I can say for Israelis, many of them are amused and baffled when they hear that there are people in Canada who call Israel a “white settler colonial state.”
It comes as a surprise to descendants of Holocaust refugees. It comes as a surprise to Jews of Ethiopian descent and of Iraqi and Tunisian and Algerian and Moroccan descent that our multicultural, multiethnic, democratic state in the Jewish ancestral homeland gets called a white settler colonial state by people around the world and in places like Canada and the United States.
It’s the best definition we have and what we’re seeing since October 7, with the horrific outburst of antisemitism that has left Jews in Canada feeling scared and intimidated, is that anti-Zionism, antisemitism — these theoretical debates — are irrelevant for all intents and purposes. Those who are calling for the destruction of the Jewish state, those who are calling for the destruction of the country that is home to half of the Jews in the world, are calling for violence and persecution against Jews, and they’re going after Jewish targets in the diaspora as well.
They see them all the same, and this is a fight that we cannot allow them to win when you see people accusing Israel of every crime under the sun. And you see the protests against Israel are not really about Israel. They say it’s about police brutality, and about LGBT rights and about climate justice.
What they’re doing is slipping into the same patterns of antisemitic thinking, which has always been to say: all the problems in the world have one common root. That root is the Jews.
If you fix the problem of the Jews, you fix the problems of the world. That is what we see now with the demonization of Israel and Israelis. With the attempt to paint Israel as being involved with everything that is wrong with the world. It’s the same antisemitic pattern that says, “If only we deal with the Jews, if only we fix that problem, we’ll redeem the world.”
If you are at the encampment because you genuinely support the terrorists who burned people alive at a music festival and you want them to do it again and you see the barbaric acts of sexual violence as glorious resistance, I have nothing to say to you. You are not someone I can speak to. You are an enemy, and I think that society needs to shun you and expose you.
To the extent there are people who are protesting because they don’t like this war, and they want it to go away, I’ll say, you know who really wants this war to go away? Young people in Israel. They’re the ones who’ve been drafted into (the army) reserves. And now they’re having to fight because a terrorist army invaded their country, burned people alive and abducted hostages into the Gaza Strip.
We want this war to go away. We want to live in peace. But we realize, if we do not, defeat the terrorist army that did this, there will be a next time and it will be worse. We’re not going to abandon the hostages in the Hamas terror dungeons no matter how many times you tear down hostage posters to try to make people forget that they are still there.
It comes as a surprise to descendants of Holocaust refugees. It comes as a surprise to Jews of Ethiopian descent and of Iraqi and Tunisian and Algerian and Moroccan descent that our multicultural, multiethnic, democratic state in the Jewish ancestral homeland gets called a white settler colonial state by people around the world and in places like Canada and the United States.
It’s the best definition we have and what we’re seeing since October 7, with the horrific outburst of antisemitism that has left Jews in Canada feeling scared and intimidated, is that anti-Zionism, antisemitism — these theoretical debates — are irrelevant for all intents and purposes. Those who are calling for the destruction of the Jewish state, those who are calling for the destruction of the country that is home to half of the Jews in the world, are calling for violence and persecution against Jews, and they’re going after Jewish targets in the diaspora as well.
They see them all the same, and this is a fight that we cannot allow them to win when you see people accusing Israel of every crime under the sun. And you see the protests against Israel are not really about Israel. They say it’s about police brutality, and about LGBT rights and about climate justice.
What they’re doing is slipping into the same patterns of antisemitic thinking, which has always been to say: all the problems in the world have one common root. That root is the Jews.
If you fix the problem of the Jews, you fix the problems of the world. That is what we see now with the demonization of Israel and Israelis. With the attempt to paint Israel as being involved with everything that is wrong with the world. It’s the same antisemitic pattern that says, “If only we deal with the Jews, if only we fix that problem, we’ll redeem the world.”
Former Israel spokesperson Eylon Levy on foolish progressive support for Hamas terrorists — National Post
'I can say for Israelis, many of them are amused and baffled when they hear that there are people in Canada who call Israel a “white settler colonial state”'
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To the extent there are people who are protesting because they don’t like this war, and they want it to go away, I’ll say, you know who really wants this war to go away? Young people in Israel. They’re the ones who’ve been drafted into (the army) reserves. And now they’re having to fight because a terrorist army invaded their country, burned people alive and abducted hostages into the Gaza Strip.
We want this war to go away. We want to live in peace. But we realize, if we do not, defeat the terrorist army that did this, there will be a next time and it will be worse. We’re not going to abandon the hostages in the Hamas terror dungeons no matter how many times you tear down hostage posters to try to make people forget that they are still there.