By Marney Blom and Daina Doucet
The recent attacks against the Jewish community seem not only anti-Israel, but anti-Jewish, pointed out Rabbi Mendel Kaplan, the founder and spiritual leader of Chabad at the Flamingo Synagogue in Thornhill. “The Jewish community feels alone. Very alone. It looks to us like this is a recurrence of pre-World War II anti-Semitism.”
This sentiment is echoed by Bernie Farber, the executive director of the Canadian Jewish Congress (Ontario Region). “We are alarmed. I fought anti-Semitism all my life. When tensions are high in the Middle East we always see an upsurge, but the latest upsurge is a concern to us.”
If looming storm clouds of rising anti-Semitism have a silver lining, it be found in the emergence of an unprecedented united front among Jews and Christians who now are standing together in public, agreeing in prayer and in principal for the promises of God for Israel as found in the Scripture.
While thousands of Christians are becoming more aware of Israel and Christianity’s Jewish roots, “The church needs to recognize where we are in God’s prophetic time-table and stand with what God is doing,” said Barry Denison, the national director of Bridges for Peace, Israel. In so doing, points out Donna Holbrook, “We’re sharing with them their anguish and agony, but also their future and hope.”
Speaking at the Ottawa rally, Irwin Cotler, MP for Mount Royal stated, “There are many good people in this country, non-Jews as well as Jews, who are prepared to join a Jewish cause because they understand and they believe profoundly that this is not just a Jewish cause, but this is a just cause – a cause for all good people everywhere.”
To cheers and raised flags he added, “For Israel asked for nothing else but for the right to live in peace!”
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