By Howie Silbiger
There is no longer any honest way to pretend that what Jews are experiencing in Canada and around the world is a series of isolated incidents. It is a pattern. It is sustained. It is ideological. And it is increasingly tolerated by people who should know better.
Synagogues vandalized. Jewish schools requiring security guards. Students told to hide Stars of David. Jewish neighbourhoods targeted. Marches where Jews are named explicitly as enemies. Online spaces flooded with calls for violence dressed up as activism. This is not theoretical. It is happening here. Now.
And Canada is not immune. In fact Canada has become a case study in how anti Jewish hostility metastasizes when political leadership hedges equivocates and hides behind process.
We are told repeatedly that hate has no place in Canada. It is a lovely sentence. It is also meaningless when Jewish institutions remain under threat when police advise Jewish communities to stay vigilant rather than protected and when politicians issue statements carefully scrubbed of the word Jew as if naming the target might be inconvenient.
This did not begin on October 7. But October 7 ripped the mask off. What followed was not only a wave of global anti Jewish aggression but a chilling realization for Jews in the diaspora. There are people who will excuse rationalize or minimize violence against Jews if it fits a political narrative they find fashionable.
Canada’s political class particularly within the Liberal Party bears responsibility for this moment. Not because every Liberal is hostile to Jews many are not but because the party has allowed its tent to shelter voices that traffic in moral relativism when Jews are the victims. Silence delay and half measures send a message. That message has been received loud and clear.
When Jewish Canadians hear elected officials hesitate to condemn chants calling for Jewish destruction when Jewish safety is framed as a complex issue when law abiding Jewish citizens are told to be patient while mobs intimidate outside synagogues and schools it tells us exactly where we stand. Not at the centre of Canadian concern. On the margins of political convenience.
Globally the picture is no better. Europe is seeing open Jewish flight. Australia has witnessed public celebrations of Jewish death. University campuses in the United States and beyond have become hostile territory for Jewish students. In the Middle East incitement against Jews is not fringe it is institutional. The common thread is permission. When consequences disappear behavior escalates.
And make no mistake anti Jew hatred today wears many disguises. It cloaks itself in the language of justice resistance and liberation. It insists it is not anti Jewish while obsessively targeting Jews alone. It demands Jews renounce their identity their history or their right to safety in order to be tolerated. No other group is subjected to this test.
Canadian Jews are not asking for special treatment. We are asking for equal treatment. For laws already on the books to be enforced. For incitement to be treated as incitement regardless of who chants it. For political leaders to speak clearly act decisively and stop outsourcing Jewish safety to press releases.
This is a moment of reckoning not just for Jews but for Canada itself. A country that prides itself on pluralism cannot selectively apply it. A government that claims to oppose hatred cannot wink at it when it becomes politically inconvenient to confront.
The Jewish community has learned painfully and repeatedly what happens when warning signs are ignored. We are done whispering. We are done waiting for permission to be concerned. The question now is whether Canadian leaders are willing to meet this moment or whether they will once again look back and say they did not realize how bad it had become.
We realize it, we are living it, and no matter how much Canadian leaders want us to, we will not be quiet about it.
Howie Silbiger is the host of The Howie Silbiger Show on Truetalkradio.com and Political Hitman on Israelnewstalkradio.com. He is the Editor-in-Chief of The Montreal Jewish News.
