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Young people are anti-Semitic.

Not all of them, of course. But, these days, too many.

Polling done since the massacres of October 7 tell a deeply disturbing story: vast swaths of Generation Z (who are 18 to 26) and Millennials (who are 27 to 42) in Canada meet the dictionary definition of anti-Semitic. A third support “targeting” Jews. A quarter want Israel destroyed.

In the U.S., it’s just as bad. A Harvard poll found a majority of younger Americans felt Hamas’ campaign of rape and murder was “justified.” Twenty per cent of them think the Holocaust is a myth.

How did so many young people come to embrace points of view that are so clearly historically and morally wrong?

Gary Wexler has an answer. Wexler is a brilliant and gifted American writer. Recently, he authored a piece for the Jewish Journal titled: “The Inside Story of How Palestinians Took Over the World.” The headline was a deliberate overstatement, of course, designed to draw the reader in.

But once you’re drawn in to Gary Wexler’s argument, it’s very hard to dispute. Because it’s true.

Thirty years ago, when peace was breaking out between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Wexler was hired by a human rights foundation to interview Palestinian and Israeli organizations seeking funding and support. The Israelis, Wexler recalled, were “almost giddy with hope.”

The Palestinians weren’t. In fact, he said, none of them would even utter the word “peace.” And all of them told Wexler he needed to meet with Ameer Makhoul, a man who would years later be convicted of acting as an agent for Hezbollah, a listed terrorist entity in Canada. Makhoul would serve nine years in prison.

When Wexler met Makhoul in Haifa, however, he was still a free man. And the Palestinian leader had a message deliver:

“We will create, over the next years, Palestinian campus activists in America and all over the world. Bigger and better than any Zionist activists. Just like you spent your summers on the kibbutz, we will bring college students to spend their Summers in refugee camps and work with our people. Just like you have been part of creating global pro-Israel organizations, we will create global pro-Palestinian organizations. Just like you today help create PR campaigns and events for Israel, so will we, but we will get more coverage than you ever have.”

And that, of course, is exactly what has happened in the intervening years. In the streets, in the corridors of academe, online – wherever young North Americans and Europeans gather, these days, the stench of Jew Hatred dominates. Young people, more than any other demographic, have been captivated by the “pro-Palestinian” movement – a movement that is, when you distill it down to its base elements, anti-Israel and anti-Jewish.

Wexler is aware of the work this newspaper has done exposing that anti-Israel protestors are being paid to protest. Asked where he thinks the money is coming from, Wexler says: “Makhoul said to me: You know where we are going to get the money for this? It will come from Arab countries and the European Union.” And that is what has happened, Wexler says in an interview from his California home.

But how can we know the campaign is coordinated, and not just happening organically? Says Wexler: “Because it is all just too similar. As soon as BDS started to rise, and I started to see real similarities in language and tone across the board. It was coordinated. It was directed.”

He adds: “These people have been brilliant. It’s very coordinated. It’s not just some people who happened to get organized on their own.”

Is the anti-Israel campaign working? Says Wexler: “As I started to see all these things starting to happen – BDS, Apartheid Week, both of which started in Toronto, by the way – I started thinking: My God, this is what Ameer Makhoul said was going to happen. I started to see the hand of Ameer Makhoul everywhere.”

The anti-Israel campaigners have pursued “a brilliant, brilliant strategy,” Wexler says, forging alliances with Black Lives Matter, Indigenous and anti-colonial groups. The minds behind the anti-Semitic campaign have also been very active online, he agrees. “They’re using influencers who they have working on these campuses. Their online effort isn’t just messaging. It’s bringing people to events, it’s community organizing.”

“They have been so, so successful. The curtain needs to be pulled back, to see where the money is coming from. We need to know why and how this is happening – and we’ll see that they have billions of dollars behind this effort.”

Gary Wexler is right. We in the West need to wake up, and start fighting back against a propaganda campaign that is reaching, and converting, millions.

And we need to do that before it’s too late.

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“You f**king Jew.”

That is what the big skinhead wearing the DROWN THE BOAT PEOPLE T-shirt had just called the lead singer of the Calgary punk band called the Hot Nasties. The Nasties had just finished their set at the University of Calgary’s MacEwan Hall, opening for the popular British punk band 999, when someone spotted the skinheads making Nazi salutes.

The skinhead and his buddies continued to spew Jew hatred. The Hot Nasties’ lead singer and lead guitarist continued to tell the skinheads to shut up, or else. The skinhead threw a punch, a fight erupted. The skinheads retreated – on that night, at least – bloodied and bruised, but vowing to return.

And, really, they never really left. Because anti-Semitism remains a significant problem in popular culture, and in music in particular. We’ve been seeing plenty of it since the atrocities of October 7.

Evidence that showed up again this week: Roger Waters, regarded as an anti-Semite by his own former bandmates in Pink Floyd, was this week dropped by his music publisher, BMG. As Variety reported, Rogers’ anti-Semitic statements “infuriated his former bandmates, as they have driven off several suitors interested in acquiring the wizening band’s recorded-music catalog, which was said to be on the market for half a billion dollars.”

Other artists who have refused to perform in Israel, or cancelled gigs there because of pressure from the anti-Semites who make up the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement, include, but are by no means limited to:

Rage Against the Machine, Cypress Hill, Patti Smith, The Strokes’ Julian Casablancas, System of A Down’s Serj Tankian, Questlove, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Run The Jewels, Anti-Flag, Santana, Sting, Lorde, Lana Del-Rey, Shakira, Elvis Costello, Lauryn Hill, Pharrell Williams, Snoop Dogg, Coldplay, Lenny Kravitz, Cassandra Wilson, Cat Power and (unfortunately) many more.

Some very notable artists refuse to go along with the BDS bigotry, however. Nick Cave, of the Birthday Party and Bad Seeds, refused to cancel shows in Israel, memorably saying: “At the end of the day, there’s maybe two reasons why I’m here. One is that I love Israel and I love Israeli people, and two is to make a principled stand against anyone who tries to censor and silence musicians.”

Thom Yorke, of Radiohead, had a similar view, posting on X: “We don’t endorse [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu any more than [Donald] Trump, but we still play in America. Music, art and academia is about crossing borders, not building them.”

Sir Paul McCartney, formerly of a little outfit known as the Beatles, was similarly defiant. In 2008, McCartney received numerous direct death threats for his insistence on playing in Israel.

Not only did McCartney show up, he dedicated a song in Hebrew to his deceased wife Linda, who was Jewish. McCartney told Israeli media: “I got death threats, but I have no intention of surrendering and I’m coming anyway…“I’ve heard so many great things about Tel Aviv and Israel, but hearing is one thing and experiencing it yourself is another.”

So, why do the BDS types continually lobby artists to boycott and besmirch Israel? Because they know cultural icons can have a tremendous influence on the opinions of millions of people, in a way that politicians rarely do. For low-information voters – who make up the majority in most electoral contests – the opinions of Taylor Swift can often be far more consequential than those of anyone else.

But, at the end of the song, politics and culture often make for an uneasy mix. Musicians tend to be lousy politicians. Just ask the Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten.

The punk pioneer travelled to Israel in 2010 to play with his post-Pistols band, Public Image Limited. Asked about the Israel-haters and boycotters, Rotten (typically) minced no words: “I think it’s disgusting. I think they shouldn’t have agreed in the first place if they were gonna back out.

“I’m here to say: People of Israel, I support you 100 percent!”

[Warren Kinsella was the lead singer of the Hot Nasties.]

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“Temporarily paused.”

That’s what the Trudeau government said it has done with funding it gives to UNRWA, the United Nations agency that supposedly helps Palestinians – but, it is alleged, also participates in massacres of Jews.

Since that shocking news dropped last Friday, just about every other civilized nation on Earth as also stopped funding UNRWA, because the accusations that its employees helped torture and murder 1,200 Israelis – and helped kidnap some 250 others – are just too credible. There is evidence.

And, yet: just ”temporarily paused.” Doesn’t sound like it’s going to be very permanent, does it? It doesn’t.

Even if Canada’s withdrawal of support for UNRWA becomes permanent, it may not matter at all. Why? Because Canada continues to fund other organizations without ensuring the proper oversight.

Forty-eight hours after Canada announced it was “temporarily pausing” support for UNRWA, Ahmed Hussen, the Trudeau government’s Minister for International Development, issued a defiant-sounding press release that stated Canada was still shoveling out $40 million to these non-Governmental agencies (NGOs):

• World Food Programme: $16 million
• UNICEF: $6 million
• United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA): $5 million
• World Health Organization: $3 million
• International Committee of the Red Cross: $3 million
• United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA): $2 million

Do innocent Palestinians need help as they navigate a war zone? Of course. But are the above organizations deserving of Canadian millions?

We need to know – because an expert is urging caution. The expert is Anne Herzberg, a human rights lawyer and the legal advisor to NGO Monitor – a Jerusalem-based group that tracks NGOs operating in the Middle East. And what she and her 22-year-old organization have found is deeply disturbing.

Says Herzberg, in an interview from her Jerusalem office: “UNRWA employees taking part in the October 7 massacres is certainly shocking. But its certainly not an aberration. There are other cases of terrorist entities that have embedded people into humanitarian aid organizations and NGOs. It’s not unique.”

Many other organizations are still receiving millions from Canada. Should they?

“One of the problems we’ve found is that there is not proper vetting going on,” says Herzberg, who obtained her law degree at Columbia University. “So, you have governments, including the Canadian government, pouring millions of dollars into the NGOs without really checking to see the extent to which they are hiring members of Hamas or other terrorist groups.”

She cites examples, and names names. The Gaza-based head of World Vision, Herzberg says, diverted $40 million to Hamas, and was later convicted in an Israeli court and sentenced to 12 years in prison for supporting terrorism. And World Vision receives substantial support from Canada – just last year, $41 million from Global Affairs.

Herzberg sighs. “There has been a very long and sad history of exploitation of humanitarian organizations to commit terrorism, unfortunately,” she says. “We’ve been seeing evidence of this abuse going back to the early 2000s. In Gaza, the problem became most acute when Hamas took over the strip in 2007. What’s been surprising to us is the degree to which the human rights industry and the United Nations have tried to cover it up. They knew.”

Canada knows, too. Or it should, she says.

Citing recent stories in this newspaper documenting how anti-Israel protestors are being paid to protest, Herzberg says Canada needs to take corrective action, now. “The first thing Canada needs to do is look at the protests, and try and find out who is paying. I think that’s critical. Canada especially needs to take a close look at the organizations it is funding.”

But that’s not all, she says.

“Canada claims to support a two-state solution, and claims to be against anti-Semitism. Yet a lot of the money they’re giving out is going to NGOs who do not support two-state solution, and who do not oppose anti-Semitism They actually actively promote anti-Semitism. Same goes for the United Nations organizations that Canada is supporting. Canada needs to have a full and comprehensive review of all this development aid.”

Will we? So far, it hasn’t happened. And, when you poke through the entrails of the Trudeau regime’s own language – “temporarily pausing,” above – they don’t seem very committed to fixing a big, big problem.

Until they do, until our money starts going to the organizations that truly oppose terror and hate, more October 7 massacres aren’t just possible.

They’re likely.

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October 7, 2023 is a day that will live in infamy.

It is also a day that has caused a massive shift, everywhere – culturally, politically, militarily, strategically.

Even on the personal level, October 7 has dramatically re-ordered the lives and priorities of many who are far from the battlefields: when a Jew is afraid to wear an indication of their faith outside their home – when they are afraid of posting a representation of it on the doorframe of their home – you know that all is changed, per Yeats, changed utterly.

The news is not all bad. By war’s end, Israel will have mostly defeated Hamas, and inoculated itself against another such attack for a generation or more. Moderate Arab nations, who have been quietly applauding the demise of Hamas, will continue to forge trade and political ties with Israel.

Benjamin Netanyahu – who had been told October 7 was coming, disbelieved it, and did nothing to prevent it – will be gone, consumed by serial corruption trials or Israeli fury, or both. Israel will likely be governed by Benny Gantz, who is what Israel needs, because he represents the desired mix of military experience and centrism.

The world’s civilized nations – already brought closer by Putin’s foul war on Ukraine – will embrace a further and superior alliance, one that is better equipped to defeat terrorist threats as well as military ones. Donald Trump will not be the one to lead it.

But one glaring, shocking problem will remain. And that is that the Beast is awake.

The aforementioned William Butler Yeats wrote of it in his Second Coming poem: “What rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

Yeats’ Beast was the anti-Christ, probably, a monster that he believed would extinguish Christianity and the world. In the post-October 7, 2023 context, it is anti-Semitism – ironically reawakened in Bethlehem, which is located in Palestine. Not Israel.

The Beast of Jew hatred is everywhere – in Canada, a Jewish restaurant in Toronto vandalized, its windows smashed as in Kristallnacht, and a synagogue in Fredericton attacked on International Holocaust Remembrance Day. And that is just in the past two days. Two days.

Anti-Semitism, the oldest hatred, is everywhere we look, these days. It has shaken the historical alliance of Jews and blacks, forged in the civil rights years. It has riven academics and unionists in a way that will take a decade or more to repair. It has made the class wars far worse, because of the (provably false) perception that Jews are all rich and white.

But the Beast of anti-Semitism is seen most visibly in one place: among our youth.

This writer has seen the public opinion research, conducted in Canada, the United States, Europe and beyond. And what it reveals cannot be denied or dismissed: vast swaths of Generation Z ( who are 18 to 26) and Millennials (who are 27 to 42) are wildly, avowedly anti-Semitic. More, much more, than the university professors or public sector union bosses or anyone else you can think of.

The polling, by Leger and several other firms, is shocking. A third of young Canadians – Gen Z and Millennials – support targeting Jews. A quarter of them say they want Israel destroyed. Forty per cent of them do not want those who promote genocide – a criminal offence, in Canada – punished.

And on Hamas, that Satanic and malevolent force, they shrug. Forty per cent of them don’t care about Hamas’ butchery, and refuse to condemn it. A Harvard poll, conducted right after the carnage of October 7, found that more than half of American Gen Z support Hamas. That it was “justified.”

On the Holocaust, which was the mass-murder that Hamas was emulating, the numbers are just as depressing. Twenty per cent of young Americans call the Holocaust a myth. Thirty per cent of them “don’t know” if it is a myth. Thirty per cent of them think “Jews wield too much power.”

There’s more – too much more – but all of the pollsters have concluded the same thing: anti-Semitism is back, everywhere, and almost half of our young people have embraced it.

That, to this writer at least, represents a greater threat than Hamas, Hezbollah, and all the idiotic professors and union bosses put together. We are at risk of losing an entire generation to Jew hatred.

The Beast is awake, but it is not slouching towards Bethlehem to be born.

It has been birthed already, and it is everywhere.

And it is taking hold of our youth.

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