Virulently Racist Palestinians Accuse Jews of Anti-Palestinian Racism

"Antisemitism has been a huge problem at the Toronto District School Board [TDSB]. Their own data says that last fall incidents of antisemitism tripled."

"The only definition of anti-Palestinian racism that I've seen, and it's one that is frequently cited among 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 because any resistance to the idea that it should be taught in schools is racist; is a form [purportedly] of anti-Palestinian racism. So they are linked in that way."

"If anything, there's lots of data to support lots of anti-Israeli sentiment in schools, and not really data to support anti-Palestinian sentiment in schools."

Aaron Kucharczuk, Jewish parent of TDSB students

Some parents want to see the addition of anti-Palestinian racism to the board's equity policy and an assurance that students or staff won't be punished for supporting Palestinian human rights.  (Martin Trainor/CBC)

"Jewish children have been clearly targeted in TDSB schools and the national hate crime data makes it very clear that Jews are the most religiously targeted group in Canada."

"CAEF [Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation] strongly urges you to send this report back to staff with an eye to addressing issues of antisemitism and anti-Israeli racism in our schools."

"Do not ignore the issues at hand; do not adopt an anti-Jew bias; do not fail to consider  how this bias played out just 75 years ago in Europe."

Andria Spindel, executive director, Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation

Palestinians' beloved state of victimhood centres around what they term the Nakba; in essence the creation of the modern State of Israel, born out of the ashes of the diaspora nightmare of the Holocaust when the ashes of incinerated Jews lifted from the chimneys of the ovens installed at the death camps that Nazi Germany built in Europe to contain Jews for slave labour, medical experimentation, and the killing machines that exterminated six million of Europe's Jews. 

Under the 1947 United Nations' Partition Plan offered to Jews and to Palestinians, Jews were happy to have the world's permission to re-establish a Jewish State on a small portion of their ancestral heritage geography, prepared to live alongside a Palestinian state. Those identifying themselves as Arab Palestinians were not prepared to live alongside a Jewish state, preferring instead to wait the few weeks it would take for a combined Arab army to destroy the nascent Israel of 1948.

That tiny Israel, assembling a core battle group of self-preservation, ill-equipped and -trained as they were, still managed to prevail, preventing its annihilation and with it the lives of Israel's Jews taught the world that Jews could and would protect themselves from another Holocaust-in-the-making. A triumph of preservation for Jews and Israel, a 'disaster' for Arab Palestinians. Anyone celebrating the Nakba as an event worth recognizing, by that recognition automatically mourns the creation of Israel, considering it 'illegitimate'; in effect approving of the 'resistance' call: 'From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free'. A call for Israel's destruction.

The Toronto District School Board appears to have recognized the merit of recognition of 'anti-Palestinian racism' that activists insist be included in the anti-racism strategy of the district. It has its counterpart in Ontario's Education Ministry recently reaffirming a need, reflecting the rising tide of antisemitism -- fuelled mostly by the Palestinians in Canada and their supporters -- to formally include the history of the Holocaust in the curriculum. One, a horrific event in world history, the other a plaintive fiction of deprivation.

The strategy released by the TDSB under Combating Hate and Racism: Student Learning Strategy Update 2024, featured the term 'anti-Palestinian racism'. And what might that conceivably be, a bemused audience might ask. Try this on for size: denying the actuality of the 'disaster' that befell Arab Palestinians when -- although they were offered equal opportunity to establish a state of their own and they curled their collective lips in disdain -- Israel established itself as a reborn homeland for the world's Jews.

A vote must yet take place to adopt the resolution to adopt the term 'anti-Palestinian racism' as a portion of the strategy at the Board against hate and racism. Palestinians view the acceptance of Israel as a major symptom of hateful racism against themselves. Any who recognize the utter absurdity of the proposal are ipso facto racists. Criticism of Arabs taking onto themselves the mantle of 'Palestinians' when historically the identification was that accrued to Jews during the Roman era, and questioning Arab claims to ancestral Judaic lands represents the philosophical crime of 'racism'.

 

Along with the Toronto District School Board, neighbouring Peel District School Board decided to commemorate the Nakba as a significant date on the board's calendar. A TDSB school, Faywood Arts-Based Curriculum School, was the venue of a Jewish student subjected to vicious harassment from immigrant Arab/Palestinian students, leading to hundreds of neighbouring adults escorting the child to class in a show of support against bullying threats, as a symbol of rejection of actual racist antisemitism. 

 

The young student had been intimidated and threatened that his persecutors would "do to him what Hamas did to Israel. We need to kill you all, and you need to bow down to us". Students at the school took part in anti-Israel walkouts, chanting "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free". Teachers observed the events, doing nothing to apprehend their repetition. Thousands of parents signed an open letter demanding the TDSB "be held accountable for ensuring the safety and well-being of all students in their care".  

The atmosphere prevailing was decidedly antisemitic, with handouts in classrooms advocating for the sanctioning of Israel. Classrooms were decorated with Palestinian scarves. Jewish students within the Board represent 3.5 percent of the student population, while incidents of antisemitism comprise 15 percent of total incidents. "It makes me feel like the TDSB has no interest in keeping my kids safe", said Aaron Kucharczuk, a parent of students attending the Board's schools, where every day's events bring yet another level of uncertainty and apprehension within the Jewish community.

Antisemitic incidents comprise 15 per cent of total incidents within the TDSB despite Jewish students making up just 3.5 percent. Photo by Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press/File