Although Israel’s – and Hamas’s – actions are subject to moral scrutiny, the demonstrations that occurred when Hamas was firing thousands of rockets into Israel were invisible – because they didn’t occur.
Nor do critics of Hamas associate with racist ant-Arabs, mostly because there aren’t any.
But Catholics and others feel no taint in joining with anti-Semites in protests against Israel. The Montréal Gazette observes:
By their nature, political demonstrations cast a wide net. Whatever the subject, loose affiliations of like-minded organizations often serve as contact networks in efforts to maximize attendance.
So it was at last Saturday’s Montreal “manif,” one in a series denouncing Israel’s military action in Gaza. More than 20 organizations were involved, from Quebec’s biggest union groups to the Fédération des femmes and the social action office of the Catholic archdiocese of Montreal, plus Québec solidaire and even something called the Mouvement Québécois pour une décroissance conviviale.
None of those groups, we’ll presume, had members involved in some of the chanting during the protest. “Burn, burn Israel” and “Palestine is ours, the Jews are our dogs” and “There is no god but Allah, and the jihadist is beloved of Allah” are not sentiments associated with the archdiocese, nor the women’s group.
And yet there they were, all in the same rally. We have heard nobody from any of those important organizations denounce the open hatred and anti-Semitism displayed by some of their fellow marchers, and we can’t understand why not.
Such a failure leads to the suspicion that anti-Israeli sentiment is in fact anti-Semitism.