Two of Canada’s presumed authorities on best practices in combating antisemitism have surprised Canadians who consider themselves deeply invested in their competency: one in a negative, the other in a potentially positive way.
No sooner had Deborah Lyons, Canada’s former ambassador to Israel and Afghanistan, been handed the baton on Oct. 16 from her venerable predecessor, Irwin Cotler, as Canada’s special envoy on preserving Holocaust remembrance and combating antisemitism, than she stumbled on her first lap of the course.
About a week earlier, on Oct. 7, Israel suffered a proto-genocidal assault on civilians, from infants to the elderly, within its borders by Hamas terrorists, who — along with their supporters in the Arab world and in the West — celebrated their bloody rampage. Lyons surely knew the special envoy post was hers, so she had a week to organize her thoughts.
