Inverting Racism, the Victimizers Become the Victims
"[The report fails to address antisemitism at a time when there is a] significant rise of antisemitic and anti-Israeli incidents and hostility in our public schools, and throughout the community.""It also adopts the narrative of 'anti-Palestinian racism,' which seeks to erase core aspects of Jewish identity and history, and redefine what constitutes antisemitism.""It should prioritize addressing antisemitism and discrimination against Jews and Israeli Canadians, while avoiding the unnecessary politicization of our students, staff, and faculty due to imported international conflicts."Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA)"Why are staff and the trustees hiding behind these walls, refusing to hear from the Jewish community? Why are they hiding?""Why are the personal stories of hate and racism experienced by Jewish students and teachers in the TDSB incompatible with the TDSB’s combating hate and racism strategy? I have personally lost confidence in the leadership of the TDSB."Carly Cohen, concerned TDSB parent
Hundreds of people rallied outside of the Toronto District School Board during a Program and School Services Committee meeting that was voting on adopting the term 'anti-Palestinian racism' within the school board. (CBC) |
"It seems apparent that the desire to include a definition on anti-Palestinian racism [and this urgently] is a virtue signalling move meant to further polarize and divide Israeli, Palestinian, Jewish and/or Arab students given that there is no indication that anti-Palestinian racism has occurred as a form of discrimination within the TDSB."Jess Burke, director of diversity, inclusion and training, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs"The only definition of anti-Palestinian racism that I’ve seen, and it’s one that is frequently cited amongst advocates, says denying the Nakba or trying to silence or exclude Palestinian narratives is a form of anti-Palestinian racism.""Adopting this definition of anti-Palestinian racism also means you’re going to have to adopt Nakba Day [denying the legitimacy of the State of Israel] because any resistance to the idea that it should be taught in schools is racist; is a form of anti-Palestinian racism. So they are linked in that way.""Antisemitism has been a huge problem at the TDSB. Their own data says that last fall incidents of antisemitism tripled."Aaron Kucharczuk, parent of 3 TDSB students, founding member of the Jewish Educators and Families Association
Occupants of a pro-Palestinian encampment on the main campus of the University of Toronto are pictured on May 24, 2024. (Evan Mitsui/CBC) |
It
is a curious social phenomenon that has manifested in the past eight
months, actually in the aftermath of a sadistically psychopathic group
atrocity of truly savage dimensions committed by Palestinians in Gaza
and primarily by the organization of Hamas governing Gaza -- an event
horrific in the revelations of an ideology whose sole purpose is the
destruction of a nation. Clearly stated in its charter that its reason
for existence is the destruction of a reconstructed nation on its
ancestral homeland and with it the Jews who call it their home and
refuge, their haven from a world without that has proven time and again
bare tolerance for a Jewish presence.
It
took a genocide to finally persuade desperate Jewish leaders that Jews
would be forever at the mercy of those who all too frequently showed no
mercy toward the diaspora, worldwide Jewry forced into exile by a
two-hundred-year occupation by the powerful Roman Empire. Assembled once
again on the land of their heritage, those who shared the land were
enraged at the formal resurrection invited by the United Nations
apportioning the land equally between Jews and Arabs in an area the
Romans had named their province of Palestine, then solely a Judean
enclave.
This
is a history well documented both by current historians and those
historical coevals of the era. The Arab contingent of actual
colonialists from Egypt took to calling themselves the authentic
Palestinians, a declaration with no grounding in reality. Their leaders
pledged to engage the nascent Jewish state in war. It was a conflict
that was to be repeated and repeated by Arab nations' militaries and the
reason for repeating was that each military confrontation failed. Those
calling themselves Palestinians then relied on their own confrontations
in guerrilla warfare, an asymmetric conflict targeting civilians. Which
led to Israel being forced to defend itself by militarily policing the
areas adjacent its borders, the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
This
is what 'Palestinians' refer to as the 'occupation', which they vow to
'resist'. Occupation that is self-defence, resistance that is code for
terrorism against Israeli civilians. And although it is the Palestinians
who threaten Jews and Israelis, they name themselves the victims and
the State of Israel, their victimizer. Even as actual events are ample
proof of the Palestinians' elaborate pretense at deprivation of their
human rights, their appeal to the international community has resonated,
leading, incredibly, to Israel's reputation suffering under Palestinian
slander.
Claiming
the rebirth of Israel as a recognized sovereign nation by the United
Nations, propelled to that status under their 1947 Partition Plan which
the Palestinians rejected for themselves, they now present the 1948
international recognition of Israel -- a sovereign state -- as a
catastrophe for Palestinians who fled the area to become refugees. The
resulting designation of mourning their loss, calling it the Nakba
attempts to portray Israel's existence as illegitimate, and Jews as
colonialists despite their ancestral heritage status' authenticity.
Apparently
hidden from view is another reality, that over two million Arab
Palestinians have legitimate Israeli citizenship with all the privileges
that come with citizenship. As loyal Israelis they take part in the
mechanics of the state as judges, lawmakers, diplomats; rising in the
professions such as medicine and academia taking advantage of all
opportunities available to distinguish themselves as Arab-Israelis in
Israel where they freely exercise their right to freedom of religion. A
small number among theme may chafe at the Jewish state but none among
them seem prepared to live elsewhere than in Israel, preferring life
there than under Palestinian rule.
The
Palestinian re-invention of history is what the West in general and the
Toronto and District School Board in particular among many others in
the West has accepted. One cannot accept the Palestinian narrative
without acknowledging that in doing so Israel is being slandered and
delegitimized; in other words, playing the game of the Palestinians and
by further extension approving the atrocities that took place October 7
in southern Israel when Palestinians embarked on a mission of rape,
torture, slaughter and kidnapping Israelis because they are Jews. For
their story of liberation against oppression also legitimizes rape,
torture and slaughter as an acceptable means to reach their version of
freedom.
Rally outside Toronto District School Board, June 18, 2024 |
Jews
may be considered a race, but it's quite a stretch to recognize
Palestinians as a 'race', although Arabs are. Palestinians are simply a
group within the wider Arab community which has distinguished itself as
'different' by claiming inheritance of ancestral Judean land, by naming
themselves for an ancient historical province originally meant to
recognize a Judean presence, by claiming Jewish history is their
history. The world of Western democracy is in the throes of a
'progressive' liberal ideology that has taken to celebrating the power
of the underdog and which boasts its support of equality, diversity and
inclusion -- aimed primarily at elevating the status within society of
people of colour and Indigenous peoples.
Diversity,
equality and inclusion is increasingly denied to Jews, their
indigeneity of the land they occupy in the Middle East overlooked in
favour of considering them colonialists and the Palestinians' claim of
'first rights' respected broadly. Israelis as white imperialists finds
great favour among academics and unions and government authorities at
all levels, devoted to the issues of Critical Race Theory. People of the
Jewish faith and various ethnicities of Jewish derivation are not
homogeneously white, nor is their culture, history and experience
monolithic.
Trustees
at the Toronto & District School Board in their wisdom voted in
favour of a TDSB staff report recommending amending its anti-hate and
racism strategy to include anti-Palestinian racism. Jewish parents of
children in the school board along with community members objected. For
the fairly simple reason that it is Jewish students, not Muslim
students, who are facing constant issues of racism; point-blank
antisemitism, from both other students and from some teaching staff.
Much of it has been generated by the atmosphere prevalent in Canada of
pervasive Israel-bashing and Jew-hate expressed in pro-Hamas,
pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel rallies.
A
new working group is to be struck, tasked to develop a strategy to
combat anti-Palestinian racism in public schools in Toronto. A task
force to address a phenomenon that does not exist. Schools in the
board's jurisdiction are encouraged to accommodate Palestinian Students
Associations as creating "affinity space opportunities for diverse students",
amid recommendations that educators attend extra-curricular
professional training sessions to more fully comprehend anti-Palestinian
racism.
Formally
instituting 'anti-Palestinian racism' runs the risk of claiming
protection from such expressions of 'anti-Palestinianism' when
Palestinian student groups indulge in antisemitic attacks on fellow
students, situations that are now commonly experienced by Jewish
students whose complaints fail to move school administrations to take
any action whatsoever to restrain the burgeoning episodes of Jewish
students being singled out for harassment and isolation. In other words,
rather than addressing the problem of growing Jew-hate in their
jurisdictions, the TDSB is encouraging by this step, a further increase
in venomous attacks against Jewish students.
The protest began at Yonge and Bloor Streets and evolved into a march that went south on Yonge Street, west on College street, south on University Avenue and east on Dundas Street, ending at Yonge-Dundas Square. (Lorenda Reddekopp/CBC) |
Labels: Hamas Oct7 Terrorism in Israel, Palestinian Victimhood, Rallying for Antisemitism, Toronto & District School Board
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