Political Will Can Address Antisemitism
Chanukah is upon us, and it is definitely a time for celebration for the Jewish people!
First off, Jeremy Corbyn has been defeated in the UK, as Labour has suffered their worst defeat since 1935. Corbyn had become synonymous with antisemitism during his tenure as Labour party leader, jumping from one controversy to another, be it praising books which blame the Jews for society’s problems or calling Hamas his “friends” and saying they “fight for social and political justice”. Corbyn’s resignation is a great victory against antisemitism.
It is not only the defeat of our enemies this Chanukah, but the emergence of allies to the Jewish community that should bring some joy. Many people have recently heard about the Trump administration’s Executive Order to insure Title VI protections to Jews on university campuses, which is a great development. But right here in Ontario, a Bill to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism provincially has passed first reading.
This would be a great first step to combating antisemitism in Ontario, especially on university campuses. Studies have shown that the BDS movement is responsible for the majority of the recent rise in antisemitism on campus. Calling BDS what it is, antisemitism, is a very important step in combating the recent tidal wave of it.
We at CAEF encourage all of you to write Premier Ford and your MPPs, and encourage them to vote this Bill into law and help fight hatred and bigotry.
Chanukah Message from Boris Johnson
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom assures the Jews in the UK and around the world that he will fight antisemitism, and that Britain is a welcome home to the Jewish people.
CAEF Brought Together Jews & Hindus; Sounding the Alarm on Islamic Radicalization
Canadian Kashmiri Hindus & Jews convened at a seminar at the Toronto Zionist Center to learn about the growing Islamic radicalization in the world, and it’s knocking on our doors here in Canada.
The seminar, which took place on Sunday, December 8th 2019 was arranged by the Toronto Zionist Center and supported by Herut Canada, The Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation (CAEF), Indo Canadian Kashmiri Forum (ICKF), Global Kashmiri Pandit Diaspora (GKPD), Baloch Human Rights Council, TAG TV & ZEE TV.
The event was well attended by over 125 people from different walks of life across the GTA and was moderated by Swarna Bakshi Saini, an educator who taught management in her native country India. Swarna gave a brief overview about the growing threat of religious extremism in the last few decades which has spread its reach in the UK, France, Belgium and other European countries and now slowly is knocking on our doors in the world’s most peaceful place, Canada. She elucidated the fact that Islamic extremism on the Indian subcontinent is centuries old, and she herself became a victim when her family had to leave their ancestral home 30 years ago when Pakistan-backed Islamic terrorists inflicted terror on Hindus in India’s only Muslim Majority state of Jammu & Kashmir. She was 6 years old when her family had to leave their homes on a cold January 1990 night, never to return as the same was looted, vandalised brick by brick, fixture by fixture, and later burnt to ground.
The old kind or newish, it’s antisemitism versus anything Jewish.
By Julian Zuckerbrot
A couple of years ago a court ruled that three men of Middle-Eastern origin who had lobbed petrol bombs into a synagogue were guilty of criminal arson but not of committing an antisemitic act. The bombers, who received no jail time, had claimed that that their act was directed not at the local Jews who worshipped at the synagogue, but rather at Israel. In buying that excuse, the judges accepted that it is perfectly reasonable to commit an act of terrorism if you blame Israel. And that it’s not really so bad, and not at all antisemitic, to attack people of the Jewish faith – even their own neighbours – for no reason other than that they practise the religion of Israel. It’s perhaps worth mentioning that these events took place in Germany.
That attack came 23 years after hundreds were killed and injured half a world away, when a suicide bomber drove a van full of explosives into the AMIA Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires. Behind the attack was Hezbullah, the Islamist terrorist group based in Lebanon that is an arm of the Iranian government. (Some European governments try to defend Hezbullah by insisting that it is their military wing that handles bombings, not their political wing, who are a fine bunch of bureaucrats like us. But that’s a bit of a stretch when Hezbullah itself insists that it doesn’t operate separate wings.)
Hezbollah’s charter calls for the “obliteration” of “the Zionist entity”. It doesn’t speak well of the United States, capitalism (or indeed communism) either. But it doesn’t have a bad word to say about Jews, so how can you call the group antisemitic? Still, when it comes to organizing a terrorist attack, a dead Jew in Argentina is just as satisfactory a target as one in Israel.