Somewhere in Western newsrooms and political backrooms, there must be an instruction manual or playbook entitled “How to make accusations of antisemitism with hardly any facts.” I imagine that Steve Paikin got hold of it and employed it to write his latest column. I am afraid that the piece is seriously lacking in intellectual honesty.
I’m not Jewish so take whatever I write with a grain of kosher salt, but we should not minimize the very chilling effect of the attacks on schools and synagogues have. And those do tend to happen more often in times such as these.
I mean, it had a chilling effect on my family and community just because my ethnic school is close to a Jewish school whose door was shot up. I can’t imagine how terrified the people who send their kids to that school must be. These are not trivial things.
It’s hard. I don’t think we the non-jews in the pro-palestine camp are doing enough to take antisemitism here in Canada seriously, much less combat it. Part of it is triage of energy, but part of it is I think also misguided tribalism that buys into the Zionist lie that all Jews are linked to the state of Israel.
One thing I would love to see would be that every time a Jewish institution is targeted, there would be public and loud displays of solidarity by the pro-palestinian crowd. If anything, every Jew that feels safe and comfortable in Canada is a Jew that is not resettling to Israel.
Thank you very much.
There is a significant chilling effect for sure. One example which might seem insignificant to others but makes the Jewish community very angry is how every single statement about antisemitism made by a public figure or organization has to have “and Islamophobia” added to it. It’s as if people don’t feel they can highlight Jewish suffering on its own because people will be offended. This would never be tolerated with any other group.