Michael Mostyn: A concerning rise in anti-Semitism, on the eve of Kristallnacht

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Today, Jews around the world mark the sombre 83rd anniversary of Kristallnacht, or the “Night of Broken Glass,” a massive, state-sanctioned pogrom against the Jews in Nazi Germany.

On that day in 1938, anti-Semitic mobs, backed by Nazi stormtroopers and police, ransacked the country’s Jewish institutions, imprisoning more than 30,000 and killing hundreds. Kristallnacht marked the beginning of the end of one of Europe’s most storied Jewish communities and foreshadowed the horrors that would befall the rest of the continent’s Jews within a few short years.

This year, many Canadian Jews find themselves asking: have we done enough to ensure something like this never happens again?

Canada, of course, is nothing like Nazi Germany. To the contrary, Canada remains a proud democracy and one of the most tolerant countries on earth. Nevertheless, a concerning rise in anti-Semitism on Canadian streets over the past year shows that humanity has not fully learned one of history’s most important lessons.

In May, large mobs marched through Canadian cities, ostensibly to protest Israel’s war of self-defence against Hamas, a terrorist group whose charter was inspired by the anti-Semitic “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” which likewise inspired the Nazis. In some cases, protesters openly displayed the swastika, the most notorious symbol of Nazi horror.

Within one 48-hour period, Jews in Toronto were chased and beaten, a pro-Israel rally in Montreal was dispersed with stones and teargas, dozens called for violence against Jews in downtown Calgary and more than 100 people danced to a pro-Hamas song with a chorus of, “Get lost, you son of a Jew!” outside the Manitoba legislature.

Canada’s Jews weren’t the only minority group facing violence at that time. On June 6, Nathaniel Veltman allegedly ran down a Muslim family in London, Ont., killing four and seriously wounding another. For a moment, Canadian Jews put aside their own suffering and stood in solidarity with their beleaguered Muslim friends and neighbours.

Imagine our collective shock when, at the national vigil for the London victims, a local imam thought the most important point to make was: “Whatever is happening in Jerusalem and Gaza is related to whatever happened in London, Ont. Period.” His remarks fed online conspiracy theories suggesting that the attack was part of a Jewish revenge plot. OMNI Television was even forced to drop one of its Arabic-language programs after its producer repeatedly and falsely alleged that the killer was a Jew.

Perhaps more frightening than the imam’s remarks themselves was the utter silence about what had occurred. His speech was broadcast by most major Canadian news channels, yet what followed was silence. Canadian Jews were left with the impression that falsely accusing us of being responsible for those heinous killings was an acceptable thing to do. For many, it conjured up memories of dark moments in the not-so-distant past.

To his credit, last month, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau led a Canadian delegation to the Malmö International Forum on Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Antisemitism. In his remarks to the forum, he rightfully warned of “organizations of extremist groups on the far-right and the far-left that are pushing white supremacy, intolerance (and) radicalization, promoting hatred, fear and mistrust.”

His statement was immediately condemned by the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, which objected to the prime minister equating “anti-racists and anti-fascists with white supremacists and the far-right.” This is illustrative of the problem: one of the most dangerous aspects of anti-Semitism in the West today is that right-wing and left-wing leaders often excuse Jew-hatred in their own camp, while cynically calling it out in the other.

The fact is that those who raised the swastika on Canadian streets in May, and who threatened Jews in Edmonton and Montreal, were not the Proud Boys — they were people who identify with the left. And this problem is not new. One could be forgiven for assuming that those who chanted, “The Jews are our dogs!” at a rally in 2020 were neo-Nazi skinheads, but they were actually Palestinian-Canadian high school students.

Everyone has a part to play in ensuring that the events of Kristallnacht are never repeated. Fighting hate should not, and cannot, be a partisan issue.

National Post

Michael Mostyn is the chief executive officer of B’nai Brith Canada.