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Fri, June 10, 2011 | Rubin Reports | By Barry Rubin

The Mysterious Haters: Who Could the Antisemites Possibly Be?

When I spoke at Canadian campuses last year I had some good experiences. But in certain universities the meetings were conducted like secret conclaves of the French Resistance during the German occupation. My hosts were clearly fearful, invitations were only issued to those they knew, and there were no signs or publicity. Indeed, at two of Canada’s leading universities previously, pro-Israel Jewish students had been assaulted by mobs.

Yet Canada is among the world leaders in Political Correctness. In no country is there more concern that someone’s feelings will be hurt due to some kind of slur. There are even special courts where those who say or write the wrong thing — presumably against non-whites or Muslims — can be tried without too much emphasis on legal procedure.

Now the figures for “hate crimes” in Canada have been issued and guess what? Like the FBI’s statistics for the United States, the number one victims of hate crimes are…Jews. Indeed, 71 percent of the hate crimes in the religion category are against Jews. The Jewish proportion of Ontario’s population? Around 1.6 percent. That’s 71 percent of the hate crimes on a religious basis against 1 percent of the population.

For Canada, 4 per cent of the crimes were motivated by race or ethnicity, 29 per cent by religion and 13 per cent by sexual orientation.

Makes you think, right?

Apparently not. Because the report is vague about just who might be attacking Jews and why these numbers have tended to rise. Skin-heads? Neo-Nazis? Russian peasant pogroms? Crusaders? The Klu Klux Klan? Peronists? Anti-Dreyfusards? Know-Nothings? Knights of the Camellia? Republicans? Tea-Partiers?

Because if we don’t know who did it, then how can the situation be improved? Was it Anglicans? Bahai? Catholics? Dunkers? Episcopalians (oh, wait, they’re the same thing as Anglicans), Franciscan monks or Fire-worshippers? Greek Orthodox? Hawaiian traditionalists? Idolotors or Illerati or Inuit? Jacobites? Kansans? Lutherans?

Ok, I give up. No sense going any further in the alphabet, is there?

Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, Jews are stopped from prayer at the Western Wall by rock-throwing, um, non-skinheads. And Yale University has shut down the Yale Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, despite the program’s holding a large number of events and a major conference. Seems they didn’t focus enough on all antisemitism coming from neo-Nazi skinheads?

So just keep repeating to yourself: The main problem of the Western world is Islam-o-phobia.

About the author,

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/ His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org. His PajamaMedia columns are mirrored and other articles available at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com/.