I don’t really see myself as a media outlet, but rather as an ordinary Jewish Canadian living in extraordinary times and facing extraordinary pressures. I hope that my arguments and experiences are somehow informative and representative of yours. And in some small way, I hope they contribute to our public interest, in Canada and Israel and around the world.

As a human rights advocate and pro-Israel advocate, I have often sought to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves, and to advocate for what I hope are just causes, with some international and enduring success. Like my family, which was always glued to the news, especially if it was about Jews or Israel, I am still glued to the news, especially if it is about Jews or Israel.

My earliest lesson in current events was not to talk while my Daddy was watching Walter Cronkite talking about Israel on the CBS News, especially if it was June 1967 and the Six Day War was on. I miss my father. And Walter Cronkite. And people we can trust. Don’t you?

In public life, when one is approached by strangers (my mother often warned me against talking to them or trusting them or taking candy from them), I had to learn the concept of due diligence and doing the background research to avoid embarrassment, risk and harm, to myself and to our community. One of the ironies of public life is that the more public one becomes, the more private one becomes, as a matter of necessity and safety.

My colleague at the Canadian Jewish Congress, Prof. Ed Morgan (now Mr. Justice Ed Morgan) suggested that I find out ‘what they want’ or enquire about their agendas when I was approached by strangers in the community. CIJA should start doing the same.

For human rights advocates like me, schooled on the equity principles ‘the personal is political’, it is sometimes hard to draw the line between the personal and the political, and public and private interests. We live in an age of over-disclosure on social media, and I am a security minded private citizen who has faced more than my share of security threats and attempts to intimidate me or silence me in my lawful work. It won’t ever happen. Buy a vowel. We won. Permanently and internationally. And we plan to keep it that way.........

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