Anti-Semitism Rears Its Head in Canada at Palestinian Rally

A July 4 pro-Palestinian rally in the Canadian city of Mississauga featured the all-too-familiar chant, “Palestine is our country / The Jews are our dogs.”

On Saturday, July 4, Mississauga’s Celebration Square witnessed a protest by Palestinian Canadians against the planned annexation of the West Bank into Israel proper.

The organizer of this event wrote: “As Canadians, we need to condemn this illegal annexation and condemn Trudeau’s support of Israel, as well as show our support for Palestine and demand justice for it’s (sic) people. Palestinian or not, this is a human rights issue and we all need to come together to stand against it.”

But far from marching “as Canadians” for a “human rights issue,” the protestors could barely conceal their hatred of Jews and their clear rejection of Canada as their country.

One slogan chanted by the crowd revealed the true nature of the protest as not being against Israel’s ill-fated annexation bid, but a visceral hatred of Jews and the call for an extermination of the State of Israel itself.

A video shows the protesters chanting: “Palestine is our country / The Jews are our dogs.”

It was followed by the singing of the Palestinian anthem and the waving of Palestinian flags. There was not a single Canadian flag in sight nor was the Canadian national anthem accorded the respect it deserves as a land that opened its doors to these children of Palestinians seeking a new home.

When will they chant, “Canada is our country,” I wondered?

Rally organizers didn’t have to expose themselves as anti-Semites to win support against Israel.

If there was any sanity among the leadership of this hate-filled group, they would have known that they did not have to expose themselves as hate-mongering anti-Semites because they had the support of people around the world.

It is not just the Palestinian diaspora that opposes the annexation. Many of Israel’s allies and citizens have expressed opposition to Jerusalem’s bid to expand its sovereign borders. More than 1,000 European MPs have called for Israel to halt its annexation, warning it of ‘consequences’.

But as I illustrated in my book The Jew is Not My Enemy, not only have Arabs missed every opportunity to establish their own state next door to Israel, but their “all or nothing” strategy with a reliance on Iran’s mullahs and Arab Islamists has doomed them to irrelevance.

When they had Prime Minister Boris Johnson on their side with former Irish President Mary Robinson and former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also opposing annexation, then why would they unleash a tirade of hate?

The slogan, “Free Palestine, From the River to the Sea” is understood by Israelis as a call for their country’s eradication despite many apologists on the left having tried to sugarcoat the slogan with politically correct interpretations.

Hatred of the Jew has become institutionalized among Muslims worldwide.

Had such an expression of Jew-hatred been a one-time incident, one could live with it. However, the Mississauga protest is not the only place where Jews have been referred to as “dogs of the Palestinians”. Numerous videos exist of Islamic clerics referring to Jews as “sons of pigs and dogs”.

Such hatred of the Jew has become institutionalized among Muslims worldwide and only we, as Muslims, can eradicate it.

For example, we Muslims are supposed to pray daily to Allah asking him to help us avoid the path of the people who have evoked God’s wrath. When asked as to who are people that incurred Allah’s wrath, Islamic clerics point their finger to the Jews, citing Prophet Muhammad – though such a label does not exist in the Quran.

How long will ordinary Canadians tolerate tax-exempt religious institutions spewing hate?

Who will rise to say that the Quran does not actually refer to the Jews, but rather it is murderers, rapists and criminals who incurred Allah’s wrath?

The larger question is this: How long will ordinary Canadians tolerate tax-exempt religious institutions spewing hate – be it in encrypted form or as explicit language hiding behind “religious freedom”?

Tarek Fatah, a founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress and columnist at the Toronto Sun, is a Robert J. and Abby B. Levine Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

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I recently witnessed something I haven’t seen in a long time. On Friday, August 16, 2024, a group of pro-Hamas activists packed up their signs and went home in the face of spirited and non-violent opposition from a coalition of pro-American Iranians and American Jews. The last time I saw anything like that happen was in 2006 or 2007, when I led a crowd of Israel supporters in chants in order to silence a heckler standing on the sidewalk near the town common in Amherst, Massachusetts. The ridicule was enough to prompt him and his fellow anti-Israel activists to walk away, as we cheered their departure. It was glorious.