Here is an article of interest on Independent Jewish Voices and the creation of a Jewish Canadian umbrella organization that opposes Israel's policies towards the Palestinians and calls for an end to the Occupation of Palestinian land. Published in Embassy Magazine in Ottawa, Canada.
Ed Corriganby Jo Roberts
Outside the Israeli consulate on Toronto's Bloor street, Jewish-Canadian peace group Women in Solidarity with Palestine is staging its weekly vigil. Eight people have gathered. One woman holds up a large black hand inscribed with "End the Occupation!" Another carries a map of Israel and Palestine showing the growth of Israel's territory since 1948. Passers-by take a leaflet, or stop and engage in conversation, sometimes heated. It's a sunny day, but the vigil continues through the snowy winter months as well.
At its March 2008 founding conference, Independent Jewish Voices (Canada) adopted the following principles:
• Human rights are universal and indivisible and should be upheld without exception. This is as applicable in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories as it is elsewhere.
• Palestinians and Israelis alike have the right to peaceful and secure lives.
• Peace and stability require the willingness of all parties in the conflict to comply with international law.
• There is no justification for any form of racism, including anti-Semitism, anti-Arab racism or Islamophobia, in any circumstance.
• The battle against anti-Semitism is vital, and it is undermined whenever opposition to Israeli government policies is automatically branded as anti-Semitic.
One of the regulars is Smadar Carmon, a 52-year-old Israeli-Canadian. She's been attending since she arrived in Canada in 2001. "I do all my activist work around Palestine from the perspective of fighting for human rights," she says. "Growing up in Israel, I read a lot of books on the Holocaust. The only way I could deal with that was not to be silent when others are living in horrifying conditions."
The vigil was started in solidarity with Women in Black, an anti-war organization of Jewish and Arab-Israeli women in Israel. It's also supported by Not in Our Name: Jewish Voices Opposing Zionism. Many such groups form a network of small affiliated anti-occupation organizations in Canada.
Bernard Katz is a member of several Jewish social justice groups in Toronto, including Canadian Friends of Peace Now, the mainstream Israeli peace organization. "There is a broad spectrum of Canadian Jewish peace organizations," he says, "ranging from people who support the existence of Israel as a Jewish state to those who believe Israel should not exist as a Jewish state because that makes it non-democratic."
Many people in the former camp would support a two-state solution to the conflict. Many in the latter would support a one-state solution, and a Palestinian right of return. Those two positions are so far apart, and so heavily contested, that they create a chasm that has so far been impossible to bridge.
Although he and Ms. Carmon, who is strongly anti-Zionist, stand in different places on that spectrum, both attended a spring conference for progressive Canadian Jews, organized by the Alliance of Concerned Jewish Canadians. That weekend conference, at which Naomi Klein was the keynote speaker, birthed Independent Jewish Voices (Canada) (IJV), a new umbrella organization under which 18 Jewish groups from 26 Canadian cities have come together.
"The Conference adopted a platform of 5 different points," explains Bernard Katz. "The one or two-state issue was not included. By leaving that out, people can focus on common themes and formally affiliate with each other."
Diana Ralph, from Ottawa, was the conference's primary organizer. "Our goal was to build a national coalition, so we could speak with one voice with a relatively broad mandate," she says.
The organization will give anti-occupation Jewish-Canadians "a credible alternative voice both in Canada and internationally." The new group has working relationships with all political parties.
In the months since its inception, IJV has sent delegations to the Gaza Community Mental Health Conference and to the World Conference against Racism in Geneva, and is coordinating Israeli anti-occupation activist Jeff Halper's Canadian tour in January.
Dismissed as "a rump" by the Canadian Jewish Congress, IJV counters that "those who claim to speak on behalf of Jews in Canada and other countries consistently put support for the policies of an occupying power above the human rights of an occupied people."
Diana Ralph is clear about why she does this work. "We are taught to live peacefully, with justice and humility, for the healing of the world. This is the best way I can be a Jew."
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