GOLDSTEIN: Blaming Jews for being Jews the oldest form of hatred
By Lorrie Goldstein
The problem when you normalize hatred against one group is that it inevitably leads to hatred against others
Imagine if Jews across Canada were marching into Muslim neighbourhoods blaming them for the thousands of deaths caused by Hamas and other Islamist terrorist groups in Israel and around the world.
Imagine if our excuse was that we had nothing against Muslims, only Muslims who are terrorists.
Imagine if we told them to go back where they came from.
Imagine if we were firebombing mosques, shooting at Muslim day schools, threatening Muslim university students and vandalizing Muslim homes and businesses.
Imagine if we were throwing smoke bombs on major city streets and snarling traffic at major intersections by “praying” in them, not as a sign of devotion, but as a power move to show the public how politicians and police were trembling before us.
Imagine if we had the gall to tell Muslims who accused us of Islamophobia that they don’t know what Islamophobia is and then proceeded to lecture them about our definition of it.
We know what would be happening if these things were occurring in Canada.
Politicians would be unequivocally denouncing us, without the qualifier that our actions had to be viewed in the context of the historic suffering of Jews.
Police would be charging us with hate crimes, assault, uttering threats, vandalism and criminal mischief, not telling the public how hard it is to prosecute for these crimes.
Now let’s look at the what’s really happening, where people who blame Jews in Canada for the actions of the Israeli government and army in Gaza are engaging in textbook antisemitism, using the same twisted logic as blaming Muslims in Canada for the actions of Hamas and other terrorist groups in Israel.
That’s why Jews in Canada don’t resort to the tactics of what the liberal media laughably refer to as “pro-Palestinian” demonstrations.
We know that portraying Muslims as terrorists because of the actions of Islamist terrorists is hateful.
While there are no doubt sincere individuals within these protests genuinely concerned about the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza, their real message is not just anti-Israel, or anti-Zionist, but anti-Jew.
There is no other explanation for the actions of protesters in Canada who tore down posters of Jewish hostages and accused Jews campaigning for the release of the hostages in Gaza of advocating genocide for the Palestinians.
The result has been an explosion of antisemitism in Canada ever since Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas – designated by the federal government as a terrorist organization in 2002 – murdered 1,200 people in Israel and took 250 more as hostages into Gaza.
Jew hatred through online and face-to-face harassment, vandalism and violence increased by 125% to 6,219 incidents last year compared to 2,769 in 2022, before Hamas’ terrorist attack, according to B’nai Brith’s annual audit on antisemitism.
That’s the highest number since the annual audit began in 1982.
It’s consistent with reporting by Statistics Canada, showing that while Jews make up 1% of Canada’s population, 70% of all religiously motivated hate crimes today are aimed at Jews.
The problem when you normalize hatred against one group is that it inevitably leads to hatred against others.
In July 2024, for example, Statistics Canada reported a 94% increase in police-reported hate crimes against Muslims compared to 2023, noting that figure is likely under-reported.
For Canada’s Jews, the not-so-subtle message based on the explosion of antisemitism ever since Oct. 7, 2023, is that Jews deserve to be attacked simply because they’re Jews.
It’s the oldest form of hatred going back thousands of years, which mutates with each new generation and today ends in the massacre of Jews – this time for celebrating Hanukkah on Bondi Beach in Australia by ISIS-inspired terrorists – with more, inevitably, to come.
