We've let antisemitism be normalized

A home that displays a mezuzah signifying a covenant with God and blessings on the home has been defiled with a note that reads: "You and your Jewish family are going to die."

- ROSIE DIMANNO

Pro-Palestinian protesters march from U of T on Wednesday after clearing the campus encampment. The judge ceded them moral latitude, Rosie DiManno writes, in finding the university's lawyers hadn't succeeded in showing that the encampment's occupants were either violent or antisemitic, as many complainants had alleged.

Elsewhere, "Long live Hitler" graffiti-scrawled on the curb.

In Toronto, suspected arson at a Jewish-owned grocery store, bullets fired at a Jewish girls' elementary school, among the targeted attacks included in the most recent hate-crime data provided by police -out of nearly 190 incidents this year, nearly half have been antisemitic.

How Jews are living in these days of wrath and unceasing protests as war rages in Gaza is very much the big picture. Fearful for their children, appalled they're being held responsible for a military operation being waged half a world away, whether they support Israel's ongoing response to the Hamas Oct. 7 atrocities or not. A friend raising two kids here, with a good job and a nice midtown house, tells me they're seriously considering moving away, perhaps to the United States, because the tenor of existence for Jews in this city has become intolerable.

It's the normalizing of hatred, the blatant antisemitism which shows no signs of receding, that's the crux of the matter. As if Jews should have thicker skins, countenancing the animus and malice that no other minority would ever be expected to abide.