If you’re landing on this page it’s pretty likely that you’ve come from the blog of Ezra Levant who, for a day or so,made me his poster child for anti-Semitism shortly after the human rights org I work for was defunded in the Bev Oda/CIDA debacle.
A little history.
Downtown Toronto born and bred, raised by English-Scottish immigrants who, as a result of being bombed by the Luftwaffe when they were children, instilled in me a deep fundamental antagonism towards all things Nazi.
Despite living in neighborhoods and attending grade and high schools that were generously populated by Jews I really didn’t know what a Jew was until my mid teens. Began to self-educate on the holocaust… read Anne Frank, then later Primo Levi and Eli Wiesel (I still read, periodically, his Hasidic portraits ‘Souls on Fire’) whose books were, as they have been for so many, devastating and also transformative in my understanding of human nature, human possibility, good and evil, racism. In university on to Kosinski and Frankl and, with my prof at Trent U. brought in ‘Shoa’ to my Cultural Studies class.
Halfway through my undergrad I hitchhiked across Europe to Israel to visit a friend studying in Jerusalem, and hitchhiked through Israel, north south east west.
I sent my first son to kindergarten at the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre in downtown Toronto, under the Buddha-like eyes of the inimitable Helene Comay.
In September 2009 I was hired by KAIROS Canada, a faith based ecological justice and human rights org, as their New Media Program Coordinator. At the end of November all of KAIROS’ CIDA funding was cut and two weeks later Canadian MP Jason Kenney announced in Israel that KAIROS had been cut because it was “anti-Semitic”. I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. The notion was absurd. Our Middle East Program Coordinator *was* an Israeli Jew.
Days later I was watching the KAIROS website stats (which were soaring) when I saw a high number of visitors coming to KAIROS’ Palestine-Israel page from a blog by someone called Ezra Levant. I didn’t know who Ezra Levant was but I checked the source page of the visitors. I was astonished to find Mr. Levant going on a tirade about KAIROS, anti-Semitism, and about deleted pages of links. As it turned out, Levant had unwittingly (or not) put in a false URL (http://www.kairoscanada.org/en/rights-and-trade/focus-countries/palestine-israel/israel-palestine-links/en/rights-and-trade/focus-countries/palestine-israel/ - it’s still on his site) which can’t be found because it doesn’t exist, and never did. I submitted a comment, directing him to the correct page. I also pointed out that almost nothing on the site had been changed (It’s a big website, with multiple global projects - stuff is going up and coming down all the time. In two months I had barely seen the ‘Palestine-Israel’ page, there just wasn’t any activity there. When the shit hit the fan KAIROS cleared up some links that were either dead, or the content to which they located had changed. KAIROS also, god forbid, pulled down a blog that was an experiment, one which would now receive brutal criticism. Not my choice). To my complete astonishment I was, the next day, Levant’s poster child for anti-Semitism: my photo is still on his blog, and he supplied a direct link to my personal website, taunting that I was a liar bearing false witness for money (if only.....).
Seeing that was one of the most sickening feelings I’ve ever had, to be labeled, as publicly as possible, an ‘anti-Semite’, by a complete stranger, who also happens to be a very popular pundit, publisher and, obviously by necessity, libel lawyer.
There was nothing I could do to reply. I would be used as a spokesperson for KAIROS, which I was decidedly not, and it was clear that Levant had no real interest in facts, just in his single minded, by any means necessary, agenda. I eventually took some solace in the list of others who have also been called anti-Semitic: Bob Rae, Irwin Cottler, Gerald Caplan, the United Nations, Amnesty International, Oxfam, Human Rights Watch, etc, etc…
To my mind the likes of Kenney and Levant are doing a supreme disservice to Jews. They are using the term “anti-Semitism” to play political games. “Anti-Semitism” has always meant to me racism towards people of Jewish descent (the obvious fact that the Arabic people are also ‘Semitic’ is a discussion I’ll back out of for now). I’ve never felt any animosity towards Jewish people. It’s never occurred to me, any more than feeling antagonism towards any other person based on their race. The likes of Kenney and Levant have, however, spread the term “anti-Semitism” to refer to anyone who criticizes the state of Israel (or, in my case, anyone who works for an organization that criticizes Israel).
This is a very foolish strategy. Firstly you run the risk of severely alienating thousands of people who have no racial animosity towards Jews whatsoever (including the many Jews who are themselves critical of the state of Israel). Secondly, by lumping Amnesty International, Oxfam, KAIROS, etc, in with fanatical bigoted white supremacists the meaning of the word “anti-Semitism” is completely obliterated. It ceases to have any traction or relevance whatsoever, and this is very very unfortunate indeed, because anti-Semitism most definitely really does exist, and it is most definitely utterly abhorrent.
All works by Nik Beeson alone are licensed under a
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