There’s no excuse for Jewish witch hunts in Canada

The ostensible reason for all this naming and shaming was to alert the public to the pressing need to banish these bad actors from the Ontario Camps Association (OCA) and for the not-for-profit camps to have their government funding stripped. But even that wasn’t enough for this groups: in their view,  the OCA’s leadership needed to be purged first. For as it turns out, the association’s “Zionist” leadership had the audacity to accept the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism (the same one the federal government officially adopted in 2019) and to cite leading Jewish organizations B’nai Brith, CIJA, and Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Remembrance in its own resources. Nothing “problematic” about “connection to Jewish identity,” of course. One suspects this group would feel genuinely aggrieved if someone called them antisemites. And they likely believe they are not. But all the usual tropes are there: the conspiracy, the misuse of public funds, the exploitation of political power, and the dual loyalty. The authors of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion must be marvelling from their graves at the longevity of their mean-spirited stupidities. This same vicious game could—though obviously should not—be played with other minority groups in Canada. For example, an April 2025 study of Russian Canadians found that while approximately 20 percent of Canadians strongly agree or somewhat agree that Russia’s war in Ukraine is a means of protecting its legitimate political interests, the number jumps to 44 percent for Russian Canadians under age 35 and a walloping 57 percent for older ones. A mere 23 percent of older Russian Canadians view democracy as a “very good form of government” (compared to 48 percent for older Canadians overall). When asked to rate their willingness to accept non-binary individuals on a scale of one to 10, more than half of Canadians said they would, with an average score higher than seven. Among Russian Canadians, more than two-thirds of those 35 and over gave a score of three or lower, and among the younger generation, the score was an average of four. No doubt these heterodox ideas about war, democracy, and gender are discussed in Russian Orthodox churches, community centres, language schools, and other cultural institutions. Many speakers at these venues likely express views that are in line with those of their community. But should those beliefs inspire righteous Canadians to hunt Russian Canadians online, take names of religious and cultural institutions, guest speakers and funding sources, and turn them into pariahs based on tangential associations or carefully curated social media posts? Of course not. Decent people don’t do these things because they recognize that in a nation as culturally, religiously, and ideologically diverse as Canada, that kind of behaviour tends to create a society in which everyone is at each other’s throats. Moreover, when one peddles enough strident moral outrage, at some point, what usually follows is violence. Indeed, in the wake of the Bondi Beach massacre, the Global Imams Council noted “this terrorist attack must also be understood as a warning to other democracies, including Canada.” The Imams went on to quote Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who claimed, “Sydney is a warning. Toronto has the same ingredients: a feckless, cowardly elite and deepening Islamist penetration, driving Jew hatred to levels Canada has not seen in modern times.” Revolutionaries are nothing if not restless. Just as the Jacobins, Bolsheviks, and Iranian revolutionaries acquired a relentless appetite for ever-expanding categories of victims, the “globalize the Intifada” crowd is going further afield in their search for Zionists to hound. It’s hard to know whether the targeting of Jewish camps and Jewish members of the OCA’s leadership was inspired by another odious project that collected names of Canadians who served in the IDF, which was bad enough, topped only by the same group’s follow-up work on “Zionist” synagogues and Jewish schools. But what is abundantly clear is that the effort to make Jewish life in Canada intolerable now extends to Jewish children who are living away from their parents’ protection. If the architects of these campaigns are seeking the most compelling case for an unapologetically Jewish state, they need only look in the mirror.