Antisemitism is being Normalized
In an interfaith online program this past week, Special Envoy for Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism, the Hon. Irwin Cotler, made the comment that antisemitism isn’t just a terrible blight in our society, with acts of vandalism, threats, attacks and ongoing social and traditional media espousing lies and bigotry, it is in fact being “normalized” and this is an even greater danger for the Jews. Once it is accepted, repeated, embedded in the education, culture and daily vernacular, it can be a serious threat to the safety of all Jews in society. Allowing any act of Jew hatred to escape uncriticized, unabated, or unpunished and the perpetrators unnamed, ignored or discounted, will make it easier the next time to take the hatred a step further.
Just last week, the antiZionist/Pro-Palestinian terror-supporters held Al Quds Day in Toronto, and no media reported it, no police stopped it, no government took much issue with it except for one Toronto City Councillor. What was once a small irritant, initiated by the antisemitic, anti-democratic, tyrannical theocratic Iranian regime in 1979, has grown in size and hateful rhetoric. This year, known antisemite, PFLP connected Khaled Berekat was a speaker and he distinctly called for an intifada against Israel. Here is how Honest Reporting Canada reported on the event.
Two individuals who did speak up were James Pasternak, City Councillor for Ward 6, and Anthony Furey, journalist, and Mayoralty candidate. Both condemned the protest and gave early warning signals, but the City did not take any steps to curtail what has traditionally been an antisemitic hatefest.
THIS MUST STOP! WRITE TO:
Acting Mayor Jennifer McKelvie at councillor_mckelvie@toronto.ca and your local Councillor to demand the end of hate and incitement from Toronto streets.
Denial, Distortion, Trivialization of the Holocaust
There is ever-increasing abuse of Holocaust memory, disregard for the facts and evidence, and lies spread about what really happened. Deniers question the numbers of people murdered, they deny who were the instigators and who their collaborators. The antisemites go so far as to suggest that Jews created the Holocaust, benefitted then and now from it, and abuse history to create sympathy, and worse — antisemites suggest that Israel’s treatment of its Arab residents is as the Nazis treated the Jews. We could only wish that Jews had been treated as Israel treats its non-Jewish citizens; the Arabs are equal citizens before the law, growing in number not diminishing, rising to the highest levels in Israeli society, and experiencing a better life in Israel than in many Arab Muslim countries. The Jews would have fared well under similar circumstances if afforded them in Germany and other European countries.
Watch this recently released film from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance organization showing the threat to Holocaust sites through neglect, weather, and vandalism.
Read about the Safeguarding Sites project and Safeguarding Sites Charter for Best Practices.
How to Create a Terrorist—Ask the Palestinian Authority
Journalist, political commentator, and author, Caroline Glick pointed out in a February 3rd, 2023 article in JNS that the American Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken has refused to see the truth about the Arab/Israeli conflict and this leads to ever increasing and bold attacks on Jews in Israel.
Blinken recently boasted about the hundreds of millions of US funds that are newly committed to the PA. We can see that this ensures pay-for-slay will continue, training kids to kill will continue, and the PA will continue to lie, embolden terrorism and benefit from their hate propaganda while doing little to better their own society.
Read excerpts:
“The Palestinian Authority didn’t condemn either terror attack (referring to two attacks on Jews that left dead 9 dead and 2 injured ed.) And this makes sense because, like the rest of Palestinian society, the PLO government in Judea and Samaria and the Hamas government in Gaza enthusiastically support the mass murder of Jews. In preschools, elementary schools, high schools, and universities, from Hebron to Gaza, Ramallah to Tul Karm and Jenin, students of all ages spent the week celebrating the massacre and attempted massacre in Jerusalem. Preschoolers “reenacted” the massacre in Neve Yaakov with toy guns. Little girls in pigtails paraded around holding photos of Alqam. High school girls wrote poems in his memory. Boys pledged to follow in his footsteps.
Alqam murdered seven Jews and wounded five more on International Holocaust Memorial Day. The anniversary is notable. The parallels between Nazi Germany and Palestinian society are overwhelming. The Nazis were able to enact the physical annihilation of the Jews by building on a century of demonization of Jews and lionizing of antisemites in Germany and throughout Europe.
The Palestinian people were created by a Nazi agent. The father of the Palestinians was Haj Amin el Husseini. Husseini, and his successors Yasir Arafat and his deputies in the PLO, and Ahmed Yassin and his acolytes in Hamas all forged a society which, like Nazi Germany, was organized around the hatred, demonization and dehumanization of the Jews as a people and as individuals.
There was no massacre in Jenin. There was a pitched battle. Fifty-two Palestinians, 34 of whom were terrorists, were killed. Twenty-three IDF soldiers were killed. Another 57 soldiers were wounded in the 11-day battle.
Jenin in 2002 was not a besieged ghetto. It was the capital of the Palestinian terror machine and the main exporter of suicide bombers.”
Note: The Biden administration is being sued for breaking the law, specifically the Taylor Force Act which prohibits funding PA and its terrorist entities until there is proof that they have ceased to incite and commit terrorism. The plaintiffs include victims of terrorism and Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, and is being led by America First Legal (AFL), a government watchdog group. Read here.
Canadian Muslim Group Spreads Lies and Hatred—CBC Supports the Lie
Read the story of Islamist terror across Jerusalem, fueled by Iran, bloodying Ramadan. Every year the violence threatens Israel’s security and leads to attacks, harassment and murder of Jews, and 2023 was no exception. Who is blamed? The Jews of course.
Read the story and watch the video produced by Honest Reporting on the “terror tentacles” of Iran in the Middle East.
Read how Canadian Muslims in Windsor characterize the events at Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount during Ramadan, where fanatical Islamists stored weapons, rocks and firebombs to attack Jews, especially the Israeli police. The police, at some risk to themselves, cleared the mosque making it safer for Muslim prayer services on the Mount and safer for all visitors. And how did CBC report this? With its usual anti-Israel bias.
The CBC Windsor reporter repeated many lies and ignored the instigation of the riots by Arabs, the danger to Jews and Arabs, and the fact that Israel then forbade Jewish visitors to the Mount during Ramadan-a highly prejudicial act against Jews—and to add insult to injury, we note the Windsor Muslim organization is raising funds on the back of the lies, claiming “to assist with emergency relief efforts for those affected in Jerusalem.” How much will be sent to the Jewish families that experienced loss of a family member by the murderous Islamist extremists? The President of the PA did not even send a word of condolence but encouraged and rewarded the terrorists and their families.
Response from a reader:
Richard Sherman sent the following letter to the CBC Windsor and journalist, T.J. Dhir.
Dear Managing Editor of Radio and TV Shawna Kelly:
CBC News Windsor demonstrated its antisemitism by its "coverage" of a recent rally. ("Windsor Muslims Rally to Help Following Violence at Jerusalem Mosque").
Reporter TJ Dhir referred dismissively to "incidents". These "incidents" included the cold blooded point blank murders with a Kalashnikov rifle of British passport carrying Jewish sisters, Rina Dee, 20, and Maia Dee, 15, and their mother Leah Dee, 46. Just an "incident" according to CBC Windsor and TJ Dhir.
Yet when combat journalist and Palestinian Arab Shireen Abu Akleh was tragically killed -- not murdered -- under the problematic circumstances that dozens and sometimes hundreds of combat journalists are killed in every year, CBC Windsor devoted endless hours to covering this story. No jew, no "incident".
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism makes clear that when the Jewish people in Israel are treated differently than other people under similar circumstances that is pure unadulterated antisemitism.
Clearly CBC Windsor has achieved its goal of being the Canadian version of Der Sturmer. Of course, TJ Dhir proudly wears the mantle of Julius Streicher.
Why the IHRA is Essential and Who Opposes It
CAEF in the News
In order to understand any phenomenon, especially to isolate it, reduce or eliminate it, transform it, or promote it, one has to define it. No science begins without attempts to define what is being studied, and through time, possibly redefine or clarify. Thus, it is astonishing that many so-called academics refuse to define "antisemitism", actively oppose the definition that resulted from the labour of many scholars over a 20 year period, and that met with acceptance and adoption by over 35 countries and hundreds of major institutions including some universities, the Global Council of Imams, established Jewish entities, police and security forces, multiple levels of government in Canada and a host of cultural entities.
It seems obvious that the opponents of the IHRA definition want to feel free to be the Jew hating hypocrites they are, without being labeled antisemites. Among the most virulent opponents are left wing Jewish and non Jewish organizations in North America, notably Independent Jewish Voices in Canada and the purely Jew hating NGO, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, which has never proposed a single resolution for peace or justice but constantly urges punishment of Israel, rejection of its right to defend itself, and ultimately supports the eradication of the Jewish state.
Read the Toronto Star article of by Richie Assaly of April 13, 2023, outlining arguments against the adoption of IHRA by those fallaciously claiming it chills criticism of Israel. Any reader of the IHRA document will know it is a false claim, using “freedom of speech” as the argument to reject IHRA while it is the Leftists who cancel speech and speakers with whom they disagree.
Read the Response from Dogan Akman as to the “pathological obsession” of Independent Jewish Voices (IJC), an anti-Zionist NGO that never speaks up to defend Jewish lives, mourn murdered Israelis of any faith, nor agree to the legal rights of Jews to the land of Israel.