events organized by Jewish federations, or smaller ones planned by both left or right- wing groups, they tended to focus almost exclusively on the hostages and their desperate situation. Canadian Jews hold a wide range of views, especially concerning Israel and the current government. But after Oct. 7, at least temporarily, there was a tacit agreement to focus on the one thing all camps could agree on: the release of the hostages. Meanwhile, the anti-Israel sentiment and antisemitism unleashed after Oct. 7, con- tinued to seep into new cracks, in disturb- ing ways. The CJN wrote about the cancel- lation of a play set in Israel, The Runner , about an Orthodox volunteer who grapples with the fallout after saving a Palestinian woman’s life—and leaving a fatally wounded Israeli soldier behind. Performances of The Runner were can- celled by a Victoria B.C. theatre which said this was not the time for a play that could further incite tensions in the community. Soon after, a theatre festival in Vancouver pulled the play from its lineup after a Pal- estinian artist threatened to withdraw his work from the event. I interviewed Leah Goldstein, a champion- ship cyclist and motivational speaker who had served in an undercover unit in the IDF 30 years ago. She was scheduled to be the keynote speaker at a women’s festival in Peterborough, Ont., but was abruptly disinvited when the organizers asked her for a statement on Israel and then can- celled the engagement, before she could even reply. Goldstein told me that after Oct. 7 her agent has been unable to book any speaking events. The festival in a small Ontario city became an international news story, and in the end, organizers cancelled the entire event for this year. I could go on. Nearly every single one of the hundreds of stories we have published and aired since Oct. 7 has been coloured in some way by the absolute tragedy of that day. It would be a fool’s errand to try and pre- dict what Israel will look like as it absorbs the losses of Oct. 7 and the toll of the war. Similarly, there’s no way of telling how Can- adian Jewish life will be reshaped by the violence and antisemitism here. For now, all we know is that those two parallel stories are still being written. n
Nathan Philips Square in Toronto, at a rally marking 100 days of captivity for the hostages on January 14, 2014
out on the bridge, although without any flags or signs. And equally predictably, po- lice warned them to leave and then made three arrests. This time I was standing among the pro-Palestinian protesters and what I heard was not political but personal and chill- ing. “How would they like it if their babies were killed” they said among themselves, referring to the rising death toll in Gaza. “Who do they think they are? Why is their neighbourhood so special?” “We’ll show those ‘Zionists.’” These protests have become increas- ingly disruptive as the winter, and the war in Gaza, dragged on. In Toronto, a protest stopped in front of Mount Sinai Hospital and people loudly chanted “intifada” underneath the hospital windows, while a self-described “Palestinian Spiderman” scaled the building to wave a flag. In early March, as I was writing this column, protesters blocked the entrance to the Bronfman building at McGill University and a few days later, surrounded a Jewish community building where Concordia stu- dents were hosting an event. The Jewish community held its own ral- lies, which we covered, but they were very different in tone. Whether they were large
end for weeks on end. The tipping point was when a police officer delivered a carton of Tim Hortons coffee that demonstrators on the barricaded bridge had ordered. I was standing with the residents on the far side of the bridge that morning and couldn’t see the coffee delivery, which police chief Myron Demkiw had to issue an apology for. But the residents, not all of whom are Jewish, had plenty to say about the protesters. They were both angry and intimidated by the masked demonstrators who used the highway overpass as a site to launch smoke flares, hang flags and chant, “Zionists out.” They were outraged the protests were tar- geting a predominantly Jewish neighbour- hood rather than the Israeli or American consulates—places where foreign policy is actually made. And even before the coffee faux pas, they were frustrated with the To- ronto police force’s practice of deescalating tensions rather than stopping the protests. The next week the police chief (who had by then received a phone call about the matter from the prime minister) declared the bridge off limits and warned that pro- testers would be arrested. Predictably, a few people tested their luck the following Saturday and strolled
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