Cancelled: there’s much talk about cancel culture, since October 7. It’s everywhere.

So, too, one of the oldest anti-Semitic tropes – which is that Jews control Hollywood and the media. And, because they have so much power, they “cancel” and “censor” those with pro-Palestine (read: anti-Israel) views.

But that’s not really true, is it? Everywhere you look, these days, a Palestinian flag or a keffiyah is being waved in someone’s face – including at the NHL All-Star game, no less, where the no-name singer of the U.S. anthem was permitted to appear, even after posting online: “if you’re a Zionist, feel free to stay your ass at home.”

Or, a few days ago, they’re outside the doors at Yuk Yuk’s, the fabled comedy club in Toronto, screaming at people trying to get inside, and assaulting patrons. As club owner Mark Breslin texted to friends: “Almost a riot outside. They tried to rip off my clothing and tip [my wife’s] car over. Fifteen police cars. Madness.”

Or, anti-Israel/pro-Hamas types are showing up on university campuses, and screaming at Jewish kids, and pushing them around. Or they’re swarming pro-Israeli voices online, hurling threats and abuse. Or – most visibly – they’re showing up in neighbourhoods where Jews are found, or outside businesses owned by Jews, to intimidate and defame.

The objective, in every single case, is to shut down the pro-Israel side. To shut it up. To cancel it.

The notion that Jews are “cancelling” the other side is therefore laughable. The reverse is true, and the evidence is found in cases big and small.

Recently, for example, Leah Goldstein experienced anti-Israel cancel culture in a way that was up close and personal. Goldstein is a feminist, author and former world kickboxing champion – and, years ago, trained commandos in the Israeli military.

Because of that, it seems, Goldstein – whose feminist credentials are impeccable – was cancelled by a group called Inspire, scheduled to hold an International Women’s Day event in early March in Peterborough. Goldstein was removed as keynote speaker, without even being asked first for her side of the story.

In their newsletter, Inspire wrote: “In recognition of the current situation and the sensitivity of the conflict in the Middle East, the board of Inspire will be changing our keynote speaker.”

In internal emails, Inspire whinges that sponsors were “becoming hesitant” after hearing from anti-Israeli types. They claimed that “the decision to cancel Leah was not made lightly.” But they cancelled her, to use their own word, nonetheless. They did not respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, Goldstein says she was “hurt, angry and heartbroken” about being erased by Inspire. “It seems they gave in to threats and hate – and that is the saddest part,” she says.

Goldstein’s shocking story just one recent example of the sort of anti-Israel cancel culture now running rampant. The most notorious example of anti-Jewish cancel culture, of course, is a big one: the BDS gang – meaning “Boycott, Divest, Sanction.” All aimed at Jews and the Jewish state, on a huge scale.

As American professor and author Gary Wexler reminded this writer last week, the global movement that is BDS literally got its start in Toronto. BDS kicked off in Toronto in 2005, after some University of Toronto students launched another pro-cancellation tactic, Israeli Apartheid Week. After the Canadian Union of Public Employees endorsed both, BDS and the “apartheid” obscenity spread globally, like wildfire.

As its very name implies, BDS is literally a vehicle – now worldwide – to cancel and censor Israel, and those people and entities that support Israel, or somehow linked to Israel. Relying on a network of campus groups, churches, unions and others, BDS tries to delegitimize and isolate Israel and pro-Israeli voices. It is now mainly headquartered in the Middle East.

As the Anti-Defamation League says about BDS: “BDS campaigns, which portray Israel as a pariah state and advocate that it be singularly targeted, are unfair, one-sided and disproportionate.

“In fact, the BDS campaign does not support constructive measures to build Israeli-Palestinian engagement, nor does it promote peace negotiations or a mutually negotiated two-state solution to the conflict.  Rather, BDS presents a biased and simplistic approach to the complex Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

The goals of this Canadian-founded group, if implemented, would wipe out Israel, says the ADL. It is therefore deeply anti-Semitic, the ADL concludes.

And what of those who attempt to cancel and censor Jews – like Leah Goldstein, or Mark Breslin – or just anyone who supports Israel in its just and overdue war against the homicidal subhumans who make up Hamas?

That all feels pretty anti-Semitic, too.

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Young people are anti-Semitic.

Not all of them, of course. But, these days, too many.

Polling done since the massacres of October 7 tell a deeply disturbing story: vast swaths of Generation Z (who are 18 to 26) and Millennials (who are 27 to 42) in Canada meet the dictionary definition of anti-Semitic. A third support “targeting” Jews. A quarter want Israel destroyed.

In the U.S., it’s just as bad. A Harvard poll found a majority of younger Americans felt Hamas’ campaign of rape and murder was “justified.” Twenty per cent of them think the Holocaust is a myth.

How did so many young people come to embrace points of view that are so clearly historically and morally wrong?

Gary Wexler has an answer. Wexler is a brilliant and gifted American writer. Recently, he authored a piece for the Jewish Journal titled: “The Inside Story of How Palestinians Took Over the World.” The headline was a deliberate overstatement, of course, designed to draw the reader in.

But once you’re drawn in to Gary Wexler’s argument, it’s very hard to dispute. Because it’s true.

Thirty years ago, when peace was breaking out between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Wexler was hired by a human rights foundation to interview Palestinian and Israeli organizations seeking funding and support. The Israelis, Wexler recalled, were “almost giddy with hope.”

The Palestinians weren’t. In fact, he said, none of them would even utter the word “peace.” And all of them told Wexler he needed to meet with Ameer Makhoul, a man who would years later be convicted of acting as an agent for Hezbollah, a listed terrorist entity in Canada. Makhoul would serve nine years in prison.

When Wexler met Makhoul in Haifa, however, he was still a free man. And the Palestinian leader had a message deliver:

“We will create, over the next years, Palestinian campus activists in America and all over the world. Bigger and better than any Zionist activists. Just like you spent your summers on the kibbutz, we will bring college students to spend their Summers in refugee camps and work with our people. Just like you have been part of creating global pro-Israel organizations, we will create global pro-Palestinian organizations. Just like you today help create PR campaigns and events for Israel, so will we, but we will get more coverage than you ever have.”

And that, of course, is exactly what has happened in the intervening years. In the streets, in the corridors of academe, online – wherever young North Americans and Europeans gather, these days, the stench of Jew Hatred dominates. Young people, more than any other demographic, have been captivated by the “pro-Palestinian” movement – a movement that is, when you distill it down to its base elements, anti-Israel and anti-Jewish.

Wexler is aware of the work this newspaper has done exposing that anti-Israel protestors are being paid to protest. Asked where he thinks the money is coming from, Wexler says: “Makhoul said to me: You know where we are going to get the money for this? It will come from Arab countries and the European Union.” And that is what has happened, Wexler says in an interview from his California home.

But how can we know the campaign is coordinated, and not just happening organically? Says Wexler: “Because it is all just too similar. As soon as BDS started to rise, and I started to see real similarities in language and tone across the board. It was coordinated. It was directed.”

He adds: “These people have been brilliant. It’s very coordinated. It’s not just some people who happened to get organized on their own.”

Is the anti-Israel campaign working? Says Wexler: “As I started to see all these things starting to happen – BDS, Apartheid Week, both of which started in Toronto, by the way – I started thinking: My God, this is what Ameer Makhoul said was going to happen. I started to see the hand of Ameer Makhoul everywhere.”

The anti-Israel campaigners have pursued “a brilliant, brilliant strategy,” Wexler says, forging alliances with Black Lives Matter, Indigenous and anti-colonial groups. The minds behind the anti-Semitic campaign have also been very active online, he agrees. “They’re using influencers who they have working on these campuses. Their online effort isn’t just messaging. It’s bringing people to events, it’s community organizing.”

“They have been so, so successful. The curtain needs to be pulled back, to see where the money is coming from. We need to know why and how this is happening – and we’ll see that they have billions of dollars behind this effort.”

Gary Wexler is right. We in the West need to wake up, and start fighting back against a propaganda campaign that is reaching, and converting, millions.

And we need to do that before it’s too late.

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“You f**king Jew.”

That is what the big skinhead wearing the DROWN THE BOAT PEOPLE T-shirt had just called the lead singer of the Calgary punk band called the Hot Nasties. The Nasties had just finished their set at the University of Calgary’s MacEwan Hall, opening for the popular British punk band 999, when someone spotted the skinheads making Nazi salutes.

The skinhead and his buddies continued to spew Jew hatred. The Hot Nasties’ lead singer and lead guitarist continued to tell the skinheads to shut up, or else. The skinhead threw a punch, a fight erupted. The skinheads retreated – on that night, at least – bloodied and bruised, but vowing to return.

And, really, they never really left. Because anti-Semitism remains a significant problem in popular culture, and in music in particular. We’ve been seeing plenty of it since the atrocities of October 7.

Evidence that showed up again this week: Roger Waters, regarded as an anti-Semite by his own former bandmates in Pink Floyd, was this week dropped by his music publisher, BMG. As Variety reported, Rogers’ anti-Semitic statements “infuriated his former bandmates, as they have driven off several suitors interested in acquiring the wizening band’s recorded-music catalog, which was said to be on the market for half a billion dollars.”

Other artists who have refused to perform in Israel, or cancelled gigs there because of pressure from the anti-Semites who make up the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement, include, but are by no means limited to:

Rage Against the Machine, Cypress Hill, Patti Smith, The Strokes’ Julian Casablancas, System of A Down’s Serj Tankian, Questlove, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Run The Jewels, Anti-Flag, Santana, Sting, Lorde, Lana Del-Rey, Shakira, Elvis Costello, Lauryn Hill, Pharrell Williams, Snoop Dogg, Coldplay, Lenny Kravitz, Cassandra Wilson, Cat Power and (unfortunately) many more.

Some very notable artists refuse to go along with the BDS bigotry, however. Nick Cave, of the Birthday Party and Bad Seeds, refused to cancel shows in Israel, memorably saying: “At the end of the day, there’s maybe two reasons why I’m here. One is that I love Israel and I love Israeli people, and two is to make a principled stand against anyone who tries to censor and silence musicians.”

Thom Yorke, of Radiohead, had a similar view, posting on X: “We don’t endorse [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu any more than [Donald] Trump, but we still play in America. Music, art and academia is about crossing borders, not building them.”

Sir Paul McCartney, formerly of a little outfit known as the Beatles, was similarly defiant. In 2008, McCartney received numerous direct death threats for his insistence on playing in Israel.

Not only did McCartney show up, he dedicated a song in Hebrew to his deceased wife Linda, who was Jewish. McCartney told Israeli media: “I got death threats, but I have no intention of surrendering and I’m coming anyway…“I’ve heard so many great things about Tel Aviv and Israel, but hearing is one thing and experiencing it yourself is another.”

So, why do the BDS types continually lobby artists to boycott and besmirch Israel? Because they know cultural icons can have a tremendous influence on the opinions of millions of people, in a way that politicians rarely do. For low-information voters – who make up the majority in most electoral contests – the opinions of Taylor Swift can often be far more consequential than those of anyone else.

But, at the end of the song, politics and culture often make for an uneasy mix. Musicians tend to be lousy politicians. Just ask the Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten.

The punk pioneer travelled to Israel in 2010 to play with his post-Pistols band, Public Image Limited. Asked about the Israel-haters and boycotters, Rotten (typically) minced no words: “I think it’s disgusting. I think they shouldn’t have agreed in the first place if they were gonna back out.

“I’m here to say: People of Israel, I support you 100 percent!”

[Warren Kinsella was the lead singer of the Hot Nasties.]

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“Temporarily paused.”

That’s what the Trudeau government said it has done with funding it gives to UNRWA, the United Nations agency that supposedly helps Palestinians – but, it is alleged, also participates in massacres of Jews.

Since that shocking news dropped last Friday, just about every other civilized nation on Earth as also stopped funding UNRWA, because the accusations that its employees helped torture and murder 1,200 Israelis – and helped kidnap some 250 others – are just too credible. There is evidence.

And, yet: just ”temporarily paused.” Doesn’t sound like it’s going to be very permanent, does it? It doesn’t.

Even if Canada’s withdrawal of support for UNRWA becomes permanent, it may not matter at all. Why? Because Canada continues to fund other organizations without ensuring the proper oversight.

Forty-eight hours after Canada announced it was “temporarily pausing” support for UNRWA, Ahmed Hussen, the Trudeau government’s Minister for International Development, issued a defiant-sounding press release that stated Canada was still shoveling out $40 million to these non-Governmental agencies (NGOs):

• World Food Programme: $16 million
• UNICEF: $6 million
• United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA): $5 million
• World Health Organization: $3 million
• International Committee of the Red Cross: $3 million
• United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA): $2 million

Do innocent Palestinians need help as they navigate a war zone? Of course. But are the above organizations deserving of Canadian millions?

We need to know – because an expert is urging caution. The expert is Anne Herzberg, a human rights lawyer and the legal advisor to NGO Monitor – a Jerusalem-based group that tracks NGOs operating in the Middle East. And what she and her 22-year-old organization have found is deeply disturbing.

Says Herzberg, in an interview from her Jerusalem office: “UNRWA employees taking part in the October 7 massacres is certainly shocking. But its certainly not an aberration. There are other cases of terrorist entities that have embedded people into humanitarian aid organizations and NGOs. It’s not unique.”

Many other organizations are still receiving millions from Canada. Should they?

“One of the problems we’ve found is that there is not proper vetting going on,” says Herzberg, who obtained her law degree at Columbia University. “So, you have governments, including the Canadian government, pouring millions of dollars into the NGOs without really checking to see the extent to which they are hiring members of Hamas or other terrorist groups.”

She cites examples, and names names. The Gaza-based head of World Vision, Herzberg says, diverted $40 million to Hamas, and was later convicted in an Israeli court and sentenced to 12 years in prison for supporting terrorism. And World Vision receives substantial support from Canada – just last year, $41 million from Global Affairs.

Herzberg sighs. “There has been a very long and sad history of exploitation of humanitarian organizations to commit terrorism, unfortunately,” she says. “We’ve been seeing evidence of this abuse going back to the early 2000s. In Gaza, the problem became most acute when Hamas took over the strip in 2007. What’s been surprising to us is the degree to which the human rights industry and the United Nations have tried to cover it up. They knew.”

Canada knows, too. Or it should, she says.

Citing recent stories in this newspaper documenting how anti-Israel protestors are being paid to protest, Herzberg says Canada needs to take corrective action, now. “The first thing Canada needs to do is look at the protests, and try and find out who is paying. I think that’s critical. Canada especially needs to take a close look at the organizations it is funding.”

But that’s not all, she says.

“Canada claims to support a two-state solution, and claims to be against anti-Semitism. Yet a lot of the money they’re giving out is going to NGOs who do not support two-state solution, and who do not oppose anti-Semitism They actually actively promote anti-Semitism. Same goes for the United Nations organizations that Canada is supporting. Canada needs to have a full and comprehensive review of all this development aid.”

Will we? So far, it hasn’t happened. And, when you poke through the entrails of the Trudeau regime’s own language – “temporarily pausing,” above – they don’t seem very committed to fixing a big, big problem.

Until they do, until our money starts going to the organizations that truly oppose terror and hate, more October 7 massacres aren’t just possible.

They’re likely.

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