Activist reveals how Jewish pride “saved her life” following threats and attempts to leak her address
Ysabella Hazan, a Canadian activist and the founder of Decolonized Judean, a movement based on Jewish pride and empowerment which seeks to educate people about Judaism through the perspective of a Jewish lens, appeared on the most recent episode of Podcast Against Antisemitism where she explained how Jewish pride saved her life after being on the receiving end of threats.
Ms Hazan said that certain community leaders advised her to stop posting her online content, which focuses predominantly on antisemitism and Jewish empowerment, due to fears regarding her safety. Concerns grew once people attempted to post her phone number and address online.
“I had security cameras installed in my house,” the activist revealed. “They said ‘stop posting’. But I’m not saying anything that’s inflammatory. I shouldn’t be discouraged to wear my Magen David (Star of David).”
However, Ms Hazan refused to remain silent. Two of Montreal’s most prominent news outlets reached out to her, and she then provided them with screenshots of the threats that she had received.
“It made it to the front page of their newspaper. I said ‘My family didn’t leave Morocco to be persecuted by the same brand of antisemitism that they experienced there’.”
A Canadian minister would then go on to retweet her, raising awareness of her situation, and people would begin to take notice.
Ms Hazan said: “So when this happened, the threats stopped. The person who was threatening me, who was leading a movement against me…he stopped because he saw that this girl is not going to stop.”
The activist said that the response to the incident invoked “a sense of pride within the community”.
She added: “No one wanted to mess with me anymore. They said ‘This girl…the more we bother her, the more she gets stronger, we’re going to leave her alone’. So, the Jewish pride is what saved me. Had I stopped, had I cowered, they would have sensed that fear and they would have acted.”
Throughout the interview, Ms Hazan touched upon a variety of other issues which included how she tackles antisemitism through a framework of ‘decolonisation’, why she believes it is so important to remain visibly Jewish and how her family escaped persecution.
This podcast can be listened to here, or watched here.
Podcast Against Antisemitism, produced by Campaign Against Antisemitism, talks to a different guest about antisemitism each week. It streams every Thursday and is available through all major podcast apps and YouTube. You can also subscribe to have new episodes sent straight to your inbox.
Previous guests have included comedian David Baddiel, television personality Robert Rinder, writer Eve Barlow, Grammy-Award-winning singer-songwriter Autumn Rowe, and actor Eddie Marsan.
