Protester accuses Israel of genocide. Carney nods

He published a fiery op ed against the Freedom Convoy, but none against the rising tide of antisemitism

Well, I admit I didn’t see that one coming. I’m referring, of course, to Mark Carney’s gaffe at a Calgary campaign stop, where he responded to a protester’s yell that there was a “genocide” going on in Gaza, with agreement — “I know” — and a further sop, “I’m aware. That is why we have an arms embargo (against Israel).”

In other, not unrelated news, describing their findings as “haunting levels of antisemitism,” B’nai Brith Canada has released its 2024 audit of hatred targeting Jews. The reported 6,219 incidents — a 124.6 increase from 2022, and on average 17 incidents per day — are the highest documented since the audit’s debut in 1982. The report doesn’t provide information about those responsible for the incidents.

Alarmingly, there’s evidence that anti-Israel groups are organized and funded in Canada. What does Carney plan to do about that?

A report by NGO Monitor titled, “The NGO Network Driving Antisemitism in Canada,” found that the dramatic increase in violent antisemitism was “concurrent with an increase in activity by an interconnected and coordinated network of NGOs, whose campaigns of anti-Israel demonization, antisemitism, and intimidation create a hostile environment throughout Canada.” The report also noted that “a number of the leading groups are linked to Palestinian terror organizations and hide their sources of funding.” Worse, of 111 groups that were analyzed, the report found that 29 receive federal or provincial funding and 38 are registered as businesses or charities with Canada Revenue Agency.

It’s possible that groups like these are behind anti-Israel disruptors like the one who appeared at Carney’s event and the several who showed up at Freeland’s during the Liberal leadership campaign where there were close to 20 disruptions.

Are we in “emergency” territory yet on the antisemitism file? Carney has given no indication he believes we are presently witnessing a society in cultural crisis. But we have evidence for what he does consider a civic emergency.

The 2022 Ottawa Freedom Convoy encampment inspired an op ed by an impassioned Mark Carney for the Globe & Mail. In it, he wrote, many Ottawans felt “terrorized.” He inveighed against the convoy as “sedition,” “beginning anarchy,” an “insurrection.” But none of these fear-mongering words are in any objective sense applicable to the trucker protest, just as the word “genocide” — a Hamas-sourced accusation — is objectively inapplicable to Israel. (The president of the International Court of Justice, Judge Joan Donoghue, has stipulated on numerous occasions that the court “didn’t decide that the claim of genocide was plausible.”)

Carney published his fiery 2022 op ed 10 days into a protest in one city, but not one in an 18-month (and counting) rollout of organized anti-Israel hate fests across the nation.

Carney has not been completely silent on antisemitism. In February, for one of a few examples, Carney did condemn an attack on a Montreal synagogue. He wrote on X (not quite as dignified or meaningful as an op ed in a national newspaper): “This reprehensible vandalism is another reminder that Jewish Canadians have been targeted by a rising wave of antisemitism, particularly since October 7th. It has to stop.…”

“Reprehensible” is a prim and bloodless contrast to “anarchy.” This is Carney in characteristic calm and collected mode. Where is yesteryear’s discourse of outrage? I don’t accuse Carney of antisemitism, but of double standards. He experienced the hate-free, violence-free working-class trucker protest viscerally, as a personal affront calling for disproportionate retaliation, yet remains aloof from a hate-drenched actual threat to an identifiable group that includes actual violence.

And what does Carney mean by the self-distancing locution, “(the rising wave of antisemitism) has to stop”? Stop itself? Divine intervention? He writes that we must “say firmly and loudly that the Jewish community has the right to feel safe in Canada.” “Say”? That’s not a plan. That’s virtue-signalling.

Pierre Poilievre, by contrast, knows the difference between a genocidally-motivated terror group’s pogrom on innocent civilians and a democratic ally’s military response to it, conducted according to international laws of war. Poilievre understands the gravity of the supremacist ideology driving the anti-Israel hate rallies, that they are a threat to all Canadians: Jews today, western civilization tomorrow. So did — does — Stephen Harper. Which is why he vowed Canada would support Israel, a bastion against this movement, “through fire and water.” Poilievre is his rightful heir on that front.

Poilievre is a leader on the antisemitism file. His plan of action to quell the gathering passions possibly seeking an outlet in European-level violence would: “defund” those with a “woke anti-Semitic agenda,” including at universities receiving federal funding; crack down “on all terrorist networks that Trudeau has allowed on our streets”; pass laws against “perpetuating radicalism in our streets”; and much more.

It takes political courage to side openly with Israel because, as Harper once noted at a conference against antisemitism, there are “a lot more votes in being anti-Israel than in taking a stand.” That was true 15 years ago when he said it, and it’s exponentially truer today. Of the two contenders, only Pierre Poilievre has demonstrated that courage.