A national icon takes his leave

One of the questions I posed in this space a few weeks ago was: who will be the next big-name Jewish MP?

With apologies to Joe Oliver, Canada’s first Jewish federal finance minister, what I may subconsciously have been asking is who will be the next Irwin Cotler, now that the 75-year-old Mount Royal Liberal MP is retiring from politics after a 16-year run.

It’s not an entirely fair question, really, because it’s nearly impossible to measure up to a national icon.

With his naturally menschlich demeanour and his long list of achievements before entering politics, Cotler has been a staple of public life in Canada and internationally for more than 40 years.

Whether as a distinguished professor of international law at McGill University, president of Canadian Jewish Congress, a messenger who helped kick-start peace between Egypt and Israel, an advocate for Soviet Jewry in the 1970s and 1980s, or representing such high-profile political prisoners as Natan Sharansky and Nelson Mandela, Cotler has been a constant.

So active has he been in public life that many of us at The Canadian Jewish News have often joked that the C in CJN stands for “Cotler,” because he makes news, and always for honourable reasons.

In many ways, he’s a Canadian version of Alan Dershowitz, who studied with Cotler at Yale University in the 1960s and worked with him to help free Mandela in South Africa, among their many collaborations.

Both Cotler and Dershowitz are true small-l liberals and law professors, but while Dershowitz is a quintessentially American street brawling New Yawker, Cotler is kinder and gentler, though equally committed to his ideals, which include being a strong defender of human rights and of Israel, as well as a foe of terror-exporting countries such as Iran.

Which brings us to another theme I’ve been discussing since the start of the campaign: the steep decline in civility in Canadian political life. The same has happened to political discussion in the Jewish community, where divisiveness now rules the day.

Cotler, who is both strongly pro-Israel and politically left of centre, has steadfastly resisted this trend, and he demonstrates, with his signature eloquence, that Israel and Zionism aren’t simply right-wing talking points.

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As well, in an age of pithy sound bites meant to cut down political opponents, Cotler makes his points respectfully – and often in long paragraphs, to the chagrin of journalists who cover him.

This reluctant politician – who, in what’s become political legend, only agreed to run in the Montreal riding of Mount Royal at the urging of his wife and his congregational rabbi – is a throwback to a time when politics were more collegial and less partisan.

He has worked with and maintained the respect of colleagues across party lines. Indeed, he famously had a strong working relationship with former Conservative cabinet stalwart John Baird, who considered Cotler a friend and whom Cotler has said was an excellent foreign minister.

Cotler has maintained his genteel disposition even when his opponents haven’t always returned the favour.

He refused to make it a political issue when he was barred from a Tory-hosted charity event in Israel during Prime Minister’s Stephen Harper’s January 2014 trip.

He was a bit more vocal in 2009, when the Tories falsely suggested he had attended the 2001 UN anti-racism conference in Durban, South Africa, which descended into raw anti-Semitism. And in 2011, he (perhaps too) politely asked the Conservatives to “cease and desist” when they made misleading calls about him to constituents in his riding, saying he was planning to retire.

Sadly, in the current polarized political climate, there doesn’t seem to be another Cotler on the horizon.

But perhaps with him as a model, someone else can aspire to his mantle.

Meanwhile, in the spirit of hakarat hatov, we should thank him for all he has done for his country and for the Jewish community.

And let’s hope he’s not entirely finished doing his good work just yet.

This wRant was originally published as a Campaign Notebook column in the Sept. 24 edition of The Canadian Jewish News.