Demented Demonizing

B'nai Brith Canada's annual report of anti-Semitic attacks, another gloomy audit of rising events hitting communities across the country is being criticized for its scatter-gun approach of appraising all incidents, lesser or larger, as equal in moment. Well, what qualifies for disqualification as an anti-Semitic attack against Jews? Insults and slanders are not to be taken as seriously as, say, physical attacks, armed threats, gravestones overturned?

Seriously? Don't slanders, unchecked, encourage racists to move on to bigger and better, as in more atrocious - events unleashing their rants into riots? Isn't that the way it usually works? Start small, aspire to bigger things? After all, the past has more than adequately proven that desensitizing a population begins by de-legitimizing others' rights, paving a path for disinterest in the general population of upholding human rights for those who have none.

Claims of increasing acts of blatant anti-Semitism seem tedious, tiresome and unnecessary in a country which prides itself on inclusiveness and kindly feelings toward others. Canadians are an inoffensive lot, by and large. But when societies become so complacent that they won't take steps to smack down attacks on the human dignity and rights of minorities among them they lay themselves open to increases in such attacks.

No one segment of society is immune to the disease of racism; it permeates society at many levels and discreet displays of discrimination can be found anywhere. Which does not mean they should be tolerated; once tolerated they become more commonplace because there is no censure, and perspective becomes skewed. And, as a simple matter of fact, intolerance is on the rise in Canada.

We see rising incidents of anti-Semitism in the guise of anti-Israel diatribes increasingly, in the elite ranks of public unions, within academia, among left-wing groups. And nowhere is that symptom of pathological detestation for an ethnic, religious, social group more evident than in universities across Canada who have allowed a hateful event isolating Israel and extending to Jewish students than the yearly ritual of "Israeli Apartheid Week".

From Gay and Lesbian groups, to the Canadian Arab Federation and its offshoots, to student and teachers' unions, the daggers are sharpened and ready to plunge. There are no labour unions, no carefree and proud gay and lesbian groups in Arab countries, but they do exist in the Jewish State. Isn't that peculiar? Within Israel, religious minorities have protected rights, where they do not in Arab countries.

Yet Protestant groups and left-leaning groups like the United Church who consider themselves social progressives tend to point a finger of blame at Israel while overlooking the terrorist activities of Palestinians in their 'resistance' against their 'occupiers' who 'occupy' so that they may protect themselves from the 'resistance' in the guise of violent attacks against their civilian populations.

And so, Israeli Apartheid Week is proudly supported, a symptom of a mass incident of cognitive dissonance led by an intransigently visceral racism called anti-Semitism. Deliberate social blinkers are donned, and various groups in solidarity with the 'plight' of the Palestinians go about their putrid pathology and their peculiar partnerships.

The true apartheid being practised, needless to say, is the separating of Jews from other segments of the population, to hold them apart as repugnant practitioners of duplicity and avariciousness, carefully separating their diseased presence from the rest of ordinary, respectable society so they may better be reviled.