Lacking Context where it matters: StandWithUS comes to the prairies
In late November 2024, I received an email from the University of Saskatchewan’s student Hillel chapter. An Israel Q&A workshop was advertised, which promised to help participants “learn some strategies for dealing with antisemitism caused by common misconceptions about Israel.”
The workshop would be facilitated by StandWithUs (SWU) – an international organization that educates youths and adults on how to combat antisemitism and anti-Zionism. The organization has expanded greatly over the last two decades and today, many local synagogues, Jewish youth and campus groups, and even non-Jewish groups, turn to SWU due to the organization’s accessibility. The group provides a host of readily available educational materials, including an array of programming for all age levels and interests. Another draw is that SWU claims to be politically “non-partisan,” though in-depth Jewish reporting has suggested the organization caters to the political right.
My family [...] were also concerned [...] as SWU promoted partisan politics, divisiveness, and watered-down facts rather than balanced information and constructive conversations.
The organization’s politics had been a concern for me back in 2023, when my hometown synagogue in Milwaukee, WI invited SWU to come educate youth about October 7 and the subsequent protests unfolding in cities and universities around the world. My family, who still live in Milwaukee and belong to the synagogue, were also concerned SWU was not a good fit for youth programming as SWU promoted partisan politics, divisiveness, and watered-down facts rather than balanced information and constructive conversations. We worried SWU would do more harm than good for our synagogue community. Still, our synagogue chose to proceed with the SWU event as planned.
Now, a year later, I was curious whether my concerns about SWU and their messaging were accurate, or if I was overreacting.
Lacking in connection
Even before I attended the event, there was something odd about the event’s promotion. I could not find the event listed on the website for the local synagogue (where the event itself was to be held). As of the writing of this article, the synagogue has not responded to my requests for clarification as to why this was the case. And the USask Hillel chapter which initially notified me about the event stated they were “unaffiliated” with the event.
When I eventually followed up with our Hillel chapter as to why they were unaffiliated with the event, I was told that:
“The Q&A event has no direct connection to Judaism, [sic] It was open to more than the demographic of Jewish students and Hillel members, and was a discussion rather than an activity so it did not make sense to affiliate Hillel in an event that does not align in the parameters of the organization’s goals.”
It seemed strange that the Hillel chapter claimed an event about antisemitism had “no direct connection to Judaism.” Claims about the event being “open to more than…Jewish students and Hillel members,” seemed inaccurate considering I was notified about the event only through our student Hillel email group. I had not seen any posters on campus, and the only social media for our Hillel chapter remains an obscure invite-only private account. All of this made it unclear who had actually coordinated the SWU visit to Saskatoon, and it was puzzling why Jewish groups promoted and provided space for SWU while also remaining non-committal in their association with the organization.
A curiously small crowd
The city of Saskatoon has a population that hovers above 250,000 people, but it has a very small Jewish population of under 1,000 individuals. Despite these relatively low numbers, Saskatoon residents have reported increased antisemitism, including alleged instances at a Pride event in 2024. With these examples in mind, I expected to find the event attended by at least a handful of concerned Jewish residents and allies ready to learn tools for combatting antisemitism and Israel misinformation. Instead, only the SWU rep (Yael Berkovich), a USask Hillel student organizer, one university student (whom I’ll refer to here as ‘Michael’), and myself were present.
Berkovich started the night by pulling up her slide deck and asking if anyone could define Zionism. With the Hillel student organizer seated up near Berkovich and acting more like a host, it was clear “audience participation” would fall either to myself or Michael. And Michael was already slouching in his seat, like he already knew all the material and had come to the event more as a favour than anything else.
SWU’s definition left no room for history or nuance, which left us with a definition of Zionism absent of even the smallest crumbs of context I had received in my Jewish education that was far from historically or politically balanced.
I did my best to define “Zionism.” I said it was a political ideology from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when European Jews (due to persecution) believed it was best to return to their biblical and religious homeland of Israel. It was a purposely broad and imperfect definition, one that avoided the fact that many Jews at the time of the ideology’s emergence did not even support it. Still, I expected my explanation to fall more-or-less in-line with SWU’s own. What followed surprised me.
The next few slides of the presentation boiled Zionism down to a matter of Jewish “Indigeneity” – a term I had never heard paired with Zionism until this past year. Per the SWU slide deck, Israel was the Jewish people’s Indigenous homeland as evidenced in our religious texts, and this was all there was to it. SWU’s definition left no room for history or nuance, which left us with a definition of Zionism absent of even the smallest crumbs of context I had received in my Jewish education that was far from historically or politically balanced.
Berkovich’s next few slides put two news headlines side-by-side. One mentioned something about Israel targeting civilians. The other mentioned civilians being targeted in Afghanistan.
Berkovich said these headlines were misleading and that understanding context was important. The article about Israel, she explained, was actually about Palestinians “refusing to pay rent.” Nothing more than that. Later, I would discover that what the headline was referring to was the Sheikh Jarrah housing controversy – a debate about land and property rights in Jerusalem, which in 2021 sparked an uptick in Israeli-Palestinian violence.
I asked Berkovich about the second headline about Afghanistan. What was the context to that one? Berkovich paused and said she had no answer. That is, she lacked the context she claimed others so critically lacked about Israel. I let her non-answer hang in the air.
Seemingly rattled, she proceeded on to her next slides focused on political cartoons. They were familiar political cartoons of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in caricature or Israel’s blue Star of David affixed to various violent and bloody scenes. As Berkovich flipped through the slides, she said that while people have a right to disagree with Netanyahu and his government, specific Israeli policies should be named before they are criticized. She said that it was important to not let Israel’s critics just offload their feelings onto us, but rather that they should name the specific Israeli policies they opposed.
However, it seemed this same standard of hyper specificity was not expected for those supporting the State of Israel. Berkovich said that when people accused Israel of things like practising “apartheid” against the Palestinian people, it was important for us to tell the public how these accusations made us feel hurt. It was important to tell Israel critics they were being anti-Jewish. Moreover, Berkovich said that while Israel was not perfect, it was important to make sure the public knew that there were Palestinian floor-managers at Israeli companies like SodaStream. Israel also has Black and Arab Mizrahi Jews who supposedly live free and without discrimination from their white and European Ashkenazi counterparts.
On this last point, I asked Berkovich if she was Mizrahi (Jews of Arab and African heritage), thinking perhaps she had lived experience in Israel as a Mizrahi Jew. However, Berkovich said she was of white European Ashkenazi descent. Here, Berkovich promoted a Jewish colour-blindness that was also part of my own Jewish education - lumping together as one big homogenous Jewish family, ignorant of ethnic and cultural identities and experience or racialized inter-Jewish violence. Perhaps my frustration showed on my face.
The Hillel student organizer chimed in, maybe sensing what I was driving at and wanting to redirect the conversation. They said Jewish students would be tabling the next day in the USask student union for Mizrahi Heritage Month – something even Mizrahi Jews are critical of for its tokenization of their history and culture. The event was another SWU initiative, and one that our Hillel chapter was also “unaffiliated” with. Why a heritage event about Mizrahi Jews lacked qualifications for being sufficiently about Judaism and Israel, I had no idea. Meanwhile, our Hillel chapter claimed our “Jewish hamsa paint night” had clearer “connections to Mizrahi Jewish heritage in Israel,” and therefore qualified as an example of “goals aligning” between SWU and Hillel. This seemed like an odd qualifier to join the groups, considering the hamsa is far from exclusively Jewish or Israeli. I was encouraged to attend both events.
Motivations unclear
At this point, the whole workshop started to feel a bit empty, a bit lacking in specific practical application for combatting local antisemitism and misinformation on Israel. Then, as if Berkovich had read my mind, she pulled up the next slides on conversation strategies about Israel and antisemitism. We had also received a handout. Among the deep insights offered were things like: asking clarifying questions, identifying facts to support your own points, and ending the conversation on a positive note.
Next, Berkovich introduced the 10-80-10 rule. She explained that 10 per cent of people would agree with “us” when it came to supporting Jewish people – and by extension – the State of Israel, while, a whopping 80 per cent of the public was supposedly unsure or had no opinion about Israel or what antisemitism looked like. Berkovich explained that it was our job to effectively win over this 80 per cent to support Israel and combat antisemitism. Meanwhile, the remaining 10 per cent were part of the “loud minority” – that is, the Palestinian rights advocates and boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) proponents who were not worth engaging with.
I asked Berkovich for clarity about this “loud minority.” Did these people not have the same goals as we did – that is, an end to the Israel-Gaza war? An end to all the killing and displacement of civilians and return of the hostages? An end to hate and ignorance?
Berkovich admitted that while we purportedly shared the same goals with these Palestinian rights advocates and BDS proponents, these same individuals believed ending the war could only be achieved by denying Jewish people their “Indigeneity.” We could not waste our time on this final 10 per cent, but instead needed to win over the supposedly uninformed 80 per cent. It seemed we were supposed to accomplish this task by crying foul about hurt feelings, and claiming Israel was not racist or practising apartheid because Israel had Black Jewish people and employed Palestinians. Meanwhile, there seemed to be no use for long, challenging, and even painful conversations with those we disagreed with. These were, regretfully, the same kinds of strategies I had used on campuses a decade ago when I identified, like most college-educated Jews my age, as a Zionist. It seemed nothing had changed.
SWU is far more concerned with stoking division by lumping the world into juvenile percentages of Israel supporters vs. everyone else.
Michael then asked Berkovich about how to talk to others about social media videos which supposedly relied on “feels” and “vibes” rather than in-depth context when it came to Israeli violence against the Palestinian people. The conversation quickly veered into Berkovich’s unscripted thoughts on all the unfair criticism she had heard levelled against Israel when doing SWU tabling at Canadian universities. Among these criticisms, she said she could not square how Israel was being accused of genocide, while a country like Russia had not yet been accused of genocide in its war with Ukraine.
I could not let the misinformation of the night continue. I pointed out to Berkovich that what she claimed was not true. That is, Russia was in fact currently being accused of genocide against the Ukrainian people, and had been since its 2020 invasion of Ukraine. Berkovich paused for a moment, and admitted that this information about Russia and genocide claims was new to her.
I found it difficult to believe that Berkovich was unaware of the political realities in the rest of the world, and her own country. Canada as a whole has a deep and visible history of Ukrainian settlement, particularly in Canada’s Western provinces (stretching as far east as Manitoba). Saskatoon, specifically, has the highest percentage of people per capita out of any major Canadian city who claim Ukrainian heritage. The city has several Ukrainian churches, restaurants, and even a Ukrainian Museum. In town, I cannot go a single day without seeing the Ukrainian flag flying from doorsteps, on bumper stickers, or even on license plates. In some parts of town, the yellow and blue Ukrainian flag seems to rival even the Canadian maple leaf.
Given Berkovich’s experience organizing pro-Israel programs at universities across Western Canada, I would have expected her to at least know some of this history. Unfortunately, Berkovich’s ignorance seemed emblematic of SWU’s real priorities and focus.
Grappling with the complexities
Instead of providing a space for informed and collaborative community conversation about combatting hate, SWU is far more concerned with stoking division by lumping the world into hollow percentages of Israel supporters vs. everyone else. By all appearances, SWU would have us believe the world is a grossly ignorant place when it comes to the Jewish people and Israel, with even Jews themselves being clueless about their own history and culture.
In my experience, though, Saskatoon’s Jewish community is like many other Jewish communities in North America, in which the focus of the past, present, and future still centres and prioritizes Jewish suffering over all else.
As a Jewish person not from Saskatoon’s Jewish community, I am in no position to give suggestions about what is “best” for the Jewish community in Saskatoon in terms of education about Israel and anti-semitism. In my experience, though, Saskatoon’s Jewish community is like many other Jewish communities in North America, in which the focus of the past, present, and future still centres and prioritizes Jewish suffering over all else. StandWithUs is but one of the newer organizations employed with helping us bang this drum, one that has been banging since I have been alive and for many decades prior.
As of the writing of this article, hundreds of Palestinian human beings have been reported killed in the latest wave of Israeli airstrikes on Gaza. In the West Bank, Palestinian human beings continue to face ongoing violence. Meanwhile, StandWithUs is promoting a 5-star VIP trip to Israel. As Jewish people, if this does not strike us as incredibly inappropriate, we are far from having anything resembling honest and difficult conversations about Israel and anti-semitism, let alone conversations about Palestinian rights and self-determination.
The simplest act we as Jewish communities could take in this regard is to stop banging our own drum. Even simpler, we should at the very least stop giving propaganda groups, like StandWithUs, the mallet.