Last month’s Public Safety progress report on the National Commitments to Combat Antisemitism notably included statements recognizing that antisemitism includes anti-Zionism. The National Council of Canadian Muslims wrote to the department to object and is now circulating a reply from Minister Gary Anandasangaree that former Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia Amira Elghawaby touted as showing that the “Government of Canada Clarifies Anti-Zionism is not Anti-Semitism.” The reality, however, is that the response did no such thing: it does not retract or amend the report, states twice that the government’s position has not changed, and links anti-Zionism to the denial of Jewish self-determination.
Post Tagged with: "antisemitism"
Three Years After October 7th: Living With the Shockwaves
In the immediate aftermath of the Hamas terror attacks on October 7th, Jewish communities around the world shared the shock of Israelis at the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. A year later, I wrote about learning of the attack in real time, hours after a Shabbat dinner, as the Israeli red alert app on my Apple Watch buzzed continuously. The barrage of alerts was so intense that I initially thought the app had malfunctioned. The pain of that day and the days that followed was shared by many who, despite being thousands of kilometres away, felt as if they too had been targeted and were left with a desperate sadness.
Over the past three years, the initial shock has turned into a relentless series of shockwaves, as if October 7th was an earthquake with reverberations that never end. For many Israelis and diaspora Jews, these three years have been dominated by denial, repeated antisemitic violence, and a deep sense of betrayal.
Ontario is Done Waiting for Universities to Act on Campus Antisemitism
Earlier this month, Jewish students at Wilfrid Laurier University returned to their residence after Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, to find that the mezuzahs affixed to their doors had been torn off and smashed. In the immediate aftermath, the campus Chabad rabbi joined the university’s dean of students to replace them, with Jewish and non-Jewish students gathering in support to send a unified response to the blatant antisemitism. My The Hub op-ed notes that the incident was yet another reminder of the escalation of harassment, discrimination, and vandalism targeting Jewish students and faculty on Canadian campuses. While repeated surveys and studies have left little doubt about the scale of the problem, not all universities have responded as decisively as Laurier. Indeed, too many have either ignored the issue or been reluctant to address it head-on.
The Wrong Target: Why the CBC Should Be Asking About the Yom Kippur Protesters, Not the Journalist Who Reported on Them
Last week, CBC journalist Neil Herland was reportedly pulled from the air and brought before a disciplinary hearing after posting a tweet thread about being taunted on his way to the Song Shul’s Yom Kippur services at the Meridian Arts Centre in Toronto. The thread included video of the protesters shouting “Zionist alert,” “you’re going to hell” and “baby killer” at people walking in to pray as well as context on the rise in antisemitism, the terror attack at the Sons of Jacob synagogue in Belleville the night before, and the presence of a guest speaker at the service. Herland’s tweet thread sparked opposition, with some defending the protesters on the grounds that the location is a public facility and not a full-time synagogue and that the speaker was Mark Regev, who once served as a spokesperson for the Israeli government. I tweeted about the response last week, noting that the thread was accurate and that I did not understand the concern. That tweet has been viewed over 280,000 times, leading to plenty of angry responses. This post unpacks the arguments and explains why I still don’t see the issue with the tweet thread. If anything, the focus should be protesters who may have violated the Criminal Code.
A Definition That Meets the Moment: Federal Government Recognizes Antisemitism Includes Anti-Zionism
Public Safety Canada released its summer progress report on the National Commitments to Combat Antisemitism yesterday, days after the Yom Kippur attack on the Sons of Jacob synagogue in Belleville. Most of the report tracks activities related to police training, funding programs, and provincial initiatives. But what makes the report consequential is the government’s clear recognition in a pair of statements that antisemitism includes anti-Zionism. The statements are sure to attract criticism in some quarters, but anti-Zionism is too often thinly veiled antisemitism, as if substituting the word Zionist for Jew renders the unacceptable acceptable. Given the rising antisemitic violence, culminating in this week’s terror attack, combatting antisemitism requires definitions that safeguard the Jewish community while remaining consistent with protecting freedom of expression. The government’s approach, which relies on a definition of antisemitism based on the lived reality of the Jewish community, does just that.
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