In their October 21 opinion column in The Toronto Star entitled: “We are progressive Jews who have been let down by our community leaders,” Bailey Greenspon, Jonathan Sas and Sam Hersh, three self-described “Jewish progressives,” presented themselves as the moral voice of Jews, daring to speak out in favour of peace in the Middle East. One of the authors, Hersh, shamelessly began accusing Israel of “genocide” virtually instantly after Hamas’ October 7 massacres.

To achieve this end, much of their commentary relied on a hodgepodge of half-truths, gross exaggerations and highly misleading statements.

While the three give a perfunctory condemnation of Hamas’ massacres on October 7, they soon focused their ire on Israel, saying “the hurt does not give permission to turn a blind eye to Israel’s disproportionate and brutal response.”

By downplaying Hamas’ massacres as little more than “hurt,” they sought to frame Israel’s response as thus nothing more than violent retribution. But it is not. Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organization sworn to Israel’s destruction, committed the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, has sworn to do it repeatedly, and continues to hold more than 100 hostages from Israel.

In essence, Israel does not have the luxury to sit from the comfort of Canada, as the three authors do, and simply hope that Hamas stops murdering Israelis. Like the Nazis or the Islamic State, these groups cannot be reasoned with, only defeated.

Not only do the authors all but entirely sanitize Hamas, completely ignoring its violent goals, they accused Israel of “purposefully targeting civilians,” despite world-renowned experts in urban warfare lauding Israel’s extraordinary efforts to minimize civilian casualties, all while Hamas deliberately uses its own people as human shields.

The trio claimed that Jewish organizations and leaders are “defending Israel no matter what red line it crosses…too often casting criticism of Israel as antisemitic,” making “it harder to fight the real cases and causes of antisemitism.”

There is no evidence to suggest that Jewish communities call criticism of Israel antisemitic; in fact, the most widely-accepted definition of antisemitism from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, explicitly states that criticism of Israel is entirely valid and is not hateful.

Moreover, the authors did not share their pearls of wisdom as to what the “real cases and causes” of antisemitism are. In Canada, as in the United States and elsewhere, anti-Israel demonstrations have regularly been scenes of violence, harassment, mayhem, intimidation, and open support for the murder of Jews.

The authors concluded their column with a bizarre straw man argument, writing that “Jewish safety” should not “come at the expense of the rights and freedoms of others.”

By implying that “Jewish safety,” either in Canada or in Israel, has been somehow conditioned on oppressing others, the three not only offered nothing of substance to the conversation, and in fact effectively demonized Israel and the majority of Canadian Jews who – despite many of whom disagreeing on many policies of the Israeli government – do not want to see Israel destroyed by Islamic terrorists, nor do they want to see terrorist supporters marching in the streets.

In their Toronto Star column, Bailey Greenspon, Jonathan Sas and Sam Hersh sanitized not only Islamic terrorists who have murdered Israelis, but terrorist supporters who have used violence and harassment in Canada and beyond. Their column was both sanctimonious and scandalous.