I highly recommend reading the antisemitism section below, as the articles go discuss the surging issues Jews are facing globally, especially in Canada (where there has been a 670% increase in antisemitic incidents in the past year according to The Free Press) and Australia.
Situational Update
The Times of Israel and IDF report: The Israeli military says it carried out strikes against 320 “strategic targets” in Syria since the fall of the Assad regime over the weekend, destroying advanced weaponry Israel fears could fall into the hands of hostile elements, including Hezbollah. The military estimates that it has taken out over 70% of the former Assad regime’s strategic military capabilities. The targets destroyed in the strikes included Syrian air defense systems, missile depots, manufacturing facilities, drones, helicopters, fighter jets, tanks, radars, navy vessels and more.
Israeli Navy missile ships struck 2 Syrian Navy facilities simultaneously: the Al-Bayda port and the Latakia port, where 15 Syrian naval vessels were docked.
A wide range of targets, including anti-aircraft batteries, Syrian Air Force airfields, and dozens of weapons production sites in Damascus, Homs, Tartus, Latakia, and Palmyra.
Numerous strategic assets, including Scud missiles, cruise missiles, surface-to-sea, surface-to-air and surface-to-surface missiles, UAVs, fighter jets, attack helicopters, radars, tanks, hangars, and more.
The IDF conducted air strikes on 130 assets in Syria, including weapons depots, military structures, launchers, and firing positions.
Per the Jerusalem Post: The World Central Kitchen fired dozens of Palestinians working for the charity in the Gaza Strip. A WCK spokesperson confirmed that 62 people had been let go. An Israeli security official told Reuters that Israel had demanded an investigation into staff potentially linked to the October 7 attack after it said a WCK employee identified as Ahed Azmi Qdeih took part in the attack. The official said an Israeli security review found that 62 WCK employees had "affiliations and direct connections" with terrorist groups.
The Numbers (7 IDF Causalities)
Casualties
1,810 Israelis have been killed including 816 IDF soldiers since October 7th (+7 since Sunday)
According to the Times of Israel: Three soldiers were killed and 12 others were wounded in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday. The troops were boarding a lightly armored truck used to transport troops when Hamas operatives launched anti-tank projectiles and opened fire at them.
From left: Staff Sgt. Ido Zano, Sgt. Omri Cohen and Staff Sgt. Barak Daniel Halpern (Israel Defense Forces) Staff Sgt. Ido Zano, 20, a combat medic with the Givati Brigade’s Shaked Battalion, from Yehud-Monosson
Staff Sgt. Barak Daniel Halpern, 19, a squad commander in the Givati Brigade’s Shaked Battalion, from Kiryat Ono;
Sgt. Omri Cohen, 19, of the Givati Brigade’s Shaked Battalion, from Ashdod.
Four Israeli reservists were killed in an operational accident in southern Lebanon Sunday, when munitions in a Hezbollah tunnel they were in exploded, the army said on Monday.
Top row, from left: Maj. (res.) Evgeny Zinershain, Master Sgt. (res.) Binyamin Destaw Negose. Bottom row, from left: Cpt. (res.) Sagi Ya'akov Rubinshtein, Sgt. First Class. (res.) Erez Ben Efraim (Creit: TOI) Maj. (res.) Evgeny Zinershain, 43, from Zichron Yaakov;
Cpt. (res.) Sagi Ya’akov Rubinshtein, 31, from Kibbutz Lavi;
Master Sgt. (res.) Binyamin Destaw Negose, 28, from Beit Shemesh;
Sgt. First Class. (res.) Erez Ben Efraim, 25, from Ramat Gan.
The South: 384 IDF soldiers during the ground operation in Gaza have been killed (+3 since Sunday)
The North: 131 Israelis (84 IDF soldiers) have been killed during the war in Northern Israel (+4 since Sunday)
Additional Information (according to the IDF):
2,491 (+21 since Sunday) IDF soldiers have been injured during ground combat in Gaza, including at least 471 (+3 since Sunday) who have been severely injured.
5,477 (+25 since Sunday) IDF soldiers have been injured since the beginning of the war, including at least 802 (+5 since Sunday) who have been severely injured.
According to unverified figures from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, 44,805 (+225 since Sunday) people have been killed in Gaza, and 106,257 (+518 since Sunday) have been injured during the war.
On October 7th, Ohad Hemo with Channel 12 Israel News – the country’s largest news network, a leading expert on Palestinian and Arab affairs, mentioned an estimate from Hamas: around 80% of those killed in Gaza are members of the organization and their families.”
The article goes on to say: “In an N12 article that came out this morning, Hemo also pointed out that since the elimination of key leader Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s top echelon has gone underground and fled Iran and Lebanon, with some relocating to Turkey and Qatar – with the hope that Israel will not strike them there.
Read this well documented piece from Tablet published in March: How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers
The Associated Press, an outlet with a demonstrated anti-Israel bias, conducted an analysis of alleged Gaza death tolls released by the Hamas-controlled "Gaza Health Ministry." The analysis found that "9,940 of the dead – 29% of its April 30 total – were not listed in the data" and that "an additional 1,699 records in the ministry’s April data were incomplete and 22 were duplicates."
The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs publishes official details on every civilian and IDF casualty.
Hostages
There are currently 96 hostages taken on 10/7 currently in captivity in Gaza
7 hostages are Americans: Meet the Seven American Hostages Still Held By Hamas
On October 7th, a total of 261 Israelis were taken hostage.
During the ceasefire deal in November, 112 hostages were released.
145 hostages in total have been released or rescued
The bodies of 38 hostages have been recovered, including 3 mistakenly killed by the military as they tried to escape their captors.
8 hostages have been rescued by troops alive
This leaves 100 hostages still theoretically in Gaza
At least 34 confirmed bodies are currently being held in Gaza
30-50 hostages are assumed to be dead and held in captivity
Thus, at most, 50-70 living hostages could still be in Gaza.
Hamas is also holding 2 Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of 2 IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.
Listen
[PODCAST] School of War Goes to Israel—Lessons from a Savage Year
Host Aaron MacLean recently embedded with the Israeli Defense Forces and saw firsthand Israel’s war with Iranian proxy groups Hezbollah and Hamas. What lessons can Americans learn from Israel’s year of fighting for its survival?
[PODCAST] Call Me Back with Dan Senor: A WINDOW OPENS FOR A HOSTAGE DEAL - with Nadav Eyal
Over the past few months, Israel has seen a number of successes, from the deaths of key Hamas and Hezbollah figures, to the destruction of Iran’s air defenses, a ceasefire agreement with Hezbollah, and finally the fall of the Assad regime, which has collapsed Iran’s proxy strategy. With Hamas in its weakest position yet, will they try to negotiate a hostage deal?Are there common threads between this new development, the fall of Assad, the ceasefire in Lebanon, and the incoming US administration?
What We Are Reading
Syria
From the Institute of the Study of War
Syrian Transitional Government Formation: Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) is establishing a transitional government and reconciling with former Syrian regime and Syrian Arab Army (SAA) members. HTS likely attempting to improve its image among the Syrian people and international community by framing itself as an organization that is devoted to building a pluralist Syrian state.
Northeastern Syria: The Kurdish-controlled, US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) may face increased challenges governing Arab areas in northeastern Syria due to the emergence of the HTS-led transitional government as a viable alternative to the SDF. The Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) is also attacking the SDF as the SDF contends with internal dissent.
Israel in Syria: The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) continued to establish a buffer zone in Syria along the Golan Heights.
Iraq and Iran in Syria: The fall of the Assad regime has exposed fissures between Iran and Iraq. Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Abbas Araghchi was “surprised” during his visit to Baghdad on December 6 that the Iraqi federal government refused to send forces to Syria to defend the Assad regime.
Iranian Syria Policy: Iran is attempting to reframe its role in the Syrian Civil War to reestablish influence within the new Syrian government.
Iranian Reactions to Assad’s Collapse: Members of Iran’s armed forces and Iranian policymakers are increasingly disillusioned with Iran’s handling of the collapse of the Assad Regime.
The Fall of Assad and What Comes Next in Syria, Adam Rubenstein interviews The New Yorker’s Dexter Filkins in The Free Press
Many people are celebrating, understandably, the fall of a truly evil dictator. During his rule, Assad presided over the slaughter of nearly 3 percent of the country’s population—his own forces have killed, by some estimates, more than 600,000 civilians during the country’s civil war, which has displaced more than 13 million people since 2011. He and his regime have waged war against his own people, disappearing dissenters and persecuting religious minorities. And yet, is his departure all good news? Could those about to take power be worse? What are we to make of the rebel factions, who were formerly affiliated with al-Qaeda? And what are the implications of Russia and Iran’s retreat from Syria?
The fall of Assad is a pivotal event in the history of the modern Middle East, for two reasons.
First, even though we don’t know yet what the immediate future will bring, it’s a great moment for the Syrian people. The Assad imperium, which began with the ascension of Bashar’s father, Hafez al-Assad, a former army officer, in 1971, lasted 53 years. (Bashar took over in 2000.) From the start, the Assads were brutal and corrupt and ruinous, tolerating no dissent; they immiserated the Syrian people.
The second reason the fall of Assad is so important is that it represents the collapse of the long Iranian campaign to dominate the Middle East. Only 18 months ago, Iranian power was at its peak, with its local allies dominating a broad swath of the region and nearly completing the encirclement of Israel: Assad in Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Shi’ite militias in Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen, and Hamas in Gaza. The Iranians called it the “Axis of Resistance.” It was primarily aimed at Israel; the clear threat was that any Israeli attempt to attack Iran, particularly its nuclear weapons program, would be met by a rapid and devastating response by Iran’s allies. At the same time, the Axis of Resistance was a vast looting exercise; Assad, the Shi’ite militias in Iraq, and Hezbollah in Lebanon were parasites, sucking and draining the wealth from the countries they inhabited and crippling the states and governments where they lived. And now, after only a few months, the Iranian project lies in ruins. Hamas has been destroyed, Hezbollah is crippled, Assad is gone, and the Iranian regime itself is severely weakened.
Israel has just taken critical territory on the top of Mount Hermon; there’s an image circulating of IDF soldiers holding an Israeli flag on the Syrian side of the Hermon. Our Matti Friedman said this is “probably the most dramatic development on the Israel-Syria border in 50 years.”
I think the more significant development was Israel’s announcement that it had struck Syria’s chemical weapons factories. Everyone should be terrified at the prospect of those falling into the wrong hands.
There’s a good chance of Syria falling into chaos. It’s an artificial country, created by a few ill-considered pen strokes after the First World War. It contains multitudes of sects and tribes, which will now have to figure out how to live together, and they will have no institutions, like a free press or civil society, to help them, as they were long ago destroyed by the Assads. And then there are Syria’s neighbors—Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar—competing for dominance. I will hope for the best and fear the worst.
Khamenei Loses Everything by Eliot A. Cohen with The Atlantic
It is a persistent folly of progressive thought to believe that wars do not achieve meaningful political consequences. The past 15 months in the Middle East suggest otherwise.
The biggest loser in all of this—after Assad, his family, his cronies, and possibly his Alawite sect—is Iran. Decades of patient work assembling proxy movements throughout the Middle East, specifically but not exclusively focused on Israel, have collapsed.
…with the defeats of Hamas and Hezbollah, and with the collapse of the Assad regime, Iran has suffered irrecoverable losses. It no longer has a land route to Lebanon; it has lost its most disciplined, well-armed, and effective proxies; and it failed in its two attempts to attack Israel directly while losing its main air defenses in a retaliatory strike.
But with the defeats of Hamas and Hezbollah, and with the collapse of the Assad regime, Iran has suffered irrecoverable losses. It no longer has a land route to Lebanon; it has lost its most disciplined, well-armed, and effective proxies; and it failed in its two attempts to attack Israel directly while losing its main air defenses in a retaliatory strike.
Russia, like Iran, has been humiliated by its client’s collapse, and it, too, now faces an enduring hostility from a Syrian population that it helped suppress, with a savagery that foreshadowed its behavior in Ukraine.
If there is a winner here it is Turkey, which has supported, although not entirely controlled, HTS—its own proxy force
The victory of HTS not only presents Turkey with an opportunity to return 3 million Syrian refugees from Turkish camps but also extends Turkish influence along neo-Ottoman lines. It will be interesting to see whether Turkey takes the momentum of this victory to attack Kurdish forces in Syria and Iraq or to secure a stronger hold on Libya, where it backs the official government.
As for the United States, it was irrelevant to most but not all of this drama. Its Kurdish allies in the east of Syria, backed by fewer than 1,000 U.S. Special Forces personnel, played a small role in this war, but continue to play a much larger one in the containment of the remnants of the Islamic State.
The first is that deeply unpopular authoritarian regimes tend to be far more fragile than they look. Few saw the sudden collapse of the Assad regime coming. Other authoritarian states, including Iran itself, may now become more tractable in dealing with foreign powers, and more paranoid internally.
Although wars may eliminate one set of problems or strategic circumstances, they usually create a new set. In this case, Iran has lost several of its claws, but others remain. After suffering a series of heavy defeats, the regime has to be terrified—not least because, according to a recent federal indictment, it also plotted to assassinate President-Elect Donald Trump. That may cause it to seek to accommodate the United States
Finally, the United States has again been frustrated in its long-standing desire, which dates back to the Obama administration, to leave the Middle East. The Biden administration’s calls for a cease-fire in Syria were pointless and ineffectual. Along with its failure to anticipate the collapse of our Afghan allies in 2021, and its inability to do more in Ukraine than provide enough weapons to prevent Kyiv’s defeat, it shows what happens when strategic thought withers into good intentions and wishful thinking.
Israel must recognize Turkey as powerbroker in Syria by Dean Shmuel Elmas in The Globes
The regime of the Ayatollahs in Iran is paying dearly for its proxies policy. When the commander of the Quds Force in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Qasem Soleimani devised that policy, it was logical at the time. The Iranians in general, and Soleimani’s successor Esmail Qaani in particular, were not, however, perceptive enough to make the necessary adaptations. So although the Iranian axis of resistance looked threatening in the wake of Israel’s failure on October 7, it can now be understood that it was a house of cards.
In the ranking of Iran’s needs, Hamas was not a basis but a tool. At the top of Iran’s priorities stood Hezbollah, a terrorist organization with a country. That was also reflected in Iran’s policy in Syria. The Iranian regime did not rush to Assad’s aid in the previous decade because of concern for his welfare, but out of a desire to expand its influence in Syria in a way that would enable it to keep up a continuous supply of arms to Hezbollah.
All the while, the rebels in Syria watched developments in the Swords of Iron war, and from their point of view let Israel do the work of weakening the Shi’ite crescent, especially Hezbollah, for them. So when the ceasefire happened, the Syrian rebel groups Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and the Syrian National Army, and especially the latter’s Turkish patrons, saw that this was an auspicious time that would not return to topple the Assad regime. And here we are: Bashar al-Assad was overthrown within twelve days, six days fewer than it took to remove Hosni Mubarak in Egypt in February 2011.
It happened because of a perfect storm: a combination of the exceptional weakness of Iran, which was left without significant tools, and regional weakness of Russia, because the invasion of Ukraine monopolized attention and resources.
In the case of Syria, it is noticeable that Israel has learned from the mistakes of October 2023. First you bolster your forces, while carrying out constant situation assessment, until you understand which way the wind is blowing. The situation is Syria is very delicate. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is an offshoot of Al Qaida, full of extreme jihadists who come from everywhere from China to the Balkans. We saw how, in Egypt, Mohamed Morsi came to power in place of Mubarak, and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is more extreme than him.
More than ever before, Israel will now have to examine its ties with Turkey. It’s easy to say "they’re haters of Israel" and accuse them of supporting terrorism, but Israel has a relationship with Turkey, which of course can’t be said about Iran. A combination of Turkish and Israeli interests in which Erdogan obtains some kind of influence that he can wave in the Palestinian arena while Israel obtains useful influence in Syria is the only way in which the upset in Syria can bring some benefit to Israel, and not to the danger of a Syrian Sharia state aggressive towards Israel on the border on the Golan Heights.
Four Syria Myths Busted by the Assad Regime’s Collapse by Noah Rothman in The National Review
Myth No. 1: America’s Enemies Are More Steadfast Than America
Critics of the U.S.-led post–Cold War order as well as its supporters are keen to note that America is a fair-weather friend. Its partners abroad can count on American support only until their cause becomes déclassé among domestic political elites, at which point the United States reliably bugs out of the conflicts to which it has committed treasure and prestige.
Well, not so much when it comes to Syria. The multi-axial lightning rebel advance that took down Assad’s regime did not progress entirely unmolested by Damascus’s Iranian and Russian benefactors. Iran deployed Revolutionary Guards Corps forces to stave off the onslaught, and Moscow’s forces mounted counterattacks on the advancing insurgents. But both rapidly concluded that they were committing valuable resources to a lost cause.
With Assad gone, the Kremlin could lose its military outposts on the Mediterranean. But it barely lifted a finger to prop up Assad in the last week, sacrificing a decade of costly contributions to its longevity in the process. Both Russia and Iran have lost a critical ally in the region, demonstrating their weakness and — perhaps more important — that the United States isn’t the only great power prone to cut and run.
Myth No. 2: Assad and Russia Were Fighting Islamists
This is a chestnut preferred by critics of Western goals in the region. Sure, the Assad regime was a vicious tyranny that tortures and mutilates children, gasses whole communities, and facilitates the murder of Americans wherever it has the chance. But at least he was fighting terrorists.
This binary dichotomy — a brutal secular dictatorship vs. the Islamist theocrats who attacked the United States on 9/11 — is one that is preferred by Assad and his backers. The dithering they encouraged allowed the regime and its Iranian and Russian backers to neutralize pro-Western elements among Syria’s rebel ranks, but Assad’s flatterers were promulgating a fiction.
Myth No. 3: We Have to Learn to Live with the Iranian Axis
The Obama team’s fixation on the notion that the Islamic Republic could be bribed into behaving like a responsible country compelled them to engage in a lot of motivated reasoning. The hands-off approach the Obama White House took to the Syrian civil war was just one outgrowth of that ill-considered project.
“Instead of helping to topple Assad, the mass-murdering goon who drops barrel bombs on civilian areas, the White House launched a phony train-and-equip program that required rebel fighters to sign a document that they wouldn’t use their weapons against the dictator who was murdering their families,” Lee Smith documented in 2016. “The administration’s anti-ISIS campaign has allowed Assad to ignore ISIS nearly altogether and focus his attention instead on destroying other opposition groups, and indiscriminately targeting Sunni towns and villages.”
Myth No. 4: The United States Is the Clandestine Author of Events in the Middle East
It’s not hard to find Assad boosters and reflexive skeptics stealing from Syrians their own agency and assigning blame, such as it is, for the dictator’s ouster to a shadowy cabal of U.S. intelligence agencies. This isn’t a new phenomenon. Donald Trump’s pick for director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has always been good for that sort of irrationality.
But America was not the author of last week’s events in Syria. Indeed, Western intelligence agencies appear to have been caught off guard by the rebel offensive. “I think everything that’s happening caught them by surprise,” the Atlantic Council’s Qutaiba Idlbi speculated. The scattershot contingencies in which the U.S. and Israel are now engaged in Syria expose the folly of those who attribute events abroad to meticulously planned Western initiatives. It was not the United States but the Syrian people who were the executors of their own liberation.
Link: Four Syria Myths Busted by the Assad Regime’s Collapse
Days After Trump's Victory, Biden-Harris Admin Granted Iran $10 Billion in Sanctions Relief, Congressional Notice Shows by Adam Kredo in The Free Beacon
The Biden-Harris administration waived sanctions on Iran three days after the November election, providing Tehran access upward of $10 billion in once-frozen funds, according to a copy of the non-public order transmitted to Congress and reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken determined on November 8 that "it is in the national security interest of the United States" to waive mandatory economic sanctions that bar Iraq from transferring upward of $10 billion to Iran in electricity import payments.
The most recent iteration of the waiver lifts sanctions for 120 days, at which time the incoming Trump administration will have to decide whether Tehran will continue receiving the relief.
The State Department confirmed last week that it issued the waiver.
"We remain committed to reducing Iran's malign influence in the region," State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters during a briefing. "Our viewpoint is that a stable, sovereign, and secure Iraq is critical to these efforts."
The Biden State Department maintains that Iran is only permitted to use the funds for humanitarian needs, including medicines and other supplies.
Antisemitism
[MUST READ] The Explosion of Jew-Hate in Canada by Terry Glavin with The Free Press
Jew-hatred was a phenomenon of the fringes, she reckoned. “It wasn’t on my radar,” she told me. Now, it’s everywhere. “Every week there is a major incident in Canada, and multiple minor ones every day in my neighborhood.”
York’s student unions issued a declaration just after the attack calling the barbarism of October 7 a “justified and necessary” act of resistance against settler colonialism, genocide, and apartheid. The student groups found widespread support among York’s professors—some of whom Rugheimer considered friends.
A politics department faculty committee demanded the university enforce a definition of “anti-Palestinian racism” that encompassed any expression of sympathy for the right of Israelis to exist within their own state: “Zionism is a settler colonial project and ethno-religious ideology in service of a system of Western imperialism that upholds global white supremacy.”
This sort of despair has become a feature of everyday life for Jews across Canada who are experiencing open hatred—and yet are living under a government that appears either blind to it, paralyzed by it, or indifferent to it. Law enforcement in Canada is not blind. Quite the opposite. Officers want to do their jobs. What they say is that they lack the moral support from the political class to enforce the law. And that they cannot keep up with the volume of hate crimes—crimes that arise from a widespread ideology that has normalized the idea that “Zionists” anywhere are a fair target for attack.
Perhaps nothing captured Canada’s dark new reality better than a split-screen story from late last month.
On November 22 in Montreal, at the 70th annual session of the NATO parliamentary assembly, rioters organized by the organizations Divest for Palestine and the Convergence of Anti-Capitalist Struggles wreaked havoc on the city. They ignited smoke bombs, threw metal barriers into the street, and smashed windows of businesses and the convention center where the NATO delegates were meeting. The rioters torched cars. They also burned an effigy of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
While Montreal burned, Trudeau was dancing and handing out friendship bracelets at a Taylor Swift concert in Toronto. It took 24 hours for him to weigh in with a single tweet.
Last month, a report by Israel’s Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism found a 670 percent increase in antisemitic incidents in Canada since October 7, 2023, including “violent attacks such as shootings targeting Jewish institutions and arson attacks targeting schools, synagogues, and other community institutions.” There are about 40 million Canadians and roughly 350,000 of them are Jewish—representing less than 1 percent of the country’s population.
Since last October 7, there have been several drive-by shootings at Jewish schools in Montreal and Toronto. A coordinated bomb threat targeted more than 100 Jewish institutions from Halifax to Victoria. Synagogues in British Columbia and Quebec have been firebombed. One synagogue in Toronto, Kehillat Shaarei Torah, has been vandalized seven times since April—its doors and windows smashed; rocks thrown through the windows. The most recent attack happened just last week.
More recently, Toronto’s reputation has been overtaken by Montreal, which is fast becoming known as “North America’s most dangerous city for Jews.” At the city’s Concordia University, the marketing professor and behavioral scientist Gad Saad said the city’s institutions of higher learning have become “cesspools” of antisemitism.
Almost none of these verbal or physical assaults are coming from white supremacists or antisemites of the right-wing variety. They are being carried out by self-described progressives, Arabs, and, often, recent immigrants who are operating inside an ideological framework of “settler colonialism,” which casts Canada, the United States, Australia, and, most of all, Israel, as irredeemably illegitimate constructs of imperialism, capitalism, genocide, and racism. It’s an ideology that has found a comfortable home in Trudeau’s Canada.
From the outset, Trudeau’s immigration policy set out to welcome unprecedented numbers of immigrants, temporary workers, and foreign students. Meanwhile, Muslim advocacy organizations quickly rose to unprecedented influence in Trudeau’s Canada.
The Muslim Association of Canada, for example, has taken in millions of dollars from the federal government in “anti-hate” funding and other subsidies in recent years. Yet this group explicitly derives its guidance from the wellspring of Islamism, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the parent organization of Hamas. The Muslim Association of Canada routinely invites foreign speakers who deliver antisemitic, misogynistic, and homophobic sermons.
There are now an estimated 1.8 million Muslims in Canada—twice as many as 20 years ago. Brym’s study found that more than 40 percent of the Muslims surveyed said that suicide bombing targeting Israeli citizens is justified.
…Canada’s Muslims should not be simply tarred with the brush of Judeophobia. But the phenomenon of fashionably “anti-Zionist” antisemitism has merged seamlessly with constituencies of newcomers from cultures where antisemitism is deeply rooted, Babb said, referencing Middle Eastern countries that once had ancient and thriving Jewish communities, now completely purged by pogrom and massacre.
Going by the Toronto Police Service’s classification system, of all the hate crimes since October 7 that involved religion, 80 percent involved an “anti-Jewish occurrence.” There are only about 120,000 Jews among the roughly three million people who live in Toronto.
In Montreal, in just the three months following October 7, police reported 132 “hate incidents” targeting the city’s Jewish community, 10 times as many reported hate crimes as the entire year of 2022. There are only about 90,000 Jews among Montreal’s 1.8 million people.
So far this year, Ottawa police report 225 hate incidents, about a third of them directed at the city’s Jewish community, which numbers about 14,000 people—less than two percent of Ottawa’s population. Half as many hate incidents were reported among Ottawa’s vastly larger Muslim community, which accounts for nearly 10 percent of the city’s residents.
Two years ago, Diversity and Inclusion Minister Ahmed Hussen personally endorsed a $133,000 “anti-racist action” grant to a man named Laith Marouf for a series of countrywide workshops. At those workshops, Marouf would teach federally regulated broadcasters about diversity and inclusion. An interesting choice considering that Marouf is a Beirut-based supporter of Bashar Assad—the ex-Syrian leader who butchered hundreds of thousands of his own people. Marouf is also a regular contributor to the Kremlin’s disinformation platform Sputnik and Tehran’s English-language propaganda platform PressTV.
Among the guests was Nazih Khatatba, whose newspaper, al-Meshwar, was already infamous for referring to the Holocaust as the “Holohoax” and publishing claims that Jewish bankers financed the Nazi Party. Another was the secretary of the Fatah Movement in Canada, Nabil Nassar, best known for celebrating the 1972 massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics and praising the Fatah terrorist Dalal al-Mughrabi, who participated in the murder of 38 Israeli citizens in the 1978 Coastal Road massacre north of Tel Aviv.
According to the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association, anti-Palestinian racism is defined as follows: “Anti-Palestinian racism is a form of anti-Arab racism that silences, excludes, erases, stereotypes, defames, or dehumanizes Palestinians or their narratives. Anti-Palestinian racism takes various forms including: denying the Nakba and justifying violence against Palestinians; failing to acknowledge Palestinians as an Indigenous people with a collective identity, belonging and rights in relation to occupied and historic Palestine; erasing the human rights and equal dignity and worth of Palestinians; excluding or pressuring others to exclude Palestinian perspectives, Palestinians, and their allies; defaming Palestinians and their allies with slander such as being inherently antisemitic, a terrorist threat/sympathizer or opposed to democratic values.”
It is worth reading that twice. It is a definition of racism that makes the most fundamental defense of Israel’s existence racist. It renders it impossible to describe antisemitism without running the risk of being described as racist.
Heartbreaking is a word that well describes the way Canadian Jews see their predicament these days.
In part, that’s because antisemitism is no longer just some protest culture eccentricity. It’s going mainstream, from the bottom to the top.
Hatred and Indifference in Modern Australia by Claire Lehmann with Quillete
Two days after Hamas massacred 1,200 Israelis, I was sitting at my desk in the Sydney Central Business District. Zoe, my colleague, stood up from her desk with a worried look. Holding her phone, she told me that the New South Wales Board of Deputies had received a police warning: the safety of Jews in the city could not be guaranteed. The message she had just received was encouraging them to leave.
That message, combined with the knowledge of an upcoming pro-Palestinian protest in the city, made me feel something that I’d never felt before as an Australian citizen. I felt queasy as I remembered other times when Jews had felt safe in their own cities—then suddenly no longer.
The vicious hate manifested that night when a mob congregated on the steps of the Opera House chanting “where’s the Jews,” “fuck the Jews,” and “fuck Israel.” But what unnerved me was the indifference of authorities who had permitted this celebratory march from Sydney Town Hall in the first place. This was compounded when only one person was arrested at that rally where flags were burned—and that was a bystander carrying an Israeli flag.
Since that day, Australia’s Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese has followed the model of indifference shown by the NSW Police. He says “antisemitism has no place in Australia,” while anti-Israel protesters freely demonstrate in front of synagogues. He takes no responsibility for surging attacks on Jews while simultaneously undermining the world’s only Jewish state. While Albanese might not be personally antisemitic, his intentional paralysis speaks of something more damning.
The silence extends beyond government. While major corporations and cultural institutions rush to signal their virtues on climate change and the Voice, they remain conspicuously silent when Jews face actual violence and threats to their physical safety. This isn’t about social exclusion or verbal slights that we normally associate with prejudice. It’s about institutional paralysis when synagogues burn, when Jewish MPs have their offices vandalised, and when mobs celebrate the massacre of Jews in Australian streets. The threat is immediate and physical, yet the response remains tepid.
This is why Anthony Albanese cannot move beyond platitudes or convey authority on an issue that requires leadership. Many in the Labor Party cannot recognise that a group that is (on average) highly educated and successful can be victimised precisely because of their success. Rushing to champion Indigenous and LGBTQA+ issues, our left-leaning leaders fall mute when confronting violent hatred directed at Jewish Australians. Their ideological framework, built around power differentials and systemic oppression, leaves them paralysed when faced with mob violence against a minority group that doesn’t fit their pro forma templates. But this blindness to success-based persecution isn’t just a philosophical failure—it betrays the basic duty to protect all citizens from violence.
The firebombing of the Adass Israel Synagogue—a place built by Holocaust survivors seeking refuge from persecution—shows where institutional indifference leads. When our leaders fail to draw clear lines between legitimate political discourse and naked Jew hate, when they treat attacks on Jewish Australians as a low priority, they create the conditions that we learn about in history books. The vicious hatred may come from a militant few, but it’s the silent majority—particularly those in positions of power and influence—who let it spread. For Jewish Australians, their grandparents’ stories must no longer feel like stories of a distant nightmare but lessons in a fear that never ends.
Jewish Australians’ worst fears have come true by Justin Amler in New York Times
Jews in Australia woke up on Friday to the devastating news that the Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne, one of the busiest synagogues in all of Australia, had been targeted in an arson attack that left the house of worship in ruins and two people injured.
The images of a burning synagogue in the heart of the Jewish community will leave a painful wound on the soul of our community that will not easily heal. How can it?
It inevitably recalls the darkest moments in our history, including the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, when more than 250 synagogues in Germany and Austria were also burnt to the ground, with unforgettable images of Jewish houses of worship collapsing in the flames of hatred.
Yet perhaps the most shocking aspect of Friday’s events is that the Jewish community is not even that surprised.
Only last week, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry released a report on antisemitism that showed incidents of Jew-hatred increased by a staggering 316 per cent since October 7, 2023.
In the past month alone, we’ve seen an attack in the Sydney suburb of Woollahra where cars were defaced with anti-Israel slogans. We’ve seen an Israeli tourist in Townsville being called a “dirty filthy f—ing Jew”, and we’ve seen anti-Israel protests at the Great Synagogue in Sydney, where the only person moved on by police was a Jewish man accused of a “breach of the peace” when he unfurled an Israeli flag opposite the protesters.
During the past 14 months, Jewish students have been made to feel unsafe on university campuses, where anti-Israel protest encampments sprung up, screaming genocidal slogan such as “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and intimidating and preventing Jews from going to their classes. Some were advised to study from home for their own safety.
Last February, members of a WhatsApp group of Jewish creatives were doxxed and their details leaked publicly – leading to harassment and intimidation, loss of work and one family even having to flee their home.
While it’s true the federal government has made some attempts to combat antisemitism, such as passing laws against doxxing and banning the use of Nazi salutes and hate symbols, it is also true that the Jewish community largely feels that neither our political leaders nor law enforcement truly have our back.
This happened during the infamous October 9 anti-Israel demonstration outside the Sydney Opera House, which included chants of “f— the Jews” and “Where’s the Jews?”
It happened when anti-Israel demonstrators descended on Melbourne’s Jewish community on November 10 last year, it happened when traumatised families of Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas visiting Melbourne were confronted by anti-Israel agitators who took over their hotel lobby, and on many other occasions, including in Sydney this past Wednesday night. Meanwhile, police investigations into the blatantly antisemitic sermons that have come out of some mosques always conclude with no charges laid.
The Jewish community in Australia is angry at the treatment it’s been receiving from the leaders of this country. It is tired and frustrated and upset and disgusted at what’s been happening on the streets of our cities. And it feels abandoned.
Sources: JINSA, FDD, IDF, AIPAC, The Paul Singer Foundation, The Institute for National Security Studies, the Alma Research and Education Center, Yediot, Jerusalem Post, IDF Casualty Count, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Institute for the Study of War, and the Times of Israel