Many readers may have already read the essay by Canadian journalist Terry Glavin that was published in The Free Press only two days ago. It is a powerful, comprehensive chronicle about the extent to which antisemitism has encroached into and taken hold of “normal” life in Canada.
Entitled, The Explosion of Jew-Hate in Trudeau’s Canada, the essay is being widely shared through cyberspace. It is a seminal document. It is also a seminal marker, a discussion piece, and a starting point, as it were, depicting the degradation of Canadian civil and civic life since October 7, 2023. For it was on that day that the floodgates of hatred of Israel and of Jews spilled a crossfire of sources onto the public spaces of Canada.
Glavin’s story has a political bite. Not all readers will agree with his point of view. But it is hard to dispute the facts and the atmosphere that most of us see, hear and read about all around us. In the circumstances, the bite of disappointment and anger is warranted.
Gavin accurately describes one of the moods in the community. “This sort of despair [denying of what should be uncontroversial facts] has become a feature of everyday life for Jews across Canada who are experiencing open hatred—and yet are living under a government that appears either blind to it, paralyzed by it, or indifferent to it. Law enforcement in Canada is not blind. Quite the opposite. Officers want to do their jobs. What they say is that they lack the moral support from the political class to enforce the law. And that they cannot keep up with the volume of hate crimes—crimes that arise from a widespread ideology that has normalized the idea that “Zionists” anywhere are a fair target for attack.”
Gavin continues: “Rather than discovering how torn the fabric of their society has become, Canadian Jews are being forced to come to terms with just how deeply antisemitism has been woven into it. This is not a matter of anecdote or impression.
“There are about 40 million Canadians and roughly 350,000 of them are Jewish—representing less than 1 percent of the country’s population.
“Most Canadian Jews feel unsafe and victimized,” the University of Toronto sociologist Robert Brym concluded in an in-depth attitudinal survey of Canadians, undertaken in collaboration with EKOS Research, published earlier this year. “They perceive a rise in negative attitudes toward Jews in recent months and years. Most doubt the situation will improve.”
Glavin’s essay is important reading. We would add that it should be required reading by our elected officials at each of the three governmental levels.
GAJE brings the article to the attention of our supporters and readers for the same reason that the update last week dealt with the unsettling atmosphere for Jewish high school students attending the public school in Ottawa.
We need the government of Ontario – especially – to be aware of the true state of Canadian society as it pertains to Jews. Glavin documents the increasing, open, unembarrassedly-expressed hostility towards Jews. In response, as we noted last week, some Jewish parents are removing their children from public schools. For them it is a matter of the safety – physical, emotional and psychological – of their children.
Being Jewish in Ontario in 2024 is decidedly more fraught than it was in the mid 1980’s when the Government of Ontario decided to extend full public educational funding to children attending Catholic schools only and to no other denominational or independent school. Being Jewish in Ontario in 2024 is decidedly more fraught than it was in 1996 when the Supreme Court of Canada determined (in the Adler case) that Ontario’s discriminatory educational funding policy was legal.
It bears repeating, again, that the Adler decision did not preclude Ontario from funding other denominational schools in addition to the Catholic schools. Nor did the decision preclude Ontario from funding any independent schools in the province.
But since that decision in 1996, almost 30 years ago, the province resolutely refuses to do away with the educational funding discrimination, or even, to allow a discussion of its correctness in the courts. Not even the hatred against Jews and of Israel rolling so menacingly through our society today has moved the conscience of the provincial government.
We urge GAJE supporters and followers to share the Glavin essay with their MPP. Ask them if the burgeoning antisemitism alarms them. Ask them, if the proliferating antisemitism makes them feel worried for the future of our society. Ask them if they still support the decades-old educational funding discrimination against non-Catholic religious communities.
We appeal to the Members of the Legislature, to the government, to the cabinet, to the Minister of Education and to the Premier, finally, to bring fairness for the benefit all Ontario children in the public funding of their respective educations. If not today, in 2024, when the walls of democracy – and respect for all human rights, the very foundation of our governmental structure – are at risk of being worn down, then when?
The Glavin article can be accessed at:
https://www.thefp.com/p/explosion-of-jew-hate-in-canada-trudeau-israel-palestine
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If you wish to contribute to GAJE’s lawsuit for fairness in educational funding, please click here.
For further information, please contact Israel Mida at: imida1818@gmail.com
Charitable receipts for donations for income tax purposes will be issued by Mizrachi Canada. Your donations will be used for the sole purpose of underwriting the costs of the lawsuit.
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Shabbat shalom. Am Yisrael Chai
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)
December 13, 2024
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education 