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Thank you, Madame Cléroux, and good afternoon everyone. And a special thanks to everyone involved in providing me with this opportunity to introduce FAST and the spirit of FAST to the people of Quebec – and recruit more Quebeckers to the fight against antisemitism.
For those who missed the FAST ads, published today in La Presse and The Gazette under the headline “Why We Must Speak Out: Non-Jewish Canadian Leaders Stand Up Against Antisemitism in Canada,” let me share with this audience the text of the ad:
We are very pleased to announce the Quebec launch of a vigorous Canada-wide offensive against antisemitism in all of its forms, funded and supported by a coalition of non-Jewish business and community leaders and the many prominent organizations that we represent.
This coalition, Fighting Antisemitism Together (FAST), was launched in Ontario in 2005 in response to a new wave of antisemitism in Canada. We concluded that in the face of this resurgence, the time had come for us to stand up and speak out.
Above all we resolved that we would not allow another generation of Jewish children in Canada to grow up feeling fearful and unsafe just because they are Jewish, and wondering if anybody out there really cares.
Well we do care. We created FAST in honour of the right of Jewish children to live secure and unafraid, and with a solemn promise that Jews are no longer on their own in this great nation in this new century.
Following the launch of FAST in Quebec, we will introduce a made-in-Quebec version of Choose Your Voice: Antisemitism in Canada, a curriculum-based program that is already reaching young hearts and minds in many Canadian schools.
Thanks to the commitment and generosity of the leaders and organizations listed below, FAST is now able to work in partnership with the Jewish community to create projects like Choose Your Voice. And stand up and speak out with authority against the oldest – and most resilient – hatred in all of human history. And, as has indeed been the case so far, attract more non-Jewish leaders to the cause.
Following these words in today’s ads are the names and titles of about 50 prominent FAST supporters who understand, as my wife Elizabeth and I do – and, we believe, the majority of Canadians do – that the time has long passed for polite silence in the face of antisemitism and other forms of hatred, bigotry and racism.
What we hope to help create, both with FAST itself and with our Choose Your Voice educational program, is a nation of non-bystanders, Canadians of all heritages who simply no longer permit the antisemites and their likeminded kin to spread their poison unscathed.
We hope to embolden and encourage those with still-open hearts and minds to stand up and speak out against discrimination, wherever and however it rears its ugly head, and marginalize the antisemites and bullies and bigots and take away their power to intimidate.
Even before this summer’s terrible and tragic escalation of the conflict in the Middle East created the inevitable spike in antisemitic activity, I had become personally very concerned about the growing tendency, here in Canada and indeed worldwide, to single out Israel for criticisms and international sanctions out of all proportion to any other party in the Middle East.
I am thinking, for example, of the condemnation of the State of Israel a few months ago by the Ontario leadership of the Canadian Union of Public Employees and the Toronto Conference of the United Church of Canada.
I ascribe no motives to the people who made these decisions beyond the ones they ascribed to themselves – a legitimate disagreement with Israeli policy regarding Palestine.
While I profoundly disagree with this one-sided take on who’s-to-blame-for-what in the Middle East, and find its solutions untenable, I accept that these views can be honestly held, and can also be (let me stress this) utterly free of antisemitic intent.
What I worry about, though, is not the intent but the effect of criticizing Israel so vehemently and disproportionately and, as tends to be the case, to the exclusion of all others. I worry that those with darker motives will treat these honestly held views as justification for hating Jews and wishing them scourged from the Earth.
While well-educated and presumably well-intentioned critics may be able to clearly distinguish ‘Israeli policy’ from ‘the Jews,’ in other words, the fineness of the distinction is lost (often willfully so) on people in search of a pretext and trolling around for permission to further enflame antisemitism.
So as much as I may defend these critics’ right to criticize, as a founder of FAST and a student of history, I truly wish that they would consider all the possible implications before making these public statements.
It can also be argued that whether we’re talking historically or right here in the moment, bred-in-the-bone antisemites don’t need encouragement. If there is one thing I have had driven home to me in the 16 months since my wife Elizabeth and I founded FAST, it is that people who want to hate Jews can always find reasons for hating Jews.
Consider, for example, that even now, in the 21st Century and in the face of unequivocal repudiation by Popes from John XXIII forward and by most of the world’s other Christian leaders, there are still people who believe that ‘the Jews’ – all Jews – should be punished for all eternity for the Crucifixion.
This myth may in fact have had something to do with how FAST got started, and if I appear to be choosing my words carefully, it is because once again I want to separate intent from effect.
In the Spring of 2004, many here will recall, there was a major spike in antisemitic incidents in this country and elsewhere, helping to make 2004 the worst-ever year in recorded history for antisemitic activity in Canada.
Although the library firebombing here in Montreal was the most grievous of these incidents, it was the weekend-long rampage of tombstone-toppling and swastika-painting in and around our hometown, Toronto, which put FAST into motion.
Early the following Monday morning, as I was shaving to prepare to go to work, Elizabeth stood in the bathroom doorway and told me how we – she and I, personally – had to so something about antisemitism.
She talked about what she’d watched in horror and sadness and growing anger on the news the night before – coming back over and over again to the uncertain and frightened faces of the Jewish children who’d been interviewed that Sunday evening. That was Elizabeth’s tipping point, as she would later describe it; mine came the following morning, almost precisely in mid-shave.
What does all this have to do with intent and effect? Well, as many of you will also recall, that spike in antisemitic activity in the Spring of 2004 came close on the heels of the release of Mel Gibson’s highly controversial crucifixion movie and the volatile public debate that it triggered.
While the intent of the movie, surely, was not to promote antisemitism, it is once again easy to see how antisemites, depending on how deeply twisted they are, could treat it as a call to action – as, apparently, many did. If you think a Hollywood movie is a bizarre reason for an antisemitic upsurge, wait till I tell you about what set off the previous great spike – which I will do in a moment or two.
In the meantime, let’s ask ourselves how it can be that even now there are still people who unreservedly believe in a Jewish plot to seize control of the world as spelled out in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion – a century-old Tsarist forgery so blatant that even Josef Stalin (no friend of the Jews) couldn’t take it seriously. And yet The Protocols remain as popular as ever – even reproduced, as recently as 2002, as (imagine this!) a 41-part television series.
Even more to the point, how it can be that, despite evidence that gives whole new meaning to the word ‘overwhelming,’ there are still people who absolutely refuse to acknowledge even the possibility of the Holocaust, much less the reality and any lessons it might have to teach? (And oh, by the way, did you hear the one about how the Jews started the war?)
But lest anyone think that modern anti-Jewishness is solely a byproduct of historical ignorance (willful or otherwise), let us reflect on what happened on September 11, 2001, and over the days that followed.
Almost immediately, a story began to spread that no Jews were killed in the attack on the World Trade Center because every one of them who worked there – some 4,000 by the count of the spinners of this mad fantasy – had been forewarned to stay home that morning. You think that’s nuts? Wait, it gets worse.
In a Big Lie worthy of Goebbels himself, the (quote) ‘fact’ that ‘no Jews were killed’ in the atrocity became all the so-called evidence needed to show that the attack was ‘a Jewish-perpetrated plot’ engineered by (yep) ‘the Elders of Zion.’ Despite the patent falseness and naked absurdity of such a proposition, this Big Lie spread across the Internet like the Reichstag Fire.
But was anybody buying this stuff? Unfortunately – but predictably – yes. You know when I mentioned a previous spike in antisemitic activity – before the one that pushed Elizabeth and me beyond our tipping point? This was what I was talking about.
The bigger the lie, Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, the greater the chance of it being believed; and, sadly, the lie that the Jews were behind September 11th has not been an exception – almost assuredly, let us be honest, because when it comes to Jews and conspiracies, some people will truly believe just about anything; and, if history is any guide, a great many others won’t really care or give it another moment’s thought.
What kind of minds can think such dangerously crazy thoughts? For all of my efforts to understand what the world might look like from the antisemites’ position, I remain genuinely mystified as to why history’s oldest and longest hatred is still so robustly with us.
There is one explanation I came across, though, that may in fact ‘say it all’ – which, unfortunately, will not be much of a consolation or promise of better times ahead. The author of this chilling ‘says-it-all’ theory is the esteemed American writer and thinker, Ron Rosenbaum. Listen to this:
“After nearly two decades of reading the literature of anti-Semitism – both the thing itself and the analysis of the thing itself – I have yet to find a satisfactory explanation for its persistence,” Rosenbaum writes in his introduction to Those Who Forget The Past: The Question of Anti-Semitism, a must-read anthology published in 2004.
Then, after running through and mulling over the standard theories, including payback for the crucifixion, he makes what he himself describes as something that “might sound at first like a radical suggestion – that it doesn’t matter any more…
“At this point antisemitism has become embedded in history,” he says, “or in sub-history, the subterranean history and mythology of hatred [and] it will always be there, a template for whatever hurts need to find an easy answer, a simple-minded balm: the Jews are responsible.”
So there you have it. “The explanation for renewed antisemitism is antisemitism: its ineradicable pre-existing history and its efficiency. It has become its own origin.”
To my mind, this is one of the most compelling reasons for founding an organization like FAST. Antisemites may be impervious to reason and logic and the truth of history, and trying to debate the irrational is clearly out of the question, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be effectively opposed.
One thing we certainly can do, and are doing, is showing the world what kind of people refuse to buy the rot of antisemitism and are willing to stand up and repudiate it publicly – a coalition of prominent and pointedly non-Jewish business and community leaders.
We may not be everybody’s idea of a role model, but I think who we are and the organizations we represent and the principled public stand we have taken will give at least some of the swayable pause.
What will really make a difference, though, has less to do with who we are or what we think than what we’re prepared to do in the name of Fighting Antisemitism Together.
By the time we announced the founding of FAST in Ontario in newspaper ads quite similar to those in today’s papers, we already had our first educational project under way – the Choose Your Voice program I mentioned earlier.
Since that time, Choose Your Voice – made in partnership with the Canadian Jewish Congress and aimed at the hearts and minds of students in grades 6 to 9 – has been distributed to schools in more than 30 school board districts. And the DVD component of the program, which takes aim at antisemitism and all the other ugly isms that pollute our world, has won two international awards.
We are now developing French-language and English-language versions of Choose Your Voice that are tailored to the unique educational requirements and needs of the people of Quebec.
I am delighted to be able to note, by the way, that as we prepare our Quebec initiative against antisemitism, racism and bigotry in all its forms, the Quebec government has launched a brave and highly laudable initiative of its own. I know I speak for all the members of FAST when I congratulate Lise Thériault, Minister of Immigration and Cultural Communities, for bringing a vital cross-section of Quebeckers together this Fall to work on guidelines for a new government policy designed (in her words) “to fight against racism and discrimination, a fight we want [to be] both effective and authentic.”
With these consultations and the ideas they generate still fresh in the Quebec public’s mind, we will start rolling out our made-in-Quebec Choose Your Voice program starting in January. If you’re interested in learning more about Choose Your Voice, you will find it at www.fightingantisemitism.com or by contacting the Canadian Jewish Congress.
Given the program’s origins in the confused and frightened children’s faces reaching out to Elizabeth from the TV, and the fact that she was once a teacher, including for a short time here in Montreal – along with the faith we share in the power of education – it is hardly surprising that Choose Your Voice would be our choice as FAST’s debut project.
We realize we may never get to those kids who acquired their antisemitism, and/or baseless hatred of any kind, at the parental knee. But we can help to marginalize them, strip them of their influence, make them ineffectual; and leave them muttering in the mirror to an audience of one.
That, at least, is the ideal. But as I am sure just about everybody in this room has personally experienced at one time or another, antisemites do grow up and disappear into the mainstream; and are only too pleased to show their loathing for Jews where and when they think they can get away with it.
And what that almost always involves in 2006, and in fact has almost always involved in the past six decades, is criticism of Israel.
I think I have already made it clear that, however wrong-headed and one-sided I may consider that criticism to be, I accept that it can be honestly held and antisemitism-free.
Indeed, as the renowned American legalist and author Alan Dershowitz points out in his book, The Case for Israel, “the harshest substantive critics” of the Israeli government are Israelis themselves, “inside and outside the government – and sometimes even in the cabinet.” (He also places himself among them on more than one occasion.)
Nor has any honest critic ever been labeled an antisemite, not in his experience, or mine, or anybody else’s that I know. Now, disclaimer intact, let me turn to the dishonest critics, the ones who rewrap their hatred of Jews into a much more discreet package.
The modest profile I have acquired as founder and, along with Elizabeth, chief advocate for FAST probably means I will never again be importuned by these (well) creeps, but I still nurture fantasies of scenarios like this one:
‘But really,’ the guy (it’s almost always a guy) opens the conversation, ‘aren’t the Israelis doing to the Arabs (or, if he’s really sophisticated, the Palestinians or Hezbollah) the same thing Hitler did to the Jews?’
And then – speaking figuratively, of course – I strike him sharply on the nose with a stick. ‘No,’ I lean in closer, looking him right in the soon-to-be-startled eye. ’And, frankly, you betray an ignorance so exceptional it could almost be deliberate.’
While (as I say) I may never get the chance to play this particular scene, it is a core role of FAST to repudiate antisemitic slurs. Of course, you don’t have to belong to our organization to stick it to antisemites that way, but with FAST, we not only have a license to respond, we have a duty.
Whatever method of derision FAST supporters and other non-Jews of good will may choose – turning sharply on one’s heel and briskly striding away also sends a clear message – the time has passed for grimacing politely, letting the bigot ‘have his opinion,’ and easing away unobtrusively.
Let me also be clear that if I ever got word of people like this poisoning the atmosphere in my own organization, I would not be restrained in my reaction – just as I would not be restrained in my reaction to any other expressions of bigotry and hatred.
If antisemitic rants were just idle talk – no sticks or stones, no broken bones – that would be one thing. But as history, both ancient and modern, clearly and cruelly shows, antisemitic words often birth antisemitic deeds. Or, just as vile, attempt to make these deeds ‘acceptable.’
And with the spectre of a nuclear-armed-and-dangerous Iran looming over the Middle East, complete with public presidential threats to (quote) “wipe Israel off the map,” among those antisemitic deeds could be a second Holocaust.
One of the truly chilling aspects of this threat is that at least as far back as five years ago, a former president of Iran was describing a scenario for a nuclear confrontation in which 15 million Iranians would die in a tradeoff for five million Israeli Jews – i.e., all of them. (Interestingly, no mention was made of collateral damage to Israeli Arabs and Palestinians.)
Some may find this farfetched, and perhaps they are right and let’s hope so. But as every person in this room knows, some in fact from terrible personal experience, when it comes to antisemitism, things that once seemed farfetched – the first Holocaust, for example – have suddenly, brutally turned very real.
Few people have been more aware of this than Professor and Rabbi Emil Fackenheim, the internationally celebrated philosopher and Holocaust survivor and scholar who taught at and graced the University of Toronto from 1948 through 1984. And the great man who authored the message I want to leave with you today.
Among the many memorable things Dr. Fackenheim spoke of and published in his 87 active and productive years was his coining in 1970 of the now-famous expression, “the 614th Commandment.” I’ll let him explain himself, in an essay entitled Faith in God and Man After Auschwitz:
“…In Jewish tradition there are 613 commandments, sufficient for all situations, future as well as past. But the tradition could not anticipate Hitler: the Holocaust was unpredictable, even for [oral Torah].”
This must not be seen, he goes on to say, as just another “case-among-others of racism-in-general” but as something unique, even for Jews and their almost seamless history of persecution. The sin was not “Jewish behaviour” this time, the sin was Jewishness itself.
So what is this extra commandment that Dr. Fackenheim believes Jews should also live by? “Let me restate the 614th Commandment,” he writes in one of his last essays, “That Jews are forbidden to give Hitler posthumous victories.”
I am here today, introducing and promoting FAST to the people of Quebec, because I believe this should not be the lonely battle it has been, for so many, for so long; and because I believe this Last Commandment is something we all should be living by.
Thank you for your kind attention. I hope at least a few of you will join us in the cause.
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