TORONTO — As one of Canada’s most prolific online commentators supporting Israel and denouncing antisemitism, Pat Johnson is accustomed to readers presuming he’s Jewish. On learning he’s not, many are surprised that Johnson — a proud progressive — would take such a pro-Israel stance.

Every two or three days, without fail, Johnson’s column appears on the Substack media platform. He refers to his mini-essays as “snappy smackdowns of antisemitism and anti-Zionism that call out the hypocrisy, duplicity and treachery of my erstwhile ideological allies in progressive spaces.” Since creating his Substack page in March 2024, Johnson has posted more than 200 such op-ed pieces, each around 1,200 words in length, typically prefaced with a caustic title and subhead.

Based in his hometown of Vancouver, Johnson, 61, has written for numerous regional and national publications and has worked as a communications consultant to businesses and nonprofits. He doesn’t do his Substack columns for financial gain, but rather, out of conviction and for how writing them makes him feel.

“It’s really therapeutic for me,” Johnson told The Times of Israel during a recent Zoom interview. “All I need to get inspired is some coffee and a look at the news and social media. My outrage level is easily provoked. Instead of just fuming, I unload on my computer and then upload it to Substack. I’ll run out of things to write about when the world runs out of antisemitism, anti-Zionism, hypocrisy, gaslighting and demagoguery. So far, so good.”

Johnson weighs in on a wide range of issues pertaining to Israel and Jews. His trenchant writings might parse the intersection between antisemitism and anti-Zionism, argue that the Palestinian keffiyehs worn by anti-Israel student activists are the new blackface, or mock the political discourse of the anti-Israel camp. A recent column, titled “Blood Libel — Now New and Improved,” takes aim at the false, often repeated accusation that Israel is deliberately killing Palestinian children.

“Incendiary allegations like ‘baby-killer’ (along with the litany of lies like settler-colonialism, ethnic cleansing,........

© The Times of Israel