Inverting Racism, the Victimizers Become the Victims

"[The report fails to address antisemitism at a time when there is a] significant rise of antisemitic and anti-Israeli incidents and hostility in our public schools, and throughout the community."

"It also adopts the narrative of 'anti-Palestinian racism,' which seeks to erase core aspects of Jewish identity and history, and redefine what constitutes antisemitism."

"It should prioritize addressing antisemitism and discrimination against Jews and Israeli Canadians, while avoiding the unnecessary politicization of our students, staff, and faculty due to imported international conflicts."

Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA)

 

"Why are staff and the trustees hiding behind these walls, refusing to hear from the Jewish community? Why are they hiding?"

"Why are the personal stories of hate and racism experienced by Jewish students and teachers in the TDSB incompatible with the TDSB’s combating hate and racism strategy? I have personally lost confidence in the leadership of the TDSB."

Carly Cohen, concerned TDSB parent

Hundreds of people rallied outside of the Toronto District School Board during a Program and School Services Committee meeting that was voting on adopting the term 'anti-Palestinian racism' within the school board. (CBC)

"It seems apparent that the desire to include a definition on anti-Palestinian racism [and this urgently] is a virtue signalling move meant to further polarize and divide Israeli, Palestinian, Jewish and/or Arab students given that there is no indication that anti-Palestinian racism has occurred as a form of discrimination within the TDSB."

Jess Burke, director of diversity, inclusion and training, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs

 

"The only definition of anti-Palestinian racism that I’ve seen, and it’s one that is frequently cited amongst advocates, says denying the Nakba or trying to silence or exclude Palestinian narratives is a form of anti-Palestinian racism."

"Adopting this definition of anti-Palestinian racism also means you’re going to have to adopt Nakba Day [denying the legitimacy of the State of Israel] because any resistance to the idea that it should be taught in schools is racist; is a form of anti-Palestinian racism. So they are linked in that way."

"Antisemitism has been a huge problem at the TDSB. Their own data says that last fall incidents of antisemitism tripled."

Aaron Kucharczuk, parent of 3 TDSB students, founding member of the Jewish Educators and Families Association

Occupants of a pro-Palestinian encampment on the main campus of the University of Toronto are pictured on May 24, 2024. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)

It is a curious social phenomenon that has manifested in the past eight months, actually in the aftermath of a sadistically psychopathic group atrocity of truly savage dimensions committed by Palestinians in Gaza and primarily by the organization of Hamas governing Gaza -- an event horrific in the revelations of an ideology whose sole purpose is the destruction of a nation. Clearly stated in its charter that its reason for existence is the destruction of a reconstructed nation on its ancestral homeland and with it the Jews who call it their home and refuge, their haven from a world without that has proven time and again bare tolerance for a Jewish presence.

 

It took a genocide to finally persuade desperate Jewish leaders that Jews would be forever at the mercy of those who all too frequently showed no mercy toward the diaspora, worldwide Jewry forced into exile by a two-hundred-year occupation by the powerful Roman Empire. Assembled once again on the land of their heritage, those who shared the land were enraged at the formal resurrection invited by the United Nations apportioning the land equally between Jews and Arabs in an area the Romans had named their province of Palestine, then solely a Judean enclave.

 

This is a history well documented both by current historians and those historical coevals of the era. The Arab contingent of actual colonialists from Egypt took to calling themselves the authentic Palestinians, a declaration with no grounding in reality. Their leaders pledged to engage the nascent Jewish state in war. It was a conflict that was to be repeated and repeated by Arab nations' militaries and the reason for repeating was that each military confrontation failed. Those calling themselves Palestinians then relied on their own confrontations in guerrilla warfare, an asymmetric conflict targeting civilians. Which led to Israel being forced to defend itself by militarily policing the areas adjacent its borders, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. 

This is what 'Palestinians' refer to as the 'occupation', which they vow to 'resist'. Occupation that is self-defence, resistance that is code for terrorism against Israeli civilians. And although it is the Palestinians who threaten Jews and Israelis, they name themselves the victims and the State of Israel, their victimizer. Even as actual events are ample proof of the Palestinians' elaborate pretense at deprivation of their human rights, their appeal to the international community has resonated, leading, incredibly, to Israel's reputation suffering under Palestinian slander.

Claiming the rebirth of Israel as a recognized sovereign nation by the United Nations, propelled to that status under their 1947 Partition Plan which the Palestinians rejected for themselves, they now present the 1948 international recognition of Israel -- a sovereign state --  as a catastrophe for Palestinians who fled the area to become refugees. The resulting designation of mourning their loss, calling it the Nakba attempts to portray Israel's existence as illegitimate, and Jews as colonialists despite their ancestral heritage status' authenticity.

 

Apparently hidden from view is another reality, that over two million Arab Palestinians have legitimate Israeli citizenship with all the privileges that come with citizenship. As loyal Israelis they take part in the mechanics of the state as judges, lawmakers, diplomats; rising in the professions such as medicine and academia taking advantage of all opportunities available to distinguish themselves as Arab-Israelis in Israel where they freely exercise their right to freedom of religion. A small number among theme may chafe at the Jewish state but none among them seem prepared to live elsewhere than in Israel, preferring life there than under Palestinian rule.

The Palestinian re-invention of history is what the West in general and the Toronto and District School Board in particular among many others in the West has accepted. One cannot accept the Palestinian narrative without acknowledging that in doing so Israel is being slandered and delegitimized; in other words, playing the game of the Palestinians and by further extension approving the atrocities that took place October 7 in southern Israel when Palestinians embarked on a mission of rape, torture, slaughter and kidnapping Israelis because they are Jews. For their story of liberation against oppression also legitimizes rape, torture and slaughter as an acceptable means to reach their version of freedom.

Rally outside Toronto District School Board, June 18, 2024

Jews may be considered a race, but it's quite a stretch to recognize Palestinians as a 'race', although Arabs are. Palestinians are simply a group within the wider Arab community which has distinguished itself as 'different' by claiming inheritance of ancestral Judean land, by naming themselves for an ancient historical province originally meant to recognize a Judean presence, by claiming Jewish history is their history. The world of Western democracy is in the throes of a 'progressive' liberal ideology that has taken to celebrating the power of the underdog and which boasts its support of equality, diversity and inclusion -- aimed primarily at elevating the status within society of people of colour and Indigenous peoples.

Diversity, equality and inclusion is increasingly denied to Jews, their indigeneity of the land they occupy in the Middle East overlooked in favour of considering them colonialists and the Palestinians' claim of 'first rights' respected broadly. Israelis as white imperialists finds great favour among academics and unions and government authorities at all levels, devoted to the issues of Critical Race Theory. People of the Jewish faith and various ethnicities of Jewish derivation are not homogeneously white, nor is their culture, history and experience monolithic. 

Trustees at the Toronto & District School Board in their wisdom voted in favour of a TDSB staff report recommending amending its anti-hate and racism strategy to include anti-Palestinian racism. Jewish parents of children in the school board along with community members objected. For the fairly simple reason that it is Jewish students, not Muslim students, who are facing constant issues of racism; point-blank antisemitism, from both other students and from some teaching staff. Much of it has been generated by the atmosphere prevalent in Canada of pervasive Israel-bashing and Jew-hate expressed in pro-Hamas, pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel rallies.

A new working group is to be struck, tasked to develop a strategy to combat anti-Palestinian racism in public schools in Toronto. A task force to address a phenomenon that does not exist. Schools in the board's jurisdiction are encouraged to accommodate Palestinian Students Associations as creating "affinity space opportunities for diverse students", amid recommendations that educators attend extra-curricular professional training sessions to more fully comprehend anti-Palestinian racism. 

Formally instituting 'anti-Palestinian racism' runs the risk of claiming protection from such expressions of 'anti-Palestinianism' when Palestinian student groups indulge in antisemitic attacks on fellow students, situations that are now commonly experienced by Jewish students whose complaints fail to move school administrations to take any action whatsoever to restrain the burgeoning episodes of Jewish students being singled out for harassment and isolation. In other words, rather than addressing the problem of growing Jew-hate in their jurisdictions, the TDSB is encouraging by this step, a further increase in venomous attacks against Jewish students.

The protest began at Yonge and Bloor Streets and evolved into a march that went south on Yonge Street, west on College street, south on University Avenue and east on Dundas Street, ending at Yonge-Dundas Square. (Lorenda Reddekopp/CBC)