CUPE errs on Israel

I'm on the phone to Mitch Bellman. He's executive director of the Jewish Federation of Ottawa.

"At this point, we're encouraging members of the Jewish community to speak out by writing letters to the newspapers and to CUPE's Sid Ryan. I know that a great many are."

They might also ask Ryan this: Was it coincidence or something sinister that the vote took place on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, that would have seen any observant Jews among the delegation stay away that day.

I ask Mitch Bellman if the resolution surprised him. "More a disappointment than a surprise. It's so short-sighted. CUPE members should express their outrage over the way their leadership strayed so far from the bounds of reasonableness. But, they're not allowed to decertify from the union."

You're right Mitch Bellman, the 200,000 of them in the province should be outraged. But if their flaccid minds are stuck in the political ignorance of the 900 delegates who represented them at the Canadian Union Of Public Employees (Ontario) convention in Ottawa last weekend, they won't.

Their national leader, Sid Ryan, says the Numskull Nine Hundred voted "overwhelmingly" to support an "international campaign of boycott, divestment, and sanctions" against "apartheid" Israel "until that state recognizes the Palestinian right to self-determination" which would include the "right" of Palestinian refugees to return to Israel --a key component of the resolution.

Ryan, a perennial losing candidate for the NDP in provincial and federal elections (four so far) has countered the hurricane of criticism over the CUPE resolution by saying: "This is not an attack on the Jewish people. It's an objection to the state of Israel's policies on Palestinians."

No, Sid Ryan, it's an attack on the Jewish people in that the people of Israel are predominantly Jewish, not, say, Buddhist, and the state of Israel was formed in 1948 as a homeland for the Jews, not, say, Hindus, and if millions of Palestinian refugees are allowed into Israel then Israel ceases to be a Jewish state, it loses its raison d'etre.

Ryan and his CUPE are getting slammed with letters, and here are excerpts from one sent to him that you haven't seen by the Toronto novelist and historian Nicholas Maes --your response, Sid Ryan?

"Mr. Ryan: Explain to me please CUPE's platform on the Untouchables of India --some 100 million people who for centuries have been stigmatized and victimized by the ruling castes of India. Explain for me, too, CUPE's stance on Robert Mugabe's regime --this nutcase has marginalized the white farmers of Zimbabwe, ruined the economy, arrested and tortured thousands of citizens and overall brutalized the country.

"How about Ahmadinjead of Iran with his drive for nuclear weapons and extreme prejudice towards Jews, or Kim Il Jong of North Korea who has starved a generation of North Koreans in pursuit of his advanced weapon systems, or just about every government in Africa with its scandalous degradation of its citizens.

"What's that? You DON'T have any public platform with respect to any of the above? But you DO have it in for the Israelis and their protective wall, introduced after Palestinian terror attacks killed 1,000-plus innocent Jewish souls?

"Your organization, whose essential mandate is to safeguard workers' rights in Canada and does not include meddling in international politics. Yet, your leadership feels that this single, exceedingly complex issue of the wall is worthy of intervention. How curious.

"Here's a thought experiment, Mr. Ryan. Put a kippah/yarmulke on your head and wander into any Muslim country in the Middle East ... The next time terrorists (or shall I say 'freedom fighters') launch yet another attack against the U.S., Spain, England, Israel, or any other country they have in their crosshairs, I hope that you, Mr. Ryan, and your loved ones are not the ones who end up paying the price. They may come close, and that's the only way this 'leadership' of yours is going to gain any sense.

Was it coincidence or something sinister that the vote took place on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, that would have seen any observant Jews among the delegation stay away that day.

They do that all the time at the UN.

There are essentially two components that these unions don't recognize or don't care about that make their resolutions very problematic.

The first is this idea that they believe Israel must be restricted in size to the armistice line of the 1948 war. What makes them experts in international law, interpreters of UN resolution 242 and 338, etc? They are speaking out for an imposed solution to this conflict, in a scornful manner. They care not about any developments on the ground like the withdrawal from Gaza, the creation of the Palestinian Autority, the expression to withdraw from more land, etc. They care only about the so called "settlements" and the security fence. They want to see Israel punished or forced to accept the diktats of others despite its very valid security concerns, it's rights under the Geneva Convention, it's valid property claims, and the historic injustices laid upon it, etc.

The second is the clincher - this claim of so-called "right of return". This is essentially asking Israel to destroy itself. Obviously a ridiculous demand that Israel will not accept. And the unreasonableness of this is so obvious, yet they put it in the resolution anyway. Clearly, the union is opposed to Jewish nationalism. Arguably this alone should makes the resolution anti-semitic, but compounded with the other demands makes it clear:

They want the Jews confined to a small area of land, on which they must be a minority people. That's clear-cut anti-semitism in my book.

On the other side of the same coin, they don't seem to care much about the Palestinians either.

They don't go to visit Palestinian academics, they don't vote to encourage trade or investment in the Palestinians, they don't call for Palestinians to unify the factions and negotiate.

They are completely unaware of the fact that if Israel did withdraw to the 1948 line that the Palestinians would be divided in at least 5 parts: Gaza, the West Bank, Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan. They seem unaware of just how dependant on the Israelis the Palestinians are - they use Israeli money and banks, Israel electric, Israeli telephones, and Israeli sewage and water.

This is why in part why it is such a complicated issue, but definitely why these votes reveal a near total ignorance of the issues, the facts, or the real needs and wants of the people - both people.

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