With all due respect, there is a certain difference between injustices, as horrible as they are — committed years ago — and a crowd of people threatening my personal family’s safety today.
This is appalling! It is time for everyone in the Western world—and this includes Canada— to WAKE UP from the delusions that have taken root in the minds of gullible, willfully ignorant people. Like the author of this piece, "I am not religious, but nonetheless [I believe] the Bible is a source of fundamental cultural and philosophical values," and not only that, but I believe it is a source of historical knowledge as well. Who, among those with any knowledge of history, can believe that the Jews have no right to the land they occupy? The Jews have inhabited the area that is now Israel for millennia. Christianity sprang from Judaism in roughly AD 30–33. The founder of Islam, the prophet Mohammed, lived from c. 570 – 8 June 632 CE. The Jews were the original inhabitants of that land. Islam has no right to claim ownership of that land, much less to claim the right to annihilate all non-Muslims. THIS IS MADNESS.
Thank you for reinforcing another article about Canada's disappearing act of tolerance for all. Have the librarians in your area heard of the Nazi book burnings? Yet, they call us Nazis. Did the Chinese "woman" realize how ridiculous her statement was, “Everyone interprets history based on their own experiences.” Really, I thought it had to do with actual facts that occurred in history and to connect the dots to today's reality and figure out why certain events happened, why social conditions improved or deteriorated, etc.. My experience as an American woman does not cause me to interpret history, but may help me to understand it better. Your comment about the safety for you and your family just swooshed right over the "white" man's head. Because you cited a real concern, he quickly discarded it. I hope for you and other Jewish Canadians, your next election will be a sea of change back from bizarro world.
Not sure who should be their next leader but Canada has been deliberately Islamified since the 1990s - none of this surprises me, in fact, I expected it.
We've had similar things going on in New Jersey, and similar idiotic justifications for it.
I always wonder what the point of the "dialogue" is that these liars say they want.
In reality of course they don't want an exchange of views. They want and will only tolerate a monologue, the purpose of which is to proselytize for Palestinianism.
Sometimes dialogue is helpful, sometimes it proves to not be productive, but maybe sometimes it plants a seed. Anyway the only alternative is to do nothing, and that's most certainly unproductive, so I'll keep talking.
Could you please send this essay about your meeting between you, the "older, tall, slender white man and . . . middle-aged queer non-binary person of Chinese descent [aka a BIPOC female]" to Yechiel Jacobs. It screams to be turned into a satirical skit in his inimical style.
Thanks for another brilliant essay, Masha. I am emailing you for specifics re: which VPL branch and also to ask for permission to cite your essay when I explain why I am stopping my donations to their Foundation. There was already an incident where an employee was wearing a keffiyeh to work. The administration declined to enforce their own excellent policy on the subject. Overall, though, we are blessed to live in Vancouver, compared with both Toronto and Montreal. Our Mayor and our Chief Constable have our backs, and it has made a difference.
Absolutely agree, Vancouver is better than the East Coast of Canada, but that's a really low bar. This happened in the Britannia branch (and it's not their first "pro-Palestinian" exhibit, if I remember correctly). There was another "adventure" in the Central Branch a couple months ago: https://mashakleiner.substack.com/i/149071814/varta-the-price-of-ukrainian-resistance
Absolutely right. Which shows there is no talking to antisemites, nor even lamenting obtuseness such as that you encountered. The best response is Israeli victory on the battlefield and the total defeat of Palestinians in the historic land of Israel. Let Canada coddle up to the Muslims and the friends of its depleted libraries contemplate indigenous identity.
Oh for the love of Pete. Good for you for trying and "engaging them in dialogue," the oh-so-important process that supersedes actually trying to understand the world you're living in.
It is possible that I misinterpret your comment,... but did you mean I should not be talking to people until you approve of my sufficient understanding of the world around me?
By “you’re,” I meant their. If they bothered to educate themselves about history, they wouldn’t need to engage in the dreaded “dialogue” that goes nowhere.
Not at all! I’m glad you gave me a chance to explain. Whew! As bad as the US is, Canada seems horrifyingly worse. I can only imagine the stress over there.
So, let me get this straight. A white guy and a lesbian-Chinese woman, neither of whom are indigenous to Canada, pulled together an offensive to Jews display in a public library in Canada, where the money had a British monarch on it and the people speak French? WTF, Canada! Between Bernie Sanders and now this, I have no idea where I'm going to be buying my maple syrup! What a-holes!
Arguably it is even more offensive to the First Nations people than to Jews, but these two refuse to see it. Oh well. But please, don't hold maple syrup responsible ))
You exceed my patience, tolerance, and desire to listen or engage with such situations 100 fold. Nice writing!!!! I agree with S. Schechter’s Comment. All glory to the success of what , you know the tune: “It’s beginning to look a lot like…” Hashem or some overarching Entity’s People Chosen for great leadership are graphically achieving on all global fronts. Something beautiful and amazing is rising like a phoenix. Watch this space and Tune in Daily to Torah.
Thanks for posting this. The Pan-Arabist flag used by Arabs in the Palestian territories and elsewhere was designed by British diplomat Mark Skyes, co-author of the Sykes-Picot agreement, not in the 1960's. A faction within the British establishment had supported Arab nationalism as a counterweight to the Ottoman Empire, which Winston Churchill had failed to defeat in his disastrous Dardenelles campaign in World War One (e.g. at Gallipoli). T.E. Lawrence was the best known British insurgent in the Arab Revolt, dramatised in the 1960's movie 'Lawrence of Arabia'. It was Churchill who had ordered the conversion of the British Navy from coal to oil power, making a strategic alliance with the Arabs essential, as Britain had Insufficient onshore oil of its own.
Well written article. My response to “For example, I’m a non-binary queer person, and I generally don’t feel safe in most places I go.” would have been different. I would have said, “Try Tel Aviv. It’s a famously gay friendly city.”
I’m a Canadian citizen ashamed and disgusted of the country that housed my family for 5 generations. But no longer! Most of us now live in Israel, a few in the US. There will not be a 6th generation in Canada. It is an unrecognizable place where the freedom to live openly as a Jew will soon disappear. Canada is doomed.
If the people you spoke with had been savvier, they would have pointed out that Irgun and Haganah and Lehi killed plenty of civilians on the road to independence. Being a supine victim is not a virtue. The point is what you do with the state you won with blood. Israel’s success is its justification, not blood and soil or peacenik delusions.
This is inaccurate - civilians got killed during Jewish fight for independence, like civilians get killed in any armed conflict. But never ever have the Jewish organizations targeted civilians. That's a huge distinction and a failure to recognize it, the failure to call out the simple fact that the "2 sides" are very different is what fuels the conflict until today.
This is simply false. The Deir Yassin massacre was just the most egregious in a series of terror attacks by paramilitary forces. The murder of Jacob Israël de Haan, Folke Bernadotte, Walter Guinness and others puts the lie to this idea that civilians were never targeted.
There wasn't "a series", and this is why everyone always names a single name - Deir Yassin.
In Deir Yassin there was fighting and there were civilian casualties. But it was not a massacre: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/hK0GZ4tN468 please, watch this footage, if you care to know the truth.
Right, Britain was forced out of the Mandate role it had taken (with the support of the League of Nations) by insurgent Jewish nationalists. Which was exactly the behaviour that Britain had encouraged in occupied Europe, for example by supporting the French Resistance via the Special Operations Executive.
I once had the privilege of meeting former SOE agent Sue Ryder, who was better known for her postwar charity work with her husband Leonard Cheshire. The SOE trained its agents to kill or be killed. Agents' typical lifespan in the field was just a few weeks.
Conservatives like to cite Japan as an example of a racial monoculture which doesn't tolerate immigration, but I've been reading about the Ainu, the Indigenous people of those islands now existing as an ethnic minority in the north. It turns out that the people we consider 'Japanese' aren't so rooted to the soil.
The argument of Palestinian Arabs has similarities to that made by ethnic Germans in eastern Europe during the 1930s, such as those in the Sudetenland. "Our claim to have originated here may be tenuous, but we've been on this land for a long time and so it's ours now. Besides, we need more land because our numbers and ambitions for regional domination are growing. Also, let's get rid of the Jews." Using this rationale, we can imagine why the Grand Mufti was an ally of the Reich.
There is a logic to any successful culture having expanded its territory in the past, for example by having the technology of the sea-going boat available. We have since agreed in the United Nations that one country shouldn't invade another, but that principle didn't exist for thousands of years beforehand. And so if we can find a territory that was never invaded, it probably means that no-one else wanted it.
This too is inaccurate. Britain wasn't "forced out" of the Mandate. Britain was given the Mandate by the League of Nations with the declared objective to establish a Jewish state there.
To your later point, this conflict is not about the size of land. This conflict is about the Arab's fundamental opposition to Jews having any land at all, no matter the size.
The Mandate was temporary to begin with. Britain withdrew from many of its colonies around that same time. Are you somehow implying that the Kind David Hotel bombing was the reason for Britain to withdraw? This makes no sense at all.
Yes, contemporary sources document that the loss of British lives in attacks like the one on the Mandate headquarters at that hotel was a factor in Britain's withdrawl.
"His Majesty’s Government had now striven for twenty-seven years without success to reconcile Jews and Arabs and to prepare the people of Palestine for self-government. The policy adopted by the United Nations had aroused the determined resistance of the Arabs, while the States supporting this policy were themselves not prepared to enforce it. 84,000 troops, who received no cooperation from the Jewish community, had proved insufficient to maintain law and order in the face of a campaign of terrorism waged by highly organized Jewish forces equipped with all the weapons of the modern infantryman. Since the war, 338 British subjects had been killed in Palestine, while the military forces there had cost the British taxpayer 100 million pounds. The renewal of Arab violence on the announcement of the United Nations decision to partition Palestine and the declared intentions of Jewish extremists showed that the loss of further British lives was inevitable. It was equally clear that, in view of His Majesty’s Government’s decision not to enforce the partition of Palestine against the declared wishes of the majority of it inhabitants, the continued presence there of British troops and officials could no longer be justified."
This is appalling! It is time for everyone in the Western world—and this includes Canada— to WAKE UP from the delusions that have taken root in the minds of gullible, willfully ignorant people. Like the author of this piece, "I am not religious, but nonetheless [I believe] the Bible is a source of fundamental cultural and philosophical values," and not only that, but I believe it is a source of historical knowledge as well. Who, among those with any knowledge of history, can believe that the Jews have no right to the land they occupy? The Jews have inhabited the area that is now Israel for millennia. Christianity sprang from Judaism in roughly AD 30–33. The founder of Islam, the prophet Mohammed, lived from c. 570 – 8 June 632 CE. The Jews were the original inhabitants of that land. Islam has no right to claim ownership of that land, much less to claim the right to annihilate all non-Muslims. THIS IS MADNESS.
Thank you for reinforcing another article about Canada's disappearing act of tolerance for all. Have the librarians in your area heard of the Nazi book burnings? Yet, they call us Nazis. Did the Chinese "woman" realize how ridiculous her statement was, “Everyone interprets history based on their own experiences.” Really, I thought it had to do with actual facts that occurred in history and to connect the dots to today's reality and figure out why certain events happened, why social conditions improved or deteriorated, etc.. My experience as an American woman does not cause me to interpret history, but may help me to understand it better. Your comment about the safety for you and your family just swooshed right over the "white" man's head. Because you cited a real concern, he quickly discarded it. I hope for you and other Jewish Canadians, your next election will be a sea of change back from bizarro world.
This is outrageous. "Oh Canada..." should be changed to "Oh stupid, regressive, Jew hating Canada..."
Praying that Pierre wins in 2025.
Not sure who should be their next leader but Canada has been deliberately Islamified since the 1990s - none of this surprises me, in fact, I expected it.
An intelligent sad depressing read. Thank you
We've had similar things going on in New Jersey, and similar idiotic justifications for it.
I always wonder what the point of the "dialogue" is that these liars say they want.
In reality of course they don't want an exchange of views. They want and will only tolerate a monologue, the purpose of which is to proselytize for Palestinianism.
Sometimes dialogue is helpful, sometimes it proves to not be productive, but maybe sometimes it plants a seed. Anyway the only alternative is to do nothing, and that's most certainly unproductive, so I'll keep talking.
The two people referred to here weren’t even Palestinians or even Muslims, just woke fools.
Love the Sowell quotation. Right on. Great piece.
Masha Kleiner,
Could you please send this essay about your meeting between you, the "older, tall, slender white man and . . . middle-aged queer non-binary person of Chinese descent [aka a BIPOC female]" to Yechiel Jacobs. It screams to be turned into a satirical skit in his inimical style.
Sure! What would be the best way to reach him?
Googled his name and came up with
jacobsyechielmanagement@gmail.com
He also has an instagram account, but as I am not on any social media, don't know if he can be reached through it.
Hope you do make contact him because your piece is worth a wide audience.
Thanks for another brilliant essay, Masha. I am emailing you for specifics re: which VPL branch and also to ask for permission to cite your essay when I explain why I am stopping my donations to their Foundation. There was already an incident where an employee was wearing a keffiyeh to work. The administration declined to enforce their own excellent policy on the subject. Overall, though, we are blessed to live in Vancouver, compared with both Toronto and Montreal. Our Mayor and our Chief Constable have our backs, and it has made a difference.
Absolutely agree, Vancouver is better than the East Coast of Canada, but that's a really low bar. This happened in the Britannia branch (and it's not their first "pro-Palestinian" exhibit, if I remember correctly). There was another "adventure" in the Central Branch a couple months ago: https://mashakleiner.substack.com/i/149071814/varta-the-price-of-ukrainian-resistance
And thank you!
Absolutely right. Which shows there is no talking to antisemites, nor even lamenting obtuseness such as that you encountered. The best response is Israeli victory on the battlefield and the total defeat of Palestinians in the historic land of Israel. Let Canada coddle up to the Muslims and the friends of its depleted libraries contemplate indigenous identity.
Israeli victory cannot come soon enough! I am waiting for it and praying for it.
That said, while me and my kids live here in Canada, I will also be doing what I can to fix this country.
Oh for the love of Pete. Good for you for trying and "engaging them in dialogue," the oh-so-important process that supersedes actually trying to understand the world you're living in.
It is possible that I misinterpret your comment,... but did you mean I should not be talking to people until you approve of my sufficient understanding of the world around me?
No, I’m on your side and making fun of those idiots. I can see how my comment is awkwardly written, though. My apologies!
By “you’re,” I meant their. If they bothered to educate themselves about history, they wouldn’t need to engage in the dreaded “dialogue” that goes nowhere.
Gotcha. Sorry, for misunderstanding (I suppose I need some extra coffee immediately)))
Not at all! I’m glad you gave me a chance to explain. Whew! As bad as the US is, Canada seems horrifyingly worse. I can only imagine the stress over there.
So, let me get this straight. A white guy and a lesbian-Chinese woman, neither of whom are indigenous to Canada, pulled together an offensive to Jews display in a public library in Canada, where the money had a British monarch on it and the people speak French? WTF, Canada! Between Bernie Sanders and now this, I have no idea where I'm going to be buying my maple syrup! What a-holes!
Arguably it is even more offensive to the First Nations people than to Jews, but these two refuse to see it. Oh well. But please, don't hold maple syrup responsible ))
The Palis pull that same crap with the Native Americans in the U.S. The Palis seem to have a good grip on manipulation.
You exceed my patience, tolerance, and desire to listen or engage with such situations 100 fold. Nice writing!!!! I agree with S. Schechter’s Comment. All glory to the success of what , you know the tune: “It’s beginning to look a lot like…” Hashem or some overarching Entity’s People Chosen for great leadership are graphically achieving on all global fronts. Something beautiful and amazing is rising like a phoenix. Watch this space and Tune in Daily to Torah.
Thanks for posting this. The Pan-Arabist flag used by Arabs in the Palestian territories and elsewhere was designed by British diplomat Mark Skyes, co-author of the Sykes-Picot agreement, not in the 1960's. A faction within the British establishment had supported Arab nationalism as a counterweight to the Ottoman Empire, which Winston Churchill had failed to defeat in his disastrous Dardenelles campaign in World War One (e.g. at Gallipoli). T.E. Lawrence was the best known British insurgent in the Arab Revolt, dramatised in the 1960's movie 'Lawrence of Arabia'. It was Churchill who had ordered the conversion of the British Navy from coal to oil power, making a strategic alliance with the Arabs essential, as Britain had Insufficient onshore oil of its own.
Well written article. My response to “For example, I’m a non-binary queer person, and I generally don’t feel safe in most places I go.” would have been different. I would have said, “Try Tel Aviv. It’s a famously gay friendly city.”
I’m a Canadian citizen ashamed and disgusted of the country that housed my family for 5 generations. But no longer! Most of us now live in Israel, a few in the US. There will not be a 6th generation in Canada. It is an unrecognizable place where the freedom to live openly as a Jew will soon disappear. Canada is doomed.
If the people you spoke with had been savvier, they would have pointed out that Irgun and Haganah and Lehi killed plenty of civilians on the road to independence. Being a supine victim is not a virtue. The point is what you do with the state you won with blood. Israel’s success is its justification, not blood and soil or peacenik delusions.
This is inaccurate - civilians got killed during Jewish fight for independence, like civilians get killed in any armed conflict. But never ever have the Jewish organizations targeted civilians. That's a huge distinction and a failure to recognize it, the failure to call out the simple fact that the "2 sides" are very different is what fuels the conflict until today.
This is simply false. The Deir Yassin massacre was just the most egregious in a series of terror attacks by paramilitary forces. The murder of Jacob Israël de Haan, Folke Bernadotte, Walter Guinness and others puts the lie to this idea that civilians were never targeted.
There wasn't "a series", and this is why everyone always names a single name - Deir Yassin.
In Deir Yassin there was fighting and there were civilian casualties. But it was not a massacre: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/hK0GZ4tN468 please, watch this footage, if you care to know the truth.
Here is a list of massacres that Muslims and Arabs perpetrated against Jews in that period and before, it's too long to list in a comment: https://medium.com/@Ksantini/the-list-of-crimes-committed-by-muslims-against-jews-since-the-7th-century-0ff1a8eb0ad0
Your selective blindness is very telling.
Right, Britain was forced out of the Mandate role it had taken (with the support of the League of Nations) by insurgent Jewish nationalists. Which was exactly the behaviour that Britain had encouraged in occupied Europe, for example by supporting the French Resistance via the Special Operations Executive.
I once had the privilege of meeting former SOE agent Sue Ryder, who was better known for her postwar charity work with her husband Leonard Cheshire. The SOE trained its agents to kill or be killed. Agents' typical lifespan in the field was just a few weeks.
Conservatives like to cite Japan as an example of a racial monoculture which doesn't tolerate immigration, but I've been reading about the Ainu, the Indigenous people of those islands now existing as an ethnic minority in the north. It turns out that the people we consider 'Japanese' aren't so rooted to the soil.
The argument of Palestinian Arabs has similarities to that made by ethnic Germans in eastern Europe during the 1930s, such as those in the Sudetenland. "Our claim to have originated here may be tenuous, but we've been on this land for a long time and so it's ours now. Besides, we need more land because our numbers and ambitions for regional domination are growing. Also, let's get rid of the Jews." Using this rationale, we can imagine why the Grand Mufti was an ally of the Reich.
There is a logic to any successful culture having expanded its territory in the past, for example by having the technology of the sea-going boat available. We have since agreed in the United Nations that one country shouldn't invade another, but that principle didn't exist for thousands of years beforehand. And so if we can find a territory that was never invaded, it probably means that no-one else wanted it.
This too is inaccurate. Britain wasn't "forced out" of the Mandate. Britain was given the Mandate by the League of Nations with the declared objective to establish a Jewish state there.
To your later point, this conflict is not about the size of land. This conflict is about the Arab's fundamental opposition to Jews having any land at all, no matter the size.
Why did Britain withdraw from the Mandate after the attack on the King David Hotel, in your view?
The Mandate was temporary to begin with. Britain withdrew from many of its colonies around that same time. Are you somehow implying that the Kind David Hotel bombing was the reason for Britain to withdraw? This makes no sense at all.
Yes, contemporary sources document that the loss of British lives in attacks like the one on the Mandate headquarters at that hotel was a factor in Britain's withdrawl.
"His Majesty’s Government had now striven for twenty-seven years without success to reconcile Jews and Arabs and to prepare the people of Palestine for self-government. The policy adopted by the United Nations had aroused the determined resistance of the Arabs, while the States supporting this policy were themselves not prepared to enforce it. 84,000 troops, who received no cooperation from the Jewish community, had proved insufficient to maintain law and order in the face of a campaign of terrorism waged by highly organized Jewish forces equipped with all the weapons of the modern infantryman. Since the war, 338 British subjects had been killed in Palestine, while the military forces there had cost the British taxpayer 100 million pounds. The renewal of Arab violence on the announcement of the United Nations decision to partition Palestine and the declared intentions of Jewish extremists showed that the loss of further British lives was inevitable. It was equally clear that, in view of His Majesty’s Government’s decision not to enforce the partition of Palestine against the declared wishes of the majority of it inhabitants, the continued presence there of British troops and officials could no longer be justified."
https://israeled.org/resources/documents/great-britain-palestine-termination-of-the-mandate/