City of Ottawa cancelling Israeli flag-raising ceremony sends 'terrible' signal, Housefather says
Hi, thanks for taking your questions. For the first time ever, the City of Ottawa and Ottawa police have decided not to host a flag raising ceremony for Israeli Independence Day. They’re saying this is due to security concerns, but they’re not elaborating. I’m wondering what kind of signal this sends to Jewish and Israeli Canadians. I I think I know that any of my colleagues answer for me and I can only speak personally. I think it sends a terrible signal. I will be at a rally in Montreal next Tuesday. That will have thousands and thousands of people there and it’s going ahead. When you have this type of threat, you amp up security, you take precautions, you move the events to a place that’s more secure, but you don’t cancel an event that is really important to Canada’s Jewish community when events that are disproportionately Jewish, because not everybody going to this event is Jewish, but a very significant percentage are and it’s a very important event for many in the Jewish community to simply cancel. That shuts us out of Canadian society. And so that’s not the right approach if your answer to Jewish Stoops and and because this happens on campus too, they tell Jewish students not to conduct events because of security. Once you stop Jews from living as Jews and being able to hold Jewish communal events on campus or elsewhere, whether they relate to Israel or anything else, you end up in a situation where Jews are being shut out of Canadian life. And that’s a horrible message.