Canada: WWII internment camps for European Jews

Credit: the author

I guess it’s easy to see antisemites on every pathway, in plain sight. Not bothering to hide because Jews are so few and the wider society doesn’t care or even understand the fear.

A historic injustice was done to nearly a million Jews from the Middle East and North Africa, who were forced to flee their regimes’ growing antisemitic sentiments after 1948. They were stripped of their citizenship and their assets were seized.

Canada: Life in the camps

“The Canadian government has made apologies to the Italians, the Japanese, Chinese, who were treated poorly at that point in history,”

But nearly 2,300 mainly German and Austrian Jewish civilians who Canada accepted as a favour to Britain were interned for years in prison camps. No such Canadian apology has been forthcoming.

A group of their descendants is asking Ottawa for a multi-million-dollar compensation package, with an educational component, modeled after what Canada later gave to other minority groups jailed during wartime conflicts.

The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario has hired the openly anti-Zionist group, Independent Jewish Voices Canada (https://www.ijvcanada.org), to provide antisemitism training to the group. There has, predictably, been considerable backlash from Zionist groups who support Israel’s war.

IJVC’s platform is Palestine Solidarity: IJV was the first national Jewish organization to endorse the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

“We continue to support and defend BDS as well as to hold Canadian organizations accountable when complicit in Israeli oppression of Palestinians.”

IJV also works to combat antisemitism and distinguish it clearly from critiques of Zionism and Israeli policies.

Justice-Oriented Jewish Communities: IJV believes that no one should have to choose between embracing Judaism or Jewishness and supporting Palestinian rights.

A message from the camps:

“I think that we educate our kids, and I think that we educate our families as well, that almost every Israeli citizen is drafted into the army at the age of 18, male or female, and they have to do their service accordingly, I know it will not stop us from bringing these young people in, and also allowing them to explore their story with our community.” Does that story include killing??? If we wish to prevent the next war, we must make sure every child understands the meaning of taking a life.

The camp boycott campaign highlighted and personally targeted one of Canada’s most senior camping administrators, Joy Levy, executive director of the Ontario Camps Association, which is responsible for accrediting approximately 350 camps as members.

Levy, who is Jewish, remains committed to being a “proud” and “outspoken Jewish Zionist, and that is something I will never hide or apologize for.”

The Jewish camps promote love for Israel’s military and for a “genocidal state”. How this is done, the campaign alleges, is partly when the camps invite former IDF soldiers to work as emissaries or hire them as staff.

La Presse published two articles in French describing current or former IDF soldiers speaking at local Jewish schools. These are in breach breach of education funding rules and the province’s secularism guidelines.

The stories in the well-respected Montréal daily, also highlight Facebook posts from Herzliah and Bialik high schools showing former soldiers. Their reports are that students are experiencing military-style training in gymnasiums, with a video circulating showing students participating in group exercises, with a voiceover describing soldier unity and community spirit.

Children are impressionable. In many cases, they believe we know more than they do. Camps should be fun not indoctrination.

There are 1,500 Canadian citizens and 23,380 Americans ‘serving’ in the IDF. Do we want these schoolkids to join them?

I would not send my own children to  any school which taught war, required draft registration or offered ROTC military training. Does it really matter that it’s Jewish? Or Muslim jihad? Or Christian crusade? Or Martian conquest?

Not sure where this tidbit fits: I had not considered this before. Jeffrey Epstein, Bernie Madoff, Harvey Weinstein were all men. Just incidentally Jewish.