BELLEVILLE – Brian Orford is a Belleville native, age 44. He looks a lot older than that. He looks profoundly sad, like he’s seen it all.

He probably has.

Brian knows the streets, here, and he knows the people who live on the streets. He knows, too, all of the 17 people who overdosed over a 24-hour period this week.

People figure they all overdosed on the same batch of opiate – but possibly with GHB mixed in. The date rape drug. There’s talk of tranq dope heading this way, too. That’s the scary one, the one that causes addicts to lose fingers and toes.

“A lot of people here have switched to those other drugs,” he says. “It’s pretty dangerous.”

It is. Nine had to be rushed to the Belleville hospital Tuesday night, to literally save their lives. They overdosed right out front, Brian says, along the grimy wall at the John Howard Society drop-in centre in the bottom of the United Church on Bridge Street. They are all his friends, he says.

When that happened, the city of Belleville issued an extraordinary warning to the public. They actually warned people to stay away from Belleville’s downtown core. For safety reasons.

Like it was a war zone. Which, these days, it kind of is.

Brian Orford says that big cities are sending the homeless and the drug-addicted to smaller towns like Belleville. To make them someone else’s problem. He’s not the only one saying it, either.

“There’s been two or three buses,” Brian says. “They get offered a free lunch and the bus takes them here.”

It’s happened two or three times in the past few months that he knows about, he says. “It’s people other places can’t handle,” he says. “But there’s so many people here already. And there’s no resources.”

Staff who work with the homeless in Belleville – staff who don’t want to be named – confirm what Brian says. They nod their heads. They’ve heard it too: big cities like Toronto are dumping their homeless and drug-addiction problems on smaller cities like Belleville.

There’s the talk of blue buses slipping into town at night, and dropping off bewildered people on cold and lonely sidewalks.

“We’ve all heard that,” says one. “The buses are coming from other places, like Toronto and Ottawa.”

Down the block from where the overdoses happened, the city’s mayor and chief of police – and a posse of other officials – are holding a press conference. The mayor is Neil Ellis, an affable straight-shooter who used to be a Member of Parliament.

Asked about the rumors about big cities dropping off homeless and addicted people in Belleville, Ellis doesn’t dodge or weave. About 66 per cent of the homeless in the area are from the area, he says. “But the homeless don’t vote,” he cautions. So they’re not entirely sure.

Ellis doesn’t confirm that people are being dumped here. But he doesn’t deny it, either. “This problem is front and centre for every community in Canada,” he says. And the federal and provincial governments need to do a lot more, he adds.

His chief of police, Mike Callaghan, nods his head vigorously. He, too, says Ottawa and Queen’s Park have been mostly AWOL. Callaghan hasn’t been able to hire new police officers for years – while Belleville has been growing by leaps and bounds.

A few blocks North of City Hall, the Grace Inn is one of the few places around that can offer a bed to a homeless person. And it’s been completely full since it opened, just before the pandemic – there’s only a couple dozen beds, while Belleville has a homeless population of at least 200. (And full disclosure: this writer has donated to the Grace Inn in the past.)

Jodie Jenkins, the impressive chair of the Grace Inn, says he has heard “for a while now” that homeless and addicted people are being dumped in Belleville. But, he says, “based on our data specific to the shelter, it doesn’t line up. Almost 80 per cent of our guests at the shelter are from the immediate and surrounding area.”

So, stories about mysterious blue buses dropping broken people onto Belleville’s sidewalks at night will remain that for now – stories. And, when you think about it, it doesn’t matter.

Because, as Mayor Neil Ellis says, the problem is everywhere. And moving it from one city to another doesn’t change the reality.

And the reality is this: the problem keeps coming back, everywhere.

And it keeps getting worse.

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Cancelled: there’s much talk about cancel culture, since October 7. It’s everywhere.

So, too, one of the oldest anti-Semitic tropes – which is that Jews control Hollywood and the media. And, because they have so much power, they “cancel” and “censor” those with pro-Palestine (read: anti-Israel) views.

But that’s not really true, is it? Everywhere you look, these days, a Palestinian flag or a keffiyah is being waved in someone’s face – including at the NHL All-Star game, no less, where the no-name singer of the U.S. anthem was permitted to appear, even after posting online: “if you’re a Zionist, feel free to stay your ass at home.”

Or, a few days ago, they’re outside the doors at Yuk Yuk’s, the fabled comedy club in Toronto, screaming at people trying to get inside, and assaulting patrons. As club owner Mark Breslin texted to friends: “Almost a riot outside. They tried to rip off my clothing and tip [my wife’s] car over. Fifteen police cars. Madness.”

Or, anti-Israel/pro-Hamas types are showing up on university campuses, and screaming at Jewish kids, and pushing them around. Or they’re swarming pro-Israeli voices online, hurling threats and abuse. Or – most visibly – they’re showing up in neighbourhoods where Jews are found, or outside businesses owned by Jews, to intimidate and defame.

The objective, in every single case, is to shut down the pro-Israel side. To shut it up. To cancel it.

The notion that Jews are “cancelling” the other side is therefore laughable. The reverse is true, and the evidence is found in cases big and small.

Recently, for example, Leah Goldstein experienced anti-Israel cancel culture in a way that was up close and personal. Goldstein is a feminist, author and former world kickboxing champion – and, years ago, trained commandos in the Israeli military.

Because of that, it seems, Goldstein – whose feminist credentials are impeccable – was cancelled by a group called Inspire, scheduled to hold an International Women’s Day event in early March in Peterborough. Goldstein was removed as keynote speaker, without even being asked first for her side of the story.

In their newsletter, Inspire wrote: “In recognition of the current situation and the sensitivity of the conflict in the Middle East, the board of Inspire will be changing our keynote speaker.”

In internal emails, Inspire whinges that sponsors were “becoming hesitant” after hearing from anti-Israeli types. They claimed that “the decision to cancel Leah was not made lightly.” But they cancelled her, to use their own word, nonetheless. They did not respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, Goldstein says she was “hurt, angry and heartbroken” about being erased by Inspire. “It seems they gave in to threats and hate – and that is the saddest part,” she says.

Goldstein’s shocking story just one recent example of the sort of anti-Israel cancel culture now running rampant. The most notorious example of anti-Jewish cancel culture, of course, is a big one: the BDS gang – meaning “Boycott, Divest, Sanction.” All aimed at Jews and the Jewish state, on a huge scale.

As American professor and author Gary Wexler reminded this writer last week, the global movement that is BDS literally got its start in Toronto. BDS kicked off in Toronto in 2005, after some University of Toronto students launched another pro-cancellation tactic, Israeli Apartheid Week. After the Canadian Union of Public Employees endorsed both, BDS and the “apartheid” obscenity spread globally, like wildfire.

As its very name implies, BDS is literally a vehicle – now worldwide – to cancel and censor Israel, and those people and entities that support Israel, or somehow linked to Israel. Relying on a network of campus groups, churches, unions and others, BDS tries to delegitimize and isolate Israel and pro-Israeli voices. It is now mainly headquartered in the Middle East.

As the Anti-Defamation League says about BDS: “BDS campaigns, which portray Israel as a pariah state and advocate that it be singularly targeted, are unfair, one-sided and disproportionate.

“In fact, the BDS campaign does not support constructive measures to build Israeli-Palestinian engagement, nor does it promote peace negotiations or a mutually negotiated two-state solution to the conflict.  Rather, BDS presents a biased and simplistic approach to the complex Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

The goals of this Canadian-founded group, if implemented, would wipe out Israel, says the ADL. It is therefore deeply anti-Semitic, the ADL concludes.

And what of those who attempt to cancel and censor Jews – like Leah Goldstein, or Mark Breslin – or just anyone who supports Israel in its just and overdue war against the homicidal subhumans who make up Hamas?

That all feels pretty anti-Semitic, too.

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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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