This month we are celebrating the fifteenth anniversary of the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, publisher of ISRAFAX, and of the daily e-mail ISRANET Briefings and the student-written Dateline: Middle East magazine. A highlight of our celebration is the Institute’s crucial August fundraiser, this year honoring one of Montreal’s outstanding Jewish philanthropists and activists, Edward J. Winant.

Honoring Eddie is a special personal pleasure. He is part of CIJR’s history, present with me at the birth of the idea for an Institute in the kitchen of Board members Hilda and the late Richard Golick. And he has been with us, on our National Board, ever since.

CIJR is today an internationally respected pro-Israel research institute, unique in Canada. Our specificity lies in connecting academic analysis directly, and quickly, to the Jewish community and the general public. Broadly disseminating, in print and electronically, objective Israel- and Jewish world-related articles, op eds and documents, we also critically scrutinize the media, and strengthen college and university students’ knowledge of Israel, Jewish history, and Zionism.

Proud of our work, and of our success, we remain as we began, an independent non-profit foundation which, from the beginning, has had to raise its own funding. Without an endowment and reserve funds, CIJR has not only survived but, in our determined, efficient way, flourished.

Our work has expanded because the need for it has grown. Since Durban, 9/11 and Iraq, the situation we initially addressed--media ignorance and bias, delegitimization of Israel, the spread of so-called “anti-Zionism”, the often-abysmal ignorance of Jewish, Zionist and Israeli history and politics of many Jewish students--has in many respects worsened.

Outside of American support, democratic Israel is largely isolated. A new global antisemitism has developed, not least on our campuses, energized by Palestinian and Muslim terrorism, and reinforced by instantaneous world-wide electronic communication.

Israel has become “the Jew” among the nations, and the bęte noire of a generation of “progressive” antisemites giving lip-service to supposed “pluralism” and “anti-racism”, while remaining oddly impervious to Jewish terror-victims and suffering.

Today, following the collapse of the Oslo Accords and three years of murderous terrorism, Israel faces the illusory “road map” to supposed peace. The Palestinians’ “new” Prime Minister--still-dominant Arafat’s closest advisor for 30 years--is received in Washington, even as he and his security chief brazenly refuse to implement the new plan’s first and clearest stipulation, the disarming and disbanding of terrorist militias.

Today, just as fifteen years ago, we must be vigilant, informed, and active. Palestinian terror will end not when the terrorists are defeated, but when they and their Arab backers unequivocally recognize the legitimate existence of a sovereign Jewish state in the Middle East. Unfortunately, such recognition is far from imminent.

I therefore call upon you, our supporters and readers, to please be as generous as possible this year. It is your tax-free donations which make the Briefings possible, and enable our largely volunteer staff—academic Fellows, lay people, and students—to continue CIJR’s crucial pro-Israel work.