Are you a Jew?

A reporter from a French-language radio station asks a supporter of our troops if he is Jewish....

Then the funny thing happened. I had told my new young friend that I could only stay for about an hour. Just as I was leaving, a reporter from a French-language radio station approached.

She seemed pleasant enough and asked the organizer if he cared to make some comments. Though fluent in French he said that he was not used to speaking to reporters and guided her to me.

Out of the gate she pounced with the usual “progressive” bias asking if our group was against “peace”. Patiently, in French, I pointed to our signs and explained that that was why were demonstrating. For our troops. And for freedom. That Canada has a responsibility, as a G-7 nation that takes so much in human and material resources from the third world where so many live under oppression, to shoulder its fair share of the burden in offering the oppressed millions there some hope. That if this country was not involved in mankind’s transcendent struggles for redemptive change then our own fleeting encounters with social justice was just so much self-delusion. That our Prime Minister had given this nation a brave and bold new vision and we should follow it.

There was no talk of the recent Middle East war, Iraq or any parochial particularities. We talked of the need to support Canada’s newly restored pride and purpose on the international scene. We discussed the merits of the Afghanistan mission. We spoke of the necessity of Canadians, as members of the family of free peoples, needing to guard against giving comfort to the enemies of freedom and compromising the survival and success of liberty.

I described our little manifestation as a rally of conscience similar to the “Red Friday” rallies in support of our Forces that are held across the country. That it was to our city’s shame that we have had no “Red Fridays” here.

Then came the zinger. She asked me if I was a Jew. I snapped back “I’m a Canadian. And a democrat. I don’t define myself by religion. Are you a Catholic?” I demanded to know what possible reason she had for this question, and why I am so often asked my religion only by Francophone reporters. Defensively, she replied it was for “context”. I asked what “context”? Her answer was symptomatic of the social sickness that has made so many fey and feckless and too many so intolerant. She said that the “peace” marchers had groups such as the Canadian Islamic Congress participating and sponsoring. I asked “So what?” We were there as free citizens. That was our title. That was our tie.

But she persisted. It was as if she could not understand that people can act out of individual initiative and character without the benediction of any group. Her face exhibited a recoil of bitter resentment bordering on rage. It was as if I had mouthed a blasphemy so heinous as to make me an enemy of the people. She tried once again and I said that there were three Jews out of a dozen in this group. Does that make it a Jewish conspiracy? “No,” I said, “we were not tied to any Jewish organization, but the very fact that you ask shows that you have the age-old prejudice that considers so many outsiders, particularly Jews, as ‘les autres’ – the others.”

Openly flustered and upset she then abruptly terminated the interview and accused me of pre-judging her. She quickly disconnected her tape recorder from the microphone and stuffed them both into her purse while reaching for her umbrella that I had been holding over her. In a hurry to cross the street, she turned from me but I persisted in reminding her of one thing. The fact that she – a journalist – a member of a profession that should prize individualism and independence, could not accept that people can act without regard to any collectivity was part of a disease destroying our society. So much has been surrendered to statocratic collectivist consensus that even freedom of thought, action and assembly are suspect. And, sadly, the age-old spectres of the “Jew” as outsider, of the “Jewish conspiracy”, still rear its ugly head.