Authorities have reacted to last Sunday’s antisemitic attack in Belleville, Ont., in all the usual and necessary ways: with stern expressions of abhorrence and promises to protect Canada’s shaken Jewish community.
asserted
Authorities → react → community
What they have failed to do is to identify or challenge the ideology that is feeding the wave of hate sweeping this country.
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that → fail → country
Anti-Zionism, as it has evolved, is the idea that Israel is an alien, illegitimate, colonial state imposed by violence on the Middle East.
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Israel → evolve → East
We don’t know whether the ex-soldier who opened fire on the Belleville synagogue held such beliefs or what other dark motivations he may have had.
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he → know → motivations
And of course anti-Zionists themselves insist that they deplore antisemitism and any kind of violence directed at Jews.
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they → insist → Jews
But it is obvious by now that the bitter, hateful rhetoric they use is fueling both.
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they → use → both
Painting Israel as a malevolent force pours gasoline on the ever-flickering flame on antisemitism.
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Painting → paint → antisemitism
Anti-Zionism has a long history, going back at least to the foundation of Israel.
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Zionism → have → Israel
Like its older cousin, antisemitism, it is both stubborn and mutable, expressed in many different ways.
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it → express → ways
It is not the same as antisemitism – you can be anti-Zionist without hating all Jews – but the two share the idea that their target is the cause of great evil in the world.
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target → hat → world
The Israeli statesman Abba Eban put it this way in 1975, when the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution calling Zionism a form of racism.
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Assembly → put → racism
“Classical antisemitism denies the equal rights of Jews as citizens within society.
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antisemitism → deny → society
Anti-Zionism denies the equal rights of the Jewish people to its lawful sovereignty within the community of nations.
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Zionism → deny → nations
The common principle in the two cases is discrimination.”
Half a century later, this species of discrimination is booming.
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species → boom → discrimination
“Globalize the intifada” is its war cry.
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Globalize → globalize → intifada
Pop stars spout it.
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stars → spout → it
Famous actors embrace it.
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actors → embrace → it
Even the head of a major Canadian political party, the NDP, feels free to accuse Israel of the worst crime in the world as if it were an established fact.
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it → feel → world
Avi Lewis, who is Jewish, marked Yom Kippur by lecturing fellow Jews that “we failed to do our part to stop an ongoing genocide committed in our name.”
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we → mark → name
Since the Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel and the start of the Gaza war nearly three years ago, Jews have come under threat in just about every corner of the world.
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Jews → come → world
It often seems as if nowhere is safe.
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nowhere → seem → ?
Only the heroism of two police officers prevented that attack from ending in another massacre of innocents.
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heroism → prevent → innocents
“You are going to die for the Jews,” the gunman shouted at one of the officers before opening fire.
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gunman → go → fire
The bullet holes left in the synagogue’s stained-glass windows show what a near thing this was.
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this → leave → windows
“Last year, over two-thirds of all religion-motivated hate crimes were directed at Jewish Canadians, who make up only one per cent of the population,” Prime Minister Mark Carney said recently.
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Carney → motivate → population
In a major address on the issue, he quoted the Jewish prophets, condemned “the scourge of antisemitism” and listed all the things his government is doing to combat it, but said nothing about Oct. 7, nothing about the anti-Zionists who march chanting through quiet Jewish neighbourhoods and wave their Palestinian flags in front of synagogues.
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who → quote → synagogues
It was as if the haters came out of nowhere.
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haters → come → ?
In fact, they spring directly from the notion that Israel is to blame for all the horrors that are happening in its troubled corner of the world.
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that → spring → world
In the guise of criticizing Israel, they demonize it.
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they → criticize → it
It is one thing to call out Israel’s government for abusing Palestinian prisoners, tolerating violence by West Bank settlers or bombing Gaza into rubble; it’s quite another to call it a bloodthirsty imperial juggernaut bent on conquest.
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it → call → conquest
It is time for Canada’s leaders to denounce such lies.
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leaders → denounce → lies
It is time for them to name the twisted ideology behind the wave of hate that found expression in Belleville this week.
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that → name → Belleville
The Aporia
