OTTAWA — With the world marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Monday, Canada’s former top soldier says more needs to be done to combat the country’s ongoing antisemitism crisis.
Retired general Rick Hillier, who served as chief of defence staff for Canada’s military, told TheToronto Sun he finds it disturbing and troubling that officials, politicians and the police aren’t doing enough to stave off the hate gripping Canada’s streets and university campuses.
“This is one of the most destructive and corrosive things happening to our country, and we’ve had precious little pushback from the folks that we elect to be our leaders to ensure all Canadians can live a life free of fear and insecurity, and with all the potential of our great country at their foot,” he said in an interview this week.
Since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas terror attacks that saw scores of Palestinian terrorists conduct a campaign of sexual assault, murder and kidnapping against Israeli communities, pro-Palestinian activists here in Canada launched a campaign of intimidation marches, rallies and demonstrations on the streets of Canada’s cities, including through Toronto’s Jewish neighbourhoods.
“My expectation was that we were going to join with Israel and make sure that those terrorists, those monsters, were going to be held accountable for what they have done, and that would occur as a general feeling in the population,” Hillier said.
“Much to my surprise, it did not occur, and Israel became the only country in the world — a tiny country in a sea of enemies — to be demonized for defending itself after being brutally attacked by a bunch of monsters.”
He added that Jews in Canada found themselves demonized — with numerous synagogues, Jewish schools and community centres being vandalized, shot at or firebombed.
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“To see it actually become normalized in Canada over the subsequent days and weeks and months (since Hamas’ initial attack) right up until now,” Gen. Hillier said.
“To see police forces stand by, elected officials take no concrete steps to actually change that, and to just watch (the hate) continue and build — and then to see what happens on university campuses grow and fester, where Jewish students and Jewish Canadians are not permitted, in some cases, to travel onto campus, to have their classes disrupted.”
The state of anti-Israel university encampments was summed up in Superior Court Justice Markus Koehnen’s July 2024 ruling on the University of Toronto’s pro-Palestinian encampment and protest, where he noted “incidents of hate speech and physical harassment of people, predominantly but not exclusively directed at people wearing kippahs or some other indicator of Jewish identity in the general vicinity of the encampment.”
Hillier called on all Canadians to fight back against antisemitism, and understand that those behind these anti-Israel protests won’t be satisfied at just silencing Jews.
“When the great silent majority remains silent, which they are right now, we’re permitting a segment of our population to be carved out and demonized,” he said.
“If we want to keep our country from exploding into a cauldron of brutal hatred … then we need to speak up right now.”
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