From: brewnoserii@gmail.com   
      
   Gerald Caplan - The Globe and Mail - Tuesday, Aug. 04, 2015   
      
   Will Harper win over Jewish voters again?   
      
   It has long been the glory of Jews throughout the world that a numerically   
   disproportionate number of them regularly supported liberal causes and liberal   
   parties.     
      
   This was true in apartheid South Africa, the segregated southern United   
   States, Britain, Russia and, yes, Canada.  Here, until 2011, a majority of   
   Jews had always supported the intermittently liberal Liberal Party.   The few   
   prominent Jewish    
   Conservatives were recognized as a rare species.   
      
   Why were so many Jews so often on the side of the oppressed?  Having been the   
   victims of unprovoked persecution down through the centuries, Jews presumably   
   identified with the plight of other victims.  Even as Western Jews gained   
   acceptance and influence    
   in the years after the Holocaust, their empathy for the underdog continued.    
   There have always been embarrassing exceptions, but on the whole it was a   
   proud record.   
      
   Among the least expected changes that Stephen Harper has wrought as Prime   
   Minister has been the successful wooing of Jewish Canadians from the Liberal   
   Party to his own, and from a generous progressivism to Mr. Harper's   
   mean-spirited conservatism.   
      
   It happened in the 2011 election, when Mr. Harper won his first majority.    
   According to an Ipsos exit poll, 52 per cent of Jewish Canadians voted for the   
   Conservatives, compared with only 39 per cent of other Canadians.   The   
   Liberals received 29 per    
   cent of the Jewish vote, the NDP a derisory 16 per cent.   
      
   It was the first time that a majority of Canadian Jews had voted Conservative.    
      
   Based on the pandering and lavish honours the Canadian Jewish establishment   
   has showered on Mr. Harper, there is a widespread expectation that his party   
   will do even better this time among Jewish voters.  Of course, his   
   unquestioning support for Israel's    
   far-right government of Benjamin Netanyahu is echoed by a disappointingly   
   large number of Canadian Jews, likely a majority.   
      
   But Jews have never been monolithic in their views on anything, to say the   
   least, and so among them are fierce detractors of Mr. Harper.  Some of these   
   critics have grown increasingly discomfited by the homage the so-called   
   leaders of the Jewish    
   community pay him.   
      
   But most Canadians would probably not even know these honourable Jewish   
   dissenters exist.  Dissenting individuals and groups such as Independent   
   Jewish Voices are largely shunned by the Jewish establishment, ignored by the   
   mainstream media and dismissed    
   as self-hating Jews by many heedless Conservatives.     
      
   Now, for the election, some critics are fighting back, publicly, noisily and   
   angrily.   
      
   Take lifelong social activist and progressive Zionist Ronnie Kaplansky (no   
   relation), who is angry as hell at the Jewish establishment and won't take it   
   any longer.    
      
   Last week's issue of the Canadian Jewish News, a weekly paper that usually   
   reflects the views of the Jewish leadership, carried an unusual full-age ad   
   produced and paid for by Mr. Kaplansky, putting strongly his tough case   
   against the Harper government.     
   It's a courageous move, not calculated to win him new Jewish friends, as he   
   perfectly well understands.   
      
   The ad notes Mr. Kaplansky's kosher credentials: He's both Canadian and   
   Jewish. His parents once lived on an Israeli kibbutz.  His sister is an   
   Israeli who has always lived in Israel.  And he's about to visit her for the   
   seventh time.   
      
   Mr. Kaplansky's ad castigates CJN readers for their apparent indifference to   
   the harm the Harper government has done to democracy and human rights in   
   Canada, which he documents.   In fact, he labels the Conservative Party as   
   nothing more than the old "   
   ultra-right-wing Reform Party."     
      
   One might describe the Netanyahu government much the same way.   
      
   In an interview, Mr. Kaplansky told me that he is frustrated that Canadian   
   Jews have embraced Mr. Harper as if nothing else matters but the Prime   
   Minister's attitude toward Israel.   Maybe that's why Mr. Kaplansky has only   
   modest expectations for his    
   initiative, and I fear he is right.   
      
   The "official" community spokespeople and institutions - and who exactly   
   elected them to represent all Jews? others ask - have become more closed, more   
   intolerant, than they have ever been.      
      
   There is no room for even minor dissent from the established party line on   
   Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu or Stephen Harper.  You're either with them all the   
   way or against them.  Never mind how badly the Conservatives have undermined   
   Canada's democratic    
   traditions and institutions.  They're on the Jewish/Israeli side.  Nothing   
   else apparently matters, as Ronnie Kaplansky observes.   
      
   Even when the Harper government has played politics with anti-Semitism, as it   
   so flagrantly has; even when it recklessly labels as anti-Semitic those who   
   merely disagree with it on the Middle East, as it has - even then, the Jewish   
   leadership remains    
   steadfastly Conservative.   But with friends like Mr. Harper, Jews need no   
   enemies.   
      
   Real foes of anti-Semitism do not throw the term around recklessly.   These   
   Conservatives debase the currency of real opposition to real anti-Semitism.    
   Is this good for the Jews, as my late mother always asked?  Does it help build   
   a more just and fair    
   world?     
      
   As everyone should know, there are few harsher critics of Mr. Netanyahu's   
   repressive policies than Israelis themselves, including many prominent ones.   
      
   What happened to Canadian Jews?  Is there not a single person among the   
   Canadian Jewish elite who will honourably say to this government: I repudiate   
   your right to play the anti-Semitic card for your own crass political   
   purposes.  You cannot have my vote    
   this time.   
      
   Or has the great Jewish liberal tradition been cancelled entirely by Canada's   
   Jewish establishment?   
   _____________________________   
      
   Page 5 of this issue:   
            http://www.cjnews.com/sites/default/files/files/07-30-15-TOR.pdf   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)