On July 17, HRC/AVI Campus Media Fellow Ora Bar, was published in The Suburban, about how academic institutions in Canada have become a breeding ground of antisemitic rhetoric fetishizing the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Such actions create an environment where the dehumanization of Jews grows, allowing horrific events like those of October 7 to occur without eliciting the appropriate empathy or outrage.
Canada Has A Sickness: Academic Institutions Are The Epicentre
By: Ora Bar
Despite many students and alumni sharing personal testimonials with me, warning me about Concordia University being an antisemitic cesspool, I chose the university for its Journalism program. I truly appreciated my journalistic studies, but was disappointed to discover that some of my own classmates, whom I assumed shared my commitment to unbiased reporting and doing no harm, would be the ones to use the journalistic skills and manipulations we were warned about in the classroom to skew and turn public opinion against me, my people, the Jews. The Link, a Concordia student-run publication, and what they promote as a credible student news platform, has become a breeding ground of antisemitic rhetoric fetishizing the Israel-Palestine conflict.
If you read its work and find yourself angry at the Jews and Israelis, thinking that they can only be the perpetrators of harm but never the receivers of it, if you think that the only solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict is Israel’s destruction, it is not by mistake. In 2022, I personally extended an invitation to The Link’s team to experience Israel/Palestine firsthand in an initiative called Face 2 Face through Hillel, a Jewish campus organization. The Link’s records will show a disproportionate focus on this topic. This opportunity would have allowed them to visit the land they are so fixated on, to meet and hold dialogue with Israelis and Palestinians. Chalking off their glaringly obvious bias to ignorance, I thought they would appreciate asking their own questions and seeing things through their own eyes. Unfortunately, they chose to stay in the comfort of Canada to pursue their writing about the Middle East and related events. This highlights questions about The Link’s journalistic integrity and intention in the shaping of public opinion, particularly in the Israel-Hamas conflict. Furthermore, it proves a lack of openness or capacity to understand the impact complicity with extremism has inside and outside of the Western bubble.
It did not take public support from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and KKK Grand Wizard David Duke to reveal that the self-proclaimed ‘Pro-Palestinian’ movement’s humanitarian image was often just a mask used to hide a busy anti-Jewish anti-West agenda. Yet these endorsements happened – at the end of May, after weeks of cult-like encampments on campuses across North America and Europe, Iran’s supreme leader posted on X: “Dear university students in the United States of America, you are standing on the right side of history.” The same radical leader whose violent, extremist misogynistic rule prompted the Woman Life Freedom protests in 2022 is now aligned with those students, my classmates. But it is by design that such groups fall into the propaganda trap of Iran and its proxies like Hamas. They become so entrenched in the anti-Israel machinery they are blind to their own destructive alignment and raging antisemitism, a sickness Jews learned to recognize.
Through The Link’s and other news organizations’ work, a reality where antisemitism does not exist is created while repainting its perpetuation as status quo justice. Their narrative creates a simplistic world where the Jews are by default oppressors who are never the victims of targeted hate, ignoring reality. Through coded words and choices of truths, they suggest Palestinian well-being should only be achieved at the expense of Israelis. While in Israel Jews and Muslims coexist, those outside of Israel are proactively attempting to normalize such low standards for human interaction that radicalism becomes the moral norm. Consequently, their audience is influenced to perceive this as standard, dehumanizing the Jews.
On March 5, 2024, The Link published an article describing, through a biased lens, an incident where Montreal Jewish students and community members were blocked by ‘pro-Palestinian’ instigators from entering an event organized by Concordia’s only Israeli campus club, The StartUp Nation. The club was hosting DiploAct, a group centered around fostering dialogue, like the hard conversations about Israel and Palestine everyone nowadays suddenly wants to have. The event offered the opportunity to do so with actual Israelis. The anti-Israel crowd would prefer having this conversation without Israelis, or accosting and harassing random Jews and open-minded allies to scream over them, instead of truly seeking to achieve peace and prosperity for Israelis and Palestinians. After outrage from those who do not believe in Israeli voices, the university which originally accepted the event cancelled the permission four days before. Jewish community organization Federation CJA invited the groups to its centre instead. The location was kept private for security reasons, yet it was leaked and then propagated by anti-Israel groups online.
While the anti-Israel agitators blocked the community members from entering the event and were recorded violently charging toward them with police needing to intervene, in its article, The Link describes events where Jews were the instigators and provocateurs. Somehow, according to them, the ‘pro-Palestinian’ barricaders were victims. This paints the events inaccurately, fueling disproportionate outrage towards the Jewish community and perpetuating more hate.
Further proof of malicious writing in this article is when The Link not only failed to grasp the significance of the term “intifada,” but also used its platform to dismiss the Jewish community’s stated concerns about its use in ‘pro-Palestinian’ protests. By defining the term simply as ‘uprising’ based on its direct translation from Arabic, they overlooked its practical implications—a call for violent attacks against Jews, as experienced during my childhood in Israel. This intentional selective presentation promotes the anti-Israel narrative, directly fueling such attacks, and dismisses the notion that inciting fear and violence against civilians is not an acceptable way to achieve societal change.
Zionism Does Not Negate Palestinian Wellbeing
The double standard in this article becomes more glaring when observing the use of the term “Zionism” as quoted from a ‘pro-Palestinian’ perspective. The article omitted to present the definition embraced by Zionists, who simply believe in the right of Jews to self-determination in their ancestral homeland. Zionism does not negate Palestinian wellbeing; Zionism is not anti-Palestinian, but anti-Zionism is anti-Jewish. The Link’s use of the term in its provided context perpetuates a negative connotation often used by antisemites who refuse to accept Israel’s right to exist and use Palestinians as a means to an end. Anti-Zionists falsely claim that Zionism is a white supremacist movement to fuel Israel’s oppressor false image and appeal to different communitie’s traumas for support—concealing the fact that the majority of Israelis are not white and some 2 million Muslims live in Israel with equal rights. And while ‘pro-Palestinians’ argue that the movement is recent, the Jewish yearning for their land spans centuries, if not millennia, through continuous persecution and exile.
By deciding to define “Intifada” against the Jewish community’s valid concerns, and “Zionism” only from the anti-Zionist perspective, The Link further demonstrates its selective narrative and reluctance to acknowledge broader historical and cultural truths.
In another article, dated April 2, 2024, The Link openly advocated for the adoption of a radical student body position. With “The Link” marked as the author of the article, it explicitly states “The Link believes the Concordia Student Union (CSU) should readopt the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) movement.” This article “[urges] all eligible students to sign” in support of this resolution. Despite its portrayal as a movement for social justice, the foundation of BDS is inherently antisemitic and self-contradictory, seeking to undermine Israel rather than promote genuine cooperation for peace.
BDS supporters claim to advocate for Palestinian rights, but hide the fact the movement’s co-founder, Omar Barghouti himself in fact said that the goal is to end Israel. He calls for cutting ties with institutions related to Israel, such as Tel Aviv University, as well as Jewish and Israeli communities. The intention, as presented by BDS, is to enact social justice through economic and political pressure on Israel.
However, on campuses across North America, it is enacted through boycotting Jewish student groups and removing Kosher food from university shelves.
The ostracizing and isolating of Jews in educational, economic and cultural spheres are old marginalization tactics aimed at weakening the Jews. Such actions create an environment where dehumanization of Jews grows, allowing horrific events like those of Oct. 7 to occur without eliciting the appropriate empathy or outrage.
One of the justifications for this war front often cited by BDS supporters is the accusation that Israel is an “apartheid” state, a claim The Link perpetuated while it has been widely refuted and debunked. Ironically, Barghouti, the co-founder, moved to Israel due to his marriage to an Israeli-Arab woman. He even earned a master’s degree from Tel Aviv University, which adds a layer of inconsistency to the movement’s principles. But last summer, a Muslim doctor treated my friend in a Jerusalem hospital, and along with Hebrew, there is Arabic and sometimes English on Israeli road signs.
The disparity between the Israel that lives in the minds of Jew haters is not the Israel that Lives. The Link’s uncritical pursuit of propagating such extreme goals like BDS, aims to make extremism neutral, demonstrating a clear failure to hold journalistic integrity in its work. The social pressure to follow the trend has blurred its moral clarity into taking a hateful position as journalists. These supposed advocates for justice are, in reality, actively working to restrict the rights of Israelis and Jews. Their efforts to isolate and dehumanize us are just one facet of the antisemitic agenda.
Ora Bar is a recent graduate of Concordia University and a Campus Media Fellow with HonestReporting Canada & Allied Voices for Israel.
