Supporting Canada Jewish Community Against Antisemitism

"The petition calls for definitive action from the government to provide clarity to law enforcement agencies and provincial and territorial attorneys general, as well as for it to examine and provide clarity on the legality of other slogans, such as 'globalize the intifada' and 'long live October7'."

"It asks and demands that the government convene a national antisemitism summit focused on taking immediate action."

Conservative Member of Parliament Kevin Vuong

 

Since the situation has only gotten worse, and since the rhetoric that we're seeing has only gotten worse, one of the messages that we're trying to bring out that it's not just directed at the Jews."

"A slogan like 'globalize the intifada' has nothing to do with the Jews, has nothing to do with Israel -- and has everything to do with Western democracy."

Talia Klein Leighton, Canadian Women Against Antisemitism

 

"Antisemitism in Canada and abroad is primarily presenting itself through the prism of anti-Zionism, which, in my opinion, is the most pervasive form of antisemitism, and the most perverse in a number of ways."

"That's what's making it so challenging for senior decision-makers in government, business and academia to address it, because they've been taught for decades that it's OK to be vehemently opposed to Israel. [They're told] that's not antisemitic, when in fact, it often is."

"It's something else entirely if you're chanting slogans that call for the erasure of Israel, or if you are obsessively calling for countries to divest."

"[While numerous and often convenient interpretations of 'from the river to the sea' abound, general consensus agrees the chant calls for the eradication of the state of Israel and its citizens -- in favour of a Palestinian-only state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea]."
Casey Babb, senior fellow, Macdonald-Laurier Institute, Institute for National Security Studies

Kevin Vuong  (Pedro Marques/Facebook/Kevin Vuong)

 

An independent Member of Parliament along with a Jewish group have presented a petition with numerous Canadian signatures to be tabled in the House of Commons to push the government to classify commonly used antisemitic chants as what they really are -- hate speech. Tabled by Spadina-Fort York MP Kevin Vuong, as a response to the increasingly frequent chants heard in pro-Hamas protests and at university campus encampments of obviously anti-Israel phrases such as 'from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free'. 

 

Canada's surprising and growing antisemitism problem has spurred MP Vuong to become one of Parliament's strongest voice against antisemitism.

He has reported to law enforcement troubling incidents targeting him for his campaign against antisemitism. He and his wife have been followed while out for walks in their neighbourhood. Photographs were taken of them from slow-moving vehicles. They found their normal walking route to be lined with posters targeting him for his support of Canada's Jewish population, posters accusing him of "supporting genocide" and other such invidious smears.

With escalating violence and hate being propagated on our streets and in our communities and country, MP Kevin Vuong has worked hard to be a voice advocating for peace and to ensure that Canada's laws are upheld. This includes fighting all forms of hate.

 

Photographs of the drivers, along with their licence plates were given to parliamentary security personnel and to the Toronto police services. The campaign that Mr. Vuong is engaged in has arisen through the inescapable reality of Jews in Canada facing threats, intimidation and violence from organized groups of Muslim Islamists and their non-Muslim 'progressive' enablers whose focus is on the elimination of Israel and the harassment and harm they can do to Jews and establishments of the Jewish community, such as synagogues, parochial schools and community centres.

There appears to have been a move  of late in the targets of Jewish condemnation; moving from Jewish neighbourhoods to harass and slander while blocking access to public roads and bridges, transferring instead to occupy university grounds by setting up tent encampments to block access to parts of university campuses to Jewish students and faculty. Demands being made by protest organizers, that universities divest anything with a Jewish component, halt academic ties to Jewish universities, among other demands that prioritize Palestinian students for tuition-free studies.

The encampments appear well-funded, and it is clear from various investigations and encounters that the most active components of the people supporting and directing the protests are by no means all students, but rather outsiders who have nothing to do with the universities, who have organized the protests. These anti-Israel groups have made common cause with unions who espouse the 'cause' of Palestinian victimhood and statehood, slandering Israel as an 'occupier' of Palestinian land.

"It's as if Hamas sympathizers within the Arab communities handed off the baton to the far left."

"Islamists in Canada and throughout the world have really been embraced by the far left, that's because they share the same perverse ideologies when it comes to the desire to see the state of Israel, the Jewish state, undone."

"That idea of 'well, the Jews have fled before, we've removed them from the entirety of the Middle East before, we've removed them from much of Europe, we can move them again, that's who they are."

Casey Babb

Supporters walk past a sign at the pro-Palestinian protest encampment on UQAM University campus, in Montreal, on May 27. Photo by Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press