"new specifications for a new reality."

Mireille Silcoff writing in Canada’s National Post (via Pamela):

«Mr. Barthel walks me through the school, which was built three years ago to what he calls "new specifications for a new reality."

"All of our windows are made with glass both bomb- and bullet-proof; there are security cameras in all the common rooms," he says. "You will also notice there is no sign outside of the school that could single it out as a Jewish place."

In the past few years, Jews in Canada may have become familiar with some security measures in synagogues, notably around the high holidays, but nothing approaching this level of stringency.

Mr. Barthel explains the buddy system instituted at the Benvenuti school for children both arriving and leaving the premises. The students must travel in a pack and are not allowed to wear visible skullcaps or Stars of David anywhere but inside the school. They are also discouraged from dressing in a manner that Mr. Barthel calls "Shalala," meaning that they asked to refrain from dressing in a style which in North American parlance might be termed "Jappy."»

How anyone can delude themselves that there is such a thing as laïcité among those people who’s barbarism would force a school to have to do this is laughable. Secular rights does not mean one can abuse schoolkids, or reserve those rights for atheists, functional or otherwise. Michael Phillips, a man I find precient, points out:

«I’ve seen it happen to one of my old friends, Fran Peavey, who became increasingly anti-Semitic as her lefty pacifism became more anti-Israel. The rest of her work became confused and ineffective in parallel.

Of course, some anti-Semitism is to be expected with a pacifist. The Holocaust is the towering granite mountain of evidence that pacifism is nonsense. The Jews surviving in Israel, in the middle of 100 million hate filled Arabs, by building a great military, is a second Himalayan mountain of evidence against pacifism. The Jews are living and dead proof that pacifism is fantasy. Ipso: pacificists readily become anti-Semities.»