“The greatest tragedy of the Jewish people is that they listened to the promises of their friends and not the threats of their enemies” — Nobel Peace Prize laureate Eli Wiesel

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Howard Levitt: Jews have learned the hard way to heed the threats of their enemies Back to video

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It is really not that long ago that a certain German Chancellor declared that he wanted to exterminate the Jews.

The threat was not taken seriously. Many thought Adolf Hitler was merely playing to an uneducated, roguish domestic audience. Not only did the Allied powers brush it off, but many Jews did as well, remaining in Germany and western Europe early on, even as their properties were expropriated and they were subjected to increasing indignities.

They presumed that things would get better and did not believe that people, many of whom had been their friends and neighbours, could ultimately be so vicious. They were wrong.

Elaborating on French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levi’s observation that antisemitism is a mutating virus, the author Douglas Murray recently noted that Jews have been hated because they were poor, because they were rich, because they were not integrating, because they were integrating, because of their religion and — when that became unacceptable — because of their race. When that in turn became unacceptable, they were hated because they were stateless; when they got a state, they were hated for having it.

Iran has long threatened to annihilate Israel which it refers to as a “one bomb” country (because of its size), obviously referring to a nuclear weapon.

Numerous reports have suggested that it, along with Qatar, has been financially supporting the groups behind ongoing hate rallies in North America, including some of those in Canada.

The Israelis, unlike the rest of the West, have learned to believe those threatening to exterminate first them and then the rest of Western civilization in turn.

That is why they have resisted a ceasefire in Gaza, which would only allow Hamas to declare victory and rearm to attack again, as it has openly declared it will do.

Israel has learned, from historic seared experience, that it must dismantle Hamas’ ability to rearm and decisively win this time. That is the thinking that led, this week, to the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and the killings of two other senior Iranian proxies.

That many were on our streets mourning the killing of the Hamas and Hezbollah leaders should be a caution.

Canada, with Montreal leading the ignoble pack, has become the scene of some of the most vicious antisemitism in the western world, starting with the thousands who cheered the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7 even before Israel had launched its counterattack.

Hate crimes which would never be tolerated against any other Canadian community have become being accepted as de rigueur.

At the same time, our federal government is accepting thousands of Gazans into the country, with some raising questions about the screening process.

The U.S. certainly gets it. In a letter to U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, co-signed by several U.S. Senators, Marco Rubio expressed concern over our program, which he warned could lead to an increased risk of allowing individuals with ties to terror groups easy access to the United States from Canada.

We have had a foretelling of that threat recently, when 21-year-old Zachareah Adam Quraishi of Cold Lake, Alta. was killed in an attempted terror attack against armed guards in southern Israel to which he travelled to kill Israelis.

Our society is becoming inured to hate crimes. It is increasingly normalized.

Jews are not only intimidated on the streets of our cities but in our schools and universities, which are capitulating to those who occupied their campuses.

The University of Toronto provided amnesty even to those who had breached the criminal code with Nazi salutes, violent assaults and the projection of the Hamas logo onto U of T buildings, agreeing that no charges would be laid if they left.

The University of Windsor was even worse, agreeing not only to amnesty but to establish mandatory anti-Palestinian racism training and to prioritize students from Gaza in handing out bursaries and guaranteeing them housing over other students. It also agreed to boycott partnerships with Israeli universities as well as to review all investment and procurement through an anti-Israeli lens, something that could be considered contrary to  Ontario’s Discriminatory Businesses Practice Act (DBPA), which outlaws a refusal to engage in business with a second person or party, where the refusal, is on account of race, creed, nationality or geographical location.

There are responses that can be taken. Many law firms and lawyers, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, are refusing to hire students from Toronto Metropolitan University who signed an antisemitic petition. One of the world’s top law firms, Sullivan & Cromwell, is reviewing social media and weeding out applicants who attended Hamas hate rallies at U.S. universities, even if they were not chanting hate speech themselves.

Once hate crimes against Jews, who make up less than one per cent of Canadians, are normalized, other groups will be next, as they always are.

Unless political parties, the police and the polity do more to become engaged, we will be living in a very different Canada. We already are.

Howard Levitt is senior partner of Levitt LLP, employment and labour lawyers with offices in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. He practices employment law in eight provinces and is the author of six books, including the Law of Dismissal in Canada.

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