Not in My Name

by Peter Bleyer
May 15, 2002


Almost twenty years ago, I attended a synagogue service in Toronto to
celebrate the bar mitzvah of a relative. During his sermon, the rabbi
referred to recent events at Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.

I sat stupefied as this apparently learned man extolled the generosity of
his people (the Jews) and the good fortune of the Palestinians to have
faced them, and not others in their moment of great vulnerability. For
surely, he suggested, their fate would then have been far worse.

The man in charge of that particular military operation, and subsequently
held personally responsible by an Israeli judicial commission, for
facilitating the massacre of hundreds of Palestinians, was current Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

I quietly left the synagogue. It was an attempt to regain my composure but
also, I hoped, a signal of my dissent.

A short while later, one person joined me. My father appeared at the door
of the synagogue and commiserated with me. Though we used very few words,
we shared our feelings of dismay.

My father, Stephen Bleyer, was a Holocaust survivor. His own bar mitzvah
had been celebrated in a Hungarian town, only months before his deportation
to Auschwitz. Unlike most of his family and his community, he survived the
Nazi death camps and eventually immigrated to Canada in 1951.

Later in the 1980s, and particularly into the 1990s, my father became
active in Holocaust remembrance and education. And by 1994, was elected
president of the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre a position he
retained until his death early in 1997.

My father gave me many reasons to be proud of him, though never more so
than during this period of his life. He promoted reconciliation between
Jewish survivors and the descendants of their oppressors by backing
innovative programs bringing young Germans and Austrians to work at the
Montreal centre. He spoke out against the injustices he saw in the world
today. From his lips the words never again were always intended in the
broadest and most universal sense.

Today, as I consider the messages being promoted by the official voices
of the Canadian Jewish community in their headlong rush to pledge
solidarity to the state of Israel, I have more reason than ever to miss my
father.

With my family, I visited Israel in the 1970s. I discussed the experience
with my maternal grandfather. Zaida, a gentle and generous man, was amazed
there could be a land where all the soldiers and police are Jews. As a
Jew who had emigrated from early 20th-century Poland and its pogroms, this
was an understandable reaction. But from my own vantage point, it didnt
feel right.

My father understood this. Years later, after visits to refugee camps and
communities in Gaza and the West Bank, I unfortunately collected more than
enough evidence to confirm my worst doubts and fears.

Even if only a small percentage of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) actions
reported by Israeli, Palestinian and international human rights agencies
are confirmed, the events of the last few weeks will stand as a dramatic
indictment of Israels abuse of its power. Bombing of civilian populations,
use of civilians as human shields, denial of medical attention and basic
necessities of life, torture, theft of personal property, destruction of
medical facilities and the detention and killing of civilians have all been
documented by the United Nations, Amnesty International and other observers.

Rallying in unconditional support of any state, government or army as it
commits war crimes against a civilian population is not a constructive
contribution to the critical quest for peace. It is not a position that I
can take, or will ever have to justify to my young children.

The entrenched enmities built up over generations between Israeli Jews and
Palestinians will not suddenly and magically disappear. Israelis and
Palestinians know far better than most they will have to make peace with
their enemy. The question they face now is how many people must die before
they reject the politics of blood and return to the politics of peace.

Israel does not need encouragement from its friends and supporters. It
needs pressure to end the illegal, immoral and counterproductive occupation
and settlement of occupied lands.

Until the day the official voices of Canadas Jewish community recognize
this need, they cannot speak in my name.

Would my father, were he alive today, have agreed with my perspective?

Frankly, I will never know. I do know that, looking into his eyes, I would
have seen the anguish he faced as he considered the inexcusable acts being
committed against innocent civilians and the inevitable long-term
consequences.

I do know, were he here, we could count on at least one more constructive
voice for tolerance, compassion and justice.


Peter Bleyer is a political economist, policy analyst and consultant who
has worked on trade, security and social and economic justice issues. He
lives in Ottawa. This article first appeared in the Ottawa Citizen.
Reprinted with permission.