Protestors chant: “The Jews are our dogs.” Will the Left care?

On July the 4th, the Mississauga for Palestine protest took place where chants of “the Jews are our dogs” took place.  Likely, this will be the only thing talked about surrounding this “protest,” and that is a shame.

In the video, you can see a small group decides to lead the chant in Arabic, and most of the crowd repeats it back to them with a course of smiles and laughter when they realize what they said. 

The most likely outcome here is a barrage of empty statements from politicians and one disingenuous apology from one of the groups involved that focuses solely on the wording of the statement but fully legitimizes the intent behind it. 

That will probably more than enough to appease the major Jewish organizations, and this incident will be forgotten until the next time.

Unfortunately, the chant of “Palestine is our country, the Jews are our dogs” will be the only thing that the outside will focus on because it was not the most disturbing part of the rally.  

The videos show multiple chants from the whole crowd of “We will sacrifice (redeem) or blood and soul for Palestine.”

Should this not be seen as a legitimate point of concern for Canadian society, and the Jewish community in particular.  

Here there are hundreds of people chanting that they will sacrifice their blood for a cause quite infamous for its association with suicide bombing. Suicide bombing is prevalent in Palestinian society that the government in Gaza will even make music videos glorifying it.

Combine these chants, and you have a glorification of violence against Israel and a willful conflation of Israel with “Yahood” (Jews).  

It is not unreasonable to assume that a few of the people in that crowd on Saturday truly meant that they would sacrifice their blood for Palestine, and as Jews living in Canada, do we not have the right to worry about or confront this idea.

In regular times it would be easy to ignore instances like this as they happen every year in Canada. However, we are going through a moment in history where people are extra sensitive to discrimination past and present, and the recent events in Toronto and the GTA expose the hypocrisy of this movement.

First, it should be pointed out for anyone who is about to say that this is not the time to talk about antisemitism, our focus should be on the Black Lives Matter movement that the numbers do not support that argument.  

Recent data shows that Jews are the number one target for hate crimes in Toronto, with Jews and Israeli being the target of 36% of the hate crimes, compared to 9% for blacks. This is consistent with last year’s data and historical trends. 

If there had been chants of “Muslims are our dogs,” “Blacks are our dogs,” or almost any other the group, the backlash would be swift and immediate. However, as it stands, we are at zero statements from politicians, zero concern from the Mainstream media outlets and zero contrition from anyone involved in the incident.

If the Left wants to claim that it is working to end racism and discrimination, they need to take a stance against a blatant and open call to incitement of violence and hatred against Jews. 

Failure to do so will only show that all the protest of the last month have been purely political, and not on principle.