That there is more to identity politics than just preferred pronouns or demanding more culturally sensitive university courses has been amply demonstrated since the atrocities committed by Hamas on 7 October 2023. Woke activist groups – including LGBT activists, Black Lives Matter, feminists and eco-zealots – responded to this barbaric event by becoming Hamas cheerleaders. They had no hesitation in communicating their hatred for Israel in a language riddled with anti-Semitic tropes.
Jewish students are withdrawing from all aspects of university life, including lecture theatres, online learning spaces, seminar rooms, and social activities in the face of growing antisemitism on British university campuses amidst the Hamas-Israel conflict.
In the first report of its kind since it was established earlier this year, a poll by the Intra-Communal Professorial Group (ICPG) found that more than half of respondents reported being fearful of being on campus. Three-quarters were also uncomfortable to be open about their identity, with some feeling intimidated into not attending Jewish events, and not wearing things that could identify them as Jewish on campus.
I don’t think Canada is too far behind the UK.
Like most Jews, I’m not the same person I was last Oct. 6. The magnitude of what happened the next day and since then has forever changed me and the reality for Jews in Canada and abroad.
A year ago, the darkest chapter in Jewish history since the Holocaust began with the invasion of southern Israel by Hamas terrorists who carried out wide-scale atrocities and kidnapped 251 children, women and men. That hit close to home for Jews everywhere including many who have family and friends in Israel.
Missing the Oct. 7 commemoration is beyond the pale of normal political behaviour or basic human decency and can’t be glossed over. For a mayor to not attend Toronto’s candlelight vigil to remember the 1,200 people slaughtered at the hands of Hamas one year ago on Oct. 7 is the final straw when it comes to Chow’s disrespect for Toronto’s Jewish community.
… Is there a political cost to being associated with hate? No, it turns out, as members of Parliament like Jenica Atwin and Ahmed Hussen continue to sit as senior members of the diversity-championing Liberal caucus despite being involved in antisemitic controversies.
Should Canada fund organizations that plausibly aid terrorist activities? Yes, according to our government, which restored financial support to UNRWA despite evidence that some of the organization’s employees participated in the October 7 massacre.
Trudeau was in the audience for this, by the way. pic.twitter.com/fr4Tfsvsyg
— Canada Proud (@WeAreCanProud) October 8, 2024
h/t Mauser
Palestinians have a custom of celebrating in the streets every time Israel is attacked or a Jew is murdered by terrorists.
The latest Palestinian celebrations took place on October 1, 2024, when Iran launched hundreds of ballistic missiles at Israel. The celebrations occurred even though some of the missiles fell in Palestinian areas in the West Bank and the only person killed was, ironically, a Palestinian man in the city of Jericho.
On Saturday, a self-proclaimed journalist named Samira Mohyeddin posted on X that “tens of thousands” of people were marching in Toronto to mark the one-year anniversary of “Israel’s relentless bombardment and genocide” in Gaza. The new journalism fellow at the University of Toronto’s Women and Gender Studies Institute, and former producer of CBC’s The Current, made no mention of what had prompted the “relentless bombardment.”
I can’t presume to speak to Mohyeddin’s personal politics, but her post reflects the view held by a distressingly large number of young Canadians who have formed an unholy alliance with Palestinian activists.
TDSB seeks ‘urgent’ guidance on addressing hate and geopolitical tensions in schools
… The board has heard from Palestinian parents who say their children feel silenced and are concerned about incidents such as students being sanctioned for wearing kaffiyehs or clothing with “Free Palestine.” Student-led walkouts were organized at some Toronto schools in solidarity with people in Gaza.
Meanwhile, Jewish parents and students have also spoken out about racial slurs, kids performing Nazi salutes, antisemitic graffiti and Holocaust denial.
Three weeks ago, I travelled to Israel to try and work out what October 7 had meant as the first anniversary approached. The massacres committed by Hamas on that black Sabbath were among the foulest of the modern era and saw the worst loss of life for the Jewish people since the Holocaust. Not much time elapsed, though, before the bloodcurdling crimes were sidelined as international attention switched, rather too eagerly, to Israel’s war in Gaza. Thousands of Palestinians were tragically killed as the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) tried to root out an enemy which used billions of charitable aid to build itself a network of tunnels more extensive than the London Underground. One military expert summed up Hamas’s strategy in two chilling words: Human Sacrifice.
In the wake of last year’s 7 October pogrom, and amid rapidly rising anti-Semitism, most Jews are even more convinced of the importance of the Jewish State and the need for greater solidarity. As researchers such as Tufts Eitan Hersh and others have demonstrated, the Hamas assaults have led many in America to emphatically embrace their Jewish identity.
The Hamas-led attack has convinced the country that it must take the battle to its enemies
TEL AVIV—One year after the brutal Hamas attack that ended Israel’s two-decade golden age of relative peace, expanding wealth and growing diplomatic ties, the country is now firmly on the counterattack and preparing to be at war for years.
Weathering a ferocious Iranian missile assault in recent days and shaking off calls from allies for a cease-fire in Gaza, Israel is instead opening new theaters of fighting.
It launched a stunning series of attacks against the Lebanese-militia Hezbollah in Lebanon in recent weeks, while simultaneously targeting Houthi rebels in Yemen, rooting out militancy in the occupied West Bank and mapping out its next steps against Iran, the architect of a so-called axis of resistance that includes U.S.-designated terrorist groups bent on destroying Israel.
We need to have some difficult conversations about our race-to-the-bottom immigration policies
As news broke on October 7, 2023, of Hamas terrorists running rampant in Israel, wreaking unspeakable violence on innocent civilians, the celebratory mood in the Canadian pro-Hamas camp manifested itself in a most despicable and un-Canadian way: the glorification of terrorism.
For most Canadians, unaccustomed to the reality that terrorists enjoy more goodwill than Jews in the Middle East, the celebrations were an eye-opener and a harbinger of far worse to come.
Today is the first anniversary of October 7, 2023, the day Hamas terrorists committed the worst massacre against the Jewish people since the Holocaust, the day 1,200 people, men, women, children and babies, were slaughtered just for being Jewish or being in proximity to Jews, the day 250 people, from elderly Holocaust survivors to babies too young to begin to walk or talk, were abducted and taken to the dark tunnels Hamas built underneath Gaza, the day everything changed.
Isn’t Gaza preview enough of a Palestinian state?
If there is one rule under international law that is unequivocal, it is that a state that has been attacked by another state has the right to defend itself.
“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations,” states Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.
This is true for every country – except it seems for Israel. When it comes to the world’s only Jewish state, apparently, the rules do not apply.
I feel a little embarrassed when someone implies Biden is in control. I don’t know who is running the US but it certainly isn’t Joe Biden.
Consider this my coming out. Not as gay – that would be easier – but as Arab. It’s an identity I’ve kept under wraps for far too long, hidden from friends and society at large. But as the war in the Middle East erupts, particularly in Lebanon, the time for silence is over.
I wonder if society truly wants to hear from me. A Lebanese-Canadian child of immigrants, I’ve learned to fit in well enough to render my ethnicity invisible, allowing me to achieve academic and career successes – not too Arab, Canadian enough. But this past year has changed everything. Arabs. Jews. The bloodbath we have witnessed has forever transformed us all.
For me, the profound depth of my connection to my Arab identity is matched only by the gut-wrenching horror I now feel – one I never knew was possible.
“Former CBC Journalist.” Within the Canadian press a “both sides” normalization is taking place.
War is ugly business don’t start them especially in the middle east where most states fund and or harbour the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah.
