Judy Rebick has lined up with a handful of other Jews - in Toronto - to protest Israel's actions in Gaza. Some people wonder why - why would Judy or any other self-respecting Jew line up with those people who are opposed to Israel? Israel's opponents have ready access to the media, and tend to receive a sympathetic hearing - do they really need the added voice of a Jewish woman like Ms. Rebick?
First of all, let me stress the fact that I fully and truly believe that Judy is absolutely honest in the position she is taking. I am not at all suggesting that expediency - of any sort - is involved.
That said, I must say that I think that Ms. Rebick's actions - and the position she has taken - are a product of the company she keeps, and has kept for some time. Her friends and colleagues are - politically - well to the left of the average Canadian, and folks on the portside tend to be anti-Israel, if not anti-Semitic. Portsiders will insist that any seeming opposition to Israel is simply and solely opposition to some particular policy or action on Israel's part. Yet, it does seem that these people are always found in opposition to Israel - no example comes immediately to mind of their lining up with Israel on any particular question.
Judy cannot have travelled on the portside of politics all these years and not have picked up just a little of this automatic tendency to look askance at anything Israel does. Similarly, it seems very likely that she may - to some degree - have picked up the tendency of portsiders to view the conflict between the Palestinians and Israel as David versus Goliath. In this version of that old story, the Palestinians are David, and Israel is Goliath, and the Palestinians - as the little guy - are always the sympathetic character. As the big guy - the guy with the wealth and the power (firepower including nukes) - Israel is expected to restrain herself, and understand, when the much weaker and poorer Palestinians resort to rockets and suicide-bombers.
It would probably be very hard for Ms. Rebick to continue travelling in portside political circles if she did not take a very public stand against what Israel is now doing in Gaza. Many of her portside friends probably harbour feelings of antipathy towards her because she is a Jew - and may or not be be able to hide those feelings - and the situation ongoing in Gaza (inflaming Muslims and their portside friends) can only be making a bad situation worse. Judy Rebick's stance - today - has probably not erased or even reduced the extent of that antipathy, but it may have ensured that that feeling hasn't grown worse.
