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KINSELLA: Anti-Semitism has never been worse -- and it was bad before
I have never seen it this bad. And I’ve seen it when it is really, really bad. But never like this. Anti-Semitism, that is. Hatred and/or prejudice towards Jews. Some context, here. As a journalist, I have been writing about, and researching Jew-hatred since 1986. As a lawyer and a citizen, I’ve been opposing it for almost as long. I’m not Jewish, but I’m a Zionist — that is, I favour re-establishing the Jewish homeland that existed long before Christ. Now, over the years, I’ve seen a lot of anti-Semitism. It’s hard to forget. An Aryan Nations fanatic — who believes Jews are the literal descendants of the devil — jammed a rifle in my chest at his group’s compound in Caroline, Alta., in 1987. When I worked for Jean Chretien in the early 1990s, the RCMP didn’t want me travelling with the Liberal leader, because I posed an added security risk — too many neo-Nazis wanted me dead, they said. Some neo-Nazi skinheads planned to firebomb my place in Ottawa, resulting in several weeks of on-site police protection in 1994. A Ku Klux Klan leader gained access to my place in Vancouver in 1997, necessitating even more security and a vacating of the premises. Online threats and attacks from Holocaust deniers Ernst Zundel and David Irving, and their fans, in 2001. Lots of those. And, in 2018, a Toronto anti-Semite publishing a “newspaper” which talked about me being “bludgeoned to death.” (I successfully pushed for a private criminal prosecution in that case — and Judge Dan Moore let the Nazi go.) And so on and so on. I’ve written five books about racism and anti-Semitism, hundreds of newspaper columns and stories, and I’ve been on the receiving end of lots of death threats over the years. I’ve spent plenty on security — and, yes, I’ve learned how to be a really good shot. And in all of that time, after experiencing all of that nonsense and more? I’ve never seen it this bad. If you’re a Jew, you know exactly what I mean. Anti-Semitism, which never really goes away, is seemingly worse now than it has been in decades. And Jew-hatred — which is now manifesting itself in unlikely places like university campuses, and small businesses, and elementary schools, and restaurants and private residences — is just about everywhere. It’s the new pandemic, and deadly in its own dark way. In Toronto alone, there’s been a 132% increase in anti-Semitic incidents since Oct. 7, when Hamas murdered 1400 Israeli men women and children – and raped and tortured many more. Think about that: after Oct. 7, the worst day Jews have experienced since the Holocaust, things got worse for them. Not better. Things got worse everywhere, in fact. Pollsters and social scientists are at work, computing the data, assembling the grim statistics. Police agencies are tallying the depressing numbers. But all of us — all of us who pay attention, anyway — know the truth: anti-Semitism, always bad, is getting markedly worse at the back end of 2023. In media newsrooms, we are all talking about it. At this newspaper, one of our writers got pushed and followed around at an anti-Zionist protest on Sunday — and was told he worked for a “Jewish newspaper.” And, for those of us who are in the business of predicting the future, it feels like blood will be spilled — and not in Gaza City or an Israeli kibbutz, either. Here. Now. It feels like someone is going to get killed. It feels like there will be blood. Israel will win the war against Hamas, yes. It will be long and it will be bloody, yes. Of that, there should be little doubt. But, elsewhere, it feels like Israel — the Jewish state — is losing. Online, in cities across the West, in public opinion, perhaps: it feels like Israel is losing another kind of war. It’s not irrelevant when we see more than 100,000 protestors marching past the British House of Parliament on the weekend, demonizing Jews and the Jewish state. It’s not irrelevant when PhDs are joking about Jewish babies being beheaded or cooked in ovens. It’s not irrelevant when Jews are afraid to go outside their homes — in Canada. Now, more than ever, those who support Israel — those who oppose terror and hate — need to fight back. We need to be seen, too, and we need to confront every barbaric lie and every blood libel. We need to defeat anti-Semitism. As we have done before. The “rough beast,” per Yeats, is again awake, and it is slouching towards Bethlehem. We must defeat it. We must.
Publish Date : 2023-10-30 21:09:22
Image and News Source : torontosun
