One point, they must only be careful to specify "Israeli" over "Jew" in English. In Arabic the chants are allowed to be much more explicit (the Arabic version of "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be Free", is "From the river to the sea Palestine will be Arab", and the ever popular "Khayber Khayber Al Yahud")
Do you have any issue with the Allied bombing of Nazi Germany, which killed 2 million civilians? Do you think the Allies should have stopped the bombing before the Nazi threat was eradicated? Of course not. Your selective outrage applies, only when Israel is involved. There's a name for that double standard for Israel. It's called Jew-hatred.
Interesting that a self-declared Jew-hater believes himself to be qualified to judge the morality of others. In fact, the moral basis of Western civilization was derived from Jewish law.
I'm Jewish, and American, and I attended McGill University from 1973 to 1977. I never encountered any significant antisemitism there; the only time I was even asked if I was Jewish was by Chabad students looking to invite others to Shabbat services, and once by a couple of Egyptians studying in Canada to avoid military service, and a friend of theirs who turned out to be an Egyptian Jew whose family was prompted to move to Italy in the 1950s.
Anti-American sentiment was far more openly demonstrated. That was how I encountered that peculiar habit of Canadians to turn a blind eye to their "not nice" treatment of the First Nations, and attacks on Pakistani immigrants. Oh, and the charming humor of "Pepsi" jokes about French Canadians.
The Canadian attitude toward its current rampant antisemitism fits right in here.
You cast a wide net of blame for the shameful rise of antisemitic incidents in Canada, more than twice as high as in Australia and 3 times that of the US. It’s all because of “We”, or “Canadians”, or “society”, or “Christian guilt”, etc.
Nowhere do you acknowledge that whitewashing hate marches as “peaceful protests”, as Trudeau did, might have had the teeniest effect. Nowhere do you note how the anti-Israel bias and the platforming of one-sided voices by our public broadcaster emboldened the haters. Nowhere do you mention that the government’s acceptance of the fake hate crime of Anti-Palestinian Racism is problematic for the Jewish community. In fact, governments at all 3 levels, especially police forces who stand by and do nothing as crimes are committed, have failed to address the issue adequately and the result is no surprise.
Well, fair enough, yes, I could have written an article 10 times as long. Not sure why you're coming at me with hostility. I think we're on the same side.
I’m hostile? A respectful opinion on how you left out any mention of government failure is hostility in your world? May I suggest that you just don’t accept dissenting views very well.
Look, Pat, I appreciate your allyship and agree with most of your points. But in your article you gave a free pass to government when their silence and inaction have emboldened the haters and put the Jewish community at risk. Saying that including governmental failure would have made the article too long is disingenuous at best, when it’s a major driver of the meteoric rise in antisemitic incidents.
Trigger warning: You’re not going to like what I’m about to say, but you’re starting to sound like a Liberal party shill.
I agree that the government has not done or said enough -- not nearly enough -- but I see that (as I said elsewhere on this thread, I think) as part of a larger phenomenon, not as the cause of the phenomenon. As in, the government reflects the antisemitic zeitgeist and does not do enough to contest it -- but I don't believe the government is the main source of the problem. I don't think it's a huge difference of opinion. Just a matter of emphasis. We live in an antisemitic society and the govenrment is part of that. The government has not turned us into an antisemitic society. (Although it should be doing more to ameliorate the problem.) Eg., if the Conservatives had been in power for the past 10 years, do you think Canada would be substantively less antisemitic?
Pat, I appreciate your writing so much. I almost always agree with you but not this time. Canada might be significantly less antisemitic if the conservatives had been in power for the last 10 years. This last Federal election was the first time I’ve voted conservative in my life. The Conservatives may have vetted new immigrants a little more carefully, not importing violent Jew hatred from the Middle East. They definitely would not have given free rein to the CBC to spread Hamas propaganda to the masses. Although education is a provincial matter, perhaps they would have appointed a far more useful envoy to combat antisemitism who would have dealt with the hatred being spread on university campuses.
Thanks Cynthia. Fair comments. I would just say I'm not sure I want the federal government (any federal government) poking into the CBC's editorial decisions.
Rhetorical or not, I will answer your last question. No, it’s unlikely that Canada would have been less antisemitic under a Conservative government. It is, after all, a global problem, although to our shame Canada is so much worse than some other Western countries. However, I believe the Conservatives would have done more to support the Jewish community rather than look the other way as we were under siege or worse, enable the haters.
On their watch, perhaps government ministries and agencies would not have been so thoroughly infiltrated by radical elements who have worked very hard to make Jewish life more and more difficult. The community has had a fight off constant lawfare attacks against our long-accepted practices, like kosher ritual slaughter which the CFIA tried to ban only to be overturned by the Federal Court. Perhaps under the Conservatives the CRA would not have singled out the JNF for having their charitable status removed while the matter was before the courts. And for sure no Conservative government would ever have appointed the likes of Birju Dattani as the Chief Commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission - a slap in the face if ever there was one.
BTW, I didn’t say government was the main cause of antisemitism. I said that they were a major driver because silence and inaction amount to complicity and permission. Canada’s Jews have felt abandoned and hung out to dry by the very institutions that had a sworn duty to protect them as much as any other minority in this country.
Emmanuel Macron told Israel first to stop killing babies and women and then Trudeau repeated that canard. Other cowardly Western leaders also pander to the Muslim population for their votes because that’s what it’s all about. And we can expect that even more rabid Jew haters will be allowed to immigrate to Canada now.
CBC News is absolutely disgusting! I stopped watching it after the editor announced that they wouldn’t call Hamas “terrorists”, but ”militants” or “fighters” unless they could attribute it to a third party! Honest Reporting Canada calls them out every single day for their blatant anti-Israel bias. Many older Canadians consume their news from the CBC - the very demographic that put the Liberals in power for 4 more years.
Carney has been terrible on Israel. He agreed with the heckler about a genocide in Gaza and then lied that he hadn’t heard him clearly. Then why mention the arms embargo? It isn’t even an embargo but the suspension of some export licenses.
Anyway, it’s no wonder that so many Canadian Jews are seriously considering leaving the country. We see no future here for our children and grandchildren.
Jacob Miller, the president of Harvard Hillel in 2023, published an op-ed in The Crimson a few days ago under the title "I've stopped caring if the Harvard protesters are antisemitic. They might be something worse" that's well worth the read.
As regards Prime Minister Carney and the rest of the party, yes, there are two stinkers in his interim cabinet, Nate Erskine-Smith and Jenna Suds (whose name gets garbled by close-captioning as "genocide"), but he appointed Rachel Bendayan as Immigration minister, and made Marco Mendicino his Chief of Staff. He's also got a few other advisors like David Lametti and Scott Bryson as advisors. Yes, the government is sending aid money earmarked for Gaza, but I have read that it's being sent to the World Food Program, not UNRWA.
Hopefully when the Prime Minister announces his new cabinet on May 12, there will be other good appointments and he won't include any additional Liberal MPs who endorsed the appalling "Vote Palestine" platform as Erskine-Smith and Suds did. Instead, we should be writing letters to these 16 (or is it 18) MPs who endorsed the "platform" questioning their silence about the anti-Hamas protests in Gaza and the summary executions Hamas is carrying out against dissidents and directing them to the excellent unpacking of Hamas's deceitful representations of the death toll in Gaza, by Lewi Stone (Professor of Mathematical Epidemiology at the mathematics department, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia and Emeritus Professor at Tel Aviv University. He has decades of experience working as a biomathematician with research interests in statistics and mathematical modelling and his work encompasses digital humanities and the quantification of warfare.) and Gregory Rose (Honorary Professor of Law at the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security (ANCORS) at the University of Wollongong, Australia, and Senior Fellow at The Hague Initiative for International Cooperation, Netherlands. His expertise is in international law and his areas of research include international law relating to armed conflict, counterterrorism, transnational environmental crime and marine environmental governance)described here in the Jewish Chronicle.
As always, your voice is deeply appreciated. But the larger issues of Liberal governance are very directly tied into this particular one. (And as another commentator, MissMU, pointed out already, even the increasing dangers of this issue have been ignored or exacerbated at every level of Liberal – and liberal – government.)
Even worse, however, we now have a regime (pretty much installed if technically elected) that essentially controls the media, that has achieved near total groupthink in the academy, education, arts, and culture, that not only censors its critics but mobilizes demonizing and violent rhetoric against them and will surely begin locking them up for "hate speech" like the UK (to the degree it's not happening de facto already), and that can completely cut off people's access to the means of survival and sanity, from bank accounts to social media connections.
This is happening, and more is coming. To speak of "fascism" in such a context is hardly surprising. (And to invoke the ambitions of the WEF and the rest of the usual globalist suspects is actually necessary, even if it inevitably courts the danger of getting tied up with the old "Jewish world conspiracy" bow.) Jews, in particular right-leaning ones, have been more aware of these developments than most anyone (including me, as a formerly left-leaning half-Jew).
I myself see the Liberals and the progressives in general making the same mistake with the jihadis and the anarchists that the German conservatives made with the Nazis before WWII, presuming they could control them and exploit their demographic power, the same mistake that Iranian leftists made with the mullahs in the run-up to the 1979 revolution, serving as useful idiots for tyrants. And I assume you have many readers who feel something similar, but who, also like me, long used to vote centre or left-of-centre. I'd suggest, for the sake of those readers and even for your own, that you remain open to hearing these undeniably frightening interpretations of the situation.
Mark Carney and the Libs scare me to the bone, frankly. And I think the "Jewish/Israel question", more than being just another area of contention, is pivotal, for deep psychological reasons. It's a means to an end, a weapon in a larger war. Sadly.
Thanks Michael. I agree wtih you on some of the historical lessons, for sure. I think, if the federal government is part of groupthink, it is a symptom, not a cause., The hate-Israel groupthink is a broader issue and it permeates all sorts of sectors, as you note, mbut it is not a simple top-down situation.
So get this: I have just discovered that blocking a hate commenter on Substack means I can't see them but everyone else still can. There is a work around I'm checking.
Anti-Zionism is antisemitism. A single nation the size of New Jersey elicits such hysteria and hatred in a metastatic global frenzy… a minuscule nation, barely visible on a map is the SINGLE spot in the entire world where Jews don’t fear government persecution for the “ crime” of being Jewish.. Don’t insult people’s intelligence. It’s antisemitism. And it’s disgusting.More disgusting still, are the Jews who so hate themselves for having to bear such a burden, that they become the loudest and most hateful voices.
Israel is home to over 2 million Arab-Israeli Muslims, 2 million+ Christians, tens of thousands of Druze, thousands of Kurds, Yazidis, Hindus.. whatever. Every Israeli has equal rights . There are zero Jews in Palestine, Pakistan, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq,Yemen, Bangladesh, Somalia,Sudan,Congo,Eritrea,Ethiopia,Nigeria- yet as I type this, Christians, Hindus, Druze, Yazidis,Alawites are being slaughtered- ethnically cleansed- genocide in all the aforementioned nations and more Muslims are slaughtered on a daily basis by Islamists than the total of Palestinians to date in a war they started .. because they hate Jews. And Christians, Hindus , Druze, Buddhists, gays, atheists… they hate the West and non-Sharia compliant Islamists.
So good luck telling yourselves it not antisemitism and you just “ care deeply” about the Palestinians. You’re lying to yourselves. Otherwise you’d be sickened and outraged by the slaughter, rape. , abuse and torture throughout the Middle East, Asia , Africa and you might even wake up to what you’ve welcomed with open arms and clueless ignorance.
You don’t have to love Israel, love Jews or even give a rats ass about wars in regions you don’t understand. But this sick, disproportionate specious hatred is a sickness. What have “ The Jeewwez “ done to you?
The "pro-Palestinian" protests are mobs--most of the time violent mobs. The participants may deny that, but they're lying. The countless videos of these events prove it. Anyone who walks anywhere near one with any symbol of Israel or Judaism is risking their life and likely will be not only verbally assaulted but physically attacked. Just as big an issue is the utter cowardice of political leaders and law enforcement to enforce any existing laws against this type of purposeful civil disorder, much less hate speech.
I live in the U.S. and am extremely concerned about any Jewish person in Canada who believes Israel has the right to exist. I hope they all move to the U.S. because it appears there's no longer any hope for Canada, which is very soon going to understand what it means to cede control to Islamists. I just hope the Jews and their allies can get out first.
Hmmm ... I hardly think that all Canadian Jews moving to the US is the answer (altho the weather is often better). There absolutely is cowardice among the leadership. But I'll be damned if I accept that "there's no longer any hope for Canada."
I live in the US and I follow Canada reasonably closely although I concede not as closely as someone who lives there. I would say there’s hope for Canada if I saw any serious attempt to counteract these trends. It’s bad enough when the politicians are so spineless that they equivocate over antisemitism/anti-Zionism; we have that here. But when the police repeatedly won’t protect Canadian citizens against the Islamist mob and allow crimes to be committed right in front of them because they either agree with or are too afraid of the mob to do their job, and the most recent election signals a continuation of Trudeau’s policies, what concrete evidence of hope is there? Do you follow Masha Kleiner? She keeps a weekly chronicle of this stuff that’s usually too depressing and scary to read in one sitting. And Rebel News, while probably more conservative than I am, has endless video evidence of the “Palestine” mobs physically attacking people and the police doing nothing. If I’m missing something that should give me some optimism, please let me know. I read an essay this week that states convincingly there is no present hope for Jews in Canada: https://www.thejc.com/opinion/a-cold-wind-blows-through-canadas-jewish-communities-gigsrsh1
Yes, Vivian Bercovici is a superb voice. And so is Masha Kleiner who is a Vancouverite as I am! We had coffee recently! Glad you read her stuff! I'm not traditionally a person who looks on the sunny side, but the grave situation drives in me a rage to fight, not to flee.
Sigh. As a New Yawker I alwayz hoid Montreal, in particular, ran a close second in welcomin' us joos. Any terry-torial "beefs" were literally tongue in cheek, like the "deli wars" where friends "kveledl" 'bout buttery corned beef "bettah" than Katz's or Carnegies (fwiw Carnegie was bettah fer corned beef but Katz's da best fer pastrami). I thought of Canadian funnymen like Mort Sahl, Lorne Michaels, Eugene Levy. Ah, these guys were a threat? My fave-o-rite zingers like Leonard Cohen an' my fave-o-rite professor an' all around literary maverick (yet teachin' today in New Yawk) Ruth Wisse. Canadians all. Oh Canada, what the heck happened? Or mebbe I should say... Oy, Canada. I guess the honeymoon is ovah...
We cannot choose to ignore our present rank antisemitism
in an attempt to « be nice. ». We weren’t nice when we wouldn’t accept Jews in WW2 and we have grown worse over time. Shame on us.
One point, they must only be careful to specify "Israeli" over "Jew" in English. In Arabic the chants are allowed to be much more explicit (the Arabic version of "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be Free", is "From the river to the sea Palestine will be Arab", and the ever popular "Khayber Khayber Al Yahud")
Maybe you're not afraid, but it appears you're using a pseudonym. Be brave, post your full name.
Do you have any issue with the Allied bombing of Nazi Germany, which killed 2 million civilians? Do you think the Allies should have stopped the bombing before the Nazi threat was eradicated? Of course not. Your selective outrage applies, only when Israel is involved. There's a name for that double standard for Israel. It's called Jew-hatred.
Interesting that a self-declared Jew-hater believes himself to be qualified to judge the morality of others. In fact, the moral basis of Western civilization was derived from Jewish law.
I'm Jewish, and American, and I attended McGill University from 1973 to 1977. I never encountered any significant antisemitism there; the only time I was even asked if I was Jewish was by Chabad students looking to invite others to Shabbat services, and once by a couple of Egyptians studying in Canada to avoid military service, and a friend of theirs who turned out to be an Egyptian Jew whose family was prompted to move to Italy in the 1950s.
Anti-American sentiment was far more openly demonstrated. That was how I encountered that peculiar habit of Canadians to turn a blind eye to their "not nice" treatment of the First Nations, and attacks on Pakistani immigrants. Oh, and the charming humor of "Pepsi" jokes about French Canadians.
The Canadian attitude toward its current rampant antisemitism fits right in here.
Interesting. I was at McGill a few years after you. Good times.
You cast a wide net of blame for the shameful rise of antisemitic incidents in Canada, more than twice as high as in Australia and 3 times that of the US. It’s all because of “We”, or “Canadians”, or “society”, or “Christian guilt”, etc.
Nowhere do you acknowledge that whitewashing hate marches as “peaceful protests”, as Trudeau did, might have had the teeniest effect. Nowhere do you note how the anti-Israel bias and the platforming of one-sided voices by our public broadcaster emboldened the haters. Nowhere do you mention that the government’s acceptance of the fake hate crime of Anti-Palestinian Racism is problematic for the Jewish community. In fact, governments at all 3 levels, especially police forces who stand by and do nothing as crimes are committed, have failed to address the issue adequately and the result is no surprise.
Well, fair enough, yes, I could have written an article 10 times as long. Not sure why you're coming at me with hostility. I think we're on the same side.
I’m hostile? A respectful opinion on how you left out any mention of government failure is hostility in your world? May I suggest that you just don’t accept dissenting views very well.
Look, Pat, I appreciate your allyship and agree with most of your points. But in your article you gave a free pass to government when their silence and inaction have emboldened the haters and put the Jewish community at risk. Saying that including governmental failure would have made the article too long is disingenuous at best, when it’s a major driver of the meteoric rise in antisemitic incidents.
Trigger warning: You’re not going to like what I’m about to say, but you’re starting to sound like a Liberal party shill.
I agree that the government has not done or said enough -- not nearly enough -- but I see that (as I said elsewhere on this thread, I think) as part of a larger phenomenon, not as the cause of the phenomenon. As in, the government reflects the antisemitic zeitgeist and does not do enough to contest it -- but I don't believe the government is the main source of the problem. I don't think it's a huge difference of opinion. Just a matter of emphasis. We live in an antisemitic society and the govenrment is part of that. The government has not turned us into an antisemitic society. (Although it should be doing more to ameliorate the problem.) Eg., if the Conservatives had been in power for the past 10 years, do you think Canada would be substantively less antisemitic?
Pat, I appreciate your writing so much. I almost always agree with you but not this time. Canada might be significantly less antisemitic if the conservatives had been in power for the last 10 years. This last Federal election was the first time I’ve voted conservative in my life. The Conservatives may have vetted new immigrants a little more carefully, not importing violent Jew hatred from the Middle East. They definitely would not have given free rein to the CBC to spread Hamas propaganda to the masses. Although education is a provincial matter, perhaps they would have appointed a far more useful envoy to combat antisemitism who would have dealt with the hatred being spread on university campuses.
Thanks Cynthia. Fair comments. I would just say I'm not sure I want the federal government (any federal government) poking into the CBC's editorial decisions.
Rhetorical or not, I will answer your last question. No, it’s unlikely that Canada would have been less antisemitic under a Conservative government. It is, after all, a global problem, although to our shame Canada is so much worse than some other Western countries. However, I believe the Conservatives would have done more to support the Jewish community rather than look the other way as we were under siege or worse, enable the haters.
On their watch, perhaps government ministries and agencies would not have been so thoroughly infiltrated by radical elements who have worked very hard to make Jewish life more and more difficult. The community has had a fight off constant lawfare attacks against our long-accepted practices, like kosher ritual slaughter which the CFIA tried to ban only to be overturned by the Federal Court. Perhaps under the Conservatives the CRA would not have singled out the JNF for having their charitable status removed while the matter was before the courts. And for sure no Conservative government would ever have appointed the likes of Birju Dattani as the Chief Commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission - a slap in the face if ever there was one.
BTW, I didn’t say government was the main cause of antisemitism. I said that they were a major driver because silence and inaction amount to complicity and permission. Canada’s Jews have felt abandoned and hung out to dry by the very institutions that had a sworn duty to protect them as much as any other minority in this country.
Emmanuel Macron told Israel first to stop killing babies and women and then Trudeau repeated that canard. Other cowardly Western leaders also pander to the Muslim population for their votes because that’s what it’s all about. And we can expect that even more rabid Jew haters will be allowed to immigrate to Canada now.
CBC News is absolutely disgusting! I stopped watching it after the editor announced that they wouldn’t call Hamas “terrorists”, but ”militants” or “fighters” unless they could attribute it to a third party! Honest Reporting Canada calls them out every single day for their blatant anti-Israel bias. Many older Canadians consume their news from the CBC - the very demographic that put the Liberals in power for 4 more years.
Carney has been terrible on Israel. He agreed with the heckler about a genocide in Gaza and then lied that he hadn’t heard him clearly. Then why mention the arms embargo? It isn’t even an embargo but the suspension of some export licenses.
Anyway, it’s no wonder that so many Canadian Jews are seriously considering leaving the country. We see no future here for our children and grandchildren.
Jacob Miller, the president of Harvard Hillel in 2023, published an op-ed in The Crimson a few days ago under the title "I've stopped caring if the Harvard protesters are antisemitic. They might be something worse" that's well worth the read.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/4/30/miller-harvard-antisemitism-task-force/?fbclid=IwY2xjawKDN_tleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFES3RrT0FTbXBXUXA5MnA1AR5WZNh2a_-cf7vkd-REzPf0ubJMkmBk40gTZHhrgm9lCxo1s_0385q_0qnN-A_aem_zY0fcVOVT8tdiV6f7GOzgA
As regards Prime Minister Carney and the rest of the party, yes, there are two stinkers in his interim cabinet, Nate Erskine-Smith and Jenna Suds (whose name gets garbled by close-captioning as "genocide"), but he appointed Rachel Bendayan as Immigration minister, and made Marco Mendicino his Chief of Staff. He's also got a few other advisors like David Lametti and Scott Bryson as advisors. Yes, the government is sending aid money earmarked for Gaza, but I have read that it's being sent to the World Food Program, not UNRWA.
Hopefully when the Prime Minister announces his new cabinet on May 12, there will be other good appointments and he won't include any additional Liberal MPs who endorsed the appalling "Vote Palestine" platform as Erskine-Smith and Suds did. Instead, we should be writing letters to these 16 (or is it 18) MPs who endorsed the "platform" questioning their silence about the anti-Hamas protests in Gaza and the summary executions Hamas is carrying out against dissidents and directing them to the excellent unpacking of Hamas's deceitful representations of the death toll in Gaza, by Lewi Stone (Professor of Mathematical Epidemiology at the mathematics department, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia and Emeritus Professor at Tel Aviv University. He has decades of experience working as a biomathematician with research interests in statistics and mathematical modelling and his work encompasses digital humanities and the quantification of warfare.) and Gregory Rose (Honorary Professor of Law at the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security (ANCORS) at the University of Wollongong, Australia, and Senior Fellow at The Hague Initiative for International Cooperation, Netherlands. His expertise is in international law and his areas of research include international law relating to armed conflict, counterterrorism, transnational environmental crime and marine environmental governance)described here in the Jewish Chronicle.
https://www.thejc.com/opinion/hamas-disinformation-war-manipulation-gaza-casualty-data-opjpliyb?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=JC%20Daily%20020525&utm_content=JC%20Daily%20020525+CID_ac9139f6e15a10877ded7c220a4a79c4&utm_source=Campaign%20monitor%20newsletters&utm_term=How%20Hamas%20won%20the%20disinformation%20war%20the%20manipulation%20of%20Gaza%20casualty%20data
Things aren't so great for us Jews south of the 49th Parallel either, unfortunately............
But u guys don’t want Israel to exist either 🤷♀️and to be fair, Jews aren’t causing the problems
When you move to Gaza
Awww, the little Jew-hater is showing his true colors.
Bravo 👏👏👏👏 great essay
As always, your voice is deeply appreciated. But the larger issues of Liberal governance are very directly tied into this particular one. (And as another commentator, MissMU, pointed out already, even the increasing dangers of this issue have been ignored or exacerbated at every level of Liberal – and liberal – government.)
Even worse, however, we now have a regime (pretty much installed if technically elected) that essentially controls the media, that has achieved near total groupthink in the academy, education, arts, and culture, that not only censors its critics but mobilizes demonizing and violent rhetoric against them and will surely begin locking them up for "hate speech" like the UK (to the degree it's not happening de facto already), and that can completely cut off people's access to the means of survival and sanity, from bank accounts to social media connections.
This is happening, and more is coming. To speak of "fascism" in such a context is hardly surprising. (And to invoke the ambitions of the WEF and the rest of the usual globalist suspects is actually necessary, even if it inevitably courts the danger of getting tied up with the old "Jewish world conspiracy" bow.) Jews, in particular right-leaning ones, have been more aware of these developments than most anyone (including me, as a formerly left-leaning half-Jew).
I myself see the Liberals and the progressives in general making the same mistake with the jihadis and the anarchists that the German conservatives made with the Nazis before WWII, presuming they could control them and exploit their demographic power, the same mistake that Iranian leftists made with the mullahs in the run-up to the 1979 revolution, serving as useful idiots for tyrants. And I assume you have many readers who feel something similar, but who, also like me, long used to vote centre or left-of-centre. I'd suggest, for the sake of those readers and even for your own, that you remain open to hearing these undeniably frightening interpretations of the situation.
Mark Carney and the Libs scare me to the bone, frankly. And I think the "Jewish/Israel question", more than being just another area of contention, is pivotal, for deep psychological reasons. It's a means to an end, a weapon in a larger war. Sadly.
But, also as always, best regards, Pat.....
Thanks Michael. I agree wtih you on some of the historical lessons, for sure. I think, if the federal government is part of groupthink, it is a symptom, not a cause., The hate-Israel groupthink is a broader issue and it permeates all sorts of sectors, as you note, mbut it is not a simple top-down situation.
Bravo
Looks like this post attracted some more Jew-haters, Pat (Check out the responses to Shaun's comment as well as mine).
So get this: I have just discovered that blocking a hate commenter on Substack means I can't see them but everyone else still can. There is a work around I'm checking.
Bizarre. I guess then that my blocking of these people didn't work, either!
Anti-Zionism is antisemitism. A single nation the size of New Jersey elicits such hysteria and hatred in a metastatic global frenzy… a minuscule nation, barely visible on a map is the SINGLE spot in the entire world where Jews don’t fear government persecution for the “ crime” of being Jewish.. Don’t insult people’s intelligence. It’s antisemitism. And it’s disgusting.More disgusting still, are the Jews who so hate themselves for having to bear such a burden, that they become the loudest and most hateful voices.
Israel is home to over 2 million Arab-Israeli Muslims, 2 million+ Christians, tens of thousands of Druze, thousands of Kurds, Yazidis, Hindus.. whatever. Every Israeli has equal rights . There are zero Jews in Palestine, Pakistan, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq,Yemen, Bangladesh, Somalia,Sudan,Congo,Eritrea,Ethiopia,Nigeria- yet as I type this, Christians, Hindus, Druze, Yazidis,Alawites are being slaughtered- ethnically cleansed- genocide in all the aforementioned nations and more Muslims are slaughtered on a daily basis by Islamists than the total of Palestinians to date in a war they started .. because they hate Jews. And Christians, Hindus , Druze, Buddhists, gays, atheists… they hate the West and non-Sharia compliant Islamists.
So good luck telling yourselves it not antisemitism and you just “ care deeply” about the Palestinians. You’re lying to yourselves. Otherwise you’d be sickened and outraged by the slaughter, rape. , abuse and torture throughout the Middle East, Asia , Africa and you might even wake up to what you’ve welcomed with open arms and clueless ignorance.
You don’t have to love Israel, love Jews or even give a rats ass about wars in regions you don’t understand. But this sick, disproportionate specious hatred is a sickness. What have “ The Jeewwez “ done to you?
Wake up. You’re next.
Are we No1 or are our cousins in Australia a tad more antisemetic than us. Possibly a dead heat?
https://substack.com/@acemasters/note/c-115018665?r=1tr59r&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
The "pro-Palestinian" protests are mobs--most of the time violent mobs. The participants may deny that, but they're lying. The countless videos of these events prove it. Anyone who walks anywhere near one with any symbol of Israel or Judaism is risking their life and likely will be not only verbally assaulted but physically attacked. Just as big an issue is the utter cowardice of political leaders and law enforcement to enforce any existing laws against this type of purposeful civil disorder, much less hate speech.
I live in the U.S. and am extremely concerned about any Jewish person in Canada who believes Israel has the right to exist. I hope they all move to the U.S. because it appears there's no longer any hope for Canada, which is very soon going to understand what it means to cede control to Islamists. I just hope the Jews and their allies can get out first.
Hmmm ... I hardly think that all Canadian Jews moving to the US is the answer (altho the weather is often better). There absolutely is cowardice among the leadership. But I'll be damned if I accept that "there's no longer any hope for Canada."
I live in the US and I follow Canada reasonably closely although I concede not as closely as someone who lives there. I would say there’s hope for Canada if I saw any serious attempt to counteract these trends. It’s bad enough when the politicians are so spineless that they equivocate over antisemitism/anti-Zionism; we have that here. But when the police repeatedly won’t protect Canadian citizens against the Islamist mob and allow crimes to be committed right in front of them because they either agree with or are too afraid of the mob to do their job, and the most recent election signals a continuation of Trudeau’s policies, what concrete evidence of hope is there? Do you follow Masha Kleiner? She keeps a weekly chronicle of this stuff that’s usually too depressing and scary to read in one sitting. And Rebel News, while probably more conservative than I am, has endless video evidence of the “Palestine” mobs physically attacking people and the police doing nothing. If I’m missing something that should give me some optimism, please let me know. I read an essay this week that states convincingly there is no present hope for Jews in Canada: https://www.thejc.com/opinion/a-cold-wind-blows-through-canadas-jewish-communities-gigsrsh1
Yes, Vivian Bercovici is a superb voice. And so is Masha Kleiner who is a Vancouverite as I am! We had coffee recently! Glad you read her stuff! I'm not traditionally a person who looks on the sunny side, but the grave situation drives in me a rage to fight, not to flee.
I think Israel is the better choice. Antisemitism in the US is also largely on the rise.
Sigh. As a New Yawker I alwayz hoid Montreal, in particular, ran a close second in welcomin' us joos. Any terry-torial "beefs" were literally tongue in cheek, like the "deli wars" where friends "kveledl" 'bout buttery corned beef "bettah" than Katz's or Carnegies (fwiw Carnegie was bettah fer corned beef but Katz's da best fer pastrami). I thought of Canadian funnymen like Mort Sahl, Lorne Michaels, Eugene Levy. Ah, these guys were a threat? My fave-o-rite zingers like Leonard Cohen an' my fave-o-rite professor an' all around literary maverick (yet teachin' today in New Yawk) Ruth Wisse. Canadians all. Oh Canada, what the heck happened? Or mebbe I should say... Oy, Canada. I guess the honeymoon is ovah...