By Beryl Wajsman, Institute for Public Affairs of Montreal
Sunday, June 24, 2007
"If a respected media organ like La Presse can indulge in such low limitations of narrow circumstance then the debate in Quebec cannot be about reasonable accommodation but must be about the ability of Quebec to accommodate reasonableness."
Some ten days ago Montreal's La Presse editorial cartoonist Serge Chapleau portrayed ADQ leader Mario Dumont in full ultra-orthodox regalia complete with round beaver hat, sidecurls and, in the words of B'nai B'rith, "a sneering, bug-eyed" look. Why? Because Dumont had met with a group of Jewish community leaders. One wonders if Chapleau would have made a portrayal of Dumont in some quaint costume if he had met with Italian, Irish or Greek community leaders. Undoubtedly not! Chapleau knew exactly what he was doing and it was as inflammatory and instigatory as his infamous caricature several years ago of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with an enormous knife in one hand and fork in the other with a kafiyeh bib ostensibly preparing to "eat" into a plate of Palestinians.
It was bad enough that La Presse ran the story about the meeting as its main page one headline entitled "Mario Dumont courtis par la communaut juive". I've never seen such publicity to any meeting that politicians have had with other cultural communities. But that could perhaps be explained by Dumont's wrong-headed decision to leave the meeting off the official agenda he had given the press on the very night of the Quebec budget debate when he chose to be absent from the National Assembly.
Chapleau however went further. His was a hateful portrayal of the "diabolical Jew", mirroring and mimicking all the old stereotypical anti-Jewish prejudices. The cartoon was as egregiously offensive as the dark, hairy, hook-nosed caricatures of Jews that have appeared in everything from "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" to Julius Streicher's "Der Sturmer" to Adrien Arcand's "Le Goglu". Chapleau's overt message is that all Jews are religious fanatics and illegitimate in the political process. Steven Slimovitch, National Legal Counsel for B'nai B'rith Canada rightly stated that, "At a time when the rate of anti-Semitism in Quebec last year jumped 70% to an all-time high of 226 incidents from 2005, Mr. Chapleau's racist caricature will only fan the flames of intolerance and hatred." In fact only days after the cartoon we witnessed another arson incident in an ultra-orthodox Jewish enclave in Val-David, Quebec.
Chapleau's message was one of demonization and marginalization. He implies that "Juive" refers only to religiosity and not ethnicity. That all Jews are uniformly ultra-orthodox. That there is somehow one central Jewish "leadership". And of course that a Jewish "cabal" has somehow "converted" Dumont. It is hard to believe that in the Quebec of 2007 - almost 170 years after Louis-Joseph Papineau gave full rights to Quebec's Jews twenty years ahead of England - the most respected French newspaper in this province should sanction such a portrayal that harkens back not to the progressive tradition of Papineau, but to animus of the Groulxs and Arcands.
This incident comes at a particularly troubling time as Quebec struggles with civility and debates, in an atmosphere laden with division and discord, the question of reasonable accommodation. A division and discord heightened not long ago by the largest French newspaper in Quebec, le Journal de Montreal. That paper commissioned a poll that asked the question "Etes-vous raciste?" In publicizing the poll the Journal used a picture of two Hassidic men and a Muslim woman in a chador. To le Journal, religion and race seem to be considered one and the same. To Chapleau, religion and ethnicity are one and the same.
To this observer it cannot be coincidental that both La Presse and le Journal used portraits of ultra-orthodox Jews to symbolize the Jewish community. Seasoned newspapers could not be unaware of the incitement it could arouse since the ultra-orthodox have been frequently in the news over issues of accommodation. The arson incidents from Outremont to the Laurentians that targeted ultra-orthodox Jews are proof enough of that. For what it's worth perhaps a short history lesson is in order, particularly for Mr. Chapleau.
The word "Jewish" is not merely a religious designation but is also an ethnic one. It is so recognized in international law by organizations and countries as diverse as the United Nations and Russia. The word derives from the Hebrew "Yehudi" referring to the inhabitants of the southern Kingdom of Judah, the surviving Israelite state after the Assyrian conquest of the north. The modern use of it, referring to both national and religious origins, came after the Roman conquest of Judea in 79 CE and stems from the Latin "Iudeus" which the Romans applied to all those who inhabited that land. So portraying Jews in religious garb makes about as much sense as portraying Italians in priests' habits.
Mr. Chapleau should also be aware that the ultra-orthodox make up less than 5% of Montreal's Jewish community and have their own issues with what they consider to be the irreligiosity of their brethren. A brethren that is overwhelmingly secular; heavily bilingual with one-third having French as a mother tongue, and an intermarriage rate of some 37%. One has to ask the question is Chapleau just ignorant or purposefully deceitful or just plain prejudiced, because even if the majority was ultra-orthodox why propound the idea that Dumont was somehow "converted" or co-opted? If Dumont had met with the Irish would Chapleau have portrayed him dancing a jig with a bowler festooned with shamrocks and swinging a shillelagh?
Chapleau reproduced the La Presse headline in the body of his cartoon. In and of itself it is totally misleading in the use of the phrase "courtis (courted) par la communaut juive". If the reports of the meeting are accurate, Dumont met with individuals from the worlds of politics and business who also have leadership positions within certain Jewish organizations. But as anyone could tell you the Jewish "community" has many organizations representing diverse interests and there is no one official "community" that has the mandate to court anybody. The people he met with are just as much leaders in the "communities" of the arts, education and health giving unequalled amounts of their time, talent and treasure to the Montreal community as a whole. Andr Desmarais, La Presse' owner, can attest to that. So was Dumont "courted" by the Jewish "community" or by the artistic "community" whose symphony, opera and theater could not survive without the support of the people he reportedly met with? Why didn't Chapleau portray Dumont in the white tie and tails of a symphony conductor? Because he couldn't pander to the lowest common denominator!
Furthermore, why does the French press always make an issue of requests from Jewish leaders to politicians? That's politics! Citizens, even powerful ones, have a right to meet their elected officials without reporting to anyone. That's called democracy! Come to think of it, when Greek community officials asked the province for more funding for Greek schools some years back I don't recall any cartoons of Quebec politicians in a Foustanella or Vraka (traditional Greek costumes for men M. Chapleau).
The bottom line is that words matter. Images sear. The "optique", as it is called in very politically savvy Quebec, is everything. How majorities react to minorities is sparked by what the public sees, hears, and reads. La Presse knows that, and all who approved the cartoon bear complicity for its insidious message. A message too frequently aimed at Jews. But Jews in Quebec, as in any society, are the canaries in the mineshaft. Their treatment is the litmus test of the capacity of a society to be truly inclusive. We need new messages in Quebec. Sounds that peal with the equity of just consideration not with the dirges of nullification and interposition. The message and metaphor of Chapleau and his ilk still resonate with the monotonous langour of "langue et sang", language and blood. One people, one culture. No others are welcome. This mindset is a danger to the commonweal.
If a respected media organ like La Presse can indulge in such low limitations of narrow circumstance then the debate in Quebec cannot be about reasonable accommodation but must be about the ability of Quebec to accommodate reasonableness. Can this place return to the emancipating traditions of Papineau and Laurier – traditions of universal humanism symbolized by the latter's statement that it had been the "pride of my public life to have been excommunicated by Roman priests and condemned by Protestant parsons" – or will it continue to languish in the mire of parochial particularities poisoning Quebecers' minds against "les autres", the others. The legacy of "la grande noirceur".
Those of us who have lived through the past three decades of "kulturkampf", culture war, in "La Belle Province" have learned never to look at any event in isolation. Rather, we tend to look around 360 degrees to see what else is happening in the Quebec tableaux. It's our own home-grown built-in sanity insurance. Kind of like anti-lock brakes for those black-iced Quebec roads. You know the skid is coming you just don't know where.
Oh and as for Mr. Dumont. Well, we need to remember that he opposed moving the crucifix out of the National Assembly because he said Quebec always has to remember the cultural and religious origins of its European founders. I hope he included the 18th century Jewish Hart brothers of Trois-Rivieres among those founders because he's now got to bear a cross in Quebec and a shtreimel in Montreal!
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