MacDougall: Stop targeting Jews in Canada for Israel's actions in Gaza

If you’re upset over Netanyahu’s policies, then protest to the embassy or let your MP know. Targeting businesses and schools here is unacceptable.

Published Mar 21, 2024 • Last updated 34 minutes ago • 3 minute read

Then-prime minister Stephen Harper is shown during the lighting ceremony of the Menorah on Parliament Hill in 2006. Photo by Jean Levac /Postmedia

What do Jews in Canada have to answer for with respect to what’s happening in Gaza? If your answer to that is anything but “zero,” you’re part of the problem.

That this even needs saying in a modern, supposedly progressive western state such as Canada is damning. But here we are. On a week in which a Jewish film festival was “indefinitely postponed” in Hamilton, the Liberal government tied itself in knots over a meaningless parliamentary opposition day motion on Gaza, and a major newspaper in Quebec published a grotesque and antisemitic editorial cartoon, it needs saying. Canadian Jews have nothing to do with decisions being made in Israel.

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It needs saying after months of mobs turning up at Jewish-owned and run businesses to intimidate their patrons. It needs saying after Jewish schools have been targeted with violence. It needs saying after “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” has slipped into the mainstream consciousness thanks, in large part, to social media. It needs saying: the Jews of Canada are not the problem. Jews as a category anywhere in the world are not the problem.

You can be upset — terribly upset — about what’s happening in Gaza. You can think, as I do, that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needs to be fired from office and fired into the sun (along with Hamas). You can rage against the conduct of the Israeli Defense Forces or the Israeli government’s slow-rolling of aid delivery to Palestinians. If that’s how you feel, protest to the Israeli Embassy or consulate or make your views known to your elected representative. But that doesn’t mean you should target or otherwise take it out on the Jews of Canada.

As a prime minister once said: “The hatred and bigotry that led to the Holocaust still lurks in our world. Antisemitic crimes in Canada, including recent vandalism at Jewish schools … demonstrate the continuing need for both action and education. They remind us of the necessity of standing firm and taking decisive action against the evils of antisemitism.”

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Now is the time for Justin Trudeau, the current prime minister, to repeat those words, uttered in 2010 by then-prime minister Stephen Harper, words spoken loudly and clearly when there was no war in Gaza. To his cabinet and caucus and all Canadians. Harper’s message was clear: Jew hatred is a symptom of a much larger disease. The mob is now coming for the minority; it is time to protect the minority. With our words, but also with our actions. Worse will come if we don’t.

Again, this shouldn’t need saying. But for the religious identity of the minority under threat, it wouldn’t need to be said. The government would be on it. We would be getting the full Laurence Olivier from Justin Trudeau. But for some reason, as British author David Baddiel has written, Jews don’t seem to count in the progressive identitarian bingo card. There appears to be no intersection at which the Jews merit protection as a minority.

Instead of having a moan about how hard his job is, Trudeau needs to absorb the lessons of history to stand firm against the hate that could soon slip out of his or anyone’s control. This is why he gets paid to sit in the big boy chair.

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By all means, Prime Minister, call Bibi and give him a bollocking. Criticize the actions of the Israeli government. But give the mobs interrupting your events and the lives of your Jewish citizens a bollocking too. Criticize them. Tell them that mob rule has no place in Canada. You want a “Just watch me” moment? Well, this is it, pal.

“Let us not forget that even now, there are those who would choose evil, and would launch another Holocaust, if left unchecked. That is the challenge before us today,” Harper said in a 2010 speech.

Hamas was that evil on Oct. 7, 2023. Hamas is that evil. We mustn’t let that evil spread to our hearts, or our minds.

Andrew MacDougall is a London-based communications consultant and ex-director of communications to former prime minister Stephen Harper.

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