I hate being lied to, manipulated, deliberately deceived. I’m sure you feel the same way.
And that’s partly why what happened this week — the fabrication of an antisemitic protest at a Jewish hospital in downtown Toronto — has so infuriated me.
It’s one thing to get something wrong, learn new information, and correct the record.
But Canadian politicians at all levels, including the prime minister, aren’t doing that. Nor are hospital administrators, journalists, and others who have power and platforms.
It is clear now (if it wasn’t immediately to everyone when this non-story broke) that nothing hateful happened. Nothing really happened at all.
And yet, the damage is done.
And I can only assume that damage is deliberate.
Yesterday, I received a message from a follower who told me that “the coverage of events in Toronto genuinely scared me and made me wonder if Canada was the best home my [Jewish] family.”
Who can blame her for this, given the deliberate scaremongering?
I’ve received messages from other white women over the past few months, all upset about my criticism of Israel and Canada’s complicity in it’s genocide of Palestinians in #Gaza.
All these messages, including the one from yesterday, stress how my posts make them feel.
These women living in places like Canada and the US ask outright or strongly imply that I should be centering their feelings instead of focusing on the mass murder of Palestinians.
We all are allowed our own feelings, of course. We all are allowed to write on topics we care about.
But in this case — and I know this is nothing new — the pro-genocide propaganda machine set out to whip up fear of and hate for Palestinians, and thus all Muslims and BIPOC by extension, plus those of us who “sympathize with terrorists.”
Please don’t fall for it. Please.
