It was September 1982. The golden days of the wheat harvest were still hot but the nights were chilly in Alberta. Someone told me Alberta had only 92 frost-free days guaranteed each year – anything more was a bonus. So by mid-September, there was the yearly rush to bring in the crop before the first frost.
Of course that September in Edmonton, where I lived with my husband Larry and toddler son, there was something else to worry about.
Before I continue, I need to remind everyone that Hamas did not even exist at that time, not for another five years.
Headlines in newspapers and all the media were filled with the news about the Sept. 16-18 massacres in a Palestinian community and refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon. Sabra and Shatila were home to more than 3500 Palestinians who had been thrown out of their homes in Palestine 34 years earlier, as a result of the Nakba. In 1982, Israel’s prime minister, Menachem Begin, and minister of defence, Ariel Sharon, had a wider objective: they wanted to destroy the avowedly secular Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and throw it out of Lebanon. According to Israeli historian Benny Morris, once the organization was crushed, Israel would have a far freer hand to determine the fate of the Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The slaughter of men, women, children and the elderly was carried out by Lebanese forces and the Christian militia, orchestrated by Israel and its pals the right-wing Lebanese Christian militia, the Phalanges. Israeli forces kept Sabra and Shatila “illuminated through the night with flares,” according to writer Thomas Friedman, so that the bloodbath could continue. According to British journalist David Hirst,
“The carnage began immediately. It was to continue without interruption till Saturday noon. Night brought no respite; the Lebanese Forces liaison officer asked for illumination and the Israelis duly obliged with flares, first from mortars and then from planes.”
The UN branded the killings “an act of Genocide.” Months later Israel’s Kahane Commission said that Israel’s IDF, and Sharon specifically, bore “indirect” responsibility for genocide. Half a million Israelis turned out to protest the massacre, which prompted Sharon to resign.
Back in Edmonton, in late September, a handful of us Jews met at our house. I didn’t know them, but my new friend, Clement Leibovitz, a numerical analyst at the University of Alberta (U of A) did.
Clement, an Israeli citizen, was born in Egypt. He had been in one of Nasser’s prisons in the Egyptian desert for a decade and had undergone torture from that regime. In Israel, he had been persecuted for his views on the need for Israel to make peace with its Arab neighbours. He emigrated with his family to Edmonton in 1967.
Three of the others in our group were physics professors at the U of A; one taught history at Athabasca University; my husband was an MBA student and I was a writer and editor. We were shocked by the murders and started a group called Jews for Peace in the Middle East. It was clear that the Israelis had received a green light from then-US Secretary of State Alexander Haig to send Israel’s army of tens of thousands of men, 1300 tanks and 1500 armoured personnel carriers to assist the Christian militias in Beirut.
We decided to publish what used to be quaintly called a “broadsheet” – one newspaper page folded in half – which put forward the arguments for Israel making peace with the Palestine Liberation Organization (the PLO) which at that point represented the aspirations of Palestinian people in the region. We published a two colour broadsheet, black type and purple headlines on newsprint. Only by talking to the PLO, the document argued, could Israel ensure its long-term survival. We decided I should sign the open letter because I was self-employed, and ran the least risk of being disciplined or fired.
We collected about $1,000 among the members of our small group. It seemed like a lot of money at the time. With it, we were able to publish the broadsheet and mail it out to local Jews. I used to shop at the Bon Ton bakery which sold Jewish bread and cakes. One day I noticed what was known as the “Jewish phone book” on the counter –for sale for $2.00. Most of Edmonton’s 3,000 Jews, their addresses and phone numbers, were listed in the phonebook which also featured advertising by some Jewish businesses. A few weeks after the massacre at Sabra and Shatila, I brought the phone book home and our group wrapped, stamped and addressed each broadsheet to those listed. We dropped them in the mail.
I edited and wrote speeches for a Tory cabinet minister
Within a week of the mailing, I was called into the office of my boss, Mary LeMessurier the Minister of Culture. LeMessurier was a lifelong Tory, and a good friend of Peter Lougheed, then Alberta’s “red Tory” premier. LeMessurier had been elected three years earlier for Edmonton’s downtown riding; she was especially interested in promoting good relations with the province’s 66 ethnic minority groups. To that end, I had been hired to edit the Department of Culture’s flagship magazine, Heritage, which celebrated minority communities that had moved to the province since the Tories toppled Social Credit in 1971. I also wrote some speeches for LeMessurier and attended various functions with her, as a staff person. This was a lucrative contract for me. And I could go and come as I liked from the offices at Edmonton’s CN Tower.
That morning, when I walked into her office at the Legislature, I noticed the billowing of the powder blue floor to ceiling drapes, and inside her office I felt a chill of more than the autumn air. She sat on one side of her desk, and I on the other. I had my notebook open, pen poised. There was the usual coffee for me in the china cup and saucer with the gold ring around the lip.
“Judy, have you seen The Jewish Star this week?”
All the “ethnic” newspapers landed on my desk (as well as the Minister’s) regularly, since the government paid thousands of dollars annually to each community group to keep their newspapers afloat. Had I seen the last issue of The Jewish Star? With its slim to negligible editorial copy, it was basically an advertising vehicle for the local Jewish community.
Not yet, I said. She tossed me the paper.
There on the third page was an article “Jews for the PLO in the Middle East” by David H Seaberg. It was a hatchet job against our local group, Jews for Peace in the Middle East, and me specifically as my name was liberally sprinkled throughout.
I gulped. Mary LeMessurier got up and walked around to my side of the desk. “I like you, Judy, but the Premier is giving you an ultimatum.” Me? The premier? WTF, I thought.
My husband was in school; my son was in daycare; we lived in a rented bungalow – what if I lost my job?
“Are you a member of the PLO? Are you a terrorist?”
What’s that? I asked.
“First, are you a member of the PLO? Are you a terrorist?”
Of course not I said; I’d never even been to the Middle East.
“Oh,” she said. “I didn’t think so.”
“Well then, Premier Lougheed has made it clear that you have to sue The Jewish Star for defamation or you have to resign your job. You can work here until the court case is resolved but we can’t have a PLO agent working on staff here.”
Left: CNTower, Edmonton (credit Ian Kucerak); Premier Peter Lougheed (Wikipedia); Min. Mary LeMessurier (credit: Edmonton Community Foundation)
I heard “court case”, “defamation”, and “firing”. Smiling weakly, I left her office and took the bus home. Larry called a meeting with the group of Jews who had helped to publish the open letter. They commiserated about my situation, but were nervous. Someone suggested I get in touch with Jeremy Williams a law professor at U of A who specialized in, and had written a textbook on, defamation.
I phoned then went to see him. He agreed to do my case pro bono. He asked me if I had ever been a member of the PLO, or been a Palestinian agent, or involved in goings on in the Middle East. No, no and no.
I was sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, but aside from a short trip to Europe in 1977, I’d never been outside of North America.
Sue we did. I had no idea how things were going to go legally, but the backlash against me among the Jews was palpable. Every month or so Minister LeMessurier held tea parties with various ethnic groups. When the members of the Jewish Federation came to her office they refused to shake my hand, they turned their backs on me and loudly asked why I still worked there. LeMessurier was a true diplomat, she brushed their nastiness under the rug. I knew I had to persist with the lawsuit or I’d lose my job. I often wonder today if any government would allow me to keep my job – given the fact I was labeled a terrorist – pending a court case.
Judy vs The Jewish Star
Months passed. I had to write about Jewish events or celebrations for Heritage. I had to face the monthly tea parties and luncheons with the Jews and the minister. It wasn’t good.
The court date was more than a year away. Prof. Williams had to prepare me to give evidence; of course my politics, my anti-zionism and my left-wing activism were fair game for being exposed when I testified. The other side could ask anything, and everything about me. I had reason to be worried. My group of Jewish friends threw a party to bolster my spirits.
The night before we were to go to court, I got a call from Prof. Williams. “We’ve won,” he told me. There was to be no day in court after all. We worked out a remedy. The Jewish Star had to publish a retraction and an apology the same prominence as the story that had maligned me. They had to pay a dollar in costs (since I didn’t lose my job and Prof Williams worked for free).
When he showed me the initial lacklustre apology that the editor of The Jewish Star proposed, I didn’t think it went far enough. I said I would write a more craven apology (that they would publish) so it would include what I wanted. Here it is, in part:
“David Seaberg and The Jewish Star regret that certain views were incorrectly imputed to Judith Haiven. Statements or suggestions that Judith Haiven ‘fully espouses the PLO cause’ that she is ‘enamoured of PLO principles,’ that she desires the destruction of Israel or that she advocates ‘shrinking Israel to less than the 1948 borders’ are incorrect.”
The only phrase The Jewish Star refused to publish was that Judith Haiven “had the best interests of the Jewish people at heart.” I had to let that go.
A week later, I returned to Minister LeMessurier’s office at the Legislature. She was beaming. She had seen The Jewish Star’s apology—and she said, “I knew someone like you with a lovely husband in university and a cute little boy couldn’t be what they said you were.”
I kept my job for another year or so—until I left because we moved to England so my husband could complete a doctorate.
PostScript:
In 1986, when Mary LeMessurier lost her seat to an NDP candidate in the provincial election, she had a soft landing. She was appointed Agent General at the now defunct Alberta House in London, England. Her job was to further trade, travel and commerce between Alberta and Britain.
423 years after the birth of poet and playwright William Shakespeare on April 23, 1564 — the internationally famous Royal Shakespeare Company’s theatre festival started its new season in Stratford-upon-Avon, about 90 miles from London. In 1987, my family and I lived in Leamington Spa, a town about 10 miles from Stratford in the West Midlands. I was an active member of an anti-Apartheid group that demonstrated and wrote letters to politicians about stopping Apartheid and freeing Nelson Mandela. That April day, my six-year-old son Max and I drove to Stratford-upon-Avon to protest South Africa’s flag raising at the start of the Shakespeare Festival. More than 50 countries were present to raise their flags in honour of the bard. Max and I joined our Leamington anti-Apartheid group and others picketing against South Africa being included. Suddenly, on the stage, I spotted Mary LeMessurier – and she saw me and Max!
She rushed off the stage to hug me and Max, and ask what I was protesting. I told her. She waved away the politics and suggested we have lunch in London the next week. We did have a long and liquid lunch – and discussed the good old days of my “troubles” with the Jewish Star.
This column is thanks to Max Haiven
Featured painting at the top: Sabra and Shatila Massacre (1982-83) by Dia al-Azzawi. It is in the Tate Gallery, London.
Notes
Eyewitness: Ellen Siegel recalls the horror of Sabra and Shatila massacre. Middle East Eye. 9 minute video here.
Friedman, Thomas. 1995. From Beirut to Jerusalem. MacMillan. p. 161.
Hirst, David. 2010. Beware of Small States: Lebanon, battleground of the Middle East. Nation Books. p. 157.
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Judy Haiven is a writer and activist living in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Formerly, she was a professor in the Management Department of the Sobey School of Business at Saint Mary’s University and is a specialist in Industrial Relations. Judy Haiven is a founder of Equity Watch, a human rights organization dedicated to fighting bullying and discrimination in the workplace.
Contact: jhaiven [at] gmail.com
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