Antisemitism: Confused Responses to a Misunderstood Problem

Two recent antisemitism-related events were reported on the same day last week, and they’re connected.

The first was Mark Carney’s speech in Toronto where he announced the creation of a “ministerial advisory council on rights, equality and inclusion.” The second event involved an announcement that Toronto Police Services (TPS) had arrested five individuals for “public incitement of hatred and willful promotion of hatred.”

Both events seemed designed as responses to persistent criticism that Canada’s official institutions have - at best - done nothing of substance to push back against growing Jew-hatred. And if you’d ask me, both efforts completely missed the point.

The Advisory Council to (hopefully) End All Advisory Councils

No doubt the new council will generate more of the same (cheap) talk that’s already featured in slightly older initiatives like Canada’s Action Plan on Combatting Hate. Those existing measures, by the way, are budgeted at more than $100 million, will measurably change nothing, and have to be seen to be believed.

I’m guessing that any “practical” suggestions delivered by the new council will probably focus on Liberal Party favorites. Hosting racism conferences no one notices along with ineffective and technology-ignorant proposals for suppressing offensive online speech will probably play large roles.

Sure, the internet can probably be blamed for some of the popularization of awful ideas. But there’s absolutely nothing any Canadian government can do about that. And, in any case, the internet is only one part of a much bigger story.

Like most real-world problems, what’s actually driving the recent explosion of antisemitism is complex. But some of the more obvious sources include:

• Issuing countless thousands of student visas to unvetted people from Muslim countries where Jew hatred is actively promoted.

• Allowing (or even mandating) openly anti-Israel and pro-terror curricular materials and activities in k-12 classrooms.

• Offering publicly funded university courses taught by openly antisemitic professors who proudly and frequently use online platforms to express their Jew hatred.¹

• Funding the CBC which interviews dozens of Hamas/Iran/Hezbollah supporters with little or no push back against their historical revisionism and criticisms of Israel and Jews. (It would be hard to point to any similar interviews with Jews/Israelis in recent years.)

Those problems all have relatively simple and obvious solutions - and none of them would require the suppression of anyone’s free speech. K-12 teachers and university professors, for example, are perfectly free to teach whatever they want to any students interested in listening. But the government doesn’t have to pay them for the pleasure.

A public school district or university that did nothing more than eliminate support and funding for such content would send a powerful message. And students of such institutions would be exposed to a whole lot less hate. Ditto for the CBC.

The problem is that, to a large degree, university deans, provincial education ministry policy managers, school administrators, and CBC program managers are on board with the hate. Or, in some cases, they feel themselves powerless to do anything about it.

I strongly believe that this is the key issue. The substance and official voice of key publicly funded institutions are closely associated with loud and proud support for government-designated terrorist organizations and their narratives. How could you expect antisemitism to not metastasize?

The fact that so many normal Canadians are, in fact, deeply supportive of their Jewish neighbours says a lot about their ability to block out official messaging. And the fact that the preferences of so much of the educational and broadcast establishment are flat-out ignored by regular Canadians is downright encouraging.

Toronto Police Services and Willful Misdirection

The second event I mentioned earlier was that TPS announcement about antisemitism arrests. I don’t find the news encouraging in any way.

First of all, why now? Public street-level attacks against Toronto’s Jewish community have been going on for years. If the City of Toronto and their police service considered passivity the right approach until now, what’s changed? This certainly doesn’t feel like an admission of error.

What’s the point? The odds anyone will ever be convicted and punished for their actions lie somewhere between microscopic and laughable. I’ve already written about how - between Canada’s prosecution-averse Crown prosecutors and a chronically chocked criminal court system - only a tiny proportion of arrests ever lead to court appearances. So why bother?

And what’s with those charges? Public incitement of hatred and willful promotion of hatred? Really? Relying on such weak hate-speech charges opens you up to accusations of political persecution. And, frankly, I’d tend to agree.

This isn’t the first time, either:

“Chief Demkiw said in the news conference that since October 7, 2023, Toronto police has laid 30 hate propaganda charges, including 11 willful promotion of hatred charges.”

“Hate propaganda” is a crime in Canada? So why aren’t half of our MPs already behind bars?

It’s not like there aren’t real crimes in play here. The guys TPS just charged were all using intimidation to try to prevent Jews (and others) from walking along a public sidewalk. There’s something about that word “intimidation” that sounds familiar.

Well as I’ve written, here’s how the Criminal Code puts it:

423(1) Every one is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than five years or is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction who, wrongfully and without lawful authority, for the purpose of compelling another person to abstain from doing anything that he or she has a lawful right to do, or to do anything that he or she has a lawful right to abstain from doing...blocks or obstructs a highway.

These arrests and charges smell like nothing more than frivolous PR stunts. I honestly can’t see what value they provide to society.

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There’s more:

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1. Here’s one shocking example that doesn’t even involve the regular fire-breathing, blue-hairedm, intersectional studies professors.