The Toronto Star
Tue 23 Mar 2004 - News - A8

Leslie Scrivener

Why would anyone knock over tombstones in a Jewish cemetery? Who would spray-paint hateful slogans on homes belonging to elderly people who, through the grace of God or mere luck, survived the Holocaust? Some say it's the work of teenage thugs. Some say it's a convergence of events - the volatile politics of the Middle East, a lower threshold in Canadian society that allows anti-Semitic talk to be more acceptable, and unrest between Muslim and Jewish students on university campuses - that contributes to hate crimes against Jews.

Some, in an effort to understand why Jewish homes, a synagogue and cemetery in the Greater Toronto Area have been vandalized in the last 10 days, wonder aloud if hate groups may use the debate surrounding Mel Gibson's unexpected hit, The Passion of The Christ, to foster anti-Semitism.

The motives are unclear but the acts hauntingly familiar.

The cemetery vandalism is the most harrowing. "It's more of a hurt than a broken window," said Frank Dimant, executive vice-president of B'nai Brith Canada. "People are saying, 'Even our dead they don't leave alone.'"

For now, until charges are laid, Jewish leaders are speculating on who and why. "It doesn't look like anything more sophisticated than teenage thuggery," said Ed Morgan, Ontario chair of the Canadian Jewish Congress.

"Desecrating cemeteries is an old-fashioned anti-Semitic act." Defacing synagogues and Jewish homes sounds ideologically motivated, said Randy Blazak, director of the Hate Crimes Research Network at Portland State University, in Portland, Ore. But it's often not the case.

Vandals are usually uninformed about world political events but may believe, wrongly, that Jewish interests control the world, he said. "They may be anti-government and anti-corporate, and this gives them a specific target for their alienation," Blazak said.

In the United States, there have been reports of anti-Semitic groups passing out leaflets as moviegoers emerge, some emotionally overwhelmed, from Gibson's film on the last hours of Christ's life. "It's not that the movie is directly causing anti-Semitic acts, but it is being manipulated by the hate movement," Blazak said. "If they think people coming out of the movie are angry about Christ's crucifixion, they hope (film viewers) will be more receptive to their message." In the most recent intifadah, the Palestinian uprising in Israel, which started in the fall of 2000, there's been a spillover effect felt around the world, said Manuel Prutschi, interim national executive director of the Canadian Jewish Congress.

"There's a significant wave of anti-Semitism worldwide and Canada is not immune," he said. Criticism of Israel is not only against its policies. "There's an existential question, an assault on the very notion of a Jewish state in the region and the right of Jews to have a homeland." Mark Webber, co-director of the Canadian Centre for German and European Studies at York University, said the threshold of what is acceptable in conversation about Jews and Israel has been lowered. "It's more okay to be anti-Semitic - things that were perhaps thought 10 to 15 years ago are now said and done."

And people's memories of the horrors of the Holocaust are fading. "I grew up with it, but for some it's ancient history."

Government leaders - from mayors to Prime Minister Paul Martin - have been quick to call the attacks intolerable.

And the National Council on Canada-Arab Relations condemned the vandalism. "Canadians cannot stand and let the ignorance of some jeopardize the social harmony that characterizes our Canadian society," the council said in a statement. It's estimated that only 10 per cent of hate crimes are reported to B'nai Brith, which conducts an annual audit of crimes against Jews across the country. "The Orthodox community is very reluctant to come forward," Dimant said. "They absorb it internally."

ILLUSTRATION:: : Ron Bull Toronto Star Toronto police investigator Steven Williams walks amid toppled tombstones at Bathurst Lawn Memorial Park, a Jewish cemetery, on Sunday. More than two-dozen gravestones were toppled, and benches, plaques and a menorah were vanalized, police say.

SOURCE Toronto Star