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Source: https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-842875
Many Canadians' Polite Passivity Tolerates the Intolerable
(Jerusalem Post) Gil Troy - A trip to post-Oct. 7 Canada in February introduced me to a world I did not recognize. "Being Jewish today means living behind security," one of my hosts observed. Students told insane tales of math or physics professors sacrificing class time to bash Israel, of writing teachers imposing class assignments about how "Israelis are savages," of historians claiming that Jewish women made up stories about Palestinians raping them on Oct. 7. I heard of students in elementary schools enduring Nazi jokes and of fifth-grade teachers bullying Jewish kids while trashing Israel. A rapidly growing, rabid, pro-Palestinian movement of Muslims in Canada has been raised to despise Jews, not "just" Israelis, and import thuggish mob politics into Western democracies. Canada's weakening national identity and many Canadians' polite passivity tolerates the intolerable, even as their Jewish neighbors suffer. However, all is not lost. At the University of Ottawa, when anti-Zionist goons tried banning me from campus, top administrators, including President Jacques Fremont - a human rights expert - appeared, so the masked cowards didn't. Most importantly, I met wonderful students. They love Israel, Zionism, the Jewish people and Western values. They laugh off many of their fellow students' excesses. They refuse to be cowed. Many students have landed on the right side of history and are making their stand. The writer, a Distinguished Scholar of North American History at McGill University, is a Senior Fellow in Zionist Thought at the Jewish People Policy Institute.