The normalization of Jew-hate in Canada's left-wing media

A year or so ago, a federal Cabinet Minister, while we were discussing the people involved in demonizing Israel as an "apartheid state," described them as "intellectually vapid hatemongers."  He quickly added, realizing the force of the language he had used, "let's keep that off the record" and so I won't mention the Minister's name. But having met and listened to a number of the sort of people he described, I concur with  his assessment.

A Queer Against Israeli Apartheid
from Toronto's 2013 Pride*

I've heard them describe Israel as a "racist apartheid regime," without their being able to cogently explain how Israel's policies are racist. Israel affords the same rights of enfranchisement and ability to serve in the legislature and judiciary to all its citizens, including Muslim Arabs. It does not afford those rights to non-citizens living in The West Bank, but for the intellectually-challenged fanatics who want to see an end to the Jewish State, in the sole case of Israel, this natural legal distinction that every country makes between citizens and non-citizens becomes "racist apartheid."

These same anti-Israel hatemongers express no objection to any form on national self-determination movement anywhere in the world, with the one exception of Zionism, which is Jewish national self-determination. While claiming this unique discrimination they practice is not anti-Semitism, there is no other convincing explanation for it.

Writers like University of Washington English Professor Emeritus Edward Alexander and University of Utah Professor Emeritis of Philosophy Bernard Harrison have described at length the new leftist anti-Semitism that manifests as anti-Zionism. Most insidious about it is that while other forms of bigotry would be reviled by the so-called progressive left, the casual hate expressed through anti-Zionism has been socially normalized for them. While that is more the case in Europe, with its traditions of Jew-hate extending back millennia,  this phenomenon is becoming more frequent in North America, as one can see in an article in yesterday's Toronto Star.

The lead article on the Star's online edition yesterday was the Dyke March at Toronto's Pride festival, essentially extolling it as a symbol of Toronto's diversity and progressiveness.

Worked into the article were three paragraphs, about a quarter of the whole piece, about a couple named Jacquie Buncel and Lorraine Gale, that unaffectedly and completely uncritically, as if recounting a fashion accessory like flowers on sunhats, described the hateful anti-Israel slogans of the pair's placards.

Jacquie Buncel and Lorraine Gale, both of Toronto, have participated in the Dyke March with their daughters, Aviva, 12, and Maya, 10, since the girls were infants. Buncel said it was unusual a decade ago to take children to the Dyke March but it is more common now — evidenced Saturday by parents pushing baby strollers and youngsters carried on shoulders. 

“We haven’t met with a lot of homophobia as a family” said Buncel, who noted Toronto crowds — some people standing three deep in places along the Yonge Street segment, most with cameras — are supportive of marchers. 

Buncel and Gale, both in their early 50s, were part of a group carrying black placards that stated in pink lettering: “Boycott Gay Tourism to Israel” and “There’s nothing hot about cruising in an apartheid state.”

The inclusion of the deplorable bigots of the group calling itself Queers Against Israeli Apartheid has been a source of division and controversy for both the Pride festival and Toronto. But for The Toronto Star, the hatred they express for Israel is just another minor descriptive element of an ordinary family outing with the kids. If this is the state to which the left-wing media in Canada has descended, then we are in for truly sad times ahead.

As an interesting aside, the pair of anti-Israel protesters featured by the Toronto Star are an odd duo who seem to have been on a natural path to their particular fold.

A Lorraine Gale is listed as the Coordinator of the Children's Aid Society of Toronto's Out and Proud Program. If this is the same Ms Gale, given the sad, radicalized state of contemporary university Sociology programs from which Children's Aid workers usually spring, it would be unsurprising if unthinking bias came hand-in-hand with that type of education.

Jacquie Buncel is the Executive Director of an organization called The Sunshine Centre for Seniors and who describes herself as a "Holocaust Educator." She is also a graduate of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, a hyper-politicized institution where emotion is frequently privileged above fact, and is notorious, among other causes, for producing a facile, anti-Semitic Master's thesis that alleged Holocaust education is a racist, Zionist plot.

Whether that is the same view of Holocaust education taken by Ms Buncel, I do not know. But if someone is making the types of pronouncements ascribed to her in The Toronto Star article, it would appear the only lesson she learned from the Holocaust is the appalling, specious one that you may get to live a little longer if you abase yourself to your oppressors.

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*Curiously, this Queer Against Israeli Apartheid has no plans to deliver the same message in the same manner in Gaza or Ramallah, or Tehran, where one would expect they would be receptive to his anti-Israel message. Why ever could that be?