Politic?: Bringing the Middle East to Canada

Bringing the Middle East to Canada

"I speak from personal experience, having observed the Al-Quds Day rally at Toronto's Queen's Park a few years ago. I was shocked that it was allowed to take place on government property."
"While I support freedom of expression for everyone, the Al-Quds Day rally was nothing but undiluted hate being spouted by speaker after speaker."
"Statistics tell us that antisemitic incidents are on the rise in Canada and around the world."
"Antisemitism thrives on hate, so if there is hate being spouted on our streets, shouldn't our government take notice and do something about it?"
Raheel Raza, Pakistani-Canadian journalist, author, public speaker, media consultant, anti-racism activist, and interfaith discussion leader

Raheel Raza is puzzled that in Canada expressions of hatred against Jews find no barriers erected by the Government of Canada. Canada has an increasingly large Muslim population, Its Jewish population is small, by comparison. For Canadan politicians votes can be lost when they address issues linked to voting demographics. As for antisemitic demonstrations, and acts of intimidation or violence against Jews, their emergence corresponds with the growing Muslim population.

Practising Muslims who know their Islamic history and values take umbrage at their co-religionists actively sowing suspicion, hatred and acts of passive and violent Jew-hatred in their adopted country which it boasts with pride is one where a multitude of languages can be heard on the street, a rainbow of pigmentation can be seen everywhere, and refugees and immigrants live in fairly reliable harmony among one another; often in cliques and districts where their ethnic and religious cultures give them comfort.

Among the 1,053,945 Muslims who make Canada their home, a significant enough proportion express anti-Jewish, anti-Israel sympathies which the 392,000 Canadian Jews must live with. The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement enjoys great popularity among Muslim Canadians who view Canadian Jews and their attachment to the State of Israel as antithetical to their own values revolving around the conviction that Israel exists on land consecrated to Islam, and which Arab Palestinians claim as their own.

Slanderous invective, engagement in 'progressive' causes on university campuses that elevate Israel to the status of institutionalized violence against Palestinians, naming Israel as an 'apartheid' state has brought these hate groups adherence in the larger general population, convinced that sympathizing with the Palestinian 'cause', its opposition to Israel as an 'occupier' that targets Palestinian children for death, makes a mockery of reality.

When, in fact, it is the Palestinian Authority that schools Palestinian children in hatred for Jews, convincing children vulnerable to suggestion that their highest calling is to become a martyr, and to anticipate a future where Jews will be slaughtered en masse, freeing up the land the Jewish state sits on, ancestral to Jews as ancient Judea, so that Arab Palestinians who identify as the authentic indigenous peoples of the land, to create their own state 'from the river to the sea'.

That Israelis must live with the constant threat of violent attacks and indiscriminate murders by whatever means Palestinian Arabs find at hand, is conveniently overlooked in favour of disinterest in the fact that Palestinians constitute 20 percent of the Israeli population, with full citizenship. That Arab Palestinians, Christians, Druze, Ba'hai and other minorities live in Israel as citizens, freely voting for their own parliamentary representation. There are Arab Israelis appointed to judgeships, diplomatic posts and who join the Israeli police and military. So much for apartheid.

Participants wave Iranian flags and display a portrait of the Ayatollahs at the 2019 Al-Quds Day march in downtown Toronto.

Participants wave Iranian flags and display a portrait of the Ayatollahs at the June 1, 2019 Al-Quds Day march in downtown Toronto. Photo by Jack Boland / Postmedia News

In Canada, Palestinian sympathizers and 'activists' among the population of Muslim-Canadians feel free to mount an annual Al-Quds march, decrying the existence of the State of Israel. An event that was instituted by the Islamic Republic of Iran that has sworn to erase Israel from the Middle East, and taken up by the wider Muslim public. Raheel Raza. a devout Muslim is outraged that Canadian Muslims would defile the holy month of Ramadan, a time of quiet reflection, the antithesis of hate, vengeance, anger and violence -- on the streets of Canada.

She has written of her disgust for the actions of the hate-mongers among her co-religionists. She has appealed to the larger Muslim population in Canada for common sense and the need to leave old antipathies behind, along with tribalism and secular violence. She has communicated with Muslim-Canadian authorities representing different sects of Islam, to find no welcoming committee for her pleas for respect and tolerance between Muslims and Jews; all to no avail.