, 06.08.2024 11:20 AM

My latest: good guys 2, bad guys 2

Good guys: 2.  Bad guys: 2.

No, that’s not a statistical summary of the Stanley Cup Final.  The Edmonton Oilers and the Florida Panthers are just getting started.

It is, however, a fair summary of the past week.  And, as with just about every single week since October 7, there has been a confrontation between those who favor democracy and decency on the one side – and those who favor Hamas and rank antisemitism on the other.

The victories seem to be hard to come by, in these dark and dangerous times.  But our side has actually had some wins, and both came on Thursday.  

One was at McGill University in Montreal, where the first anti-Israel/pro-Hamas (take your pick) “encampment” was set up. For weeks, the Infant-fada has occupied a large area near McGill’s fabled Roddick Gates, falsely accusing Israel of genocide and displaying signs like this one: ON OCT. 7 ISRAEL KILLED ITS OWN PEOPLE & COVERED IT UP TO JUSTIFY GENOCIDE.”

This week, the “protestors” – CBC called them students, but the university has said 80 per cent of them aren’t – stormed into McGill’s administration building.  They forced out anyone who worked there, barricaded doors, destroyed furniture, and unfurled banners mocking the Holocaust.

Hours later, riot police arrived, quickly cleared them out – and, once outside, charged at them with batons and tear gas.  The mob faded away, but not before fifteen were arrested. Score one for the good guys.

Down the 401 at York University, masked Israel-haters decided to ape the McGill cabal and set up an “encampment” of their own on Wednesday.  “Our tuition funds genocide,” their signs said – which would be news to everyone with a functioning brain, because Palestinian population growth regularly dwarfs Israel’s by about 35 per cent.

Undeterred by pesky facts like that, the Hamas horde set up tents in the Harry W. Arthurs Common at York’s Keele campus.  As at McGill, most were “persons unknown to the university,” York said.

The university did not mess around: it served trespass notices on the aspiring campers on Wednesday, and Toronto police cleared them all out within ten minutes at 8 a.m. on Thursday.  One Hamasnik who wandered back was arrested.  Another win for the good guys.

Not all the news has been good this week, however.  

Around the same time that McGill and York were doing the right thing, Toronto city employees were apparently doing the polar opposite in the St. Paul’s neighborhood, which has a significant Jewish population. On Tuesday evening, city workers were photographed hacking down posters of Jews (and non-Jews) who have been held hostage, or murdered, by Hamas.  The city workers left untouched posters advertising free landscaping estimates and a Strawberry Social.

The city workers used a machete-sized blade to remove the posters, which were in front of the newly-opened Cafe Landwer on Spadina – a restaurant which is owned by Jews, and which has been targeted for anti-Semitic attacks in recent months.  When one of my readers objected, the grinning city workers said they were “following orders,” which has a certain Nuremberg ring to it.

The reader – her name is Hannah, but she did not want to give her full name because she fears retribution – wrote to her Toronto city councillor, Josh Matlow, to say: “Why in the world were they doing such a HORRIBLE thing?…With firebombs, shots fired at Jewish schools, (need I even go on?) you ought to be keenly aware of the heinous levels of anti-Semitism in Canada.  This hostage poster removal project lends itself well to the disgusting violence against the Canadian Jewish community which YOU have permitted to continue.”

When I contacted city media representatives, they said posters about “local community issues” were acceptable, but others – hostage posters, apparently – were not. Hannah was told the same thing by a Matlow staffer after the Sun started making inquiries.

Over at CBC, scores of CBC employees this week issued a letter decrying (wait for it) “Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism within CBC.” 

Leaving aside the fact that Palestinians are not a “race,” the signatories claimed that CBC has a “pattern of anti-Palestinian bias, Islamophobia, and anti-Palestinian racism within the corporation’s news and documentary culture.”

That would certainly be news to many Canadian Jews.  As Canadian Jewish News has written, CBC has long been a repository for anti-Israel “distortions, biases, and clichés,” with “distorted and harmful portrayals” of Jews and the Jewish state. Meanwhile, as Robert Walker has written for Honest Reporting Canada, “CBC completely ignores Hamas” and its crimes.  

A CBC spokesperson said they “welcome the feedback,” adding: “The tensions we are experiencing at CBC are a microcosm of what’s happening all over the world and that’s to be expected; this is such an emotionally charged topic, personal as it is divisive.”

So, a wash of a week.  Two victories for the side of decency, two wins for the side that seems to be indifferent to the fate of Jews.

Two steps forward, two steps back.

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5 Comments

  1. Warren,

    The rescue of the four hostages in central Gaza is great news. The IDF says they were fired on going in and coming out. Hum. In a refugee camp. Why would Hamas fire with so many civilians there? Now we know why this was a daytime operation. Imagine the casualties in a nighttime operation.

    There are apparently over two hundred deaths. It remains to be seen how many are civilians and how many fighters. Women and children are among the dead.

  2. Meanwhile, Bibi hasn’t changed: he’s practically begging Gantz not to leave the “national unity” government. Surprise, surprise, Gantz’s polling has plummeted, as I predicted. He better go now, or his political career is over.

    • Warren,

      Finally, if he’s waiting for elections, he better not have bet the farm.

      • Warren,

        Netanyahu is such a piece of shit: begging Gantz to reconsider, when HE’S the reason why Gantz left the unity emergency government in the first place. If Bibi had devised a final plan and an exit one, Gantz likely would still be part of the war cabinet. This guy deserves everything he gets politically, and the sooner, the better.

  3. Jason says:

    There isn’t really a way for an outsider to verify, but according to Brodie Fenlon (editor in chief of CBC News), 55% of the complaints about the war coverage say CBC is unfair to Israel, and 45% say it is unfair to Palestinians.

    What I don’t require a study to verify is the fact that both sides have a tendency to demand the other be disregarded wholesale – an attitude that USED to be reserved for the extremes, but as far as the Middle East goes, infects many of the moderates as well. I believe this is fuelling the fire on campuses as much as anything. Trying to shut them down just makes them double down harder, but also makes them progressively less willing to listen. (This holds true for every issue.)

    And completely lost in the shuffle of Western coverage is the leftist Israeli perspective – one where October 7th was an “I dold you so” moment – that regardless of who started what or why, their leaders’ short-sighted (at best) and self-serving (at worst) actions are lining them up for destruction in a way nobody thought to be concerned about for decades.

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