Conrad Black: Canada’s shameful flirtation with antisemitism hits a wall

Peloni:  It is important to note in Conrad Black’s article below, the the division of the land between the two competing factions which he describes was in fact carried out by the British, even as they lacked the specific authority to do so, at the Cairo Conference of 1921 when they created the Emirate of Transjordan for exactly this purpose with the Jordan River as the border between the two territories.  Additionally, the reason the Emirate of Transjordan, later to become the state of Transjordan as recognized in 1946, was named ‘Transjordan’ was specifically in reference to the boundary of that nation being the Jordan River, ie trans Jordan referenced the region on the far side of the Jordan river, as opposed to cis Jordan region (the near side of the Jordan River) which was appropriated for the Jewish homeland.  This division was adopted by the League of Nations as the Two State Solution which has been since been attempted over and over again under the same sense of duplicity and historical revisionism which led the state of Transjordan reinventing its name as Jordan in 1950 to try to erase the fact that its border had been set at the Jordan River.

The argument that Israel has no right to exist as a Jewish state is unspeakable nonsense

By Conrad Black| National Post | Feb 22, 2026

Israeli athletes at the Opening Ceremonies for the 2026 Winter Olympics. Screengrab via X. 

There were two events in Canada last week which may, viewed optimistically, constitute a turning point in the shameful and distressing flirtation that this country is having with antisemitism. There is widespread anecdotal evidence of discrimination against Jewish applicants for many categories of work and entry to exclusive professional occupations, including doctors and teachers. Antisemitic incidents are far more numerous than the police can make any pretense to respond to and include unprecedented levels of violence, car theft, and petty harassment such as ripping Mezuzahs off door-frames. The two incidents included the turnout of over 350,000 people, mainly Muslims, in Toronto to demand regime change in Iran.

There are approximately 1.8 million Muslims in Canada and about a third of them are Arabs, and of those probably only about half are from areas adjacent to Israel. These are the most strident enemies of the Jews, and it appears that an approximately equal number of Canadian Muslims were prepared on a cold day, to demonstrate peacefully for the overthrow of the regime that has armed and financed and instructed the terrorist assaults upon Israel. It was a badge of honour for Toronto that its demonstration last Saturday, though coordinated with those in other cities and particularly Munich and Los Angeles, was the largest in the world. The demonstrators gave roses to the police and in demonstrating for the overthrow of the most barbarous and racist government in the world, they debunk the terrible falsehood that all Muslims believe in war on Israel and Jews everywhere.

The second incident was the revelation that a coalition of virulently “anti-Zionist” movements in this country is challenging the right to exist of Jewish summer camps for children in most of our provinces. These camps, which are completely unexceptionable, were accused of propagating Jewish genocidal hostility to non-Jews, as evident from the self-incriminating fact that they are, in fact, Jewish. The good news is that all of the authorities that license and monitor children’s camps rejected and denounced these completely spurious attempts to bring down the hateful malignancy of antisemitism on Jewish children.

It is not conceivable to me that antics of this kind represent the views of a substantial proportion of Canadians. Antisemitism was a profoundly despised sentiment in the lengthy aftermath of the revelation of the proportions of Nazi atrocities against the Jewish people (and millions of other death camp victims) in Europe. Perversely, the Europeans seem to some extent to be afflicted by an inability to forgive the Jews for having attracted the inexplicable mortal hostility of the Nazi leadership, and brought almost all of Europe into disrepute, though the wickedness of the European assault on the Jewish people during the Third Reich is generally still accepted, though the subject of a continental yearning to forget.

At the same time, and somewhat in parallel to declines in some types of Christian practice, a significant number of Jews in the West have effectively abandoned Judaism as a religious affiliation and have attempted to portray themselves as religious non-practitioners who do not accept that Judaism is an ethnic group either and profess a complete lack of interest in Israel. The most dramatic telltale evidence of this trend was the fact that nearly half the Jewish vote in New York City’s November mayoral election was cast for the Israel-hating, Jew-blaming Zohran Mamdani.

It seems to have become a fad in young, reflexive, youthful rejectionist circles to give lip service to antisemitic snideries, without any intellectual, theological, or historic matrix at all for this ancient and unrelievedly repulsive form of bigotry. And the great catalyst of the last couple of years, has of course, been the Gaza War. From the beginning, on October 7, 2023, there was a section of the Canadian Muslim Arab community that stormed out of their normal places of work and residence upholding the right of the Hamas terrorist Islamic organization, bankrolled by the perverted theocracy in Iran, to massacre and kidnap Israelis on the hackneyed theory that Israel itself is an “occupation.” This view was lent some ostensibly learned credentials because of the widespread leftist academic belief that Israel is a belligerently aggressive state.

It has become a truism in those circles that the Muslim Arabs have evidently preemptive rights to the territory of Israel. And as usually occurs, our media have failed completely to take even the most elemental steps to arm the Canadian public with an informed opinion on this complicated subject. The Jews have been in the land of Israel for 5000 years, that is to say 3600 years before the birth of the prophet Mohammed, and approximately 1500 years before the arrival in what is now Israel of the Philistines, who are generally seen as the forerunners of the Palestinians. The right of the Jews to be in Israel is incontestable. In 1948, 1967, and 1973, the Arab powers initiated war against Israel with the declared aim of expelling, subjugating, or killing the Jews and putting an end to the Jewish state. They failed to do this and on the first two occasions yielded a good deal of territory in the attempt.

As the British, in 1917, when the area was still governed by the Turks, announced that they would create a Jewish homeland in Palestine without compromising the rights of the Palestinians, the only logical resolution to the problem was a division of territory between the two contesting factions. Only in the late 1990’s did it become clear that the Palestinian leadership had no interest in a two-state solution but rather insisted upon the right of return, by which was meant anyone claiming to be a Palestinian had a right to take up residence in Israel and assure that the Jews became a minority in Israel, which has been a Jewish state since 1948. The Jews, approximately half of whose worldwide population had been massacred in the previous decade in Europe, were granted a homeland for the first time in approximately 2500 years.

The argument that Israel has no right to exist as a Jewish state is unspeakable nonsense. There is room for discussion of its precise borders, but the claim that it has no right to exist was set up merely as a distraction to the Arab masses, who have no particular interest in Palestinians, to take attention away from the misgovernment most of them were suffering from their own leaders. The Arab powers now acknowledge the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state and acknowledge the legitimacy of Israel compared to the terrorist puppets of the Islamic revolution in Iran who are backers of the Hamas terrorists who initiated the invasion on October 7, 2023. It is certainly time that all Canadians came to the same conclusion. Freedom of expression includes non-violent ethnic caricatures, (which are often somewhat amusing) and everyone has the right to dislike other people. But antisemitism, like all racist and sectarian bigotry that condones violence and oppression, is unmitigated evil. It is reprehensible that most of our governments are so ambiguous on these points. The fact in democracies that we get the government that we deserve is sobering.