Oh Canada...Where Has Thou Gone?

"It has been more than two days that the supply of electricity to Gaza has been shut off. It must resume -- essentials including food, electricity, and medical supplies should never be used as political tools."

"Canada must work with our allies to stand up for international law to promote sustainable peace and security in the Middle East and to support full access to humanitarian aid for Palestinian families."

"As this work continues, both parties must work toward the return of all hostages and the completion of the ceasefire agreement."

Canada's new Prime Minister former financier Mark Carney

Mark Carney is sworn in as Prime Minister during a ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa on Friday, March 14, 2025.  Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press—AP

 

"For the record, international law is very clear on this point [whether Israel, at war with Hamas, has an international obligation to supply Gaza with humanitarian aid]: Israel is not obligated to provide aid that will be used by an enemy in a time of war, and anyone who argues differently is either illiterate or willfully ignorant."

Law professor Mark Goldfeder, CEO, National Jewish Advocacy Center

It has yet to be seen whether the newly elected leader of the ruling Liberal Party of Canada has the wherewithal to govern the country as its latest -- and perhaps shortest-ruling PM ever -- iteration of the Trudeau government, having never before been elected to a political post to serve a public office. It hasn't taken long in his mandate, however, to realize that in the Liberal Party's attitude toward the State of Israel, Canada has veered from supportive and collegial, to a critic of a country that has suffered a sharp, violent blow of terrorism's savagery wreaked on its population by Palestinian Hamas.

 

The afterthought in Mr. Carney's condemnation of Israel withholding humanitarian aid from Gaza, of the plight of the Israeli hostages held for over a year and a half in monstrously subhuman conditions tacked on to indicate 'fairness' in his approach, somehow lacks both humanity and credibility. That previous humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip has notoriously been proven to be purloined under violent duress by Hamas operatives and withheld from the Gazan civilian population, is of no moment to Mr. Carney; damning Israel is the point of his criticism.

 

A boy sits as Palestinians gather to receive aid provided by UNRWA including food supplies, after Israel says it has ceased entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza, outside a distribution center, at Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza Strip, March 2, 2025. (credit: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa)

No other country but Israel is expected to go out of its way to essentially provide comfort and aid to an enemy that has boasted its pride in the sadistic slaughter, rape and destruction it imposed on Israeli farming villages, most of which had employed Palestinian workers while commiserating with their privation; their empathy repaid by many of those same workers streaming into southern Israel alongside Hamas, Islamic Jihad and PLFP terrorists to take part on the brutality that demolished the calm and trust of a ceasefire on October 7, 2023. That Hamas threatens there will be many more October 7s appears irrelevant to Mr. Carney.

 

The very Hamas authority that most Gazans fully supported in this hideous inhumanity that made hostages of infants, young families and the elderly. In the midst of the first few days of taking up duties as an incoming government with all the files requiring attention relating to a Canada under duress of a neighbour's malign overtures of annexation, a trade war, the country's internal problems of immigration,  housing, expanding crime rates, a faltering health system, the incoming Prime Minister turned his attention to tut-tutting a member-democracy embroiled in a conflict from violent Islamists on its northern and southern borders.

 

A woman holds a cut-out picture of hostages Shiri Bibas, 32, with Kfir Bibas, 9 months old, who were kidnapped from their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz during the deadly October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas and then killed in Gaza, on the day of their funeral procession, at a public square dedicated to hostages in Tel Aviv, Israel February 26, 2025. REUTERS/Shir Torem

The ruling government of Justin Trudeau's preference of ignoring a year-and-half of roisterous, threatening harassment of Canadian Jews by ostensible supporters of the 'Palestinian cause', where hordes of keffiyeh-clad antisemites marched through Jewish neighbourhoods, where Jewish-owned businesses have been vandalized, Jewish-Canadians told to 'go back to Poland', the crowds shouting 'global Intifada', and 'From the river to the Sea', with their malicious messages of destruction, have never been called to account for hate-mongering disruption of the public peace.

 

Toronto Police attend Pro-Palestinian demonstration at Yonge and Dundas Sts. in Toronto on Saturday, Aug. 3, 2024. Photo by Caryma Sa’d

 

That the incoming government is satisfied to allow the situation in Canada dividing its population through the auspices of foreign manipulation, as long as the victims are only Jewish, choosing to overlook the fact that everyone is affected when one distinct portion of the population is under constant threat. When the Jewish demographic of Canada suffers the alarm and fear of synagogues being defaced and fire-bombed, Jewish parochial schools being shot at, Jewish businesses boycotted, the entire country is involved, never made more obvious than when large groups of Muslims gather at public intersections, effectively closing them down while engaging in group prayer sessions on public roadways, bridges and parks.

 

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered at Montreal's Place-des-Arts on Saturday afternoon to take part in an "International Day of Action." (Kwabena Oduro/CBC)

The moral ambivalence of stating repugnance for antisemitism in the public sphere and pledging to address the issue through means not yet to see the light of day, while in the same breath deploring 'Islamophobia' as a public menace is a step too far toward the sophistry of performative art aligned with concerns over the potential of offending an offensive group to the point of risking their votes. The die has been cast, Jews in Canada, in a state of disbelief that this can be happening, that their loyalty to the country of their birth is now in a state of flux forced on them by uncaring governments and an influx of immigrants and refugees with an infused agenda of Jew-hate, now debate whether their children's future is safe in Canada.  

Israeli hostages, from left, Eliya Cohen, Omer Shem Tov and Omer Wenkert display Hamas-issued certificates while they stand with Hamas militants on a stage in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip, before being handed over to the Red Cross on Saturday. (Abdel Kareem Hana/The Associated Press)