TVOntario’s star talk show host, Steve Paikin, wrote an opinion column on the network’s website on September 23, entitled “What can we do about antisemitism in Canada?” In it, he repeated many of the misleading tropes about this question. Below is Larry Haiven’s response.

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Somewhere in North American newsrooms and political backrooms, there must be an instruction manual or playbook entitled “How to make accusations of antisemitism with hardly any facts.” I imagine that Steve Paikin got hold of it and employed it to write the above-named jeremiad. I am afraid that Paikin’s piece is seriously lacking in intellectual honesty. Where to begin?

The first rule of the instruction manual is to start out with an almost irrelevant anecdote to establish your credentials. Paikin recollects, as a child, being called a “filthy Jew” by a street hockey mate. I am of a similar vintage as the host of TVO’s The Agenda and I, son of an Auschwitz survivor, was no stranger to antisemitic comments when I was growing up in Toronto. They certainly stung, yet like Paikin, I now take them with a grain of salt, as gratuitous creatures of a bygone past that preceded the outpouring of Judeo-philia after the Six-Day War, after which Israel’s military triumph over a coalition of Arab states reinforced its global image. But Paikin mentions not a single recent instance of personal experience of such slurs, which I can only presume he would have done had he been able.

I am a self-identified Jew. For example, at Chanukah I proudly display the traditional menorah in my window in a non-Jewish neighbourhood and have done so for many years. But no rotten fruit or painted slogans have appeared. When I tout my Jewish background in public, I receive respect and admiration, not slurs. When my kids had community bar mitzvahs, non-Jews clamoured for invitations. Like the vast majority of today’s Canadian Jews, we experience love and respect, not hate.

The second rule is to deliberately conflate criticism of Israel, on the one hand, with hatred of Jews as Jews, on the other. Almost all of the current animosity perceived by some Jews as antisemitism is robust condemnation of Israel’s actions, which has been called out, by none other than the International Court of Justice, as a plausible genocide. The well over 41,000 Palestinians dead in Gaza are real, as are the more than 2,000 killed so far in Lebanon. Meanwhile, surveys of Jews in Canada reveal much fear but few personal attacks.

The third rule is to confuse episodic antisemitism with the systemic and structural variety of that bigotry. My parents’ generation of Jews, up to even the mid-1960s, were barred from certain professions, clubs and institutions. But such systemic exclusion is absent for Jewish people in Canada today (though it is present for many racialized people).

A number of years ago, a close relative asked me if we in Nova Scotia were suffering from the same “terrible antisemitism” they claimed was rampant in Toronto. Sarcastically, I responded that, all at the same time, Nova Scotia’s lieutenant governor, chief justice of the Supreme Court, and president of our province’s largest university were all Jewish (as was then the case). “No,” I said, “it must have missed us.”

Irony aside, when a province with fewer than 3,000 Jews can have such a panoply of Jewish dignitaries, something must be going right. It is a fact that many Canadian Jews are fearful. But that fear has been carefully curated and nurtured by pro-Israel organizations and warmongering publications.

The fourth rule is to confuse what comes from the right and from the left. Some white supremacists certainly hate Jews. Yet, ironically, they often love Israel—as the kind of ethno-state they wish to emulate, and one that regularly attacks Muslims. On the other hand, much of the political left is very critical of Israel, but almost universally admires and respects Jewish people. The shooting and fires set at Jewish schools and synagogues are frightful and deplorable, but are they coming from the left?

In fact, recent surveys show that Canadians as a whole are uncomfortable with Israel’s actions, but still hold their Jewish neighbours in very high regard. Canadians by and large—and particularly those with progressive, leftist politics—seem to know the difference between Jews and Israel.

The fifth rule is to attribute accusations of antisemitism to someone else. Thus Paikin says that CUPE Ontario President Fred Hahn “has been forced to apologize twice for tweeting things many people found antisemitic” (emphasis added). Does the TVO host himself find Hahn’s social media posts offensive? Yes, some loud voices, including Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford, have condemned Hahn. But Hahn’s online commentary is vociferously critical of Israel—it is not antisemitic.

A sixth rule is to fail to distinguish incidents from attitudes. Among a general rising tide of bigotry, there are certainly instances of antisemitism and they must be vigorously resisted and condemned. Still, we should take comfort in the above-mentioned attitude surveys. As University of Toronto professor Robert Brym has written,“a relatively small percentage of Canadians (counted by attitudinal surveys) may be responsible for a large percentage of incidents.”

A seventh rule is what I call “the rule of chaff.” The dictionary definition of chaff is “material (such as strips of foil or clusters of fine wires) ejected into the air for reflecting radar waves (as for confusing an enemy’s radar detection).” In short, this refers to distraction. Whenever Israel launches attacks disproportionately targeting civilians and the world gasps in horror and anger, we are implored by Israel’s defenders to turn our attention to something else. More often than not, aided by an all-too-willing mainstream media, the preferred distraction is accusations of antisemitism.

To paraphrase Bob Dylan: “Something’s happening here, but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Paikin.”

Dr. Larry Haiven is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Management at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He is a co-founder of Canada’s Jewish Faculty Network and a founding member of Independent Jewish Voices Canada.