I highly recommend Michael Keefer's indispensable new book, Anti-Semitism Real and Imagined: Responses to the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism. Mr. Keefer, a professor at Guelph University, has pulled together writings of his own and others to expose the ugly attempts by the Conservative government and influential Jewish organizations to damn any criticism of the government of Israel as an attack on the very existence of the Jewish state. So criticizing what Avraham Burg calls the “thugs” who run Israel makes you automatically an anti-Semite. Too bad if the critics happen to be Jewish Israelis.
Mr. Keefer makes another important and timely contribution. I have in earlier columns noted a remarkable paradox: This generation of Canadian Jews is among the most fortunate in the world, indeed in the history of the world, with anti-Semitism rarely touching any of our privileged lives. Yet the B’nai Brith, echoed by the Conservatives and the mysterious and rather sinister Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism, insist that Canada has seen a dramatic resurgence of such hatred.
Mr. Keefer does a thorough analysis of the available data to show what virtually all Jews know from personal experience: this is groundless fear-mongering. He shows that many so-called incidents of anti-Semitism are trivial, overblown or imaginary; they may be reported (unlike other criminal acts), but they’re often completely unverified. Worse, many others are not really examples of anti-Semitism at all but mere criticism of the government of Israel. And that's precisely the point of the bloated numbers. They are exploited – with frightening success – to create a climate in which no critical debate about Israel is legitimate and anyone who does criticize is smeared as an anti-Semite who wants Israel to disappear.
