Amid rising antisemitism, the view for Jews in Canada looks bleak - opinion

Over the last month and a half, Jews around the world have gotten incredible clarity on the status of global antisemitism.

The view from Canada is chilling. Massive pro-Palestinian and even pro-Hamas protests feature thousands of furious people calling unequivocally for genocide – the extermination of Israel “from the river to the sea.”

The thin shroud of humanitarianism disappeared before Israel went into Gaza, when protesters objected to potential infringements on Palestinian civilian lives, while failing to condemn the actual atrocities that Hamas had committed against thousands of innocent Israeli civilians.

Now, seven weeks later, our schools are receiving bomb threats. (Canadian police don’t need to protect mosques – no one blows up mosques.)

Synagogues are being defaced. 

Police guard our community centers.

I now wear my Star of David under my sweater rather than over it.

Toronto, my birthplace and home to my three Canadian-Israeli children, has grown cold and foreign.

My eldest, when asking me if he can take the bus home with his little brother after school, said: “I promise – I will hold his hand the whole time. And I will take his kippah off.”

This is what being a Jew in Toronto is like in 2023. It must be how German Jews felt at the beginning of the Holocaust: a terrible mix of shock, betrayal, and disbelief.

It is clear to Jews in Canada that the impetus for the founding of the State of Israel – that antisemitism can rise and countries can turn on their Jewish population and become unsafe for us at any time – is as relevant today as it was when the Jewish state was established in 1948.

Canadian Jews’ collective hope is that this new reality is the result of well-intentioned ignorance.

WE HOPE that it’s a matter of misinformation, a lack of education, and/or brainwashing. 

We hope that this behavior is a result of the erroneous reduction of the current war to an amorphous Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that this new reality is perhaps a misunderstanding of Hamas’s role in the lives of Palestinian civilians, which deprives them of global humanitarian aid and uses them as human shields. Perhaps it can be blamed on a misguided moral equivalency between those who intentionally murder innocent civilians and those who mourn the loss of civilian casualties that are peripheral to an unavoidable war against terror.

Or, we surmise, it could be due to the prizing of political correctness and “impartiality” over accuracy and truth. Perhaps it is because of a lack of understanding of the ferocity and nature of global jihadism, which is not a legitimate reaction to colonialism or mislabeled “apartheid” but instead is a reflection of a philosophy that values death as the glorious and welcome precursor to attaining paradise.

We try to ascribe it to the de-contextualization of Hamas and its sponsor, Iran, from the global issue of state-sponsored terrorism; of (at least partially) misplaced empathy for a people raised on Jew hate – educated on the virtues of martyrdom – who democratically elected the Hamas leadership; or, at worst, a blind spot to a worldview that is completely antithetical to everything the civilized world values.

If it’s not that, we must consider the possibility that Canada – known the world over for its multiculturalism and progressiveness – is home to a significant population of genuine terrorist empathizers.

Or that it is all due to Jew-hatred. Plain and simple.

Canadian Jews ponder the reasons behind rising antisemitism, support for Hamas

I WANT to share a little Jewish secret with my fellow Canadians: We don’t understand why.

We have encountered Jew hate unrelentingly throughout history – from ancient Egypt to medieval times, from the Spanish Inquisition to the Holocaust, and right up until today. We know the historical sources and tropes – and still, we don’t really understand it. There is an element to antisemitism that just is, and it doesn’t make sense.

Here’s why.

Being a Jew means being part of a global family for whom the cultural norm is kindness. No matter where we live – in Canada, in Israel, or elsewhere – and regardless of our ethnicities, our languages, our religious stripes, and our political leanings, kindness is a fundamental component of the Jewish DNA.

Let’s unpack.

Judaism basically boils down to an expansive code of ethics that mandates us to treat all people with the utmost respect, generosity, and kindness. Judaism teaches that every person is a universe unto him/herself, and so to save one person’s life is to save the world; to help one person is to help the world. We believe in the limitless potential of every person and that each one has a unique and important contribution to make to this world.

Nothing is more sacrosanct than human life. For Jews, how we treat others in this life is not just one aspect of our religion. It’s everything.

It is taught that the entire Torah comes down to one commandment: to love your fellow as yourself (Leviticus 19:18). This one verse provides the impetus for much biblical discourse. It is the jumping-off point for the definition, in painstaking detail, of how we are meant to conduct ourselves in our relationships with fellow human beings.

Of course, human nature can lean toward jealousy, anger, and other evil inclinations. Judaism teaches that we each have, implanted from birth, an inclination toward good and an inclination toward evil, and that our life’s work is to nurture our – and others’ – good inclinations, which repair the world.

We are a people of forward momentum – learning, conquering our baser selves, and achieving personal growth and evolution.

Of course, Jews do not have exclusivity over kindness and personal growth. Many human beings, of all faiths and backgrounds, are guided by a moral compass. However, these principles are more than “features” of the Jewish religion. They are the founding principles of the Jewish nation itself, the core of Jewish identity.

We hate war.

We value life.

We mourn human suffering and the loss of human life – Jewish and non-Jewish alike.

Like all of Israel’s wars, the current one is not one we chose. It was thrust upon us in the form of an unfathomably barbaric attack on our people. We will fight it with the utmost humanity as we have fought all the wars that we have had to fight.

That is why Israel strews warning flyers over Gaza, begging civilians to evacuate before it retaliates.

And why Israeli hospitals treat homicide bombers in the same ER as their victims.

And why Israeli Arab politicians who commit treason have had a place in our government. 

And why Israel is a safe haven for refugees and gay people from all over the Arab world.

The list of kindnesses goes on.

When this war first broke out, there was footage on the news of a Hamas terrorist at a kibbutz he had overtaken. He was walking quickly past a dog and shot it dead. I contrasted this image with an instance a decade ago, when my ex-husband, an IDF soldier, was operational in Gaza, and his unit was using an evacuated house as their base. While stationed there, the soldiers took daily turns doing farm chores, coming out from under cover and putting their lives at risk to feed and water the abandoned animals – chickens, dogs, and a few goats. The same is true in the current war as the IDF soldiers take turns risking their lives daily to look after the animals they find.

One can almost taste the irony – on one side, a people who murder indiscriminately; on the other side, a people who risk their own lives to nurture the lives of animals.

The Jewish people are kind. We are the diametric opposite of our enemies in this respect. So why does the world think the opposite?

The question hangs where it has since time immemorial, unanswered and untouched by reason.

We see this lack of reason in our current theater of the absurd as people who support the barbaric murder of babies hold placards accusing Israel of genocide. As LGBTQ groups cheer on Hamas and condemn Israel when they would be hanged for their sexual orientation in Gaza. It is a complete Orwellian reversal of reality.

SO WHERE do Canadian Jews go from here?

We don’t permit the hate hurled at us to morph us into a hateful people. Instead, we strengthen our resolve and commitment to fixing what is clearly a very broken world. We continue to operate with kindness on the premise that all human beings are created in the image of God, despite seemingly overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

It is as though the world tests us over and over again – in the form of antisemitism, terrorism, and misperception – to see what we are made of. Jews have been getting knocked down and coming back stronger and kinder for almost 6,000 years.

Are Jews hated because it is easier to see us as aggressors, to see us as the opposite of what we actually are – because our unrelenting humanity challenges the world to achieve a spiritual standard that seems unattainable?

On October 7, humanity commenced teetering on the cusp of a new existential age. The winner of this war of good vs. evil will determine the future of civilization as we know it.

EVERY CANADIAN has a choice to make.

Will you permit Jew-hatred to flow in our streets, or will you step up and repudiate all forms of hate against any people and protect our Jewish communities?

Are you going to stand with Israel, the country fighting our war against jihadism, and help innocent Palestinians by freeing them from the terrorist regime that runs Gaza? Or will you continue to blame Israel and funnel support into the pockets of a handful of thugs who will do nothing to improve the lives of their people but instead continue building tunnels and waging war against Western civilization?

Will you continue to believe that there is a moral equivalency between Israel and Hamas because you want to be impartial or politically correct – at the expense of the truth?

Are you going to support a worldview that justifies chopping off heads and baking babies alive? Or one that cherishes the life of every single living thing?

Or are you willing to see that Jews were chosen as the front line executioners of evil because we are the most merciful among the nations?

Are you going to finally accept us – and embrace us with an open heart?

It’s time for Canadians to take a page from the Jewish book and realize that each and every soul – what we think and what we do in this world – matters. 

The writer is a former writer at The Jerusalem Post and founder and CEO of Cam & Leo Emotion School (emotional intelligence program for children, families, and schools). A Canadian Israeli living in Toronto, she currently works for Ve’ahavta, a Jewish humanitarian organization that assists all faiths/backgrounds to emerge from poverty.