In a June 16 op-ed in the Toronto Star entitled: “I once embraced the Zionist dream. Now I’m protesting the genocide in Gaza on the streets of Toronto,” Michele Landsberg informed readers that, despite her understanding and past sympathies with the self-evident reasons for the Jewish State’s survival, she now considers herself uninterested with its fate and instead organizes protests against its war of self-defense in Gaza.

Landsberg described the horrors of growing up in an era when harsh, overt antisemitic views and actions were acceptable and common in society, and she vividly described some of the disgusting acts of hatred and discrimination that she and her peers at the time experienced. This led her younger self to embrace left-wing Zionism, believing that “democratic socialism would mean justice for all, and Jews would be safe at last in our own home.” Since that time, however, Landsberg has had a change of heart. She now considers herself a “post-Zionist” and feels “no longer committed to being a part” of the Jewish state’s future.

The piece at times read like self-promotion for her protest events while at other times like a personal trauma dump that should probably be taking place in the safety of a therapist’s office rather than on pages that shape public opinion about life-and-death political decisions. While one can certainly empathize with her struggle over conflicted feelings navigating these troubled times, that is no excuse for publishing flagrantly false, inflammatory, and hypocritical claims.

Landsberg declared that the “dream of a [Jewish] country committed to justice and equality has died,” and that Israel’s actions in Gaza are a “slaughter” and “fitting any reasonable definition of genocide.” On the Jewish community’s support for Israel, she mused “Is this intense social pressure why so very few Germans stood up against the Nazis?”

Astute readers immediately note the red flags of her carelessly throwing around comparisons between Israelis and the Nazi regime that mass-murdered many of their family members, parroting the endlessly disproven ‘genocide’ big lie about Israel’s defensive war against a terrorist group, or nonchalantly entertaining grandiose visions of the Jewish state’s existence ending — and should accordingly plan to take the seriousness of her opinions with a grain of salt.

But she went further, condescendingly suggesting that her current views represent “enlightenment” after years of her/her community’s “fiercely resisting the tools of fact and reason” and “tr[ying] hard not to see the cracks in the Zionist utopian narrative.”

Yes, in her apparently vastly greater intelligence, Landsberg has graciously chosen to bestow the ultimate truth upon the rest of us unenlightened resistors of facts and reason, as she decrees that “I lost that dream of Jewish social justice, but I found a new one: justice for all.”

How grateful readers should all be that the solution to these issues has finally been found!

Only one problem — not only does her viewpoint totally fail to address any of the actual problems at hand, but she also very quickly proves to be a complete hypocrite of her own philosophy, even within the short span of this one op-ed.

She asserted that there are “countless credible reports of intentional murder of children, of journalists, of aid workers; the deliberate destruction of schools, hospitals, museums, libraries; the erasure of an entire culture; the stark evil of denying food and water to desperate people.”

Someone concerned with “facts and reason” would back up their claims with evidence. Yet, of these allegedly “countless credible reports of intentional murder,” Landsberg cited precisely … zero.

Perhaps this is because zero is the total number of such credible reports that exist.

While pro-Hamas propaganda and confused activists have certainly shouted such claims routinely, these are hardly considered “credible reports” by most sane individuals. Attaching the label “intentional murder” to her already false and grossly misleading claims means Landsberg is actually going further than most anti-Israel media, with the exception of direct Hamas propaganda.

But even more bizarrely and disturbingly, Landsberg blames the Jews for their own victimhood — stating that “Israel’s cruelty in its occupation of Palestinian lands spawned world-wide anti-Jewish terrorism.”

Landsberg’s column is not “enlightenment” or “justice for all.” It’s betrayal, reactionary naivety, and moral bankruptcy. And Toronto Star readers should understand that when assessing the validity of her views.