The Glib Lies of Politicians

"The government will always stand with  you. It is not enough to protect the Jewish community. It is not enough for Jewish Canadians to live without fear. Canada is not Canada unless all members of the Jewish community can fully participate in all aspects of Canadian life."

"This is about thriving. This is about taking the light and spreading it today, across our country and through generations, so this is the last generation that has to struggle against hate."

"[Hanukkah] represents the resilience of the Jewish people, but also the contributions of the Jewish people to our society, to all societies, to humanity. And I will always be here with you, and I will not rest until we've moved from protection to thriving."

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney

Rabbi Chaim Boyarsky welcomed Prime Minister Mark Carney and Rideau-Vanier Coun. Stéphanie Plante as the ceremony marked the start of Hanukkah. Photo by Ashley Fraser /Postmedia

 

Statistics Canada reports that the majority of hate crimes recorded as having been reported to police throughout 2023 were aimed at Canadian Jews, representing 70 percent of the total reported, while the Muslim population were the targets of 16 percent of those hate crimes. Beyond ironic since most of the hate crimes perpetrated against Canada's Jews were led by Muslims, Muslim and Palestinian groups and organizations, relentlessly. Any 'hate crime' reported against Muslims would rarely be the fault of Jews and far more likely to be from other Muslim-disaffected Canadians reacting to the Islamist cult of jihad. 

 

Mark Carney, Canada's current prime minister, repeats ad nauseum the same condemnatory mantra his predecessor did from the heights of the Liberal government pulpit; when the pro forma condemnation of antisemitism is uttered by either of these men in reaction to reports of continual egregious threats against the Canadian Jewish community, they speak of deploring racist antisemitism against Jews and 'Islamophobia' against the Canadian Muslim population, as though the two could possibly be equated. One scurrilous assault after another from the latter, qualifying it as the proponent of antisemitism yet portraying themselves as 'victims'.

 

According to the Ottawa Police Service, while hate crime statistics have been fewer through 2024 in comparison to the year before -- in the direct wake of the Palestinian terrorist groups Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine launching a mass slaughter in southern Israel on October 7 of 2023 when 'pro-Hamas'/'pro-Palestinian' groups came out in force to publicly celebrate the savagery perpetrated on Jews in Israel, accusing Israel of 'genocide' while calling to 'globalize the Intifada' and chorusing 'Final Solution!' -- it has been Canadian Jews who were most victimized, with 113 reported cases last year.

 

For the past two years and more, Jews in Canada have been isolated, vilified, threatened, private businesses vandalized, synagogues fire-bombed, parochial schools fired at, and Jewish citizens have had to put up with gangs of masked, keffiyeh-clad marchers on the streets of mostly Jewish-occupied homes where their privacy and sense of security is challenged time and again by shouts of ridicule and threats to their very existence in the country they've called home for centuries.

 

There has been no government action at any level -- federal, provincial or municipal -- to shut down the violently disorderly and threatening conduct that makes life a misery for Jewish residents and citizens. Police protect the protesters as exercising their Charter rights to free speech, while Jews seeking to counter the marchers' slanderous claims are chastised and advised that their presence and challenges to the demonstrators will be construed as provocations. 

 

A rabbi speaks to mourners at a tribute outside Bondi Pavilion in Sydney on Tuesday, honouring victims of the Bondi Beach shooting. (David Gray/AFP/Getty Images)

 

This is the social/political aura under which Canada's prime minister, like that of Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese govern, extending protection to the Palestinian/Muslim populations that have flooded their countries in the past several decades, while leaving their Jewish populations to fend for themselves, having to take extraordinary precautions of self-defense in erecting barriers around synagogues and community centers, and hiring security guards to protect the Jewish presence, where congregants are harried and threatened as they enter synagogues and children mocked as they attend schools.

 

In Sydney, Australia, this Jew-baiting, threatening situation has culminated in a terrifying gunfire attack against Jews celebrating the Festival of Light -- Hanukkah -- on Bondi Beach on Sunday, where two gunmen, a father and son openly supporting Islamic State shot to death 16 people; children, the elderly, rabbis, while 40 other revelers were injured, many critically. There were heroes who placed themselves deliberately in danger to forestall the massacre; a Jewish man and wife who grappled with one of the attackers and died in the effort. A teen-age girl who used her body to shield two much younger children. A non-Jewish man who tackled one of the attackers and disarmed him, while sustaining multiple bullet wounds.

 

In Canada, as in Australia, there is no honour in the mealy-mouthed assurances of their political leaders, who have made no effort at any time to realistically put a stop to the continual and ongoing public displays of antisemitic ridicule, threats, slander and outright criminal acts. Words of support and condemnation of hatred and threats come easily, however. The sanctimony of the betrayers of trust.

 

Olivia Mellcovsky stepped up the ladder as the prime minister held it so she could light the first Hanukkkah candle. Photo by Ashley Fraser /Postmedia