RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.thefp.com/p/explosion-of-jew-hate-in-canada-trudeau-israel-palestine?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

There has been a 670% increase in antisemitic incidents in the past year. ‘It was like a dam burst.’ What happened and why? The Free Press investigates.We rarely run pieces this long. But today’s investigation—the story of how antisemitism became deeply embedded in Justin Trudeau’s Canada—called for it. This is a piece worth reading carefully. It is relevant not just to our many Canadian readers, but to anyone invested in the future of the West. —Bari Weiss
‘The Denial Is What’s Painful’
For Sarah Rugheimer, a professor of astronomy at York University in Toronto, the first sign of the virulent strain of antisemitism now embedded in Justin Trudeau’s Canada appeared on a lamppost.

It was a few weeks after the Hamas massacre of last October 7. Rugheimer, 41, was walking in a park near her home in the city’s quiet Cedarvale neighborhood when she saw a poster of the Israeli hostage Elad Katzir, a 47-year-old farmer from Kibbutz Nir Oz, covered with swastikas.

In the days that followed, as the war raged in Gaza, swastikas turned up all over Cedarvale. They also started appearing on the York campus, where Rugheimer serves as the Allan I. Carswell Chair for the Public Understanding of Astronomy. As fall turned to winter, a swastika showed up in the snow outside the campus building where she works.

An astrophysicist with a particular interest in the origins of life on Earth and the possibility of life on other planets, Rugheimer tended to confine her worldly concerns to scientific matters. So the swastikas came as a shock. But worse was to come.

She grew up in Montana, and her academic career took her around the world—from a PhD in astronomy and astrophysics at Harvard University to Scotland, England, and now Canada. But until taking up her post at York University two years ago, Rugheimer said she’d never encountered any overt antisemitism. Nor had she given much thought to her identity as a Zionist: Like the vast majority of Jews around the world, Rugenheimer believes in Israel’s right to exist.

Jew-hatred was a phenomenon of the fringes, she reckoned. “It wasn’t on my radar,” she told me. Now, it’s everywhere. “Every week there is a major incident in Canada, and multiple minor ones every day in my neighborhood.”

It was what was happening inside her university that disturbed her the most.

York’s student unions issued a declaration just after the attack calling the barbarism of October 7 a “justified and necessary” act of resistance against settler colonialism, genocide, and apartheid. The student groups found widespread support among York’s professors—some of whom Rugheimer considered friends.

A politics department faculty committee demanded the university enforce a definition of “anti-Palestinian racism” that encompassed any expression of sympathy for the right of Israelis to exist within their own state: “Zionism is a settler colonial project and ethno-religious ideology in service of a system of Western imperialism that upholds global white supremacy.”

She was shocked by the declarations, and the defaced posters, and the swastikas. But for Rugheimer there was something worse. “The denial is what’s painful,” Rugheimer said.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21195/rebottled-jew-hate-boycott

“Since October 7 [2023], a sort of quiet boycott of Israeli researchers has begun, of the kind that has never been seen before. This boycott is reflected in the cancellation of invitations to joint conferences, the rejection of articles for publication, the rejection of grants to Israeli researchers, and more.” — Israel’s National Council for Civilian Research and Development, December 2023.

“Antisemitism was always premised on redefining Jewish existence as unnatural and artificial. Jews were being denounced as colonizers as far back as the days of Pharaoh…. The Jews, being Semites, do not belong in Europe. The Jews, being European, do not belong in Israel. The Jews, being Zionists, do not belong at progressive institutions like Harvard or Columbia. And the Jews, being occupiers, do not belong in London…. it’s not about Israel [but] has everything to do with the Jews.” — Daniel Greenfield, journalist, JNS, August 24 2024.

At this time of international turmoil, the world needs expertise and wisdom from the finest minds and great statesmen, including the Jewish ones. It is to the detriment of Western civilization and society, should this millennia-old generational excellence be denied to the West at this dark time of post-truth, post-morality and spreading barbarism, especially in the West.

Today’s calls in the West to boycott Israelis and Jews are systemic and indicate a widespread aggressive agenda globally to erase Jewish influence in academia, science, technology and culture. The true explanation for these boycott initiatives, it seems, is one of deep-seated Jew-hatred within various Western societies.

Somewhat covertly, in November 2024, Ayelet Shaked, a former Israeli Minister of Justice, was shockingly denied permission to enter Australia for the purpose of participating in a conference discussing current Middle East events. The conference was hosted by the Australia Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), and intended to be a Jewish community event.

Colin Rubenstein, executive director of AIJAC, denounced the visa denial, made without a reason being disclosed at the time, by Australian Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke. In Rubenstein’s view, “The decision to refuse a visa to… Shaked on the grounds that she would vilify Australians and incite discord among the community is a disgraceful act of hostility towards a democratic ally.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/no-room-for-jews-in-jihad-cities/

Gideon Falter, the head of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, was standing on a London street watching a pro-Hamas mob pass. A Metropolitan Police approached him and warned him not to move. “At the moment sir, you are quite openly Jewish. This is a pro-Palestinian march. I’m not accusing you of anything, but I am worried about the reaction to your presence.”

Then the officer threatened to arrest the “openly Jewish” man if he did not leave.

Met Police Commissioner Mark Rowley defended the officer’s targeting of a Jewish man and described the “actions and intent of the officer” as being “in the best tradition of British police trying to prevent disorder.” The UK government expressed “confidence” in Rowley.

In Montreal, Rabbi Adam Scheier, the head of the largest Conservative Jewish congregation in the city, was shopping with his family when a pro-terrorist mob chanting slogans against Canada and Israel marched up the street “flanked by police protection”.

“The police approached me and asked me and my family to leave the area,” Rabbi Scheier describes. “I asked why we were given this directive, as we had not exchanged even one word with a protester. The only thing I am guilty of is shopping in downtown Montreal… while wearing a kippah.”

“The policeman explained to me that he was fearful of a ‘fire starting between the two sides.’ Apparently, my presence is deemed a sufficient provocation for removal, while their hateful chants are allowed to continue.”

In Toronto, Ezra Levant, a journalist and the founder of Rebel News, was arrested while filming a Hamas rally in the middle of a Jewish neighborhood in Toronto which promoted Yahya Sinwar, the dead leader of Hamas and displayed red triangles: a symbol for the call to murder Jews.

Police accused the Jewish journalist of breaching the peace and arrested him “in the interest of public safety” while claiming that his presence was “inciting the crowd”.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21185/jew-hunting-open-season

“We have become the Gaza of Europe. I will NOT accept that. NEVER. The authorities will be held accountable for their failure to protect the Israeli citizens. Never again”. — Dutch MP Geert Wilders, X, November 8, 2024.

In Europe, saying that one is for the Palestinians has become the politically correct way of saying one loathes Israel and Jews.

So long as courageous politicians like Geert Wilders are pushed to the margins, the situation in Europe can only get worse. European political leaders are afraid of Muslim unrest and of losing potential votes. They have commensurately become increasingly anti-Israel. French President Emmanuel Macron urged completely stopping arms deliveries to Israel.

“Offering to negotiate with Islamic terrorists is a statement of weakness. Jihadists only offer to negotiate out of fear, weakness or to entrap us, and they assume we do the same thing. Nothing would ever convince them that we genuinely want to live in peace with them, or that we prefer alternatives to violence. So any time we offer to negotiate, they see it as weakness or a trick. If our diplomats ever understood this cultural reality, they would stop being baffled when the negotiations fall apart.” — Daniel Greenfield, Gatestone Institute, December 2, 2024.

On November 7 in Amsterdam, visiting Israeli soccer fans were chased through the streets, beaten, thrown to the ground, punched, kicked, stabbed, and thrown into the icy water of the city’s canals. While the attackers shout anti-Semitic slurs, the victims, in an attempt to escape, shout back that they are not Jewish. No one was arrested during or after the pogrom. The attackers were only put on buses and dropped off on the outskirts of the city. Pictured: Police officers chase rioters who attacked Jews and Israelis in Amsterdam on November 7, 2024. (Photo by Wahaj Bani Moufleh/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)

November 7. Amsterdam. As soon as a soccer match between the Netherlands’ AFC Ajax, a Dutch soccer club, and Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv ends, Maccabi supporters who came from Israel and several European countries to attend the match, are attacked. Many are chased through the streets, beaten, thrown to the ground, punched, kicked, stabbed, and thrown into the icy water of the city’s canals. While the attackers shout anti-Semitic slurs, the victims, in an attempt to escape, shout back that they are not Jewish.

The attackers film what they do, then post the videos on social networks. Five Israelis are hospitalized; dozens of others, some wounded, lock themselves for hours in their hotel rooms. The Israeli government sends planes to rescue the Jews. A jihadi pogrom has just taken place in the city where Anne Frank and her family hid until they were turned over to the German occupiers and sent to death camps.

“This is a very dark moment for the city, for which I am deeply ashamed,” said Femke Halsema, Amsterdam’s “left wing” mayor.