Canadians who don't like Israel and Judaism tend not to like Jews

The deductions resulting from the following study are absolutely Sherlockian in their brilliance. As reported by Louis Charbonneau in the Canadian newspaper National Post, April 30, 2025:

A new survey finds “an important minority of Canadians” channel strong negative sentiment towards Israel into negative views of Jews.

Israel Independence Day begins the evening of April 30, marking the Jewish state’s 77th birthday, amid a tide of antisemitism in Canada and elsewhere.

“While people certainly have the right to criticize the government of Israel, it’s a serious problem when it descends into antisemitism,” said Jack Jedwab, the president and CEO of the Association for Canadian Studies and the Metropolis Institute, in an email.

Two surveys by Leger Marketing for the Association for Canadian Studies examine Canadians’ views on Israel, Judaism, and Jews, and explore the connections between opinions of Israel and attitudes toward Judaism and Jews. They also investigate the impact of Holocaust awareness on shaping these attitudes.

Since October 7, 2023, when Hamas attacks triggered the Israel-Hamas conflict, there has been a significant increase in hate crimes targeting Jews across Canada. Of the 1,284 police-reported religion-based hate crimes in Canada in 2023, an alarming 900 targeted Jews, according to the most recent Statistics Canada report.

The first Leger survey, conducted on March 1-2, 2025, asked questions of 1,548 Canadians. The second survey took place between April 17-19 and involved 1,603 Canadians.

One of the findings is that most people who hold a very negative opinion of Israel had the most negative views of Judaism. One survey found that the majority of people holding a negative view of Judaism hold negative views of Jews.

“The study confirms some links between anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiment. The observation requires some nuance and is complex, as most Canadians holding negative sentiments toward Israel do not hold very negative sentiments toward Jews. Nonetheless, an important minority of Canadians do indeed channel strong negative sentiment towards Israel into negative views of Jews,” said Jedwab.

“There is a point at which negative sentiment towards Israel translates into an anti-Jewish sentiment.”

The second survey found that older Canadians more likely to view relations between Canada and Israel, as well as between non-Jewish Canadians and Jewish Canadians, positively rather than negatively.

The surveys also looked at how francophones and Quebecers perceived Jews and Judaism.

The survey found that 55 per cent of French-Canadians hold a negative view of Israel, compared to 42 per cent of English Canadians. Quebecers are more likely than the residents of other provinces to assess relations between Jewish and non-Jewish Canadians negatively. Quebecers are also the most likely to have a negative view of Israel. Francophones in Canada are also somewhat more likely to have negative opinions of Judaism and Jews, according to the surveys.

Richard Marceau, vice-president of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, said one factor is the “lack of contact” between francophones and Jews. “Seventy-five per cent of Quebec Jews are English speaking as a first language,” he said.

Another reason, according to Marceau, is that “francophones, especially in Quebec, tend to have, generally speaking, a more negative view of religion.”

Quebec’s secular stance is reflected in public support for laws like Bill 21, which restricts public officials and certain public sector employees, such as teachers, from wearing religious symbols at work.

The survey found that people who responded they had good knowledge of the Holocaust viewed Jews, Israel and Judaism more favourably.

Marceau said education is an important tool in combating antisemitism. He said that there is generally a lack of understanding about Jews.

“Holocaust education to me is central, because the entire post-World War 2 infrastructure in terms of protection of human rights flew from what we saw in the Holocaust.”

He also said Canada needs better protection of Jewish institutions and a stricter enforcement of existing laws. He also advocates for making the glorification of terrorism a crime.

“It’s not normal that synagogues are vandalized, that Jewish-owned businesses … are vandalized. It’s not normal that to go to synagogue, you actually have to go through different layers of security just to go in to pray,” said Marceau, “It is the promise of Canada that is being broken towards the Jewish people.”

He added that antisemitism impacts all Canadians, not just Jews.

“I think a lot of Canadians see it as a frontal attack on what Canada stands for.”

Bereavement often leads men to turn to drink

As reported by Emily Braeger of the London Daily Express, April 28, 2022:

Men often turn to drink and recreational drugs to numb the heartbreak of bereavement, research has revealed.

They admitted they reached for alcohol 13 times a month on average, according to the Sue Ryder charity.

And nearly a quarter said they used drugs every day after the death of a loved one.

Women were more likely to use prescription drugs to combat depression and anxiety, the poll said.

Sue Ryder, which has launched a Grief Kind campaign to encourage more openness, said support from friends and family would have prevented many from using drugs or drinking.

The charity's Bianca Neumann said: "This suggests men are turning to short-lasting and numbing coping mechanisms. Encourage them to visit their GP!"

Young criminals are driven by excitement and influenced by the crime they see around them

This won't come as a surprise to anyone who's familiar with books, movies, or television programs about juvenile delinquency (or who's known any juvenile delinquents, for that matter). As reported by the University of Portsmouth, February 24, 2020:

Young burglars are driven by a desire for excitement when they initially commit crime, new research from the University of Portsmouth has found.

The paper published today highlights the importance of positive emotion in the initial decisions to commit crime which drive the young person into habitual offending.

Researchers compared findings from younger (average age 20) with older, experienced residential burglars (average age 39) after they completed a ‘virtual burglary’ where participants use a simulated environment to choose and burgle a property. They were asked to ‘think aloud’ during the re-enactment and then were interviewed by researchers.

Participants were asked about the days and hours before the burglary to try and establish the processes that led them to be involved in the first place.

Dr Claire Nee, Reader in Forensic Psychology, who led the research, said: “It’s important to understand under what circumstances young people make that initial decision to commit a crime, so we can think about intervention. The role of emotion in driving the desire to commit crime is a much neglected area and our research indicates it could be key to stopping it in its tracks. The excitement drives the initial spate of offending, but skill and financial reward quickly take over resulting in habitual offending.

"What really struck me about the research is how young offenders can’t identify a clear initial decision to commit a burglary – it’s just part of the ‘flow’ of what they’re doing with their adolescent comrades."

The research shows that offenders tended to drift into crime rather than any distinct turning point. Offending was often considered an integral and almost inevitable part of participants’ lifestyles.

One young burglar said: “Like where I’m from… that’s what it’s like, it’s crime, like, that’s the norm.” An adult burglar expressed similar sentiments: “I was just born on the streets… that’s what people do.”

The research discovered a pattern which shows that initiation into burglary is linked originally to the desire for excitement and the ‘thrill’ of committing the offence, but this thrill reduces once the offender has repeatedly committed a crime.

Having completed one burglary, offenders became motivated by the experience of making quick, easy money. One participant said: “I just had so much money and I was thinking, wow, is this what 10 minutes of work is.”

Dr Nee said: “It is fascinating to explore the stages of a criminal’s career, so we can see what motivates them at the start, what continues to motivate them, and how we might be able to intervene.”

The paper is published in the British Journal of Criminology.

Click on the link for the original article Expertise, Emotion and Specialization in the Development of Persistent Burglary by Marco Otte, Zarah Vernham, Jean-Louis Van Gelder, Claire Nee, and Amy Meenaghan.

Child molesters go where the children are

As reported by David Rose in the London Mail on Sunday, June 23, 2018 (link in original):

A devastating report will this week expose the scale and impact of child sexual abuse across the UK.

Researchers have found that abuse is widespread across all communities and social classes – and believe it has been perpetrated in schools and other institutions much more widely than previously thought.

The report – obtained by The Mail on Sunday – is based on the biggest archive of evidence by abuse victims and survivors ever assembled in this country.

It presents detailed accounts from 50 of the 1,400 people who have so far given evidence to the Truth Project, part of the huge Independent Inquiry on Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) set up by Theresa May when she was Home Secretary.

Researchers have found that abuse is widespread across all communities and social classes – and believe it has been perpetrated in schools and other institutions much more widely than previously thought...

...Nabila's parents used to send her to their local mosque in Birmingham for religious instruction from the age of seven.

The Bangladeshi imam, Hafiz Rehman, subjected her to escalating sexual abuse for four years, finally attempting to rape her.

‘I used to think about telling my mum every day as I walked home,’ she says.

‘But I was scared. Would she believe me? How could I say such things about an imam?’

Sometimes she avoided classes by hiding in a graveyard. But she kept silent and even today, as a married mother, ‘intimacy seems dirty. If I do start to enjoy sex, I feel I must have enjoyed it when he was doing those things to me’.

She went to the police years later, and after a second mosque victim came forward, he was convicted in 2016 and sentenced to 11 and a half years in jail.

Astonishingly, Rehman had been on bail and was allowed to stay at home at the end of the trial by claiming he was ill.

He had surrendered his UK passport, but had a second, Bangladeshi one – and the day after he was sentenced he fled there, where he remains. Nabila says abuse is rife in Muslim communities, but ‘never discussed, always covered up.

The culture is, “we will deal with this, we don’t need anyone’s help” – but we don’t tackle it. There is abuse in almost every Asian family.

‘They get away with it in their own community, and then they target vulnerable white girls.

‘This culture has got to change.'...

...Patrick Sandford has had a successful career as a theatre director, actor and playwright.

But for decades he hid a deeply painful secret: he was repeatedly abused by a teacher in his last year at primary school.

Like many victims, this left him terrified of intimacy: he did not have a relationship until he was 26: ‘I didn’t let anyone touch me for 15 years.

‘I thought I was the most hideous, ghastly person, and I blamed the fact I was homosexual on my abuse.’

When he finally started to talk about it decades later, ‘I realised I’d had two lives – a successful professional one and a private psychological battle’.

In 2016, to rave reviews, he wrote and began performing his story in a one-man drama entitled Groomed.

Analysis by IICSA shows 53 per cent of witnesses who spoke to the project have so far been women, while 94 per cent of perpetrators were men.

Forty per cent of victims were aged between three and seven when their abuse started and 32 per cent between eight and 11. More than a third endured multiple ‘episodes’ of abuse.

They described a wide range of consequences in later life, including depression (33 per cent), difficulties with trust and intimacy (28 per cent), thoughts of suicide (28 per cent) and actual suicide attempts (22 per cent).

It is often claimed that most sexual abuse takes place within families. But only 28 per cent of witnesses say they were abused by relatives.

Abbie was abused by a Catholic priest for four years from when she was just seven.

A friend of her family, he assaulted her on days when he took her out and when staying at her family’s home.

Now in her 50s, she told the Truth Project her ordeal ‘destroyed me as a sexual person’.

She has had a successful career and many friends but has ‘never had a serious relationship’, because she says she found sexual thoughts ‘very upsetting’.

Although her abuser was in the Church, Abbie has retained her faith and says it is important to her.

But her attempts to raise what happened with the Church in her 20s were ‘met with disinterest’, she says.

Shockingly, around a quarter were abused by teachers or other educational staff, and a fifth by adult family friends or ‘trusted members of the community’.

Fourteen per cent were abused by members of the clergy, 12 per cent by professionals such as doctors and social workers, and nine per cent by residential care workers.

Rebekah Eglinton, one of IICSA’s clinical psychologists, works closely with the Truth Project. She said: ‘We’re learning that many people have put themselves in positions of trust and authority to have access to children.

'It feels really important that we are here. People tell us again and again how silenced they have felt. This is an opportunity to end that silence and so to hear how we can better protect children.’

Dru Sharpling, the former Crown Prosecutor for London, is the IICSA panel member who heads up the Truth Project. She said some victims’ testimony has been referred to the police, leading to 14 perpetrators being convicted of child sexual abuse so far.

She added: ‘Listening to these accounts can be extremely moving. For some, it’s the first time they’ve disclosed. Others have tried and not been believed.

‘Yet often there were signs when they were still children that something was very wrong – which were not picked up. Sharing these experiences is of inherent value but they will also help IICSA make recommendations to protect children in future.’

The Truth Project continues and those wanting to share their experiences can call 0800 917 1000 or visit truthproject.org.uk.

Fin – not his real name – told the Truth Project he was abused by the head teacher at his training school after he joined the Navy as a boy sailor in the 1950s.

He said that he informed the padre, who did nothing.

Fin began wetting his bed, and went AWOL, for which he was then beaten in ‘ceremonial’ fashion.

The Navy decided Fin was ‘unfit’ to serve and discharged him. He has, he says, had ‘a good life, financially’, but has struggled with his personal relationships, avoiding attachment for fear of ultimate rejection.

‘I wonder what my life could have been like if I had not been sexually abused,’ he said.

HT: Vox Popoli

Addictions expert says that legalization of marijuana could lead to greater use

As reported by Kieran Leavitt of StarMetro Edmonton, June 3, 2018:

EDMONTON—With cannabis legalization on the horizon, Alberta Health Services is trying to grapple with how and where people can use the substance — but also how they can help people quit if they want to stop using it.

“It does worry me,” said AHS executive director for addiction and mental health, Mark Snaterse.

“When we look at some parts of the world that have done this (legalization), they have found that in many instances, recreational users of marijuana will often become daily or regular users of marijuana.”

He’s a veteran in the world of addictions, having been involved for 26 years and in his current role as director for nine. He has reason to be concerned, while most people who come to use his department’s services are addicted to myriad substances, many are addicted to marijuana.

“When we look at everybody coming into our services for all different kinds of substance use, the top two are alcohol and marijuana,” he said.

According to data Snaterse provided from all of Alberta in 2016-2017, only one per cent of people who accessed addiction services came solely using marijuana.

However, of people taking multiple substances, 52 per cent of them included marijuana in their list of substances they were taking. Of those people, 25 per cent identified that marijuana was a problem they wanted to be treated for.

Therefore, of the approximately 13,500 people that accessed addiction services and listed marijuana as a substance they used in 2016 and 2017, around 3,300 acknowledged marijuana was a problem for them.

Snaterse also said mental illness is commonly exacerbated by marijuana use.

“A lot of the people we care for have a persistent and chronic mental illness,” he said. “There certainly is a strong link between people’s ability to remain well and their use of substances such as marijuana.”

His department offers addictions counselling and one-on-one support for people dealing with dependency to marijuana. The treatment style is very individualistic, Snaterse said.

Some will be in residential treatment, where they spend a certain amount of time. Some just need to have conversations with counsellors and others might have to be outpatients dealing with things more independently.

Snaterse said they deal with marijuana withdrawal as well, saying people can experience high anxiety or other emotional symptoms.

No substitute exists for people wanting to ween themselves off cannabis, he said.

May 31 marks World No Tobacco Day and folks all over the globe gathered in protest to tobacco products.

In Edmonton, Chris Sikora, medical officer for health with Alberta Health Services, spoke to the cessation of smoking but also said they’re also grappling with legalization of cannabis and what it means for them.

At the Kaye Edmonton Clinic Thursday, AHS promoted their resources for quitting smoking available to those struggling, but have updated their policy to include quitting the use of cannabis.

People dealing with substance abuse can access addiction counselling, outpatient support, residential support or peer support through AHS. Typically people will go for a consultation to see what the best course of treatment is. This applies to tobacco, e-cigarette and cannabis use as well.

AHS also updated their policies to ban cannabis use on all of their properties, with Sikora saying although cannabis will be legal to consume, it shouldn’t mean creating an unsafe environment where people are cared for.

“What isn’t right… is exposing others to those substances in an unnecessary manner that increases risk the risk of harm to other individuals,” said Sikora.

AHS has a free help line people can call if they want assistance in dealing with addiction, available by dialling 1-866-332-2322.

Drinking young leads to dying young

Now that scientists have discovered that drinking alcohol at an early age can lead to an early death, don't be surprised if they announce similar discoveries about the early practice of smoking, drug use, or other bad habits. The following article abounds in euphemisms: "alcohol abuse disorder;" "alcohol use disorder;" "abuse sufferers;" "alcohol addiction." I'm surprised "alcohol dependency" and "alcohol-dependent" weren't included. The term "drunkenness" is mentioned, which is far more honest. The Bible never uses such euphemisms, or even terms such as "alcoholism" or "alcoholic"--terms popularized by Alcoholics Anonymous in an effort to relabel a sin as a disease--but uses such terms as "drunkenness," and says that "drunkards" will not inherit the Kingdom of God (I Corinthians 6:10). I'm not going to mention the innumerate use of the word "DOUBLES" in the original Daily Mail headline.

As reported by Alexandra Thompson in the London Daily Mail, June 9, 2017 (bold in original):

Getting drunk before your 15th birthday nearly doubles your risk of an early death, new research reveals.

Those who get inebriated at a young age are 47 percent more likely to die prematurely, a study found.

Researchers believe early drinking may increase a person's risk of suffering a life-threatening alcohol abuse disorder in later life.

Lead author Dr Hui Hu from the University of Florida, said: 'Early onset of drinking and drunkenness are associated with alcohol use disorders and therefore may play a role in elevated alcohol use disorder-related mortality rates.'

Other experts add excessive alcohol-consumption at a young age can increase a person's 'risk-taking behavior' and lead to mental health issues.

How the study was carried out

Researchers from the University of Florida analyzed the drinking habits and death records of almost 15,000 adults, who were followed for three decades.

The researchers examined data from the early 1980s that asked the participants if they had ever been drunk and how old they were when it first occurred.

At the time of the interviews, most participants were aged between 18 and 44-years-old.

Key findings

Compared to study participants who said they never got drunk, those who did so at least once before they turned 15 were 47 percent more likely to die during the study period.

Getting drunk at 15 or older increased the risk of death during the study by 20 percent.

Some 61 percent of the study's participants said they had been drunk at some point, with around 13 percent of first-time cases occurring before they turned 15.

Of those who got drunk young, around 37 percent were suffering from an alcohol abuse disorder at the time of the interviews, compared to 11 percent of abuse sufferers who did not get intoxicated until they were older.

By the end of the study, 26 percent of those who got drunk young had died, compared to 23 percent of those who got drunk later and 19 percent who had never been inebriated.

Why early drinking is risky

Excessive drinking at a young age is thought to be linked to alcohol abuse in later life.

Dr Hu said: 'Early onset of drinking and drunkenness are associated with alcohol use disorders and therefore may play a role in elevated alcohol use disorder-related mortality rates.'

Yet alcohol addiction may not be the only factor contributing to young drinkers' early death risk.

Dr Hu said: 'We found that an estimated 21 percent of the total effects of early drunkenness were mediated through alcohol use disorders, suggesting that many other factors in addition to alcohol use disorders may play important roles.'

Dr Michael Criqui, a public health researcher at the University of California, San Diego, who was not involved in the study, said: 'We know that alcohol abuse leads to earlier mortality, but it is also possible that earlier abuse reflects other genetic or environmental characteristics that lead to earlier mortality.'

Early drunkenness may point to other factors such as risk-taking behavior, mental health issues or a lack of social or economic support that influences health and longevity, noted Dr. Gregory Marcus, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the study.

How to interpret the results

Dr Marcus said: 'No one should interpret these data to mean that their fate is sealed.

'On the contrary, these findings are useful exactly because they may help us identify those at risk so we can prevent these adverse outcomes.'

Yet Mr Joy Bohyun Jang of the institute for social research at the University of Michigan, who was not involved in the study, added that the study demonstrates an early mortality risk exists even among people without alcohol addiction, which all drinkers should be aware of.

He said: 'Those with alcohol use disorders may receive attention to their alcohol use behaviors by practitioners or they themselves may be cautious about their alcohol use.

'But what this study tells us is that those without alcohol use disorder may need the same level of attention if they experience drunkenness early in their life.'

Boys will be boys: Men are wired to be aggressive

Some scientists--at least the ones who came up with the study cited below--have apparently never experienced aggression in academia, and are therefore substituting a "review of the academic literature" for the experiences of a normal life. As reported by Nick Collins of the London Daily Telegraph, January 23, 2012:

The "male warrior" instinct means that men are programmed to be aggressive towards anyone they view as an outsider, a study claims.

In evolutionary terms an instinct for violence against others helped early men improve their status and gain more access to mates, but in modern terms this can translate into large-scale wars.

In contrast women are naturally equipped with a "tend and befriend" attitude which means they seek to resolve conflicts peacefully in order to protect their children, researchers said.

The study, published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, is a review of evolutionary evidence for the so-called "male warrior hypothesis".

It claims that in every culture throughout history, men have been more likely than women to use violence when confronted by people they saw as outsiders.

The "tribal" attitude of men, ultimately aimed at boosting their chances of reproducing, is similar to the territorial behaviour of chimpanzees, it was claimed.

The study also examined evidence which suggests men have a stronger sense of group identity than women, and that they will develop closer ties with others in their group if they are in competition with rivals.

Although men's hostile responses most likely evolved to combat the threat from outsiders, they "might not be functional in modern times and are often counterproductive," experts said.

Over time this has resulted in full-scale wars between countries and empires, and also in scraps and skirmishes between rival groups of football supporters and urban gangs.

Prof Mark van Vugt, who led the study, said: "A solution to conflict, which is an all too common problem in societies today, remains elusive. One reason for this might be the difficulty we have in changing our mindset, which has evolved over thousands of years.

"Our review of the academic literature suggests that the human mind is shaped in a way that tends to perpetuate conflict with ‘outsiders’."

The original article, titled Evolution and the psychology of intergroup conflict: the male warrior hypothesis, is by Melissa M. McDonald, Carlos David Navarrete1, and Mark Van Vugt, and appears in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 367 (1589), March 5, 2012, pp. 670-679.

Unlicensed drivers are prone to risky behaviour

Of course, the propensity to engage in risky behaviour may be a major reason that these drivers don't have licenses. As reported by Dave Cooper in the Edmonton Journal on April 18, 2011:

Drivers who get behind the wheel without a valid licence are more likely to take chances, traffic safety expert Barry Watson says.

They're also involved in about 10 per cent of all fatal crashes in Australia and 20 per cent in the U.S., and are also four times more likely to be involved in a fatal crash compared to licensed drivers...

...His study of accident files between 2003 and 2008, plus interviews with hundreds of drivers charged with illegal driving, paints a picture of drivers "outside the system" who are banned from driving yet continue to do so because they can get away with it...

...Driving to traffic court with a suspended licence suggests to Watson that "punishment avoidance" -or not being caught -was the strongest predictor of continued illegal driving. He said one-third continued to drive unlicensed and undetected before their court date.

"They would say I have been driving for 10 years and have been caught once, so I'll just keep doing it."

Pet owners trust pets more than people

Anyone who's had a pet will wonder why this is reported as a news item:

Canadian pet owners would rather deal with their furry friends than other people, according to a recent study by Harris/Decima.

The study revealed 53 per cent of Canadians who own pets find them more reliable than people. Ninety per cent of Canadians talk to their pets and one-third have confided their deepest, darkest secrets to Fido or Milo or Hero.

There are several obvious reasons for this, such as: pets don't lie to you; they aren't mean to you; they're glad to see you; and best of all, they don't talk back.

Fathers in Tokyo work too many hours

As reported by Reuters:

Tokyo fathers spend less time playing with their children and pitching in with the housework than dads in other big Asian cities due to working such long hours, according to a Japanese survey.

Among Tokyo dads, only 37 percent spend at least two hours a day with their children on weekdays compared with 50 percent for fathers in Seoul and about three-quarters of Beijing and Shanghai dads, the survey by education services provider Benesse showed.

It also showed that fathers in Tokyo come home from work much later than their Asian counterparts, with about 40 percent getting in the door after 9 p.m. versus 29 percent in Seoul and a low 3 percent in the Chinese cities.