On Thursday November 2, Conservative Deputy Leader Melissa Lantsman resorted to an antisemitic trope while excoriating CBC president Catherine Tait.
It happened at a meeting of the Commons Canadian Heritage Committee.
Tait was there to defend the institution she heads, especially against attacks from Conservative MPs. One of Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s favourite battle cries is “Defund the CBC!”
Lantsman focused on CBC’s coverage of the current war between Israel and Hamas.
In particular, the Deputy Leader took issue with what she called “a false headline based on dangerous disinformation that incorrectly stated that Israel was responsible for the explosion at the hospital in Gaza that resulted in the deaths of innocent civilians.”
Lantsman pointed out that Israel had disavowed responsibility for that attack, blaming the Hamas-allied group Islamic Jihad.
Further, she said, the Canadian Prime Minister, the US President, and the British and French governments had accepted the Israeli version. Nonetheless, a headline that read “Palestinians say hundreds killed in Israeli airstrike on hospital. Israel blames Islamic Jihad” was still on the CBC’s website.
Lantsman then asked Tait if she would “apologize to Jewish Canadians.”
Here, the deputy leader was, in effect, doing what those who work fulltime to combat antisemitism universally condemn, namely, “holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of the State of Israel.”
Those are the exact words of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)’s working definition of antisemitism.
The IHRA brings together experts and government representatives from more than 50 countries, including Canada, to advance the cause of Holocaust education.
Many human rights groups and other civil society organizations dispute certain elements of the IHRA definition of antisemitism. They argue some of its references to Israel could be invoked to stigmatize legitimate criticism of Israeli policies and practices.
For instance, the IHRA definition states it is antisemitic to apply a double standard to the state of Israel “by requiring of it a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.”
Defenders of Israel have cited that vague and nonspecific principle to deflect concerns about questionable Israeli actions – actions such as building a wall through West Bank territory, or allowing settlements on occupied lands.
Few, however, would dispute the IHRA’s condemnation of those who would lump together all Jews, everywhere, with the government of Israel, especially the current far-right Israeli coalition.
Conservative MP Melissa Lantsman wants CBC’s president to apologize to the Jews of Canada for a story it carried about Israel.
The flip side of that demand would be to blame the Jews of Canada for the more than 10,000 people of Gaza Israel’s bombs and missiles have killed over the past month.
Canadian Jews do not get a vote in Israel, nor does the Israeli government consult them when it launches military actions or allows armed settlers on the West Bank to displace and attack Palestinian villagers.
It is hard to imagine the Conservative Deputy Leader would not condemn as antisemites those who would hold Canada’s 400,000 Jews accountable for what Israel is doing in Gaza.
Lantsman cannot have it both ways.
However inadvertently, her demand that the CBC apologize to Jews, for something one headline said about Israel, takes a big step down the slippery slope of classic antisemitism.
More than 10,000 Gazans killed, including several thousand children
The prime victims of the current Israel-Hamas war are the 1,400 Israelis and others Hamas killed on October 7, the 200-plus people it took hostage, and the more than 10,000 children, men and women Israeli forces have killed, and many thousands more they’ve maimed, in the mere month since Hamas’ attacks.
It is important to underscore that fact.
The people in the midst of the action are those most suffering its consequences.
This is especially true in Gaza, where the severe lack of food, water, medical care, and even shelter add to the agony of death and destruction.
But far away from the battlefront, here in Canada, others are experiencing their own forms of agony.
The current conflict has, to date, been more intensely brutal, on both sides, than any other over the past half century directly involving Israel and the Palestinians. And reactions to it have been equally vehement and acrimonious.
Muslim and Jewish parents alike are nervous about sending their children to school. Some tell their kids to not advertise their identities. That’s not always possible. Some kids wear visible signs of their religion.
Overall, we are seeing a chill on any sort of candid and open dialogue or expression of opinion about the Israel-Hamas war – or the situation in the region more generally.
Supporters of Palestinian rights are afraid to display the flag of Palestine, or publicly express their views on the conflict – and, it seems, for good reason.
A CTV reporter in Nova Scotia lost her job and an NDP member of the Ontario legislature was booted out of caucus for doing so.
READ MORE: Defend Sarah Jama, stop the attack on Gaza
In Chicago, a self-styled (not Jewish) vigilante’s answer to Hamas was to kill a Muslim child.
On the other side, pro-Palestinian demonstrators in Toronto decided to picket a Jewish-owned café, while an unknown person (or persons) attacked a suburban Montreal synagogue and Jewish community centre with Molotov cocktails.
And life can get uncomfortable in the extreme for people who refuse to buy into any simple narrative about the conflict.
One Jewish musician and teacher in Toronto, who has been publicly critical of Israel’s massive military response to the October 7 Hamas attacks, says she has lost friends because of their differing views.
She also reports this exchange with one student: “He asked me, ‘Are you a Zionist?’ I asked why he wanted to know and he said, ‘are you supporting the genocide and the occupation?’”
Another student, she says, “came to her lesson crying, because she believed she had witnessed some students whom she took to be Muslim jumping a ‘Jewish kid.’”
We cannot verify if this event was perception or fact.
It is a fact that there was a donnybrook at Concordia University in Montreal on November 8 when pro-Palestinian campaigners clashed with a pro-Israel group.
Trudeau and UN’s Guterres speak out
The rise of hate and intolerance has not escaped the attention of Canada’s Prime Minister. During a scrum with reporters on Wednesday October 8 Justin Trudeau said:
“We’re seeing right now a rise in anti-Semitism that is terrifying … horrific threats of violence targeting Jewish businesses, targeting Jewish daycares with hate. This needs to stop … And the rise of Islamophobia we’re seeing across this country and around the world is also unacceptable. The expressions of hate against Muslims, against Palestinians, against anyone waving a Palestinian flag — this is unacceptable.”
Trudeau added “there are people across this country hurting, scared for themselves, scared for their kids here in Canada, scared for their loved ones on the other side of the world … Canadians are scared in our own streets right now.”
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also addressed what we might call the hearts-and-minds war.
On Wednesday, he said that there is something “clearly wrong” with the way Israel is conducting its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza.
The civilian toll is unacceptably high, and Israel is generating a worldwide backlash that could irreparably harm its international standing.
“There are violations by Hamas when they have human shields. But when one looks at the number of civilians that were killed with the military operations, there is something that is clearly wrong,” Guterres told the Reuters news service.
Guterres pointed to a heart-wrenching statistic. Each year the total number of children killed in all the wars around the world can be numbered in the hundreds, he explained, then continued: “We have seen, in a few days in Gaza, thousands and thousands of children killed.”
Guterres reiterated his strong condemnation of the Hamas attack on Israel, but added a huge caveat: “We need to distinguish – Hamas is one thing, the Palestinian people (are) another.”
“If we don’t make that distinction, I think it’s humanity itself that will lose its meaning,” Guterres concluded.
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