Itmar Ben Gvir’s call to “burn all of Lebanon” highlights the ridiculousness of the discussion of “antisemitism” in Canada. In their latest employment of their ideological stick, Israel lobbyists recently convinced leading politicians to label activists hanging him in effigy as “antisemitic”.
In response to four occupation soldiers being killed by the Lebanese resistance Friday, Israel’s Minister of National Security posted in Hebrew, “For every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep. All of Lebanon must burn! With all due respect to the Americans, Israel must make it clear to the entire world that the blood of our sons and the security of our citizens are not forfeit. All of Lebanon must burn. Our supreme duty is to protect the citizens of Israel and the soldiers of the IDF, and this commitment takes precedence over every other consideration. I told the Prime Minister, even in our private meetings: For every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep. Enough with the ping-pong. In the Middle East, you don’t win with measured responses and restraint—you need to go berserk. To obliterate. To crush the terror.”
Ben Gvir is a genocidal sociopath. The leader of the Jewish Power party recently mocked flotilla activists tortured for seeking to break the blockade of Gaza and celebrated his birthday with a cake ‘decorated’ by a death penalty noose to mark a new racist death penalty law for Palestinian detainees.
Despite decades of genocidal activism, Israel lobby groups convinced a slew of politicians to cry “antisemitism” when activists hung effigies of Ben Gvir, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu three weeks ago. Rebel News videographer Guillaume Roy circulated a somewhat hard to make-out video with only the Ben-Gvir effigy, which has his trademark large white kippah, under the tagline “The pro-Hamas group Mtl4Palestine displays the [Montreal] Canadiens flag next to what appears to be an effigy of a Jew wearing a kippah, hanged with a rope.”
Even though it was easy to find images of all three political effigies, Liberal MP Anthony Housefather quote tweeted Roy noting, “hanging an image of a Jew wearing a kippah in effigy is disgusting, antisemitic, and a clear incitement to hatred.” Montreal mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre as well as Liberals Evan Solomon, Gary Anandasangaree and Leslie Church all echoed the defence of Ben-Gvir who has been sanctioned by Ottawa for his extreme right-wing actions and words. Several leftists such as Antonia Zerbisias also gave oxygen to the “antisemitism” freakout.
The Ben Gvir kerfuffle is but the latest of many similar faux “antisemitism” outrages sparked by Zionist lobbyists over the years. In a bid to deter Israel from slaughtering 1.5 million Palestinians cloistered in Rafah on February 12, 2004, thousands joined an emergency march in Toronto. During the four-hour long march “Spiderman for Palestine” and another individual climbed atop scaffolding in front of a (closed) entrance to Mount Sinai Hospital to waive a Palestinian flag as they did at numerous other spots.
In response Canada’s genocide apparatus whipped up outrage that a public institution with Jewish roots was targeted. A slew of top politicians, including NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, baselessly echoed the genocide lobby in smearing justice minded activists.
In another similarly embarrassing episode a few years earlier, the prime minister, Conservative leader, NDP leader and Green leader followed the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs in denouncing activist Dimitri Lascaris for (correctly) tweeting “MPs Anthony Housefather and Michael Levitt are more devoted to apartheid Israel than to their own prime minister and colleagues in the Liberal caucus.”
At the time there was already a bevy of evidence that Housefather and Levitt prioritized defending Israeli crimes over their own party. But the immediate background to the 2018 tweet uproar made the condemnation completely outrageous. After a demonstration opposing B’nai B’rith’s smears against the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, Lascaris called on Housefather and Levitt, CIJA, and others who had defended B’nai B’rith on the eve of the protest, to publicly repudiate two of that group’s supporters who called for a number of Muslim and brown politicians to be killed in a video detailingtheir participation in a counter protest to the rally against B’nai B’rith.
Despite the moral righteousness of Lascaris’ tweet, several leftists, such as The Breach founders Martin Lukacs and Dru Oja Jay, joined the apartheid lobby in labelling his tweet “antisemitism”.
While their goal post has shifted with the scope of Israel’s recent horrors, The Breach and many leftists continue to promote important elements of Zionist hysteria. Recently, that publication published an odious column bemoaning pro-Palestinian antisemitism by an individual who defends an uncle who is a leading genocide lobbyist.
Three years, going on a century, into a genocide Israel still wields a unique ideological stick. While Itmar Ben Gvir calls to “burn all of Lebanon”, Zionist groups in Canada can get officials to cry “antisemitism” for hanging him in effigy.
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