Chris Selley: Avi Lewis embraces collective guilt for Jews, but never for Muslims

“For Jewish people, the personal has always been political and the political always personal. This year I’m reflecting on the fact that we failed to do our part to stop an ongoing genocide committed in our name,” federal NDP leader Avi Lewis wrote, calamitously, on the occasion of Yom Kippur.

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Pithy counterpoint, courtesy of Liberal MP Anthony Housefather: “Holding Canadian Jews and Jews across the world collectively responsible for events over which they have no control is despicable,” he wrote. That’s about the size of it.

Indeed, I’m old enough to remember the aftermath of 9/11, when New Democrats — and many others, particularly on the left — admonished us not to do to Muslims precisely what Lewis did to his fellow Jews. (The admonishment was often a bit much, but I fully agreed with the message and still do, no matter what group we’re talking about.)

Columnist Jesse Kline keeps you up to date with what’s happening in Israel and the effects of antisemitism on life here in Canada. Friday mornings.

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One very common commentary trope back then was, “Well why can’t Muslims at least apologize for what was done in their name?” It was ugly and un-Canadian, and it rightly got called out. And now, a quarter-century later, Lewis is doing the same thing.

Anyway: By way of follow-up, Lewis bizarrely insisted that he had not held Jews collectively responsible for the wreck of Gaza … which he unambiguously had, including himself among the guilty.  He accused those criticizing him of being “partisan.” Lewis’s fellow travellers insisted, among other things, that Lewis’s critics were acting “in bad faith”— which is, ironically, a very bad-faith argument.

I also have to say I’m intrigued to know what Lewis imagines he or any other Jewish Canadian should have done to stop what he claims is an “ongoing genocide.” Does he have special powers we don’t know about? The anti-Israel rabble isn’t easily placated by empty statements of support and solidary from their politicians. They want Canada to Do Something, or at least be more virulently anti-Israel in its policies and messaging.

People like Lewis rely on the notion that “criticizing Israel is not the same as criticizing Jews,” which I certainly agree with. But you don’t hear that argument so often nowadays. Protestors seem less and less interested in picking targets that we’re supposed to believe are extra-supportive of Israel. Once you start marching through Jewish-populated neighbourhoods, the argument is laughable. You don’t know who lives there. This is just pure harassment.

Does Lewis realize he’s inviting misery upon himself, for that matter? It’s not hard to imagine the rabble turning on him. They don’t care who he is, or who his father was, or where he sits on the political spectrum. They just want more Canadian politicians to say they hate Israel. And Lewis just made that quit a bit easier.

National Post

cselley@postmedia.com

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