Ontario Premier Doug Ford has adopted the IHRA\u2019s Working Definition of Antisemitism which puts Jews at risk by implicating them in Israel’s assault on human rights.<\/em><\/p>\n BY\u00a0DAVID KATTENBURG<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Under the guise of fighting antisemitism, the Conservative government of On October 27, by\u00a0Order in Council (OIC 1450\/2020)<\/a>, Canada\u2019s most populous province adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance\u2019s Working Definition of Antisemitism (IHRA-WDA), thereby removing the\u00a0Combating Antisemitism Act<\/em>\u00a0(Bill C-168) from the Order Paper, denying me the chance to testify against it, as I had requested.<\/p>\n Ontario\u2019s OIC declares, tersely, that \u201csystemic racism, including antisemitism, is a persistent reality in Ontario,\u201d and that the government will consequently adopt and recognize the IHRA-WDA adopted in Bucharest in 2016.<\/p>\n Promisingly, the OIC makes no mention of the IHRA-WDA\u2019s flawed inner core: those eleven \u2018Illustrative Examples\u2019 of \u2018antisemitism\u2019 cited in the\u00a0Bucharest Declaration<\/a><\/em>, seven of which involve commentary on the State of Israel.<\/p>\n But their absence from Ontario\u2019s OIC offer little relief. Pro-Israel groups, including its\u00a0\u201cstaunch defender,\u201d B\u2019Nai Brith Canada<\/a>, are now crowing that the Ford government has adopted these perverse examples of Jew-hatred, and are preparing to weaponize them.<\/p>\n The IHRA-WDA has been the subject of huge discussion, commentary and acrimonious debate, including on these pages. Cornerstone of the WDA\u2019s eleven examples of \u2018antisemitism\u2019, number seven: \u201cDenying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.\u201d<\/p>\n So, if Ontario\u2019s OIC is to be taken at its word and embraced, I, the son of Dutch and French holocaust survivors, born on Long Island, naturalized Canadian, never having set foot in Israel before the age of 31, have the right to move to Jerusalem today, to reside on\u00a0land stolen from people now living in exile<\/a>\u00a0(lots of them in the province of Ontario), who themselves have no right to go home, and are\u00a0abused and deported<\/a>\u00a0at Ben Gurion Airport, in that order, if they try to.<\/p>\n I refuse this right! By thrusting it on me, the codicil Ontario has just adopted implicates me in unsavory, highly unbecoming acts. It exposes me to opprobrium. Indeed, to antisemitism.<\/p>\n I am not indigenous to the Land of Israel. Israel is not my ancient homeland. My Ashkenazi genome contains less Levantine DNA than the genomes of my Palestinian friends \u2014 60% vs. 80%,\u00a0a recent study reports<\/a>.\u00a0Another study reports<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cat least 80% of Ashkenazi maternal ancestry is due to [DNA] indigenous to Europe, most likely through conversion.\u201d<\/p>\n And, as any population geneticist can explain, mathematically, my roots can\u2019t be traced back to more than a tiny fraction of the women and men who actually lived in Second Temple times.<\/p>\n Still, if I shout this out on Facebook and Twitter \u2013 someone so lost in diaspora as to deny the Land of Israel\u2019s presence within himself, and his within Israel \u2013 ugly messages land in my inbox. \u201cSelf-hating Jew!\u201d they spit at me. Or, worse yet,\u00a0kapo<\/em>! Indistinguishable from the death camp Jews who snitched and dug graves at Sobibor and Auschwitz (where almost a hundred Kattenburgs perished).<\/p>\n The Jewish \u2018self-determination\u2019 claim Doug Ford\u2019s government has just adopted tars me with a brush I\u2019d just as soon dodge. Where does Ford get off smearing this on me?<\/p>\n It gets worse. Playing the game both ways (as Israel\u2019s advocates do), IHRA-WDA Example Six posits as \u2018antisemitic\u2019 that most invidious of claims \u2014 that Jews are \u201cmore loyal to Israel,\u201d or to the \u201calleged priorities of Jews worldwide\u201d [all of ancient Hebrew heritage], and Example Eleven declares as \u2018antisemitic\u2019 \u201cholding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the State of Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n So, connecting the dots: 1) All Jews, regardless of their place of birth or current domicile, anywhere in the world, have the right to go live in Israel, whereas native Palestinians do not, and denying this is antisemitic, and 2) Jews who refuse to arrogate this right to themselves are \u2018self-hating\u2019 Nazi collaborators (a parallel WDA Example Ten deems antisemitic). But, viewed from the other side, 3) It\u2019s also antisemitic to point out civic conflicts emerging from such claims, or to suggest that any Jew on the street (e.g. me) should be held accountable for Israel\u2019s crimes, notwithstanding the Land of Israel\u2019s putative presence deep inside them.<\/p>\n Can the Ford government appreciate the bind it\u2019s just placed me in?<\/p>\n Edwin Montagu\u00a0captured the hazardous contradictions<\/a>\u00a0implicit in the Jewish nation-state idea back in August 1917, three months prior to the Balfour Declaration.<\/p>\n \u201cZionism has always seemed to me to be a mischievous political creed,\u201d the British Cabinet\u2019s only Jewish minister wrote. \u201cIf a Jewish Englishman sets his eyes on the Mount of Olives and long for the day when he will shake British soil from his shoes and go back to agricultural pursuits in Palestine, he has always seemed to me to have acknowledged aims inconsistent with British citizenship and to have admitted that he is unfit for a share in public life in Great Britain, or to be treated as an Englishman.\u201d<\/p>\n A hundred and three years after the Secretary of State for India\u2019s anxious letter to the British Cabinet, the conundrum is stickier still: If me and my Jewish and Palestinian friends attempt to hold an event declaring Israel a \u201cracist endeavor\u201d<\/a>\u00a0(an antisemitic claim, under Example Seven), or a\u00a0settler-colonial apartheid state<\/a>, or that all Palestinians have the\u00a0right to return<\/a>\u00a0to the villages Zionist militias expelled them from in 1947\/48\/67, before demolishing them, or if we wave Palestinian flags and cry \u201cPalestine shall be free from the River to the Sea!,<\/a>\u201d that event is highly likely to be cut short, very quickly, with the aid of a\u00a0new Israeli government app<\/a>\u00a0(Act.IL) now in the hands of Israel\u2019s zealous Ontario friends.<\/p>\n Or, if righteous Ontario Jews shine bright public light on the\u00a0numerous extra-judicial murders<\/a>\u00a0the Israeli Defense Forces and Border Police have been charged with by reputable groups like Human Rights Watch or Israel\u2019s B\u2019Tselem, or suggest that the\u00a0International Criminal Court<\/a>\u00a0should pursue war crimes charges against Israeli officials for the mass murder of unarmed Gazans, or that Israel should be held to account for its\u00a0widely reported interference<\/a>\u00a0with Palestinian health efforts in the midst of the Covid pandemic, Israel\u2019s lobbyists will charge us with \u201cblood libel\u201d, per IHRA-WDA Example Nine.<\/p>\n Not to mention \u201cApplying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation,\u201d per Example Eight.<\/p>\n Talk about invidious inversions of the truth! Other than Israel, what other country \u2014 what supposedly democratic UN member state \u2014 gets to\u00a0violate international law with impunity<\/a>? Without the slightest consequence? Indeed, with the\u00a0diplomatic and economic support<\/a>\u00a0of the international community, Canada front and center?\u00a0<\/p>\n Doug Ford may think the IHRA-WDA and its eleven Illustrative Examples of antisemitism are an effective tool for protecting people like me (The first four are, albeit superfluous). I don\u2019t. True Jew-hatred is an ugly scourge, as are all forms of racism, ethnic hatred and misogyny. We don\u2019t need the IHRA-WDA to fight these. Indeed, it constrains us.<\/p>\n So, we are preparing to\u00a0defy Ontario\u2019s new Order in Council<\/a>. Stand by.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/paju.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/1030.jpg\")
Ontario Premier Doug Ford has just boosted my exposure to that most vulgar genre of racism.<\/p>\nContradictions of the IHRA<\/h5>\n
Montagu\u2019s warning<\/h5>\n