Features
The World in 2025 May Become an Even Darker Place
By HENRY SREBRNIK On November 12, the former New York Times journalist Bari Weiss, did a brave thing. Speaking to the annual conference of the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America, in Washington, DC, she didn’t provide uplifting words or an assurance that things will somehow get better.
She is the founder of the Free Press newspaper – “for free people,” as its masthead states – and has been courageously fighting against the antisemitic tide that has enveloped the Western world since October 7, 2023. I can do no better than to quote her opening statement:
“When did you know?
“Looking back, now that we are on the far side, I wonder: When did you realize that things had changed?
“When did you know that the things we had taken for granted were suddenly out of our reach? That the norms that felt as certain as gravity had disappeared? That the institutions that had launched our grandparents had turned hostile to our children?
“When did you notice that what had once been steady was now shaky ground? Did you look down to see if your own knees were trembling?
“When did you realize that we were not immune from history, but living inside of it?
“When did you see that our world was actually the world of yesterday — and a new one, one with far fewer certainties, one where everything seems up for grabs, was coming into being?”
How well we now realize that it applies even more so, in Canada, where a veritable chasm has opened up, as in a horror movie, and it is filled with antisemites as vicious as rarely before seen in this country.
Since October 7, 2023, all levels of government in Canada have failed, either by design or due to incompetence, to understand and act on the gravity of the moment.
Those on the front lines already feel it. Jewish students at the University of British Columbia this past summer hung posters throughout campus that read: “I am a Jew. I hide my identity because I feel threatened and unsafe,” and “Stop terrorizing Jews.” No police chief instructed them to hide; Jewish students could detect the tenor and a mounting risk of violence on campus.
And it keeps getting worse. Dawson College in Montreal shut down classes for almost 10,000 students on November 21 after students voted 447-247 in favour of a strike to demonstrate solidarity with Gaza. The closure of the public college was prompted by numerous emails and calls from members of the community expressing concerns about the safety of students and employees on the day of the boycott.
Demonstrators gathered outside Dawson’s campus and left after an hour, marching east to Concordia University, where they met up with more strikers. Concordia had a phalanx of security guards manning the doors, police officers inside the lobby and large panels of plywood on the inside of their windows. Dozens of other student associations voted to strike. At McGill, activists planted a tree in solidarity with Palestinians.
There were several protests a day later, including one at Université du Québec à Montréal. An effigy of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was set on fire and smoke bombs were lit as demonstrators chanted “Free Palestine” and “Israel is terrorist, Canada is complicit.” Rioters that evening clashed with police officers, smashed windows of businesses, and even set vehicles ablaze in the downtown area.
How has all this come about? We must face facts: Canada in recent decades adopted a policy of unfettered and incautious immigration, and with it have come some immigrants who are steeped in antisemitic values. We now realize that, in our big cities, they have changed the very nature of Canadian society. They have not adapted to liberal western values. Rather the reverse: they are bending this country towards theirs – to the detriment of Canada’s Jewish population. The examples are many, and they would have been beyond belief a mere decade ago.
A vigil that was scheduled to be held in Mississauga, Ont., November 26 in memory of “the great Martyr” Yahya Sinwar –the Hamas leader responsible for the Oct. 7 attack on Israel — did not, after numerous complains, occur on the originally scheduled date. A flyer for the event, which was shared on social media, used the slogan, “Lest we forget our heroes,” and red poppies on top of a black and white photo of the architect of October 7.
However, the city’s mayor, a onetime Liberal MP, had no problems with it, even comparing Sinwar to Nelson Mandela. “I just want to point out, and I’m not being facetious, Nelson Mandela was declared a terrorist by the United States of America until the year 2008,” Carolyn Parrish stated. “Your terrorist and somebody else’s terrorist may be two different things.” Not surprisingly, anti-Israel rallies are almost a weekly occurrence in her city.
An Ottawa school played an Arabic-language Palestinian protest song associated with fighting in Gaza as the soundtrack to its Remembrance Day presentation, causing outrage and distress for some students and parents. Principal Aaron Hobbs of Sir Robert Borden School defended the selection, saying it was chosen to bring diversity and inclusion to Remembrance Day.
Speaking of Remembrance Day, the New Democratic Party, which was once led by David Lewis, a Jew, and supported by many in the Jewish community, is now completely supportive of the Palestinian cause. Edmonton NDP MP Heather McPherson, one of the most vocally anti-Israel members of the House of Commons, had just delivered a statement accusing Israel of genocide, compared her wearing of a watermelon pin to the wearing of a Remembrance Day poppy. The watermelon slice has been adopted by the anti-Israel movement as representative of the Palestinian flag because it has the same colour scheme, of black, red and green. “I stand here proudly wearing a pin that shows that I stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people,” she stated.
The University of Victoria in British Columbia cancelled a scheduled November 24 on-campus talk by an extremist preacher who is on record calling for the annihilation of Jews. Invited by the Muslim Students Association, one of the central organizers of anti-Israel rallies outside the B.C. Parliament Buildings, the event was widely criticized on local forums, forcing the university to decline the booking request for the event.
Sheikh Younus Kathrada himself blamed the cancellation “on a Zionist run organization which is clearly pro-ethnic cleansing, pro-genocide, pro-apartheid and pro-murder.”
Meanwhile, Canada finally listed the pro-Palestinian group Samidoun, based in Vancouver, as a terrorist entity October 15, after endless hesitation. Known as the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, it has close links with and advances the interests of another group that Canada already lists as a terrorist entity, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Vancouver police launched a criminal investigation into a rally Samidoun organized on the one-year anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel, which included a masked speaker who told the crowd that “we are Hezbollah and we are Hamas.” She also led cries of “death to Canada, death to the United States and death to Israel.” More recently, the home of Charlotte Kates, a director of Samidoun, was searched by the police.
Behind much of this we find a web of more than 100 anti-Israel organizations operating in Canada, according to a recent study by NGO Monitor, and nearly all of them overlap in activity and funding.
“The NGO Network Driving Antisemitism in Canada” was released on November 4. It highlights the structure and dynamics of the NGO network. The “dangerous spike” in Jew-hatred is concurrent with “an increase in activity by an interconnected and coordinated network of NGOs, whose campaigns of anti-Israel demonization, antisemitism and intimidation create a hostile environment throughout Canada,” the report declared. “A number of the leading groups are linked to Palestinian terror organizations and hide their sources of funding.”
Despite their small numbers, campus-operating organizations play a prominent role in the network, collaborating with many nonprofits, including those receiving funding from the Canadian government. These groups were “leading the campaigns, the attacks, the antisemitism on university campuses within Canada, and are closely interrelated,” according to Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor.
To top all this off, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau defended his assertion that he would support the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and ex-Israeli defence minister Yaov Gallant on an International Criminal Court warrant issued on November 23 should they come to Canada. The court stated that there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that the two intentionally targeted civilians in Gaza during Israel’s ongoing retaliatory war against Hamas. This is the first time that a democratic country, with a robust and independent judiciary, has had arrest warrants issued for its leadership. It is international lawfare in its most extreme form, and a reward for terrorism.
I could go on ad infinitum with other examples, but the bottom line is this: Everything I just described would have seemed unimaginable. Had you predicted it, you would have been laughed at or seen as a doomsayer.
But, as Bari Weiss knows, and so should the rest of us, we are in the midst of a worldwide eruption of antisemitism not seen since the Holocaust. And there’s no sign it’s going to get better.
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.
Features
“Lessons from the Holocaust for Today”
By HENRY SREBRNIK On April 12, I spoke at our annual Yom Hashoah memorial ceremony in Charlottetown. The last time I did so was in April 1976, in Montreal. It was, for Canadian Jews, a completely different time. Montreal was still the first city of Canadian Jewry, with Toronto a distant second. Israel seemed a secure country, having won a hard-fought victory three years earlier in the Yom Kippur War.
There were clouds gathering, true – after all the UN General Assembly had passed the “Zionism is a form of racism” the previous December, and a powerful Communist bloc led by the Soviet Union was still a formidable enemy.
Today, Jewish life has become far more precarious. Two things are essential for an anti-democratic political movement to succeed: ideological justification by academics and intellectuals, and control of the streets by violent mobs. Since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas invaded Israel, we have seen both.
At McGill University in Montreal, a March 21 referendum by the Law Students’ Association (LSA) supported amending the group’s constitution to boycott Israeli academic bodies, though it was deemed illegitimate by the university’s president. Similar actions are taking place across Canada. Indeed, at Vanier College, a Montreal CEGEP, it abruptly cancelled its Holocaust commemoration on March 25 because it didn’t think it could keep guests and the college community safe.
Unfortunately, we know a terrible precedent for this union of the intellectuals and the mob. Nazi ideology, too, was not formulated by street thugs. Historian Max Weinreich published his book Hitler’s Professors in 1946, noting that German scholarship provided the ideas and techniques that led to and justified unparalleled slaughter. All too many Nazi war criminals were holders of PhDs.
As historian Niall Ferguson reminds us, in an article published in the New York Free Press of Dec. 11, 2023, “Anyone who has a naive belief in the power of higher education to instill morality has not studied the history of German universities in the Third Reich.” The “final solution of the Jewish question” began, he has written, with words — “to be precise, it began as lectures and monographs and scholarly articles.”
The American writer Vivian Gornick, reviewing a book, “Turning a Blind Eye, A memoir of daily accommodation to fascism,” by the German historian Joachim Fest, about Hitler’s Germany in the 1930s (before the Holocaust), quotes this passage:
“Everyone sees that life for the Jews is gradually shutting down. Take their neighbor and good friend, Dr. Meyer: one day he can no longer subscribe to newspapers and magazines; another, he has to hand in his bicycle and typewriter; another, he can no longer keep a pet or buy flowers. Then all the Jews simply start disappearing from the neighborhood.” The Nazi march to power literally begins with shutting Jews out of public life while using academia as the heavy hand of indoctrination.
Is this slowly happening to Jews in Canada today, as they are pushed out of or refused admittance to cultural events, colleges, universities, and graduate schools, academic university positions, publishing, music, theatre, and so on? In “Canada’s Polite Pogrom,” By Jesse Brown, Atlantic, March 24, 2026, he writes: “Is a national tolerance for zealotry purging Jews from public life?” Jewish life in Canada may have “forever changed,” he argues. “I can no longer take for granted that people like me are represented in Canada’s hospitals, schools, newsrooms, and legislatures.”
We may see the quiet withdrawal of Jews from Canadian society “without any glass or bones being broken,” simply because the evidence that they are no longer welcome has become overwhelming. Another writer calls it the social and academic “shtetelization” of Western Jewry.
We even face obstruction from the Canadian government. In just the last two years, eight explicitly Jewish non-profit charities, including the Jewish National Fund, have been stripped of their ability to collect tax-deductible donations by the Canada Revenue Agency — often amid pressure campaigns from anti-Israel activists. The delisting was also celebrated by the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC), the union representing CRA workers.
We now witness continuous large “pro-Palestinian” rallies through our cities, invasions of shopping malls and thoroughfares, including intimidating behaviour against Jewish passersby. Today, police stand and watch mobs chant for Israel’s destruction, call for the genocide of its people, harass visibly Jewish citizens, and drive antisemitic intimidation deep into urban life. They now believe their job is to enforce the law only if it does not risk upsetting violent constituencies. This makes Jews expendable, because defending them risks confrontation.
And these events are not just “political protests.” At an al-Quds rally in Toronto March 14, protesters held signs that showed rats crawling out of a Star of David, depicting a Jewish man as a goblin-like creature emerging from a cave, and showing a Jewish man as a hook-nosed caricature.
Three Jewish synagogues in Toronto were hit with gunfire in one week in March. After every such incident, we hear that “antisemitism has no place in Canada.” But if that were true, synagogues would not require concrete barriers. Jewish schools would not need armed security. Community institutions would not conduct threat assessments before hosting events. Yet big city mayors like Toronto’s Olivia Chow don’t seem, to put it diplomatically, be losing much sleep over what’s going on in their cities.
The attacks on Jews, including physical assaults and social media campaigns, are part of a purposive campaign designed to make Jews think twice about gathering with other Jews, entering a synagogue, going to kosher restaurants, putting a mezuzah on the doorpost of their apartments or dorm rooms, or wearing a Jewish star around their necks. In fact people have been attacked on the street for speaking Hebrew.
If each Jewish holiday will now be seen by antisemites as an opportunity for terror, then the prognosis for diaspora Jewry is bleak. Unless things change, Jewish life in the diaspora will become more sealed off from the larger society.
We may be returning to a time that we thought was long behind us. And we are less prepared for it than our forebearers were, because they were used to living in a semi-segregated world, and expected less from the larger society. As large swaths of the Jewish community are beginning to retreat inward, the greater long-term fear is the collapse of Jewish life here altogether.
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.
Features
Streaming the Diaspora: Jewish Stories in the Digital Age
The digital era has transformed how cultural narratives are created, shared, and preserved. For Jewish communities around the world, streaming platforms have become powerful tools for storytelling — enabling voices from different countries, traditions, and generations to connect in ways that were once impossible. What used to rely on local gatherings, printed texts, or regional broadcasts is now accessible globally, instantly, and interactively.
Streaming has allowed Jewish stories to transcend geography. Whether it’s historical documentaries, modern dramas, or personal testimonies, audiences can now explore a wide spectrum of perspectives — from Ashkenazi and Sephardic traditions to contemporary Israeli culture and diaspora experiences in North America, Europe, and beyond. This shift reflects not only technological progress but also a deeper need for identity, continuity, and shared memory.
A New Era of Cultural Storytelling
Streaming platforms have opened doors for creators who might previously have struggled to find mainstream distribution. Independent filmmakers, historians, and content creators now have the ability to reach global audiences without relying on traditional gatekeepers.
This has led to:
- more diverse representation of Jewish identities
- storytelling that blends history with modern perspectives
- greater visibility for lesser-known traditions and communities
As media scholar Henry Jenkins noted,
“Digital culture allows stories to travel, evolve, and find new audiences beyond their original context.”
Jewish storytelling, rooted in centuries of oral and written tradition, naturally adapts to this model — evolving while maintaining its core themes of resilience, identity, and community.
The Role of Streaming in Preserving Memory
One of the most significant contributions of streaming platforms is the preservation of historical memory. Documentaries about the Holocaust, migration stories, and cultural archives are now widely accessible, allowing younger generations to engage with history in a more immediate and emotional way.
Streaming enables:
- access to survivor testimonies and historical footage
- educational content for global audiences
- preservation of languages like Yiddish and Ladino
This accessibility helps ensure that stories are not lost, but instead reinterpreted and shared across generations.
Bridging Generations Through Digital Media
Another important aspect of streaming is its ability to connect different age groups. Older generations may bring lived experiences, while younger viewers engage through modern formats such as series, podcasts, and short-form video content.
This creates a dynamic exchange:
- elders share traditions and personal histories
- creators reinterpret these stories for modern audiences
- viewers engage, discuss, and reshape narratives in digital spaces
The result is a living, evolving cultural dialogue rather than a static archive.
Entertainment, Identity, and Digital Habits
In today’s digital ecosystem, cultural content exists alongside many forms of online entertainment. Users often move fluidly between watching series, engaging with interactive platforms, and exploring different types of digital experiences.
For instance, while streaming culturally rich content, users may also explore entertainment platforms featuring zoome slots, where interactivity, design, and engagement play a central role. Although the purposes differ, both environments reflect how digital platforms are designed to capture attention, create immersion, and keep users engaged through evolving content.
This coexistence highlights a broader reality: modern digital life blends education, culture, and entertainment into a single, continuous experience.
Challenges of Representation in the Digital Space
While streaming has expanded opportunities, it also raises important questions about representation and authenticity. Not all stories are told equally, and some narratives may be simplified or commercialized for broader appeal.
Key challenges include:
- balancing authenticity with accessibility
- avoiding stereotypes or oversimplification
- ensuring diverse voices are included
Creators and platforms must navigate these issues carefully to maintain cultural integrity while reaching wider audiences.
The Globalization of Jewish Narratives
Streaming platforms have also contributed to the globalization of Jewish stories. A viewer in Canada can watch an Israeli drama, a French documentary, or an American series — all within the same platform. This interconnectedness allows for a richer understanding of how Jewish identity varies across regions while still sharing common roots.
This global reach encourages:
- cross-cultural dialogue
- broader empathy and understanding
- new interpretations of identity in a modern context
Streaming vs Traditional Media
| Aspect | Streaming Platforms | Traditional Media |
| Accessibility | Global, on-demand | Limited by region and schedule |
| Diversity of content | High | Often restricted |
| Viewer interaction | Possible (comments, sharing) | Minimal |
| Content longevity | Long-term availability | Time-limited broadcasts |
| Entry for creators | Lower barrier | High barrier |
This comparison shows why streaming has become such a powerful medium for cultural storytelling.
Final Thoughts
The digital age has reshaped how Jewish stories are told, preserved, and experienced. Streaming platforms have turned local narratives into global conversations, allowing voices from across the diaspora to connect in meaningful ways.
By combining accessibility, diversity, and interactivity, streaming has created a new space where tradition meets innovation. As audiences continue to explore these stories alongside other forms of digital engagement, the importance of thoughtful, authentic storytelling becomes even more significant.
In this evolving landscape, Jewish narratives are not just being preserved — they are being reimagined, shared, and lived in real time across the digital world.
Features
U.S. Senate candidate from Michigan calls Israeli government ‘evil’ like Hamas
Abdul El-Sayed, doubled down on his criticism of the Netanyahu government and defended campaigning with controversial streamer Hasan Piker
By Jacob Kornbluh (Posted April 19, 2026) “This story was originally published in the Forward Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox.”
FoAbdul El-Sayed, a U.S. Senate candidate from Michigan, said in an interview aired Sunday that the Israeli government is as “evil” as Hamas, sharpening his criticism of Israel in the closely-watched Democratic primary.
“Killing tens of thousands of people makes you pretty damn evil,” El-Sayed told CNN congressional reporter Manu Raja on the network’s Inside Politics program. “It’s not how evil is this one versus that one — Hamas: Evil, Israeli government: Evil. We can say both.”
El-Sayed, 41, is a physician and the son of Egyptian immigrants. He is seeking to channel the energy of the 2024 Uncommitted movement, which protested the Biden administration’s support for Israel in the war against Hamas in Gaza. He is also hoping to build on the surprise success of the New York City mayoral campaign of Zohran Mamdani in taking on the Democratic establishment.
He is locked in a dead heat with state Sen. Mallory McMorrow and Rep. Haley Stevens. The primary is set for Aug. 4.
Earlier this month, El-Sayed faced backlash for appearing alongside streamer Hasan Piker, who has been accused of antisemitic rhetoric — including saying that Hamas “is a thousand times better” than Israel. McMorrow, who is married to a Jewish man, and Stevens, who is closely aligned with AIPAC, have both criticized El-Sayed.
In the CNN interview, El-Sayed defended his decision to campaign with Piker, framing it as an effort to reach voters who feel alienated from traditional politics. “My understanding of America is, it’s a place where we have freedom of speech,” he said.
The Michigan Senate race is shaping up as one of the starkest tests of the Democratic coalition and how the party navigates policy towards Israel in Congress amid the wars in Gaza and Iran. The state is home to the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the United States.
Last week, 40 Senate Democrats voted to block $295 million for the transfer of bulldozers, used by the Israeli military to demolish homes in the West Bank and Gaza; 36 of them also supported a measure to block the sale of 1,000-pound bombs to the Jewish state. It shattered a previous high of 27 Democrats who backed a similar pair of resolutions of disapproval to block some weapons transfers last year.
Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, who is Jewish, was among those who voted for the measures. In remarks as they announced their votes, Democrats highlighted their opposition to the Israeli government’s policies in the occupied West Bank, the humanitarian situation in Gaza and the war with Iran.