimize Israel, but rather, “to educate people about the nature of Israel as an apartheid system and to build Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns as part of a growing global BDS movement.” I have not stated that I advocate for the “extinction of Israel as a Jewish State” as the Koffler’s statement claims. What I do state publicly is that I am an anti-Zionist Jew. This is an ideological stance, not one that determines any specific outcome for the contemporary state of Israel. I consider the Koffler’s press release a blatant misrepresentation of my position as well as that of IAW.

Let me wrap my head around the aforementioned verbal gymnastics. IAW does not delegitimize Israel? I will not rehearse my arguments about IAW, but will refer you to a piece I wrote about IAW in Canada's national newspaper, The National Post, on February 26, 2009:

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/02/26/tamir-bar-on-the-manipulative-mythology-of-israeli-apartheid.aspx

The aim of IAW is to compare Israel to one of the most heinous regimes on the planet, former apartheid South Africa. The aim is to show that Zionist Israel ought to be an extinct political entity, like apartheid South Africa.

But let's not be too defensive. Apartheid Israel is better than Nazi Germany. And frequently the IAW crowd will bring out the Israel = Nazism posters. The reality is that Israeli dailies like Ha'aretz and university campuses have debated Israeli apartheid for years. Yet, apartheid claims should cuts both ways. Why does Katz or IAW supporters not speak of apartheid in Arab and Muslim lands where Jews have been cleansed and even officially expelled from countries like Libya? Where are the Jews of Gaza, Morocco, Libya, and Saudi Arabia? In contrast, one million Israeli Arabs are citizens, MP's, professors, mayors, judges, and footballers in allegedly "apartheid Israel". Moreover, IAW proponents want us to believe that Israel alone is responsible for Palestinian suffering. It is responsible, but so are Palestinian political actors, Arab states, and major powers. But nuanced positions are not necessarily a forte of the IAW crowd.

Second, Katz says she does not advocate the extinction of a Jewish state, but this is precisely what IAW supports. No two-state solution. And don't be fooled, as New Historian Benny Morris astutely points out recently in One State, Two States (2009), there is no official Palestinian support for "one, secular, democratic Palestine" with equal rights for all cultural and religious groups. It is a slogan that has been conveniently utilized by the Palestinian movement, understanding that there can be no equal rights for non-Muslims. The "one, secular, democratic Palestine" is neither supported by the genocidal Islamists Hamas, nor the Fatah secularists.

Third, Katz admits she is an anti-Zionist Jew. She has the right to be an anti-Zionist Jew, but the Koffler also has the right to determine what it does with its money. It prefers to promote Jews that are pro-Zionist. Jews that defend Israel's right to exist, with all its warts, just like most people defend the right of their nation-states to exist. A Zionist is compatible with a Palestinian nationalist. Katz would have us believe otherwise because she swims under the cloudy spell of the IAW crowd. The same crowd that does not utter a word for real genocide in Darfur, yet farcically calls Israel a genocidal state. What is so wrong with two states for two peoples caught in a terrible, tragic drama created by both parties, as well as external influences?

Fourth, Katz states that her anti-Zionism is an "ideological stance". A stance on Zionism that is not ideological? Is Zionism not the dream for a homeland for the Jews of Palestine, with the caveat that Palestinian rights are respected? Is Katz a religious anti-Zionist, insisting that the Jew cannot make an idol out of state worship? Given her left-wing secular politics, this is unlikely. Katz says that her stance does not determine a "specific outcome" for the state of Israel. Worldviews, political ideologies, and media are all powerful tools in what the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci called the "war of position" in civil society. There is a struggle in civil society between competing groups (some with more power than others) for hegemonic control of what becomes acceptable and common sense, and the future direction of political and cultural systems. One cannot put out a particular "ideological stance" and then say it has no impact on the world. Fascism, extreme communism, and Islamism were all born first as ideological constructs. They then gained adherents in civil society. They challenged the existing hegemonic conceptions of their respective political systems. They all proposed to get rid of liberal parliamentary democracy. They formed movements, parties, paramilitary organizations, and captured the levers of power in different historical epochs. They were all McCarthyite to the core.

Does Katz not see that the IAW supporters similarly want political victory and not justice? That they practice McCarthyism. I have spoken to many IAW supporters on campuses throughout Canada. I have never heard of an IAW supporter acknowledge genuine Jewish suffering both yesterday and today. And that Israel is a response to that suffering, which had its claim to statehood already recognized at the 1920 San Remo Conference well before the Holocaust. Palestinian statelessness and suffering are indeed real, but the realities go both ways. Mutual recognition of suffering and statehood claims will lead to peace in Israel-Palestine.

I do, however, agree with Katz's brilliant defense of political pluralism and dissent:

I do not expect the Koffler or the UJA to agree with my political leanings. The issue here is the silence because of my political affiliations, and the stonewalling of internal dissent and debate within our cultural institutions. I am deeply committed to open discussion both within Jewish communities and with Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim communities worldwide. Dissent and discourse are crucial parts of this now global conversation; silencing and blocklisting are cowardly and toxic.

It is true that the Koffler acted like the CIA, or the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS), by spying on Katz's Facebook for her political leanings. Welcome to our McCarthyite world! But let us not be too hasty to judge. Remember the British MP Galloway that is now a martyr of free speech in this country and around the world. Well, he supported the bannning of Geert Wilders, the anti-immigrant Dutch politician, from Britain. He said Jean-Marie Le Pen, another despicable anti-immigrant politician and head of the French Front National, was a Nazi and should be denied entrance to Britain. Katz supports IAW, which completely banned Zionist voices from its speaker list in 42 locations around the globe. And now Katz faces the chilling, Arctic winds of McCarthyism. McCarthyism is unfortunately part of the zeitgeist of the age. We should fight it with all our hearts. But it is about time we understand that McCarthyism cuts both ways.

Tamir Bar-On