Trained to avoid rushing to judgment, we historians know there will be far more to learn about Monday\u2019s Montreal bloodbath, wherein a terrorist killed one police officer and one civilian.<\/p>\n
The police claim the terrorist was not antisemitic and that the resulting murder of a beloved Jew in the Jewish neighborhood attacked is coincidental.<\/p>\n
Assuming that conclusion holds, Canadians and their leaders must admit that even if antisemitism didn\u2019t trigger this crime, the lynch-mob mentality against Jews, Zionism, and Israel drove it as well as other acts of political violence. The same argument holds when terrorists attack areas with no Jews at all. It\u2019s essential to recognize that by tolerating so much antisemitism and \u201cZionophobia\u201d \u2013 hostility toward Zionists \u2013 many Canadians helped foster an atmosphere of political totalitarianism breeding extremism, zealotry, and violence.<\/p>\n
Silence often speaks volumes. Those who keep quiet while others harass Jews, Israelis, and Zionists broaden the zone of tolerance for all forms of brutality. In healthy democracies, there are no innocent bystanders; when fellow citizens are besieged, silence is complicity.<\/p>\n
Lack of public reaction to antisemitism<\/strong><\/p>\n Jesse Brown opens his March 2026 Atlantic essay, \u201cCanada\u2019s Polite Pogrom,\u201d with a devastating line. Describing how the University of British Columbia\u2019s Ed Rosenberg quit teaching geriatric medicine after 30 years, Brown explains that the antisemitic bile students and colleagues at the University of British Columbia posted after October 7 was bad enough. Nevertheless: \u201cHe did not resign because of the messages\u2026; he resigned because the university wouldn\u2019t do anything about them.\u201d<\/p>\n Antisemites around him could be dismissed \u2013 it\u2019s hard to feel betrayed by twisted people who celebrated such perversions. But Rosenberg and so many others have felt betrayed by so-called \u201cinnocent bystanders\u201d and supposedly responsible administrators who did nothing.<\/p>\n The insult is compounded by a cancel culture and DEI bureaucracy exaggerating the slightest slips into massive grievances \u2013 when it comes to other groups. Selective silence is equally painful, double-crossing the targeted \u2013 and emboldening aggressors. On June 1, Prime Minister Mark Carney modeled the kind of political cherry-picking that justifies using the clich\u00e9 \u201cdoing more harm than good.\u201d<\/p>\n Carney\u2019s 2600-word speech about antisemitism never used the Z-word, Zionism, and only mentioned Israel once. That\u2019s like denouncing Southern racism without defining it as an obsessive bigotry against blacks.<\/p>\n Linking anti-Zionism with antisemitism is not some Jewish delusion; it\u2019s a conscious stance wired deeply into the Palestinian national movement\u2019s DNA. Palestinians and their enablers yell \u201cDeath to the Jews\u201d and target Jewish schools, synagogues and individuals when they\u2019re enraged by Israel.<\/p>\n Palestinians and their enablers recycle old Jewish stereotypes and dip their anti-Zionism in the toxic reservoir of anti-Semitic slurs. And it\u2019s Palestinians and their enablers who have fed a spike of Jew-hatred since October 7, because the antisemitic anti-Zionism of Hamas and other Gazans on that bloody day inspired them. Carney\u2019s omission was particularly glaring because he o so earnestly, speaking in French, invoked the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor to explain Canada\u2019s \u201ccelebration of differences.\u201d<\/p>\n That acceptance reflects Taylor\u2019s notion of \u201crecognition,\u201d Carney explained, which \u201cis more than mere tolerance\u2026. To be recognised is to be received as who you are.\u201d How ironic that in this speech Canada\u2019s prime minister refused to recognize or receive how Zionists are \u2013 or admit how much they have been pursued.<\/p>\n These full and partial silences help amplify today\u2019s shouters, who continue to believe they run the conversation. They dominate the airwaves, the headlines, and social media. Today\u2019s loud, often foul-mouthed, hotheads view everything through a partisan lens \u2013 which paves the road to totalitarianism.<\/p>\n Reducing our complex world to a series of all-or-nothing political propositions oversimplifies and inflames discourse simultaneously. Extremists thrive in this highly charged atmosphere. They make politics tribal \u2013 us versus them. And they escalate identity into zealotry.<\/p>\n Belonging is no longer enough. Bullying the other becomes expected, fundamental \u2013 first, most easily, in Tweets, then in words to strangers, then in breakups over politics with friends and relatives. Once that happens, once you\u2019ve demonized and objectified the other, it\u2019s easy for unstable maniacs to turn violent. After all, everyone else has convinced them that if you dare disagree with me \u2013 you\u2019re an existential threat to me and our democracy.<\/p>\n Canada\u2019s turn from Canada the decent and delightfully boring, to Canada the indecent and menacing, reflects this evil logic\u2019s spellbinding power. Of course, not every terrorist or partisan firebrand is a Jew-hater or an anti-Zionist. But Jew-hating and Israel-bashing green-lighted a culture of political fervor and abuse.<\/p>\n We now live in a world \u2013 in democracies \u2013 where healthy functioning adults \u2013 not just lunatics \u2013 act crazy. They shun colleagues and friends, harass shopkeepers or customers, hit little kids, shoot their schools, and assault their places of worship, proudly, while earning high-fives in return.<\/p>\n For decades we\u2019ve known in theory \u2013 it starts with the Jews, but never ends with the Jews. The words were mouthed \u2013 and are mouthed whenever Jews are targeted. We need more than words. The twin evil genies of Jew-hatred and political violence, which have long been intertwined, have been unleashed, and Jews aren\u2019t responsible for returning either foul force into its bottle.<\/p>\n Jews should focus on defending themselves just enough to feel free to double down on being Zionist, doing Jewish, and celebrating Israel. It\u2019s the much larger non-Jewish world that must remember two long-lasting lessons. Jew-hatred is the disease of the non-Jew, not the Jew.<\/p>\n And citizens in healthy democracies must defeat the totalitarian, conspiratorial, violence-breeding evil of antisemitism, doing it, not for the Jews\u2019 sake, but for the sake of their own societies, and their own souls.<\/p>\n