Middle East war throwing light on Canada’s new divides

By Emma Teitel
December 1, 2023 Edition

Although fundamentally at odds, antisemites and proud Jewish mothers have one trait in common: both groups love to share news about successful Jewish people. However, where Jewish mothers typically brag about Jews they know personally (their own children for example, or someone else’s children whom they wish their own children to marry), antisemites prefer to talk up Jewish people they’ve never met, but who serve in their weak minds as proof of a Zionist conspiracy to control the world’s wealth and power.

Years ago, amid another hideous armed conflict in the Middle East, I did my best – on the patio of a gay bar in Toronto – to convince a drunk antisemite that contrary to what he read on the internet, downtrodden Jewish people do exist.

“Look!” I implored him, pulling out my phone. “There’s even an organization called Jewish Family and Child Service. They say Holocaust survivors in Toronto are living below the poverty line.” He then pulled out his own phone and read off a list of Jewish Nobel Prize winners and CEOs.

That exchange disturbed me. It did not prepare me for what was to come.

This is not a column about the Israel-Hamas war. It’s a column about a painful reverberation of that war a world away. Since it began, I know of four people in the GTA who say the mezuzahs on their doors were ripped down.

Recently, my wife was at a house party packed full of young-ish progressive people when an acquaintance – who did not know she was Jewish – casually let slip that he could never live near Eglinton Avenue. His reason: “So many Jews.” On the same night, at a different party, my university-aged cousin got into an argument with a man who threatened to break his “Jewish nose.”

Meanwhile, my friends whose children attend Jewish schools in Toronto are in constant talks with their peers about keeping their kids home because they wonder if the next bomb threat evacuation, firebombing, or shooting will target their own Jewish institution.

What we are seeing in Canada is not merely a dramatic rise – or rather a reveal – of antisemitism at all levels of society, it is a horrifying (and annoying) revelation for many Jews my age that our parents were right. This stuff doesn’t just go away with the passage of time. It is always there under the surface and it comes up for air when people are hurting – whether the source of that hurt is a recession, a global pandemic, or a war.

I will be blunt: Marching in support of besieged Palestinian civilians is not antisemitic. Calling for a ceasefire is not antisemitic. Denouncing Israel’s racist, far-right government is not antisemitic. But blaming ordinary Jewish people in Canada – yes, even ordinary Zionist Jews (which is to say most Jews) – for the military actions of a foreign government is antisemitic.

It is also antisemitic, frankly, to suggest that Jewish people in Canada have no right to their fears because thousands of innocents are dying in Gaza.

Not only is this what-about-ism utterly useless if one’s goal is to advocate for Palestinians; it is deeply hypocritical as it violates the cardinal rule anti-Zionists claim to uphold in their activism – that they don’t conflate Jewish people with the Israeli government.

Since the war began, left-leaning pundits and social media influencers have echoed the call to “hold many truths at once.” And yet one truth they seem incapable of holding is that Canadian Jews have every right to raise the alarm about hate in our own communities. When we do this, we do not minimize the plight of Gazans. (This principle goes the other way too; it is grossly unfair to demand Palestinians denounce antisemitism every time they champion their own rights and dignity).

But whatever one’s faith or stance on the war, antisemitism isn’t a problem for Jews alone, though we bear the brunt of its violence. It is a conspiracy theory that eats away at truth and democracy. It is a sign of decay.

Twitter: @emmaroseteitel