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| "Antizionist" protester with sign calling to keep the world clean of people represented by the Star of David |
It’s strange how being identified as
an antisemite makes most antisemites lose their minds.
Witness the Toronto District School Board’s recent
adoption of a report on antisemitism in Toronto schools. Antisemites organized
a fierce opposition. But after a marathon 14-hour meeting, stretched over two
days to give all those antisemites a chance to voice their objections, the
School Board finally voted to accept the report. All that opposition over
simply accepting a report the School Board itself had commissioned!
The authors of the report on antisemitism spoke to
125 students, canvassed every mainstream Jewish organization in the city,
including our national organizations, and confirmed what parents have been
screaming for 18 months now: Ever since the October 7, 2023, terrorist invasion
of Israel, antisemitism has shot up everywhere, including (especially!)
in our schools.
Thirteen Trustees voted to accept the report. But
five others apparently believe the school board should ignore what Jews
have to say about antisemitism.
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Tweet from Neethan Shan,
Chair of the Toronto School Board
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Neethan Shan (Chair of the Toronto School Board), Malika Ghous, Yaline Rajkulasingham, Zakir
Patel, and Matias de Dovitiis (federal NDP candidate for
Humber River–Black Creek) all voted against the board accepting the report.
Here’s testimony from a Toronto kid who those five
Trustees don’t want to hear:
During my five years at CH
Best (Middle School at Finch and Dufferin), I have been targeted and
marginalized by antisemitism. On multiple occasions, people have thrown money
at me and said, ‘Go get it, Jew.’ I have had other students give me the Hitler
salute, I have been sent Holocaust denial memes on Snapchat, I was told, ‘You
should have been gassed with your ancestors, Jew”, and “Free Palestine, kill
Israel.”
Apparently, the antisemites who organized the
opposition to the report, and their allies on the school board who voted
against the report, don’t think this sort of antisemitism is worth worrying
about. For them, the real issue – the issue that gets them all worked up – is
that the report notices that antizionism “has recently re-emerged as a
contemporary form of antisemitism.”
For example, it’s the kind of thing children are
hearing from other kids at middle school: “Free Palestine, kill
Israel.”
This isn’t antisemitic, say the antisemites. Jews
aren’t even mentioned! At least, not in that little bit, but they do have to
block their ears to miss that these “antizionists” are also saying, “you
should have been gassed with your ancestors.”
Antizionists want to deny it, but everywhere we
see antizionism, we also see old-fashioned antisemitism.
For example, a number of years ago, I objected to
the Toronto School Board and other school boards across the province
encouraging kids to read a novel: The Shepherd’s Granddaughter.
The author clearly meant this book as anti-Israel
propaganda; that is, as antizionist. But it depicts Israelis – and Jews more
generally – as child killers, which is one of the most familiar and
most vile of antisemitic tropes. (More here.)
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| Parents protesting antisemitism at Toronto Schools |
Another example: The University of
Toronto’s medical school commissioned Dr. Ayelet Kuper to
investigate the faculty’s rampant antisemitism. As always in “progressive”
environments, the antisemites at the U of T medical school present themselves
as antizionist. But Dr. Kuper also found old-fashioned antisemitism everywhere.
She especially found students and faculty invoking
the “the longstanding myth of ‘Jewish power.’” Among other things,
Dr. Kuper heard that Jews “control CaRMS (the Canadian Residency Matching
Service, which manages the residency selection process), Jews control faculty
hiring, and Jews control … promotion decisions” (here).
Antisemites pretend that “antizionism” is merely
criticism of Israel. The fact that traditional antisemitism always
shows up alongside antizionism makes nonsense of this claim. Besides,
the biggest critics of Israel are actually Israelis – if “criticism” means
criticism of particular Israeli governments or policies.
But that’s not what antizionists are about. Even
without the obvious presence of traditional anti-Jewish myths, antizionism goes
off the cliff into antisemitism when it shows itself as hatred.
Antizionists claim to “only” hate Zionists. But
90% of Jews are Zionists – that is, they support Israel’s continuing existence
– and for Jews who care about being Jews, that percentage is much higher. So,
while they claim to not hate Jews, antizionists admit to hating almost every Jew.
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| Protest in Toronto |
Indeed, most people in most places support Israel
continuing to exist. In Canada, for example, an Oct 2024 poll found that “most
Canadians agreed that the Israelis have the right of self-determination: 56 per
cent, yes; 9 per cent, no” (here).
But although all of Canada supports Israeli
self-determination by a margin of six to one, antizionists get worked up about
the Jews in particular. Try walking by an anti-Israel demonstration wearing a
kippah, as I have. You will be accosted. (Though probably not assaulted, as
there’s always a heavy police presence.)
Or try being a Jewish kid in a Toronto school.
It’s the Jewish kids who get told, “Free Palestine, kill Israel.”
And that after all is the goal of the
antizionists. They want Israel wiped off the map. Killed. At best they’re
indifferent to the lives of the seven million Jews who live there. And since
October 7, we’ve seen much worse than indifference. All over the world and in
Canada, too, we’ve seen outright jubilation over the murder of 1,200 Jews in
that October 7 terrorist attack.
The antizionism we’re seeing is antisemitism.
It simply transfers the traditional hatred of the Jewish people to a hatred of
the Jewish nation. But it’s the same hatred.
It reproduces the same anti-Jewish myths.
Antizionists feed off their anger in the same way
antisemites do – they feel exactly the same joy in their anger, the same sense
of self-importance because of their anger, plus all the other emotional
rewards that feed antisemitism (see here).
And Jews (or almost all Jews)
remain their target.
This raises the question: Where did this ploy of
disguising antisemitism as antizionism even come from? And why?
We have to go back to the 1950s. After WW2, “Zionologists” in
the Soviet Union took Czarist-era antisemitic propaganda and simply substituted
the word “Zionist” for “Jew,” and voila! antizionism was born
(here).
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| May Day parade in Moscow 1972: "Zionism is the weapon of imperialism" |
Once it became clear that Israel wouldn’t fall
into the Soviet orbit and especially after the Six Day War of 1967, the KGB and
other apparatus of the Soviet state took over. They further developed this new
form of antisemitism and used it to forge bonds with third world nations,
especially Arab countries.
Beyond that, far left groups around the world
adopted this new antisemitism. Eventually it made its way from the far-left
fringe to dominate many university campuses here in Canada and elsewhere
throughout the West.
Why the new face for a very old hatred?
Because antisemitism was associated with the
Nazis. Until WW2, many respectable people were proudly antisemitic. But the
Nazis forced much of the world to notice that hating Jews was a bad thing. (At
least in the West; the Islamic world didn’t go through a post-Nazi rejection of
antisemitism.)
Also, the world had changed. After two thousand
years of utter powerlessness, Jews now had our own state.
Particularly on the left, antisemites needed to
evolve a new variety of Jew-hatred adapted to their progressive sensibilities
and reflecting the new world and a “progressive” idea of ultimate evil.
Traditional notions of Jews as Christ killers or puppet masters or race
polluters needed updating. The Soviets answered this need.
Progressives identify the great evils as racism,
fascism, Nazism, genocide, imperialism, colonialism, militarism and apartheid,
so the Soviets assigned all these to Zionism and Zionists. (More on the Soviet
origins of antizionism here.)
None of this resembles actual Zionism in any way.
Actual Zionists came in many different varieties
across the political and the religious/non-religious/anti-religious spectrums,
and contemporary Israeli political parties are the descendants of some of these
many strains.
All Zionists shared and still share the goal of
having a Jewish state – in part because we need one! Centuries of persecution,
both in the Christian and Islamic worlds, have made this painfully clear. And
the place for a Jewish state is in the land where Jews originally come from,
the land where our people have lived for 4,000 years – in Israel.
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Rebranding antisemitism as antizionism allows haters to virtue-signal while attacking Jews
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And yes, of course, it gets complicated, as Israel
aims to be a Jewish state while respecting the equal rights of its non-Jewish
citizens. But arguably it’s less complicated than Canada, where we aim to have
one united country with shared values, but composed of French, English and
Indigenous nations, plus a mosaic of countless cultures.
Antizionists ignore all this. They have zero
interest in the reality of Israel and Zionism. For them, Israel and
“Zionists” are simply Satan. That is, “Zionists” are the great evil,
and this hallucination allows antizionists to feel self-righteous and heroic
while indulging their anger or hatred.
This is how progressive antisemites maintain their
certainty of their own moral purity while bathing in antisemitism. They agree
antisemitism is bad. But antisemitism for them is something on the right. Since
they’re on the left and they’re morally pure; they cannot be
antisemites.
Thus, for example, Neethan Shan, Chair of the
Toronto School Board, will signal his virtue by posting a Tweet for Holocaust
Remembrance Day (here).
But Shan will also Tweet the claim that Israel is
a criminal state occupying “Palestine” (a country which we might want to exist
but as of yet never has).
He’s also Tweeted his admiration for Sarah Jama,
the Ontario MPP who has called for Israel’s
destruction, denied Hamas’s crimes, and
took part in a demonstration that celebrated Hamas October 7,
2023, murder of 1,200 Israelis. The NDP kicked Jama out of its caucus because
of her statements widely taken as blaming Israel for Hamas’s terror attack (here).
Shan presumably misses the contradiction in his
Tweets, because Nazis were evil far-right antisemites, while his “antizionism”
is virtuous and pure and progressive.
To progressives, it’s simply impossible they can
be antisemitic. They see the notion as a monstrous (Jewish) lie – a lie that
defames their (imaginary) virtue – a lie that must be defeated! Hence,
we end up with a fourteen-hour hearing on whether or not the Toronto School
Board should listen to Jews about antisemitism.
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| Jagmeet Singh, leader of the federal NDP, and Sara Jama |
Similarly, at the NDP’s 2021 policy convention,
the policy issue NDP activists most wanted on the agenda was how to define
antisemitism. Weird, yes? Considering close to 0% of these activists are Jews.
They brought forth, not one resolution, but three
of them, sponsored by 42 different riding associations, all dedicated to
defining antisemitism – or more specifically, to rejecting the definition of
antisemitism developed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Association
(IHRA, an association of 34 countries, including Canada, that seeks to counter
antisemitism).
Canada’s Ministry of Heritage has adopted this
definition. So have the governments of almost every democracy the world over.
So have innumerable subnational governments, associations, and even some
schoolboards. It’s the gold standard. But this definition notices that
contemporary antisemitism often shows itself as obsessive hatred of Israel,
Israelis and “Zionists.”
Please note, the large majority of people who
simply vote NDP don’t share this obsession about “Zionists.”
But unfortunately, the IHRA definition of antisemitism does describe many
NDP activists, some members of the Toronto School Board, and many
others who call themselves “progressive.” (More on the NDP's "antizionism" here.)
This is where our world is at. The Soviet Union
fell decades ago, but visit any anti-Israel rally today, and you’ll hear
protesters using the same slurs the Soviets wrote for them 60 years ago – slurs
about colonialism, genocide, and Nazism – slurs that invite progressives to
project all their hatred onto “Zionists” and to feel virtuous for doing so.
Alas, antisemitism doesn’t die; it just migrates
from place to place and morphs from one form to another. Alarmingly, right now,
antisemitism is showing up in our schools and is being defended at our school
boards.
***
This piece was originally published on the Canadian Zionist Forum.
Read more of my pieces here (and scroll down). ~Brian
