Prime Minister Carney, YOU failed Canadian Jews AND you failed Canada

On June 1^st, Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered a speech about antisemitism in Canada. He correctly identified the extent of the hatred directed at Canadian Jews, but he still failed miserably, not only Canadian Jews but all of Canada.

Carney’s speech never once mentioned anti-Zionism, which is, by far, the most common form of hatred directed at Canadian Jews. He never mentioned Israel either, as if its existence and the hatred directed at it were not relevant to the issue of antisemitism in Canada.

As if to make sure that no one misunderstood his speech as condemnation of anti-Zionism, he stressed his support for “freedom of speech” without saying that such speech should not and should never consist of hatred against the Jewish state, of denial of Israel’s right to exist, and of support for groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the IRGC who are sworn to the destruction of Israel.

Anti-Israel demonstrators in Canada have become so emboldened that they openly support terrorists. Carney said nothing about that. Instead, he made a reference to Islamophobia in his speech, which is hard to not see as a wink to anti-Israel extremists.

Carney also announced a new racism advisory board and tasked it with assessing antisemitism in Canada, but as reported in the Jerusalem Post, Carney appointed to that board “a politician who had previously rejected describing the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades as a terrorist organization, along with a lawyer who had represented anti-Israel encampment activists”. Seriously? Would Carney have appointed a white supremacist to fight anti-Black racism? I hope not!

We are supposed be a country that protects its minorities, whether they be Blacks, gays, Muslims, Asians, aboriginals, and so on, and we do a pretty good job at it in most cases, but we do a terrible job at it when it comes to Jews, a tiny and diminishing minority, while the groups that typically hate Israel are growing by leaps and bounds.

How does Carney expect the antisemitism problem to improve when we don’t screen immigrants based on their values of respect for minorities? When even the prime minister of Canada is afraid to identify anti-Zionism as the main issue? When he appoints anti-Zionists to fix the problem of anti-Zionism?

As someone who voted for Carney because I saw him as a centrist and a serious politician who isn’t afraid to face reality, I have to say that I am extremely disappointed. Carney may be a centrist on the economy, but he certainly isn’t willing to face reality when doing so may interfere with his ability to win the next election in a country where antisemites are getting bolder and noisier every day.

In his speech, Carney said that “Canada failed its Jews”, but by failing to confront antisemitism effectively, Carney himself failed Canadian Jews. More than that, he failed Canada’s fundamental values of diversity and the protection of minorities, and therefore he failed all of Canada.