Hello, Canada? Your Jews Calling...

"[The posters are] plain antisemitism."

"It's sad to see this in my own city. This is intended to stigmatize, to target and to make you afraid to say what you want to say."

"[There has been an] absolutely extraordinary amount [of hate in the past nine months, threats issued on social media]. This [the posters] sort of continues down that path. Except it's another sign on the streets of Montreal where others are also exposed to it, not just me and my staff." 

"And then to tell a Canadian Jew who was born in Montreal, whose parents and grandparents were born in Montreal, that I should go somewhere else ... it's telling us that we don't have a place in our country just because we believe that Israel has a right to exist."

Member of Parliament Anthony Housefather

Anthony Housefather shared a photo on social media of a poster equating Zionism with terrorism. Photo by Anthony Housefather via X

At every turn, throughout Canada mobs of people, incited equally by groups that have established themselves comprised primarily by Arab-Canadians to promote the 'rights' of Palestinians in their contested claims of authenticity as indigenous to the land called Palestine originally (so named during the Roman Occupation of the Middle East, meant to describe heritage Judaean lands as Roman provinces), against their claims of Israeli 'colonialism' and 'apartheid'. Re-awakening on the other hand, slumbering antisemitism residing deep in the subconscious of some Canadians.

 

That Jews and the establishment of the modern State of Israel have illegally taken the land claimed by Arabs styling themselves Palestinians. Arabs who, though not indigenous to Palestine, arrived as migrants from Egypt and Syria to find opportunities for economic advancement for their future. For generations Arabs and Jews lived alongside one another, simmering resentment bubbling over from time to time each claiming entitlement to land ancestral to Jewish heritage identity. During the British Mandate administering Palestine, sparks of adversarial rage lit the fires of bloody pogroms.

 

And while Arab federations in Canada claim rights to the land that Israel sits on, their hugely successful public relations machinery portrays Israel as both the foreign intruder on the land and the aggressor against Palestinian rights. This, despite Palestinians having spurned the UN's Partition Plan that offered land equally to Arabs and Jews. Since the establishment of the modern State of Israel, Palestinians have established not a civil infrastructure that would advance their own interests in establishing a state of their own, but chose instead to invest time, energy and the financial charity of the international community in securing militias grounded in terrorism to confront Israel and murder Jews.

 

On October 7 of 2023, several of those terrorist militias led by Hamas which governed the Gaza Strip, dispatched thousands of their operatives into Israel across the Gaza border through the heavily damaged border fence, to converge on southern Israel's farming kibbutzim on a mission to slaughter Jews, young and old, in a campaign of mass rape, mutilation and hostage-taking. The horror of over 1,200 civilians killed, women and girls raped, mutilated and killed, others taken as hostages into Gaza was a nightmare that defenders of the concept of Palestinians as victims of Israeli violence denied. 

 

A protest outside the Federation CJA in Montreal, home to the Jewish Community Foundation of Montreal and the Montreal Holocaust Museum. Photo by CIJA /X

The more recent rise of skilled public relations overtures to the West, to convince populations there of the victimization of Palestinians by unscrupulous Israeli government human rights defilers portray Jews as committing genocide against Arab Palestinians, arousing indignation and censure of Israel in some quarters. Perpetrating the lies of genocide and victimization through apartheid so far from reality which is the charter of the Palestinian anti-Israel, violence-prone militias pledging to destroy Israel and kill Jews.

 

These ambitions veiled in victimhood and entitlement have entered the West along with Arab/Palestinian/Muslim immigration bringing with them all the tools of slanderous allegations damning Israel in the minds and attitudes of those who accept the narratives of 'victim' and an 'apartheid' regime. Despite the reality of millions of Palestinian Arabs with Israeli citizenship free to elect their own government representation. Jew-hate, however, sells well and gullible people driven by latent antisemitism awakened join the Muslim-Canadian squads demanding the villainization of Israel and Jews.

Canadian Jews are painted with the broad brush of villainy against Palestinian rights and entitlements when they express loyalty to the existence of Israel as a Jewish homeland and present-day haven for a people that has been persecuted throughout the diaspora during its millennias of exile from ancient Judea. The posters that have upset and angered Liberal MP Anthony Housefather show the flag of Nazi Germany alongside that of Israel as ideological compatriots. As one of the most outspoken politicians in Canada supporting Israel, the mobs call him a neo-Nazi and call for him to "get out of Canada".

 

Strategically placed in areas of Montreal traditionally hosting Montreal's Jewish communities, the posters are far more than an affront given the Nazi World War II ambition to eradicate Europe's Jews, succeeding to the degree that six million Jewish children, women and men were annihilated in German-led death squads and the establishment of death camps in Nazi-occupied Europe. An episode in modern history of horrendous consequences, the Holocaust represented proof positive of a dire need for a national haven for the world's Jews.

• Petrified young people at the Nova music festival seeking shelter in port-a-potties, and then terrorists spraying bullets into them to ensure they are dead. Other young people running through open fields to escape the gunmen. 
• Terrorists invading a home, killing a father with a grenade. His two young boys who miraculously survived wailing while the murderers loot the home. 
• Two beheadings shown in full – one done with a garden hoe, the other with a crude knife. The terrorists were ecstatic while committing these barbaric acts.
• Unsuspecting civilians slaughtered while driving past, dragged out of their cars and left to bleed in the streets like animals.
• Burned and mutilated bodies (including children) reflecting the inhuman way they met their end.
• Terrorists bringing kidnapped victims into Gaza, met with the cheers of Palestinians.
• Murdered women with blood running down their legs, indicating rape and torture.

Yet here we are generations later when Jews continue to mourn the horrors of the Holocaust that largely obliterated the Jewish presence in Europe, and this time an Islamist-generated program of eradication of Israel and world Jewry has relit the inextinguishable flame of  Jew-hate to unprecedented proportions placing Jews once again on notice that they are unsafe everywhere, their security and citizenship called into question, and the governments that ensure the safety and security of their populations, fail to react in response to violent rhetoric and simmering threats, along with criminal racist acts of Jew-hate.

 

Once again, unbelievably, but all too obviously, the general population of non-Jews of every description which has lived for generation after generation among the minority Jewish population throughout Europe and North America, has failed to respond, to reject the separation of Jews from the general population for the purpose of slander, demonization and threats.

"Our country has gained so much from the contributions of our Jewish community; it is past time for the rest of us [Canadians] to come together and say 'no more'."

"It is our duty to stand in front of them [Canadian Jews] to protect them, behind them to support them, and beside them in true friendship."

Deborah Lyons, Canada's special envoy for combating antisemitism

Anti-Israel protesters demonstrate outside the McGill University’s Bronfman building in Montreal. (John Mahoney / MONTREAL GAZETTE)