Waking Up Jewish |
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| Written by Lia Tarachansky, Photos by Ryan Davies |
| Monday, 24 March 2008 |
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“I grew up in Toronto. My mother’s from Montreal and my Father’s from Winnipeg” tells Ben Saifer. Now living in Ottawa, he is an activist with Not In Our Name (NION): Jews Against Israeli Wars. “I grew up relatively secular. We’d go to synagogue on the high holidays, but I think it was mostly for the tradition, as opposed to any particularly religious sentiment.” During the Second World War, Ben’s paternal grandfather served as a soldier on the Canadian side while his maternal grandparents fled from Romania and Austria. “They lost a lot of close friends and family members during the Holocaust and were forced to constantly be on the run in order to stay alive.” Growing up Jewish, he celebrated his Bar Mitzvah at age 13 and went to Jewish summer camp. Listening to him speak I’m thrown back by how strong Jewish traditions are among the Diaspora. When I was growing up in Palestine/Israel the closest I’d come to the Star of David was seeing it on the flag. Corey Balsam is another organizer with NION, and a student of Human Rights (part of the Public Affairs and Policy Management program) at Carleton University. “I grew up in Ottawa in the Jewish community, so I had Hebrew school after day school.” Attending the very multicultural day school Leslie Park, he was exposed to people with origins spanning the globe. “One of my best friends growing up was Palestinian,” he says. “My father doesn’t care about the Settlements,” Corey tells me, “as long as we [the Jews] have a place to go if we are ever persecuted again. It’s derived from his experiences as the child of a Holocaust survivor.” In the late eighteenth century, modern Zionists dreamed of Jewish people around the world having a new homeland. But this was based upon, among other things, the myth that historical Palestine was ‘a land without a people for a people without a land’. This became the ideological basis for modern political Zionism, and has also been used to justify the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
“One day I received an e-mail telling me that some guy named Norman Finkelstein was coming to give a talk on campus. I’d never heard of him, but the email was very aggressive, instructing me not to attend because Finkelstein [was] horrible… [It said that he] dominates the microphone, and spreads propaganda. [But] I was not impressed by this heavy handed approach.” Ben attended the talk anyway. “It was a very charged environment and seeing that this was my first exposure to critical analysis of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, [Finkelstein’s] words were quite provocative. When I returned to my dorm room that night, something fundamental had changed. I was pretty broken.” He continues, “I really had a strong break from the Jewish Community as I started learning more about Israel and Zionism,” adding that it was pushed by “the fact that there seemed to be unquestioning support and an endless supply of justifications for this unbelievable oppression” against the Palestinians. Today, in organizing with NION, he feels he’s made a round-a-bout homecoming. “A lot of the people I organize with now are Jewish, so I feel like I’m strongly reconnecting with the Jewish Community.”
During the trip, which runs ten days, participants climb Mount Mossadah, visit Tel-Aviv night-clubs (where Birthright pays for their drinks) and relax on the beaches of the resort town of Eilat. Needless to say, they do not visit Palestine. “It’s just a party,” he tells me. But the party left a strange taste in his mouth. Before going, Corey started reading a book that talked about massacres against the Palestinians perpetrated by Israeli Offence Forces during the Deir Yassin Massacre of 1948. “I hadn’t given that much thought to [the region’s] politics at that point, but I was reading this book on the trip and was telling everyone ‘did you know about this? Did you know about this?’” “I remember one guy saying ‘Shhh… I know, but we’re not supposed to talk about it.’ And at that point it was pretty awakening for me.” “The birthright trip is very effective. In spite of all my questioning, I’m pretty sure I left more ‘pro-Israeli’ than I was prior,” says Corey. “But there was one thing that I absolutely rejected. One day the president of the trip was talking to us. He was saying that if we have an opinion against Israel, we should come to Israel and express it. But if we’re out there, we have to stand with Israel and defend it, no matter what. And I immediately put up my hand and said ‘no! This is ridiculous!’”
“All my activism is motivated by what happened to my own family during the Holocaust. Despite its skewed usage by various pro-Israel organizations, the phrase ‘never again’ does not give Israel free rein to ethnically cleanse, occupy, and oppress the Palestinian people. On the contrary, ‘never again’ means that we will never allow any people, Jewish or otherwise, to be persecuted. I have come to realize that it is only by taking a principled and unapologetic stand for justice that I can ever hope to live up to this powerful phrase.” Corey agrees. Much effort is expended to ensure that Jewish people around the world are oblivious to the resolvable issues of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. Such oblivion is perpetuated by entities such as the mainstream media, the Israeli government, or the forces within the United States that go far to support Israel’s actions. They would rather keep us holding onto the wishful belief that Israel is that safe-haven that will save us from our persecutors. But a growing number of us are awakening to the nightmare endured by the Palestinians. We are waking up to see Israel’s actions as oppressive and genocidal and we will stand for nothing short of justice and real peace.
© 2008 Lia Tarachansky, Photos by Ryan Davies; licensee (Cult)ure Magazine.
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Growing up Jewish in North America can be about as thrilling as a gefilte fish in Matzah ball soup. It can also be revolutionary, as two Jewish activists, Ben and Corey, explain to me how it shaped their dreams and views. They speak of how they pushed away from the blindfolding and brainwashing of Zionism.
Slowly, Ben, Corey and I have woken up and learned to separate Judaism from Zionism, history from propaganda, and defence from offence. Ben recounts the personal metamorphosis that was triggered upon joining the mailing list of the Jewish Student Association during his first year of university.
Meanwhile, Corey’s awakening has its roots in the Birthright-Taglit program – a trip free of charge for all Jews, funded by the “government of Israel, independent Jewish philanthropists, and Jewish communities throughout the world,” according to the organization’s website. 
Recounting getting into activism, Ben tells me: “Last year I organized a big dialogue event. That’s where my entry point was – talking about justice and peace. I think dialogue is important for our local community, but when dealing with a horrible injustice like apartheid in Palestine/Israel, dialogue must be seen as an entry point to action, not as the end in itself.”
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