Let’s not import hatred | The Press

Let’s walk. All together, united against hatred. Let us take to the streets as in France to denounce racism and more particularly anti-Semitism, which has experienced a dangerous resurgence since the Hamas attacks which sowed terror in Israel and triggered an even bloodier response in Gaza.

Unfortunately, Montreal has not escaped the wave of global hatred which has awakened the sinister memory of pogroms and the Holocaust.

Jewish schools targeted by gunfire.

A synagogue targeted by Molotov cocktails.

A lecturer at the University of Montreal who shouts in front of Jewish students “Go back to Poland!” » during a scuffle at Concordia University.

The sulphurous imam Adil Charkaoui who harangues a crowd of demonstrators gathered in the city center, proclaiming in Arabic: “Allah, take care of the enemies of the people of Gaza. Allah, identify them all, then exterminate them. And don’t spare any of them! »

All over the world, this same hatred of Jews stains the walls where Stars of David and graffiti glorifying Hitler have appeared.

This hatred also pollutes social networks, as evidenced by a video showing a group of teenagers who sing, in the middle of the Paris metro, an odious anti-Semitic chant: “Fuck the Jews and the grandmothers, we are Nazis and proud” .

If the Hamas-Israel conflict has caused a rise in anti-Semitism, we must realize that this is only a revealer of already well-entrenched prejudices. It is just an argument that has offered some form of legitimacy or rational explanation to those who have always hated Jews.

And they are many.

Here in Canada, even before the explosion of violence in Israel, Jews were the target of half of the hate crimes targeting religious communities, even though they only make up 1% of the population, according to Statistics Canada.

Today, hatred of Jews is rekindled by a false amalgamation.

We put all the Jews of the world in the same basket, assuming that those who have lived here for generations automatically approve of the policies of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, which continues to appropriate more and more Palestinian territory.

Nothing could be less true. Many Jews took part in demonstrations in support of the Palestinians after the bombings of Gaza.

Although deeply saddened by Hamas’s attack on Israel, many Jews are also appalled by Israel’s implacable response, explained Professor Emeritus Yakov M. Rabkin in the screens of our Dialogue section.¹.

Thus, we cannot hold Jews around the world responsible for the actions of the Israeli government, which is held in place thanks to the ultra-Orthodox and the far right. And even less subject them to hatred, fear, discrimination…

Another dangerous amalgam threatens the Jews as well as the members of the Arab-Muslim communities who are put in the same basket. The two communities are accused of importing foreign conflicts into their host land and of threatening social peace, by giving precedence to their religion rather than their citizenship.

Let’s instead look at the situation from the other end of the lens.

Away from the passions and suffering of the Middle East, the Jewish and Arab diasporas are well placed to play a positive role by managing to forge links and create spaces for dialogue to defuse the conflict.

To do this, we must reach out to everyone and denounce the violence on both sides.

In this regard, the commissioner for the fight against racism and systemic discrimination of the City of Montreal, Bochra Manaï, missed a great opportunity to be useful. While the wave of anti-Semitic acts swept through Montreal, she was conspicuously absent, hidden behind an alleged duty of reserve with variable geometry which did not prevent her from taking a stand on social networks for the Palestinian cause.

Confidence is seriously shaken.

To fight against racism and anti-Semitism at home, why not start with a march like the one that brought together 182,000 French people last weekend? A transpartisan gesture would send a message of solidarity to Jews here who live in fear.

We experienced the trauma of the great mosque of Quebec. We do not want to experience another one in a Montreal synagogue.

Let’s not forget that at the turn of the millennium, terrorists plotted to detonate a megabomb in a tanker truck, at the corner of Parc and Laurier avenues, in the heart of Outremont, a neighborhood that is home to a significant Hasidic Jewish community. The man ultimately preferred to target the Los Angeles airport, before being intercepted at the American border in a vehicle filled with explosives.

All this makes you shudder.

We do not want to import violence into our country. So, let’s take to the streets to stand up against hatred. Let’s walk.