Another Day, Another Arson
Antisemites burn “Bring Them Home” signs because they want to burn Jews
Our friend Brian Henry is back with a report from his daily walk in his Toronto Jewish neighbourhood. The evidence of Jew hatred is impossible to miss. This is the new reality Canadian Jews are living with in the aftermath of Hamas’ depraved attack on Israel, now over ten months ago.
August 10, 2024
Twice a day, I walk by the Tiferet Israel Congregation, a synagogue on Sheppard Avenue West. Today, I saw that someone had tried to burn the Bring Them Home sign which stands in front of the synagogue.
Image: Sign at Tiferet Israel Damaged by an Arsonist —- Source: Brian Henry
A week and a half ago, a guy pulled up on a motorcycle outside Temple Sinai and then at Kehillat Shaarei Torah synagogue and burned their signs, too. (The police have video.) For Kehillat Shaarei Torah, this was the fourth time it’s been vandalized since October 7 (more here).
Image: Signs at Shaarei Torah, damaged for the fourth time —- Source: Brian Henry
A couple days before that a bus that carries children to a Jewish school was torched in the parking lot of my local “No Frills” grocery store. This “No Frills: is a three-minute walk or thirty-second motorcycle ride from Temple Sinai.
The media reported the bus "caught fire," (as in spontaneously combusted?). Call in Scully and Mulder from the X Files.
Image: School Bus used by Bobov Yeshiva torched by an arsonist. —Source; Brian Henry
Everyone around here in my very Jewish neighbourhood believes this was the same kind of spontaneous combustion that consumed those Bring Them Home signs at the synagogues. The same kind of spontaneous combustion as at the Schara Tzedeck synagogue in Vancouver (see here) or the arson of the Jewish deli at Steeles and Keele Street in Toronto, where the words “Free Palestine” were daubed on the windows (see here).
No doubt this was also similar to the spontaneous gunfire directed at a Jewish elementary school in my neighbourhood (see here) or the gunfire directed at three Jewish schools in Montreal – one of them twice (see here and here).
Unlike these other incidents, we don’t know that the school bus was torched because it served a Jewish school. It could be a random act of vandalism. That could be. I hope so, but it’s the kind of thing we’ve come to expect.
People wonder, how anyone could burn a Bring Them Home sign; a sign calling for nothing but the freeing of hostages, some of them small children. And this isn’t a new development. Right from the start of Hamas’s war, antisemites (or pro-Palestinians as the media calls them) have been ripping down posters of the kidnapped Israelis.
It’s shocking, but not surprising. For an antisemite it’s not possible that Jews can be victims. They can only be perpetrators, only criminals. To an emotionally committed antisemite, the very notion of a Jewish victim is an affront, an outrage! So of course, they rip down posters of kidnapped Israelis. Of course, they burn Bring Them Home signs.
This is the same dynamic that underlies Holocaust denial and it’s the same dynamic that’s driven the insistent denial that Hamas committed atrocities on October 7. The sheer irrationality of such denials becomes easier to understand when we realize they’re not at all about what did or didn’t happen – they’re denials that Jews can be anything other than villains.
Thus, Holocaust denial is rife with accusations: that the Jews invented this lie to play on the world’s sympathy, to extort reparation payments from Germany, or to steal Arab land (meaning Israel).
Holocaust denial even includes the accusation that Israelis are Nazis. That is, antisemites will both deny the Nazi Holocaust (because Jews can’t be victims), while simultaneously accusing Israelis of inheriting the Nazis mantle as the world’s most evil people by perpetrating a Holocaust on Palestinians.
Antisemites often make such contradictory claims, particularly in the Arab world where Holocaust denial dates back to 1945 and continues today (more here).
“Pro-Palestinians” make the same quick turn from denial to accusation. Thus, we have Ghada Sasa, a board member of the pro-terrorist group Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) claiming it was Israeli soldiers, not Hamas, who shot hundreds of young people at the Supernova Music Festival (here).
This is not just a lone Canadian antisemite who talks like this. Denial of Hamas’s atrocities – especially of the mass rapes and gross sexual violence – has spread across the world. (For example, see an analysis of the situation in the UK here).
Even more commonly, antisemites “contextualize” Hamas’s atrocities, which is to say, they justify them. They accuse Israel of every great evil of the modern world: genocide, colonialism, apartheid, and sometimes Naziism. Essentially, they’re saying what antisemites have always said: Jews are criminals – everywhere and always. To kill them, to rape them, to torture them, and to kidnap them is no crime. To committed antisemites, the very notion is an outrage.
Thus, at every anti-Israel rally the world over you will hear the claim that Palestinians have “a right to resist by any means necessary” and the slogan, “Resistance is justified when Palestine is occupied.”
By “Palestine” they of course mean the country the rest of world calls Israel, and by “resistance,” they mean what the rest of the world calls terrorism, atrocities, and crimes against humanity.
This is why it’s no surprise when the “pro-Palestine” crowd rips down and burns posters of men, women and children held hostage. Because after all, they’re Jewish. It’s still shocking. Seeing that burned Bring Them Home Sign while out on my daily walk shocked me. But a surprise? No. It’s always been like this.
Capital Pride Update
We thank Brian Henry for ably articulating the sense of outrage and dread that Jews are feeling as acts of anti-Jewish Hatred are normalized. Along the same lines, we have an update this morning on the Capital Pride story, which Fred Litwin has covered here recently.
As we wrote yesterday, Ottawa’s mayor Sutcliffe announced that he would not be marching with Capital Pride this year. Meanwhile dedicated Ottawa community members have been working hard reaching out to sponsors and other organizations asking them to follow the mayor’s example.
Some of this is anecdotal, but I believe reliable information. The Public Service Pride Network has withdrawn from the March, as has the Liberal Party of Canada. CTV News reports that the Ottawa Hospital and the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario has also withdrawn. Private companies including, Rogers, Giant Tiger have issued statements that they will not participate, as has the German Embassy. Ottawa Carleton District School Board (OCDSB) trustee, Nili Caplan-Myrth announced that she will not march and shared the news herself in the Ottawa Against Antisemitism Facebook group. She said that the parade should not go ahead.
Sadly, but not surprisingly the OCDSB itself is participating. Nili wrote:
As a lifelong ally and advocate for my patients, community, and relatives — standing up for their rights to feel safe expressing their gender identity and sexuality, to live and study and access health care in inclusive environments — I cannot walk at the front of the parade with my OCDSB colleagues this year in Ottawa’s Pride parade. I fly a rainbow flag outside my clinic with the words, “Everyone welcome here,” but I am neither welcome nor safe in this year’s parade.
It is heartening to see that the Jewish community of Ottawa has allies. It is disappointing that the school board which educates the majority of Jewish children in our city is not among them.
If you value our work here at Canadian Zionist Forum, please consider a free or paid subscription. Paid subscriptions will help us to grow the site and support our efforts to create a platform for those who oppose the vilification of Zionism and want a future for Jews here in Canada. If you are a paid subscriber, you can leave a comment.
Thank you to everyone for reading Canadian Zionist Forum.
 | A guest post by
|
I know the Antisemitism is rampant. But I am glad that I am wrong about Capital Pride - that it has lost significant support following the stance taken by the Jewish community against their blatant anti-Semitism.