Of course there are the normal reasons:  Israel murdering tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, including 10,000 children; homelessness in Canada though we are one of the G7 nations and, by definition, one of the richest countries in the world; the federal government blaming immigrants and international students for taking up housing, medical resources and jobs — blame that is wrong-headed;  Trudeau stopping Canada’s  $30 million annual donation to UNRWA because Israel says (on the very day of the International Criminal Court interim decision on genocide) there are 12 possible Hamas supporters out of 13,000 UNRWA employees in Gaza.  The list goes on.  If you read my newsletter regularly, you’ll know what makes me fume.  

But my anger is really about Jewish privilege in Canada. I know I’m not supposed to say that, but it’s borne out in the facts of the current campaign of civil terror being waged against critics of Israel and supporters of Palestinian human rights.  First let me say when I refer to Jewish privilege it has nothing to do with religion, or biology or anything inherent;  it is about a political outlook to which many Jews (about half the Jews in Canada) ascribe. 

For instance, Larry Haiven’s article in Canadian Dimension here cites a 2023 survey of Canadian Jews suggests 59% say Israeli government is moving in the “wrong direction”; 54% oppose expanding Israeli settlement in West Bank and 31% want establishment Jewish organizations (e.g. CIJA, B’nai Brith) to be more critical of Israel. A 2018 survey of Canadian Jews suggests approximately 60% of Canadian Jews themselves do not see criticism of Israel as necessarily antisemitic, while half of Canadian Jews believe that accusations of antisemitism are “often used to silence legitimate criticism of Israeli policies.” 

Item 1:  Look at this photo: 

The three  women in this picture (and the woman in pink) were standing on the steps of Moxies in Toronto on 21 Oct, 2023.  All were fired from their jobs within days.  Their crime? As servers or kitchen staff, the women stood outside the restaurant and applauded the National March for Gaza, which took place on 21 Oct – two weeks after 7 Oct. The march wound its way through downtown, and past University Avenue and Wellington Street West, the location of Moxies Restaurant. Watch this video here (credit: lawyer Caryma S’ad).

You see three women, and another employee (dressed in pink) joined them on the steps — so they total four.  You’ll see three out of four women are racialized.  We see they are women, and all seem under age 30. 

You have to  know that all four women earn about minimum wage — $16.55 an hour. 

“We are happy to report that the employees in question are no longer working at Moxies.”

Michael Mostyn, and B’nai Brith Facebook post here

Maybe the women are students; maybe they have small children; maybe they are saving up to move to a better apartment.  Why were they fired?  Someone ratted them out to their employer as “antisemites.” Someone said that their applause on the restaurant steps that day meant they sided with the “terrorists”?  Were they fired because their opinion on a political situation– Israel’s war on Gaza —  wasn’t in line with their employer’s? Or did the establishment Jewish community of Toronto decide to “get them”.  The latter seems likely.  A Jewish “human rights organization”, B’nai Brith proudly posted a few days later, “Following further discussions with the restaurant, we are happy to report that the employees in question are no longer working at Moxies.”

In an email to the CBC, B’nai Brith Canada’s, CEO, Michael Mostyn, admitted, his

“organization had reached out to Northland Properties, the parent company of Moxies, after Moxies had publicly said it intended to investigate the employees and ‘requested that we be updated as to the results of their investigation.’ ”

Michael Mostyn

Reading the comments appended to B’nai Brith’s X (Formerly Twitter) post, at least half of the comments support the idea that the four Moxies’ staff stepped out of line and were antisemitic, pro-terrorist, pro-Hamas, should have run their opinions by their bosses, or should not be allowed to display any political opinions at all. How is that fair?  

B’nai Brith Canada, one of the establishment Jewish organizations has some nerve to push for these women’s firings. B’nai Brith calls itself an “Independent Jewish Human Rights Organization”.  A look at their site betrays little of this mission—or intent. While they ostensibly “defend” Jewish rights in Canada and elsewhere, they portray Palestinians and anyone critical of what Israel does as enemies who must be bullied and punished.  The young women at Moxies were singled out as supporters of Palestinians, and they had to be stopped.   

Item 2: Weeks before Ontario MPP Sarah Jama was “fired” from the NDP caucus, in October, the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (FSWC) had demanded she be ousted.  Indeed according to the FSWC, the 

“decision[came] two weeks after FSWC and other Jewish groups called on the Ontario NDP to remove Jama from caucus following her abhorrent statement on the Israel-Hamas war that failed to acknowledge the mass atrocities committed by the terror group Hamas against Israeli civilians… on Oct. 7.”

FSWC here

Though Jama retracted her statement and apologized, the FSWC claimed it was   “much too little, much too late” and that for months the Center had been upset by Jama’s stance.  As far back as March, 2023, “FSWC raised concerns with Stiles [NDP leader] over Jama’s antisemitism and the Ontario NDP’s failure to acknowledge the harm done, apologize and communicate a commitment to confront antisemitism within the Party.” 

Jama, a Black woman who uses a wheelchair, had made comments on the need for a ceasefire to end the 75 years of violence and retaliation rooted in settler colonialism.  She was fired from the NDP caucus.  See her statement from 10 Oct. 2023 below:

Item 3:  Dr Yoni Freedhof is Jewish and an Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Medicine.  He personally took offence at some social media posts written by Dr Yipeng Ge about Israel’s war on Gaza and drew attention to them.  Freedhof called Ge’s messages antisemitic and genocidal.  As a result, Dr Ge was suspended in the final year of his residency program.  Dr Ge, had previously volunteered for Doctors without Borders, and had called Israel an apartheid state.  He was suspended in November 2023. After a three-month long  investigation by the Faculty of Medicine, his employer offered to reinstate him.  But Dr Ge received no apology and no recognition that the Faculty of Medicine  had done anything wrong.  Dr Ge refused to return to his residency and  is now looking for other opportunities.

Item 4:  The CBC received screenshots of a closed Facebook group called Canadian Jewish Physicians.  The screenshots show a group of members saying they have compiled a list of 271 medical students who had signed an open letter calling for a ceasefire and a stop to Israel targeting hospitals and health workers in Gaza.  Some members of the Canadian Jewish Physicians want to ensure that students who signed the open letter and sympathize with Palestinians are not offered preferred residencies.  “The stated intention is to share this list with program directors ahead of residency interviews.” This flies in the face of the nonprofit organization CaRMS (Canadian Residential Matching Service) which matches newly graduated doctors with their preferred residency programs. As the CaRMS site says, “CaRMS will conduct all of its affairs according to the following values: fairness, objectivity, reliability and transparency.” Again, a group clearly identified as Jewish physicians claims credit.

Screenshots from a private Facebook group sent to CBC News by a member, in which a handful of members say they’ve compiled a list of 271 medical students who signed an open letter calling for a ceasefire and an end to targeting health-care facilities and workers in Gaza. (Canadian Jewish Physicians/Facebook)

Item 5:  In a way,  little of this is news.  Four  years ago Dr Valentina Azarova, an internationally-acclaimed legal scholar was denied a job at the University of Toronto Law School.  Though she is a Jew, she was “soft” on Palestinians’ human rights and had published research on the subject.  A federal tax judge, David Spiro, a U of T Law School alumnus and major donor to that school, who is also Jewish and prominent in Jewish institutional organizations, is alleged to have used his influence to block Azarova’s hiring. 

Spiro, who sat on the board of the avowedly pro-Israel organization, CIJA (Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs), told a friend at the University of Toronto he had “concerns” about hiring Azarova and warned the appointment could damage the school’s reputation. (Kind of like protection racketeers who tell business owners “Nice establishment you have here; too bad if something bad should happen.”) That seemed to be enough to have had Azarova’s job offer rescinded.  A month later, in Oct. 2020, CBC-TV’s The Fifth Estate reported that Judge Spiro had been barred from deciding cases involving Muslims.  A year later, the university tried to clear things up by re-offering Azarova the job – which she declined.  The atmosphere had been poisoned.

Item 6:  In 2021, a University of Toronto doctor and faculty member was accused of “antisemitic behaviour”, Dr. Ritika Goel, the social justice, anti-oppression and advocacy theme lead for the doctor of medicine and postgraduate training programs at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto, was the target of an anonymous open letter that circulated in May 2021.

The letter described a “prevailing culture of antisemitism and xenophobia” within the faculty, and ultimately demanded the “prompt dismissal” of Goel from her position in the university’s Department of Family and Community Medicine (DFCM).

Goel was one of 3,000 health care professionals who had signed an open letter that asked Canadian health care workers to express solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza – where Israel had killed Palestinian doctors and bombed clinics.   Friends and colleagues of Goel argued that the allegations against her were baseless and harmful to larger efforts to stamp out racism and prejudice.

Goel’s  supporters noted that there was a “stifling” of discussion on Israel and Palestine.  As one supporter Dr Zac Feilchenfeld of Toronto, wrote, 

“I think the claims of antisemitism against Dr. Goel are a conflation of criticizing Israel, criticizing the actions of the Israeli government and the Israeli army with antisemitism.” 

As Larry Haiven notes in his recent article “Racialized are prime targets of Pro-Israel attacks –and its deliberate” in Canadian Dimension here, “the answer to the question ‘Who is antisemitic?’ might well be ‘Anyone, but especially a racialized person, who criticizes Israel.’”

Still the University of Toronto ignored the attacks on its own faculty member, Dr Goel.  Eventually, because of huge support for her in the medical school, the matter seemed to die down.

Reality Check

Four out of six of the above examples of people fired or attacked are racialised people.  Larry Haiven’s article in Canadian Dimension explains that

“racialized people have been special targets of pro-Israel lobby organizations in Canada because they spoke out on Palestinian rights. And these examples suggest how the defend-Israel-at-all-costs industry has a racism and Islamophobia problem”.

Once upon a time there was systemic discrimination against Canadian Jews. My mother, who graduated from Dentistry at the University of Toronto in 1943 was one of a quota of only a handful of Jews (and a few women) allowed in her class. 

But in my lifetime, Jews in Canada– including myself – have been able to get jobs in medicine, at hospitals, in research, in law, in the courts, in engineering, in architecture and as professors in almost every university.  I don’t know any Jews who have been excluded from jobs in the media, in publishing, in politics or in other professions because they are Jewish.  In the last 50 years there were few to no  complaints to Human Rights Commissions across Canada by Jewish people who faced discrimination in employment, or housing or were excluded from government support or services because they were Jewish.  

This is not to say there is no antisemitism. 

It is to say we who are alive today in Canada, live in a golden age for Jews.  We are  a people who have had a lot of success in building careers and enjoying a good life in Canada – so why is the Jewish establishment so vicious toward anyone who questions what Israel is doing,  and supports Gaza and Palestinians?   Now after Israel has killed nearly 27,000 Palestinians (more than half of whom are children and women), after two-thirds of the houses are gone and Gaza utterly destroyed, after at least a million Palestinians are sleeping on the pavement or under tarps crammed into southern Gaza, after Israeli protesters have blockaded trucks of food, medicine, and clean water from delivering to the people of Gaza, after Israel has taken advantage of the “war” to kill more than 380 Palestinians in the West Bank — don’t people have a right, indeed an obligation – to say no more? 

Apparently not.  The power and wrath of the Jewish establishment against the racialized who question or disagree with Israel seems to have no end.  

Featured image at the top: Photo of three Moxies employees outside the restaurant on 21 Oct. with a demonstrator holding a placard (from social media post)