In Vaughan on Monday, someone dressed in a mask sprayed pro-Palestinian messages on several banks, a Starbucks and a Sobeys supermarket. The individual also hit the United Jewish Appeal and, according to CP24, a synagogue. The act, we are told, is being considered a hate crime.
The headline is as straightforward as you might expect: Police seek masked suspect after businesses, synagogue targeted with pro-Palestinian graffiti. Journalist Joshua Freeman doesn’t list which banks (many of which have invested in the Israeli war machine) nor does he mention that Starbucks is the target of a global boycott campaign because of the support of its owners for Israel’s genocide. Though he does guess that Sobeys may have been hit because it has a large Kosher section. Strange journalism to guess why Sobeys was hit and not state plainly why the banks and Starbucks were hit, but anyway.
Like the banks and Starbucks, the United Jewish Appeal is fair game to have a pro-Palestine message spray painted on it. The UJA is one of Toronto’s most ardent supporters of Israel. They have a donor program that helps young Torontonians to move to Israel permanently, including “preparation for IDF enlisting.” While they claim that conflating Israel with Jewishness is anti-semitic, they also coordinated the largest show of support for Israel in Canada since the start of the war without condemning any of Israel’s actions, the way that hundred of thousands of Israelis have done in the streets of Tel Aviv. Supporting Israel is absolutely within their right. Just as it is within the right of anyone who is horrified by Israel’s deeds to peacefully express their opposition.
But the vandalism at the synagogue crosses the line (that is, if the synagogue isn’t being used to host a real estate sale for stolen Palestinian land). Except even this is a curious point on the list, one that CP24 manages to jump over entirely. Free Palestine was scrawled across a sign that said The Gates Of Zion - a place of worship that isn’t regular synagogue – it’s a messianic synagogue located beside the Starbucks in a strip mall. Messianic. As in, they believe that Jesus is the Messiah – something that’s, you know, not exactly inline with Jewish belief.
Messianic Jews are a bizarre mix of Jews who want to convert to Christinianty (as in, they believe that Jesus is the Messiah) but also want to maintain some traditions of Judaism, and evangelical Christians. You might know them as Jews for Jesus, a group that when I was first starting university was the first cult I had ever come across. Messianic Jews believe that the true path to salvation is through Christianity and weirder, you can believe in Christ’s salvation but also observe the Sabbath in a traditional Jewish way.
The tensions that flow from the question: is Jesus the Messiah? form the basis of classic antisemitism. The Christian majority has found biblical reasons to oppress the Jewish minority for centuries and they all relate to whether or not Jesus is the son of God. How ironic, then, that vandalizing the strip mall “synagogue” of Messianic Jews is considered antisemitism when their very existence brings antisemitism well beyond hatred and into its own religion! (more...)
Untangling opposition to Israel's war crimes from antisemitism
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