Why is anti-Semitism on the rise?                                                   

What is anti-Semitism?  It is hostility, prejudice, or discrimination against Jews per se. A person who holds such an attitude towards Jews is called an anti-semite. Anti-Semitism is generally considered to be a form of racism. It appears to have stemmed from the time when Jesus Christ was crucified. Many Christians are prone to blaming the Jews for Jesus’ crucifixion. It was the Romans who crucified Jesus albeit at the prompting of the Hebrew religious leaders in Jerusalem. The most known of the religious leaders were the Pharisees. They were a religious political party. The word “Pharisee” literally means “Separatist.” It was the name given to them by their opponents because of their “holier than thou” haughty attitude towards others. Their supreme aim was to strictly follow both the current written and oral laws. 

 Pontius Pilate was the fifth prefect of the Roman province of Judaea from AD 26–36. He served under Emperor Tiberius, and is best known today for the trial and crucifixion of Jesus. He actually didn`t find fault against Jesus but when the Pharisees threatened Pontius Pilate that they would tell Tiberius that he approved of Jesus being the real leader of the world, Pontius Pilate gave his approval that Jesus was to be crucified.

Since the crucifixion of Jesus, Jews have been blamed for his death and as such, they have been tormented ever since. They have learned to bear the pain but what really annoys them is the itch of anti-Semitism that constantly plagues them—an itch that no matter how much scratching they do, it never seems go away.   

It is ironic when you think about it. Adolf Hitler was truly one of the worst human monsters who ever lived in history. He slaughtered millions of innocent persons of many races and creeds and all for the promotion of his concept of the Aryan race. We correctly blamed the German leaders after the Second world War for their atrocities they committed, and yet, nowadays, we think of the children of those Germans as decent enterprising human beings—and rightly so.  

Why then has anti-Semitism been so pervasive in so many countries, in so many time periods and for so many reasons?

Between the years 250 BC and 1948 AD - a period of 1,700 years—Jews have experienced more than eighty expulsions from various countries in Europe which come to an average of nearly one expulsion every twenty-one years. Jews were expelled from England, France, Austria, Germany, Lithuania, Spain, Portugal, Bohemia, Moravia and seventy-one other countries. Even just before the Second World War began, Jews fleeing Hitler’s Germany were turned away from Canada and the United States. To Canada`s shame, between the years 1930 and 1939, Canada rejected almost all Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe, taking in only 4,000 of the 800,000 Jews looking for refuge. They had to return to Germany where a great many of them were later gassed in the German gas chambers.

I remember one day in 1953 when I wanted to spend a night in a large hotel in Canada, The clerk at the front desk asked me the following question. “Are you a follower of the Jewish faith?” If I told him that I was (which I wasn’t) he would not have rented ne a room.  

Historians have classified six explanations as to why some people hate the Jews:

1.     Economic—"We hate Jews because they possess too much wealth and power."

2.    Chosen People—"We hate Jews because they arrogantly claim that they are the chosen people."

3.    Scapegoat—"Jews are a convenient group to single out and blame for our troubles."

4.    Blame—"We hate Jews because they killed Jesus."

5.    Outsiders—“We hate Jews because they are different than us." (The dislike of the unlike.)

6.    Racial Theory—"We hate Jews because they are an inferior race."

However in my opinion, Jews should not brag that they are the chosen race. That is because no race is the chosen race.   

 Are these exclamations listed above justification for anti-Semitism or excuses for anti-Semitism? If we look more carefully into these so-called explanations, there is no justification at all for these exclamations and that being as it is, then anti-Semitism should no longer exist. If we can accept a contradiction to the explanations, it will demonstrate that the explanations are not valid reasons, they are just a weak excuse to be anti-Semitic. Let's look at some contradictions in the excuses for these explanations.

1. Economic—The Jews of 17th- 20th century Poland and Russia were dirt poor, had no influence and yet they were hated. 

2. Chosen People—In the late 19th century, the Jews of Germany denied "Choseness." And then they worked on assimilation. Yet, the holocaust started there. Actually, many Christians and Moslems profess to being the "Chosen people," yet, the world and the anti-Semites tolerate them. 

2. Scapegoat—Any group must already be hated to be an effective scapegoat. The Scapegoat Theory does not then cause anti-Semitism. Rather, anti-Semitism is what makes the Jews a convenient scapegoat target. Hitler's ranting and ravings would not be taken seriously if he said, "It's the bicycle riders and the midgets who are destroying our society." He chose the Jews because many people in Germany hated the Jews.

4. Blame—the Christian Bible says the Romans killed Jesus, though Jews are mentioned as accomplices (claims that Jews killed Jesus came several hundred years later). How come the accomplices are persecuted and there isn't an anti-Roman movement through history? b) Jesus himself said, "Forgive them [i.e., the Jews], for they know not what they do." The Second Vatican Council in 1963 officially exonerated the Jews as the killers of Jesus. Neither statement of Christian belief lessened anti-Semitism.

5. Outsiders—With the Enlightenment in the late 18th century, many Jews rushed to assimilate. Anti-Semitism should have stopped. Instead, for example, with the Nazis came the cry, in essence: "We hate you, not because you're different, but because you're trying to become like us! We cannot allow you to infect the Aryan race with your inferior genes."

6. Racial Theory—The overriding problem with this theory is that it is self-contradictory: Jews are not entirely a race. Anyone can become a Jew and members of every race, creed and color in the world have done so at one time or another. It is the creed that many people hate.

Every other hated group is hated for a relatively defined reason.  However, Jews are hated for many stupid reasons.  Jews are hated for being a lazy and inferior race.  They are hated for dominating the economy and taking over the world. They are hated for stubbornly maintaining their separateness and when they assimilate with other races, they pose a threat to racial purity through intermarriages. They are seen as pacifists and alternatively as warmongers; as capitalist exploiters and as revolutionary communists; possessed of a Chosen-People mentality, as well as of an inferiority complex. It seems that they simply can’t win no matter how hard they try to fit in our societies as equals. 

Hitler said; “The struggle for world domination will be fought entirely between us, between Germans and Jews.  All else is facade and illusion.  Behind England stands Israel and behind France and behind the United States.  Even when we have driven the Jew out of Germany, he remains our world enemy. The Ten Commandments have lost their validity. Conscience is a Jewish invention. It is a blemish like circumcision. The discovery of the Jewish virus is one of the greatest revolutions that has taken place in the world. The battle in which we are engaged today is of the same sort as the battle waged, during the last century, by Pasteur and Koch. How many diseases have their origin in the Jewish virus?  We shall regain our health only by eliminating the Jew.” unquote

This madman eliminated over six million Jews while he was in power. In this modern age, even publicly y proposing the elimination of Jews in Westernized nations is a criminal offence deserving of punishment.

On the other hand, Lloyd George, Prime Minister of England said in 1924: “Of all the extreme fanaticism which plays havoc in man’s nature, there is not one as irrational as anti-Semitism. If the Jews are rich, they are victims of theft. If they are poor, they are victims of ridicule. If they take sides in a war, they are accused that they wish to take advantage from the spilling of non-Jewish blood. If they espouse peace, it is because they are scared by their natures or traitors. If the Jew dwells in a foreign land he is persecuted and expelled. If he wishes to return to his own land, he is prevented from doing so.” unquote

It is an irony of Jewish history that it took the Holocaust to give anti-Semitism a bad name. So widespread was international revulsion over the annihilation of six million Jews that following World War II anti-Semitism, even a minor variable) became the hatred one dared not publicly express. But as the years moved forward, the hatred of Jews grew stronger. At the beginning of the 21st century, virulent, open anti-Semitism has surfaced yet again, and in a big way. One need only read a Jewish newspaper or website–replete as they are with accounts of verbal anti-Semitism by high officials and intellectuals, and anti-Semitic physical attacks conducted by common street thugs–to understand the depth of concern held by Jews and decent non-Jews also.

I remember a day in the 1960s in which some fool publically screamed insulting remarks about Jews on a main street in Downtown Toronto. Within minutes, a huge crowed formed and began chasing him down a street for many blocks before he finally escaped them.  

Canada has for some years now has been taking a stronger stand against anti-Semitism. In 1989, Alberta public school teacher James Keegstra was convicted under the Criminal Code for his willful promotion of hatred against an identifiable group to wit, the Jews.

In 2009, the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism was established by major federal political parties to investigate and combat antisemitism - particularly what is referred to as the new antisemitism. It is argued that this form of hate targets Israel, consisting of and fed by allegations of Israeli "war crimes" and similar claims. Anti-Israel actions that led to the formation of a Parliamentary Coalition included boycott campaigns on university campuses and in some churches, spilling over into attacks on synagogues, Jewish institutions and individuals. Activities such as "Israel Apartheid Week" at Concordia (Montreal), York University and the University of Toronto, and boycott campaigns targeting Israel (BDS) included what some considered as "forms of antisemitism"

In November 2011, an ant-Semitic attack took place at the south Winnipeg high school when a teen approached a 15-year-old girl as they crossed paths near his locker and began talking to her. He pulled out a lighter and started flicking it near her head, saying, "Let's burn the Jew.``

On April 12, 2012, several Jewish-owned summer homes in Val-Morin, Quebec were broken into and defaced with swastikas and anti-Semitic messages.

According to the "2013, Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents" written by the B'nai Brith Canada, there was a decrease of 5.3% in the number of anti-Semitic incidents during 2013. Despite that, cases of vandalism rose by 21.8% while violence increased by one incident and harassment cases dropped by 13.9%. These incidents include anti-Semitic graffiti, paintings of swastikas in Jewish neighborhood, firebomb attacks, anti-Semitic statements, etc.  

On March 2016, the Toronto Police published its annual report of hate-crimes during 2015. According to it, the Jewish population is the group most targeted to hate-crimes, especially when it comes to mischief to property occurrences. Moreover; in occurrences involve religion, most of the victims are part of the Jewish community (in 31 out of 58 cases.  The report found that the Jewish community makes up only 3.8% of the religious population in the City of Toronto but was victimized in approximately 23% of the total hate/bias crimes in 2015. Anti-Semitic graffiti and swastika inscriptions has been also found during in this year along with overturned Jewish gravestones.

There is one way we can stop this form of anti-Semitism. Send the violators to prison for a long time. Eventually these criminals will realize that wasting several years of their lives in prison will act as a good deterrent. Those die-hards who are too stupid to appreciate just how severe the consequences can be; will keep destroying Jewish property and eventually, they will be put away for a very, very long time. Maybe the message will then sink into their thick hate-ridden skulls.  

What are Canadian politicians doing about fighting anti-Semitism? The following article I got from the Toronto Sun explains why not enough is being done in Canada to fight anti-Semitism. And now the article that was  written by Sue Ann Levy.

“It happened again in 2016, repeating a trend that has been ongoing for at least 10 years. According to the latest Toronto Police Service (TPS) hate crime report — on the agenda of this week’s police services board meeting — Jews were the most targeted group in Toronto when it came to acts of hate crime last year. Some 43 of 145 offences or nearly 30% of all occurrences reported to police in 2016 involved attacks on the Jewish community, mostly pertaining to vandalism and graffiti or criminal harassment. The LGBT community was a far distance behind at 24 or 17% of all occurrences followed by 22 occurrences each against Muslims and blacks, amounting to 15% of all incidents reported. Hate crimes against Jews are up 7% from last year and the police report that the Jewish community has been among the three most targeted groups (including the black and LGBT communities) since 2006. None of this surprises me in the slightest given the rise in anti-Semitism dressed in the guise of an anti-Israel, pro-BDS, pro-free speech movement that has found a home amongst alleged Liberal thinkers on university campuses and in union and feminist-backed solidarity movements across Canada, the United States and western Europe. I saw and heard the anti-Israel rhetoric at the recent International Women’s Day rally at U of T of largely self-described oppressed socialist man-haters. And how can we ignore the recent spate of bomb threats targeted at Jewish Community Centres in Toronto, across Canada and in the States. Let’s face it, we Jews are dispensable. One doesn’t have to look any further than how this rise in anti-Semitism is being treated, or rather not treated, at all three levels of government. While our politicians at City Hall, Queen’s Park and in Ottawa make a big show of pandering to political correctness when it comes to perceived Islamophobia and about battling other forms of racism, anti-Semitism seems not to be on their radar at all. Let’s start with the very controversial M-103 anti-Islamophobia motion introduced by Liberal MP Iqra Khalid. A recent poll says only 14% of Canadians support it and a whopping 71% say either take out the focus on Islam and/or mention all religions. Or take Michael Coteau, Ontario’s anti-racism minister. When he released his new three-year plan to combat varying forms of racism two weeks ago, there was plenty in it about racism against Indigenous people, blacks and Islamophobia but not a word, from what I could see, about the rise in anti-Semitism. Ironically our provincial champion of anti-racism launched his plan on the day Toronto’s downtown Jewish Community Centre was targeted with a bomb threat and barely made mention of it. Ditto for Toronto City Hall which has launched a five-phase Toronto for All education campaign — costing $80,000 per phase — to target Islamophobia and anti-black racism while conspicuously ignoring the rise in anti-Semitism in the city. Just last week when brave 19-year-old Ryerson student Marlee Socket organized a rally against anti-Semitism in front of the downtown JCC, not one politician showed except for Mayor John Tory. Not one city councillor showed their face especially the one whose ward contains the JCC and continually preaches tolerance for whatever cause he supports, NDPer Joe Cressy. Not Premier Kathleen Wynne, who rushed to a Toronto mosque and donned the appropriate headgear to console the Muslim community following the tragic massacre at the end of January at a Quebec City mosque.” Unquote

Did you really expect better from these politicians?  Do hogs at the public trough fly? There is your answer. Now you know why I asked the question at the heading of this article—Why is anti-Semitism on the rise?