This article reminds me of a weather forecaster standing out in a storm, telling us that the weather is bad. That is patently obvious. We need to call out the groups and people doing this. Quit pussy footing around it.
Our universities have become hotbeds of antisemitism. We pay a special Govt appointed representative to remind us all how Islamophobic we are and to think that the two issues are not connected is being willfully blind. There are twice as many Muslims in this country as there are jews, and the ratio is getting larger. Gutless Liberals know where the votes are and so only give token attention to the problem.
Carney called us the most European of non- euro countries. Have a look how much worse it is over there, and hope, that as usual, Carney doesn't know what he's talking about.
The lack of action to address clearly illegal harassment of jewish communities in Canada'a major cities is unforgivable. The least we can do is vote the municipal leadership out of office, and ensure police boards/commissions have members who better reflect the values we expect.
"We must stop and reverse the moral erosion that has already set in in Canada...."
Thanks for the humour. But this cannot happen in reality when all the Good Canadians would never dream of doing and supporting what they are actually doing and supporting. No matter what words institutional and elected leaders mouth (like 'unacceptable') over anti-Semitic acts, let's remember that permitting equals permission. Anti-Semitism now masquerades as Anti-Zionism so the two are clearly synonyms and a required tribal expression of belonging to the Good Canadian Club. Anti-Semitism is here to stay in Canadastan. It's fully permitted. Therefore, you are a racist and bigot if you dare complain about it because you are kicked out the Good Canadian Club and are now a Very Bad Person.
David, I absolutely agree with Tildeb in the use of "Canadastan" which means that I respectfully disagree with you.
I infer that you are offended by a comparison of Canada to the "stans" to be found in central and southern Asia and which seem to be the home of much that is "disagreeable" [quotation marks deliberately used to avoid saying what is itself, "disagreeable"].
The fact is that ever so much of Canada is now "disagreeable" in it's actions and attitudes. I, as a Gentile, am also affected by this anti-Zionist, anti-Jew bias insofar as it infects society as a whole and very quickly brings danger to me, my family and my community if we disagree with it - and I do.
So, David, please understand that you need to accept these labels as accurate.
As a kid growing up in Quebec I lost track about how many times I was told that the Jews killed Jesus. (From a Catholic senior prelate) and that the Holocaust was an English lie ( my school teachers who got it from Premier Duplessis). Until 1960 or so French Quebec was effectively run by the Catholic Church for two hundred years and had been isolated from European thought since the time of the Spanish Inquisition. These are now the ancestral inheritance of today’s Quebec French who under Trudeau the Greater acquired and still maintain a stranglehold on the running of the Federal government. So is it any wonder that Canadians accept xenophobic and antisemitic laws and actions in Quebec and by extension in the rest of the country.
My favorite label for Canada for years was “occupied Kanuckistan”. I see very little reason to retire it.
I've taken a lot of Canadian history and I somehow never learned that Premier Duplessis was such a racist. Never stop learning, I guess. Thank you.
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The "Jews killed Jesus" thing always seems bizarre to me.
Any Christian should know that "he died for our sins" means that we can't offload responsibility for Jesus' death (or sin) onto any subset of humanity. A Christian can be an anti-semite, but he'll be working hard to ignore some glaring biblical facts. (Not that **plenty** of Christians haven't put in that work and then some.)
But let's take the theology out entirely. Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the Bible should know that Jesus was directly killed by Roman soldiers, on the orders of a Roman governor at the behest of an angry mob of Jews whipped up by the Jewish religious leaders at the time. Of course, the Roman authorities fundamentally had zero interest in Jesus, because why would they care about a religious argument among their Jewish subjects?
Other factors include the obvious fact that Jesus was Jewish as were all of the apostles and followers. Christian women might as well say "Jesus was killed by **MEN**, don't ya know!!"
Oh and all his Christian followers ran away rather than stand by him and the most prominent of the Apostles repeatedly denied knowing Jesus at all. If we're talking "blame", then utter and complete betrayal by all his friends, the most prominent Christians at the time seems worse somehow.
The whole thing just seems stupid. Like having a fight about the family lineage of the conspirators who assassinated Julius Caesar.
IMO Duplessis was a racist because his constituency was anti semitic and anti Anglo. Whether the Jews killed Christ or not was irrelevant it came from the Catholic Church so it was holy truth.
I was told in all sincerity by one of the local sages that people from different races could have children but the next generation would be sterile (After all it’s true of horses and donkeys). Tiger Woods and President Obama would be surprised 😆😆
Quebec is under the cosh for introducing legislation, including the not-withstanding clause, to remove all religious symbols and dress from public life. Complete separation of religion and state. They are farther advanced than the ROC. If put to a plebiscite, the legislation would pass. And the next provincial election will be telling.
I find it ironic that in a comment about anti-semitism, the response what I read a different form of religious intolerance. In another 20 years, white people will be the minority in the Western World. I hope they treat us better than we've treated them.
There is no question that Canada has suffered greatly from a vacuum of leadership at all levels from all parties. Danille Smith just used the not-withstanding clause to attack another minority group the other day. It doesn't seem we're getting any smarter.
You seem - I infer - to confuse the idea of the use of the word "Canadastan" with intolerance. Instead, I suggest that in the particular areas of the world that I mentioned there seems to be a great deal of animus toward certain groups. Perhaps you find that offensive, perhaps not, but I did not suggest any issue associated with religion; that was your association.
Now, as for your attack on Danielle Smith, I think if you read carefully her comments - not what the MSM and their acolytes spew - you will find that she is terrifically careful to clarify the reasons for the use and there is nothing that I can find that suggests a suppression of a minority group. You may think otherwise and that is your right but I respectfully suggest that you would be incorrect.
Any of the "stan" countries that I can think of are mono-religious dictatorships, completely intolerant of other cultures. I'm OK with people being critical of Canada....it has a huge list of unaddressed issues. It's still light-years more evolved than the "stans".
I think Danille is the most short-sighted, brain-dead premier in the country on a list that includes Doug Ford. Alberta, in the longer term, will suffer greatly for her current decision-making. I guess we view her open assault on trans rights a little differently.
The same ethnic tribalism that expressed itself so well in Minnesota's billion dollar scam is not just true in Canada but expressed so liberally across the country that is in legal practice and social acceptance an ethno-state. The country is not Canadian in the post war to late 80s sense any longer. It is not just different everywhere but almost the reverse in many places where street signs are sprouting in languages either unrecognizable or unpronounceable to those who speak the official languages. Entire large communities now exist populated by those who share none of the values used to justify multiculturalism. So the 'stan' I included was intended to drive home the point that Canada has morphed into a foreign land to its multigenerational occupants, including 'Newfs' - a term used by my Newfoundlander friend to describe the massive influx (in their millions) of heavily accented people not from the west who now seem to populate all and every avenue of public access to government services. When English and/or French are a common barrier to communication, something fundamental has changed in Canada. If you take umbrage at 'stan' then by all means offer another term that captures the same sense of losing one's country because all other ethnicities, traditions, languages, (and religions, let's be clear) rank higher in 'tolerance' than those of the majority.
Time doesn't stop. Change is part of life. Canada of the 1980s isn't coming back. My grade school class 50 years ago was 100% white. My kids' grade school class 20 years ago was 50% white. It's evolution. In another 20 years, it will be 25% white. What's your plan then?
Canada has and is suffering from a lack of leadership. I am of the opinion that to immigrate, you should be required to have a working knowledge of one of our official languages. No question that what you suggest is an issue. But I think it's a smokescreen for the far bigger one, which is a vision for the country 20 years from now. Instead, we're running around with debt-funded band-aids while giving tax breaks to the richest.
The problem is stark and the solution absolutely clear: integration. Not 100 million 'new tribal Canadians' by 2100, not privileges in law and funding for tribal lands, tribal rights, tribal 'reconciliation', but integration into one citizenry that shares all rights and all freedoms together, meaning each of us has a stake in supporting a unifying system for all ethnic populations past, present, and future. There cannot be a country otherwise. This current tribalism expressed in so many ways is utterly devastating and destabalizing and divisive, yet claimed and believed to produce strength in such diversity. This is a bald-faced lie. Diversity that separates us into tribal silos has been so warmly embraced by the deluded (many of whom still seek a national 'identity' while condemning everything national, everything that builds nations) is already socially and economically and politically disastrous in every situation in which the ethno-state now operates. Integration is key and critical to reversing the regression so many rush to support in the name of being 'nice' and 'fair' and 'tolerant' when the opposite is true in reality.
Very well put. And I agree. I believe part of the reason delaying integration is that the chiefs - indigenous and non indigenous - are getting too much money for no work to give it up easily. Canada’s current system is where every one is a “Paul” getting something for nothing and a “ Peter” (probably Peter’s unborn grandchild)having his pocket picked to pay for it all. And politicians of all stripes and the media are gleefully pissing on everyone and telling them it’s raining.
I read there was a West Coast fall tradition called a potlatch where you were gifted an item and had to reciprocate with a bigger one and so on until a few people had all the harvest and the rest of the bare-assed froze to death. The missionaries were influential in ending the practice either by persuasion or force, nor sure which. The process reminds me of Canadian elections where parties try to outpromise each other. Then wisdom prevails and the promises are deferred indefinitely by the time honored civil service/ministerial process of using the search for perfection delay the good until it dies of old age and irrelevance.
I agree completely. I just wish we'd thought of that before we sat down with the people who owned the land, signed treaties making huge promises that we broke before the ink was dry. And since there are so many to sit down and make deals with to integrate, we've screwed ourselves badly, because they rightly don't take our word on anything. But perhaps your idea should start with people moving into the country. They are more than welcome to bring their heritage. They may not bring their laws, and they may not bring their complaints about the home country.
I have fond memories of my school mates in the Edmonton of the 1960s and 1970s. Their ancestors (and sometimes they themselves) were from all over, including China, Jamaica, Africville in Nova Scotia, all over Europe (including Ukraine, Russia and other places in Central and Eastern Europe) and, of course, the indigenous and Métis communities of Alberta and Saskatchewan.
Be careful of using your nostalgia for what you believe was a better country to blind yourself to the reality.
As much as Justin Trudeau was properly castigated for putting form before substance, his words about the terrible things done to indigenous peoples were spot on.
As was Steven Harper’s apology to Japanese Canadians for the horrible treatment they suffered during, and after, WW2.
Finally let’s not forget the terrible personal costs suffered by tens-of-thousands of Chinese migrants because of the Chinese Exclusion Act, (1923-1947).
Your belief about the history of the country - especially concerning indigenous populations - is badly in need of honest review. Junior didn't just state lies; he institutionalized them and we will be hard pressed to ever undo the terrible damage to Canada by his ignorance and willingness to believe a narrative over truth. Perhaps once your property rights are waved away you might become motivated enough to find out for yourself rather than continue to believe in belief.
What you call 'nostalgia' is based on travelling the post war globe, living in different continents, and returning to Canada to experience the very bright future that lay before the country. By comparing and contrasting Canada to every other nation on earth as it really was then, this 'nostalgia' reveals why Canada was understood especially from afar to be situated by a vast richness of many inheritances to become a global leader, a shining example, that has now become globally irrelevant, worthy of mockery, and now self-imploding through stupidity combined with firm beliefs disconnected from reality.
Yes, like every country, Canada as a nation could have done things differently that, in hindsight, could have been better. But in any honest and fair comparison globally, Canada was mostly an example to follow. Globally, Canadians were treated with honour and respect for these achievements by civilians everywhere I encountered, not least of which was based on a very high order of peace, order, and good government among a very disparate population that truly was envied around the world. That has all evaporated. Sure, call it nostalgia, but understand it is based on reality that has morphed into its polar opposite today. I just happen to think that a Bad Thing.
We have suffered 50 years of bad, inept federal government. That doesn't change what we did to Native Canadians, the Chinese and the Japanese. The worldview of Canada hasn't changed that much, even if the reality of the country is struggling at the moment. A lack of leadership will dig those holes.
What we 'did' to native communities is the very framing that I think you are importing and not extracting from history. For example, there is a wonderful historical series on Quillette called the Nations of Canada by historian Greg Koabel that will reframe what you think you know about this country. With this background, you can then begin see the the jaw-dropping scope of the misinformation currently peddled as what 'colonialists' 'did' to the indigenous. And that's only the start because when you begin forming policies and laws based on a misinformed framing, you institutionalize lies that only divide and undermine and think one's self righteous by supporting exactly that which should not be supported but heavily criticized and corrected.
I have no clue what terrible Canadian things happened IN CONTEXT that somehow elevates Canada to be singled out as a particularly bad actor and this isn't the place to go into details of the points you raise that supposedly modify them correctly into 'typical'. That proposition is ahistorical. Neither Japan nor Germany has offered Canada a formal apology. China certainly hasn't apologized for its ongoing subversive and criminal role in Canada today. But we have apologized to their emigrants! I understand the desire to hold Canada's government to a higher standard that better reflects our founding liberal values and democratic principles and I can appreciate always wanting to do better. That's a good intention. But to pick up the burden of historical guilt for these selective and often ahistorical outliers and rip apart and excuse the destruction the country today by some perverse flagellating desire to scourge it with policies and laws meant to undermine those very values and principles seems to me to be an act of national suicide. That proposition I think is batshit crazy.
Terrible things happened everywhere and, as long as there are humans, it will be forevermore. The human brain has not evolved significantly in 50 000 years. Our hubris, belief that we are socially evolved, is just a myth promulgated by "social scientists" who ride the coattails of wealth generated by advances in technology.
This is one of the most important columns I have ever read at The Line.
What is particularly gut wrenching is the betrayal of left. Jews were at the forefront of every major rights movement: Betty Friedan and Bella Abzug in the women's movement; Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (who marched arm in arm with MLK), Abel Meeropol (who wrote the lyrics to "Strange Fruit"), and James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner (martyred in the civil rights registration drive); and Harvey Milk and Larry Kramer in the gay rights movement.
Jews have been central to the Labour Party, Democratic Party and our Liberals and NDP. To see the treatment of Selina Robinson under BC's NDP government, or the support for Sarah Jama within Ontario's NDP, or the positions of NDP leadership candidates, especially from grandson of the late, great David Lewis is sick making.
I'm especially heartsick at the moral rot within our arts community: The cancellation of Christopher Morris' important, award-winning play "The Runner" by Vancouver's PuSh Festival and Victoria's Belfry Theatre, or the cancellation of the Jewish Film Festival in Hamilton are only two examples.
I honestly don't know how we come back, especially when our political leadership offers nothing but thoughts and prayers.
There’s a good chance it’s too late. The Left is the dominant ideological force in Canada and it has embraced antisemitism. So it’s difficult to see, given demographic trends, that much will change
I recently read a book called “Irena’s Gift” - it’s a book written by the daughter of a Holocaust survivor and is based on a true story. I realized over the course of the book how undereducated I am - both on the conditions leading up to WW2, and how deep the hatred for Jews ran in many European countries (not just Germany.)
I erroneously believed that the Nazi’s had fomented the hate against the Jews, which I now know was wrong.
I share the above because while I’ve been vocally supportive of Jews since Oct 7, and vocally anti-Hamas, I consider myself average when it comes to history knowledge. I fear that much of the hatred fomenting right now is able to foment because people simply are uneducated and lack the ability to truly respond with kindness and love and instead let fear and propaganda take the wheel.
I agree that this needs to be called out, but I would add that I think as a society we need to look more at our social bonds. What brings us together as communities and cities and provinces and a country? There is far too much public focus on outrage and differences, and I think it’s created an inaccurate view for many people. We can all be prone to being pulled into thinking about the current big topic - but I think that is actually the root problem. What legacy media remains does a good job of leading with the fear and shock headlines, and not such a good job at focusing on what unites us all.
Maybe there’s a balance somewhere - where unity and common ground can be rebuilt that is blind to gender, religion, and skin color. We’ve spent far too long looking at differences instead of the 90% we all have in common with each other. And this habit of dividing and sorting ourselves is ultimately what I think creates the space for this kind of hate to develop.
I don’t want to let my guard down against antisemitism. Even though I’m not a confrontational person, I challenge it whenever I hear it spoken. I deliberately choose Israeli products when I find them. I shop at businesses that I know are Jewish (especially ones I’ve heard have been targeted by antisemitism). I do these things since October 7. Also I believe I would defend a Jewish person who was being attacked for being Jewish.
I know these things are insignificant, and probably not worth mentioning except maybe it will help someone to know that not all Canadians are indifferent to the unjustified hatred Jewish people are facing once again.
You can hate the behaviour of the government of Israel and not be anti-Semitic.
I have said in this forum many times that anyone in Canada harassing anyone Canadian because of what is happening in Israel is an idiot. If you're upset about what's happening there, protest there.
I don't think the police have done nearly enough to address it.
I supported Israel's expected response to October 7. That had a shelf life that has long passed.
All this idiotic religious hate confirms my other theory... organised religion, and their assorted Gods are humanity's worst invention....and all based on nothing but opinion. How have we created a world where imposing our opinions on how others should live their lives is all that matters?
Religion frequently gets blamed as the source for much hatred and death. If religion is the source of the majority of conflict, hatred, and death, then we need to explain the immense death tolls of atheist regimes. Easy examples of those atheist regimes are the Soviet Union and Communist China. Any belief system can be used to justify our best or worst impulses. I suspect the human race's inherent tendency for tribalism is the most significant driver of our divisions.
The closest anyone has come to a religion-free democracy in the Western World after WW2. It's the only time it's really been tried, your two examples both being dictatorships. In the West, it worked brilliantly until unregulated greed destroyed it.
You are correct in pointing out I conflated political/governmental regimes with religion. That was an error on my part. That said, a religion-free government is not necessarily the same as an atheistic government. I definitely agree with the idea of separating church and state as much as humanly possible.
I agree with much or your initial post. It’s disgusting to see our laws so selectively applied that any group of Canadians feels threatened by other Canadians.
As others have pointed out, blaming religion for "imposing our opinions on how others should live their lives", has the fatal problem that taking religion out doesn't slow down this human impulse and sometimes seems to supercharge it.
The Soviet Union has been mentioned, but consider feudal Japan. Not exactly a place that welcomed people living their lives in "unJapanese" ways to say the least and this was very obviously not a religious thing. Ditto Imperial China. When something occurs within religious communities AND outside them in as close to equal measure as anyone can tell, it's silly to say "it's because of religion".
Looking at **Christian** anti-Jewish hatred for a moment, I think it's equally fair to say that it's not religiously caused at all but that Christianity and Christians just failed to prevent a sadly common human sin.
Christianity is fundamentally Jewish. Jesus was a Jew, all the apostles were Jews, virtually all the heroes of the Bible were Jews. The Bible records permanent promises made by to the Jewish people. Christians can be and have been ridiculously anti-Jewish, but they're obviously rowing upstream to get there. Now remember all the other factors. Jews were ethnically distinct in ethnically homogenous communities, Their culture was very different. Their dress was often different. They had food rules different from the natives. They were often more successful than the natives. And all through Europe, religious loyalty was very frequently correlated with political loyalty. Then consider the weird leaps of logic Christians sometimes did to justify anti-semitism... like some of the British claiming that they were the "real" Jews and the people called Jews were imposters. It's weird, but it shows an attempt to "get around" the Jewishness of Christianity.
I don't think that's a fair comparison. Japan never went the multicultural route, nor did they inherit/ steal the land from anyone. They, Russia and China were never immigrant nations.
I think religious hate is just the stupidest of humanity showing themselves for what they are. All religion is just a collection of made-up cults that don't stand the test of intellectual evolution. We have left the systems of government of those eras behind for excellent reasons. Are we smart enough not to prove Darwin wrong?
With respect, the point about stealing land is a red herring. The issue as you yourself put it is "imposing our opinions on how others should live their lives".
Empires are *one* way to do that, but only a race essentialist, (aka a racist trying to sound respectable), would argue that a powerful person imposing a way to live on someone from their own ethnic group isn't imposing his opinion on how others should live their lives. That imperial Japan enforced a culture on it's own people and punished (or killed) people who strayed too far in the opinion of the ruler from "the" Japanese way only further proves the point. Imposing a way to live on other people is an ever-present human trait, not one caused by religion. And of course Japan imposed their way of living on the empire they conquered long before the Europeans showed up there.
Imperial China did the same thing, both to all the ethnic Chinese of the same ethnicity of the rulers and to the empire they conquered.
Neither of those cases were religious and both were empires imposing one way of living on conquered people *and* their own people.
Since you bring up Russia, they did exactly the same thing as they conquered eastwards from Moscow under the Tsars "Russifying" every people group they conquered. That's before we get into the explicitly atheist Soviets who were rather explicit about imposing their opinions on people about how to live their lives.
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You're free to like or dislike religion all you like, (though notably not in the most famous explicitly atheist societies), but I think history makes it very clear that when it comes to imposing our opinions on how others should live their lives, religion is NOT the cause of that at all... instead, religion is simply one of the opinions that can be imposed.... along with political ideology, diet, lifestyle or.. (if you're Tsarist Russia), legally permissible facial hair grooming options.
Empires are dictatorships. Dictators impose their opinions. Democracies, the evolution of leadership and governance, aren't supposed to. It's why church and state need a wall between them. A lack of that wall is part of why the US is collapsing. I'm just really tired of people dying for praying wrong.
David: I have met an Ainu elder who would vehemently disagree that the Yamato Japanese did not take land that was once occupied by the Ainu, who still exist and were subject to systematic abuse by the government of Imperial Japan.
As for Russia and China, actually, both absorbed many different peoples and were changed, in ethnographic and cultural terms by those historical processes. And that occurred largely because of imperialist expansion.
Rightly, or wrongly, I may make a big distinction between battles and occupations of tribes from similar geographic areas and the colonisation of the Americas by Europeans.
Hate and haters, whatever their stripe, prosper because good people stand and watch but say nothing and do nothing. We’ve become too scared to speak up and stand up to the goons that foster all sorts of abominations because we don’t want to be next. Easier to be a lemming than to be a lion.
Had the opportunity to watch "Cabaret", the musical, in London last year at this time. Ironic and sad that the theatre is so close to the site of the weekly antisemitic demonstrations that have come to characterize the fall of GB. These demonstrators are certainly part of the professional omnicause, and the suggestion that the pendulum against these beliefs has swung to far is naive. The academy is a lousy with these people and an purge is needed.
It's exceedingly odd this article doesn't mention or address the anti-Jewish racism and religious hatred again Jews in Islam. This racism and religious hatred is obvious in majority Muslim countries, but it's a feature of Islam everywhere, including in Canada. It's downright weird that Mr. Kimmel doesn't mention it at all given how the resurgence of anti-semitism in Canada has been mirrored by the increased immigration to Canada from the so-called "Muslim world". The article would be quite incomplete if it was exclusively about that, because anti-Jewish racism is also on the rise in Christian nationalists, "groypers" and the so called "woke left"... but it's weird that anti-Jewish racism in Muslim communities is not mentioned at all.
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I think it's also worth noting that Mr. Kimmel is right that criticism of Israeli government decisions remain both valid and necessary for public discussion, as with any other country. At the same time, when even valid criticisms are directed exclusively and obsessively at the only Jewish state, it's a clear sign of racism at work in the critic.
Consider a parallel. Let's say someone in the US pointed out that criticism of fatherlessness and violent crime in the black community are valid and necessary for public discussion, as with the same in any other community. That's true. It's not inherently racist to criticize that any more than it is to criticize Israel.
Now let's say you've got a lot of people who only criticize fatherlessness and violent crime when it's in the black community and are "coincidentally" quiet about those same things in white communities. When pressed, they admit that it's also bad there, but they quickly move back to talking about the crime in black communities. The criticism of those things (and Israel) is still valid... and at the same time, those critics are obvious racists.
Thank you for publishing this column. This country is awash in anti-Semitism, discrimination, and promoters of racial hierarchies. It is governed by a progressive, Liberal, elitist cabal that counts votes rather than address issues of truth and justice. These are sad days for our country. We made heroic efforts to put down racism, bigotry, and anti-Semitism only to have our current leadership turn their backs on our achievements. Today our leaders refuse to denounce racial profiliing, discrimination, and anti-Semitism as they worship their DEI idols and appear terrorized by the threat of electoral losses. They provide comfort to bigots and anti-Semites (both left and right).
Too late … it’s been too late pretty much since Oct 7, 2023. We have allowed the pro,Palestinian mobs to take over our streets for over 2 years now. This ship has sailed.
Who do we blame, universities are the starting point pushing BDS policy and making Jews uncomfortable for over a decade. We have progressive left politicians wrappings themselves in Keffihahs in the HOC, and a two successive liberal PM’s who are actively hostile towards Israel.
The rot truly does start at the top. The morally smug lefties don’t even see their racism here.
Starting with PM Doolittle signing some paper recognizing the non-state of palestine. Palestine was a region of the Middle East since before the time of Jesus, it’s not a nation, despite the aggressive words and actions of the left.
This article reminds me of a weather forecaster standing out in a storm, telling us that the weather is bad. That is patently obvious. We need to call out the groups and people doing this. Quit pussy footing around it.
Our universities have become hotbeds of antisemitism. We pay a special Govt appointed representative to remind us all how Islamophobic we are and to think that the two issues are not connected is being willfully blind. There are twice as many Muslims in this country as there are jews, and the ratio is getting larger. Gutless Liberals know where the votes are and so only give token attention to the problem.
Carney called us the most European of non- euro countries. Have a look how much worse it is over there, and hope, that as usual, Carney doesn't know what he's talking about.
He knows exactly what he is talking about, and Canadians should be worried.
The lack of action to address clearly illegal harassment of jewish communities in Canada'a major cities is unforgivable. The least we can do is vote the municipal leadership out of office, and ensure police boards/commissions have members who better reflect the values we expect.
"We must stop and reverse the moral erosion that has already set in in Canada...."
Thanks for the humour. But this cannot happen in reality when all the Good Canadians would never dream of doing and supporting what they are actually doing and supporting. No matter what words institutional and elected leaders mouth (like 'unacceptable') over anti-Semitic acts, let's remember that permitting equals permission. Anti-Semitism now masquerades as Anti-Zionism so the two are clearly synonyms and a required tribal expression of belonging to the Good Canadian Club. Anti-Semitism is here to stay in Canadastan. It's fully permitted. Therefore, you are a racist and bigot if you dare complain about it because you are kicked out the Good Canadian Club and are now a Very Bad Person.
You were doing terrifically until "Canadastan"....
David, I absolutely agree with Tildeb in the use of "Canadastan" which means that I respectfully disagree with you.
I infer that you are offended by a comparison of Canada to the "stans" to be found in central and southern Asia and which seem to be the home of much that is "disagreeable" [quotation marks deliberately used to avoid saying what is itself, "disagreeable"].
The fact is that ever so much of Canada is now "disagreeable" in it's actions and attitudes. I, as a Gentile, am also affected by this anti-Zionist, anti-Jew bias insofar as it infects society as a whole and very quickly brings danger to me, my family and my community if we disagree with it - and I do.
So, David, please understand that you need to accept these labels as accurate.
As a kid growing up in Quebec I lost track about how many times I was told that the Jews killed Jesus. (From a Catholic senior prelate) and that the Holocaust was an English lie ( my school teachers who got it from Premier Duplessis). Until 1960 or so French Quebec was effectively run by the Catholic Church for two hundred years and had been isolated from European thought since the time of the Spanish Inquisition. These are now the ancestral inheritance of today’s Quebec French who under Trudeau the Greater acquired and still maintain a stranglehold on the running of the Federal government. So is it any wonder that Canadians accept xenophobic and antisemitic laws and actions in Quebec and by extension in the rest of the country.
My favorite label for Canada for years was “occupied Kanuckistan”. I see very little reason to retire it.
I've taken a lot of Canadian history and I somehow never learned that Premier Duplessis was such a racist. Never stop learning, I guess. Thank you.
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The "Jews killed Jesus" thing always seems bizarre to me.
Any Christian should know that "he died for our sins" means that we can't offload responsibility for Jesus' death (or sin) onto any subset of humanity. A Christian can be an anti-semite, but he'll be working hard to ignore some glaring biblical facts. (Not that **plenty** of Christians haven't put in that work and then some.)
But let's take the theology out entirely. Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the Bible should know that Jesus was directly killed by Roman soldiers, on the orders of a Roman governor at the behest of an angry mob of Jews whipped up by the Jewish religious leaders at the time. Of course, the Roman authorities fundamentally had zero interest in Jesus, because why would they care about a religious argument among their Jewish subjects?
Other factors include the obvious fact that Jesus was Jewish as were all of the apostles and followers. Christian women might as well say "Jesus was killed by **MEN**, don't ya know!!"
Oh and all his Christian followers ran away rather than stand by him and the most prominent of the Apostles repeatedly denied knowing Jesus at all. If we're talking "blame", then utter and complete betrayal by all his friends, the most prominent Christians at the time seems worse somehow.
The whole thing just seems stupid. Like having a fight about the family lineage of the conspirators who assassinated Julius Caesar.
IMO Duplessis was a racist because his constituency was anti semitic and anti Anglo. Whether the Jews killed Christ or not was irrelevant it came from the Catholic Church so it was holy truth.
I was told in all sincerity by one of the local sages that people from different races could have children but the next generation would be sterile (After all it’s true of horses and donkeys). Tiger Woods and President Obama would be surprised 😆😆
Lol... the stupidity of that one is unbelievable..
Quebec is under the cosh for introducing legislation, including the not-withstanding clause, to remove all religious symbols and dress from public life. Complete separation of religion and state. They are farther advanced than the ROC. If put to a plebiscite, the legislation would pass. And the next provincial election will be telling.
I find it ironic that in a comment about anti-semitism, the response what I read a different form of religious intolerance. In another 20 years, white people will be the minority in the Western World. I hope they treat us better than we've treated them.
There is no question that Canada has suffered greatly from a vacuum of leadership at all levels from all parties. Danille Smith just used the not-withstanding clause to attack another minority group the other day. It doesn't seem we're getting any smarter.
Hmmm ......
You seem - I infer - to confuse the idea of the use of the word "Canadastan" with intolerance. Instead, I suggest that in the particular areas of the world that I mentioned there seems to be a great deal of animus toward certain groups. Perhaps you find that offensive, perhaps not, but I did not suggest any issue associated with religion; that was your association.
Now, as for your attack on Danielle Smith, I think if you read carefully her comments - not what the MSM and their acolytes spew - you will find that she is terrifically careful to clarify the reasons for the use and there is nothing that I can find that suggests a suppression of a minority group. You may think otherwise and that is your right but I respectfully suggest that you would be incorrect.
Any of the "stan" countries that I can think of are mono-religious dictatorships, completely intolerant of other cultures. I'm OK with people being critical of Canada....it has a huge list of unaddressed issues. It's still light-years more evolved than the "stans".
I think Danille is the most short-sighted, brain-dead premier in the country on a list that includes Doug Ford. Alberta, in the longer term, will suffer greatly for her current decision-making. I guess we view her open assault on trans rights a little differently.
How did we get from antisemitism to trans rights????🙄🙄
The same ethnic tribalism that expressed itself so well in Minnesota's billion dollar scam is not just true in Canada but expressed so liberally across the country that is in legal practice and social acceptance an ethno-state. The country is not Canadian in the post war to late 80s sense any longer. It is not just different everywhere but almost the reverse in many places where street signs are sprouting in languages either unrecognizable or unpronounceable to those who speak the official languages. Entire large communities now exist populated by those who share none of the values used to justify multiculturalism. So the 'stan' I included was intended to drive home the point that Canada has morphed into a foreign land to its multigenerational occupants, including 'Newfs' - a term used by my Newfoundlander friend to describe the massive influx (in their millions) of heavily accented people not from the west who now seem to populate all and every avenue of public access to government services. When English and/or French are a common barrier to communication, something fundamental has changed in Canada. If you take umbrage at 'stan' then by all means offer another term that captures the same sense of losing one's country because all other ethnicities, traditions, languages, (and religions, let's be clear) rank higher in 'tolerance' than those of the majority.
Time doesn't stop. Change is part of life. Canada of the 1980s isn't coming back. My grade school class 50 years ago was 100% white. My kids' grade school class 20 years ago was 50% white. It's evolution. In another 20 years, it will be 25% white. What's your plan then?
Canada has and is suffering from a lack of leadership. I am of the opinion that to immigrate, you should be required to have a working knowledge of one of our official languages. No question that what you suggest is an issue. But I think it's a smokescreen for the far bigger one, which is a vision for the country 20 years from now. Instead, we're running around with debt-funded band-aids while giving tax breaks to the richest.
The problem is stark and the solution absolutely clear: integration. Not 100 million 'new tribal Canadians' by 2100, not privileges in law and funding for tribal lands, tribal rights, tribal 'reconciliation', but integration into one citizenry that shares all rights and all freedoms together, meaning each of us has a stake in supporting a unifying system for all ethnic populations past, present, and future. There cannot be a country otherwise. This current tribalism expressed in so many ways is utterly devastating and destabalizing and divisive, yet claimed and believed to produce strength in such diversity. This is a bald-faced lie. Diversity that separates us into tribal silos has been so warmly embraced by the deluded (many of whom still seek a national 'identity' while condemning everything national, everything that builds nations) is already socially and economically and politically disastrous in every situation in which the ethno-state now operates. Integration is key and critical to reversing the regression so many rush to support in the name of being 'nice' and 'fair' and 'tolerant' when the opposite is true in reality.
Very well put. And I agree. I believe part of the reason delaying integration is that the chiefs - indigenous and non indigenous - are getting too much money for no work to give it up easily. Canada’s current system is where every one is a “Paul” getting something for nothing and a “ Peter” (probably Peter’s unborn grandchild)having his pocket picked to pay for it all. And politicians of all stripes and the media are gleefully pissing on everyone and telling them it’s raining.
I read there was a West Coast fall tradition called a potlatch where you were gifted an item and had to reciprocate with a bigger one and so on until a few people had all the harvest and the rest of the bare-assed froze to death. The missionaries were influential in ending the practice either by persuasion or force, nor sure which. The process reminds me of Canadian elections where parties try to outpromise each other. Then wisdom prevails and the promises are deferred indefinitely by the time honored civil service/ministerial process of using the search for perfection delay the good until it dies of old age and irrelevance.
Not to mention the end to tribal slavery and inter-tribal warfare and massacres... not that many seem to care about such indigenous trivialities.
I agree completely. I just wish we'd thought of that before we sat down with the people who owned the land, signed treaties making huge promises that we broke before the ink was dry. And since there are so many to sit down and make deals with to integrate, we've screwed ourselves badly, because they rightly don't take our word on anything. But perhaps your idea should start with people moving into the country. They are more than welcome to bring their heritage. They may not bring their laws, and they may not bring their complaints about the home country.
I’m with you, but on a personal note,
I have fond memories of my school mates in the Edmonton of the 1960s and 1970s. Their ancestors (and sometimes they themselves) were from all over, including China, Jamaica, Africville in Nova Scotia, all over Europe (including Ukraine, Russia and other places in Central and Eastern Europe) and, of course, the indigenous and Métis communities of Alberta and Saskatchewan.
I was very fortunate.
As do I. None of my friends' parents were born in Canada but they did something today's immigrants by and large don't do. Integrate.
Be careful of using your nostalgia for what you believe was a better country to blind yourself to the reality.
As much as Justin Trudeau was properly castigated for putting form before substance, his words about the terrible things done to indigenous peoples were spot on.
As was Steven Harper’s apology to Japanese Canadians for the horrible treatment they suffered during, and after, WW2.
Finally let’s not forget the terrible personal costs suffered by tens-of-thousands of Chinese migrants because of the Chinese Exclusion Act, (1923-1947).
All in the name of “the Dominion of Canada”.
Your belief about the history of the country - especially concerning indigenous populations - is badly in need of honest review. Junior didn't just state lies; he institutionalized them and we will be hard pressed to ever undo the terrible damage to Canada by his ignorance and willingness to believe a narrative over truth. Perhaps once your property rights are waved away you might become motivated enough to find out for yourself rather than continue to believe in belief.
What you call 'nostalgia' is based on travelling the post war globe, living in different continents, and returning to Canada to experience the very bright future that lay before the country. By comparing and contrasting Canada to every other nation on earth as it really was then, this 'nostalgia' reveals why Canada was understood especially from afar to be situated by a vast richness of many inheritances to become a global leader, a shining example, that has now become globally irrelevant, worthy of mockery, and now self-imploding through stupidity combined with firm beliefs disconnected from reality.
Yes, like every country, Canada as a nation could have done things differently that, in hindsight, could have been better. But in any honest and fair comparison globally, Canada was mostly an example to follow. Globally, Canadians were treated with honour and respect for these achievements by civilians everywhere I encountered, not least of which was based on a very high order of peace, order, and good government among a very disparate population that truly was envied around the world. That has all evaporated. Sure, call it nostalgia, but understand it is based on reality that has morphed into its polar opposite today. I just happen to think that a Bad Thing.
We have suffered 50 years of bad, inept federal government. That doesn't change what we did to Native Canadians, the Chinese and the Japanese. The worldview of Canada hasn't changed that much, even if the reality of the country is struggling at the moment. A lack of leadership will dig those holes.
What we 'did' to native communities is the very framing that I think you are importing and not extracting from history. For example, there is a wonderful historical series on Quillette called the Nations of Canada by historian Greg Koabel that will reframe what you think you know about this country. With this background, you can then begin see the the jaw-dropping scope of the misinformation currently peddled as what 'colonialists' 'did' to the indigenous. And that's only the start because when you begin forming policies and laws based on a misinformed framing, you institutionalize lies that only divide and undermine and think one's self righteous by supporting exactly that which should not be supported but heavily criticized and corrected.
You glossed over everything I wrote. These terrible things happened. Period. Your reading suggests a desire to extemporize away historical fact.
I have no clue what terrible Canadian things happened IN CONTEXT that somehow elevates Canada to be singled out as a particularly bad actor and this isn't the place to go into details of the points you raise that supposedly modify them correctly into 'typical'. That proposition is ahistorical. Neither Japan nor Germany has offered Canada a formal apology. China certainly hasn't apologized for its ongoing subversive and criminal role in Canada today. But we have apologized to their emigrants! I understand the desire to hold Canada's government to a higher standard that better reflects our founding liberal values and democratic principles and I can appreciate always wanting to do better. That's a good intention. But to pick up the burden of historical guilt for these selective and often ahistorical outliers and rip apart and excuse the destruction the country today by some perverse flagellating desire to scourge it with policies and laws meant to undermine those very values and principles seems to me to be an act of national suicide. That proposition I think is batshit crazy.
Terrible things happened everywhere and, as long as there are humans, it will be forevermore. The human brain has not evolved significantly in 50 000 years. Our hubris, belief that we are socially evolved, is just a myth promulgated by "social scientists" who ride the coattails of wealth generated by advances in technology.
This is one of the most important columns I have ever read at The Line.
What is particularly gut wrenching is the betrayal of left. Jews were at the forefront of every major rights movement: Betty Friedan and Bella Abzug in the women's movement; Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (who marched arm in arm with MLK), Abel Meeropol (who wrote the lyrics to "Strange Fruit"), and James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner (martyred in the civil rights registration drive); and Harvey Milk and Larry Kramer in the gay rights movement.
Jews have been central to the Labour Party, Democratic Party and our Liberals and NDP. To see the treatment of Selina Robinson under BC's NDP government, or the support for Sarah Jama within Ontario's NDP, or the positions of NDP leadership candidates, especially from grandson of the late, great David Lewis is sick making.
I'm especially heartsick at the moral rot within our arts community: The cancellation of Christopher Morris' important, award-winning play "The Runner" by Vancouver's PuSh Festival and Victoria's Belfry Theatre, or the cancellation of the Jewish Film Festival in Hamilton are only two examples.
I honestly don't know how we come back, especially when our political leadership offers nothing but thoughts and prayers.
This article reminded me of why I hold cold contempt against MSM and CBC extreme selectivity.
Well said, NS!
There’s a good chance it’s too late. The Left is the dominant ideological force in Canada and it has embraced antisemitism. So it’s difficult to see, given demographic trends, that much will change
But not so much in Alberta. If you can't join them, leave them.
I recently read a book called “Irena’s Gift” - it’s a book written by the daughter of a Holocaust survivor and is based on a true story. I realized over the course of the book how undereducated I am - both on the conditions leading up to WW2, and how deep the hatred for Jews ran in many European countries (not just Germany.)
I erroneously believed that the Nazi’s had fomented the hate against the Jews, which I now know was wrong.
I share the above because while I’ve been vocally supportive of Jews since Oct 7, and vocally anti-Hamas, I consider myself average when it comes to history knowledge. I fear that much of the hatred fomenting right now is able to foment because people simply are uneducated and lack the ability to truly respond with kindness and love and instead let fear and propaganda take the wheel.
I agree that this needs to be called out, but I would add that I think as a society we need to look more at our social bonds. What brings us together as communities and cities and provinces and a country? There is far too much public focus on outrage and differences, and I think it’s created an inaccurate view for many people. We can all be prone to being pulled into thinking about the current big topic - but I think that is actually the root problem. What legacy media remains does a good job of leading with the fear and shock headlines, and not such a good job at focusing on what unites us all.
Maybe there’s a balance somewhere - where unity and common ground can be rebuilt that is blind to gender, religion, and skin color. We’ve spent far too long looking at differences instead of the 90% we all have in common with each other. And this habit of dividing and sorting ourselves is ultimately what I think creates the space for this kind of hate to develop.
Nice comment by a decent person, who no doubt would be trapped by leftists, who in these times are a main source of hatred against Jews.
The infidels, that us, the non-muslims, must remind ourselves that Islamists will destroy us.
In the current situation any social bonds aimed at Islamists, real or theoretical, are extremely naive and null and void.
The Islamists misuse those as a Trojan horse.
I don’t want to let my guard down against antisemitism. Even though I’m not a confrontational person, I challenge it whenever I hear it spoken. I deliberately choose Israeli products when I find them. I shop at businesses that I know are Jewish (especially ones I’ve heard have been targeted by antisemitism). I do these things since October 7. Also I believe I would defend a Jewish person who was being attacked for being Jewish.
I know these things are insignificant, and probably not worth mentioning except maybe it will help someone to know that not all Canadians are indifferent to the unjustified hatred Jewish people are facing once again.
Maurice, these things are deeply significant.
You can hate the behaviour of the government of Israel and not be anti-Semitic.
I have said in this forum many times that anyone in Canada harassing anyone Canadian because of what is happening in Israel is an idiot. If you're upset about what's happening there, protest there.
I don't think the police have done nearly enough to address it.
I supported Israel's expected response to October 7. That had a shelf life that has long passed.
All this idiotic religious hate confirms my other theory... organised religion, and their assorted Gods are humanity's worst invention....and all based on nothing but opinion. How have we created a world where imposing our opinions on how others should live their lives is all that matters?
Religion frequently gets blamed as the source for much hatred and death. If religion is the source of the majority of conflict, hatred, and death, then we need to explain the immense death tolls of atheist regimes. Easy examples of those atheist regimes are the Soviet Union and Communist China. Any belief system can be used to justify our best or worst impulses. I suspect the human race's inherent tendency for tribalism is the most significant driver of our divisions.
The closest anyone has come to a religion-free democracy in the Western World after WW2. It's the only time it's really been tried, your two examples both being dictatorships. In the West, it worked brilliantly until unregulated greed destroyed it.
You are correct in pointing out I conflated political/governmental regimes with religion. That was an error on my part. That said, a religion-free government is not necessarily the same as an atheistic government. I definitely agree with the idea of separating church and state as much as humanly possible.
I agree with much or your initial post. It’s disgusting to see our laws so selectively applied that any group of Canadians feels threatened by other Canadians.
As others have pointed out, blaming religion for "imposing our opinions on how others should live their lives", has the fatal problem that taking religion out doesn't slow down this human impulse and sometimes seems to supercharge it.
The Soviet Union has been mentioned, but consider feudal Japan. Not exactly a place that welcomed people living their lives in "unJapanese" ways to say the least and this was very obviously not a religious thing. Ditto Imperial China. When something occurs within religious communities AND outside them in as close to equal measure as anyone can tell, it's silly to say "it's because of religion".
Looking at **Christian** anti-Jewish hatred for a moment, I think it's equally fair to say that it's not religiously caused at all but that Christianity and Christians just failed to prevent a sadly common human sin.
Christianity is fundamentally Jewish. Jesus was a Jew, all the apostles were Jews, virtually all the heroes of the Bible were Jews. The Bible records permanent promises made by to the Jewish people. Christians can be and have been ridiculously anti-Jewish, but they're obviously rowing upstream to get there. Now remember all the other factors. Jews were ethnically distinct in ethnically homogenous communities, Their culture was very different. Their dress was often different. They had food rules different from the natives. They were often more successful than the natives. And all through Europe, religious loyalty was very frequently correlated with political loyalty. Then consider the weird leaps of logic Christians sometimes did to justify anti-semitism... like some of the British claiming that they were the "real" Jews and the people called Jews were imposters. It's weird, but it shows an attempt to "get around" the Jewishness of Christianity.
I don't think that's a fair comparison. Japan never went the multicultural route, nor did they inherit/ steal the land from anyone. They, Russia and China were never immigrant nations.
I think religious hate is just the stupidest of humanity showing themselves for what they are. All religion is just a collection of made-up cults that don't stand the test of intellectual evolution. We have left the systems of government of those eras behind for excellent reasons. Are we smart enough not to prove Darwin wrong?
With respect, the point about stealing land is a red herring. The issue as you yourself put it is "imposing our opinions on how others should live their lives".
Empires are *one* way to do that, but only a race essentialist, (aka a racist trying to sound respectable), would argue that a powerful person imposing a way to live on someone from their own ethnic group isn't imposing his opinion on how others should live their lives. That imperial Japan enforced a culture on it's own people and punished (or killed) people who strayed too far in the opinion of the ruler from "the" Japanese way only further proves the point. Imposing a way to live on other people is an ever-present human trait, not one caused by religion. And of course Japan imposed their way of living on the empire they conquered long before the Europeans showed up there.
Imperial China did the same thing, both to all the ethnic Chinese of the same ethnicity of the rulers and to the empire they conquered.
Neither of those cases were religious and both were empires imposing one way of living on conquered people *and* their own people.
Since you bring up Russia, they did exactly the same thing as they conquered eastwards from Moscow under the Tsars "Russifying" every people group they conquered. That's before we get into the explicitly atheist Soviets who were rather explicit about imposing their opinions on people about how to live their lives.
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You're free to like or dislike religion all you like, (though notably not in the most famous explicitly atheist societies), but I think history makes it very clear that when it comes to imposing our opinions on how others should live their lives, religion is NOT the cause of that at all... instead, religion is simply one of the opinions that can be imposed.... along with political ideology, diet, lifestyle or.. (if you're Tsarist Russia), legally permissible facial hair grooming options.
Empires are dictatorships. Dictators impose their opinions. Democracies, the evolution of leadership and governance, aren't supposed to. It's why church and state need a wall between them. A lack of that wall is part of why the US is collapsing. I'm just really tired of people dying for praying wrong.
David: I have met an Ainu elder who would vehemently disagree that the Yamato Japanese did not take land that was once occupied by the Ainu, who still exist and were subject to systematic abuse by the government of Imperial Japan.
As for Russia and China, actually, both absorbed many different peoples and were changed, in ethnographic and cultural terms by those historical processes. And that occurred largely because of imperialist expansion.
Rightly, or wrongly, I may make a big distinction between battles and occupations of tribes from similar geographic areas and the colonisation of the Americas by Europeans.
" organized religion, and their assorted Gods are humanity's worst invention"...you said a mouthful there David.
Hate and haters, whatever their stripe, prosper because good people stand and watch but say nothing and do nothing. We’ve become too scared to speak up and stand up to the goons that foster all sorts of abominations because we don’t want to be next. Easier to be a lemming than to be a lion.
Until there is meaningful pushback, there will be no change in the ugly behaviour of Canadians.
Had the opportunity to watch "Cabaret", the musical, in London last year at this time. Ironic and sad that the theatre is so close to the site of the weekly antisemitic demonstrations that have come to characterize the fall of GB. These demonstrators are certainly part of the professional omnicause, and the suggestion that the pendulum against these beliefs has swung to far is naive. The academy is a lousy with these people and an purge is needed.
Cultural "erasure", anyone?
It's exceedingly odd this article doesn't mention or address the anti-Jewish racism and religious hatred again Jews in Islam. This racism and religious hatred is obvious in majority Muslim countries, but it's a feature of Islam everywhere, including in Canada. It's downright weird that Mr. Kimmel doesn't mention it at all given how the resurgence of anti-semitism in Canada has been mirrored by the increased immigration to Canada from the so-called "Muslim world". The article would be quite incomplete if it was exclusively about that, because anti-Jewish racism is also on the rise in Christian nationalists, "groypers" and the so called "woke left"... but it's weird that anti-Jewish racism in Muslim communities is not mentioned at all.
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I think it's also worth noting that Mr. Kimmel is right that criticism of Israeli government decisions remain both valid and necessary for public discussion, as with any other country. At the same time, when even valid criticisms are directed exclusively and obsessively at the only Jewish state, it's a clear sign of racism at work in the critic.
Consider a parallel. Let's say someone in the US pointed out that criticism of fatherlessness and violent crime in the black community are valid and necessary for public discussion, as with the same in any other community. That's true. It's not inherently racist to criticize that any more than it is to criticize Israel.
Now let's say you've got a lot of people who only criticize fatherlessness and violent crime when it's in the black community and are "coincidentally" quiet about those same things in white communities. When pressed, they admit that it's also bad there, but they quickly move back to talking about the crime in black communities. The criticism of those things (and Israel) is still valid... and at the same time, those critics are obvious racists.
Thank you for publishing this column. This country is awash in anti-Semitism, discrimination, and promoters of racial hierarchies. It is governed by a progressive, Liberal, elitist cabal that counts votes rather than address issues of truth and justice. These are sad days for our country. We made heroic efforts to put down racism, bigotry, and anti-Semitism only to have our current leadership turn their backs on our achievements. Today our leaders refuse to denounce racial profiliing, discrimination, and anti-Semitism as they worship their DEI idols and appear terrorized by the threat of electoral losses. They provide comfort to bigots and anti-Semites (both left and right).
Too late … it’s been too late pretty much since Oct 7, 2023. We have allowed the pro,Palestinian mobs to take over our streets for over 2 years now. This ship has sailed.
Who do we blame, universities are the starting point pushing BDS policy and making Jews uncomfortable for over a decade. We have progressive left politicians wrappings themselves in Keffihahs in the HOC, and a two successive liberal PM’s who are actively hostile towards Israel.
The rot truly does start at the top. The morally smug lefties don’t even see their racism here.
Starting with PM Doolittle signing some paper recognizing the non-state of palestine. Palestine was a region of the Middle East since before the time of Jesus, it’s not a nation, despite the aggressive words and actions of the left.
Thank you for this eloquent reminder of what we must all guard against. Jews have been uniquely and horrifically targeted over the millennia.
We must remember, as well, the ease with which majority communities can demonize “the other”, as “that man” did to Somali-Americans just last week.