This past weekend I
was in Washington DC with our youth on a wonderful social justice weekend. While we have been doing youth group trips to
various cities over the years, this trip was unique. First we joined a program called L’taken,
which means “to fix”, sponsored by the Religious Action Centre. For more than 50 years,
"the RAC" has been the hub of Jewish social justice and legislative
activity in Washington, they educate and mobilize the Reform Jewish community
on legislative and social concerns, advocating on more than 70 different
issues, including economic justice, civil rights, religious liberty, Israel and
more. The L’taken program brings around 300 teenagers from around north American
to take an in depth look at social concerns and then learn how to take action
on those issues. For example, we talked
about homelessness and poverty and heard from a former homeless man named Steve
who was abused and lived on a bench for two years about a block from the white
house. He is now able to find work and a home but talked about his
struggles. We then learned about the
root causes of poverty – mental illness, homelessness, abuse, drug and alcohol etc.
then we talked about how to take action on poverty. We studied Jewish texts on
the mitzvoth that require us to help the needy.
We talked about how we can do food drives and volunteers at soup kitchens. But these address the symptoms, not solve the
problem. The government can have a much
bigger role in legislating towards alleviating poverty such as raising the
minimum wage or better health care or federal job training. As Canadians we were lucky to learn about how
Canada has taken a much more progressive role in these issues, but while we
have accomplished a lot the work is far from done. So we learned how to lobby the government to
make effective change through new and better laws.
After poverty we focused on Israel, women’s’
rights, climate change, worldwide malaria and more. Each time doing the same thing, examining the
issues, learning the root causes, studying Jewish values that correspond and finding
out ways to take action to solve the problems.
Of course we had time to hang out with other teenagers, have great
meals, see the sights of Washington like the monuments, museums and shopping
and stay up late eating pizza. But we
also learned a lot and the culmination was our visit Monday morning to the
Canadian Embassy. Throughout Sunday, we
focused on how to write a speech and present it to legislators and other
government representatives. Monday was
the time to put our work into action. Each student put on his or her best
professional attire, wrote a speech about an issue they felt strongly about and
entered the embassy board room to meet with our Canadian ambassadors’ representatives. We spoke mainly on three issues – a strong
relationship between Canada and Israel, Canada’s role in addressing climate
change and women’s’ rights. For two of
these issues, we were preaching to the choir.
Canada has led the way on fighting for women’s rights on a global
scale. Canada has also been a great
friend to Israel with economic and military trade and support. On climate change we felt Canada could do
more by donating more to the worldwide green fund, curbing greenhouse gases and
switching to renewable energy. I sat
back with amazement as our teenagers delivered their words with great emotion
and seriousness, forcing the embassy officials to take notes and answer how our
government can do better. It was a great
weekend and hopefully we can continue to build on the work by meeting with our
MP and MPP’s here in Oakville.
In the discussion on Israel it was hard not to
notice events happening around us in Washington. Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu had arrived to
speak at the AIPAC conference on Sunday and Monday and then was going to
address the US house of representatives on Tuesday, one of just a handful of
foreign leaders to ever have that opportunity.
It was all over the news and seemingly all everyone could talk
about.
The topic of Netanyahu’s speech as we all know was
about the current round of negotiations between The P5+1, a group of six world powers[1] which in 2006 joined the diplomatic efforts with Iran with regard to its nuclear program. P5 are the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, namely United States, Russia, China, United Kingdom, and France, plus Germany
Israel is clearly not on that list and I am amazed
that our little tiny country has such a voice in world affairs. This issue is of particular importance
because while no country in the world seems to be happy that Iran is trying to
acquire nuclear weapons, there is only one country that is a target, and this
is Israel. And not just hints, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has
called for the annihilation of Israel.
The
former PM of Iran Amhanejiad denies the Holocaust and calls for Israel’s
destruction time and time again. Not of
the p plus 1 countries have been called out for obliteration like Israel, which
also happens to be within firing distance of Iran’s new rockets. Those rockets were just tested over the past
few months and can hit our entire homeland with ease. What if they carried nuclear war heads? We are not at war with Iran but it is clear
that Iran sponsor terrorism by Hezbollah and Hamas to attack Israel. They are involved in supplying money and arms
to the regimes in Syria and Lebanon and support all anti-Israel activity. They walk the walk and talk the talk. So why would Israel want a country that calls
for its destruction to be in possession of nuclear weapons, of course we are
doing everything we can to halt their progress.
The UN in 2006 upon heard of Iran’s plans to develop the bomb imposed a
halt, to no avail. For years they passed
sanctions and demanded inspections, some worked for a little while, some were
merely window dressing but Iran continued.
They build bunkers underground, they have over 10,000 centrifuges, and
they brought in experts from Russia.
They are going full speed ahead.
Israel tried other options such as computer viruses which set back their
work for a few years but nothing has worked.
It is possible there is a bombing option but it presents many
problems. The sites are spread out, hard
to find and extremely difficult to neutralize effectively. Iran would bomb Israel in retaliation,
perhaps other Arab countries would join, and that could be disaster.
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