HANNAFORD： Safer in Israel than Toronto
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Summary
Vivian Berkovich is a tireless advocate for Jewish people everywhere. She was appointed Canadian Ambassador to Israel in 2014 by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. She lives on a kibbutz in Israel where, through her podcasts, her writings, and her television commentaries, she is an advocate for Jews everywhere. It is because of that that we re talking to her today to try and make sense of this.
Transcript
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Good evening, Western Standard viewers, and welcome to Hannaford, a weekly politics show.
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I'm Nigel Hannaford, and it is Thursday, December the 18th, and I am speaking today still trying
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to get my head wrapped around what is happening to Jewish population around the world.
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Just four days ago, there was a savage massacre in Australia, Bondi Beach, the famous Bondi
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It's like a massacre happening at the foot of the CN Tower in Toronto.
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Fifteen people killed because they were Jews, apparently by Islamist terrorists, and I am
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joined today by Vivian Berkovich, who was appointed Canadian Ambassador to Israel in 2014 by Stephen
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She lives these days in a kibbutz in Israel, where through her podcasts, her writings, and
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her television commentaries, she's a tireless advocate for Jewish people everywhere.
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It is because of that that we're talking to her today to try and make some sense of this.
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Vivian Berkovich, pleasure to be here with you, Nigel.
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Vivian, it seems a lot longer than four days ago.
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There seems to be a pattern of random attacks on Jewish people.
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Well, I think that we are finally seeing the fruits of two-plus years of momentum.
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The Free Palestine Movement, Globalize the Intifada, whatever you want to call it.
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It's a kind of convergence of various political and other interests, the so-called progressives
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on the extreme left, the free Palestine folks, the fundamentalist Islamists, so pro-Hamas, pro-Isis,
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And the one thing that they seem to agree on, because they come from very different kind
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of philosophies, but the one thing they seem to agree on is that Israel is the most evil
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that it must be annihilated, eradicated, and that all Jews must be killed.
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When people are screaming on the streets in Toronto, as they have been for two-plus years,
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Globalize the Intifada, from the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free.
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Our successive prime ministers, so Mark Carney and Trudeau before him, premiers, mayors,
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law enforcement officials have been telling us for two-plus years that these are peaceful
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protests with individuals exercising their constitutional rights.
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It was malarkey on October 7th, and it remains malarkey today.
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There is nothing peaceful about calling for the annihilation of Israel and the murder of
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Well, Limeon, if you're going to annihilate Jews, why do it in Australia?
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You know, if it makes sense to attack Jews in Australia, does it make sense to attack Jews
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Well, I mean, I used to spend a lot more time in Canada than I do now, and a large part
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of the reason is because of what it's become since October 7th.
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I was in Toronto, my hometown, where I lived over 50 years.
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I still have a kid there, lots of family and friends.
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I was there in April in the lead up to the election, and people were unnerved, but not
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I was back in September, and it's just Venus and Mars.
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The Jewish community in September was terrified.
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Canada has changed a lot since Mark Carney took office, and it shows.
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It shows in the statistics, and it shows in the fear.
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I mean, many Jews emigrated to Canada over the years because they thought it was a safe
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I think, by and large, for most of the time that I've been in journalism, which goes back
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50 years, there was a very strong, almost to the point where people resented it, that
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there was a very strong influence on public policy by the Canadian Jewish population.
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Obviously, that kind of general acceptance is not helping Jews in Canada today.
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Do you think there's going to be a nasty incident like this in Canada soon?
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So, we're just lucky that it hasn't happened yet.
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Well, it's happening in other places on a smaller scale.
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It seems like hardly a week goes by that there isn't a report of a murder where the obvious
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conclusion can only be that it was an anti-Semitic hit.
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You mentioned, I think, some attacks in the United States, there was a couple of universities.
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Just tell us what is going on, and then I want you to tell, is this random, or is it
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an informal strategy to intimidate Jews wherever they live?
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In terms of, since Bondi, as best I can recall, sort of off the top of my head, there was a
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I believe that the expectation of the shooter, um, was probably that the Jewish professor
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who runs that course was going to be attending, um, and giving the seminar or the tutorial.
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A few days later, um, a Jewish professor at MIT, a physicist, um, originally from Portugal,
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I've been in America for many years, uh, 47 years old, young children, young family.
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Someone broke into his apartment in Brookline, Massachusetts and murdered.
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Um, there was a man in the last few days on the streets of Brooklyn, uh, attacked, a visibly
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Jewish man, sort of wearing Orthodox clothing, Orthodox Jewish clothing.
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And he was attacked and stabbed, uh, within an inch of his life, I believe.
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Um, and, and those are just a few that kind of pop into my head.
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But even more concerning, Nigel is the fact that within hours at Bondi, there were people
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coming out and celebrating what had happened there within hours of Bondi in Toronto, at
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the corner of Bathurst and Shepherd, a major intersection in the north end of the city.
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The, there was a Hanukkah lighting, just like there had been at Bondi.
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There was a lighting, a public Hanukkah menorah lighting at an intersection in Toronto.
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And for two plus years now, every week, every Sunday, the Islamists, the free Palestine crowd
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have come to that intersection to harass Jews who are not doing anything illegal, who are
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They're standing there to demonstrate their support for Israel.
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They have harassed them relentlessly, but they also go to the shops.
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Where they know Jews are shopping or that are Jewish owned.
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And in the last six, eight months, they've taken to parading through the residential streets,
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quiet residential streets, and harassing Jewish families outside their homes, saying the most
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Do you know what the police did on Sunday after Bondi?
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There was a man who was standing at the corner of Bathurst and Shepard.
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I have a translation of the lyrics he was singing.
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And it glorifies attacking and murdering Jews in the name of Allah.
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The police are standing there, protecting this.
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And when they later parade into the Jewish neighborhoods, the police tell the Jews,
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This individual singing the kind of song that you sing, that sounds like hate speech.
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You know, Vivian, I don't understand the government responses.
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Five minutes after the Bondi shooting, the Australian Prime Minister, Mr. Albanese,
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starts talking about the need for stronger gun laws and clamping down on right-wing extremists.
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The problem at Bondi wasn't the availability of guns.
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Where they can't get guns, they just drive the car into a crowd.
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Or you describe people with knife attacks and so forth.
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Now, it seems what you have just said about the response in Toronto that they stood by,
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they knew this was hate speech, they didn't intervene,
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they don't actually divert these demonstrations away from the Jewish neighborhoods.
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Why, in your view, is, what is it that our leaders are deliberately not joining the dots
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because they'd rather not admit there's a problem?
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So, first of all, I want to just point out, in addition to what you commented on with respect
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to Prime Minister Albanese, he has, as have so many of us, including me, in my column that I wrote
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that day for the National Post, he has lauded the heroism of Ahmed Al-Akhmed.
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He is a Muslim man, originally from Syria, I believe, and unarmed, he went and tackled
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one of the gunmen, took him down and grabbed his gun.
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He also had police training, which came out in the ensuing days.
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Mr. Ahmed, Mr. Al-Akhmed, was visited by Prime Minister Albanese in hospital.
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The Prime Minister did not visit any of the Jewish victims in hospital.
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The Prime Minister has not gone to any of the Jewish funerals that have been held today and yesterday,
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including the funeral for 10-year-old Matilda, sorry, Matilda, who was gunned down.
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Her parents watched as she was stalked by one of the gunmen.
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Her execution has horrified people around the world.
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Prime Minister Albanese did not go to her funeral.
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There are two Jewish people, an elderly couple, well, elderly, a little older than me,
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who tried to tackle one of the gunmen before he even got going.
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Do you know what else he hasn't mentioned, as you said?
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And another thing that we know about the two men, the father and son team,
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who went to shoot Jews at Bondi Beach on Sunday,
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is that they were both training with an ISIS cell in the Philippines one month ago.
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So what do you think explains this very selective response
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that the Australian Prime Minister has offered here?
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One is that he simply doesn't understand what's going on.
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I sort of, I have never accepted this kind of, you know, facile, offensive,
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You know, there are more Muslims in these countries than Jews.
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But they can target the Jews for a whole bunch of reasons.
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Ask Mark Carney to explain his rather breezy attitude
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because it's the same as Albanese's, in fact, worse.
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Albanese has made expressions of support for the Jewish community in Australia
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over the past two years that have never passed Mark Carney's lips.
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Is it, you know, the brown shirts of the 20s and 30s in Germany,
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What I would, if it is, the brown suits and better cut suits.
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He was talking about the need to go after right-wing extremists.
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This is in the same speech that he identified guns as the problem.
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You know, if you admit there's a problem, you have to deal with it.
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Do you think that's a part of what's going on here?
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They don't have the stomach to actually take a position on Islam.
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Is it, call it out for what it is, a danger to Western democracy?
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I think that our political kind of leadership has become so dumb
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and so puerile that are they afraid to call it out?
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I don't understand the fear to call out something that is clearly such a direct
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and existential threat to, right now, Jewish citizens,
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What it does is it puts many Western political leaders
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and leaders of institutions, like the chief of police in Toronto,
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Myron Demke, it puts them in the position of having to look at
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their kind of guiding, their lodestar, their guiding ideology,
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We're so inclusive, which is kind of all they seem to pay attention to.
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They can't start, you know, challenging Islamists just because they're Muslim
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or, you know, extreme progressives just because they're whatever.
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And maybe people have difficulty accepting that their ideology is a load of hooey.
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Well, maybe, to put it, I mean, to put it, this is like cognitive dissonance.
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You have an idea of how your society is and ought to be, and it's inclusive.
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Well, there's the I part of it, the inclusivity.
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And we can do better than we've done in the past.
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Lots of different people who think different things.
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And they all get along peacefully and they get along well.
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Well, then you get in, now you have the dissonance.
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So are we onto something here in terms of understanding?
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Maybe, I mean, look, Nigel, the police in Toronto, they have decided from the get-go that their
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approach, and Myron Demke has made these comments in many a closed room over the last two plus
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years, and he says, my approach to policing is to keep the peace.
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And it seems that his idea of keeping the peace is to detain more Jewish people.
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Um, he has, his force has arrested and detained far more Jewish people, um, who are in their
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neighborhoods, who express some kind of, or who even just stand there.
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They have told Jewish people in the, in the neighborhood that is constantly being, um, you
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So, I mean, this is kind of, they're going out of their way.
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If you, and I have been at demonstrations in Toronto, and I've had police officers come
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There was one in particular in March, and I was standing there.
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But they looked at me, and I guess they decided, since I didn't have a keffiyeh and wasn't hearing
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a sign saying, destroy Israel, that I was with the Jews.
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And a police officer came up to me and said, go stand over there.
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You know, this little penned off little area of a sidewalk.
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And, you know, he was kind of like a little uncertain about how to answer me.
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And I proceeded to walk right into the demonstrators, the demonstrators.
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Now, what he was saying to me, and what he said to me, was, it's for your own protection.
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What Jewish people have been told many, many times over the last two plus years in Toronto
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A Jewish woman standing in her driveway in the neighborhood of Bathurst and Shepherd about
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But they're trying to turn the Jewish people into somehow having caused the problem.
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And there have been many comments made to that effect about what happened at Bondi in Australia.
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How were they causing a problem, in the opinion of those who think they did, by assembling on
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Vivian, we don't have an awful lot of time left.
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But I would like you to tell me your honest thoughts about, should Canadian Jews think
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She is, both my kids are in the kind of late 20s, early 30s snap bracket.
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And my older daughter is going to be leaving for a whole bunch of reasons.
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And she works in an environment, it's a public sector environment, it is very hostile, openly
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You may have heard recently that, you know, there have been a rash of incidents over the
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And the drivers have been either throwing them out or said very unkind and inappropriate
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things if they think the person is Jewish or if they hear them speaking Hebrew.
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When I'm in Toronto, I can't use Uber because I have a cell phone with an Israeli area code.
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I simply, I'm not safe in Europe or in Toronto to use Uber.
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But what I do say in my columns and on my podcast and I'll say here is, open your eyes.
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There is zero political will to actually deal with this and address it.
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There is zero will on the part of law enforcement to deal with this in a remotely appropriate
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And frankly, Nigel, based on what I've seen and what we saw in Australia the other day,
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I got a question whether or not our police, and I think this is way beyond municipal police
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I don't know that they have the capability to deal with this.
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We watched the Australian police duck for cover while watching people mowed down by these two men.
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The police have not explained how and why that happened.
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Do the police in Toronto even have the ability to deal with an attack of that nature?
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Never mind the political will or the institutional will.
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Like, who has the ability to deal with counter-terror?
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And you have to be able to mobilize within minutes.
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Are you saying that you don't think the police have the ability?
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There have been many violent attacks on Jewish institutions and on Jewish people.
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And one of the things that needs to be understood here is that the similarities between Sydney and Toronto
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are incredible in terms of the demographics of the Jewish community.
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Both communities are kind of very heavy with Holocaust survivors and their families.
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They're not as voluble as their counterparts in America.
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You mentioned earlier that Jews have often been very influential and involved in public policy in Canada.
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I would actually take a different perspective on that.
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I think we've been less involved in Canada as a group than in most Western democracies.
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But if that's the perception, that's the perception.
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But I think that the similarities between the two cities is astonishing.
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The level of violence against Jews in Toronto, statistically, and the kinds of violence
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has exceeded what the community in Sydney has experienced.
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Vivian, thank you for coming on to talk about these.
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You know, I heard somebody the other day say it's 1938 all over again.
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And for The Western Standard, I'm Nigel Hannaford.