OpEd: Anti-Israel Protesters Resort to Petty Tactics

This is how petty and vicious antisemites have become.

Mezuzahs must be driving Israel’s military strategy, as far as anti-Israel activists are concerned. About 20 mezuzahs were snatched from the doorways of Jewish apartment tenants this past Sunday in the North York section of Toronto, where a large Jewish community lives, according to reports from The Times of Israel and Canada’s National Post.

“They feel violated, that such a thing should happen literally at the door of their home,” said Rabbi Mendel Zaltzman, who founded the Jewish Russian Community Centre.

The hate crimes unit of the Toronto police department is investigating the thefts at the Toronto Seniors Housing Corporation building near Bathurst Street and Steeles Avenue W, at Toronto’s border with northern Jewish suburbs. A mezuzah is a rolled-up scroll of parchment that Jewish families hang on the frame of their front doors, usually in a decorative case.

A team of volunteers offered new mezuzahs to residents, mainly members of the Russian Jewish community. There were unconfirmed reports that far more than 20 mezuzahs had been stolen from the building.

What does this have to do with the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza? Maybe advocates for the Palestinians did not commit this crime, but the wave of antisemitic acts was spawned by the current struggle more than 5,000 miles to the east. It is so incredibly petty and intimidating. The victims are elders who cannot do much on their own to confront the hoodlum or hoodlums had they witnessed the crime.

Across the pond, the late Israeli President Chaim Herzog and native Irishman was dishonored when members of Dublin City Council proposed renaming Herzog Park, named after Herzog in 1995. Fortunately, the idea has been shelved for now.

Council planned to consider the change two weeks ago, but the proposal was blocked when Ireland’s Prime Minister Micheal Martin called for its withdrawal, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Before then, Herzog’s son Isaac Herzog, who is Israel’s current president, intervened, stating, “Removing the Herzog name, if it happens, would be a shameful and disgraceful move. We hope that the legacy of a figure at the forefront of establishing the relations between Israel and Ireland, and the fight against antisemitism and tyranny, will still get the respect it deserves today.”

The elder Herzog was the son of the first Irish chief rabbi and became Israel’s sixth president in 1983. Seven years earlier, he tore up a copy of the infamous United Nations resolution that declared “Zionism as Racism,” JTA reports.

So what does a deceased Israeli leader have to do with today’s war? He was a significant defender of Zionism, that’s what. It is not good enough for Arab protestors to accept that Zionism means support for Israel’s existence and prosperity.

Anti-Israel activists are so juvenile that last year they covered all references to the Herzog family at the park with Palestinian flags and added placards with the name “Hind Rajab Park,” according to the JTA. That refers to a 6-year-old Gaza girl killed during the war.

The Jewish News Syndicate reports that Chaim Herzog was born in Belfast and spent his early childhood in Dublin.

He could have been speaking for Toronto’s mezuzah-theft spree, too.

*
Bruce S. Ticker is a Philadelphia-based columnist.