The shocking eruptions of Jew-hatred following the Hamas atrocity against Israel in October swept through streets, squares and universities, threatening individuals, businesses and communities in dozens of countries including Canada. That the evil phenomenon might soon fall upon the cultural scene seemed inevitable. The responses of cultural organizations weren’t inevitable, however, but a series of choices. And so with a pair of West Coast theatres recently facing the choice of proceeding with a long-scheduled, highly acclaimed play in which Jews are not portrayed as villains, or submitting to the bullying of pro-Hamas activists and a tendentious Palestinian graffiti artist. Examining the situation, Michael Posner finds one work dedicated to uncovering universal truths and shared humanity, the other employing untruth to advance a particularist political agenda.

The Hamas attack on Israel was horrific and depraved, but at the same time foreseeable and explicable. The goal of Hamas and its allies in terror is not an independent state for Palestinians but the eradication of Israel and of Jews themselves. While many are now demanding that Israel hold back and negotiate for peace, some argue it is the “peace process” itself that facilitated the conflict. Lynne Cohen charts what she considers the only road to a durable peace – one that begins with uncompromising action by Israel and ends with an international effort borrowed from the post-Second World War era.

It is the most improbable of political ventures, the most far-fetched of stories. A nation that returns conquered lands to countries that attack it. A people who provide material aid and medical care to those who mistrust them. A culture that laughs at its brushes with extinction. And a stirring embodiment of the Western idea in a lonely and vulnerable outpost. David Solway examines Israel and finds a modern Jewish homeland whose Diamond Jubilee next month merits international celebration, a model the world should be shooting for, not shooting at, a country that provides an image of the possible while serving as a touchstone of the real.

In the early hours of November 10, 1938, Nazis attacked Jewish people and their property throughout Germany. “Kristallnacht” was a direct prelude to the Holocaust. Barbara Kay reminds us that how a nation treats its Jewish minority is a signal of the wellbeing of the broader polity, and warns against what she calls the “third wave of anti-Semitism.”