By Ben Murane, Executive Director
With everything in the Middle East happening so fast, where do you turn for news and analysis?
If Haaretz isn’t already one of your most important news sources, then it should be. No other Israeli publication offers daily analysis of the most important issues with the honesty, integrity, and progressive angle that Haaretz does.
On Sunday, September 14th, Haaretz is coming to Toronto for a one-day conference featuring their editors and journalists, as well as a star-studded lineup of Israeli opposition politicians and civil society leaders. Alongside them will be Canadian politicians and community leaders.
Tickets are now on sale for the Haaretz conference – and they will sell out fast.
We are proud to co-produce this unique Haaretz event with JSpaceCanada.
This conference is important because there’s a big hole in Canadian Jewry’s public discourse. Israelis — across the political spectrum — have been loudly criticizing their government since its election three years ago. Those voices are rarely reflected here.
The most stunning example to me is our domestic discourse about the hostages still captive in Gaza. Despite the fact that so many of us are disgusted with the current Israeli government, almost never do we hear the official demands of the hostage families and the majority of Israelis: immediate elections and a state inquiry into October 7th. These demands are repeated weekly from the demonstrations in Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square.
But here at home, the hostage families’ demands have been conspicuously edited out, excluded from synagogue pulpits and official October 7th commemorations. Yet according to recent polls, Canadian Jews support the hostage protest movement in Israel by a 2:1 margin.
In the pages of Haaretz every day, you can read the complex reality. You’ll read about both starvation in Gaza and antisemitism in Canada. On the same day a few weeks ago, there were live updates on Iranian missiles falling on innocent Israelis, op-eds from Palestinian citizens of Israel about their towns’ lack of public shelters, as well as a prophetic editorial taking Iranian ambitions deadly seriously while lambasting the government’s moral failure for again choosing overblown promises of total military victory rather than diplomacy. All of these things are true at the same time.
This Haaretz conference is bringing to Toronto an embrace of reality: that we must always hold two truths equally at all times. We’re going to do so by engaging with Israelis — a variety of political leaders, a diversity of civil society leaders including Jews and Palestinians — and Canadian allies.
We hope that you will join us for what promises to be a powerful, one-of-a-kind gathering about Israeli society, the Canada-Israel relationship, and a better future for the Middle East.