Antisemitism speech lacked crucial punch

Can Prime Minister Mark Carney be blamed for not speaking the truth about Israel and antisemitism in this post-truth era we live in of emotions over facts? Maybe he was just channelling his inner Jack Nicholson with his famous line to Tom Cruise in the movie A Few Good Men, “You can’t handle the truth!”

But it begs a bigger question. How can a society eradicate the dark attitudes in its midst if it doesn’t shine its righteous light on the exact voices and causes?

The prime minister’s speech last week at Toronto’s Holy Blossom synagogue on combatting antisemitism was titled “The Canadian Covenant.” Having spoiled us with his penetrating Davos speech in January, listeners expected more. Not that he didn’t bring some receipts.

It was erudite in the extreme, demonstrating an intellectual and theological understanding of Jewishness, all from a practising Catholic. He quoted ancient Hebrew prophets and a Canadian philosopher. Clearly, he wrote this speech himself. Which makes the “meh” feeling even more, well, “meh.”

The reason is not what he said, which was good, but what he didn’t say. He did not shine the laser beam of public disgust and opprobrium on radical, anti-Zionist actors and attitudes that have given rise to record levels of antisemitic incidents and attacks.

B’nai Brith Canada’s annual audit of antisemitism documented 6,800 incidents last year, equivalent to an average of 18 per day. This is the highest volume it has ever recorded. Canada now holds the disturbing record for the greatest number of such incidents, more than Germany, Britain, Australia and France. It is urgent and necessary to combat this.

Always present, antisemitism has skyrocketed since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks. Attacks that killed almost 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals, took some 250 persons hostage and which were followed by Israel’s destructive war on Hamas in Gaza that has claimed the lives of over 70,000 Palestinians.

The Israeli government’s ferocious assaults in Gaza fuelled anger and concern around the world, including in Canada. The scale of death, destruction and suffering continues to shock, ceasefire notwithstanding. Over time, it obscured and diminished the original crime of Oct. 7, replacing it with Israel’s decades-long occupation of Gaza and the stateless state of subjugation or submission in which Palestinians live. “Globalize the intifada” replaced “Remember October 7.”

Protesting Israeli government policy, a legitimate right in Canada, has degenerated into protests against Israel’s existence. The right of all states, including Israel, to defend themselves is replaced with challenging the right of Israel to even be a state. It is not, then, a leap in this logic for Jews anywhere — including Canada — to be considered complicit in Israeli government policy, whether they agree or disagree or even had anything to do with it in the first place. Which legitimizes hatred and violence against them. It has put a large Jewish star on them, as an unspeakable symbol of hatred and violence.

The prime minister said strongly and rightly “that Canada’s civic compact is failing Jewish Canadians.” Canada’s pluralism is about “recognition”; meaning “to be received as who you are.” In this sense, he called out Canadian society as a whole for letting Jewish Canadians down and making them unsafe.

State “failures” inevitably lead to state “solutions.” So, the PM created a new committee — a ministerial advisory council on rights, equality and inclusion — to figure out how to combat racism and hate “in all their forms.” But racism is not a governance problem. It is a moral problem, and you cannot legislate morality.

Civic norms emanate from civic behaviour. We model what we learn and observe. From our parents, our friends, our neighbours and our fellow citizens. What they decree as good or bad, moral or evil, shapes us.

Civic leaders have a particular role in decreeing and enforcing those norms. But in today’s post-truth world, too many have shied away from doing their civic duty. Anodyne “thoughts and prayers” — rinsed and repeated — are subbed in when shame and blame are what’s called for. Fear of giving offence trumps saying the hard truths essential to fixing the problem.

It is not a crime to be Jewish in Canada. Say so.

It is a crime to call for or wreak violence upon Jewish Canadians for being Jewish. Call out those who do so and the nationalist and religious extremism behind it.

It is a moral stain upon this country to call for the erasure of another country. Zionism is the right of Jews to exist in their own country.

Disdain the policies and actions of the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu all you want. It is not antisemitic to do so and should not be equated as such.

But in Canada you need to know there are civic lines that we do not cross. If this new council does anything, state those lines clearly and unambiguously. Re-establish the Canadian covenant the prime minister says has been tattered in precise terms. Tattered because we have allowed foreign conflicts to be transposed onto Canadian soil and each other.

If not, this speech will, in Abraham Lincoln’s famous words about one of his own, “not scour.”

David McLaughlin is a former clerk of the executive council and cabinet secretary in the Manitoba government.