Adam Dobrer is a BC based political analyst.Dear Canada,I have a routine for when Jews are massacred. The first step, once the location is established, is to check-in on those I know in country who could have been the wrong Jew, at the wrong place and time. Then I doom scroll, hunting down emerging details, arming myself with the facts to pre-empt the denials, distortions, and inversions that so often shadow these tragedies. I check the Canadian press, the American press, and the Israeli press, to see the inchoate narratives begin to take shape. Then I say tehillim, because there is a certain comfort in prayer, and it prayer cannot hurt. The day of, I am in a kind of daze.A cold anger in me simmers, as the Canadian parade of platitudes begins..QUESNEL: Confronting the uncomfortable truth about Christian antisemitism.After Jews are savagely murdered, Western societies respond with a weighty solemnity, and breathless reverence. National leaders take to the airwaves, to condemn the violence, and "all forms of discrimination and hate."Journalists shuffle off to find witnesses to recall their harrowing ordeals. Local police jurisdictions promise to “step up” visible security presence in Jewish neighborhoods for some unspecified period of time. Vague, non-specific promises of “action” to “combat” antisemitism “and all forms of hate” are made.As victims are identified, the solemnity morphs to a tense grief. Vigils take place, under heavy police protection, lest copy-cats decide to test their luck. Every Jew then has a mental tug-of-war, of whether to attend or not. Some walk through the metal detectors at their synagogues, and attend services behind the bulletproof glass, subconsciously mapping the exits, some put on a brave face of irreverent joy, and others choose to stay home. Many, at Rabbi’s instruction will cope through quiet acts of chesed, and tzedakah, when Jews are murdered, Jews do mitzvot. The massacre at Bondi Beach fell on the first night of Hannukah, so the obvious mitzvah was to light the candle, and to proclaim the miracle to the world..Journalists assigned to cover these events are as audacious as they are cautious. They solicit comment from faith leaders, and prod loved ones of the murdered to open up and give the audience glimpses into the lives so tragically, and unexpectedly lost. The Israeli flags, the hostage pins, that dark day in October, are all kept diligently out of frame, so as to avoid “controversies.” The controversy erupts anyway as soon as the President or Prime Minister of Israel comments on the massacre of their Jewish brothers and sisters in the Diaspora.Political leaders show up in “solidarity,” and fall over themselves to emphasize themes of Jewish defiance, and Jewish resilience, leaving why Jewish people need to be so defiant and resilient unspoken. Some harken back to the antisemitism of our forefathers, the Nazi genocide still within living memory, especially if one of the murdered this time around happens to be a Holocaust survivor. Our leaders declare “antisemitism has no place in our society,” and “this is not who we are,” ad nauseum, as if speaking it will somehow make it true..OLDCORN: Minister sworn in on Quran backs bill criminalizing Bible, other religious texts.Parallel to this parade of platitudes, anonymous accounts, amplified by bot farms declare that it was obviously an inside job, a Mossad psy-op, to distract from the evildoings of Israel, or in their honest moments, the evildoings of the Jew. Another discourse takes shape, that well, maybe somehow, these Jews deserved it; they were Zionists, Judeo-Nazi’s complicit in a live-streamed genocide, and all they got was a taste of their own medicine.I am fed up with the hollow condemnations. I am sick of hearing how “sickened” our leaders and societies are, but only ever post mortem, while the blood of my brothers and sisters still runs hot in the streets, and while they are fighting for their lives in hospitals. I am done with the dilution, and the subtle gaslighting that comes along with it. It is not “hate and violence in all of its forms.” In Manchester on Yom Kippur, at Bondi Beach on Hannukah, it was obvious and ghoulish Islamist antisemitism. In Washington, and Boulder, Colorado, it was that purifying revolutionary violence of Franz Fanon: Intifada, globalized. The exact Intifada that masked “pro-Palestine” mobs on campus quads and city squares have demanded with vigorous enthusiasm since October 8, 2023..If people keep killing Jews in the diaspora on our holy days, then I am sorry to say, Israel and the war in Gaza, and Palestinian suffering has been a fig leaf.“This is not who we are?” Really? “Antisemitism has no place here.” Really? The massacres of Jews, and the celebrations of them suggest otherwise. This is who some of us are, and antisemitism does, in fact a place here. It is structural. Its roots are ancient and gnarled, almost as ancient as Jewish civilization itself.I am tired of being tired. I am done with quiet, stewing Jewish anger. I will not countenance the offer of casting Israel aside, the only country that offered my family refuge as they fled antisemitic persecution in the Soviet Union. .JÄGER: Canada's public transportation is a national embarrassment.I am tired of being told that I am overreacting, that I am being too sensitive, that I need to learn to take a joke. I am dispensing with the notions that this is intergenerational trauma getting the best of me, or that this will all blow over soon, because it’s been two years, and the winds have come a howlin’.Hannukah is a festival of light, and that makes for useful Manichean metaphors about “light” pushing back against the “darkness.” Hannukah is the celebration of a minor miracle: one nights worth of oil that lasted for eight. But why did the Jews need oil? To rededicate our Temple in Jerusalem, after its desecration at the hands of Seleucid Greeks. Hannukah is the celebration of a revolt by Jewish zealots, the Jews who refused the temptation to melt away our faith, and traditions to find acceptance. They drew a line in the sand.The parade of platitudes is not enough. The time has come for Canada to draw a line in the sand.Adam Dobrer is a BC based political analyst.
