Green Party leader Elizabeth May supported a move to broaden language found in the blogger's original resolution to call for any charitable organization's status to be revoked if they are in violation of Canadian or international law.
Recently, two Holocaust survivors and human rights activists died, both having lived long and fruitful lives.
Over the course of his life, the writer Elie Wiesel received many prizes and much praise for his activism, including speaking out for the beleaguered peoples of Bosnia and Rwanda. Hedy Epstein was no less passionate an advocate; at the age of 90, she was arrested for protesting the fatal shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown by police in Ferguson, Missouri.
But it was the conflict in the Middle East that flamed Ms. Epstein's social justice passions the most, using her pulpit as a survivor of the atrocities committed against the Jews in the Second World War to encourage people to help stop the sufferings of Palestinians caused by Israel's occupation.
As a Jew committed to tikkun olam, the ideals of social justice that I learned from my parents, I follow the Hedy Epstein school of Holocaust lessons: two wrongs do not make a right.
It is why I decided to submit a resolution to the Green Party to revoke Revenue Canada's charitable status of the Jewish National Fund of Canada, and why I co-sponsored the resolution calling for the boycott, divestment and sanctioning of Israel until they end their occupation of Palestine.
While both resolutions have been roundly condemned by some as anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli, including the former president of the Green Party, Paul Estrin, I have chosen to heed the words of Ms. Epstein: "Remember the past, don't hate, but don't be a bystander."
I am proud of my Jewish heritage and traditions. My actions do not make me anti-Semitic or anti-Israel.
The policies of the JNF are well documented. Both the UN Committee for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the U.S. State Department have called the JNF discriminatory because of its practice of selling or leasing land only to Jews. But more important, the Attorney General of Israel -- in a 2005 ruling against the JNF -- stated that their practice of refusing to sell or lease their lands to non-Jewish citizens of Israel amounts to discrimination.
Even a JNF official has acknowledged that "a large portion of JNF parks are on lands where Palestinian villages used to stand, and the forests are intended to camouflage this" (page 43).
In Canada, the JNF has raised money for its project in Israel, Canada Park. A beautiful 80,000 acres of lush greenery, this oasis of rest and recreation also happens to sit atop the ruins of the Palestinian villages of Deir Ayyub, Imwas and Yalu. The residents of the latter two villages along with those of neighbouring village, Beit Nuba, were forcibly expelled from their homes and the villages deliberately destroyed during the 1967 war. The villagers played no role in the fighting and held aloft white flags when Israeli soldiers entered their communities.
Under the guise of "greening" the area, the seized land was then given to the JNF, which conveniently built Canada Park a few years later. This contravenes Canadian government policy, which does not recognize permanent Israeli control over lands occupied since 1967, as well as international law.
CBC's Fifth Estateproduced a documentary ("Canada Park: A Park with no Peace," 1991) about the forced expulsion, the deliberate destruction of the villages and the establishment of the park. In the words of former Israeli parliamentarian Uri Avnery, "By putting that park there and calling it 'Canada Park', you give a Canadian cover-up to a war crime."
As a party that emphasizes our commitment to the environment, neither should the party stand idly by... when such abuses are subsidized by our taxpayer dollars.
To this day, there has never been any acknowledgement or recognition of the actions by the Israeli government or compensation given to the nearly 10,000 people who were forced out of their homes, and who have not been granted the right to return, as stipulated under international law, while Canada Park physically prevents any return from taking place. Yet, because of JNF's charitable status, the park continues to be subsidized by the Canadian taxpayer.
It is not easy to move forward in the face of such sustained, yet patently false, attacks. I am proud of my Jewish heritage and traditions. My actions do not make me anti-Semitic or anti-Israel. Neither are the Green Party and its leader anti-Semitic or anti-Israel. The Green Party and its leader are absolutely not anti-Semitic or anti-Israel.
But as a party that emphasizes our commitment to the environment, neither should the party stand idly by while grave human rights abuses are done in the name of environmentalism, particularly when such abuses are subsidized by our taxpayer dollars.
On Saturday, my proposed resolution on the JNF was ultimately defeated in the thrust and parry of party politics by turning the motion into a generic call for any charitable organization's status to be revoked if they are in violation of Canadian or international law. But on Sunday, the Green Party stood by its principles and voted overwhelmingly in favour of the BDS motion.
The debates, carried out in a public forum with media and observers present, and the passing of the BDS motion signals that although one battle may have been lost, ultimately the war has been won in the march towards a just peace in the Middle East.
I like to think that Hedy Epstein, whose memoir was titled Remembering Is Not Enough, would have been proud of my actions.
Updated and reprinted from the Hill Times, Saturday, Aug. 6, 2016 6:51 a.m.
Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook
MORE ON HUFFPOST:
