How Safe? The Rise of Antisemitism in Canada with Jesse Brown

Hi, everybody. Steve Pagan here. I'm pretty new at this podcast thing, but Jesse Brown has been at it for more than a decade, focused mostly on media criticism. But every now and then, he turns his attention to a subject that really gets under his skin. And we're going to talk about one of those subjects today. Jesse has a special podcast series called "What is Happening Here?" And he begins by saying, quote, "Two years ago, my world began to fall apart." Well, let's find out what is happening here. Jesse Brown, one on one, coming right up on the Pagan podcast. Well, this rookie is delighted to welcome the Godfather of Canadian podcasting to my little show here. He's the founder and host of Canada Land There's Jesse Brown. Jesse's great to see you. How you doing? I'm doing well. Thanks for having me, Steve. Well, you say you're doing well, and I want to follow up on that because, you know, let's take the quote, "Two years ago, my world began to fall apart," which eventually be gat, this new podcast series that you've been working on. What happened two years ago that major world fall apart? October 7th. At first, it was not clear to me that this was going to be any kind of a life-changing event. Of course, it was a massacre or tragedy. But one gets used to hearing bad news from Israel. This was particularly bad, but the events in Israel, to me, did not seem like they were going to touch me here in Canada the way that they did. I had been covering the media and one aspect for over a decade, as you said in your introduction, and one aspect of media coverage that we've really focused on is discrimination. We did a whole series called Thunder Bay on anti-indigenous discrimination. We've done a lot of work on anti-black discrimination during the BLM, anti-Islamah-phobic discrimination. So it was pretty normal for me to take note when anti-Israel protests, which we've seen over the years quite a few, when they bled into anti-Jewish sentiment, which they occasionally have over the years. And that's a line that the anti-Israel movement itself has always tried very hard to assert. We're not against Jews. So when I saw that some people involved were against Jews, I remember the first inciting event that I reported on. There were a bunch of protesters who showed up to protest Christie of Freelins' constituency office, which seems like a pretty legitimate place to protest if you're against Canada's foreign policy. And she wasn't there, and the doors were closed, and there was no one to yell at. And some people just kind of noticed that they were Kitty Corner to the local Jewish Community Center here in Toronto. And a bunch of them started to direct very angry accusatory chance at the Jewish Community Center. Like what? I don't remember the content of the chance themselves, but they were certainly, the issue is not that the chance were anti-Jewish chance. It was that anti-Israel chance were being yelled at a Jewish institution, if you follow me. So they were confused. Jews were being held. Yes. Okay. Jews were being held responsible for what Israel is doing. And maybe that was an honest mistake from people who saw some Hebrew writing, you know, and, you know, but my experience with this is that it's just kind of like a daily thing to say that shouldn't be those that small group of protesters crossed the line. And usually you would have people within the anti-Israel organizational space saying, yes, we don't approve of that. And it didn't happen this time. I actually got a phone call from one of the organizers who said, can you go easy on this because, you know, people are really traumatized. And, um, yes, I acknowledge this shouldn't have happened, but we're trying to not call people out right now. They're kind of pleading for me to ignore this. I didn't ignore it. And rather than the usual responses that I get when I when I point out just sort of a lapse into discrimination, people are incredibly angry with me. You know, this this community center, I know it well. The Jews pray there. There's an overflow service that happens in the high holidays. Children go there for daycare. It's just like a Jewish community space. And it's actually a community space that's welcoming of people of all faiths. It's kind of a hobby where people can kind of meet Jews in Toronto. And for that space, and they've had dozens of incidents since they've had vandalism and protesters that do eject a guy, you know, again and again, people said, you know, taking their complaints against Israel to your local Jewish space. It's plainly discriminatory, plainly anti-Semitic. And people were really upset with me for pointing this out. And you said, people, who are the people? Well, first it was, you know, uh, the usual thing that doesn't really get under my skin. I've got a thick skin at this point, having me in podcasting as long as I have and being on Twitter as long as I have anonymous accounts online or people who are very radicalized or part of a movement. But what, what, where my world started to, to feel uncertain and I could feel the ground shift beneath my feet is that journalists that I'm familiar with or friends with, you know, we can talk names. I don't want to hide other people's, you know, these are statements that people made publicly. And I assume they stand behind them. You know, but the consensus, it became clear amongst a big sector. I don't want to say cohesively the whole journalistic community, but they're sort of like a younger, more, you know, quote unquote progressive sector that sort of standard in uniformity that at this moment, it's, uh, improper to be, to be, you know, bringing up anti-Semitism. Either, and either I'm wrong, you have to get through like layers of defense. Some people saying, this is not that. You're wrong about this. This is anti-Semitism. It's not anti-Semitism. Or people, uh, sometimes suggesting, you know, well, there's Jews who are doing it. So how can it be anti-Semitic? Um, or people saying, well, the camera angle is lying to you like you're, you're taking a set of context. It's not exactly what happened. And when you get through those lines of defense, you're like, no, it happened and in fact, somebody yelled out a slur or somebody, you know, just saw somebody with it with a keep on and said, you know, you're, you're a Zionist, you're a genocide or made those assumptions, uh, based on the being Jewish, then the argument would shift to who cares? This is a really minor thing that you're bringing up. This doesn't matter given what's happening in Israel. Stop centering yourself, which leads to as kind of a series of other accusations that, um, a lot of people ascribed intentionality to that, that in bringing up anti-Semitism, Jews were trying to distract. I have no affiliation with Israel. I'm a journalist who maintains neutrality on, you know, topics of foreign politics that never take into position in support of any country. Um, to be kind of accused that I'm doing this out of now, you know, some sort of a plot struck me as consistent with conspiratorial thinking about Jews working together. So I gather you were disappointed with the fact that as you looked at both mainstream and digital media, you weren't seeing any, you know, any kind of in-depth coverage of any of these incidents or what seemed to be in your view, I guess, a trend towards anti-Semitic incidents. Do I have that right? You do. I saw a very clear double standard. Now, there are there certainly what was reporting as soon as the statistics were available that the incidents of police reported hate crimes against Jews was spiking and they have spiked to historic levels and, you know, though Jews are less than 1%, less than 1% of the Canadian population where we are now the number one target of police reported hate crimes. Every piece of information that entered the discourse was met with a counter-argument that this was, this was actually the manipulation of groups like Benebreath who consider every Palestinian flag flown to be anti-Semitic. It's a daily labor to explain to people, police reported hate statistics are not been a birth statistics. There's a very high standard. The police do not consider pro-Palestine political messaging to be a hate crime. And, you know, you get an answer, well, Jews report hate crimes more than other groups. There's no statistical basis for that. In fact, I know many Jews who don't bother calling the cops because nothing is done. So you have to kind of get through like basically a lot of the very same people who have been very sensitive to racism, micro-aggressions over the years took a very unique position, which itself is kind of indicative of a certain discrimination because these are not people who you would ever find saying, no, you're not experiencing racism. If it's a group. Well, you call it a unique position, but in fact, I mean, I've listened to the podcast episodes that have dropped and I mean, you had some of them, I guess many of whom you knew, questioning your mental health. I mean, questioning whether you'd gone crazy. What do you think of that? I mean, it's not pleasant, but at the same time, this is an old playbook. When you have somebody who's saying things that are inconvenient for an ideology that you've jumped onto, I'm an inconvenient person because the typical thing is most of the voices who are bringing these things up have official affiliations or many of the voices. They work with Ceeja or with an anti-Semitism group or something that's Israel affiliated. Well, that's easy. They are explicitly Israel advocates. I'm not. I don't have any political affiliation myself, but my news organization is thought of as a progressive news organization. We know from our audience surveys that over 85% of our audience leans left. And I have a history of caring about discrimination against other people and covering it as a journalist. So when I I bring up issues of anti-Semitism. It's really inconvenient and you can't be dismissed with the usual defenses. So they go after my sanity. I'm also very forthcoming, and I think I'm more personal approach to journalism than perhaps journalists like yourself. When I feel that I talk about from a first person, what's happening, you know? So when I feel that the community has changed, when I feel that friends and colleagues are applying a double standard when I feel that there's an unfairness. I'll talk about how that's affecting me. I think in doing so I open up a door for like, well, there you have it. He's admitted it. He's emotional about this. >> Because I've been followed up with any of the people who made the allegations. I mean, we can name names here. I can name names here if you like too, but there's some pretty prominent journalists who've accused you of sort of losing your mental health. Did you ever follow up with them and asked them to come on your show and talk about it? >> Yes. Not about my mental health. I don't really consider that necessarily a topic for, let's have a debate about whether I've lost my mind or not. But the voices that you heard on the podcast, who have been kind of attacking me in that way. I would say attacking, trying to discredit, include people like Shri Prawdkar, who we did a piece of reporting about, is from the Toronto Star, and Nora Loretto, who used to be on the program from time to time on Canada land. Who else? I think we heard Jeremy Appell. I've made myself available. Anybody who wants to talk about me, I've made myself available. If you'd like to talk to me, I'll accept any interview request. You know, Steve, I'm on this show after all. I've here. I accepted yours. Even people who are, I think, on the radical and people's side of things to the extremes. And I try to avoid making comments about people as a person. I won't call Eugenieler an anti-Semite. I think he is someone who does anti-Semitism. I think his behavior is anti-Semitic. I'll talk to him. I think we need more dialogue right now. What has happened over this issue is a siloing where people are really uncomfortable having their ideas challenged. What we have is a process by which Zionists, but who are we talking about? We're talking about Jews, are being dehumanized and degraded on a daily basis. It's through repetition that we're seeing just the language of Zionist freak, genocidal freak, you know, comparisons to animals. All of this is really hard to do when you're actually sitting face to face with somebody. It's hard to talk to somebody that way. I might have a reasonable position on things that you don't agree with. I might be, it's only possible to say to somebody, you are a Zionist genocider when I've never described myself that way, if I'm not in the room. So if the question is, have I, you know, I've reached out to some of those people directly for comment when I have talked about them. You know, when I reported on Shri Pradkar, of course we reached out for comment. You know, when somebody calls me a nut job on the internet, they're probably not gonna have me say, hey, I heard what you said about me. Can I come into front myself? Fair enough. You and I probably think of Canada, as I suspect a lot of the 40 million Canadians do, as a kind of, you know, the kinder gentler half of North America. And I learned from your podcast that Canada has had more synagogues, vandalized than any other country in the world since October 7th. And those two things don't compute in my head. So maybe you can help me understand how that possibly could be the case. Well, that's what I try to figure out. And I spend about seven months trying to figure it out. The, as far as I can tell, more synagogues vandalized. And I'm not talking about just spray paint here. There's a synagogue in Toronto that's had dead animals thrown on its steps and windows broken again and again and again. It's happened 10 times. As far as I can tell, yes, in absolute terms, Canada has had more of that happen than anywhere else. There's more than that. There's a Jewish grandmother got stabbed in the back by a guy with an ecstatic internet presence in a, basically what's known as the kosher law bloz, an auto out the one place you can go to buy kosher food. There's a Jewish dad who was visibly Jewish. He's an orthodox guy who was savagely beaten in front of his kids in Montreal. And there have been no fewer than seven mass murder plots. You know, we all followed the horrible massacre at Bondi Beach where Jews were Australia. In Australia where Jews were celebrating Hanukkah on the beach and two ISIS connected radicals came and just open fire and killed was 15 Jews. There have been seven attempts to do similar things. Kind of credible attempts. The people were in possession of weapons or explosives. I think in three cases they were connected to ISIS. These were serious attempts that thank God the police sworded. So when we talk about in addition to the police reported hate statistics, you add this all up and it is not the Canada that I thought I was living in. But when I talk about my world string to crumble, it was both in a very personal level of that friends and colleagues and people who, not in terms of people who I thought would always have my back, but people who I thought shared principles with me against discrimination surprised me. But also in a wider sense, I'm living in a country where I think Jews have every reason to, it's not, you know, we hear this media refrain that Jews feel unsafe. Jews are unsafe. When these things happen to a group of small as ours, we are unsafe. So, you know, all of this adds up to it to a conception of Canada, as you say, is like very different than the pluralistic and polite. And the, you know, compared to America, the mass shootings, we consider as much less violent. >> Mm-hm. >> To answer the question, why? I don't know, it's going to take some time. Why do you think? >> Jesse, I knew at some point in this interview you were going to try to turn the tables on me and assume your traditional role of question-asker instead of question-answerer. And I was sort of thinking, how am I going to react when he does that? And I'm going to react this way. Jesse, I'm asking the questions today, okay? [LAUGH] Fair enough. Fair enough, fair enough, that's a good one. >> There were some things that I would dodge it. Yeah, go ahead. There were some things I heard, of course, during this series that I found extremely disquieting. Somebody, you've got somebody, quoted as having Yale, Hitler should have finished you all off. Somebody else that you were interviewed, or one of the voices I heard said the entire Jewish community of Toronto has blood on its hands. How do you, I mean, these are obviously inflammatory, extreme things to say. How do you take these in? It's been a process. I think that my experience echoes a lot of people, a lot of Jewish people. And that at first there's this visceral response where you're kind of put on your back heel. I have never experienced significant discrimination or anti-Semitism in Canada before October 7th. This is a golden age that I've enjoyed for most of my life. I think that is indicative of the wider experience. The Canadian Jewish experience has been I think uniquely free of discrimination, at least during the 48 years or the 46 years of my life up to October 7th. So it was shocking. And it takes a moment to figure out what's happening. And sometimes I was not, I don't think there's disbelief. Like, can I believe my eyes? >> Well, disbelief, but I guess I'm wondering, do you take it at face value? Or are these sort of ignoramuses just popping off? How do you take it? >> Yeah, then it's the rotten apple that maybe these are, maybe these are the few extremists who are using a legitimate political movement. Maybe I can get some cover here for my friend, anti-Semitism, which hasn't been palatable before. At the risk of giving away the end to the podcast, which I do think people should go listen to what is happening here, I've come to understand that we are facing a hate movement. And by way, I don't just mean Jews. I think that, and I don't think it's like, oh, anti-Semitism is anti-Semitism. It is its own unique hate movement. Anti-Semitism itself was its own unique hate movement. Jews talk about anti-Semitism has been with us for hundreds of not thousands of years. It's not really true. Jew hatred has been around for hundreds of thousands of years. Anti-Semitism is a term coined by Germans, like, you know, whatever 120 years ago. Like it was a very specific phrase that when it was introduced like anti-Zionism, it was supposed to be a good thing. It was, I'm not one of these people who hates Jews for killing Christ. I'm an anti-Semite. Jews are semites. They're racially impure. They're orientals. They're semites. They're kind of Arab. They're not us. They're not white. And on a Darwinistic, you know, like, genetic, you know, it's phony race science. That's that that was the intellectual, uh, you know, assertion, the, the, the, the bunk science of anti-Semitism. We know anti-Semitism is a bad thing that nobody wants to be. That took a lot of work. So now we've got a new term, anti-Zionist, which is like, to many people, they're very proudly anti-Zionist. Right? And they'll reject the notion that this is anti-Jewish. It's a political thing against a country. where we get to in exploring this with academics and talking to the people who espouse these views and actually digging into their views. And I sit down and I have uniquely civil conversations on the show with activists. It's not a your usual, uh, Israel good or bad, you know, Yelfest really dig into what they're about. And what they're about is that they want to abolish a country. If I were to say that I want to abolish Japan, and I don't think that the Japanese people deserve their sovereignty, if I were to say that I want to abolish Turkey, that's hateful. It's not acceptable. And usually it has a racist, you know, there's a spectrum. If I say I hate Italians, and I'm against Italianism, well, I don't know, Italians are kind of considered white right now. If I were to say that I hate Pakistan, we would, you know, where I hate Kenya, I think that would immediately be what's a racist argument. There's an ethnic national, we lose ourselves in these semantics squabbles. Israel is the one country where people now feel completely okay to say they don't have a right to exist. They should be abolished. Let me just, just for argument, say, let me make what I suspect is the point that they're trying to advance, which is their belief that Israel's conducting Gaza is so beyond the pale as to warrant pariah nation status. And therefore fill in the blank. I think that a full-throated political response against Israel's actions in Gaza is well within the boundaries of political discourse. And I think that the vast majority of the people who participate in anti-Israel political action are appalled by what they've seen out of Gaza and want it to stop and believed that they were going to peace demonstrations, ceasefire demonstrations. I believe that. I give a lot of benefit to that. And I'm a firm believer in our rights of free expression and political expression, political protest. What I don't think a lot of people understood is that they were joining a pre-existing ideological movement that has explicitly, if you look at the first Hamas Charter, called for the genocide of Jews, that is based on a religious, not strategy, not a political movement, but this is how we're going to get to a better place because there is no moral argument for ethnically cleansing Jews for removing them or killing them. And there's no moral argument for ethnically cleansing Palestinians. And so one way or the other, these people are going to have to figure it out together. And that's what that is not the movement that people were joining. They were joining a movement that glorifies martyrdom and that believes that martyrdom is the path. And they can't really explain how that's going to work. So really what this movement is pushing for is what we've lived through, which is permanent conflict, permanent murder, permanent death. And this was the strategy of October 7th. There was a strategy. I don't like to describe it as just pure chaos and barbarism. Let's go and murder brutally. And the strategy included rape. And there's been a lot of denial of that. Let's make sure that it's filmed. Let's make sure the media sees it. Let's make sure that the parents of the victims see it. Let's make sure that we in rage Israel humiliate them, degrade and dehumanize them. And the response will be a sledgehammer. And that will turn the world against Israel like never before. That was the strategy. And it's effective. Yeah. It happened. And it required the death, brutal death and very traumatizing death to everybody, not just the families, but everybody who lives with intergenerational trauma and memories of the Holocaust. It required those deaths, 1200 plus Israelis. And now what are we at now? 60, 70,000? What? What? I don't know. And I don't know, but a lot more Palestinian death. So that's the movement that people were joining. And I fully believe that there is a necessity to call it out as a hate movement. And those who legitimately want to advocate for Palestinian life, life, but not death and martyrdom need to detach from this anti-zionist movement, which in its military regalia, in its war drums and its calls for kill, kill, kill. This is not a peace movement. It's not something that is just a threat to Jews. We're seeing it's becoming the omnicaws. The same people showed up the exact same people showed up to protests on behalf of the Iranian regime. Or for Venezuela for Maduro. Now, I don't like kidnapping world leaders. But we're seeing, there's almost this magical thinking that Israel will fall and with it so too will fall, Western imperialism around the world. This is its own religion. No one can actually explain to you how the sequence of events is going to take place. Let me ask you to talk about a distinction that, again, I learned a great deal about from your podcast series. And that was the distinction between Jews in this country feeling unsafe versus feeling uncomfortable. And I guess the distinction here is that Jews have a right not to feel unsafe in their own country, Canada, but they don't have a right not to feel uncomfortable about how Israel has conducted itself post-doctor 7. What do you make of that distinction? I think it's a racist distinction. And if you dig into it, it has an ugly heart of racism. The argument goes, you are privileged white people. You have been indoctrinated into a cult of Zionism through propaganda as a child. You're not used to feeling uncomfortable. So when we come to your synagogues and protest your synagogues, which have been, you know, have been vandalized, but we have nothing to do with that. When we come to your community events, when we come to your neighborhoods, not the Israeli consulate, but your neighborhoods, and we yell bloody murder, and we say that you are Zionists who support the death of childrens. How many more babies do you have to kill when we come to your businesses? And you dare to complain about it? Well, puffs shit. You're experiencing discomfort for the first time in your privileged white life. It is an ugly argument. It is a complete reversal and double standard from people who otherwise say that when people speak up and say, I have been the victim of racism, we listen to them. Doesn't mean that they're always right. Doesn't mean that we have to take their word as gospel, but we listen to people. We take them seriously. We treat them respectfully, and we investigate to see whether or not there has been discrimination. This is one of the interesting conundrums, and conundrums, rather, because, you know, you've talked about whether Jews are quote unquote white. And certainly, and I'm a little older than you. So certainly, you know, back in my day, when I was a young guy growing up, Jews were not considered white. Jews were considered very different. And today, there is certainly a large faction of people in this country who not only see Jews as white, but and I'm talking about Canadian Jews who may never even have been to Israel. But they see them as sort of a colonial oppressive presence. At some level, at some level, Jesse, this is a very bizarre thing to say, but that's kind of progress in one way, right? Where I mean, Jews are seen in the same discriminatory light as, you know, the British would be or other colonial powers from back in the day. Is it an indication of how far Jews have come that many people considered Jews in Canada to be part of a colonial oppressive class of people? What an optimist you are. I sadly know, I mean, in a way, it's hilarious. Given that I am being facetious, of course, but there you go. Yeah. This argument of Jews is the white colonial oppressor. Like there's no inclusion into the into the kind of the high status. In a sense, Jews are being kind of positioned as the apex predator. Kind of like more white in colonial. There's a weird way in which people who are part of this movement, you know, they do consider Canada to be a settler colonial project. And yet they reserve their real hatred for Israel, not the country that they live in and participate in and are citizens of. Like they're angry or with Israel. Somehow Israel is like still doing the colonial genocide thing in a way that Canada gets off the hook for. There's, you know, there is an inversion process happening. It's like a permission structure thing where in the exact same way in which Jews were persecuted for being not white enough, now you're kind of too white. Now this falls apart in every way. It falls apart in Israeli context because like there are Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews who are from Arab countries where they were ethnically clansed from and then they are not white. There are there are black Jews. Like the Jews just not white. They're not white. If you're going to even look at white just from a like a pigment standpoint. To apply it here is interesting too because you get into questions of indigeneity where, you know, what is effectively being argued is that diaspora Jews, Ashkenazi Jews, our ancestry spent so much time in Europe and there was so much intermarriage, some of it through a rape that we effectively became white. And it doesn't matter that no like Polish, you know, or German or like those people didn't consider us one of them. That doesn't matter anymore. We effectively are them now. And it doesn't matter that there is a genetic bloodline that firmly, this is just science, places, you know, connects Jews to the Levant, pre-European, pre-Diaspora. So you're actually saying things about indigenity and how if people are dislocated from their land and there's enough intermarriage, they lose their indigenity? I know a lot of indigenous people who would have a thing or two to say about that. That is not consistent with any other conception of indigenity, again, as a double standard that's applied in Jews. Well, let me, okay, I'm gonna pick up on that double standard thing because I think it's fair to say that if the Italian government were to do something that was extremely controversial and perhaps indefensible, Italians in Canada would not be asked to defend that practice. You could say the same thing about Greeks here in Canada for the Greek government, Turks here in Canada about the Turkish government. For some reason, Jews in Canada are often asked to defend the actions of Israel's government, even if they've never been to Israel or even if they oppose the conduct of the government of Israel. Why is that? Racism. It's a modern day application of something that happened in the Middle Ages called the Force Disputations. Have you ever heard about this one? Nope. I'm not so smart, but I have some smart listeners. One of them said, you know what this is, it's the modern version of the Force Disputations. So I studied and read up on this and what happened was the Middle Ages and medieval times, there were these sort of public debates where they would haul Jewish leaders up before an audience of Gentiles, of Christians. And the idea was, this was sort of, they're gonna, the Battle of the Faiths, Christianity versus Judaism. But the actual terms of the debate were not about, you know, what's a better religion or what's the one true faith. The terms of the debate were, have you blasphemed against Christ simply by not accepting Christ? And are you there for guilty? And maybe you're guilty of killing him as well. And the answer to that question was predetermined, right? There was no universe in which the end of that debate would be actually we're just peaceful people living next to you who happened to have a different faith system than yours. There was no version where we were like, "I have that makes sense." Because the entire society was built on the premise that Christ is Lord and everybody has the opportunity to accept Him as Lord and these people for some reason don't. It started guilty and it ended guilty. And at the end of it, they would burn Torahs and sometimes they would expel Jews. This was a pretense. It was basically creating an intellectual pretense for basically pogrom-like behavior. The people who are inviting Jews to defend Israel, first of all, it's simply by asking Jews to do so, have already made a racist move, right? Your Judaism means that you are different than non-Jews. You must, you could be okay if you denounce Israel. You could be okay, but first we need to hear it, right? Because the conclusion's already been reached. Israel is evil. Israel is a genocide or Jews might be okay, but we know that most of you support Israel and you're gonna have to prove otherwise. This is, there's a statement I was reading recently saying that the anti-Semite does not accuse the Jew of theft because he believes the Jew stole something. He accuses the Jew of theft to watch him turn his pockets out. - Okay, but I'm not sure. - The exercise is humiliating us. I understand, but I am gonna ask you the flip side of that question, which is I also would observe, and I find it quite interesting that in Israel itself, there is a significant diversity of opinion about the advisability of the conduct of Benjamin Netanyahu's government. In this country, however, and I suspect, you know, some of my more engaged in community work, Jewish friends are not gonna like the way I put this, there is very little diversity of opinion permitted within sort of official Jewish community circles in this country. There is a great deal of, you know, if you don't support Israel, particularly at this moment in its history post October 7th, you know, you're really not a good team player. And I wonder whether some of that, some of the kind of, I don't wanna call it intolerance, but what's considered an acceptable mainstream view within the Jewish community of Israel, I wonder how that plays into all of what you are trying to describe. I think it does, it's not my role to defend the positions of, you know, the Ben-Abraith or Sija, but I'll say this, there is a very important distinction between saying that I support Israel. Like what do Jews mean when they say I support Israel? What does a Jew mean when they show up to the walk for Israel? I can forgive people for saying, oh, I guess you support Netanyahu, I guess you support the war. No, they mean they support the existence of the state. And it's important for Jews to say that right now, because never have so many people been calling for the destruction of Israel. So right now, you can excuse Jews for feeling like this is not necessarily a safe place for me to engage publicly in a conversation about my deep consternation and disapproval of Netanyahu because I'm basically feeding the arguments of people who want the entire country, including my family that lives there, to be wiped off the map. I'm gonna keep that criticism to myself or within the community. Steve, I'm sure that you'll agree that if you talk to Jews about their feelings, if you talk to two Jews about what they think about what Netanyahu is doing, you'll hear six opinions. And not many, there's like one guy in every crowd who kind of has just lost it and will say hawkish violent things. So those people exist. I wonder how much of it is them just expressing frustration and pain. I don't know that they actually believe that, but I guess you have to take people at face value. The vast majority of Jews I talked about this, what does it you think of what's happening in Gaza? I don't know, what is that human being think? It was like the same range of opinions, the same obvious responses to seeing atrocious images. There's really no difference. The only difference is that these alarming levels of anti-Jewish violence and hate are traumatizing Jews and are coloring the way Jews express themselves publicly. I'll give you one statistical backing for that. Avi Lewis put out a report and likes to say that only 51% of Jews are Zionist, which suggests that 49% are anti-Zionist. Well, he's not part of the 51%. He did a, I guess four out of the five NDP leadership candidates did a debate on the future of Palestine this past week. And Avi Lewis proudly proclaims himself an anti-Zionist Jew. That's right, of which I believe something like, depending on the poll, something between one and three percent of Jews identify as. And I'm not saying that because there are minority, that's a wrong position, but I think that community, everyone's entitled to their opinion, but communities do form consensus, right? So he has an interest in what you'll hear from that small percentage of Jews. I think he actually said I'm trying to save the soul of Judaism. So he's preaching to Jews that he's part of the minority that's got it right and he's going to convince us all. And then I think he manipulates the stats. And he says we're making progress here because only 51% of Jews call themselves Zionists and you know, feel on the blanks 49% might be on his side. This is not true. I think it's, it's upwards of 80% of Jews feel strong connections to Israel, okay? We're not calling ourselves Zionists anymore because you get targeted, right? You, because people are afraid, people are going underground. You can bully and force Jews to stop using that word, but you're not going to stop Jews who have, as we talked about, a deep religious connection, the ways in which Jews are connected to Israel, like the people of Israel. So it's spiritual, it's religious, it's in the scripture. If that's not your bag, maybe it's because you got family and friends there who you care about. Maybe it's just because as a people, you recognize that there's seven million Jews there and you care about just as a people, what happens to them? And you know, maybe it's because you want to have a safe place if things get out of hand here. Maybe it's because of whether you call it indigenity or some sort of ethnic connection, that's where we come from. There are lots of reasons, the same way that any people can be connected to a land. Many, many reasons why Jews are connected to Israel and we're not going to stop feeling connected to Israel. You can just force people to be quiet or about it. That's all you're going to accomplish. - I would be very interested in your take on the distinction between anti-Semitism of the right, which has certainly been a significant force, I guess during the course of my life, versus anti-Semitism from the left, which is a, it seems anyway in my life to be a more recent phenomenon. How are they different or are they different? - At the extremes, they're not very different. It's that horseshoe theory where the ways in which the NIC-Wantus' talk about Jews and Jewish power and the Jewish question is not that dissimilar to how people on the very, like I'm not even sure how this, the part of anti-Semitism that is Islamist, as opposed to Islam, very important. very different thing, but then, you know, how did that become part of the left? And there is an interesting history that's explored in the show about Soviet messaging. Where does anti-signism come from as an ideology? There were little strains of it in Nazism, but then it was really developed as a Soviet idea, and then in collaboration with Arab governments, it got imported into that region. But that connection might explain it as a thing of the left. But I don't know how a religious fundamentalist outlook of the world with all of its, you know, the usual homophobia and misogyny became a thing of the left. So, you know, all these distinctions disappear at a certain point. But there are people who are part of the, you know, the communists or the anarchist left who have become deeply antisemitic or anti-Jewish, any how through anti-signism. And many of the things they say are indistinguishable from what people on the right say. They're just sort of saying it towards different goals, I guess. You know, there is this longstanding mythology that Jews control this, that, and the other thing. And if you're on the right, you think that there are, you know, a fifth column that we need to, that needs to be, you know, excised from American politics. So it stops influencing American foreign policy. And if you're on the left, you think the same thing. But towards the goal of, you know, I guess a world-wide revolution of the people, you know, and not an America first, you know, it's very, very similar. For years, Canada Land was much more focused on what we saw happening from groups like the proud boys, or, you know, antisemitism that was coming from this new, you know, alt-right. And we've dedicated, like, a lot of resources, which is not fun to, you know, if some of these people like, you know, Gavin McKinnis or Lauren's Southern or Faith Goldie were putting kind of like a, a certain face, you know, whether it's satire and comedy or like a, a blonde, pretty face on, on rebel news, where they wouldn't explicitly say things about Jews. If you spent enough time going through hours of their, you know, pay-walled podcasts or ramblings, you'd get to the anti-Jewish stuff. It was there, and we did that work to expose that. One criticism that I faced about the new series, what is happening here, is that none of the anti-Semites that are, um, criticized or exposed on the show are from the right. I go where this story takes me, Steve. I traveled across Canada. I spent months talking to dozens and dozens of Jews. And I just asked them, like, what happened to you and who was doing it? And not one of them said it was coming from the right. That's a fascinating development. I want to know if you've lost any friends over this Canada land series. Yeah. I have. I've lost friends and colleagues. I've lost friends and colleagues before the series. Um, I've, I've had relationships fall apart where, uh, I try to be really, in most cases, I hope I'm not the one severing those connections because I really do think that most of the people who are doing the harm are confused. I think there's a great deal of moral confusion. And I think that there's a way back, you know, and I, I, I, I despair as somebody who lives in words and lives in conversations. I despair for the idea that like, we can't talk to each other anymore that we're, we're on, on, warring teams that can't communicate. I think that's, that's a really bad path. How about advertisers? Have you lost advertisers for the series? I have not, but there was an incredible amount of pressure put on advertisers. There is kind of like an ad hoc thing that happens where there are a lot of, you know, keyboard warriors. And every day there's a new target. This is a Canadian thing we can talk about as well. But every day there's a new target. And the game becomes how can we get at them? You know, we weren't able to shame them and humiliate them into reversing their position or apologizing. Let's go for his employees. How can you work for this guy? He's a Zionist. He's a genocide. If that doesn't work, who are, who are his advertisers? So it's, it's, it's like, you know, it's that internet mob cancellation thing. And I have, I've been the target of that for sure. There was an episode in which you focus on, you talk to a, I guess a young mother whose elementary school age child was being sort of swarmed and shouted at. You know, this is at school free Palestine, free Palestine kids. A larger group of kids swarming this one Jewish child to the point where I guess the. Well, understandably the child felt as if they didn't have any friends at school and didn't want to go to school anymore. And the parents has apparently sued the peel district school board. For failing to provide a sort of safe place for the kid to go to school. You know what the status of the lawsuit is? As far as I understand it's, it's, it's pending. It's ongoing and there hasn't been any kind of settlement or trial yet. What should our reaction be to, to a group of one group of students sort of swarming an individual student who is Jewish and presumably at age 10 doesn't know a heck of a lot about what's going on over there. What do you think it should be? Well, you know, here we, you're doing this again, aren't you? Yeah, like, but in this case, like, we're talking about these are tough questions to answer. I agree. I agree. I agree. I think I mean, it's wholly inappropriate for that to be taking place. The question is, what should the school be doing about it? And in this case, I guess the parents were quite unsatisfied at the school's response fair to say. Yeah, fair to say. And, and this came out of a situation like we're forgetting the basics or this stuff is not that complicated. It really isn't. What do you do when a whole crowd of kids swarm one kid and point out, I don't care if it's because she's got a lot of kids. I don't care if it's because she's got red hair because it's like it's incredibly aggressive hostile traumatizing behavior. It's not acceptable. And you deal with it through through the same disciplinary measures that you would regardless. And the fact that it's hate motivated makes it more serious. Why did that not happen? Well, confusion. Jews don't fit like where the excuses are made. This happened to be a school with a very large Muslim population and the kids were yelling an Arabic at the Jewish student. And there's this context where first of all administrators get very nervous. This feels like very controversial stuff. Where is this going to go? What if the media finds out who's going to say what? They know the parents are are, you know, very, very angry and politicized about this. I believe the principal said to the mother like, what do you want me to do? Like I can't, I can't suspend all of those kids. Like by virtue of the fact that there were so many kids hanging up on her daughter. You couldn't do anything and claimed not to remember which kids were doing it, even though he was there for it. We're betraying the basic social contract, right? I got to care about you and your kids. You got to care about me and my kids. If I see something happening to your kid. I should probably do something to help them and vice versa. When that when you start questioning that. It's it's not like the politics like something is broken that really needs to be sorted out there. We're forgetting like the basic rules of civil discourse because people are getting sucked into some bizarre ideology whereby like maybe it's okay in this instance. Maybe it's justified. Maybe it's actually a good thing and people are arguing that too. Maybe there's a moral obligation to this was argued by a guy named Dave Mezzlin on my podcast who feels that any building within Israeli flag is a legitimate target. Including synagogue says Dave. Right now that you start from like, okay, maybe maybe I guess that's a political thing. A flag is of an, you know, well, which buildings have Israeli flags pretty much every synagogue. Pretty much every so really it's like who is a safe target now the same guy who says he is against anti-Semitism says every synagogue with like a couple exceptions is a legitimate target for protest. And when you actually look at the protests they they they involve violent imagery they often involve. Go back to Europe and they they set the stage and we there's plenty of research to show that they are followed by vandalism and violence that they they legitimize it. So yeah, this is a threat to Jews as as a community and in Canada and you know he got there very quickly as you quoted earlier he said. Yeah, that that's right because the community has blood on its hand the community collectively that that is a breaking of of a central principle. We don't have collective punishment. We don't say because you're Italian or because you're Russian. You're on the hook for what Putin does. Why for Jews. It's it's just a clear double standard. Jesse one ask you one last question and that is a question I think Jews all over the world have asked themselves for about 4,000 years which is how do I know when it's time to get up and leave. And obviously during the 1930s there were far too many Jews in Europe who asked the question and did not get to the correct answer quickly enough and 6 million died in the Holocaust. And after listening to your series I'm wondering if you have reached the point where you are now asking yourself as a Canadian Jew do I need to leave Canada. What do you think. I want to explore this in some detail. No, I have people I know who have left. I get emails from people who heard the series saying is it time for me to go. And I feel strongly otherwise and I hope to impress upon people why I feel strongly otherwise but before we get into that I just want I want to engage with what I think a lot of people listening to this are thinking like what. What are you talking about because that is the response whenever this comes up in a broader context not just among Jews and sometimes even with you like like are you out of your mind. And there are two ways in which that idea is regimen. One is mockery and the other is allegation. So the mockery is, you guys are the most privileged people. You're rich Jews. You're experiencing a little bit of discomfort for the first time in your lives. You're hysterical. You're paranoid. You're like that. And you get laughed at that. That this is a looted. Yeah, get out of here. I don't know if you're that weak, if you're that cowardly, if you're that paranoid. So this is a basket of anti-Semitic tropes. You know, the paranoid nervous Jew. That's what's being described there. And again, and it's deeply racist and it's deeply discriminatory because it's not something we do when any other minority vulnerable, tiny minority talks about at a time when there is demonstrabulls that statistically proven harms. We don't make fun of people or scorn them for those concerns. The other thing you get, which is even worse is allegation that in discussing this in bringing this up, there's an agenda that you're trying to essentially assert a Zionist mentality that Israel's the only safe place for the Jews and people they laugh at that too. The mockery and the scorn and the allegations can go ahead and hand this. Yeah, as if Israel's so safe. Yeah, please go there. You're not going to be safe there either. So that we're doing this out of some kind of a Zionist plot that where there were we're we're we're shilling for Israel when we consider the possibility of making Alia. So I want to just deal with both those things and identify them as deeply racist. That being said, no, I have I don't like hearing that from Jews. I don't begrudge any Jew, whatever they feel they need to do for their own safety or out of their own and every Jew has the right to make Alia. That is what Israel exists for make Alia means move to Israel. That's right. That is a right that Jews have just as there are many nations that have rights of return. You know, there's a Germany has if you have an ethnic connection to Germany. There's many countries that welcome members of their own diaspora. It is not people like to use this ethno state. All right, if you want to use that because there's an ethnic component to that. Let's apply it fairly because there's many countries that have that Japan. I'm a Canadian Jew. I'm a diaspora Jew. I feel much more comfortable as a minority. I don't know what it is. I've been to Israel. It was weird for me to be a member of a majority. I'm used to being other. But beyond that, I have like Jews are pretty recent in Canada. But I have like roots and history here. And the last hundred years or so. I have a grandfather who. The family story goes. He worked, he worked. He worked, he worked, he worked in a tobacco farm. He lived in the ward. Jewish ghetto in Toronto. Was in Parvish. He was an Aaron boy for the ladies of the night who worked and you know, would go by cigarettes for them and worked his way up and through law school at a time when there were quotas for Jews. And then became somebody who, you know, developed projects for you know, commerce and you know, became a respected guy in the community and a lawyer and worked as a classic story. I have another grandfather who sold fruit and vegetables and chickens. And in the same way that there's like a lot of immigrant families live in little corn, you know, they have little corner stores. That's what my family had a winet peg. They lived above it. You know, the labor was free because they put their kids behind my dad and his brothers behind the cash register. You know, and my dad worked hard and became a doctor so that I could become. I could become a scurrilist journalist and throw it all away and not be a white collar professional like him. This is a story that echoes the stories of Jews in Canada one after the next. We have, you know, I don't take much, you know, any personal accomplishment, but the progress that's been made is a people in this country, the contributions that you have made to this country. We have been gradually getting to a place of belonging and inclusion. And that's the work of my parents and grandparents and great grandparents on one side to a point where a Jew like yourself could like, you know, host a federal leaders debate and non Jews will welcome you into their homes and and not think of you as other or, you know, too garlicky or some sort of a problem, you know. We worked really damn hard and not just for our own benefit. I think we've made tremendous contributions to this country in all sorts of ways, culturally and economically. This is my home. I'm not going anywhere. I'm I'm I'm not feeling like I did two years ago when my world began to fall apart. I'm off my back. I'm not going to be a real bad guy. for porn and anti-semacism, that's the only constant. This is a big thing. We're up against, but we can do it. We've done it before. Steve, we're having a very Jewish experience right now. Which is, we're being oppressed. I hate it. People say, "Oh, you love playing the victim." I don't like playing the victim. I was much more happy as a white man. As a privilege white man, life was a lot better. I find racism really boring to cover as a journalist. There's a hundred other things I'd rather cover. It's stupid. Racism is really stupid, but I'm up for this fight. History has taught me how to fight it, and I'm up for it. We are happy to remind people that the name of the series is called "What is happening here?" It is produced by the founder and host of Canada Land, Jesse Brown, Jesse. It's always great to talk to you. I have to say, I really, I'm a listener of Canada Land. You really put yourself out there, which is a gutsy thing to do. And thanks for doing the work that you're doing. Much appreciated. Thank you, Steve. Thank you, over the years, and thank you now for your attention to my work. It really means a lot to me. And one of the things I've learned from Jesse is there's something called Patreon, which I know he uses. And we do here too. So if you go to patreon.com/thepakentpodcast, you'll find all sorts of goodies there. Check it out. You can join us. Support us a little bit if you like the work we're doing. We're always going to have this PAKEN podcast be for free. But for those who want to put a few bucks in and support keeping the lights on and all that other stuff, we encourage you to do that. And of course all of our programs are archived at my website, stevepakene.com. Peace and love everybody. And we'll see you next time.