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Up to one month ago we were still able to hear a litany of pro-Israel apologists on radio, on TV, on the news, everywhere. We heard about Jews who were the eternal victims. We heard about Jewish suffering during the Holocaust. Israel bullied its way into the 2024 Eurovision song contest — despite being denied because of its war on Gaza. Israel managed to bully Eurovision which had also criticized the political lyrics of the original song. . We heard about the hostages and how their release had to be a precondition for stopping Israel’s war on Gaza. We heard about Israel’s agony about being “forced” to murder 14,000 children in Gaza . We heard the outrage from diaspora and Israeli Jews who refused to allow Israel to be disparaged by the world community, despite the preliminary finding of possible genocide by the International Court of Justice (ICJ). We saw scores of people, from waitresses at Moxie’s restaurant who were fired, to a retail clerk at a grocery store, to a nursing student in Winnipeg, to medical doctors and residents who were suspended or disciplined because they supported Palestinian human rights. Some establishment Jews had the power to ruin other people’s careers and futures.
Yesterday, CBC-TV’s Adrienne Arsenault, while flying over Gaza, said, “I can’t get over the speed of change.”
She’s right.
But she could have just as easily been talking about what’s going on in Canada, in some of our media, in our public squares – even in Canada’s parliament. Suddenly – almost no one wants the predictably pro-Israel voices to dominate public discourse as they did before. The tide is changing.
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Mark Regev: South Africa has become “Hamas’ lawyers”
Israel’s PM Netanyahu, at one time ubiquitous in his appearances on the TV news, is no longer. We rarely see Israel’s minister of defence, Yoav Gallant a retired military general—but we used to see him interviewed with regularity. Mark Regev, the Israeli diplomat and former foreign minister to PM Netanyahu, told LBC (British TV news) in mid-January that South Africa’s charges of genocide in Gaza were ‘preposterous’, and that South Africa has become “Hamas’ lawyers”.
I haven’t seen or heard Regev on Canadian news outlets since then.
Eylor Levy, Netanyahu’s silver-tongued English-language spokesman has been dismissed. Brig. Gen. Daniel Hagari, the head of the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, used to be at the media briefings even into January and February, and now is rarely seen..
It used to be that our media gave play to Israel’s demand that the hostages had to be freed before Israel would stop the killing of civilians. But suddenly our media realised that there are just over 100 hostages in compared to almost 32,000 dead Palestinian civilians – among them more than 14,000 children. Some in the media are now discussing Israel’s efforts to cover up the reality that a number of hostages were indeed killed by Israel troops, and airstrikes – not by Hamas.
Claims of antisemitism as a cover for Israel’s murderous rampage in Gaza & West Bank
Canada’s CIJA (The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs), realising how unpopular and hated Israel’s war on Gaza has become, has attempted to keep the spotlight on antisemitism in Canada. The establishment Jewish community has fostered the very wrong idea that all Canadian Jews support Israel and that the interests of Jews and Israel are inextricably linked. The establishment Jews who run CIJA, B’nai Brith and the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre are desperate to amplify the spectre of antisemitism in Canada. But much of the antisemitism is backlash against Israel. Considering the bloodshed in Gaza and the West Bank, I’m surprised that most people are willing to condemn Israel, but not Canada’s Jews. I am shocked there is not more outrage against the establishment Jews—as they continue to conflate being Jewish with blind support for Israel.
Several journalists, myself included here, here and here , have noted the scores of Canadians – disproportionately people of colour — who have been fired, disciplined, laid off or had their careers curtailed because they criticized Israel, or signed a pro-peace petition, or attended a rally for the people of Gaza.
All of us who criticized Israel were frozen out or on the outside from the start. For four months, the Canadian media was relentless in its defence of Israelis as beleaguered victims of an attack that was unexplainable, and antisemitic. Suddenly that’s not so. Somehow a threshold has been reached. Beyond 30,000 Palestinians dead, and 70,000 seriously injured, beyond 1,000 child single and double amputees and thousands of Palestinians still missing or buried under the rubble of their destroyed homes– the media’s interest in comforting those who defend Israel, and defending its apartheid state is waning.
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The NDP motion Monday night was further proof. Even with the amendments, which watered down many concerns and the demand for a ceasefire – 204 Parliamentarians voted yes. Only three Liberals voted no which signalled an historic shift. True, the motion was not binding, but it signalled that MPs have listened to the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who have protested nearly every week for five months for a ceasefire. Moreover, the MPs have suddenly had to listen to their own consciences.
This is happening now, when the blood of the tens of thousands of children finally comes pouring into our daily newspaper, or breakfast TV. It was bound to happen. Sooner not later. Just after 9-11 the world sympathised with the US for its loss of more than 2,700 people in the attacks on the World Trade Centre. Within weeks, that sympathy changed to bitterness and anger as people throughout the world saw the bombings and revenge the US took on Afghanistan (and later Iraq), and the tens of thousands of civilians killed plus the thousands taken hostage and kept in illegal “black site” prisons and then cages at Guantanamo for years.
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Israel, which for a few days in October received the world’s sympathy in the wake of the Hamas attacks, is now all but a pariah state. With Israel’s refusal to allow the necessary food, water and medicine into Gaza, Israel’s shelling and killings in hospitals and schools — plus green-lighting more than 1.5 million Gazans to suffer mass starvation — Israel’s standing in the world will further deteriorate.
Featured photo at the top: Palestinian fisherman holds a crab, part of his miserable catch in Gaza City, 20 Feb. 2024. (credit: Omar Qattaa/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images).
NB: The Hinge of Fate, is book four of former British prime minister Winston Churchill’s series of books that detail the dramatic account of how the Allies turned the tide of World War II.
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