The Mess of Anti-Semitism in Canada
Israel Apartheid Week and Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions Have Got To Go!
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“Yes, understanding Hamas, Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left, is extremely important.” - Judith Butler (Activist-Academic, Hero of the Left, Insane Maniac).
“This coordinated, multilayered Jihadi assault on Western Civilization has included a successful campaign to harness the largely politically and financially subsidized Canadian media (such as the national CBC) to scapegoat Israel, portraying it as a genocidal, white, apartheid state nobly opposed by a so called ‘resistance,’ which now includes a seven front war by state and non-state terrorist groups, all orchestrated by the tyrannical theocratic government of Iran and cheered on by one of Canada’s so called NATO allies, Turkey.” - Geoffrey Clarfield (Anthropologist at Large).1
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Israel Apartheid Week was created at the University of Toronto in 2005. The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel was and is a big part of IAW activism, which is now embraced at over 250 campuses worldwide. It’s a heartbreaking and shameful fact that this hateful anti-Semitic movement began, and continues to operate, in Canada.
Drawing on a long history of leftist anti-Semitism, the Soviet Union promoted a conception of Zionism which identified “Jewish nationalism and capitalist imperialism with Judaism and the Jewish bourgeoisie.” Shortly after Israel won its war for independence, Stalin came to view Zionism as a threat. “Zionism was perceived to be working in tandem with American imperialism, both in the Middle East and as a conspiracy inside the U.S.S.R.. From 1949 until his death in 1953, Stalin engaged in a full assault on the Jews of the Soviet Union, who were then considered ‘bourgeois nationalists’ and a Zionist fifth column.”2
Here lies the roots of the American/Zionist conspiracy theory which prevailed much of the leftwing anti-war activism of the first decades of this century, and continues with the hostile and disruptive Canadian pro-Hamastinian demonstrations of today. The new conspiracy involves the much older one where a cabal of Jewish elites control banking, industry and media – as laid out in the fabricated anti-Semitic tract The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion – but the twenty-first century rendition of this anti-Semitic conspiracy paranoia has been rebranded as anti-Zionism and sees our Jewish cabal’s control extending to the American government.
Israel fought a “Six Day War” in 1967, again securing their sovereignty against hostile Arab neighbours. But afterwards, the “Soviet anti-Zionist rhetoric regularly used Nazi analogies, accusing Israel of behaving like Hitler.”3 This and other cruel inversions of the truth were thus established as the weapons of choice for the leftwing anti-Semites (still in use today). The Soviets pressured the U.N. in 1975 to adopt resolution 3379, which declared that “Zionism is a form of racism and racist discrimination.” UN Resolution 3379 was annulled in 1991 (the year the Soviet Union collapsed). But the damage to public perception had been done. Among the Avant Garde activist milieu, Zionism was still racist.
Anti-Zionist activists falsely claim that Israel is an Apartheid state. When the official call was made for boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel in July of 2005 by 170 Palestinian civil society organizations, it was clear that the model was South Africa. However, prominent South African judge Richard Goldstone, who helped dismantle apartheid in South Africa, has stated that “In Israel, there is no apartheid. Nothing there comes close to the definition of apartheid. In Israel, equal rights are the law, the aspiration and the ideal; inequities are often successfully challenged in court.” Goldstone, who was mentioned in my last essay, had led a UN inquiry into the 2009-10 Israel-Hamas war. He was interviewed on CBC when his UN report was released. At the time he stated that war crimes were committed by both sides, but spent most of the interview focusing on Israel, which suited CBC just fine. However, he later expressed regret for the report.
An analysis of the Goldstone Report published on HonestReporting found that:
“Israel did not deliberately target the civilian population of Gaza and, in fact, made efforts to prevent civilian casualties that no other army in the world would have done; Contrary to the assertions of Goldstone, Hamas did use Palestinian civilians as human shields; The Goldstone Report is not objective and is, in fact tainted by bias and politicization, both from the UN Human Rights Council and members of the mission itself; The report relied upon the contributions of anti-Israel non-governmental organizations and unreliable Palestinian “eyewitnesses.”; Israel respects human rights and has a sophisticated legal and judicial system. Hamas does not. Yet the report has created an unjust equivalence of a democratic state with a terror organization.”
It needs to be made crystal clear that the current dominant anti-Semitic protest movement which calls itself pro-Palestinian or anti-Zionist, is not advocating for a compromise or an end to hostilities. They are not calling for a two-state solution. They believe only in a one-state solution that disassembles Israel. How have any of us been tricked into thinking these people are peace activists? They are not. They are activists for terrorists, enemies of Canada, our allies and the greater Western world. There is no disassembling Israel. That is madness. These anti-Semitic activists are pushing for endless conflict, terrorism and war.
The fact that a hateful movement which is working to destroy Israel — an ally to Canada, the only liberal democratic nation in the Middle East — is permitted to operate unfettered on Canadian soil is a surreal nightmare. Seriously, what the hell are we doing? Are we way over our heads on this multiculturalism stuff and just hoping these existential problems will go away if we ignore them?
Through no fault of their own, Canadian Jews have been caught in the crossfire. They are Canadian first, but as history has shown the global Jewish diaspora are under constant threat of an anti-Semitic flare up. This makes the existence of a safe haven Jewish nation imperative. Israel is that safe haven. The last time large scale Jewish persecution took place was World War II, just before Israel declared statehood. Prior to the war, countless numbers of Jews had nowhere to run. The area known as Palestine (which included the future Israel) was under the stewardship of the British who cruelly stalled and limited Zionist immigration during the worst period of Jewish persecution in Germany and throughout Europe. The modern state of Israel ensures that this will never happen again. Jews today can leave Canada or Britain, or any other place unable to deal with an escalation in anti-Semitism, to seek peace and security in the Jewish state. Why would anyone want to take that from them?
There will never be, nor has there ever been, a political decision made under conditions of universal consensus. Then as now, some people disagreed with the premise of Zionism, and felt Israel should not have been established in the Middle East (there was a time when early Zionists considered establishing the Jewish state in other areas). However, an agreement was reached among the principal powers of the globe at the conclusion of WWI and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. A promise was made to the Jews that their nation would be reconstituted in the tiny patch of land in the Southern Levant where it had originally existed in biblical times. Although some Jews and Arabs already lived in the area, it was for the most part, a sparsely populated desolate place.
Zionism at first involved diaspora Jews legally purchasing large tracts of land in Palestine from Arab land owners who were happy to sell at prices offered by the Jews. There were malarial swamps scattered throughout the area. The Jews performed a number of astonishing feats of innovation and engineering by draining the diseased swamps and transforming large areas of lifeless arid land into a virtual “desert bloom.” They made the land productive and created economic opportunities which attracted more Jews and Arabs from the surrounding regions. While not everyone was happy with the Zionists, it is a fact that before their arrival and subsequent nation building efforts, no one cared much about the place. It went undeveloped for centuries. After the Jews made the land productive and the area valuable, conflicts with the Arabs began to erupt.
The anti-Semitism of Nazis Germany was imported into the Middle East during the Mandate period by way of the Mufti of Jerusalem, an Arab nationalist named Hajj Amin al-Husayni. Husayni collaborated with Hitler and the Nazis in several ways including broadcasting anti-Jewish propagandist to the Arab world.
Several violent pogroms against the Jews perpetrated by Arab mobs took place during this time. Clearly, Zionism was off to a rocky start. However, once the land had been purchased and efforts to develop it were underway, there was no reneging on the deal, there was no going back. Anyone who has ever made a deal that involves investment and effort knows this. The Jews were manipulated and misled on multiple occasions. Many promises to them were broken. They were forced to settle for a lot less than what had initially been granted. The history is truly terrible. In 1948, after the awful period of the British Mandate in Palestine, and just after the Holocaust in Germany (the worst crime against humanity in the history of humanity), the Jews finally declared Israel an independent state. The promise the world had made to the Jews, although so much of it had been unfairly altered against their interests, was at last fulfilled. But then within 24 hours Israel was attacked by five neighbouring Arab countries.
I think it is a disgrace that so many Canadian elites in government, education and media, are completely out-to-lunch on this issue. The ignorance and the apathy can be shocking. Although it is mixed with misplaced compassion, the clamour and belligerence coming from the leftist activist class has been drowning out sensible voices, while unapologetically amplifying anti-Semitic hatred. Things could not be more un-Canadian regarding pro-Palestinian activism and the threatening posture it takes toward Canadian Jews. However, this whole mess in many ways is a thoroughly Canadian problem. It was our Canadian elites who decided Anglo Canada needed to be Multicultural Canada, and later those same elites who provided safe harbour for Jew hating Islamic extremists, and their anti-Israel terror-supporting NGOs. The University of Toronto created Israel Apartheid Week and continues to call for boycott, divestment, and sanctions against a vital Canadian ally. Canada must clean up its own mess, and the longer it doesn’t, the more disgraceful it will appear on the world stage.
Thanks for reading. For more from this author, read The Epic Bias of CBC
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James hits the nail on the head: “It was our Canadian elites who decided Anglo Canada needed to be Multicultural Canada, and later those same elites who provided safe harbour for Jew hating Islamic extremists. Multiculturalism means that criticism of minorities is verboten. The one minority that is a threat to Jewish citizens is allowed hate speech in our streets, while we, and especially mainstream media, deny ourselves the right to speak freely about totalitarian Islam.
Fear is not in the habit of speaking truth. — Tacitus