Fanning the flames of antisemitism

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This article was published 25/11/2023 (917 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Mike Fegelman

In her Nov. 22 opinion piece in the Free Press, “I am Jewish — and I want freedom for Palestinians,” self-described “anti-Zionist Jewish organizer” Alison Moule blames Israel for antisemitism, and appears to blame all Jews for Jew-hatred.

Before she engages in victim-blaming, Moule first begins by wholeheartedly accepting Hamas’ claims about casualties. While it hardly needs to be said that Hamas is not a reputable source of information, Moule treats it as such in her column.

Moule authoritatively told readers that “over 13,000 people have been killed in Gaza,” though curiously chooses not to add that the source for this figure is none other than Hamas, via its so-called “Gaza Ministry of Health.” Not only is Hamas an Islamic terrorist organization which rapes, tortures and murders its victims — all while recording their heinous actions on camera for posterity — it is also a skilled disseminator of propaganda.

For instance, on Oct. 17, Hamas loudly spread its lie to the world that Israel had bombed the Al-Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza, killing 500 people. But Israel never bombed the hospital; the culprit was an errant rocket fired from within the Gaza Strip that was responsible.

But this didn’t stop Hamas from spreading its propaganda as loudly as possible, clearly showing that the group’s claims cannot be trusted.

Moule’s implicit trust in Hamas’ honesty is just the beginning of her column’s descent into gullibility at best, and moral turpitude at worst.

Perhaps most egregiously, Moule wrote that “Israel’s violence empowers antisemitic and Islamophobic violence elsewhere.”

Rather than pinning the blame for a spike in antisemitic hate on the perpetrators themselves, Moule grotesquely identified Israel and its temerity in defending itself against Hamas terrorism as the real culprit behind attacks on Jews in Canada, the United States, Europe and elsewhere.

When Moule wrote that “hateful people take this war as an opportunity to justify their hatred,” she is ostensibly arguing that by daring to defend its people against Hamas, Israel is allowing antisemitism to spread.

But Israel is not to blame for acts of Jew-hatred; the perpetrators are, and by appearing to blame Israel for antisemitism, Moule is effectively letting those who carry out hate crimes off the hook.

After going to great pains to stress that, for her, Israel does not represent the Jewish People at large, Moule then pivots to conflating the two.

“After centuries of being killed, it seems we… have learned to kill. We need to remember our history. We have suffered. We should not inflict the same suffering on others,” Moule writes, adding that, “one genocide does not justify another.”

Not only is Moule’s reasoning entirely devoid of merit — unlike centuries of Jewish persecution, where perpetrators mass-murdered Jews simply for their identity, Israel is doing no such thing in Gaza, fighting a terrorist organization while taking pains to minimize civilian casualties — she is also explicitly accusing Jews as a collective of becoming mass murderers, or at least a party to it.

Such commentary is more than an assault on historical truth; it is lending credence to Jew-haters who target Jewish institutions across the Western world, justifying their actions on the basis that Jews around the world should be held accountable for the actions of the Israeli government.

Moule is unquestionably free to oppose Israel’s government and its policies, and to call for a ceasefire if she so desires, though that clearly places her in a minority compared to the majority of Canadians who support Israel in its quest to defeat Hamas.

But Moule, by darkly accusing Israel of carrying out “genocide,” all while appearing to hold Jews accountable for this alleged genocide, is providing justification and oxygen to those responsible for the dramatic rise in antisemitism following Hamas’ terror attack seven weeks ago.

Offering words in condemnation of antisemitism means precious little while adding fuel to the fire, as Moule has done in her column.

Mike Fegelman is executive director of HonestReporting Canada, a non-profit organization ensuring fair and accurate Canadian media coverage of Israel www.HonestReporting.ca