generalspeaking

Anti-Semitic? Yes and No

Two stories out of Canada on this day. Both reporting instances of worrying backlash against Jews. One may certainly be classified as a hate crime, a distinct instance of anti-Semitism by a fervid hater of Jews expressing his raging vitriol in a rather traditionally violent manner. The other not so much so, as there are nuances sufficient to ensure that the incident was caused by inadvertence following on what also might be tentatively seen as anti-social behaviour.

In the first incident, yet another violent attack on the symbolic infrastructure of Jewish orthodox life. A week-end firebombing of a Jewish boys' school in the city of Montreal. Two years earlier another Jewish school had been torched and considerable damage resulted to the school's library. The children who attended the school had their confidence in their place in Canadian society somewhat altered. The perpetrator was apprehended, found guilty and sentenced to 30 months in prison.

In this instance damage to the school was not as extensive. The shock to the community and the school's students, however, was equally as damaging as the first such event. A camera installed at the school caught the image of a young masked man tossing a Molotov cocktail into the main entrance of the Skver-Toldos Orthodox Boys School at midnight on Saturday. As damage to the school was limited the school opened the following day.

The children who attend the school have been traumatized, they are fearful, unable to sleep properly, and given to weeping. Hardly surprising; their world has become a fearful place, where the peace of their existence has been challenged, for they can see how upset even their parents are as a result of this terribly destabilizing event. It's an emotional assault of a highly sensitive nature. Where is one's safety assured if not in one's own country?

Security at the school is scheduled to be upgraded, and windows will be protected with metal grillwork. Hostility of an unspeakable nature has determined that schoolchildren be reminded daily that they live in a world where danger lurks, where because of that, their school rooms will now bear a resemblance to a prison.

Montreal police arson and major-crimes squads are in the investigative process. They have thus far, unimaginably, declined to classify the event as a hate crime. Why might that be? Because no message had been left behind declaring the crime to be one of hate. As though to torch a school that had long been a fixture in the community, which teaches 250 local children from pre-school to high school would represent an action commensurate with approval. A love crime.

In the second incident an Orthodox Jew, unable to speak either English or French was removed from an Air Canada Jazz flight heading for New York from Montreal. It would appear that the man decided the time was right, while on board the airplane, in the company of other passengers, to express his piety by embarking on spiritual ablutions. Orthodox Jews become very vocal, very physically active during prayer. To embark in this manner, in a traditional prayer session was in my opinion a thoughtless act of social disruption.

People are sufficiently nervous as it is when they board a plane and prepare to take flight, these days. It is entirely uncalled-for for someone to feel sufficiently entitled that they blot out the presence of others within the narrow confines of a plane and begin a process which at best can only be confusing to others and more likely irritating in the extreme because of the strangeness of the voicing and the repetitive movement associated with the prayer process.

That this selfishly thoughtless act, under these precise circumstances, drew unwanted attention to the man was hardly surprising. While the stewardess who attempted to make him stop this behaviour alarming to some passengers did have an idea what the man was doing, duty called her to report the incident so the plane could return to the gate, the man assisted to disembark, and a translator found.

In the end, the situation was explained to the man in a language he understood, and he was able to take a following flight to his destination. One might hope with the full understanding that he would be wise not to repeat the incident and wait until his arrival in New York City to seek out a more appropriate site to commune with God.

Anti-Semitic? No question about the first nasty event, but the second? Hardly.

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, September 06, 2006