‘MANDEL: Anti-Semitism continues to spread like a virus’: The Scapegoats; The Canary in the Coal Mine

TORONTOSUN.com By Michele Mandel June 12, 2020

In the midst of a national emergency, the vilest scum rises to the surface.

Last Friday, the rabbi and 150 congregants of the Village Shul on Eglinton Ave. W. got together in a virtual meeting to usher in the Sabbath. It’s usually a time of camaraderie and spirituality, both sorely needed in these pandemic times.

But that sense of peace and calm was shattered by a disgusting hate crime. The synagogue’s Zoom event was suddenly crashed by a number of people, including one yelling, “Hitler should have killed you all.”

“The entire congregation was absolutely horrified, the rabbi was horrified,” said Jaime Kirzner-Roberts, of Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (FSWC). “They have Holocaust survivors in their congregation. It was frightening and horrific.”

It was the third time a Toronto synagogue has been victim of zoombombing, said Kirzner-Roberts, director of FSWC campaign against anti-Semitism.

“They’re very targeted, they’re premeditated involving numerous perpetrators and they’re saying very frightening things,” she said.

“We’re asking police to investigate this as a hate crime. It is illegal in Canada to promote or advocate for genocide. We are asking law enforcement to enforce the law. It’s not okay in Canada to say what these individuals said.”

By all markers, anti-Semitism has been steadily on the rise.

This week B’nai Brith announced that Peel Regional Police had followed up on their complaint from August 2019 about anti-Semitic articles posted by Polish-Canadian newspaper Goniec.

The articles allegedly accused Jews and Zionists of having “terrorism in their blood,” claimed “Jews are spying on you” by using WhatsApp and that they controlled the governments of the United States and Poland.

B’nai Brith CEO Michael Mostyn said the offensive online articles disappeared after police arrested and then released publisher Andrzej Kumor, warning him that any further promotion of hatred against Jews would lead to criminal charges.

“We’re hoping he has learned his lesson from this,” Mostyn said. “It’s important news outlets understand that racism, bigotry and anti-Semitism are not fair game and are not going to be tolerated in Canada.”

James Sears, the editor of Your Ward News, learned that last summer when he was convicted of promoting hatred against Jews and women. Sentenced to a year in jail, he’s currently free on bail pending his appeal.

But Your Ward News was old-school hate. The pandemic has seen an explosion of age-old anti-Semitic tropes on social media as well as the new phenomena of zoombombing.

The hate mongering tends to follow a number of crazy conspiracy theory themes: Israel created the virus to benefit their national pharmaceutical industry; Israel is deliberately spreading COVID-19 to Palestinians; Jews are disobeying quarantine rules and like rats, spreading the disease.

According to an FBI alert, neo-Nazis and other white supremacists are even encouraging their members who contract COVID-19 to spread the virus to Jews.

“We’ve seen a significant uptick in daily reports to our anti-hate hotline,” Mostyn said. “It just shows you how quickly this can become a breeding ground for anti-Semitism and how thinly-veiled prejudices against minority populations can quickly rise to the surface.”

The scapegoating of Jews is a common thread throughout history, explained Kirzner-Roberts of FSWC.

“In moments of great distress and great hardship, we’ve seen the greatest growth of anti-Semitism,” she said. “When people look to people to blame for their current state of fear and panic, they look to the Jewish community.

“We’ve seen such a tremendous and overwhelming effort across social media to blame Jews for creating the virus, for spreading the virus, for profiting from the virus,” Kirzner-Roberts said.

“And all of this hate on social media has implications for actual hate incidents. People are not just passively absorbing that information.”

Now they can even bring the virus of their vile pestilence right into the sanctity of a person’s home.