OP-ED: Legacy media whitewashed Hamas and fueled global antisemitism
Almost exactly two years ago to the day, my wife and I were dancing and singing at a Simchat Torah service at our Toronto synagogue.
Author: Sue-Ann Levy
Almost exactly two years ago to the day, my wife and I were dancing and singing at a Simchat Torah service at our Toronto synagogue.
(Simchat Torah is a joyful holiday which celebrates a new cycle of Torah readings).
The next morning we awoke to the atrocities of Oct. 7 in southern Israel and all hell broke loose for two years.
It wasn’t just the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust – with 1,200 innocent Israelis murdered, raped and burned – but the barbarians in Hamas played cruel psychological games with the hostages and their families.
Let’s not forget that more than 1,100 IDF soldiers lost their lives defending the Jewish state. Their heroism got lost in all the noise.
On Tuesday, the same Simchat Torah holiday, we will dance again to celebrate a peace deal and the release of the remaining 20 hostages still believed to be alive, if Hamas honours the deal signed at midnight Thursday.
We are cautiously optimistic as the terrorist group has broken many deals in the past (including Oct. 7).
That 20-point plan’s first phase will see the release of the remaining hostages, dead and alive, and a ceasefire.
I will never forget that US President Donald Trump brought about this deal – despite however much the woke left, and legacy media carry on with their obsessively sick Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS).
To repeat, US president Trump brought about a deal after his predecessor, Joe Biden, was either asleep at the switch or repeatedly advised Israeli president Bibi Netanyahu to hold off attacking Hamas, as did many left-wing politicians around the world.
This was subsequent to our own weak Prime Minister Mark Carney and his lapdogs, particularly Anita Anand, proudly announcing that they intended to recognize a Palestinian state, effectively rewarding Hamas for the terror attack and further enabling anti-Semitism in Canada.
Premier Doug Ford was mostly conspicuously silent for two years and foolish Toronto mayor Olivia Chow danced incessantly – but not for the Jewish state.
Carney, an anti-Semitic globalist, was joined in his efforts by Keir Starmer of Great Britain and French president Emmanuel Macron, both of whose countries have been lost to massive unchecked immigration by those who hate the west.
I was thrilled to see Trump make krepelfleisch (in English, mincemeat) of that nebbish Carney in Washington this past week while his useless lapdogs, Anand, Melanie Joly and Dominic Leblanc looked on.
Whatever criticism was levelled at him, thankfully, Netanyahu recognized from experience that appeasing Hamas would just put Israel in the same boat over and over again, under threat from the terrorists who have been indoctrinated to hate the Jewish state.
To be clear, only Trump and a few other world leaders had the moral compass and strength to see through the lies and propaganda of the Jew-hating legacy media, propagated by Hamas and its sympathizers in the West.
If anything suffered during this two-year conflict, it was the truth.
While Israelis battled an actual war, we in the Diaspora fought a never-ending war of words.
The legacy media (in Canada, the CBC and CTV) and activists blindly repeated the number of Gazans killed during the conflict delivered by the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health without question and never once trying to appear balanced.
Masked terrorist sympathizers took to the streets of Montreal, Toronto and other major Canadian cities, calling for an Intifada, screaming from the “River to the Sea” and “Death to the Jews” with no attempts by the police or our weak politicians to stop them.
Two-tier policing at its finest saw Jews who tried to counter-protest arrested or threatened with arrest. Nothing ever happened to those who want to kill us (intifada means kill Jews wherever, whenever).
Social media became a cesspool of Jew hatred and lies about the Jewish state, perpetuated by such terrorist sympathizers as Paramount restaurant owner Mohamed Fakih, obsessed Jew hating law professor Heidi Matthews and such doctors as Yipeng Ge.
The ignorant and uninformed were fed a steady diet of Jew hatred and activists and leftist professors were only too happy to gather up for their cause the weak-willed Gen Z types desperate for attention and validation.
Our own school board in Toronto sanctioned anti-Israel protests and fundraisers, outrageously pandering to activist students and teachers.
Jew hatred became a badge of honour for some.
The level of anti-Semitism in the Diaspora and attacks on Jews simply for being Jewish in North America, Europe and even Australia was like nothing I’d ever seen before. As one of my friends on FB articulated so well:
“Even though the hostages are coming home and we are seeing an end to the war, it does not mean the fight is over. This war uncovered a level of Jew hatred and anti-Semitism we didn’t know existed anymore and we can’t forget it now that we’ve seen it.”
That’s where the grassroots Jewish community comes in.
My wife and I will not just be dancing again on Tuesday, but we will continue our efforts to expose the truth and to pressure our leaders to do what’s right.
Next month, we will travel to Israel to see for ourselves what Hamas did two years ago.
But we won’t just share the pain but celebrate the resilience of the Israeli people to the trauma of the past two years.
When most of the world turned on the Jewish state and the Jewish community worldwide, we are still standing – and dancing.