The Palestinian Hounds From Hell

Students were injured when an off-campus gathering organized by a Jewish group at Toronto Metropolitan University was broken into by anti-Israel protesters on Nov. 5, 2025. Photo by Ernest Doroszuk / Postmedia/File

 

"I will tell anyone, with great sorrow, anyone in the Jewish community, not to have their children apply to TMU. Can you imagine that? I love this university and I've worked here for [over a decade]."

"It's given me my entire professional life. Now I tell friends not to let their children go here because they'll be harassed and mistreated and bullied and potentially assaulted."

"And I say Send them to McGill, or Western, or U of T, or to the U.S. or somewhere else'. They are all better."

Unnamed tenured Toronto Metropolitan University professor  

If, as the anonymous and obviously disturbed professor states, those other Canadian universities where attendance for Jewish students is preferential to that of the former Ryerson Collegiate Institute -- now Toronto Metropolitan University -- that improvement would be strictly marginal. The truth is all academic institutions in Canada, to greater or lesser degree have been  hijacked by Critical Race Theoried-DEI constructs of social progressivism. They all host student bodies and faculty hostile to Israel and dismissive of Jewish identity that equates with Zionism. Selecting any one of them is holding to a low standard of approval. 

"Some administrators and University leaders expressed concern that certain faculty members may be encouraging, incentivizing, or intensifying student activism in ways they viewed as inappropriate or inconsistent with professional boundaries."

"[This review] was also given multiple examples of statements reportedly made in classrooms, faculty-led seminars and educational spaces that many Jewish participants experienced as antisemitic, dehumanizing, or normalizing hostility toward Jewish people."

"Administrators, some faculty, Jewish student and faculty representatives, and event organizers frequently described conduct they experienced as crossing from protest into intimidation, harassment, or attempts to silence participation."

"Interviewees in this group pointed to repeated event disruptions, aggressive confrontations, social media targeting, doxxing, hostile language, and personal accusations directed at identifiable individuals."

TMU Report 

Former Ontario Appeal Court Justice Mary Lou Benotto has recently released her report on the simmering antisemitism that has turned Toronto Metropolitan University into a hellhole for Jewish students and faculty members. The report lists such incidents taking place as that of Jewish students being spat on, sour milk thrown at them; intimidation, harassment, threats. Leaving them living in trepidation over attending the university in pursuing their academic education within the confines of a university failing to come to grips with antisemitism's scourge of the civil social contract. 

 

Some of the statements sufficiently notable to be included in the Benotto review included denial of or minimizing the Holocaust (that Adolf Hitler was guilty of 'discrimination', not conducting a genocide). Statements such as "academic power is rooted in Jewish supremacism" which needs to be "rooted out of academia", as well as holding discussions relating to "how much violence we are willing to engage in". 

 

The inmates that have contrived control of the asylum just happen to be students and faculty members of Palestinian Arab, Muslim origin, bolstered by a large contingent of pro-Palestinian participants whose intrinsic hatred of Jews has given them a common denominator of identification of the world's conflicts summed up by volunteering Israel and diaspora Jews living in the world community as the cause and focus of world strife. Yet the report makes note that these same vectors of rampant antisemitism expressed fear, exclusion and marginalization; so very typical of the permanent self-imposed state of victimization of Palestinians.

On Feb. 23, an unidentified person threw an open carton of past-dated milk at a group of Jews and Israelis participating in a student tabling event at Toronto Metropolitan University for Students Supporting Israel in partnership with StandWithUs Canada. Photo by Handout/Ethan

 

"Several described grief and trauma connected to events in Gaza, frustration with institutional neutrality, and concern that criticism of Israel was too readily conflated with antisemitism", notes the report. This is the fixed mindset of Palestinians with their visceral hatred that is so uniquely communicated like the disease it is, to others receptive of the message of Jew-as-agent of evil. Wherever Palestinians settle in through their scattering out of the Territories, they simmer and fester and violently lash out in aggravated frustration over their lot as the world's permanent victims. This is the reason that no country in the Middle East allows them space. But the West does, out of pity for their plaintive mewlings.

 

At the university, that pattern played itself out, with senior university administrators followed, filmed, verbally abused, and violently assaulted. "Protesters repeatedly followed the University President to the parking garage and surrounded his vehicle and then posted a video of the event with disparaging remarks", noted the report. Senior university administrators, including the president vice-provost and chief financial officers were featured in posters placed around the university campus along with the phrase: "Wanted for Genocide".

 

The Benotto review was initially an investigation into several incidents -- where in September of 2025 Students for Justice in Palestine disrupted a Democracy Forum event featuring AI Minister Evan Solomon, shouting "war criminal" and "baby killer", causing the event's cancellation. It is the very Liberal government of which Solomon is a Minister that contrived their entry as immigrants, refugees and migrants into Canada. Two months later the same group pushed and shoved into an off-campus meeting of a Students Supporting Israel speaking event featuring an IDF serviceman, forcing that meeting also to be cancelled. 

 

The report's introduction notes "The Review is based on the foundational principle that universities are meant to foster inquiry, debate, and democratic engagement". The report made it clear that those behind the pro-Palestinian/anti-Jewish protests were so vehemently incensed with the  university, with the presence of Jews in any capacity, that no debate and discussion could ever be possible. 

 

"TMU effectively permitted a 'heckler's veto' whereby the threat of disruption determines who is permitted to speak." The review morphed into "a broader institutional issue: a deeply polarized campus environment shaped by the aftermath of October 7, 2023, and the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Review concludes that the two incidents under review were symptoms of a deteriorating campus climate that, absent decisive institutional action are likely to recur". The university, pointed out former Justice Mary Lou Benotto, has the tools required within its Code of Conduct. The solution lies in a "consistent and principled" enforcement.

 

In response to a recent report, Toronto Metropolitan University president Mohamed Lachemi announced the launch of a task force on campus expression, antisemitism and community safety. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press)

 

Canada's Liberal Government Sanctioning Palestinian History Inversion

"Despite numerous pleas over many, many months by many different people there has been a very careful effort to provide no context for the Palestinian displacement whatsoever."

"From what I’ve seen from the website, it is a very one-sided, biased narrative that is not befitting a national federal museum." 

Gail Asper whose father Israel Asper founded the Museum of Human Rights

 

"It is difficult to understand how telling the story of Palestinian displacement in 1948 while omitting the simultaneous expulsion of 850,000 Jews from the Arab states can be viewed as anything other than politically motivated."

"In response, the museum has only made a vague commitment to exploring that story as part of a broader exhibit on displacement at some time in the unknown future."

"But the stories are not severable — they occurred at the same historical moment."

Letter of Resignation from CMHR Board, Mark Berlin, McGill law professor, human rights lawyer

Protesters rally outside the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, June 26, 2026. (Credit: Izzie Helenchilde)

 

In 1948 when Arab armies joined forces to attack the nascent Jewish state following the UN's 1947 Partition Plan for Palestine declaration, offering an opportunity for both Jews and Arabs to declare their sovereign state intentions, Jews moved directly to form their sovereign nation as a reborn-from-antiquity Israel. Palestinians had chosen to reject the opportunity, in the process refusing Israel's right of existence.

An estimated 750,000 Arab Palestinians fled the fledgling Israel, persuaded by surrounding Arab states to leave, planning to return once the combined Arab militaries had destroyed the Jewish state-that-would-be.

 

When the motley collection of Jewish kibbutz farmers, Holocaust survivors, former refugees and members of the Jewish resistance, hurriedly formed into a new army for a new state somehow, miraculously foiled the Arab League's plan of extinction, leaving the Arab armies to themselves flee, the unexpected debacle was declared by the defeated Arabs to represent a catastrophe, a "Nakba". That word was immediately adopted by the self-exiled Arabs now calling themselves Palestinians to describe the advent of Israel's existence, on Judean ancestral land, that the 'Palestinians' claimed as their very own.

 

While some of the 750,000 Arabs who fled Israel may have been propelled by fear of Jewish threats, most were convinced by Arab leaders they would return triumphant to take possession of the entire geography once Israel was destroyed. At the same time, there were hundreds of thousands of Arabs who made no move to leave, and remained where they were, becoming citizens of Israel, while still calling themselves Palestinians. During that period, Arab countries where Jews had lived throughout the diaspora for millennia were exiled, their properties confiscated, some 850,000 Arabized Jews from Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, Libya.

 

While Palestinians, aided and abetted by the United Nations, became permanent 'refugees', demanding a right of return and the dissolution of Israel, their Jewish counterparts from Algeria, Tunisia and elsewhere, found refuge in Israel and other destinations around the world. Their loss has never been internationally acknowledged, while that of the Palestinian Arabs became a legendary injustice to be used as a cudgel against Israel. That Palestinian Arabs today make up over 20% of the Israeli population does not stop the compassionate left from labelling Israel an apartheid state, happy to chorus Palestinian propaganda.

 

And it is Palestinian propaganda and the functioning aggressive ill-will of its slanderous campaign to delegitimize Israel and convince the global community that Israel is committing 'genocide' against the Palestinians when it is the Palestinian leadership that has for 70 years incited their population to 'resist the occupation', an 'occupation' necessitated by the patterning of the leadership toward martyrdom in convincing their youth, both male and female of their duty to kill Jews, to destroy the Jewish state, to reclaim 'Palestine', 'from the river to the sea'.

 

That is the packaged message weaponized in the Nakba exhibition at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights which was originally dedicated to educating the public about the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust. The very genocide that President Mahmoud Abbas mocked and minimized in his doctoral thesis at the Patrice Lamumba University in Russia. The leader of the West Bank whose martyrs' fund pays the families of Palestinian murderers of Jews as rewards, along with those imprisoned in Israeli jails for crimes against Israel in its 'Pay for Slay' program.

 

Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present’ exhibit at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg, June 26, 2026. (Credit: Izzie Helenchilde).

 

What the public visiting the exhibit, Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present will see is the juxtaposition of the exhibit against that of the original Holocaust memorialization of a historic tragedy of intense proportions that ended in the death of almost half of the world's Jewish population; most of the Jewish-European diaspora. That is the meaning of genocide. The Nakba exhibit pretends to equate Palestinian trials and tribulations caused by their insistence that murdering Jews will restore the land they claim to be theirs, not that of the Jews of Israel, with the immeasurable loss of Jewish lives through the state channels of an ancient hatred. 

 

"Around 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced during the creation of the State of Israel", the displays proclaim in a perspective that suits the purpose of damning Israel for victimizing Arab Palestinians. That historically, the term Palestinian was always interpreted as Jews living in that area of the Middle East, later shared by others who had migrated to the area by Arabs from Egypt, Syria and Lebanon looking for opportunities, and devout Christians wanting to live where their faith resonated, that designation was totally co-opted by Arabs now claiming the title of Palestinians.

 

Jewish prophets, their burial grounds in memoriam, place names, histories, cultural traditions, history, have all in turn been co-opted by Arab Palestinians claiming all to be theirs. The refusal to recognize and acknowledge Israel's right of existence, the never-ending plaints of victimhood, the inversion of truth and reality, somehow seem to resonate with an international community seasoned by latent leftist 'compassion' for a people whose uncompromising fealty to violence as a solution to all their problems never seems to be recognized by 'progressives'.

 

A memory box containing artifacts and recorded personal stories at the ‘Nakba Past and Present’ exhibit at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, June 26, 2026. (Credit: Izzie Helenchilde)

 

In Canada, the Liberal-led government that equates 'Islamophobia' with Antisemitism despite that it is largely the former that commits the latter, and enjoys intoning that immigration groups while adding to Canada's vaunted multiculturalism -- certainly not homogeneity -- must leave their heritage animosities behind when they become Canadian, simply chooses to overlook fact, preferring fiction. That same government has enabled over the past decade and more, the immigration, refugee acceptance and migrant haven claims to people Canada, with groups whose cultures and values are averse to Canada's. Yet their numbers are such that to offend them represents ballot box suicide.

 

That same government has willingly surrendered its obligation under the law to ensure equality and security for all its demographic population groups, in favour of abandoning the human rights of a smaller minority group for the encouragement of a larger minority group, irrespective of outcome. The result being that the Canadian Jewish population now finds itself under constant threat by the venomous actions of some segments of a vocal threatening, Jew-hating Muslim population, guided by Palestinian students on study visas in Canada.

 

When the Nakba exhibit can publish such incendiary statements as "Following the Hamas attack that killed about 1,200 people on October 7, 2023, Israel launched a large-scale military campaign in Gaza. Today, more than 240,000 people have been killed or injured, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health and UN agencies", without the realization that these figures, the omission of the fact that a terrorist group on Canada's own terror list, Hamas, is being quoted, leaving a public to digest these misconstrued statements as fact, Canada's government itself is complicit in furthering the agenda of Palestinian public relations. 

 

The situation is agonizingly blasphemous, taking place at the very institution in Winnipeg meant to ensure that the world not forget history as it was, the most dreadful human  tragedy enabled by lack of interest or any method of intervention to interrupt a Fascist death-cult from its Final Solution to destroy the lives of world Jewry by a dominant threat to world peace that almost succeeded in installing itself as a world-leading totalitarian presence of ubermensch in command of human rights everywhere. 

 

Gail Asper protested the exhibit ‘Nakba Past and Present” at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, June 26, 2026. (Credit: Izzie Helenchilde)

 

Palestinians -- Victims of their Own Ineradicable Hatred

Canadian Museum for Human Rights, Winnipeg

 

"The Museum has allowed itself to become the tool, or dupe, of only one side of the story ad thereby betrays its duty as a national institution to provide a common and inclusive meeting and educational space on the matter of human rights."

"I think what you're seeing with the Jewish Heritage Centre is the manifestation of a fundamental breach of trust by the Canadian Museum of Human Rights."

"The factual, historical context of events surrounding the 'Nakba' are not just one story."

"In my father's founding vision of the purpose of the Museum he never had a problem with the telling of the whole story, which includes the displacement and expulsion of over 800,000 Jews who were living in Arab countries and, perhaps most importantly, that a lot of what happened was triggered by the fact that many Arab countries declared war and tried to conquer and eliminate Israel in 1948." 

David Asper, Winnipeg lawyer, businessman, trustee, Asper Foundation 

Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present  opening June 2026, Canadian Museum for Human Rights

 

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights has gone the way of all public institutions in Canada -- from the very Liberal-led government itself, to all its constituent arms of public service, from academia to unions, news media and museums throughout the country, to portray Palestinians as victims of a cruel apartheid occupation. Taking their cue from the United Nations which designated Palestinians and their offspring as perpetual refugees, the Palestinian narrative of victimhood has resonated in its pathos everywhere that kind hearts and malevolent sentiments fall victim themselves to an ongoing parody of human rights.

 

Arab Palestinians have from the very moment the United Nations announced its Partition Plan in 1947 refused the offer of a state of their own, just as they refused to acknowledge Israel's inherited ancestral right to accept that offer of two states side by side. With encouragement and incitement from the Arab world in the Middle East that refusal has lasted a lifetime and for generation after generation. Simply put all the countries of the Middle East, Islamic to the core, refused to tolerate the presence of a Jewish state in their midst, ancient and authentic as it is.

 

Bearing in mind that many Palestinians did not leave Israel, preferring to remain to this day where they have full citizenship, voting rights, occupy positions in the judiciary, in Israel's parliament, in the medical and law professions, making up 20 percent of the entire population. Circassians, Druze, Bedouin, Christians, Kurds, B'hai, and other minority groups are part of Israeli citizenry with full and equal rights. In contrast, no Jews are welcome in Palestinian areas of the West Bank or Gaza to the point of death. Palestinian leaders have over the years and continue to refuse to recognize Israel's right of existence.

 

Over the years countless opportunities arose for negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian authorities to reach an agreement for the side-by-side existence of two states; Israeli and Palestinians. While Israel has time and again made conciliatory concessions, the Palestinian side has made no concessions whatever. Instead Palestinian governments have incited their populations to hatred of Jews and Israel, infusing in them a raging will to violence, convinced that only by destroying Israel and taking possession of the entire geography will a Palestinian state be feasible. 

 

None of which makes them legitimate candidates for human rights victimhood to be forever memorialized in a museum whose function is to educate and highlight for the public at large authentic instances of human right abuses and the victims thereof. The new exhibit set to become permanent at the Museum for Human Rights in the spring of the coming year is entitled 'Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present'. Its purpose is to focus on the Palestinian 'experience' during the creation of Israel and the following Arab-Israeli war. 

 

The exhibit is an insult to reality and an assault on historical accuracy.

 

Isha Khan, CEO of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, said the Palestine Uprooted exhibit is still in development and will get the same academic and curatorial rigour as all exhibits. (CBC)

 

As for the estimated 750,000 Arab Palestinians who fled in anticipation of returning once the fledgling Jewish state was pummelled into nothingness by the combined Arab armies that marched to destroy it but failed, they have swelled in numbers to 6 million over the years, with their diaspora settling everywhere in the West engaged in slandering the State of Israel and infecting the minds of the populations wherever they settle against Jews, offering the poisoned chalice of antisemitism everywhere. 

 

And while the UN and popular opinion fixate on the 750,000 Arabs who fled with Israel's 1948 declaration of statehood, the 850,000 Jews that forcibly became refugees from Arab lands at Israel's reappearance are ignored.  

"[When the CIJA learned about the museum's intention to profile the experiences of refugees from the 1948 Arab-Israeli War], we immediately engaged with the Museum's leadership."

"We offered to convene leading experts to help ensure that any exhibit presents a balanced, fact-based, and comprehensive narrative, one that reflects the experiences of all refugees, including the more than 850,000 Jews forcibly displaced from long-established communities across the Middle East and North Africa." 

"As currently framed, the proposed direction will deliver an incomplete and unbalanced narrative, one that omits Jewish refugee experiences entirely and will carry reputational consequences for the Museum."

"To ensure the Museum fulfills its mandate, we have requested information from its leadership about the exhibit's content, framing, objectives, and development process, before any further steps are taken."

"We are actively working with our community and with partner institutions across Canada to demand accountability."

Gustavo Zentner, vice-president, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs 

 

Remembrance Day Disharmony in School 'Inclusivity'

"Over the last few days our school has been the focus of significant public attention due to the recent Remembrance Day events. This has resulted in a  high volume of incoming messages to the school as well as some graffiti on the outside of the school property."

"Fortunately, there has not been any significant disruption to our usual routines and learning environment, thanks in large part to the incredible work of our staff who have continued to focus on our students' educational needs and emotional well-being amidst the external pressures."

"We are committed to providing a safe and supportive learning environment where all students feel respected and valued. We are actively working with central school board staff to monitor the situation."

Sir Robert Borden High School Principal Aaron Hobbs

 

"I think they are in general just protesting [demonstration by pro-Palestinian groups in front of her constituency office] but they also want to oppose my position on the inappropriate song on Remembrance Day." 

"I support their right to protest and I am thankful they chose my [riding] office [where their protest took place] and not Sir Robert Borden High School."

Lisa MacLeod, Conservative member of Ontario provincial parliament

Sir Robert Borden High School in Ottawa. Photo by Ashley Fraser/Postmedia

Fallout from Principal Hobbs' controversial decision to highlight an Arabic song -- associated with Palestinian support for the terrorist group Hamas in the wake of its violent incursion into southern Israel on October 7, 2023, when thousands of terrorists went on a campaign of gross carnage in mass rape, mutilation, slaughter of Israeli children, men and women and hostage-taking as a 'just' reaction to the Israeli 'occupation' of Gaza in self-protection against its violent predatory mission to destroy the Jewish state -- featured at Canada's solemn Remembrance Day ceremony at the school, is ongoing.

 

That the school principal viewed it as 'inclusive' to feature an Arabic-language Palestinian song throughout the day's ceremonies at the school, was at the very least an 'exclusion' exercise, in the reality that the school hosts a large number of Jewish students, who were puzzled at the inappropriateness of introducing something so obviously political and one-sided to a ceremony dedicated to the memory of Canadian soldiers who fell in military duty to defend and protect democracy against the forces of fascism.

 

That none of the teaching staff at the high school appear to have cautioned their principal against his decision to have the song played amidst the three presentations at the school for varying grade levels is itself peculiar. The principal initially explained that it was one of the teachers who had suggested that the song might be a good fit for the ceremonies taking place at the school for Remembrance Day. What has resulted days later is the discovery that someone vandalized the school sign with large red lettering reading "Hamas High". 

"We acknowledge that Remembrance Day is a solemn occasion, where the focus should remain on honouring those who have sacrificed their lives for the freedoms we hold dear."

"The inclusion of a song that could be seen as politically charged was not in line with the values of respect and unity that we strive to uphold at this school."

School Principal Aaron Hobbs

The controversy ensuing from the principal's poorly-thought-out, and obvious political messaging saw condemnation from parents whose children attend the school, as well as local, regional and national politicians. The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board has launched an investigation into the incident as the principal, expressing mortification and remorse reiterated that his purpose was to extend to the entire school population a spirit of 'inclusion'; a woke sentiment that seldom works well in its canted practise. 

 

A demonstration by pro-Palestinian groups was planned for the school,  which social media posts publicized as a rally to end "anti-Palestinian racism", and to "stand in solidarity with the students" following the principal's issuance of a public apology for deciding to include the Arabic protest song as a feature of Remembrance Day at the school. Other parents from the school planned for a counter- demonstration to walk their children home through the protest. The Ottawa Police Service were present to ensure an orderly and peaceful event took place. 

 

The location of the rally changed and shifted outside the constituency office of outspoken member of provincial parliament Lisa MacLeod whose riding it is. She had spoken for the principal to be fired in response to his 'inclusivity' venture. The demonstration resulted in no untoward incidents although police recommended that the riding office be closed during the demonstration. 

 

During the initial event when Jewish students asked for an explanation from the school principal for the reason and purpose of the change, he had responded it had been his intention to open up the ceremony that is usually only about "a white guy who has done something related to the military".  An expression of gross misrepresentation, making light of the sacrifice of thousands of Canadians.

"Remembrance Day is a solemn time to pay tribute to Canadian veterans."

"Including a song associated with one side of an ongoing foreign conflict -- especially one currently contributing to division and tension in our communities -- reflects poor judgement for a public school setting."

Jewish Federation of Ottawa

Graffiti on the sign at Sir Robert Borden High School in Ottawa following a Remembrance Day controversy. Photo by X

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)

Excoriating Israel for Genocidal Intent

"Since we can't hope for anything morally courageous from most of the faculty, the best hope we have is to seek to defund the universities, to call for the resignation of their weak-kneed presidents, and to fix the broken hiring system in which a single ideology [and not merit] determines who is in and who is out."

"We must find a better way forward, and not just on campus. As the pro-Hamas fores make blatant use of Jew-hatred, they are testing how far they can go in upending our liberal values."

"If we don't stop them now, this will only be the start of a forced march on the road to much, much worse."

"All of this has its source in an ideology that has gripped the minds of the vast majority of university professors, a neo-Marxist ideology that despises the values of liberal democratic society on which our freedoms are based." 

"We now have a choice. Do we allow the pro-Hamas mobs to take over our campuses? It is painful to observe the students in the encampments serving as 'useful idiots', to see the faculty largely become deluded supporters deceived by an ideology; and to discover that the administrators are weak appeasers. This is clear in their pathetic attempts to 'negotiate' with the campus occupiers by bribing them with faculty positions and student scholarships."

Kenneth Green, professor, Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto

Pro-Hamas Encampment, University of Toronto, Globe & Mail

The new 'normal' that has arisen since October 7's Hamas atrocities in southern Israel is one that constitutes a nightmare for Jews in the diaspora where throughout Europe and North America, a tidal wave of antisemitism has surfaced that, in its bold authenticity has shocked and terrorized Jews everywhere. World Jewry since the Second World War sought comfort in the belief that their enormous sacrifice on the altar of Jew-hate would never, ever recur.

 

The world, in the face of the open secret of the death camps, the gas chambers and the ovens that incinerated Jewish corpses to ashes filtered through those giant belching chimneys to sprinkle human ash like fertilizer over the agricultural fields of Europe chose to do nothing, to remain oblivious to the death throes of European Jewry. A chastened world, shocked by the visual evidence of what they knew was occurring, offered a palliative in the UN's decision to permit a re-awakened State of Israel.

Now that same world has turned upon the Jewish State, repeating what a terrorist group has disseminated, that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians. Those Arab communities who named themselves Palestinians, the ancient Roman Occupation word to describe Judean lands administered by Rome, and whose agenda was to claim heritage Palestinian designation as a legitimate Arab-Palestinian state where Israel sits.

It is a narrative that has no basis in reality, one which documented history, ascribing ancestral heritage to Jews who originated in the Middle East as the authentic indigenous people of the region validates. Yet by identifying themselves as victims of Jewish aggression, while in actuality acting out as terrorists whose goal is to embark on never-ending deadly assaults against Jews and Israel, claiming them as oppressors and themselves as beleaguered threatened people of peace, the Western world's progressive left has taken up their cudgel to beat Israel.

Their appeal to the professional and trade unions of the West, eagerly grasping the narrative of 'occupier', 'settlers' and 'indigenous people', the struggle of the underdog against the capitalist threat of the 'colonialists' has led to the snarling references to Israeli 'genocide' against a powerless people deprived of their birthright, ventilating fullblown antisemitism under the canopy of human rights being defiled by a greedy colonialist entity depriving Palestinians of what is rightfully theirs.

Palestinian terrorists crossing the fence separating Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip from surrounding Israeli settlements on October 7, 2023. (Photo by Stringer/APA Images)

And so, there are school encampments throughout the West, demands that universities condemn the Israeli genocidaires, that academic cooperation with Israel be cancelled, that investments and collaboration be cancelled in the name of upholding human rights. The October 7 atrocities interpreted as a just and admirably courageous assertion of the Palestinian right of self-defence, not the sadistic savagery for which there is abundant visual evidence recorded by the Hamas murderers themselves. 

Despite that Palestinian terrorists in their thousands swarmed across the border from Gaza into southern Israel in a well-planned and -orchestrated bloodbath of dreadful proportions, accompanied by mass rapes, the murder of infants and children, burning alive of entire families in their torched homes, the deliberately exacting mutilation of girls and women before their execution after rapes, are all justified as the uprising of a people dominated by a military that refuses them a state of their own.

That would be the state that Palestinian leaders rejected in 1948 and consistently thereafter every time an attempt at negotiations took place between Israel and the Palestinians. Who, while piteously declaring to the West that all they want is their fair share in a two-state 'solution', continue to plan their brutal attacks on Israel and its people to achieve the real agenda of clearing the region of the Jewish State to declare it forthwith a sole Palestinian State.

Whereas Israel has given citizenship and equality to Palestinians within Israel representing 20 percent of its population, the Palestinian leadership, both the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas governing Gaza, have made it clear that not one Jew would remain alive in the Palestinian Territories. And it is to these antagonists of Israel to whom the West gives their unalloyed support while giving wan lip service to the right of Israel's existence as a sovereign state.

An elderly Palestinian man raises a national flag as youths shout slogans during a protest in the southern Gaza Strip. (AFP)

A terrorist group that has committed its version of a genocidal effort to complete what the Holocaust started can characterize Israel as a genocidal state planning to eliminate Palestinians in their entirety, and that assertion is accepted and echoed by Western academics both of Palestinian/Arab/Muslim derivation and non-Arab, Marxist-inspired faculty at universities, upholding the free speech entitlements of non-student organizers and university students to hold a school in ransom to their negative-Israel demands. 

Academics, Jewish and non-Jewish risk being labelled as 'Islamophobic' and 'racist' by asserting the right of Israel to exist, by declaring Palestinian terrorist groups be recognized for what they are, by demanding the disassembling of the university campus encampments with their antisemitic themes, threats and verbal and physical intimidation against any and all who fail to agree with their messaging. That government at any level, and school administrators are too cowardly or in agreement with the pro-Hamas protests to shut them down, is a condemnation of those who have abandoned the democratic values of their own heritage and culture.

"Anti-Palestinian Racism" at York University, Hotbed of Anti-Israel Racism

"[York University pledges to take] proactive steps to fight racial inequity [which cannot be done unless administrators actively commit to isolate and destroy the Zionist] settler colonial project."

"The struggle for Palestinian self-determination will support the liberation of all humans and non-humans [sic] from colonial oppression." 

"It is the systematic and structural denial of the Palestinian right to self-determination and national liberation, and the collective existence of the Palestinian people, while upholding Zionism."

"Zionism is a settler colonial project and ethno-religious ideology in service of a system of Western imperialism that upholds global white supremacy."

"Academic freedom allows us to comment and critique on historically and philosophically relevant topics in context and allows for the pursuit of truth and fulfillment of university objectives."

"We propose that the department advocate for a more transparent and effective University process for handling complaints and violations of the code of conduct, including reparatory justice and/or grounds for suspension or removal for individuals who violate the code of conduct and community safety standards."

Department of Politics Palestine Solidarity Committee document

Students at York University drop a banner calling for a walk out in solidarity with Gazans. Credit: Palestine Solidarity Collective/Instagram

"[York University is becoming a landscape of] surveillance, fear, intimidation and repression [for anyone advocating] Palestinian liberation. [Faculty members] should not be pressured to condemn Hamas."

"More students have expressed or reported feeling that the university has become an unsafe environment."

"[Any defence of Israel must be viewed as] anti-Palestinian, Islamophobic, and anti-Arab."

York University faculty committee, Department of Politics

York University in Toronto has devoted itself to the loving care of the sensibilities and sensitivities of their Palestinian students, amidst a larger concern at the university over the plight of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank who have attempted mightily over the last 70 years and more to  uproot the presence of Jews and the State of Israel, labelling them as 'occupiers' on their own historical, well- documented ancestral land which the Arab migrants from Syria, Jordan and Egypt, purloining the ancient Roman-occupation-era designation of 'Palestine' -- as a province of Jews for administrative purposes -- for their very own, extend that 'ownership' to the land Israel sits on, as well.

These are the Palestinians who declare themselves descendant of history's Philistines and in the sense that the word is used today philosophically , they certainly are, in character if not in historical context. The fairly recent trend in immigration, refugee acceptance and illegal migration that has gifted Canada with a large Arab/Muslim population has resulted in the Palestinian propaganda machine working diligently to defame Israel and frame Canadian Jews as undesirables. And whereas Jews in Canada have never undertaken a campaign to discredit and isolate that Arab/Muslim population, the latter has been labouring overtime to succeed in doing just that to the much smaller Jewish-Canadian population.

Antisemitism and the pejoratives usually applied to Jews anywhere are not new, but the rigour with which this campaign of several years' standing -- accelerated after the Hamas terrorist incursion into Israel with its horrendous savagery imposed upon civilians and still-ongoing retention as hostages of Israeli children, women and the elderly -- speaks volumes of the group-characteristics of a violent people who cloak themselves in the guise of victims of Israeli/Jewish 'genocide'.

The large and growing presence of this discordant blight upon Canada's traditional intake of immigrants from around the world has drawn out the latent antisemitism in Canadian society to a formidable degree causing Canadian Jews to feel uprooted psychologically yet again by the preponderance of prejudice and racial/religious/ethnic/cultural winds of suspicion and hate they see being played out in street demonstrations, extolling the 'human rights' of Palestinian terrorists to 'resist' an 'occupation' that resulted from Palestinian violence against Jews.

Verbal contortions and the invention of 'truths' that re-write history and reality are grasped gratefully by those comfortable with their own brand of antisemitism, layered over with the sanctimony of a sudden love affair for Palestinians, felt to be justified by their aggressive historical and cultural inaccuracies from a hymnal not that different from the one conventional/traditional antisemites sing from. The convenience of citing Critical Race Theory, and the comfort of snuggling into Diversity, Equality and Inclusion gives additional impetus to the smug who declare themselves defenders of human rights while denying Israel's right of existence.

A "recommendations report" dated April 5 from the political committee devoted to the defense of Palestinians, within the Department of Politics at York University proposed Israel cannot be defended since its very existence is "anti-Palestinian", "Islamophobic" and "anti-Arab". Henceforth they declared, any acknowledgement of the very existence of Israel represents evidence of "anti-Palestinian racism". It is not, needless to say, racist to declare the existence of Israel forbidden.The Department of Politics Palestine Solidarity Committee issued its 9-page document with great self-congratulation.

While it is the beleaguered Jewish students suffering isolation, threats and fear of violence, this committee engages in the kind of contorted hyperbole that conflates fear and  isolation not to the threatened Jewish students but to the Palestinian students who are the source of the threats against their Jewish student counterparts. The committee approved a faculty mandate a month following the Hamas assault on southern Israel to draft "a departmental definition of anti-Palestinian racism". 

As to the sacred principles of academic freedom and free speech, it is made abundantly clear that anyone supporting Israel, working with Israeli academics or having any connection however slight to Israel, is not similarly entitled to free speech. The purpose of the document is to advocate "severing ties with Zionist departments and institutions", and to impose a complete commercial boycott on anything that can be construed as having a link to Israel. Even recommending the boycott of Aroma and Starbucks coffee companies, both headquartered in the US, with no Israeli ownership or management.

The document makes it clear to the Department of Politics at York University that York's crisis of "anti-Palestinian racism" cannot be fought without the issuance of a departmental statement endorsing a boycott of Israel in support of "the struggle for Palestinian liberation".

 

The document by a York University Department of Politics committee makes it clear that the principles of “academic freedom” and “free speech” should not apply to anybody supportive of Israel or having any peripheral connection to Israel whatsoever. Photo by Tyler Anderson/National Post