By Marvin Ross

Since October 7, we have been faced with an unprecedented level of anti-semitism which continues to grow. The left and the young seem to have forgotten what precipitated Israel’s attack on Hamas and blame Israel and most Jews. Israel is not waging war on Muslims but on the terror group Hamas based in Gaza, the West Bank, Qatar and supported by Iran.

I don’t wish to get into an historical and political discussion with this post but to concentrate instead on reactions. The latest odious anti-semitic insult was graffiti placed on a Toronto bus stop. Someone had written “no service for Jew bastards”. The photo of that was tweeted out on X by Michael Geist, a law professor in Ottawa. His words accompanying that picture were:

“I used to think of these as black and white images telling a story of my grandparents that I thought was a horror in the past. To see this appearing in colour today on the streets of Toronto – the city where I was born and raised – shakes me to my core.”

His tweet and the picture were part of an article in the National Post about the shameful actions of the Toronto Police Service for allowing Pro-Hamas protesters to prevent Prime Minister Trudeau and the visiting Italian Prime Minister from attending a banquet in her honour at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Video of that event showed police on horseback sitting and watching. In my personal history of picketing the US Consulate on University Ave against the War in Viet Nam, the police were not passive. Having a police horse moving sideways towards a crowd is very effective.

The next day, the protesters went to visit a large synagogue in Vaughan north of Toronto. One of the women protesters assaulted a cop but after the crowd of Hamas types starting yelling to let her go, York Regional Police did just that. Watch the video. That was just the most recent assault on the Jewish community which has involved invading Jewish neighbourhoods, vandalizing a book chain owned by Jews and even attacking the Mt Sinai Hospital to name just a few. In that incident, a female doctor’s car was surrounded by angry crowds and she was trapped until rescued.

Those of us who are appalled by the Hamas attack, rapes and murder of women, children and the elderly on October 7 do not attack Muslim businesses or demonstrate and terrorize Muslim places of worship. If these protestors are not happy with Israel’s response, let them protest at the Israeli consulates and embassies. That’s where they should be. Torching a Jewish deli as they did in Toronto makes no sense even if they did not like the pastrami.

When I was growing up in Toronto, there were areas that Jews did not go to and beaches we were not welcome at. There were quotas on how many Jews could get acceptance to university faculties like medicine and dentistry, and earlier the Mt Sinai Hospital came into existence because Jewish doctors were not allowed privileges at most hospitals. With time and advocacy, we became a tolerate and multiculturally diverse society but it seems we are losing that.

I was so outraged by this particular bit of anti-semitic graffiti at a bus stop that I posted it on Linkedin with “Graffiti on a Toronto bus stop reported on X by Ottawa law professor Michael Geist. Shades of Germany in the 30’s”

Within less that half an hour, I received a note from Linkedin that they removed my post as it was fomenting hate. I appealed and I just as quickly lost.

Who was my hate directed against? The moron who wrote the graffiti or Germans in the 1930’s?

I suspect the Linkedin decision was made by a bot which just goes to prove the old joke about computers from many years ago that seems to be still valid. In that anecdote, a computer was programmed to translate from English to Russian. What was fed in was “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak”. What came out in Russian was “the wine is good but the meat is off”.

How stupid can we get?