Local Jewish leader condemns rally at City Hall
By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on November 16, 2023.
LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com The president of the Lethbridge Hebrew congregation is outraged over a protest at City Hall Tuesday night which he believes was anti-Semitic.The protest called “Ceasefire Now” was organized by a University of Lethbridge student calling for Israel to stop its attacks in the Gaza Strip.
Israel retaliated after Hamas militants staged a surprise attack on the country recently, killing hundreds of civilians.
The protest was associated with the Lethbridge Public Interest Research Group which is “a student-funded, student-directed, not-for-profit organization providing resources for undergraduate students to engage with environmental and social justice issues,” according to its website.
Garry Kohn attended the rally with his daughter and he’s extremely upset by what he calls blatant anti-Semitism and hate. He will be filing complaints with the U of L and its Student Union.
“If you don’t know the history of the Middle East and the history of the Jews and Arabs, you have no right to talk,” said Kohn Wednesday morning.
More than 1,800 years ago, says Kohn, Jews were forcibly displaced from their homeland by the Romans and “the country was occupied thereafter by successive conquerors — Arabs, Crusaders, Mamelukes, Ottoman Turk: But the Jewish people never renounced the right to their homeland. During all these centuries of dispersion, the people hoped and prayed for return and for restoration of independence.
“The uniqueness of Jewry’s link with Palestine has been recognized more than once. Jewish and Arab claims presented to a forum of the League of Nations in 1922 led to a mandate, making the British Government responsible for the establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine “through immigration: and “close settlement by Jews on the land”. On the 29th of November, 1947, having exhaustedly studied and debated the issues, the United Nations General Assembly re-affirmed that Jewish right to independence in Palestine by passing one of the most famous resolutions in its history — The Partition of Palestine.”
In 1948, the Arab State launched a war against Israel on the day it declared independence.
“Thus it was that the Jewish State was born in conflict and combat, which still darkens Arab-Israeli relations. It is a shadow that might have been dispelled long ago by peaceful negotiation, had the Arabs held to an agreement made in 1919 by their own King Feisal and Israel’s Dr. Chaim Weizman, pledging themselves to the closest possible collaboration in the development of the Arab States and Palestine,” Kohn wrote in a history of the conflict.
Kohn, who served with the Israeli army after the Six Day War in 1967 as a volunteer, has close ties to that country. His father and late Medicine Hat mayor Harry Viner – a fellow Jew – visited the home of Israel’s first prime minister and its main founder David Ben-Gurion in 1953. Both the elder Kohn and Viney were sheep farmers as was Ben-Gurion and Kohn supplied him with a dozen sheep of a hardier breed.
Kohn called the gathering Tuesday “typical left-wing woke university students” who will take up a cause just to be seen and heard, their conduct typical of those who don’t understand the history of and the events happening in the Middle East, he said.
He called the rally an “incitement of hate” against the Jewish people which consist of only 0.2 per cent of the world’s population of eight billion. There are 16.1 million Jews in the world. The total population of the Arab world, in contrast, was 446.68 million in 2022.
“If the Palestinians laid down their arms, there will be no more violence. If Israel lays down their arms, there will be no more Israel period. That’s the way it is,” said Kohn.
Both Kohn and his wife are from Jewish families who were expelled from Russia in the early 1900s. His grandfather ended up in North Dakota and after getting his homestead burned up by a major fire, he ended up setting up a home near Suffield.
Kohn was raised in Lethbridge and headed to Israel after heeding a call for volunteers while working at Simon Fraser University.
“Huge groups of us signed on,” recalled the soon-to-be 80-year-old who spent 7.5 months in the West Bank and Sinai desert.
One issue that bothers Kohn is what he says is a lack of discussion about what’s happening in other places in the Middle East, including Syria and Afghanistan.
Israel became a nation in 1312 BCE, 2,000 years before the rise of Islam, according to Kohn. Jews have had a continuous presence there for 3,000 years, he says.
Kohn says if Palestinians laid down their weapons there would be peace but if Israel lays down its arms, there will be death to its people. Follow @albeebHerald on Twitter 4
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