Canadian Dimension
November/December 2005 Issue
This is not about
Jews. It is not about race, ethnicity or religion. It is about power. The new
Israel lobby in Canada — the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy
(CIJA) — has enormous power, derived from abundant resources, corporate
connections, political associations, elaborate and able organization and a
cadre of dedicated activists. Since its inception several years ago, this
hard-line lobby has used its power, first, to gain political hegemony and
impose ideological conformity on the matter of Israel within a heretofore
diverse Jewish community, and second, to influence government decisions and
shape public opinion regarding Israel — ostensibly in the name of all Canadian
Jewry. From the outset, a primary focus of this lobby’s attentions has been the
university campus, alleged centre of anti-Israel sentiment, conveniently
construed as anti-semitism. Over the last two years, the lobby has by various
means attempted to pacify these campuses and bring them into line, particularly
Concordia and York. While the lobby has made some significant gains, at York
their effort has been stalled.
In the fall of 2002,
student protests at Concordia University led to the cancellation of a speech by
right-wing Israeli politician Bejamin Netanyahu. The event sounded an alarm for
some powerful people sympathetic to Netanyahu. “What happened at Concordia was,
to many people, appalling,” Maxyne Finkelstein, executive vice president of the
United Israel Appeal Federation of Canada, explained to the Toronto Star. “What
happened at Concordia was a real shock.” According to a recent profile in
Toronto Life, Concordia was a wake-up call for the so-called “power couple,”
Heather Reisman and Gerald Schwartz. Reisman, niece of free-trade negotiator
Simon Reisman, is CEO of Indigo/Chapters Books. Her husband, Gerry, Liberal
Party chief fundraiser and former co-founder of CanWest Global Communications,
is CEO of Onex Corporation. As fundraisers, both enjoyed “exceptional closeness
to [Prime Minister Paul] Martin” and were eager to “flex their newfound political
clout.” Trying to “decode their agenda,” Toronto Life noted that the first
signs of their intentions had surfaced immediately after the Concordia
controversy. “Shocked into action, Schwartz and Reisman summoned a group of
fellow philanthropists, including Toronto tycoons Larry Tanenbaum and Brent
Belzberg, to plot a counter-strategy.” Tanenbaum is co-owner of the Toronto
Maple Leafs, and venture capitalist Belzberg owns Torquest Partners. The four
gathered together a select group of like-minded and monied colleagues and
“self-appointed” themselves the “Israel Emergency Cabinet,” intent upon lending
“more conviction and financial muscle” to advocacy for Israel in Canada. The
Toronto Star observed that “the membership of the emergency cabinet reads like
a who’s who of power and influence among the Jewish community” and that “some
members are well known for their hawkish opinions favoring Israel in the long
and bloody Middle East conflict.”
In addition to
Reisman, Schwartz, Tanenbaum and Belzberg, the group included Senator Leo
Kolber, former director of the Toronto-Dominion Bank, Seagrams and Loews
Cineplex; Israel Asper, co-founder and CEO of CanWest Global; Stephen Reitman,
whose family owns Reitman’s clothing stores; Julia Koschitzky, whose family fortune
derives from the IKO Group, global manufacturer of construction materials; and
Stephen Cummings, CEO of Maxwell Cummings. Together, the group represented
billions of dollars in assets, which its members knew how to use. Over the next
year, through the facilitation of the United Israel Appeal Federation, which
funded both the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) and the Canada-Israel Committee
(CIC), the Emergency Cabinet morphed into the CIJA. Chaired by Tanenbaum,
Belzberg and Cummings, CIJA eventually brought both the CJC and the CIC under
its effective control. The stated aim of the new umbrella organization was to
double the funding for Israel advocacy in Canada and make it more “pro-active.”
Not everyone was
happy with the new extremist conglomerate. “What we are talking about here,”
one official told Toronto Life, “is essentially a takeover of the country’s
Jewish institutions.” Frank Dimant, executive vice president of B’nai Brith
Canada, which belatedly — and grudgingly — entered into an agreement with CIJA,
pointed out that “the group known as the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish
Advocacy had on its inaugural steering committee some of the most powerful men
and women in this country.” CIJA co-chair Brent Belzberg himself acknowledged
that “this is being seen as a bunch of rich guys telling the others what to
do.”
According to the
Forward, one observer described the CIJA’s incorporation of the CJC and the CIC
as a “hostile takeover,” while another told the Toronto Star that it amounted
to a “coup d’état by powerful financial interests bent on cementing their
control over Jewish advocacy activities in the country,” adding that “these
guys are used to getting their way.” “This is a group of self-appointed people
who have very little linkage with the Jewish [masses] and they have private
agendas of their own,” Thomas Hecht, former Quebec chair of the CIC, pointed
out.
According to the
Toronto Star, some members of the community believed that the CIJA “will put
control of Jewish lobbying efforts in Canada into the hands of a few wealthy
and powerful individuals.” “It’s the funders who will determine the policy,”
B’nai Brith’s Dimant insisted; “they will be deciding policy for all those
entities.” “I think it’s a process cloaked in secrecy right now,” he added,
cautioning that, “It’s a dangerous move.” “The underlying theme is a total
centralization of Jewish thought, opinion, and messaging. It’s an attempt to
silence the activists in our community.” In the eyes of some Jews, then, the formation
and agenda of the CIJA, which even in its name conflated the term Jewish with
Israel, constituted a threat not only to Jewish critics of Israel, but also to
Jewish moderates, a hijacking of Jewish identity in Canada by a well heeled and
politically well connected cabal of zealots.
After its first year
of operation, the CIJA boasted of its “success stories.” These included “new
initiatives initially sponsored by Israel Emergency Cabinet,” like symposia,
conferences and seminars designed to promote pro-Israel “education.” They more
than doubled the number of visits, dubbed “missions,” to Israel arranged for
Canada’s politicians and “opinion makers.” Among the most noteworthy of such
efforts was a visit by premiers Mike Harris and Brian Tobin, which included
meetings with Netanyahu, the ultra-right Israeli politician whose speech was
cancelled at Concordia, and right-wing Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The CIJA
also arranged for meetings in Toronto between federal, provincial and community
leaders and Aviv Bushinsky, spokesman for Netanyahu.
The CIJA also
created CIJA-PAC (alternately called the Public Affairs Committee and Political
Action Committee). Under its managing director, Josh Cooper, a former
Conservative candidate from Thornhill, CIJA-PAC set about “attracting,
involving, informing and training strong advocates” and “establishing a
coordinated rapid-response capability.” In Ottawa, meanwhile, CIJA influence
had already achieved dramatic effects, through justice minister Irwin Cotler, a
former CJC president, and the prime minister himself. The CIJA “has the ear of
those who make decisions,” Belzberg boasted to the Canadian Jewish News.
According to Toronto Life, “CIJA can already claim political dividends” with
the shift in Canada’s posture regarding Israel at the United Nations. For the
first time Canada sided with the United States on several Israel-related UN
resolutions. “In foreign policy circles,” Toronto Life noted, “the turnabout
qualified as a diplomatic bombshell.” “In case you missed it,” John Ibbitson
observed in the Globe & Mail, “our Mideast policy has shifted.” According
to Ibbitson, instruction for the change in policy came directly from the Prime
Minister’s Office, where Paul Martin was “under intense pressure” from CIJA
co-founder Gerald Schwartz.
Given that the
formation of the Israel Emergency Cabinet had originally been prompted by
events at Concordia University, it is not surprising that a major focus of CIJA
activities has been the university campus. CIJA efforts in this arena centred
on the new National Jewish Campus Life department of the UIA Federation,
created specifically to train pro-Israel advocates and cultivate campus
“influentials.” “In a key strategic move,” the CIJA website reported, “CIJA has
contributed more than one million dollars for use on Canadian post-secondary
campuses,” noting that “professionals to support Jewish student life have
recently been put on campuses across the country.” “The National Jewish Campus
Life has hired seven organizers at campuses in Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, and
Vancouver … to provide support to pro-Israel advocacy,” and “is developing an
on-line resource for campus Jewish advocacy.” The CIJA spent a quarter of a
million dollars “subsidizing the visits to Israel of campus leaders.” As well,
“several student leaders have already been sent to training programs to become
more effective campus advocates.”
“On the campus
front,” the Canadian Jewish News reported, “CIJA has funded the hiring of seven
advocacy experts in seven Canadian cities, who assist local student groups and
address anti-Israel agitation on campus. CIJA has also recruited Jewish Agency
shlichim [emissaries] who provide students with information, education,
resources and someone to talk to when they experience difficulties” (the Jewish
Agency for Israel is the international agency for Israeli immigration). As
well, CIJA CEO Hershell Ezrin told the Canadian Jewish News that, “Professors
at various schools have agreed to act as advocates in confronting anti-Israel
colleagues.”The CIJA campus campaign coalesced in the formation of the new
Canadian Federation of Jewish Students (CFJS), on CIJA’s recommendation, which
was spawned by the CIJA’s National Jewish Campus Life subsidiary at a
conference of 32 Jewish student leaders in Ottawa. In addition to engaging in
“skillbuilding events,” the group met with foreign affairs minister Bill
Graham, courtesy of the CIJA’s insider connections.
The new federation
immediately set about to establish a board of directors, with each campus
Hillel or Jewish student association holding two seats. “For campuses with
large Jewish student populations, such as York University, the board will have
one additional seat for each 1,000 Jewish students,” the Canadian Jewish News
reported.
York was vitally
important to the CIJA, and not only because of the large number of Jewish
students in attendance. York was the watering hole for many leaders of the
lobby. “Emergency Cabinet” members and later CIJA co-chairs Belzberg and
Tanenbaum had close ties with York’s Schulich School of Business, where
Belzberg sat on the advisory committee. Emergency Cabinet member and later CIJA
director Julia Koschitzky sat on the board of the university’s influential
Foundation, which was headed by Paul Marcus, former director of development at
United Jewish Appeal. Other prominent pro-Israel advocates on the Foundation’s
board included Alonna Goldfarb, H. Barry Gales, Maxwell Gotlieb, Honey Sherman
and Howard Sokolowski.
Early this year York
University president Lorna Marsden and her entourage, including a number of top
York administrators (Paul Marcus and Stan Shapson among them) went on their own
CJC-sponsored mission to Israel, underwritten in part, according to CJC
national president Ed Morgan’s report to the Canadian Jewish News, by Gerry
Schwartz and Julie Koschitzky.
“At York
University,” the Canadian Jewish News reported, “where a student slate unseated
an [sic] pro-Palestinian student government, CIJA ‘helped create a better
environment for all students’ and ‘empowered’ Jewish students to get involved
in politics,” according to CIJA co-chair Cummings. The successful effort of
Young Zionist Partnership members Paul Cooper and Yaakov Roth and their
Progress Not Politics (PNP) slate to take control of the York Federation of
Students and reshape student politics there was supported by Josh Cooper,
managing director of CIJA-PAC. It was supported also by Hillel at York, whose
director Talia Klein, in the wake of pro-Palestinian demonstrations at that
university, exclaimed to Aretz Sheva “Now it seems as if York has turned into
Concordia.” Klein recently co-produced a film with Igal Hecht entitled Not In
Our Name, which, as Hecht told the Jewish Tribune, condemns “these leftist Jews
who choose to criticize Israel.” The political shift at York was supported as
well by the student newspaper Excalibur, whose news editor, Aliza Libman, was a
founding officer of CFJS.
CFJS was just in
formation when its York operatives invited Daniel Pipes to speak on campus, in
what appears in retrospect to have been a deliberate provocation of York’s
“pro-Palestinian” activists. It seems to have been an attempt to create a
controversial environment at York akin to that created with Netanyahu’s
proposed visit to Concordia, one which might invite stern corrective action by
the York administration. Of course, this is only speculation, but it is not
implausible. Pipes is a well known lighting rod for campus critics of Israel.
Not only is he a tireless right-wing pro-Israel propagandist but — far more
important — he was the editor of the notorious witch-hunt website “Campus
Watch,” which devotes itself to smearing academics who do not stick to the
Israel lobby’s line on Middle East politics. CFJS had to know the invitation
would spark protests at York, as it had elsewhere — as did their mentors in the
CFJS parent organizations.
When the York
protests predictably emerged, almost immediately — as if on cue — the Israel
lobby leaped into action. The spectre of Concordia is uppermost in everybody’s
minds,” Hillel of Greater Toronto executive director Zac Kaye reminded the
media. In the midst of the controversy, according to the Canadian Jewish News,
Bernie Farber of CJC Ontario “spoke to [York president] Marsden directly.” A
CJC Ontario organization editorial later boasted that, “we fought back attempts
at keeping Daniel Pipes out of York University.”
Marsden’s insistence
upon having Pipes speak, for which she was congratulated by the CJC’s national
president, Ed Morgan, entailed a change in venue and a dramatic beefing-up of
security. Her action signified for the Israeli lobby a triumphant reversal of
the shameful Concordia debacle, in which the administration had caved under
pressure in cancelling Netanyahu’s speech. More significantly, it set the
precedent and the stage for the establishment of a regime of repression on
campus.
The implementation
of this new regime was carried out by President Marsden through the good
offices of the university secretary and general counsel, Harriet Lewis; Office
of Student Affairs operatives Bonnie Neuman, Debra Glass and Amelia Golden; and
Communications and Media Relations directors Richard Fisher and Nancy White.
The effort entailed the formulation and imposition of administrative policies
that effectively restricted freedom of speech and assembly on campus. These
measures included the charging of prohibitive security fees to student groups
wishing to bring controversial speakers to campus, severe limits onleafleting,
postering and tabling, and outright bans on the use of central campus space.
In the spring of
2004, President Marsden herself unilaterally and without regard for established
university student disciplinary policies suspended pro-Palestinian activist
Daniel Freeman-Maloy for three years on spurious charges, and banned him from
the campus. Freeman-Maloy was the embodiment of Talia Klein’s worst nightmare:
a leftist Jewish anti-Zionist. After a provincial court judge made it clear
that Marsden’s actions would be subject to judicial review, she rescinded the
ban. In the fall, however, the administration again initiated disciplinary
action against Freeman-Maloy and other pro-Palestinian activists, who had
engaged in a peaceful, off-campus vigil in support of the people of Gaza. At
the same time, Marsden and her colleagues unveiled their revised Temporary Use
of Space Policy, restricting such use to approved student groups and requiring
those to complete an elaborate application for approval, including the names
and past activities of all proposed participants. All activities in the Vari
Hall rotunda, themain campus forum, which had traditionally been the site of
demonstrations (and which had, indeed, had been designed by the architects with
this in mind), were banned outright.
Later that fall I
distributed a flyer suggesting, among other things, that the presence on the
York University Foundation of a significant number of Israel lobbyists and
fundraisers might help explain the administration’s repression of
pro-Palestinian activists. Within 24 hours of its distribution, York
University, the York University Foundation, Hillel, CJC Ontario and the UJA
federation issued simultaneous press releases denouncing me — another leftist
Jewish anti-Zionist — as anti-Semitic. These defamatory denunciations were
published the following day by the Globe & Mail, and, the next day, by the
Toronto Star. The remarkable efficiency of this effort appeared to confirm my
suggestions. Among those publicly condemning my actions were, in addition to
Lorna Marsden herself, Talia Klein, Zac Kaye and Dori Borshiov.
In the wake of the
Noble affair and the disciplining of pro-Palestinian students, an “illegal”
demonstration was held in the Vari Hall rotunda in defense of freedom of speech
on campus. It was called by members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees,
the union representing teaching assistants and contract instructors, and
included graduate-student, undergraduate and faculty speakers, including
myself. Later, some of the students were once again threatened with
disciplinary action.
Finally, on January
20, another demonstration was held by a progressive political group in protest
of the inauguration on that day of U.S. president George W. Bush. This time
Marsden decided the demonstrators were “trespassing” on private property and
called in the Toronto police to enforce the ban on unapproved speech and
assembly. The police promptly assaulted the peaceful protest, beating and
arresting students on their own campus. The administration alleged —
preposterously — that the action of the police was provoked by student violence
and they justified their decision as a defense of order. Curiously, although
the demonstration focused upon the inauguration of Bush and York’s corporate
and military ties, the students were immediately condemned for being
anti-Israel.
There is a happy
ending to the York story, one that is still unfolding. The Israel lobby’s
campaign, designed to pacify the campus, has in fact had the opposite effect.
In the wake of the mounting repression, a veritable York Free Speech Movement
has emerged (roughly in time for the fortieth anniversary of its Berkeley
antecedent). Defiant, unauthorized demonstrations have already been held in
Vari Hall. The dramatic events of January 20 triggered outrage and sparked
demonstrations, the largest in York’s history, supported by York students,
faculty and unions. The university’s Senate officially condemned the
administration for its use of force, and the York University Faculty
Association (YUFA) called upon the Canadian Association of University Teachers
to launch a formal investigation of York’s suppression of academic freedom and
freedom of speech, an investigation now underway. Despite several attempts by
the administration to force a suspension of the CAUT inquiry, it remains on
track. At the same time, in response to intensifying demand from students and
faculty, the Senate has undertaken a review of the revised Temporary Use of
Space Policy, which had been formulated in secret by Marsden and her minions.
In the mean time,
having been reinstated and having resumed his activism, Dan Freeman-Maloy has
launched an $850,000 lawsuit against Marsden, which is now moving through the
courts. Likewise, I filed a $10-million grievance against the university for
violation of my academic freedom and defamation. The YUFA executive committee
later voted unanimously to take the case to arbitration, which is scheduled for
November. Finally, the PNP slate supported by the Israel lobby was
overwhelmingly defeated in the latest York Federation of Students elections,
replaced by a coalition of people with diverse sympathies. Similar changes in
personnel have taken place at York’s student newspaper, the Excalibur.
The Israel lobby has
had its day at York, and it appears to be over, especially now that their
campaign has been exposed and our perceptions and understanding of recent
events have been enlarged. The owl of Minerva, as the wise man said, takes
flight at dusk. And now that the lobby has lost York, the new day dawning
promises to be one in which robust debate and a diversity of opinion will once
again be allowed to flourish on this proud campus, and where the thoughts,
voices and actions of all members of the York community, including all Jewish
members, will be freed from the constraints of compulsion and conformity.