Politic?

This is a blog dedicated to a personal interpretation of political news of the day. I attempt to be as knowledgeable as possible before commenting and committing my thoughts to a day's communication.

Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Canada's Badge of Shame

"The lines about 'Canada will support Israel'. Really?"
"Now you're not going to deliver weapons to Israel when we're fighting against sheer evil and we haven't finished the job?"
"Minister [Benny] Gantz said in one meeting that you don't take out 80 percent of the fire and leave 20 percent, hoping that  it's going to turn out for the best but knowing that it's going to come back to rage and take over Gaza."
"[Canada's decision] is not going to wear well historically. It might [work] for the moment with public opinion, with their finger in the wind because of the difficult pictures. I get it."
"But this is a moment that Canada is going to have to deal with for 10, 20, 30, 40 years -- that in Israel's darkest hour, they abandoned it."
"That's what they just did and, frankly, I think it's shameful."
Ron Dermer, Israeli minister of Strategic Affairs, member, 5-person Emergency War Cabinet
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While responding to a question from Conservative MP Michael Chong, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly said there are issues with the non-binding motion brought forward by the NDP that would officially recognize Palestinian statehood.
 
Yes, it's certainly true that in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist bloodbath in southern Israel that took place on October 7, 2023 when a flood of Hamas operatives, along with PLFP terrorists and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and even ordinary Palestinian citizens joined in, to perpetrate a series of horrific attacks on Israeli children, women and men that had been well-rehearsed and put into action the world was horrified. That the attackers enjoyed their practised scenarios of mass rape of girls and women, tormenting Israeli non-combatants, engaging in the murder of entire families whose homes they set afire, taking vulnerable citizens, the elderly and the frail, newly-orphaned children hostage back to Gaza, propelled Canada's PM Trudeau to pledge support of Israel's right to defend itself.
 
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A collage of screen captures from videos recorded on October 7, 2023 showing Hamas attacks across southern Israel. 
 
Most Canadians know that Justin Trudeau is a man whose promises are seldom kept; feel-good rhetoric that appeals to the masses from a master of virtuous declarations that no longer surprise Canadians when they are casually abandoned in the greater interests of solidarity with a large Canadian voting bloc comprised of Canadian-domiciled Arabs, Palestinians and Muslims for whom moral debasement leading to atrocities visited upon the helpless is a sign of strength to be celebrated. 

Following Justin Trudeau's assurance that Canada believed that Hamas had no place governing Gaza, an acknowledged terrorist group that Canada itself lists as such, Canada chose to vote in favour of a UN ceasefire resolution that failed to make mention of the atrocities perpetrated by the terrorist group in Israel on that hate-filled, fateful day of agony for Israel and joyful celebration for Gaza's Palestinian population. And while initially halting funding to UNWRA when it was revealed that some of its employees were not only members of Hamas but also took part in the bloodbath, Canada took no time in restoring that funding.

And then came the introduction of a proposal launched by the leftist New Democratic Party in Parliament that saw fit to lead the country to unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state. In the wake of its worst disaster, loss of Jewish life and grieving for Israeli infants, teens, girls, women, and the elderly held in Hamas's underground tunnels, abused and continually victimized in an orgy of bestiality hard to fathom but perfectly consonant with Islamist terrorist values, along comes the gift of recognition of legitimacy for the rapists and murderers, whose carnage brought Israeli retaliation against the enclave.

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The House of Commons passed a softened NDP motion on Monday night that no longer calls for the federal government to officially recognize Palestinian statehood after last-minute amendments brought in by the governing Liberals.
 
The bloody assaults that took place in Israel on October 7 failed to resonate with an audience of Muslims in Canada who chose to celebrate the atrocities just as the perpetrators of mass rape and the bloodbath took pride in their murderous exploits by videoing them proudly for public distribution. Crowds of Muslims living in Canada came out in numbers to charge Israel with 'genocide' against Palestinians, somehow failing to notice that it is Hamas whose agenda is one of genocide against Jews. In Canada, no effort was made to restrain the Islamic protests against Israeli 'brutality' where cries of 'gas the Jews', 'Intifada', and 'From the river to the sea' rang out, promoting genocide
 
The NDP proposal to promote recognition of a Palestinian state in an amended form called for Canada to "cease the further authorization and transfer of arms exports to Israel". "It is a false premise to pick sides [in the conflict]" airily pronounced Canada's minister of foreign affairs, Melanie Joly. Picking 'sides' would entail, needless to say, support of a fellow democracy in the Middle East, risking raising the violent ire of Canada's extensive Muslim population. Better, in the interests of maintaining good relations and assuring a Liberal vote, to rank Israel's legitimacy alongside that of Hamas.

Canada is sensitive to the issue of approving applications for new permits for military goods produced in Canada to be exported to Israel, busily attempting to verify whether human rights could be violated in the process. Violations of human rights by the most moral military in the world. The absurdity of Canada's position is clarified by the reality that military exports from Canada to Israel amounted to $28.5 million in 2022, In contrast, Israel sold Ottawa more than a billion dollars in weapons systems that included key components for General Dynamics Canada's armoured personnel carriers and Iron Dome radar systems.

American anti-boycott legislation could be impacted by Canada's move. Ranking member on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Senator Jim Risch, declared himself disappointed that Canada's government chose to halt arms exports to Israel "in its fight against Hamas's unspeakable evil and antisemitic violence". This is the very man who co-sponsored the Israel anti-boycott act in 2018.

Clearly, Canada under Justin Trudeau and his Liberal minions have chosen to part company with their staunchest ally in the Middle East. The murder of over 1,200 Jews in the space of a day, the abduction of 240 children and adult civilians, the impact of which has been minimized in the greater interests of demonstrating compassion for the outcome of the conflict that Hamas initiated and which Israel is determined to destroy to ensure no further October 7's will materialize, has Canada's current government in the grip of a fatal moral malaise.

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Protesters hold Palestinian flags during a rally to call for a ceasefire, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in Gaza, on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada March 9, 2024. REUTERS/Ismail Shakil/File Photo

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Monday, March 25, 2024

What's Happened at Canadian Universities Where Canadian Jews are Threatened?

"I have students who are coming into my classes already with a very deep belief in antisemitic lies."
"It's worse where there is very strong activism against what's happening in the Middle East. And it's most painful where you have a lot of Jewish students."
"[Attempts  were made to restrain Jewish students from access to kosher food on campus. A] safe space [needed to be made available in the boardroom for Jewish students in early October] because students didn't feel safe on campus, and faculty didn't either."
"[Posters of Israeli hostages were torn down at a] terrifying rate."
"[Jewish students were being followed and filmed on camera.] In classrooms, professors were just riffing on what was happening and often presenting Oct7 as legitimate resistance. ... To hear the rapes and brutality being celebrated as legitimate resistance was just terrifying and deeply wounding [for students with family and friends in Israel]."
"This is a national problem -- it's happening at University of British Columbia, Concordia and across Canadian universities. Where we don't have reports of antisemitism on campus, we have to ask the question, are the Jews feeling safe to report? Is there a history of reporting not being counted or dismissed?"
"And that activism against the state of Israel is being weaponized against the Jews on campus [students, but also staff and faculty]. The criticism of the state is slipping into 'all Zionists' or 'all Jews'."
"It's really hard to walk through a campus when you see posters or people calling for intifada. And that's the reality."
Deidre Butler, director, Max and Tessie Zelikovitz Centre for Jewish Studies, Carleton University; co-chair, Network of Engaged Canadian Academics
Cary Kogan and Deidre Butler
The issue of antisemitism looming large on the campuses of Canadian Universities, targeting Jewish-Canadian students did not just suddenly manifest after October 7 when Hamas terrorists flooded across the border from Gaza into southern Israel -- on a planned, orchestrated, and committed one-day campaign to rape, murder, torture, torment, and take Israeli civilians hostages whether they were infants, teens, families, the elderly, foreign farm workers -- in a day of unheralded mayhem and slaughter. On a somewhat lesser plateau the threats that erupted did so for decades, intensifying in nature and number after October 7.

Before that fateful day, antisemitic attacks against Jews on university campuses spiked any time conflict between Israel and the many and varied Palestinian terror groups ignited new episodes of hate speech and threats manifesting in Canada where Jewish students have been the target of violent messages. The students have been mercilessly harassed, cornered in public spaces, spat upon. A number of prominent Canadian universities and several student unions are now facing class-action lawsuits launched by students with the claim those half-dozen universities permitted a hostile environment against Jews to flourish on their campuses.
 
Which has also led to the creation of the non-partisan Network of Engaged Canadian Academics, inspired by a network of similar purpose that arose in the United States, whose mission is to protect academic freedom and to ensure a "robust and fair dialogue relating to Jewish identity and Israel" is respected. At the same time, the group is engaged in countering a rising tide of antisemitism. Some two hundred faculty members across 27 campuses signed on, many who were witness to "troubling anti-Jewish rhetoric and actions", according to the organizers.
 
According to Dr. Kogan of the University of Ottawa, "there was really no organization in Canada that was helping faculty manage these issues", despite the presence of some organizations representing the interests of Jewish students. As an example of the worst-case scenario confronting Jewish students, a union-issued 'toolkit' encouraged teaching assistants to divert tutorials to teaching on Palestinian liberation and condemnations of the "Zionist Israeli state", irrespective of the course under discussion, at York University. Jewish student organizations like Hillel have see bans issued. 

Some university professors, pointed out Professor Butler, not themselves teaching about the conflict, nonetheless "are bringing the conflict into every discipline. It's not that we want to censor people; we absolutely don't. We want to strengthen academic freedom through viewpoint diversity, from having more perspectives taught." Rather than the one overwhelming narrative "that leaves no place for Jewish identity. It leaves no place to be critical or thoughtful about the history of Israel or Zionism. And it's really a problem. We all need to be worried."

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At McGill University in Montreal, a group called Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights celebrated the Hamas attacks on Israel as 'heroic.'   Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press

"People are entitled to discuss their points of view, but here we're talking about things that cross the line into hate speech, things that cross the line into incitement of violence and into harassment of Jewish students, regardless of their position vis-a-vis Israel."
"We had people who were not experts on the conflict in the Middle East regurgitating a lot of problematic and inaccurate information, using their classroom as a pulpit to express their opinions outside their areas of expertise."
"[After the Israel-Hamas conflict in 2021], there was a noticeable, what felt like an organized approach trying to de-legitimize Israel and trying to undermine discourse that could allow for multiple perspectives and fruitful dialogue, which is what the academy is about."
Cary Kogan, clinical psychology professor, University of Ottawa, co-founder, Network of Engaged Canadian Academics

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