I want to thank Daphna not just for inviting me today. But for inviting each of us here every Sunday. It’s so important.
Daphna – todah rabah.
**
I was not born into this community. Nor did I convert. I just showed up here, about 30 years ago, like a stray dog. And you took me in.
As someone coming into this community from the outside — but especially, coming from a background of progressive, left-wing activism, from the gay community, from antiracist activism, I have had the opportunity to see, to hear and to understand events from different angles.
When I showed up in Vancouver’s Jewish community, I had no idea about the depths of the familial, spiritual, emotional and personal connections between almost every Jewish person and the state and the land of Israel.
And I think this is one of the things that you probably discovered in the last five months. Most people just do not comprehend what Israel means to Jewish people.
We need to share that story. But we can only share that story if other people will listen. And that is the problem.
Because the people who need to hear it are too busy chanting to listen … or to understand.
**
Many British Columbians fail to understand why a former cabinet minister is claiming anti-Jewish bias while so many of her colleagues, who have apparently invested no effort into exploring the many forms antisemitism can take, steadfastly insist there must be some other explanation.
Israel is the national embodiment of the Jewish people. To attack Israel is to attack Jews.
Here is the bigger issue …
The people who are marching against Israel … they are not helping the people of Gaza … and they sure as hell are not making the world a better place.
The only thing they are doing is making Canada a more dangerous, toxic, intolerant country.
Hateful words against Israel are inciting violence against Jews in Canada.
And when we express concern about this undeniable correlation, we are accused of conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism … as if that distinction makes a damn bit of difference to the victim of a hate crime.
Words of hate … lead to acts of hate. We understand this when it comes to any other group.
But when it comes to Jews … people are willing to employ the most dangerous, inflammatory and incendiary rhetoric. And let the chips fall where they may.
**
But it is not only Jews and Israelis who are under attack by these radical extremists.
It is the very essence of what it means to be Canadian. It is our core national values that these activists betray.
Day after day, we see shrieking, crazed mobs shutting down events, screaming obscenities and threatening people who are trying to live their lives, commute to work, go to the theatre, attend synagogue or get an education.
The person you should be hearing from is not me.
Selina Robinson was invited here today. But it was not safe for her to come.
What does that tell you about the state of civil discourse in Canada?
You’ve seen their rallies. You have heard their chants. Do those look to you like people of peace?
They call for Israel to stop defending itself … but they refuse to demand the one thing that would immediately end the war and all this dying – the surrender of Hamas.
On the steps of this art gallery, days after the pogrom of October 7, people stood here and celebrated murder, rape, beheadings and kidnappings.
**
We mourn … we grieve every single innocent life lost.
We do not celebrate dead innocents.
Neither do we tally up bodies in a grotesque competition where the side with the most dead wins moral victory.
And even if some of the people who march for Palestine do not celebrate beheadings, do not applaud rape or rejoice at mass murder – they are absolutely content to march alongside people who do.
Those who on these steps called those horrific, inhuman atrocities “brilliant and amazing” are not only part of a movement that is holding human beings hostage.
They are holding hostage humanity itself.
They have abducted words like peace and ceasefire, freedom and human rights — but they desecrate these values.
Canadians have allowed people who align with the most misogynistic, homophobic, xenophobic, violent and totalitarian forces on earth to masquerade as voices for justice and equality … while accusing us of humanity’s greatest crimes.
If these people were genuinely advancing human rights and social justice, they wouldn’t need to cover their faces in keffiyahs and balaclavas.
We need to figuratively tear off their masks and show Canadians who these people are …
**
Maybe many Canadians don’t care about a conflict half a world away.
But the violence, coercion, intimidation and racism these people embody is a threat to Canada… to our civility … our peace, our multiculturalism and political discourse.
But the threat does not come only from the goons marching in the streets.
It also comes from some of our elected officials – including some who, until very recently, we thought were our friends — from the trusted teacher, the activist clergyperson, the crusading union leader, the self-righteous politically engaged artist.
Meanwhile, far too many Canadians have stood on the sidelines while extremists have taken over our streets, our campuses, our community theatres, our high schools, our public service.
Maybe they don’t care about Israelis.
Maybe they don’t care if the Jewish people lose their country.
But when they wake up and see that Canadians have lost ours … Jewish Canadians and their allies will be asking. Where were you?
Where were you when we were standing up for the values that Israelis and Canadians share?
Where were you when we demanded bring them home?
Because if you are not standing with Israelis against extremism … you are emboldening extremism in Canada.
This is not about choosing between Israelis and Palestinians. Unlike the extremists, we want peace for everyone.
This is about choosing between civilization and barbarism.
And we need to ask every Canadian: Which side are you on?