Canada, Radical Islam and Cities of Fear

Why do hate incidents against Jews in Canada vastly outnumber all other minorities?

By: Jerry Grafstein

Toronto, per capita, leads cities in the Western world in antisemitic hate incidents, which also outnumbers all other hate incidents in the city, according to B’nai Brith Canada’s impeccable statistics and confirmed by the Metropolitan Toronto Police. And these hateful incidents continue to spiral to historic highs.

In just one recent example, six students at a North Toronto primary school made the Nazi salute and neither the principal nor the parents were castigated.

On Yom Kippur, shots were fired at a Jewish girls’ school; thankfully, no one was there at the time.

Questions abound. Why are antisemitic incidents against Jews in Toronto the highest per capita in Western democracy? Why does DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) in Canada only exclude Jews? Why do hate incidents against Jews vastly outnumber all other minorities? Why are prosecutions against these egregious actions per capita higher in the United States than in Canada?

And why was Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, which started more than a century ago because Jewish doctors were barred from other hospitals and now is open to all faiths and races, mobbed by violent Islamists and their collaborators? Why were no arrests made? None. This was despite the fact that police headquarters and a police station were located within a few blocks.

Why were many good Canadians passive when other Canadians celebrated the Oct. 7 massacre of Jews—old men, old women, young parents, teenagers and children?

Jews live with these questions and keep asking why.

Why has Toronto been transformed from “Toronto the Good?” Perhaps it’s due to the passive attitude of the mayor, Olivia Chow, who has drawn condemnation from local Jewish groups and her City Hall cohort.

Antisemitism has deep roots in Canada. Prime Minister Mackenzie King allowed these roots to fester. King was an early and open admirer of Adolf Hitler and Vichy France. He also never criticized Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Canada recognized Vichy France, an openly antisemitic government, until 1942. Canada, under King from the 1930s to 1945, allowed only 4,000 Jewish refugees to settle here. (Revelations about how Canada prevented European Jews from immigrating during the war are featured in None Is Too Many, by Irving Abella and Harold Troper.)

Despite King’s views, two of his officials—Louis St. Laurent, Canada’s secretary of state for external affairs, and his deputy minister, Lester “Mike” Pearson—led efforts in the United Nations to establish the Jewish state.

In the years since, Canada has seen the rise of two subliminal “isms,” Islamism and Marxism, which share a common irrational hatred of Jews. The intersection of this hate is playing out in Canadian streets today as history seems to be repeating itself.

Culture wars and “identity” cults are always a precursor to democratic decay. Unchecked foreign influence in Canada intensifies, weakening of democratic structures. This was the case in the Weimar Republic in Germany in the 1920s. Unchecked protests, geared by hate, are always a harbinger of the decay of democracy. Loosening public morals or failing to call out discrimination adds to the drift away from democracy. Normalization of hatred against Jews is always the first sign of democratic decay.

Across Canada, cities have become places of fear for Jewish residents. Jewish kids in Jewish primary schools now learn to go to a safer room if under a terrorist attack. Antisemitic marches in Toronto are now regular events, yet most public officials are silent and ever-compliant.

Antisemitism has suddenly become “normalized” in Canada, and no other minority group here faces these kinds of challenges.

What can be done? A Parliamentary committee hearing followed by a task of independent judges could stem the tide of both Islamism and communism in Canada, as is being done with inquiries into foreign influence in Parliament. Public exposure to their deep tenacles in the body politic in civic society is an existential danger to our fragile democracy. This is the best antidote to Islamism and communism, which both seek to normalize this against Jews. Islamists, Communists and fascist followers all believe Jews stand in the way of the decay of democracies across the globe.

Our parliamentary democracy depends on equal treatment, equality for all and the protection of all faiths, declared in the Canadian Bill of Rights in our constitution.

Only by public exposure and prosecutions can Canada cleanse itself of malignant foreign influence violent unreasoned discrimination against Jews and welcome a return to peace, order and good governance. Truth and reconciliation is the only way!

          (JNS.org)

Jerry Grafstein is a retired lawyer and former Liberal senator in the Canadian parliament