David L. Bernstein: Combating antisemitism means pushing back against woke ideology

We can’t fight Jew hatred without fighting the ideology that fuels it

Published Sep 18, 2024  •  Last updated 7 minutes ago  •  5 minute read

Signs are seen surrounding the anti-Israel encampment at the University of Toronto in May. Photo by Jesse Kline/National Post

By David L. Bernstein, David Steinberg and Sam Goldstein

These are tough times for Canadian Jews. In 2023, the last full year for which we have survey data, nearly 5,800 antisemitic incidents were reported — or 16 per day — a 110 per cent increase over the previous year. With the extremism and violence we’ve witnessed this past year on college campuses, on city streets and even in suburban neighbourhoods, we should expect those numbers to be even higher in 2024.

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Even more so than their counterparts in the United States, Canadian universities such as Concordia have become hotbeds of antisemitic activity and platforms for shameless intimidation. Too many university administrators haven’t lifted a finger, effectively turning over their campuses to hostile antisemitic mobs.

The cumulative effect of these antisemitic acts — some of which have turned violent — is the growing sense among many Canadian Jews that their beloved country is becoming increasingly inhospitable to Jewish life. What should we do about this sharp rise in Jew hatred that’s threatening Jewish life?

Mainstream Jewish organizations, public officials and other well-meaning people have offered up a veritable cornucopia of possible interventions, from enforcing existing laws, to passing new legislation, offering better security to Jewish institutions, conducting ambitious education campaigns aimed at the public and providing training for educators.

Without a doubt, these are all important measures. Anything we can do to sensitize the public, protect Jewish life and push antisemites to the margins of society is worth pursuing. But reacting to antisemitic incidents is not enough.

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The explosion in antisemitic fervour did not suddenly appear out of nowhere. Rather, it has emerged out of an ideology that has become increasingly embedded in our social institutions and manipulated by Islamic radicals to co-opt masses of useful idiots.

This ideology is used to fuel hostility toward Jews and other supposedly “white adjacent” minorities, such as Hindu- and Chinese-Canadians. It emerges from a simplistic oppressor-oppressed ideology, which has gained prominence over the last few years and now dominates many institutions and sectors of Canadian society. It holds that we can neatly designate identity groups as either “privileged” or “marginalized” based on skin colour, average household incomes or educational achievement.

Jews, who have been among the most oppressed people in world history, are implicitly, and often explicitly, categorized as “privileged” by virtue of their skin colour and economic status. Moreover, Jewish history and Jews’ lived experience of discrimination is discounted or completely disregarded, because, as members of the “privileged” class, Jews are seen as incapable of being oppressed. This is the perverse, irrational and ahistorical logic of the ideology that’s at the foundation of contemporary antisemitism.

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By contrast, under this ideological framework, members of Indigenous communities, Muslims, Black Canadians and trans people, among others, are all considered “oppressed.” Anything they do or say against their “privileged oppressors,” including Jews, or for the benefit of other “oppressed” groups, including Palestinians in Gaza, is thus justified.

Corporations, universities, school boards, medical associations, the arts, legal bodies, etc., have taken proactive steps to instill the oppressor-oppressed ideology through “equity audits,” diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs and just plain intimidation that punishes any disagreement or dissent. It should surprise no one that a culture that is hostile to varied viewpoints and the western liberal principle of free inquiry is also antagonistic to specific groups of people who it perceives as opposing the party line or attaining unearned “privilege.”

If we’ve learned anything in recent years, it’s that deferring to radical ideology begets more and crazier forms of that ideology. Take, for example, the Toronto District School Board’s (TDSB) embrace of “anti-Palestinian racism,” or APR. APR absurdly holds that challenging the Palestinian narrative of “the Nakba,” or catastrophe, of Israel’s creation can be a form of racism against Palestinians.

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The TDSB, like many school systems, has long embraced a DEI ideology, which holds that marginalized communities get to define what constitutes racism against them and can be “harmed” by any expression of disagreement to the dominant narrative.

Then came ideologues like Dania Majid, co-founder and president of the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association, who inserted Palestinians into the ideological template, asserting in a 2022 webinar on APR that impact is more important than intent when evaluating racism. She classifies Palestinians a paradigmatic marginalized group that must be deferred to lest these fragile oppressed people experience harm.

Next thing we know, the school bureaucracies, which buy into such outlandish claims about marginalization and harm, embraced APR as official doctrine, other Canadian school districts followed suit and APR jumped the border into the United States and other western countries. Crazy begets more crazy.

That is why it’s long past time that the good people who want to combat antisemitism come to the realization that we can’t fight antisemitism without fighting the ideology that fuels it. Fighting this ideological battle means standing up for the western liberal values that undergird Canada’s liberal democracy and inspire others to do the same. It means challenging DEI not just because it fuels antisemitism, but because it undermines the core principles of Canadian democratic and civic life.

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It’s understandable why many good people are reluctant to get on board — they know that such an approach will not win them friends in progressive political circles, the educational establishment or even their workplaces. That’s a bitter pill to swallow.

Those who fight antisemitism need to sacrifice some of their political and social capital in the short term to do battle with the ideological forces that give rise to antisemitism in the long term. They need to stand up for the values that protected them for decades and not yield to ideological fads out of expediency.

It’s time that those who want to save Canada’s Jews undertake the real fight.

National Post

David L. Bernstein is the founder of the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values and author of “Woke Antisemitism: How a Progressive Ideology Harms Jews.” David Steinberg and Sam Goldstein are Toronto-based lawyers.

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