December 2024
Gillian Creighton

During the Christmas seasons of my childhood, my devout Catholic mother always placed a menorah on the dining room buffet “...so our Jewish friends will feel valued, and their traditions respected.” The menorah looked slightly out of place adjacent to the Nativity creche, and I dismissed it as one of my mother’s eccentricities. I did not yet understand the importance of demonstrating allyship with the most persecuted group in history. The menorah was a symbol of safety for Jews in our home. 

Last year, my husband and I bought a house in the Strathcona neighbourhood of Hamilton. We were delighted to join this tightly knit community, in which the active Facebook group members posted invitations to share garden tomatoes, tune-up bicycles, and announce movie nights in the park. A welcome change from life in downtown Toronto! 

But on Oct. 7, 2023, we watched the news programs in horror when young people who had been celebrating peace at a music festival in Israel were murdered; cheering terrorists with AK-47s paraded a young woman covered in blood, her limbs bent at odd angles, through Gaza. The vision of Noa Argamani being torn from her boyfriend’s arms by terrorists while she begged for her life haunts me still.

As Jews everywhere grieved, I was sickened that many Westerners brainwashed by anti-Jewish propaganda celebrated the attacks and excused the odious behaviour of jihadists. Jewish history was being rewritten on social media. While this resembled Nazi propaganda in the 1930s, in today’s climate of virtue signalling, the rhetoric and terminology have shifted. The term “anti-Zionism” has come to denote hate speech and implies the perpetrator is, in fact, the saviour of the oppressed. Modern-day antisemites refuse to consider historical facts and instead choose to trust distortions and outright lies expressed on social media.

One common sentiment I have consistently heard from my Jewish friends this past year is that their most acute pain has come from silence. Friends who have not reached out, loved ones who have not checked in, a heavy silence that implies, “I do not care about your pain,” and amid this raging storm of antisemitic propaganda, perhaps that silence means they, too, are amongst the brainwashed masses.  

Our Strathcona Facebook group’s administrators (and neighbours) posted anti-Israel propaganda using terms such as “Nazis,” “white supremacists,” and “zios” (an ethnic slur favoured by David Duke) to describe Jews. Members of Hamas were labelled “freedom fighters”. The administrators then followed up by arbitrarily kicking out several of the group’s Jewish members. When I expressed my concerns about this unacceptable behaviour to an administrator, I received a feeble, non-committal response.

I believe that Canadian gentiles have a moral obligation to support our Jewish community. Questioning the legitimacy of Israel and its struggle for survival against those who genuinely seek to perpetrate genocide is akin to engaging in the moral territory of Holocaust deniers. We cannot accept the insidious antisemitism that disguises itself as anti-Zionism in our schools, communities, and the institutions and media we once respected.

I recognize my privilege as a white, non-religious woman allows me to express my opinions freely, while my Jewish neighbours are punished when they endeavour to express their own. To stop this tide of evil, we need to start with our leadership. In Hamilton Centre, our MPP is Sarah Jama, and our MP is Matthew Green. Jama has repeatedly expressed support for Hamas, and Green hides his prejudices behind anti-Zionism while publicly showing support for Jama. At the next elections, we need to make different choices. Our vote is our voice.

My husband and I are looking forward to celebrating Christmas in our new home this year and have already started stringing up decorative lights. My menorah will be displayed in the entryway, next to the Christmas tree.

Gillian Creighton lives in Hamilton with her husband and their two dogs.