'Independent Jewish Voices'

"Our politicians cannot be complacent in these marble hallways while Israel continues to burn Palestinians alive in their tents."

"Canada's ongoing arms exports and diplomatic support make it complicit in these atrocities."

Niall Ricardo, Independent Jewish Voices Canada 

"Their actions represent an egregious distortion of Jewish values and a calculated attempt to hijack Jewish identity to serve a hateful anti-Zionist and antisemitic agenda."

"We refuse to remain silent as Independent Jewish Voices and their partners recklessly endanger Jewish Canadians by perpetuating lies and fomenting hostility."

"Their shameful antics today, which trivialize genocide and vilify Israel, undermine Jewish safety and foster the very antisemitism they claim to oppose."

Joint statement of  19 Jewish groups in Canada

Members of the Parliamentary Protective Service and Ottawa Police Service detain members of an antiwar protest that occupied the lobby of the Confederation Building on Tuesday morning. The building houses MPs' offices. (Raffy Boudjikanian/CBC)

 

Canada's exports of arms and military equipment to Israel has never been other than peripheral to actual military equipment as in lethal weaponry. Months ago, Melanie Joly, Canada's minister of foreign affairs announced that her government was placing all such 'military equipment' on hold until the cessation of the Israel-Gaza/Hamas conflict. "Our policy has been clear," she said. "Since Jan. 8, we have not accepted any form of arms export permits to be sent to Israel."

 

Weapons permits by non-governmental weapons producers in Canada have also been suspended. Canada's Liberal government is quite a bit ahead of these shameful 'Jewish' action groups demanding that Canada completely isolate Israel from Canadian military exports. Canada through this Liberal government abandonment of an ally at war, has nothing to be proud of. Perhaps they chose to overlook that Canada buys missiles manufactured in Israel, along with indispensable radar equipment.

“For some reason, (Foreign Minister Melanie Joly) forgot that in the last decade, the Canadian Defense Ministry purchased Israeli weapon systems worth more than a billion dollars,” according to an analysis by the Jerusalem Post, which noted that Israeli military technology is “protecting Canadian pilots, fighters, and naval combatants around the world.”

National Post

A member of the Swiss army walks past an Israeli-made Spike LR2 Long-Range Missile on March 21, 2024. A version of the Spike LR2 was recently fast-tracked by Canada for its troops in Latvia. Photo by STEFAN WERMUTH / AFP

This past Tuesday a group calling itself Jews Say No To Genocide Coalition, took Parliament Hill hostage to its campaign, with an occupation it vows to continue until the government accedes to its demands. A group estimated to number 100, of anti-Israel protesters rushed the lobby of the Confederation Building in Ottawa, housing the offices of Members of Parliament. Parliamentary Protective Services and Ottawa police responded, and 14 protesters were arrested, then released.

The coalition stated through a news release that its membership is comprised of Jewish Canadians, announcing its intention to occupy the building indefinitely, with "MPs and staff blocked from business as usual". Which led a group of 19 mainstream Jewish groups that include B'Nai Brith Canada, the Tafsik Organization, the Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation, Allied Voices for Israel, Canadian Women Against Antisemitism, the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, and groups representing Jewish lawyers, doctors and educators to decry the protesters, standing in direct opposition to the values of the entire Jewish Community in Canada.

An estimated 91 percent of Canadian Jews believe that Israel has a right to exist, stated the group of 19 organizations. Numbers from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance were cited in support of their contention that connection to Israel is a core part of Jewish identity. They urged Parliament and Canadians to view the protesters as "fringe activists operating outside the mainstream Jewish community."

Jews Say No To Genocide Coalition demanded that Canada must end "its active participation in Israel's genocide", an astonishingly egregious statement falsifying the entire conflict history between Palestinians and Israel of over a century, culminating in the atrocities committed in southern Israel when thousands of Palestinian terrorists swept through farming villages and kibbutzim to rape, burn families alive, torture and slaughter infants, the elderly, women and men, civilians all. Israel still awaits the return of the 101 hostages remaining in Gazan captivity by Hamas.

In the choice of that estimated 100 Jewish protesters to  make their demands and stage their dramatic storming of Parliament buildings, the Canadian Jewish community, already under huge duress by pro-Hamas instigators of violence against Jews, knowingly and deliberately add to the uncertainty and insecurity experienced by Jews in Canada. That tight little group of 100 Jewish dissidents chose to support Palestinian terrorism over Israeli existence. Absolutely not to be believed!

Dozens of antiwar protesters that occupied the lobby of the Confederation Building in Ottawa early Tuesday have now been removed by police and security services. (Raffy Boudjikanian/CBC)

 

Canada's Critical Mass of Religious Extremism

"It  has been disappointing [appointed role by the federal government], in part because I don't feel that the rise in antisemitism is getting the attention or response from leadership across the country, at all levels, that it should be getting, and that's been very disappointing."

"And it's been quite troubling, because as much as I've worked in conflict zones before and difficult environments, to be here, in my own country and to experience the horrific rise, unprecedented rise, of antisemitism in Canada and the lack of a real response to it causes me to worry about the future of our country."

"I don't think the faith community has stepped up. I don't think we've seen the non-Jewish, non-Muslim faith communities step up to say, 'Wait a minute. This is unacceptable in Canada'."

"We don't endorse this level of hatred and animosity toward one another. This is unacceptable. This is not who we are as children of God."

Deborah Lyons, Special Envoy on Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Antisemitism in Canada 

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre was one of several speakers at the Holocaust memorial in Ottawa. He said 80 years after the Holocaust, Canadians are seeing 'the same ugly totalitarian ideologies' playing themselves out on campuses and in attacks on synagogues.

 

Deborah Lyons, for all her ferocity as a non-Jew in deploring antisemitism and her determination to instill a sense of responsibility in the general public in Canada, and awaken in the slumbering consciousness of religious leaders a faith-obligation to recognize their religion's social conscience in a critical matter of outright racist obloquy against the the world's perennial scapegoat, speaks with caution, lest she alienate the very religious extremism that has worked assiduously to awaken slumbering Jew-hate by outright naming them.

Suffice it that she spoke of 'non-Jewish, non-Muslim' sources she would feel had a moral, religious obligation to come to the rescue of the Jews in Canadian society by condemning the spiralling antisemitic flow of hate speech, in support of their Jewish colleagues representing the origins of their own faith, namely Christians. That source would have a degree of moral authority. Much as governments at every level possessing political-social authority. Instead occasional sanctimonious rejection of the outright violent slander and threats that permeate the 'protests' alleging support of Palestinians to shield naked Jew-hate.

 

A counter-protester, centre, is forced out of the anti-Israel encampment set up on the University of Toronto campus on May 2. Photo by Chris Young/The Canadian Press

The infiltration within Canada of a steady flow of immigrants and migrants and refugee-class Muslims from the conflict-charged landscape of the Middle East may detest one another for their sectarian, political, cultural and tribal divisions of long standing but what does draw them together in a common purpose of rejection and hatred is the ideological/cultural detestation of Jews and the presence of Israel among Muslim-majority states.

 

Ms. Lyons calls upon community leaders, political leaders, business leaders, faith leaders, academic leaders to stand together and condemn the vitriolic surge of hate that targets the Canadian Jewish demographic, instilling fear and trepidation, as the violence of threatening speech along with viscious attacks against Jewish parochial schools, community centres, synagogues and private businesses speak to the level of hatred that drives people from their homes in once-proud communities.

 

There is no censure from government, from community leaders, when slogans of hate and threatening chants ring out in the streets from crowds of people devoting themselves to issues of conflict taking place half a world away. When a tiny sliver of a country is surrounded by bristling enemies decrying the presence of a Jewish nation in its ancestral home, in the midst of a huge gathering of nations devoted to Islam. One, a religion boasting four millennia of existence, the other one with less than half its existence in time and place which has in fact 'borrowed' heavily from Judaism, its sacred tenets and prophets.

"One of the things, again, as somebody who's travelled a lot internationally, is, why is Canada having this unprecedented surge in antisemitism right now? What is it about the makeup of our society? What is it about our push for diversity and inclusivity? And what is it about our demographics?"

"What is it about our country that is seeing such a level that has actually caused other countries to say, 'What's going on in Canada? We wouldn't have expected this from Canada".

Deborah Lyons, Special Envoy on Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Antisemitism in Canada

Police investigators examine the exterior of a synagogue in Dollard-des-Ormeaux, Que., where an incendiary device was ignited in November. (Francois Joly/Radio-Canada)