Morgane Oger

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Morgane Oger

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Yom HaShoah, Anti-Zionism, and Canada’s Reckoning with Hate

As organizers and activists speaking out about injustice, we can not afford to forget what the seeds of genocide are. Because never again means never again for everyone.

By Morgane Oger
April 24, 2025

I wrote this piece hoping activists, organizers, educators, and engaged citizens committed to justice will hear my concerns about the line between critique and hate. It’s important we all ensure our efforts to bring change for the better do not perpetuate the same patterns of exclusion we oppose.

Each year on Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, we honour the six million Jews and millions of others murdered by the Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945. This act of remembrance calls us not only to mourn but to remain vigilant against the ideologies and prejudices that led to such atrocities. The Holocaust teaches us that hatred, when normalized, escalates from rhetoric to violence—and that lesson remains tragically relevant.

Plan of Ravensbruck womens concentration camp with caption in French saying the plans were extracted from the architect at great cost.
Plan of Ravensbruck concentration camp for women in Germany. The caption in French says the information was stolen from the camp architect at great cost and huge risks.

Today, in Canada and around the world, antisemitism and identity-based hatred persist. This hatred is often masked as political discourse, particularly through anti-Zionism that crosses the line into antisemitism. In my human rights advocacy work, I’ve also noticed similar patterns between anti-Jewish and anti-transgender voices. Both too often allow criticism of policies or ideas to seamlessly morph into an attack on the right to even exist at all. This is a blind spot that resurfaces when well meaning people take shortcuts in their communications.

On this Yom HaShoah, I hope you will join me in reflection on these parallels and recommit to opposing all forms of exclusion.

Criticism of Policy vs. Targeting Identity

It is essential to distinguish between criticizing the policies of a government and targeting people for their identity. Criticism of Israel’s government is legitimate, as criticism of any government should be. However, when that criticism morphs into hatred toward Jewish people collectively, it perpetuates the same exclusionary logic that fueled the Holocaust.

Consider Sean Orr, a Vancouver columnist and musician who, before his election to Vancouver City Council in April 2025, posted dehumanizing social media content. He justified violence against Israeli civilians during the horrific October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks and openly supported Israel’s destruction.

Orr also made jokes invoking harmful antisemitic stereotypes, including the statement, “they are all settlers,” which dehumanized victims, children among them, and rationalized terror. This is not legitimate critique, nor is it satire. It is the normalization of hatred disguised as activism, echoing the very rhetoric history has taught us to reject.

The Caryma Sa’d incident further illustrates this. In 2024 Sa’d, an Ontario lawyer, publicly posted images of Jewish-owned businesses and the home of Bernie Farber, head of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, because of a legal dispute. A Law Society of Ontario investigation determined she engaged in discriminatory conduct, targeting Jewish identity rather than addressing policies or actions. This crossed the line from legitimate activism to identity-based harassment.

Similarly, Ofra Sixto, the Israeli-Canadian owner of Ofra’s Kitchen in Vancouver, began facing escalating hate speech and threats after displaying an Israeli flag in her restaurant and expressing support for her country after the October 7 attacks. Despite her inclusive stance, the sustained hostility forced her to close her restaurant in 2024. This chilling example underscores how expressions of Jewish identity are still met with hostility here in Canada.

Historical Lessons and Modern Parallels

The Holocaust was the culmination of centuries of antisemitism. The Nazis did not begin with gas chambers—they began with rhetoric, exclusion, and the dehumanization of Jews.  Transgender and queer people were among those targeted, imprisoned, and killed by the Nazi regime. It is not lost on me that after the war  Germany continued persecuting LGBTQ+ people under the same Nazi-era laws, while Jewish survivors struggled to rebuild their lives in Europe’s ruins amidst continued prejudice throughout a continent where so many of their neighbours had more than tolerated the genocide that Nazi Germany executed.

The patterns of dehumanization, scapegoating, and exclusion endure today. Anti-Zionism, when it denies the Jewish right to self-determination, invokes the same genocidal rhetoric that Arab leaders, from Haj Amin al-Husseini to Iran’s current regime, have used to justify calls for Israel’s destruction. It is not about borders or policies but denying Jewish existence.

This mirrors how trans-exclusionary ideologies challenge not just trans rights, but the very legitimacy of trans identities. These narratives, like antisemitic ones, reduce individuals to stereotypes and justify their marginalization or erasure.

The Moral Imperative of Protesting With Care

It is never acceptable to make individuals or vulnerable communities fear for their safety because of protests or activism. 

A rule of thumb I try to follow in my own advocacy is to never be the monster:

When protesting actions you feel are so harmful that they are worth protesting, it’s better if you aren’t yourself the monster that day.

Do not target schools, community hubs, care providers, or places where families gather. Never target vulnerable people, and never be the scary one in a debate.

There are spaces meant for safety and inclusion, and the one who brings fear to those spaces is the one who is wrong. While in extraordinary circumstances there may be space for asymmetric resistance to large scale agents of harm such as oppressive systems or groups inciting hatred against vulnerable people, this work is not the place for unguided and inexperienced allies. And this wrk must never be executed against vulnerable persons or persons who have no say in what is happening.

It is never appropriate to incite hatred against people because of who they are. Ethical protest targets actions, policies, or entities—never individuals or communities based on their identity.

Stoking Stochastic Terrorism

In Canada, antisemitic incidents surged over 50% in Vancouver alone in 2023. During this time marked by Middle East conflicts, Jewish schools, synagogues, and community centers faced threats and vandalism. On university campuses like UBC and SFU, BDS activism often escalates into hostility toward Jewish students, blurring the line between policy critique and acting out hatred towards Jews because of who they are.

These experiences mirror the treatment of transgender people, who face personal attacks and systemic exclusion under the guise of opposition to gender policies reflect implement human rights legislation. Statistics Canada reports that between 2016 and 2023, police-reported hate crimes targeting transgender and gender-diverse people in Canada rose by 1,438%. This 14x increase is cultivated by persons actively cultivating hatred.

Christopher Elerston travels under the name Billboard Chris across Canada and the United States, spreading anti-transgender rhetoric while standing outside schools and community spaces. His conduct and choices are a case study of activism crossing into criminal harassment. Elerston’s conduct targets vulnerable youth and the spaces meant to support them, reflecting the same dehumanizing patterns seen in other forms of identity-based incitement of hate.

Both the Jewish and Transgeder communities share being targeted because of who they are and face disproportional criticicism when they respond reasonably to hostility targeting them strictly because of deeply-held bias affecting the viewpoint of their antagonists.

A Helpful Definition of Antisemitism

I support the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. I appreciate how its logic applies universally and how it helps distinguish legitimate criticism of governments from identity-based hate.

For example, calling for a boycott of all Jewish-owned businesses in Vancouver because of Israel’s actions is no different from boycotting all Anglican-owned businesses because the UK oppresses transgender women. Both are indefensible.

Imagine opposing China’s policies by vandalizing businesses in Chinatown or criticizing India by harassing worshippers at a Hindu temple. Or picture burning small churches to protest the misconduct of faith-based charities—or harassing trans people at picnics or drag queens reading books at libraries under the guise of opposing gender ideology.

The principle is the same: targeting individuals or communities for their identity is always wrong. Shifting standards depending on whom we criticize only exposes our own biases.

Commitments for Yom HaShoah:

TOn Yom HaShoah, we remember the past to shape the future. I urge my fellow Canadians to:

  1. Strengthen protections for marginalized communities, ensuring human rights laws cover religious, ethnic, gender, and sexual minorities equally.
  2. Educate on historical context, including the genocidal rhetoric historically aimed at Jews and how it echoes today.
  3. Promote dialogue that differentiates valid policy critique from identity-based hate, safeguarding free speech while rejecting hate speech.

The Holocaust shows us what happens when identity-based hatred is normalized. On this Yom HaShoah, let’s stand together to reaffirm our commitment to push back against such hatred – whether it takes the form of antisemitism, transphobia, or any other system of exclusion.

We actually honour the memory of those lost by ensuring that never again means never again for anyone.

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Responses to “Yom HaShoah, Anti-Zionism, and Canada’s Reckoning with Hate”

  1. Mahmood

    In 2025, a haunting contradiction sits at the heart of our global conscience. We honor Holocaust Remembrance Day with solemn speeches, educational campaigns, and renewed pledges of “Never Again.” We remember the six million Jews murdered under the Nazi regime. We tell ourselves the world has learned. But many of those same voices, institutions, and governments fall silent—or worse, become complicit—when those principles are most needed today.

    How can one mourn genocide in Europe’s past while excusing the relentless devastation of Gaza or the displacement of Palestinians? How can moral clarity collapse so swiftly when the victims speak Arabic, live behind blockades, or worship in mosques instead of synagogues?

    This is not a rhetorical question. It is the fracture line of our time.

    Empathy, Disarmed by Politics

    To witness someone speak eloquently about the suffering of Jewish children in the 1940s—only to justify or downplay the deaths of Palestinian children in 2025—is to watch empathy strangled by ideology.

    In the past year alone, the death toll in Gaza has surpassed 40,000, with thousands of them children, according to U.N. agencies and human rights organizations. Entire families have been wiped out in a single airstrike. Schools and hospitals have become ruins. And yet, for many defenders of Israeli policy, this is not genocide. It is “self-defense.” Collateral damage. A tragedy, perhaps—but a justified one.

    This is where the moral compass fails. It is one thing to recognize complexity in war. It is another to become a genocide apologist while claiming to stand for justice.

    The Weaponization of Memory

    The Holocaust, rightly, occupies a sacred space in historical memory. Its horror is unmatched, its lessons urgent. But in recent years, its memory has been instrumentalized—not to promote universal human rights, but to shield a state from accountability.

    Israeli officials and their allies often invoke the Holocaust as a justification for policies that dispossess, bombard, and surveil millions of Palestinians. The trauma of Jewish survival is invoked not to protect life but to rationalize domination. The slogan “Never Again” becomes a moral firewall—used to delegitimize even the most basic criticisms of state violence.

    The result is perverse: human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are smeared as antisemitic. Survivors of the Holocaust who speak out in defense of Palestinians are ignored or vilified. Even Jewish academics, like Norman Finkelstein or Ilan Pappé—both children of Holocaust survivors—are discredited because their memory refuses to conform to a nationalist narrative.

    2025: A Year of Reckoning

    This year, the devastation in Gaza reached a scale unseen in decades. UN rapporteurs have warned of imminent famine. Over 70% of residential buildings have been destroyed or rendered uninhabitable. Children are not just dying from bombs, but from dehydration and trauma. Mass graves are being dug with backhoes because bodies decompose faster than they can be buried.

    In the West Bank, settler violence has escalated dramatically, often with the tacit or direct support of the Israeli military. Entire communities have been displaced under the guise of “security.” Israeli ministers now openly speak of transferring Palestinians, redrawing borders, or reoccupying Gaza fully—language chillingly reminiscent of 20th-century ethnic cleansing.

    Yet, when international courts open investigations into possible war crimes, defenders of Israel cry foul. “How dare you compare this to the Holocaust?” they say. As if the memory of past genocide should prevent us from identifying the mechanisms of current atrocity.

    The Real Lesson of the Holocaust

    The Holocaust should teach us to recognize and resist the machinery of dehumanization, not to justify it. To say “Never Again” and mean only for us is not remembrance—it’s a betrayal.

    Jews, of all people, know the cost of silence. Know what it means to be bombed in ghettos, denied food, labeled threats, and stripped of their humanity by state propaganda. When those same logics are applied to Palestinians—when children in Khan Younis or Rafah are called “human shields,” when water is shut off, when aid is blocked, when cemeteries are targeted—we are called to speak. Not despite the Holocaust, but because of it.

    Justice Is Not a Competition

    It must be said: defending Palestinian rights does not require denying Jewish suffering or delegitimizing Israel’s right to exist in safety. But real safety is not built on domination. It is built on justice, equality, and the courage to face one’s own abuses.

    If we are to honor the memory of the Holocaust—truly—we must recognize that its moral weight demands universal application. Not just for Jews, not just for Europeans, not just in museums or textbooks, but for anyone anywhere being bombed, caged, dispossessed, or dehumanized.

    “Never Again” means never again for anyone.

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    1. Morgane Oger

      Mahmood,

      Thank you for your powerful and thoughtful response to my article “Yom HaShoah, Anti-Zionism, and Canada’s Reckoning with Hate” (morganeoger.ca, April 2025). I appreciate your commitment to justice and your willingness to hold difficult truths up to the light. That, too, is an act of remembrance.

      You raise a deep and painful challenge: how can societies grieve one atrocity while seemingly justifying another? It is a question with no easy answer. But I feel compelled to clarify something that often gets misunderstood.

      None of my writing—whether in the piece you reference, or in others such as “Canada Must Act on Stochastic Terrorism Before More Are Killed” or this piece —centers the conflict between Israel and Palestine in terms of whose national project is more justified. I do not write about who has more right to safety, to nationhood, or to land.

      It would be very difficult to find meaning or relevant commentary that helps about an ongoing military operation within an 80-year- long conflict so seemingly devoid of altruistic beligerants or stakeholders.

      Sadly, it is all too true that during a war there are no rules and there are no rights – only convention on where unacceptable conduct begins.

      I write instead from a perspective of human rights and about something I believe to be more foundational: the right to live free of hatred and discrimination at home.

      That is not an abstraction—it is an actual, codified human right. And it is under attack in Canada and around the world.

      My focus is on how hatred travels—how it shape-shifts and targets different groups using the same tools: dehumanization, disinformation, state tolerance or complicity, and public apathy about a country’s conduct towards its own citizens.

      Whether it is anti-Jewish hatred, anti-trans violence, or anti-Palestinian rhetoric, these all manifest through the same machinery. That is the through-line of my work.

      What I find missing in your reply is engagement with this equivalence—not of historical experiences or national narratives, but of the tactics and structures of hate. When we fail to name and understand how these mechanisms work across contexts, we allow them to flourish again, even while we claim to be remembering.

      It is not a betrayal of the Holocaust’s memory to notice this. It is a fulfilment of its warning.

      I agree with you that “Never Again” must mean “never again for anyone.” And I acknowledge you are holding me to my own words. But to get there, we must be vigilant not just in Gaza or Israel as observers, but in our own communities, in our own systems, and in our own language as participants.

      That is the responsibility I try to uphold with my voice.

      Thank you again for holding me accountable to that work.

      Warm regards,
      Morgane Oger

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