Your letters: Kudos to mayor for standing up to antisemitism

It’s refreshing to see a Canadian politician stand up in defence of its Jewish citizens. In recent comprehensive Canadian police data, the Jewish community was the most-targeted religious or cultural group overall, representing about 19 per cent of all reported hate-crime incidents across every category, and, more importantly, roughly 70 per cent of religiously motivated crimes.

It’s past time to stem this tide.

Some who disagree with Israeli government policies may use that as justification for antisemitic incidents. We don’t apply that logic, however, to members of other groups based on affiliation — there are no attacks on Russian Orthodox churches despite Russia’s wars of aggression and crimes against humanity. No one is advocating targeting Iranian-Canadians despite Iran’s abysmal human-rights record. By the same token, there is no justification for targeting Canadian Jews.

I applaud Mayor Jeromy Farkas’s efforts to take on this challenge locally, provincially and across the country.

Tom Kerwin, Calgary

I am disgusted with Mayor Jeromy Farkas’s recent appearance on CBC’s Power & Politics. For a municipal leader to use a national television platform to label his own provincial peers and constituents as “useful idiots” is completely unacceptable.

Many Calgarians are legitimately engaged in the serious conversations surrounding our province’s future and the upcoming sovereignty referendum. Dismissing these widespread, deeply felt concerns as “deranged” or minimizing them to jokes about hotdog buns is an insult to the intelligence of the people who elected him.

We voted for a leader to focus on core municipal priorities, not someone who insults his voters on national TV and tells them to move to the United States.

Trust in his leadership is severely damaged.

Tom Pearce, Calgary