By:  Rafael Medoff

Who’s to blame for antisemitism? The answer, according to one University of Manitoba professor, is the Jews themselves. And for some reason, the Winnipeg Free Press twice has given him a platform from which to make that slanderous accusation.

Dennis Hiebert, who teaches sociology at the University of Manitoba, assumed the role of would-be historian on the op-ed page of the Free Press on August 27, and proceeded to mangle the historical record.

Prof. Hiebert claimed that “antisemitism surged in response to the ethnocultural nationalist movement of Zionism that emerged in late 19th-century Europe…”

In fact, the rising antisemitism around the world in the early 20th century was not a response to the Zionist movement.

The thousands of pogroms in Czarist Russia in the early 1900s were not because of Zionism, nor were anti-Jewish blood libels such as the trial of Mendel Beilis in 1913. Zionism did not cause the slaughter of 250,000 Jews in Ukraine in 1917-1921, the imposition of anti-Jewish quotas in American and European universities in the 1920s, or the rise of the Nazis to power in Germany in 1933.

The notorious outbursts of antisemitism in Canada in the early 1900s likewise were not responses to the emergence of the Zionist movement.

The wave of anti-Jewish assaults and boycotts in Quebec City in 1910 (the Plamondon Affair) had nothing to do with Zionism.

Neither did the “Days of Shame” strike by doctors at the Hospital Notre-Dame in Montreal in 1934 to protest the hiring of a Jewish physician. The doctors did not object to Dr. Samuel Rabinovitch because he was a Zionist; their objection was that he was a Jew.

The antisemitic boycotts promoted by the notorious French Catholic priest, Abbé Lionel Groulx, in the 1930s, were not provoked by Zionism.

Nor was the King administration’s infamous “none is too many” policy of closing Canada’s doors to Jews fleeing the Nazis.

Antisemitism is not the fault of the Jews or their national liberation movement, Zionism. It’s the result of people embracing bigoted ideas and then raising their children on that diet of hate. Sometimes, the hate has been rooted in Islam and Arab nationalism; sometimes, in fundamentalist Christian teachings; and sometimes, in other ideologies. It is the bigots who are to blame, not their victims.

Sadly, Prof. Hiebert has extended his blame-the-Jews approach to the October 7 Hamas invasion of Israel.

He made that argument in an essay he wrote for the Journal of Sociology and Christianity last year, which appeared in abbreviated form in the Winning Free Press on February 28, 2025.

“[W]which side and what factors initiated” the “Hamas versus Israel conflict?,” Hiebert asked. “[W]as it the horrific violence perpetrated by Hamas against Israelis on October 7? Or was it the preceding gradual confinement by Israel of Palestinians to by now 13% of their original land, and cutting off their supply of water and electricity?”

Prof. Hiebert’s version of history is completely upside down. First, the temporary wartime interruptions of water and electricity took place after the Hamas invasion, not before. Second, the Palestinian Arabs took control of 100%, not 13%, of Gaza when Israel withdrew in 2005. Third, Israel never “confined” the residents of Gaza. On the eve of the Hamas invasion, 18,000 Gazans were entering Israel every day for work. Others left Gaza to study abroad, to seek medical treatment, or for other reasons.

But what was worse than Hiebert’s deeply flawed history was his implied justification for the October 7 atrocities.

According to Hiebert, even “more terrifying” than the Arabs using force against Israelis is “the protracted terror of colonization.” He then cited (alleged) Israeli policies as an example of the “terror of colonization.” His implication was that the mass murder and torture of defenseless Jewish civilians, burning families alive and the gang-raping of women, was a merely a response by Hamas to Israeli “colonization.”

Blaming the Jews for the actions of their persecutors is repulsive. No serious academic should indulge in such moral recklessness, and no reputable publication allow its fact-checkers to go on vacation when such essays are submitted.

(Dr. Medoff is director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, in Washington, D.C. and author of more than 20 books about Jewish history and the Holocaust. His latest is The Road to October 7: Hamas, the Holocaust, and the Eternal War Against the Jews. Read his daily commentaries at: Facebook.com/rafael.medoff)