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Bubble zones: they work.

Bubble zones – or “buffer zones,” “safe access zones” or access zones” – first started to show up in the early 1990s.  Back then, women seeking legal abortions, or just seeking advice, were routinely being harassed and threatened at clinics and hospitals that provide those services.

Going back to 1984, doctors offices and abortion clinics in the U.S. were being bombed. One doctor was shot to death at a clinic in Florida in 1993. A clinic volunteer was murdered in 1994, again in Florida.  And, across the United States and Canada, women were being threatened and attacked for coming near places that provided safe and legal abortions.

In 2000, Dr. Henry Morgantaler told this writer that he had received “untold thousands” of death threats over the years.  And that he, his staff and his patients regularly needed protection from violence.

So, legislatures started to create what are often called bubble zones.  That is, defined areas where certain activities are against the law – initially, to protect doctors, nurses and women providing or seeking abortions.  By creating a designated buffer zone around a clinic, police were compelled to act: if an anti-abortion lunatic crossed the line, they’d get arrested.  Simple.

It’s now apparent that we need to do likewise for Canada’s 400,000 Jews – around their places of worship, in particular.  The pro-Hamas, Jew-hating mobs have targeted Jewish businesses, community centres, schools and synagogues.  Police weren’t preventing the attacks, or they weren’t doing enough to keep the haters away.

So, create bubble zones around those places where Jews are most vulnerable.  Like synagogues.

Quebec (surprisingly, given the province’s documented problems around anti-Semitism) went first.  Earlier in March, the Quebec Superior Court made history.  The Court ordered that groups associated with extremism – Montreal4Palestine, Palestinian Youth Movement Montreal, Alliance4Palestine – stay at least 50 metres away from Jewish institutions in predominantly-Jewish areas of Montreal, Notre Dame de Grace and Cote-des-Neiges.

Then, a few days later, Vaughan mayor Steven Del Duca proposed the same thing for his city.  Del Duca urged councillors in the city North of Toronto to approve a bylaw that would prevent protests near places or worship, schools and could care centres.  The objective, Del Duca said, was to stop those who “incite hatred, intolerance and violence” in such places.

Del Duca’s law would keep the Israel-haters 100 metres away from designated places.  Anyone who violated the law would face fines up to $100,000.

Now, Toronto councillor Brad Bradford is pushing for a similar law in Canada’s largest city.  Bradford wrote to Ontario’s Attorney-General to call for the creation of what he called “safety zones” around places of worship, but also important social infrastructure.  That addition is welcome, too, because the pro-Hamas mobs have shown their willingness to block major roadways and target hospitals.

“A shocking 56 per cent of incidents have been anti-Semitic and target Toronto’s Jewish community,” Bradford said in his letter.

In an interview, Bradford explained why he took action: “Over the past six months, there has been an absence of leadership at City Hall when it comes to ensuring people have the right to practice their faith in peace without fear of violence or persecution. We’ve seen businesses attacked because of who owns them, we’ve seen neighbourhoods targeted because of who lives there, and it continues to undermine the diversity, tolerance, and acceptance that used to be the hallmark of Toronto…It has to stop.”

Establishing safe zones, Bradford says, “would be a meaningful step that would provide another [way] to stamp out hate and start to restore the type of civility and tolerance we ought to expect in a city like Toronto.”

Brad Bradford is right – as are the other leaders in Quebec and Ontario who are taking action.  We need to protect people when they are at prayer – when they are most vulnerable.  We need to make neighbourhoods feel safe again.

Establishing safe zones, as Bradford calls them, would do just that.

Will Canada’s other leaders follow his lead?

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Grassroots. Gotcha.

The anti-Israel, pro-Hamas propagandists would like you do believe that theirs is a spontaneous, organic, community-based effort, one that is entirely funded by regular folks, presumably through bake sales.

Oh, and this: they want to reassure you that their advocacy isn’t against Jews.  It’s against “Zionists.” (Who Dr. Martin Luther King, no less, said are the same thing.)

Most of all, they want you to believe that it’s a grassroots effort.  That is, just a bunch of well-meaning ordinary people concerned about “genocide” being committed by “Zionists” in Gaza.

Even though, you know, Gaza’s population growth has far exceeded Israel’s.  Even though Israel provided Gazans with food, water, fuel, medical supplies and more, for years. Even though…well, you get the point.  If the “Zionists” were committing “genocide,” they sure weren’t doing a very good job at it.

Which suggests that the anti-Israel, pro-Hamas folks aren’t telling the truth about that, and quite a few other things, as well.  Such as how truly “grassroots-y” they are.

Because they aren’t.  They are, in fact, one of the best-organized, best-run, best-funded propaganda efforts many political people has seen in a long, long time.  Ask James Carville, the guru who got Bill Clinton and many others elected: “America’s far-left, for which I hold a very low opinion, is mobilized by the war. And they’ll undoubtedly seek to exploit the unrest it creates – foolishly believing the turmoil advances their cause.”

Former Republican strategist (and, full disclosure, friend) David Frum has said that “Iran, China and Russia have made large investments in anti-Israel, pro-Hamas messaging.” And that propaganda, Frum says, is too often working – particularly with young people.

And it’s not – not – grassroots.

Take, for example, the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights’ “City Council Palestine Organizing Toolkit,” recently leaked to this writer.  The multi-page “toolkit” is one of the most professional-looking (and sounding) lobby and PR blueprints I have ever seen.

Essentially, the document is a “guide on organizing for ceasefire resolutions in local city councils.” Here is what it contains:

•    draft anti-Israel resolutions for City Councils to pass
•    a media guide on how to manipulate news coverage
•    guides for calling and emailing voters to apply pressure on city councillors
•    maps on how to increase “grassroots advocacy capacity with digital tools, such as mass mailers, text alert systems, etc.”
•    how to host “weeks of action” to paralyze cities and towns who do not comply
•    how to “create narratives” that “ending genocide is a moral issue”
•    how to track votes
•    talking points, graphics and leave-behind documents

And on and on.  The plan reports on the cities where they have been successful (Dearborn, Providence, Akron, Detroit, Seattle, Oakland, Kalamazoo, Portland, St. Louis and Chicago – where, ominously, Democrats are having their convention in August.)

The “toolkit” gives the anti-Israel forces tips on how to manipulate their online presence – so that it will be harder for politicians and their staff to learn more about their backgrounds.  In particular, the plan describes how to effectively bully reluctant politicians into submission – or, if they are resolute, how to isolate them.

What’s incredible about all of this, of course, is that local city councils don’t set foreign policy.  They’re not even consulted about it – national governments do that.

But the anti-Israel/pro-Hamas forces are so organized, and so well-funded, they have enough resources to steal support for their extremist cause everywhere – including with people whose vote ultimately doesn’t ever change world events.

And make no mistake: the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) is no grassroots group.  It has a multi-million-dollar budget, a website that is better-looking than just about any professional political party, scores of full-time staff, field organizers, plus steering committees and advisory boards aplenty.

The USPCR regularly accuses Israel of “apartheid,” “ethnic cleansing,” “genocide,” “war crimes,” and “colonialism.” It promotes anti-Israel “Boycott, Divestment and Sanction” efforts, going after companies from Ben and Jerry’s to Airbnb.  Most seriously, USCPR helps fund the Palestinian BDS National Committee – which, Israel notes, shares members with Hamas.

USPCR exists and, so far, that fact hasn’t changed.  But this, too, is a fact: the “grassroots” campaigns we’re seeing, just about everywhere?

Many of them – perhaps most of them – just aren’t.

And they’re just trying to fool people into thinking they are.

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What’s that old military saying?  You know you’re over target when you’re taking flak?

That’s what the B-17 pilots used to say when flying over Europe on missions to bomb the Jew-haters in Hitler’s armies during World War Two.  The most intense flak happens when flying directly over target.

That saying – and the circumstances that gave rise to it – apply in the post-October 7 era, too.  Here at Postmedia, arguably the most pro-Israel newspaper chain on the continent, we tend to know when we are getting close to target: when the Israel-hating, pro-Hamas propaganda effort kicks into gear.  That’s when the flak gets heavy.

In recent days, this writer (and my editors) have taken flak, big time.  We’ve received hundreds and hundreds of letters, attacking us and Israel – using, over and over (and tellingly) the exact same subject line.  Using the same language and attack lines.

That is what is done in “astroturf” propaganda campaigns – namely, hiding the sponsor of the propaganda, to make it look like a spontaneous and organic grassroots response to something.

What enraged the Israel-haters? A column that stated what every sane person knows to be true: there is a coordinated, global and well-funded campaign to demonize Jews and the Jewish state.

It is seen in anti-Israel protestors getting paid to show up.  It is seen in experienced, professional organizers running protests and rallies to attack Jews, Jewish businesses and Jewish neighbourhoods.

It is seen online, where Gen Z and millennials – in particular – have been bombarded with messaging denying the atrocities of October 7, denying the right of Israel to exist, and denying that Hamas raped, killed, mutilated and kidnapped hundreds of Israelis.  It is seen in the deployment of professional-looking graphics and agit-prop around the globe.  Always to turn Israel, the victim, into the wrongdoer.

This newspaper, and other media, have documented all of this, many times.  And when we do, the Israel-haters lose their minds. They are sent into a spit-flecked rage. Because they know, deep in the cavernous pits where their hearts are supposed to be, that they cannot let the Jewish state ever be the object of empathy.

They cannot let people remember that Hamas broke the ceasefire. That Hamas started the war.  That Hamas used, and uses, innocent Gazans as human shields.  That Hamas brutalized and murdered hundreds of innocent civilians – men, women, children and babies.

The haters know that, if that happens, they will lose the propaganda war.  In that way, they’re just like the Holocaust deniers that preceded them: they need to deny, deny, deny.  To rehabilitate the reputation of Adolf Hitler and National Socialism, the Holocaust deniers needed to erase the historical fact of the murder of six million Jews.

So, too, the October 7 deniers.  They need to deny the killings and the rapes and the kidnappings and the barbarism.  Because nobody will want to listen to their anti-Semitic chants if they recall that, on that day, Israel was the true victim.  Not the wrongdoer.

The astroturfing and hundreds of “spontaneous” letters aren’t going to work.  In their essence, they are a lie.  They are smoke and mirrors.  They are disinformation.

The letter-writers should know this, too: it’s not working.  In fact, it’s having precisely the opposite effect.  The more you complain – the more you attack – the more we know we are on the right track.

Because you’re telling us we are over target.

 

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