The insidious campaign pushed by anti-Israel extremists of ‘Anti-Palestinian Racism’ says that taking a stand against Palestinian political propaganda is not just wrong, but racist, and an attempt to silence opposition.

It is out of that dark textbook that Jon Allen and Mary Mouammar, in their December 1 opinion column in The Toronto Star, appear to be reading.

Allen, a onetime Canadian envoy to Israel, and Mouammar, a former member of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada who signed an open letter spreading the “genocide” slur against Israel, teamed up in their commentary, “This was just the latest attempt to silence Palestinian voices in Canada. But these stories should be heard,” in claiming that criticism of the forthcoming “nakba” exhibit at Winnipeg’s Canadian Museum for Human Rights is “is the latest attempt to suppress the Palestinian narrative in Canada,” lamenting that Palestinians have a right to tell their “story” alongside Israel’s.

What the pair ignored is that objecting to the museum’s so-called “nakba” exhibit is not about silencing Palestinian voices, but standing against hateful propaganda. Nakba, the Arabic word for catastrophe, is used by anti-Israel activists to refer to the Jewish State’s independence in 1948. It is often used to portray Arabs as being expelled by Israel, when in fact many, if not most, left because of pressure and threats from Arab leaders.

Moreover, the museum is being criticized for failing to engage with Jewish voices, a particularly egregious omission given that the “nakba” narrative is a widely-used tool to demonize Israel and delegitimize the Jewish connection to their own land.

Ironically, then, what Allen and Mouammar complain constitutes a censorship or silencing of Palestinian voices is in actuality opposition to a dark effort to rewrite history and erase Jewish history on the part of those they are framing as victims.

The pair also took issue with opposition surrounding the City of Toronto’s flag-raising of the Palestinian flag, saying that it “turned a peaceful, one-day gesture of pride for Palestinians into a political storm that served only to sow further divisions between Jews and Palestinians at a time when polarization is already at an all-time high.”

Opposing the raising of the Palestinian flag, a non-existent country, is hardly a contributor to “divisions” in Canadian society. Those divisions are because of hateful anti-Jewish hate mobs who have enjoyed near-total impunity over the last two years, with the Palestinian flag at the centre of their demonstrations.

For millions of Canadians, the Palestinian flag has become synonymous with these violent, hateful and decidedly anti-Israel protests, and expressing opposition to the raising of such an emblem is not divisive, but a firm stand against divisiveness in Canada.

The authors acknowledge that “real antisemitism, the hatred of Jews for being Jewish, is dangerous and growing and should be fought head on,” but that “suppressing Palestinian rights and ignoring Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank will not help that fight.”

Despite condemning the proliferation of antisemitism, they blithely ignore that it is being spread by the very same pro-Palestinian voices that they claim are being silenced.

While Jon Allen and Mary Mouammar’s opinion column looks like a thoughtful call for more understanding of Palestinian voices in Canada, they disregard the uncomfortable yet undeniable reality that those same individuals and movements are at the forefront of a campaign of hate.