Do Toronto’s Forest Hill Collegiate Institute and the Toronto District School Board have a ‘Jewish Problem’? The Optics Are not GoodFriday May 25th, 2018
I grew up in Forest Hill Village, which was, and is, a posh Toronto neighbourhood. My sisters and I, therefore, spent our formative years in the Forest Hill public school system: first South Prep (“Preparatory”), then West Prep, then South Prep Middle School and ending with five years at Forest Hill Collegiate Institute (FHCI).
I have very fond memories of FHCI, where I felt ...
Hamas will always win the PR war, even as Israel wins the military victoriesTuesday May 22nd, 2018
In his May 16 column, Terry Glavin takes Israel to task for the deaths and injuries of Gazan Palestinians sustained in the border clashes he concedes that Hamas orchestrated.Yes, Glavin understands that “Hamas exists for the sole purpose of doing violence to Israel and to Israelis.” Yes, clearly “what (Hamas) failed to accomplish with its rockets and tunnels, it is now prep...
Israelis hold their fire as long as they can. Hamas writes cheques after mass suicidesFriday May 18th, 2018
There’s an old French proverb which, translated, reads: “This animal is very bad; when you attack it, it defends itself.” There is only one “animal” — politically speaking — that inspires this curious strain of logic, but it does so over and over again. Israel. Alone of the nations, Israel draws condemnation for doing what every other nation in the w...
When Trans fanaticism joins with Political Arrogance, Freedom of Expression is the VictimTuesday May 15th, 2018
Politics makes strange bedfellows, a truism I am presently experiencing in real time as I find myself on social media supporting TERFs – Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists – in their battle against Trans ideologues regarding the charged question(s): Who/What is a woman?
The lines of that battle are pretty simply drawn.
Trans ideologues uphold one entirely subjective cri...
The embassy move only angers the usual suspects. Even the Arab leaders have bigger problems nowTuesday May 15th, 2018
So Israel’s U.S. embassy is where it belongs: Jerusalem, Israel’s eternal capital. It took its sweet time getting there, but, thanks to the last person on Earth most Americans want to credit for any foreign-affairs success, Donald Trump, there it is. Mazel tov.The usual suspects are bruiting their dismay and/or outrage, convinced that the embassy gambit will act as a provocation ...
MP Christine Moore Reluctantly Provides NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh With a Teaching Moment in the Use of the Word “Survivor”Thursday May 10th, 2018
In a man-bites-dog version of the usual #MeToo pattern of male aggressor, female victim, NDP MP for Abitibi-Kamiskimingue Christine Moore has been accused of serious sexual misconduct.
Unusual in itself, the story is particularly noteworthy because Moore has established herself as a righteous warrior in this normally dog-bites-man domain. On to the story momentarily. First, the set-up th...
We’ve forgotten how bad Communism was. Identity politics reminds usTuesday May 8th, 2018
Ten days ago I heard Bill Browder speak at a packed fundraising event. Browder’s bestselling 2015 memoir, Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder and One Man’s Fight for Justice, is a riveting chronicle of Browder’s investment adventures — first spectacularly successful, then harrowing — in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.Browder spoke eloquently, notably...
Another cultural institution succumbs to Jordan Peterson hysteriaTuesday May 1st, 2018
This Friday marks the 175th consecutive weekly “Free Raif Badawi” vigil in Sherbrooke, Quebec, where the imprisoned Saudi blogger’s family found asylum and have lived as permanent residents for the past three years. Badawi is still serving a seven-year prison sentence for “insulting Islam through electronic channels.”On April 26, to celebrate its 70th anniversar...
Status of Women Canada: Paints a Misleading Portrait of Muslim WomenTuesday May 1st, 2018
At what point do you know that your country is, on the whole, “inclusive”? Would there have to be, say, zero hate incidents for three years before you could say you live in a tolerant country?
But that’s never going to happen except in some hardline utopian’s dreams.
So now we have to settle for what is an “acceptable” hate crime statistic – ...
Don’t Call Toronto’s Van Massacre “Misogynistic” and Here’s WhyWednesday April 25th, 2018
At first, because the “van” is so often lone-wolf jihadism’s preferred agent for carnage, many Canadians assumed the Monday’s sidewalk massacre in Toronto’s Yonge-Finch corridor was an act of terrorism.
Within 24 hours, enough details had been released about the suspect, 25-year old Alek Minassian, to dispel that idea.
This was clearly a disturbed indivi...
The agony of an attack without explanation, and the pain of chaosTuesday April 24th, 2018
The method is only too familiar. The motive of the man who rammed a van into dozens of pedestrians in Toronto on Monday is so far unclear, although it is for the moment tentatively linked to sexual grievances.In 1993, when North Americans were still cocooned in their bubble of geopolitical security, a 1,200-pound bomb in a Ryder van parked underground at New York’s World Trade Center e...
UK Labourites must exorcize the metastasizing anti-Semitic cancer Jeremy Corbyn has nurturedThursday April 19th, 2018
With cruel irony, the 70th anniversary of the State of Israel, celebrated April 19, is sharing media space with the news that Jewish MPs within Jeremy Corbyn’s UK Labour Party have testified to the demonstrable anti-Semitism that runs rife in that party under his leadership.
In parliament on Tuesday, three hours of debate were given over to the problem of anti-Semiti...
Liba Augenfeld – the survivor who brought her love of Yiddish with herWednesday April 18th, 2018
In the upwardly mobile Jewish enclave of Toronto where I was raised, Yiddish was the language of my parents’ generation. It was reserved for Borscht-belt humour and hiding certain subjects from children. It was both prosaic and nostalgic: Hebrew was the future; nobody I knew mourned the passing of Yiddish.
But it hadn’t passed everywhere. At Montreal’s Jewish Public Library (JPL), where I was d...
A gift for Israel’s birthday: a legal summary of its clear legitimacyTuesday April 17th, 2018
Israel’s 70th birthday will be celebrated Thursday. Note the passive voice. I would have preferred “the world will join in celebration of Israel’s 70th birthday,” but immediately saw its impossibility.The reality is more people will be cursing than congratulating Israel on this occasion. Cursing, rhetorically speaking, comes easy. Israel haters rely on emotive, trigge...
Only a Country like Canada Could Produce a Guy (so filled with Envy) like Jesse BrownMonday April 9th, 2018
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The trope “Tall Poppy Syndrome” refers to the impulse in some countries, Canada amongst them, to cut down to size any cultural peer who achieves uncommonly high status and international success. It is a particularly pronounced phenomenon amongst left-leaning tribes in academia and the punditocracy.
Canadian psychologist and academic Jordan B. Peterson presently reigns as t...
This spring, the fight to protect free speech in Canada continuesTuesday April 3rd, 2018
Never has freedom of speech been so vulnerable in Canada, but I will be privileged to take personal inspiration and hope for change on this front at three events on my spring calendar.On April 26 in Montreal, as chair of the committee that is mounting the event, I will be introducing Jordan Peterson, keynote speaker for the Montreal Press Club’s inaugural freedom award ceremony, honour...
When a Man Saves a Woman: Manliness asserts itself in a French SupermarketMonday April 2nd, 2018
In a video conversation with Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, Harvard academic Harvey Mansfield recounts the story of a media appeal for comment regarding a deceased colleague.
The female reporter asked Mansfield to sum up his colleague in a single word that best described him. Mansfield replied, “Manliness.” There was a pause. Then she asked, “Can you think of another wo...
Euthanasia’s Slippery Slope Goes to CourtMonday March 19th, 2018
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Canada, a natural home for French JewsFriday March 16th, 2018
In January, an incident took place – or, rather, didn’t take place – in Toronto, which came to be known as #hijabhoax on social media: a young Muslim girl had alleged that an Asian man attacked her hijab with scissors, while she was en route to school. Within a day, the allegation was exposed as a fabrication.
In fact, apart from the Quebec City mosque massacre that was carried out by one deran...
Do Toronto’s Forest Hill Collegiate Institute and the Toronto District School Board have a ‘Jewish Problem’? The Optics Are not Good
Friday May 25th, 2018
Hamas will always win the PR war, even as Israel wins the military victories
Tuesday May 22nd, 2018
Liba Augenfeld – the survivor who brought her love of Yiddish with her
Wednesday April 18th, 2018
