There is a grand 45 mile long convoy of truckers crossing Canada to Ottawa to protest the attack on our collective freedoms. Some in the media call it a so-called “freedom-convoy.” Whatever that means.
They are STANDING on guard for thee.
They want freedom: from masks and mandates, curfews, lockdowns and vaccine passports. A trucker was spotted wearing a yellow star and was attacked by media and Jewish organizations. Why?
According to Belle Jarniewski, executive director of the Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada:
“It’s shameful. It is a distortion of history to compare the health restrictions that are in place at the moment to protect us, to keep us safe and alive for that matter to the labelling of Jews that resulted in the murder of six million men, women and children.”
I disagree. I don’t believe truckers wearing the yellow star are comparing health restrictions to murdering the Jews. Is it not possible that they understand the star to be a symbol of dehumanizing, demeaning and denigrating people not meant to be tolerated; people who do not follow or fit the party line? Is that not the purpose of the Vaccine Passports? And the words: “Show me your papers?”
Perhaps we should have embraced him and thanked him for his awareness of the events that led up to the Holocaust, including the Nuremberg Laws. While initially focused on Jews, the Nazi government clarified that the Nuremberg Laws also applied to Roma, Black people, and their descendants. They could not be full citizens of Germany. Nor could they marry or have sexual relations with “people of German or related blood.”
We should have taken the opportunity to educate him about the Nuremberg Trials and the Code and the Defense – the Phoenix that rose from the ashes of millions. We haven’t taught the history – the real evil. I don’t believe we teach the Nuremberg Code and Defense in school, yet here was a man who had some idea, some memory. He knows that the yellow star is a symbol of the implementation of evil. That people wearing that star were denied freedoms and then murdered. That does not mean that he believes that those who are not vaccinated will be murdered.
As the late Holocaust survivor and educator Irving Roth often said: “It began with words.”
And so it did with the Covid pandemic.The powers that be divided us into “essential” and “non-essential” human beings and given “rights” accordingly. But our ethic tells us that we all have equal intrinsic value and all life is sacred. And as time went on more rights and freedoms were taken away. We were told where we could shop and that we no longer had a right to worship. There were curfews, and limits on people in our homes, shops and restaurants; when they were allowed to be open. Then came masks and coerced vaccines; and if you didn’t take them you lost more freedom, from shopping to travel because without your vaccine passport: “Show me your papers;” you were consigned more or less to your home. And then came threats of losing health care.
Now, we are in our third year of Covid and Canadians are speaking up: Enough. And what does the media – the propaganda arm of the government do? Attacks people for comparing Covid restrictions to the laws leading up to the Shoah.
But wait…
Remember when AOC compared Trump’s border detention centres to concentration camps?
“The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border, and that is exactly what they are – they are concentration camps,” Ocasio-Cortez told an Instagram Live audience Monday evening. “And if that doesn’t bother you … I want to talk to the people that are concerned enough with humanity to say that we should not, that ‘never again’ means something,” a reference to a phrase commonly invoked by Jews about the Holocaust.
“The fact that concentration camps are now an institutionalized practice in the home of the free is extraordinarily disturbing, and we need to do something about it,” she added.
And the CBC, Canada’s Broadcasting Corporation, talked about concentration camps on the 75th anniversary of the Holocaust on the programme, The Current, moderated by Matt Galloway. One hour about the Jews. The first half hour he interviewed a Holocaust survivor. The second half hour he talked to Andrea Pitzer who wrote about concentration camps. And, of course, took us to the detention centres at the US southern border. She agreed that AOC was correct when she used the term concentration camp to refer to the detention camps at the US southern border. Now, think about that. People who are innately antisemitic and those who deny the Holocaust, love that statement. If a concentration camp is like the camps at the US border, well, what are the Jews complaining about? As if they were the same. Take a moment and read about that episode and the excuses the CBC made. Not surprising, though, as the CBC is one of the most antisemitic media outlets in the world.
I don’t remember a lot of screaming and crying, the rending of clothes about comparing Trump’s detentions centres to concentration camps. Do you?
But a yellow star; worn by a trucker who wanted to get back the freedoms that our leaders had taken away is excoriated?
Perhaps the truckers are also protesting because of the words of Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Words that would make hitler proud.
“Yes, we will get out of this pandemic by vaccination. We all know people who are a little bit hesitant. We will continue to try and convince them, but there are also people who are fiercely against vaccination,”
“They are extremists who don’t believe in science, they’re often misogynists, also often racists. It’s a small group that muscles in, and we have to make a choice in terms of leaders, in terms of the country. Do we tolerate these people? Or do we say, hey, most of the Quebecois people – 80% – are vaccinated. We want to come back to things we like doing. It’s not those people who are blocking us.”
“The small fringe minority of people who are on their way to Ottawa who are holding unacceptable views that they are expressing do not represent the views of Canadians who have been there for each other, who know of that following the science and stepping up to protect each other is the best way to continue to ensure our freedoms, our rights, our values, as a country.”
Answering questions about the coming protest on Parliament Hill, Trudeau said that Canadians who have stepped up to “do the right thing,” by getting vaccinated are the ones protecting “the freedoms and the rights of Canadians to get back to the things we love to do.”
The brave Trudeau will not be meeting with the truckers. Seems he was “exposed” to someone with Covid and is isolating!
The moment the government divided us into essential and non-essential was the moment we all should have stood up and said, “No.” But we didn’t. Out of fear. That fear put us on our knees. The fear is over. We are off our knees. We are standing up for freedom. And if people want to wear a yellow star, let them. That star carries the lessons we should have learned about the destruction that can come from dehumanizing the “other.” And that a trucker, riding for freedom donned that star, let’s thank him and share with him the entire history. And remind the world:
“It all started with words.”
From the Ethics of the Fathers: “Rabbi Tarfon used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it.”
