Categories for Feature

My latest: two wars, two different responses

Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

Vladimir Putin’s regime immediately commenced brutally killing Ukrainian civilians on a massive scale.

Russia committed war crimes. It committed acts of rape and infanticide. It took hostage innocent Ukrainians. It tortured them.

Canada is home to the largest Ukrainian diaspora community in the world. Here are the things that did not – did not, we emphasize – happen in Canada after February 2022.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did not piously instruct Ukraine to exercise “maximum restraint.” He did not give performative speeches, telling Ukraine how to defend itself.

His witless foreign affairs minister, Melanie Joly, did not demand a cease-fire, or attack Ukraine’s military for targeting Russian missile batteries.

No NDP member of a provincial legislature gave speeches to baselessly accuse Ukraine of genocide, or to deny Russia’s many war crimes.

Mid-war, while Russia was still waging war against Ukraine, a significant chunk of the Liberal Party caucus did not also demand a total cease fire and insist that Ukraine stop fighting back.

The Canadian media did not accept Putin’s propaganda, and call the invasion a mere “security exercise.” Our media did not treat representatives of Russia and Ukraine as having an equal moral standing or voice, and invite them to debate on-air for better ratings.

Canadian universities did not suddenly become safe havens for students to wear masks and physically assault Ukrainian students – or accuse them of genocide and apartheid. Canadian university and college professors did not go on social media to falsely accuse Ukraine of war crimes, and absolve Russia of every sin.

Pro-Russian thugs did not shoot up schools – once, twice, thrice – where Ukrainian-Canadian children were being taught the Ukrainian language and culture. They did not firebomb Ukrainian orthodox churches, or Ukrainian community centers.

No Russian religious figure appeared at rallies to call on God to “exterminate” Ukrainians everywhere.

No pro-Russian, pro-Putin mobs took to the streets every single weekend, demonizing Ukraine and its people, chanting about their desire to see Ukraine wiped off the map, “from Belarus to the Black Sea.”

No one organized boycotts of businesses owned by Ukrainian-Canadians, or businesses with an imagined connection to Ukraine. No one scrawled graffiti on thousands of walls and doors and windows – defaming Ukrainian religious symbols, or accusing Ukraine of the vilest crimes.

No one did or said any of those things, after Russia attacked Ukraine. No one did any of those things after Vladimir Putin commenced his slaughter of Ukrainian men, women and children.

But in Canada, all of those things have happened, and much more. Not to Ukrainians, however. Not them.

No, all of those things have happened in Canada to Israel and a certain religion.

Didn’t happen with Ukraine. Did with Israel.

What’s the difference, we wonder?


My latest: the biggest liars

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, some people will eventually believe it.

The author of that one, of course, was Joseph Goebbels, and he would know. Goebbels was the chief propagandist for Germany’s Nazi Party. He helped to devise and then cover up the Shoah – the Holocaust.

Goebbels would likely approve what has happened in the days following the modern Shoah, October 7. Since October 7, words and meanings have been giddily twisted and manipulated like a rag doll in a madhouse.

Every weekend, everywhere, angry voices – pro-Palestinian, but also pro-Hamas – can be heard on city streets, screaming “from the river to the sea.” The people who use that slogan insist, over and over, that those words are benign, and express no ill-will towards Jews.

And, yes, “from the river to the sea” – from the Jordan River in the East to the Mediterranean Sea in the West – doesn’t explicitly say every inch of “Palestine is for Muslims only, Jews are warmongering Zionist Nazis, and every Muslim has an obligation to wage holy war against them until they are all gone.”

But the Hamas 1988 Charter certainly says that, and plenty more. When he was celebrating the anniversary of said Charter, Hamas’ billionaire leader Khaled Mashaal made clear what “from the river to the sea” means. Said Mashaal: “Palestine is ours, from the river to the sea, and from the South to the North. There will be no concession on any inch of the land.”

No concession. Sorry, citizens of the Jewish state: “from the river to the sea” literally means there is no room for you, and no more Israel. Everyone, from Hamas to the Palestine Liberation Organization – who used it as their official slogan, and who asserted that “armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine” – know precisely what “from the river to the sea” means. It means no Jews, no Israel. Period.

Because they are disciples of Goebbels, the pro-Hamas propagandists are also careful about their use of the word “Jew.” They prefer “Zionists.”

Zionism is a political movement that seeks a Jewish homeland, in the part of the world Jews occupied for centuries before the birth of Christ – and thousands of years before the word “Palestine” was ever uttered. Saying you oppose “Zionists” – and “the Zionist project,” which is what they call Israel – is a lot less controversial than saying you are against the Jews.

No less than Dr. Martin Luther King is the best source on the distinction. As recalled by author Seymour Lipset: “When approached by a student who attacked Zionism, Dr. King responded: ‘When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You’re talking anti-Semitism.’”

This week, this writer was on a Toronto radio panel with a man who proclaimed he was a “human rights lawyer,” but who revealed himself to perhaps regard some humans as having more rights than others.

The host, Greg Brady, did his best to challenge this man’s many whoppers, which included:

• Hamas hasn’t killed any Jews outside “occupied territories.”
• Firebombing a synagogue may not be anti-Semitic.
• A Montreal Imam who called for Jews to be exterminated, didn’t.

How can anyone, least of all a “human rights lawyer,” embrace such things, all of which are false? Who knows. The “human rights lawyer” wanted more “evidence” on the synagogue firebombing. He didn’t answer yes or no to Brady’s request that he agree that Hamas was a terrorist organization. He said the Imam called for “Zionists” to be exterminated, not “Jews” (see above).

And so on. That’s how it’s been pretty much everywhere, since October 7. The mobs – found in the streets, in faculty lounges, university classrooms and NDP caucus meetings – have manipulated and mauled language to justify, or minimize, Hamas’ mass-murder on October 7.

They have done that because they know, deep in their tiny black hearts, that they won’t win over public opinion by saying they favour eliminating every Jew in Israel. So they say they oppose the “Zionist entity” and want to merely liberate Palestine, “from the river to the sea.”

It’s all so dishonest and divisive and dangerous.

Goebbels would approve.


My latest: charge them, prosecute them, convict them – then jail them

 

What is hate, and what isn’t?

What words are against the law, and what words are allowed?

Actions are easier to judge. When a six-year-old boy is stabbed to death for being a Muslim, Chicago police determined that it was homicide and charged a man. When a 69-year-old Jewish man is pushed by an anti-Israel protestor in California, and he smashes his head and dies, that is classified as a homicide, too.

Words are more difficult to judge, however – and much more difficult to prosecute. And since October 7, a day that will live in infamy – the day when Hamas committed the greatest act of mass murder against Jews since the Holocaust – words have become very important.

Here is a summary of just the past week, in just one province, Quebec:

• Synagogue firebombed
• Jewish community centre firebombed
• Two Jewish schools hit with gunfire

And also:

• Imam says Jews should be exterminated
• Anti-Israel protestor screams “kike” at Jewish student
• Professor calls Jewish student “a whore,” says go back to Poland

The first three incidents are clearly crimes.  In those cases, thankfully, no one was hurt – the bullets and Molotov cocktails missed their intended Jewish targets.  But, for police and prosecutors, those crimes indisputably are acts of terror – that is, and as defined in Canada’s Criminal Code, a political or religious act whose intention is “intimidating the public, or a segment of the public, with regard to its security.” Namely, Jews.

There are lots of terrorism-related sections in the Criminal Code.  If prosecutors can’t convict the Hamas-lovers for simple intimidation, they certainly can do so because the firebombing and school shootings “intentionally endangers” lives and causes property damage.

Whoever is arrested, prosecuted and convicted for these obvious acts of terrorism can be imprisoned for life – and, in the case of non-citizens who commit serious crimes, they can be deported, too.  It’s the law in Canada, and has been for years.

But what about words? What about the Quebec Imam who stood before 20,000 “pro-Palestinian” protestors in Montreal and said this:

“God, take care of these [Jews]. God, take care of the enemies of the people of Gaza. God, identify them all, then exterminate them. And don’t spare any of them.” The Jew-haters in the crowd cheered.

Now, are those words a crime? It sure looks like it.  There are three sections in the Criminal Code that could apply: wilfully promoting hatred against an identifiable group (Jews), promoting genocide against an identifiable group (Jews), and willfully promoting anti-Semitism (which, of course, is always directed at Jews).

Every political leader ion Quebec has urged the police to go after the Imam who uttered those hateful words.  So far, that hasn’t happened.

What about the woman who screamed “kike” at a Jewish student at Concordia University?  Or the professor who called a Jewish student “a whore,” and told her to go back to Poland?

Those incidents are hateful and disgusting, but they may not reach the level of crime. As former Canadian Jewish Congress CEO Bernie Farber notes:

“Canada’s anti-hate laws are meant to balance our cherished rights of free speech with the dangers of hate speech. We have made the bar for hate speech high – as it should be. Nonetheless, we require trained police officers to enforce our hate laws. Without dedicated anti-hate units and the training that must accompany it, we will fight a losing battle.”

And, make no mistake: we are losing the battle. Since October 7, there has been an explosion in anti-Semitic hate incidents, everywhere. From open intimidation of Jewish businesses – to bullets being fired at Jewish schools – our social fabric is ripping apart.

And the haters – mostly on the anti-Israel side, to be frank – are doing most of the damage. Why can’t they bring themselves to hold the law assign – just one – condemning Hamas? Why can’t they hold an event – just once – demanding the release of the Israeli hostages?

They haven’t done those things, and it doesn’t look like they are going to do any of those things. They haven’t been deterred.

So, it is now time for the police, the prosecutors, and the courts to apply the principle of deterrence. It’s time to deter further acts of hate.

And, after being convicted,  if some of the haters go to jail or are deported?

So be it.


Remembering my Dad on Remembrance Day


Here he is, age 20, at officer cadet training in the Summer of 1952. Front row centre.

He went on to join the Royal Canadian Armoured Corps but the war ended before he could go over. He always regretted being unable to fight fascism and anti-Semitism in battle, but he taught us to always oppose all forms of hate.

We miss him every single day – and on this day, even more.

God bless him and everyone who serves.


My latest: when there is no one left to interview

Don’t make it about you.

That’s one of the first things we learned in journalism school. First-person writing wasn’t completely outlawed – but, if your story had “I” and “me” in it, you had to have a very good reason for it.

And: what you feel, as a writer, was irrelevant. What matters is how the people you’re writing about feel. Their feelings matter a lot more than yours.

Journalists and writers started to violate these rules in the early Seventies. Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, Hunter S. Thompson, Joan Didion, Ta-Nahisi Coates, James Baldwin and others started to place themselves in their stories – and they started to sell lots of books and magazines and newspapers.

Some, like George Plimpton, even got into the boxing ring so he could write more vividly about boxing. The new approaches had different names: Participative Journalism, New Journalism. Traditionalists didn’t like it, but the first-person approach attracted converts.

Sitting in a darkened room at the Israeli consulate in Toronto this week, watching unspeakable horrors unfold on a screen, I – sorry – remembered these journalism rules. They created a dilemma.

How does one write about what is up on the screen without personalizing it? How does one write an account that doesn’t describe what one is feeling?

How does one do all that in a way that respects – and accurately describes – the feelings of the people on the screen?

That one was the biggest challenge of all. Because the people on the screen simply weren’t available to be interviewed. And their families – who have been living through horrors that cannot be captured in mere words, even by the likes of Tom Wolfe or Joan Didion – were not readily available, either.

They told the IDF and the Israeli Foreign Ministry that the footage could be shown to journalists, but they did not want it on the Internet, to become the fodder for conspiracy theorists and neo-Nazis.

So, it fell to 25 of us gathered at the consulate on Monday – journalists, commentators, news anchors – to describe what we were being shown, and describe its impact.  The raw footage was taken from security and dashcam cameras,  or devices retrieved from Hamas terrorists. It ran nearly 45 minutes.

I decided, even before I got there, that I would just describe what I saw, and avoid editorializing – save and except calling Hamas “monsters,” which is literal and not figurative. And, at the end, I described how I left the consulate and started to weep.

But I would not editorialize. If you can read about the body of a baby – brutalized and riddled with bullets – and not be moved? Well, no amount of editorializing will change you back into a human.

Before the footage was shown, Israel’s Consul-General, Idit Shamir, addressed us. “What value is there in seeing these horrific sights?” she asked, then answered her own question. “To bear witness. Sometimes, words do not do justice to crimes against humanity.”

“We show you these images to show you what Israel and the world now faces.”

So, my colleagues bore witness. Here is a sampling of what they witmessed:

Sabrina Maddeaux, National Post: “The worst part was the glee. The pure jubilation of Hamas terrorists as they filmed themselves killing and torturing; their excited voices bragging about their atrocities…I’ll never forget the gore, but it’s the look of euphoria and pride in the terrorists’ eyes, cheering for the cameras as if they were the ones partying at a music festival that day, that will haunt me.”

Matt Gurney, The Line: “Glee. Pleasure. Delight. Whooping cheers, selfies with the boys (carefully framed to put dead or captured Jews in the background), huge grins. The attacks were efficient, but not joyless. The Hamas terrorists are thrilled to be doing what they’re doing…And they did so with the benefit of having achieved complete surprise. That’s something else I noticed when I took the time to look past the visceral horror of the murder spree.”

Evan Dyer, CBC: “There are numerous scenes of Hamas fighters celebrating, waving one finger in the air and shouting ‘Takbir’ and ‘Allahu Akbar.’ Jubilant and excited gunmen can be seen both leaving Gaza in the morning and returning with bloodied captives, and with the body of German festival-goer Shani Louk. Some of those images have circulated widely.The film shows Hamas hunting people at military bases, kibbutzes and at the Nova music festival…Hamas can also be seen killing injured people and shooting into rooms full of bodies and blood to kill any survivors.”

These writers, and others present that day, all remark on one thing, over and over: the utter remorselessness of Hamas. Their undisguised delight in savagery and barbarism – and the enthusiasm they showed for torture and rape and infanticide and the murder of so many innocents.

So, then, most of us present broke one of the most important rules of journalism. We wrote in the first person, and we wrote what we were feeling.

But we had no choice.

Because the bastards in Hamas had killed everyone.


My latest: the truth of what happened on October 7

October 7 was beautiful, clear day, and the sky above Israel seemed to go on forever.

It was the weekend. It was the Sabbath. It was a religious holiday.

What we saw – taken from home security camera footage, or mobile phones, or live-streaming, but mostly from the footage Hamas shot themselves, on GoPros – was so, so clear.

It wasn’t fuzzy or faded or hard to see. You could see all of it. You could hear all of it.

This is what we saw. This is what we heard.

I saw the decapitated heads of babies and children. I saw babies with bullet holes in them. I saw babies and children who had been burned until all that you could see was the outline of their little bodies, arms reaching up to God.

I saw a girl, perhaps six or seven, her tiny frame covered in blood and dirt. She was wearing Mickey Mouse pajamas. There was the body of another girl, even younger. She was still in a sun dress with blue butterflies on it. Her hands were arrayed across her chest, like little broken pieces of china.

I saw the Hamas monsters – they were disguised as men, but they were assuredly monsters – firing North Korean Type 58 self-loading rifles at cars carrying Israeli families. The windshields would crack and shatter, there would be sprays of blood and viscera, and then the cars would slow to a halt. The monsters would then pull the Israelis out, and shoot them in their heads. They did that over and over and over. Then they’d cheer and dance beside the bodies. They left behind ISIS flags, here and there.

I saw them at the gate to the Be’eri kibbutz, waiting for a resident to drive up and for the gate start to open. Then they shot the man, over and over, and then they walked inside. Once there, they crept past the small white homes. They didn’t speak. You could hear them breathing on their videos. Once or twice, they’d say: “Where did they go?” They were looking for civilians to kill.

I saw them at the rear of a home, where a child’s swing could be seen. Some music is playing. A cell phone still glows on a table. One monster reached up and sliced a window screen with a box-cutter, then shot a woman who was huddled on the floor, trying to hide.

I saw a dog, a black retriever, approach the monsters, his tail wagging. They shoot him – once, twice, three times. The dog falls to the sidewalk.

I saw a man running out of his house, carrying one son, the other son rushing ahead of them. They were in their underwear. They ran into what looked like a concrete shelter. A few minutes later, one of the monsters threw a hand grenade into the space where the man had taken his boys, killing the man. The boys go into their house, bloodied, crying out for their father. The younger one can’t see out one of his eyes, because he didn’t have his eye anymore. “We’re going to die,” his brother says.

I saw two monsters enter a kindergarten. There are little knapsacks hung neatly on the door that the monsters pass through. A woman is hiding inside a room there, under some of the pillows the children use at nap time. There’s no sound. She’s alive – and then, moments later, she’s dead, or close to it. They carry her out. We don’t see her again.

I saw another woman, hiding under a desk in a kitchen. She’s crying. They shoot her three times, and the crying stops.

I saw a man, perhaps a foreign national – dozens were killed or kidnapped that day – lying on the ground near a wall. He’s bleeding. He moves his arms, a bit. One of the monsters then takes a hoe, and starts hacking at the man’s neck, trying to behead him. “God is great!” the monster screams every time he brings down the blade on the man’s neck.

I saw a woman, dead, holding a dead child in her arms. They are in a room. It’s a bit dim. Then I see there are other dead children and adults there, too. The monsters stand there for a while, looking at the bodies. Sometimes, they fire more bullets into them and cheer.

I saw senior citizens at a bus stop in Sderot, which isn’t far from the border. They had been on a sightseeing tour, and the monsters killed them all. Their bodies were twisted on the ground, left among the canes and walkers and the dirt.

I heard a Hamas monster calling his parents in Gaza. “Dad,” he said in Arabic, “I’m talking from a Jewish woman’s phone. I killed her and her husband. With my bare hands, Dad. Dad, I killed ten, ten with my bare hands.” His mother comes on the line. “Mom, your son is a hero! Kill kill kill them!”

There was another one, caught on tape. “Let history be my witness,” he said. “That this was the first man I killed. The first one. A Jew. Give me a knife, I swear to you by God I will cut off his head.”

There was another one. Two monsters are talking about a dead Jew. “Bring him and crucify him,” one says. He laughs. “We’ve totally slaughtered them.”

I saw a man trying to escape the music festival in Re’im. He tries to hide at the rear of a car. A monster sees him, walks over, and shoots the man in the head.

I saw the Hamas monsters – all of them in military gear, top to bottom, no T-shirts or jeans or the like – take selfies with the bodies of the people they had killed at some of the 30 towns and army bases they attacked. Over and over, they’d yell: “Allah akbar!” God is great, but God does not seem to be present on this day.

At the end of the footage – 45 minutes of it, but it feels like it has gone on for 45 weeks – a first responder finds the bodies of the young people at the music festival. There are dozens of them, bloodied and splayed out in the dirt. “Is anyone alive?” he asks, and there is silence. “Give us a sign of life. Is anyone alive?” But no sound comes.

There was more, much more. About 25 of us are there, mainly journalists and writers. A woman is crying. A man I know is crying.

I go outside and my colleague Brian Lilley is waiting for me. He asks me how I am.

And then I start to cry, and I cannot stop.


My latest: the Magna Carta of Evil

It’s the weekend, so there’s going to be more demonstrations against Israel.

They’ve been happening every weekend since October 7, pretty much. There will be chants and signs and banners, proclaiming participants to be “anti-Zionist” (read: mostly anti-Semitic) and “pro-Palestine” (read: too often, pro-Hamas).

By now, everyone knows who Hamas is. They are a terrorist group who swept into Israel on October 7, and murdered 1400 Israeli men, women, elderly, children and babies. They also took more than 200 hostages.

As we say, everyone knows that. What they don’t know, too often – what the people participating in those marches don’t know – is what Hamas stands for.

It’s not hard to find out. Hamas published its “charter” for all to see back in 1988. It’s their constitution, their ultimate law.

It doesn’t disguise the reality of Hamas. And it’s really important that the people marching this weekend know what Hamas thinks of them. Here’s a short summary of the most important “articles” in the Hamas Charter.

ARTICLES 1 AND 2: These say Hamas is an “Islamic resistance movement,” and call for a “complete embrace of all Islamic concepts of all aspects of life, culture, creed, politics, economics, education, society, justice and judgement” – as well as “conversion to Islam.” Meaning, only Muslims are truly welcome in Palestine – and Hamas’ rules apply to every aspect of every person’s life. No exceptions.
ARTICLE THREE: If you’re in Hamas, you are required to “rid the land” – kill, mainly – people who are “unclean, vile and evil.” That is, anyone who isn’t like them.
ARTICLE SIX: This one says the goal is Islamic rule “over every inch of Palestine.” Anything else spreads “evil, schisms and wars.” If you’re not properly religious, “there is no life” for you.
ARTICLE SEVEN: This is an important one. Hamas says it wants its control to “spread all over the world,” not just Palestine. It calls Jews “Zionist invaders,” and calls for Jews to be killed, wherever they are hiding, “no matter how long it will take.”
ARTICLE ELEVEN: Hamas and its ilk are entitled to take back Palestine “by force.”
ARTICLE TWELVE: Women and slaves are talked about in this article – yes, lesser beings like slaves are permitted in the Hamas caliphate, and women are considered lesser beings, too. They can “fight the enemy,” however.
ARTICLE THIRTEEN: Pro-Palestinian types may want peace, but Hamas doesn’t. Ever. It calls them “so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences [that] are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement.” It says they are “a waste of time.” Peace talks only help “the infidels,” says Hamas. All that is permitted is “jihad” – that is, holy war.
ARTICLE FOURTEEN: It is “a horrible mistake” and “a sign of deep ignorance” to question jihad against the Jews. Ridding Palestine – and the world, see above – of non-believers is “an individual duty for very Moslem wherever he may be.”
ARTICLE FIFTEEN: Pro-Palestinian educators, professors, educational unions take note: there will be “changes in the school curriculum, to cleanse it of the traces of ideological invasion” caused by Christians, Jews and non-Muslims generally. It’s “a duty.”
ARTICLE SIXTEEN: This article is similar. The main textbook is to be the Koran and materials only from “authentic sources.” Only “specialized” people will be allowed to teach. There will be permitted study of the weaknesses of the Zionist and Christian “enemy,” however.
ARTICLE SEVENTEEN: This is a really important one. It’s called “The role of the Muslim woman.” It’s pretty simple: the role of women is to make babies, ideally male babies. “She is the maker of men.” Hamas’ enemies try to manipulate their baby-makers with films and school curriculums,” but also – and this is a quote – “Freemasons and Rotary Clubs.” They “are all nothing more than cells of subversion and saboteurs.” When Hamas runs everything, they “will be obliterated.”
ARTICLE EIGHTEEN: Women are supposed to “look after the family,” full stop. Women are expected to follow Islamic principles every day. Their role is “performance of housekeeping matters.”
ARTICLE NINETEEN: Art is important, but only if it is Islamic art. “The book, the article, the bulletin, the sermon, the thesis, the popular poem, the poetic ode, the song, the play” are acceptable if they are “Islamic.”
ARTICLE TWENTY: Jews are “similar to Nazis.” They are “vicious.” They permit homosexuals and transsexuals, apparently, “making no differentiation between man and woman.” Not allowed.
ARTICLE TWENTY-TWO: Jews “took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations…They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and there. With their money they formed secret societies, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions,” as well as World Wars, the Balfour Declaration, the League of Nations, and on and on. “There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it,” says Hamas.

And so on and so on. We could go on, protestor-types, but perhaps a picture is emerging. If you’re a woman, or a girl, or LGBTQ, or a believer in free speech, or just someone who has a faith that is different from theirs – well, they don’t want you.

And, in some cases, they will kill you, too.


My latest: ignorance = hate

“I never really knew much about Jews until this year.”

That’s what Dana Remillard Kreil wrote in one of her essays, which ended up in court.  She went on:

“In other grades, all I was told was that the Jews are a RACE that are discriminated against. They had never had a fair chance. But not one of the teachers ever stopped to tell me of their TRUE origin. This year I learned of their origin and their wicked plans, and I am very scared that the world is going to fall to them. I only hope that we Christians will be strong enough to fight off their Satanic hate.”

Another kid, Gwen Mathews, read out some of her class notes at the preliminary hearing. “Christ told the Jews: ‘Your father is the devil, you are the children of Satan.’”

She went on: Jews secretly ran the French Revolution, and they had what they called the “Feast of Reason: They carried aloft a number of prostitutes. They would strip her and lay her on the altar. Then they killed an innocent girl, and poured the blood on the hooker. Then they cooked the girl and ate her.”

There’s a lot more of that, if you have the stomach for it. It’s what Gwen and Dana were taught. Not in Nazi-era Germany. But in Canada – Eckville, Alberta, to be precise – for many years.

Their teacher was the former mayor of Eckville, Jim Keegstra. In his social studies class, Keegstra taught kids for 14 years that the Holocaust was a hoax, that there was an international Zionist conspiracy, and that Jews are the biblical descendants of Satan.

If all of that sounds a bit like the sort of belief system propagated by Hamas, you’d be right. And if it also sounds not unlike the sort of vile anti-Semitism now manifesting itself around the planet – on university campuses, in the streets, everywhere online – you’d be right about that, too.

Jim Keegstra was ultimately prosecuted, successfully, for promoting hatred against Jews. His case went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, and he lost. Keegstra died on June 2, 2014, which – as I wrote at the time – was the day that Hell got that much more crowded.

How did he do it? How did Jim Keegstra get away with preaching Jew-hatred to children – much in the way that Hamas and its ilk now do? How?

Lots of reasons, as it turned out. Inadequate classroom supervision. Disregard for the approved curriculum. But, as it turned out, something else: geography.

There were no Jews in Eckville, you see. Not one. And the nearest synagogue was two hours away, in Edmonton.

This writer was working for the Calgary Herald in the Keegstra years. I met and interviewed him, and many of his followers – which included the majority of his students, even after his trials.

And that is what struck me, over and over. Jim Keegstra was successful in teaching students to hate Jews because there were no living, breathing Jews nearby. He could make Jews into whatever he wanted, and he did.

Right now, at the back end of the year 2023, we are witnessing the biggest resurgence of anti-Semitism since the Second World War. You don’t need a poll to prove it. It’s the truth.

Also true: hatred is the product of ignorance. Hatred flourishes where education is absent.

That is why what the Doug Ford Government of Ontario has announced this week is so, so important.  Like other provincial governments of differing stripes, it has declared its intention to ensure that students are taught better about the Holocaust.

Other levels of government, in other places, need to do likewise. As we saw in the Keegstra scandal – as we are now seeing around the world – anti-Semitism is flourishing in those places where Jews are vastly outnumbered, or where they no longer exist.

“I never really knew much about Jews.” That’s what Dana Remillard Kreil said, so many years ago, in Alberta. It tells us the way out.

We are all in a dark and dangerous place. The way out is truth. The way out is education. The way out is learning that Jews are human, like humans everywhere.

In his Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare put it best. His main character was a Jew. And this is what that character famously asked:

“If you prick us [Jews], do we not bleed?”