Exposing Jewish Exceptionalism In Canadian Media

 

The misguided belief in eternal Jewish victimhood is being weaponized to help allow Israel’s genocide to continue.

Over the past decade, I’ve written extensively on the pro-Israel bias in Canadian media. This article will focus on something different, but which helps shape the bias: Jewish exceptionalism.

You can find articles about how various -isms and -phobias impact Canadian media: homophobia, Islamophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, classism, racism, sexism, etc. And yet, there’s little out there on Jewish exceptionalism, which is increasingly being analyzed by commentators outside of the country.

Jewish exceptionalism is the belief that Jewish people as a demographic are eternally and ontologically oppressed, no matter the circumstances, and as such should be treated differently. Jewish exceptionalists refer to antisemitism as the “oldest hatred,” and treat it as though it’s the only one powerful enough to make its targets a permanently marginalized group. 

This incorrect analysis fails to take into account the status of Jewish people in Canada and elsewhere over at least the past few decades. While Jews remain the targets of alleged hate crimes (though reports on the issue vastly overstate the reality), they face no systemic discrimination and generally fare exceptionally well in Canada and elsewhere on all other markers used to measure oppression. As a point of comparison, few that anyone would take seriously argue that dozens of churches being burned down in acts of arson since 2021 make Christians an oppressed group in Canada.

This article will illustrate how Jewish exceptionalist sentiment underlies much of the discussion in Canadian media involving Jewish Zionists by outlining five tropes, providing examples of them in mainstream publications and explaining how they smuggle in the idea that Jewish people are exceptional and should be treated as such. The tropes are: ‘Jewish-owned business’; ‘blood libel’; ‘Jewish state’; ‘Jewish neighbourhood’; ‘list of Jews.’

While this article could have been written at any point in recent years, I’ve done so now because Israel, the state claiming to represent Jews and which enjoys widespread support from them according to polling, is committing a genocide in the name of Jewish supremacy, the most explicit form of Jewish exceptionalism. Those who defend Israel and seek to undermine the pro-Palestine movement also utilize arguments that rely on Jewish exceptionalism to do so.

As such, these tropes deserve to be identified and refuted because they strengthen narratives defending the worst atrocity of our time: Israel’s genocide in Gaza.  (more...)

Exposing Jewish Exceptionalism In Canadian Media