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I mean, they’re “connected” insofar as they have the potential legal right to move there and acquire citizenship. The question is - is that kind of connection meaningful here? Speaking personally - I am ethnically Jewish, although I’ve never practiced, and of Polish descent. Technically, if I were to go through the necessary processes, I could acquire citizenship of Israel or Poland. Despite that: I’ve never been to either country, have no known family there, I don’t speak either Hebrew or Polish…the notion that I have any meaningful connection to these foreign countries beyond trivial historical facts is absurd to me. And the idea that, were Poland or Israel to become geopolitical adversaries of Canada, I would be viewed with mistrust, as less Canadian because, through quirks of family history and bureaucracy I’ve been made an offer I never accepted, is pretty disheartening. At any rate, the upshot of this line of thinking - that we must be wary of Jews with matters of national importance because they are, through no choice of their own, supposedly beholden to a foreign power - is enormously problematic and, yes, anti-Semitic. Similar logic was used to justify Japanese internment camps. |