Guest column: Hatred flourishes where ignorance is allowed to reign

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Instructing concerning the Holocaust and Jews key to preventing largest resurgence of anti-Semitism since WWII

Printed Nov 04, 2023  •  Final up to date 22 hours in the past  •  3 minute learn

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By: Warren Kinsella

“I by no means actually knew a lot about Jews till this yr.”

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That’s what Dana Remillard Kreil wrote in one in all her essays, which ended up in court docket. She went on:

“In different grades, all I used to be instructed was that the Jews are a RACE which might be discriminated towards. That they had by no means had a good likelihood. However not one of many lecturers ever stopped to inform me of their TRUE origin.

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“This yr I discovered of their origin and their depraved plans, and I’m very scared that the world goes to fall to them. I solely hope that we Christians can be robust sufficient to struggle off their Satanic hate.”

One other child, Gwen Mathews, learn out a few of her class notes on the preliminary listening to. “Christ instructed the Jews: ‘Your father is the satan, you’re the kids of Devil.’”

She went on: Jews secretly ran the French Revolution, they usually had what they referred to as the “Feast of Motive: They carried aloft quite a lot of prostitutes. They’d strip her and lay her on the altar. Then they killed an harmless woman, and poured the blood on the hooker. Then they cooked the woman and ate her.”

There’s much more of that, when you’ve got the abdomen for it. It’s what Gwen and Dana had been taught. Not in Nazi-era Germany. However in Canada — Eckville, Alberta, to be exact — for a few years.

Their instructor was the previous mayor of Eckville, Jim Keegstra. In his social research class, Keegstra taught children for 14 years that the Holocaust was a hoax, that there was a world Zionist conspiracy, and that Jews are the biblical descendants of Devil.

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If all of that sounds a bit just like the kind of perception system propagated by Hamas, you’d be proper. And if it additionally sounds not in contrast to the kind of vile anti-Semitism now manifesting itself across the planet — on college campuses, within the streets, all over the place on-line — you’d be proper about that, too.

Jim Keegstra was finally prosecuted, efficiently, for selling hatred towards Jews. His case went all the way in which to the Supreme Court docket of Canada, and he misplaced. Keegstra died on June 2, 2014.

How did Jim Keegstra get away with preaching Jew-hatred to kids — a lot in the way in which that Hamas and its ilk now do? How?

Numerous causes, because it turned out. Insufficient classroom supervision. Disregard for the permitted curriculum. However, because it turned out, one thing else: Geography.

There have been no Jews in Eckville, you see. Not one. And the closest synagogue was two hours away, in Edmonton.

Jim Keegstra was profitable in instructing college students to hate Jews as a result of there have been no residing, respiratory Jews close by. He might make Jews into no matter he wished, and he did.

Proper now, on the again finish of the yr 2023, we’re witnessing the most important resurgence of anti-Semitism because the Second World Battle. You don’t want a ballot to show it. It’s the reality.

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Additionally true: Hatred is the product of ignorance. Hatred prospers the place training is absent.

That’s the reason what the Doug Ford authorities of Ontario has introduced this week is so, so vital. Like different provincial governments of differing stripes, it has declared its intention to make sure that college students are taught concerning the Holocaust.

Different ranges of presidency, elsewhere, must do likewise. As we noticed within the Keegstra scandal — as we are actually seeing world wide — anti-Semitism is flourishing in these locations the place Jews are vastly outnumbered, or the place they now not exist.

“I by no means actually knew a lot about Jews.” That’s what Dana Remillard Kreil mentioned so a few years in the past in Alberta. It tells us the way in which out.

We’re all in a darkish and harmful place. The best way out is reality. The best way out is training. The best way out is studying that Jews are human, like people all over the place.

Warren Kinsella is a Canadian lawyer, writer, political marketing consultant and commentator.

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