"I Didn't Think for a Second He Was Joking"

"Before I go, I want you to remember my name and remember my face, because the next time you see it, I'll be on the news." 

"I know when I'm going to die because I'm going to plant a bomb in every synagogue in Toronto and blow them up to kill as many Jews as possible."

Waisuddin Akbari, 41 

 

"It is important to be clear about what Mr. Akbari is -- and is not -- being sentenced for. He is not being sentenced for taking any material steps to act on the threats he made. There is no evidence before me of the collection of weapons, explosives, maps, planning or coordination."

"Indeed, following his arrest, police conducted extensive checks and searches on Mr. Akbari to ensure the safety of the community was not still at risk. Mr. Akbari's guilt is based on empty threats he communicated to a stranger, mistakenly assuming [he] would be sympathetic to Akbar's own warped and hateful world view. There was no effort to publicize his threats beyond the conversation."

"That is not to say that the threats were harmless. Mr. Akbari's threats were clearly motivated by bias, prejudice and hate toward Israelis and Jews. ... Hate-based threats are not just words, they are the gasoline upon which even more serious offences burn. Where hate is normalized, harm follows."

"It is impossible to overstate the sense of fear, anger, and frustration Mr. Akbari's words have instilled in the broader Jewish community."

Justice Edward Prutschi, Ontario Court of Justice, Newmarket 

The Newmarket courthouse is shown in a file photo. File photo/Village Media

 

"At a time of rampant antisemitism in Canada and elsewhere, it sends an alarming message that threats to slaughter Jews and bomb synagogues may be met with leniency."

"That is extremely disappointing and profoundly unsettling for our community."

Jaime Kirzner-Roberts, director, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies 

Justice Prutschi, while recognizing that physical harm follows voiced threats against Jews, and while commiserating with the 'sense of fear, anger and frustration' that Jews in Canada experience when threats of the nature spouted by this man take place, yet found it reasonable to dismiss the event to the extent of sentencing the malefactor to house arrest. The judge was well aware of the invasive and viral threats emanating from groups of Palestinian-Hamas supporters across Canada, condemning Israel for its purported 'genocide' in Gaza, and threatening to 'globalize the intifada' while chanting 'final solution'.

 

Yet he felt a reasonable response to this man's sinister threats "to kill as many Jews as possible", merited no more than a veritable gentle chiding of a 60-day period of restraining the man to his home and three years of probation. This is viewed by Justice Prutschi as appropriate penalty for advocating for actual genocide. A decision that entirely lacks acknowledgement of the nature of the offence, much less the potential of the man following through on his sinister threat. In contrast to the manner in which 'justice' was seen to be done in that Newmarket courtroom, a similar case in the U.S. was handled quite differently.

 

On July 23, the United States Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York issued this notice: 

"Earlier today in federal court in Brooklyn, Domagoj Patkovic was sentenced by United States District Judge Ramon E. Reyes, Jr. to 60 months’ imprisonment for conspiring to make threats and conveying false information about explosives.  The defendant made hoax bomb threat phone calls to historically Jewish hospitals and care centers in New York City and on Long Island. "

"Joseph Nocella, Jr., United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York and Christopher G. Raia, Assistant Director in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York Field Office (FBI), announced the sentencing."

“The defendant endangered patients and diverted precious law enforcement resources to advance his hateful agenda against people of the Jewish faith.  His actions fed a rising tide of antisemitism in America,” stated United States Attorney Nocella.  “Our Office will continue to prosecute dangerous bomb threats and swatting schemes to the fullest extent of the law, especially those motivated by hate, and those targeting vulnerable communities in hospitals and care centers.”

 

The defendant in the U.S. case made threats similar to those expressed by the defendant in Canada. In the case in New York, the legal authorities felt it appropriate to ensure that consequence under the law recognizing the seriousness of the man's actions and to deter others from performing similar actions, be given a sentence commensurate with the crime: 60 months' incarceration. In the Canadian case, the justice who handed down the sentence felt that a similar crime merited a 60-day home detention. As Jaime Kirzner-Roberts with the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center pointed out, the 'light sentence' indicates an urgent need to reform Canada's hate crime laws.

 

After hearing community impact statements from five Jewish community groups outlining the depth of fear and despair experienced by Jews with the spread of the news of the threats, and Justice Prutschi's own expressed empathy for the plight of Jews facing an ongoing flood of  unrestrained antisemitism combined with threats, that easy-going sentence of home detention was still considered fitting as a consequence of an unbridled hate crime and threat of death to the Jewish community.

 

Born in Afghanistan, taken to Pakistan at age six before moving to Moscow, Russia eight years later, Akbari moved to Canada in 2007. He became a Canadian citizen, opened a shawarma restaurant, married and had children. At the trial he denied any statements of bombing synagogues or killing Jews. The judge noted at trial the "false, despicable and odious" commentary expressed by Akbari, who also said he had no idea of what Judaism meant or what a synagogue was before he was arrested.

 

In March of 2024, Akbar was at a BMW dealership, waiting for an oil change. In speaking with a salesman there, he commented he would not lease or finance a new car since it was his belief that Israel and Jews controlled world events and took benefit from interest payments on all car loans He believed, he said to the BMW dealership salesman, that Israel was plotting to exterminate anyone who was not Jewish, and they all deserve deadly punishment which he was prepared to administer. 

 

The salesman in disbelief, challenged Akbari's statements asking if he was serious, leading Akbari to respond: "Yes, I'm serious. I'll make sure those attacks are filmed and posted online so the world can see what I've done."As it happened Akbari and the car salesman are both Muslims, both having grown up in Pakistan; their shared background left Akbari with the impression that what he said would be approved by the other. The salesman, however, described his impression as fearful, leading him to call police and report the conversation.

 

Waissudin Akbari

 

Subsequently, a police investigation led to Akbari being charged with threatening to damage property, and threatening death. "Based on the seriousness in his tone, I didn't think for a second he was joking", the salesman testified in court at Akbari's trial, the result of which was that Akbari was found guilty, and Monday he was finally sentenced. 

 

Crown prosecutors for their part had suggested a four-to-six-month jail sentence to be followed by three years of probation, DNA registration, and a weapons prohibition. Akbari's lawyer on the other hand, felt a conditional discharge, a finding of guilt without jail time or criminal conviction would be more appropriate. In the end, it seems that the judge favoured the lawyer's version of justice. 

 

In apparent sympathy with the defendant Judge Prutschi described Akbari's difficult life prior to his arrival in Canada, his restaurant work supporting wife and two teenage children, and an Ismaili Muslim community network expressing support for his rehabilitation while not condoning the threats. His shawarma franchise was cancelled. He went on denying he had issued any threats, expressing opposition to violence and antisemitism. 

 

At Toronto's Adath Israel Synagogue. Photo by Peter J. Thompson /National Post

 

"The result of the unprecedented rise in antisemitism has left a palpable dread hanging over the community. This atmosphere of despair is only amplified by the actions of Mr. Akbart."

"Jewish Canadians did not and do not feel safe in their own communities. The constant threat of attack has left members of the community in perpetual fear for their well being and has led to members of the community questioning their future as Canadians." 

Richard Robertson, director, B'nai Brith Canada 

The Nobility of Defacing a Holocaust Memorial

"[I had discussed my hunger strike with family to prepare them in advance -- it was not an] impulsive decision."

"I thought about it a long time. It wasn't some sort of product or symptom of mental illness."

"It's a product of a deeply found or held moral belief in what's right."

Iain Aspenlieder, 46, Ottawa resident

 

"There is an undeniable humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza. As Prime Minister Mark Carney stated, Israel’s handling of humanitarian aid in Gaza constitutes ‘a violation of international law.’ People are starving. Children are dying."

"Mr. Aspenlieder has accepted responsibility for his actions. When he is sentenced later this year, the court will hear that his conduct, while unlawful, was driven by a profound sense of compassion and moral urgency—not by hatred or prejudice. He looks forward to demonstrating that his motivation was rooted in a desire to call attention to human suffering, not to cause harm or spread intolerance."

Michael Spratt, lawyer for Iain Aspenlieder 

 

"The Ottawa Police Service (OPS) is investigating an act of vandalism that occurred overnight at the National Holocaust Monument, located at 1918 Chaudière Crossing."

"The monument was defaced with red paint."

"The Hate and Bias Crime Unit is actively leading the investigation and urges anyone with information to contact their tip line at 613-236-1222, extension 5625."

"The OPS treats incidents of this nature seriously and recognizes the profound impact they have on the community."

"We encourage anyone who witnesses or experiences such incidents to report them to police. Reporting hate-motivated incidents is an important step in stopping cycles of hatred."

Ottawa Police Service, June 9, 2025

 

"That person is no longer an employee [in the legal department] at the City of Ottawa."

"The National Holocaust Monument is a sacred place in our city, an important place in our city."

"And I know that members of the Jewish community were very distraught and disturbed to see it vandalized."

Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe, June 29, 2025 

The City of Ottawa has fired one of its lawyers after he was charged earlier this month with vandalizing the National Holocaust Monument. He was on leave at the time of the incident. CBCNews

 

According to the Law Society of Ontario website, a man named Iain David Aspenlieder -- who was until recently employed by the City of Ottawa as a legal counsel, and released from his position when he was arrested on June 27 and charged with mischief to a war monument, mischief exceeding $5,000 and harassment by threatening conduct -- has been "suspended administratively" and is no longer permitted to practice law.

 

The Ottawa Holocaust memorial, dedicated to the memory of the six million Jews who were murdered during World War II by state action of the Nazi government in Germany, was defaced with red paint, the words "FEED ME" scrawled in large block letters across its austere side. The man who perpetrated this unspeakable act of malicious disrespect to the memory of millions of innocent people sacrificed to the excesses of racist hatred pleaded guilty on Friday to the charges brought against him.

 

Court documents register "an acknowledgement of criminal responsibility". Imprisoned since his arrest, the man who professes a 'deeply held moral belief in what's right' as his motivation for scorning and defacing a memorial to man's inhumanity to man, is to be under strict house arrest now, with GPS monitoring in line with a plan proposed for his release on bail, pending sentencing.

 

Aspenlieder was caught by surveillance cameras on his arrival by bicycle at the monument at 2:59 a.m. on June 9, along with bags containing cans of paint. The video shows him throwing paint cans at the monument and brushing his "FEED ME" malice on the monument, then evacuating the area at 3:08 a.m. He had left behind his red-painted handprint for good measure. But this act of contempt is not to be viewed as anything but the expression of moral outrage over Israel's response to the Hamas carnage in southern Israel that necessitated a siege of Gaza.

 

When he was arrested, Aspenlieder wore a shirt with red paint spattered on it informing police he was wearing 'incriminating evidence'. Police seized a backpack, a Palestinian flag, a floral cap and running shoes, all of which were, given the red paint each revealed, 'incriminating evidence'. A bicycle, also sporting red paint, along with booklets and magazine  with titles sch as "Why does Canada choose to be complicit in Israel Apartheid?" and "Five Principles for Dismantling Antisemitism" were also taken as evidence of the man's moral outrage.

 

While affirming to police that he accepted responsibility, he deigned not to provide information of his beliefs, ideology or the disposal of the paintbrush he had used, while denying mental health disorders prompted his behaviour. Court was informed during a June 28 bail hearing that Aspenlieder was engaged in a hunger strike that would end only when Prime Minister Mark Carney stated that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was a 'war criminal', 'complicit in genocide'. Presto, Carney obliged without any prompting on this criminal's part, and the hunger strike is over. 

 

According to Justice of the Peace Stephen Louis Dibblee, the painted message "FEED ME" lacked context and it appears to him to represent Aspenlieder's hunger strike as "he takes a radical means of voicing his position on the (Israel-Palestine) conflict". For his part, Carney wrote on Twitter that Israel was violating international law by imposing blockades on desperately needed humanitarian aid reaching starving Palestinians, accusing the Israeli government of failing to prevent the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. No mention, evidently of Hamas.

 

No one has yet recommended that Carney and his foreign minister be stripped of their official duties as morally incompetent and politically focused on the reactions to be evidenced on the part of newly-arrived Gaza 'refugees' joining the cohorts already present in Canada and working ferociously day and night to foment civil unrest, and divisions between Canadian communities as they fire up the sleeping embers of antisemitism into a  blast furnace of hate against Canadian Jews.

 

Police investigating vandalism to the National Holocaust Monument in downtown Ottawa on June, 9, 2025. Photo by Jean Levac /Postmedia

 

"My father is a Holocaust survivor. His sister and his mother and father were all killed. My daughter is named after his sister" said Lawrence Greenspon, co-chair of the monument committee.

"When somebody defaces the National Holocaust Monument, it is personal and it hurts, and particularly when it is such an act of hatred and antisemitism."

Greenspon called on world leaders to go beyond 'bland and banal' condemnations and take action against antisemitism. He also said government leaders should "stop blaming Israel for the current conflict in the Middle East" — a clear shot at Carney. 

"Every time that a leader, including our own prime minister, stands with the leaders of France and Britain and condemns Israel for the situation in Gaza, it just feeds the fuels of antisemitism."

Toronto Sun 

Minority Protection in the New Syrian Government

"There isn’t a single home in the whole province that isn’t grieving someone."

"The youngest victim was 3 months old, killed by shrapnel that hit her stomach. This one was 14. She was slaughtered [young girl, her head turned to the side a scarlet line across her throat]."

"These are only the people we know about and who could reach us [many victims were buried in makeshift graves near people’s homes because the hospital had been surrounded during much of the battles]."

"The final tally will be much worse." 

 Randa Mihrez, one of the coroners at Sweida National Hospital

 

"They were screaming, and I tried to move them, to help them somehow. But I kept slipping on the blood."

"One relative was bleeding out and barely alive. He was begging, ‘Shoot me.’ But I had no weapons on me. I would have done it otherwise."

"[He heard the gunmen say] 'Kill them all. We don’t want them identifying us'."

Hatem Radhwan, 71, Druze Blacksmith 

 

"Initially, we wanted to bury them in the hospital’s backyard, but administrators worried we’d contaminate the water reservoir."

"The bodies were decomposing too much in the sun, they were becoming unrecognizable. We just couldn’t wait anymore [the man who bulldozed a mass grave for 149 people from the hospital either unidentified or whose families were unable to bury them]."

Basel Abu Saab, on a bare mountain outside Sweida's outskirts 

A group of Druze factions move displaced families from the city to the mountains in response to the battles with the Bedouins, Sweida, Syria.  (Hasan Belal/For The Times)

 

"On July 13th, a Bedouin group kidnapped a man and took his car. In retaliation, an armed group linked to the owner detained Bedouins in Swaida’s suburbs. The situation escalated: retaliatory kidnappings, property seizures, then shelling from Bedouin groups, which killed eight people, including a child. Druze fighters mobilized. Mediation led to the release of the hostages by July 14."

"Despite that resolution, on July 15, the ministries of interior and defense announced plans to forcibly enter Swaida to “restore peace.” Many interpreted this as a signal of Israeli approval, believing the Syrian government would not risk a direct retaliatory strike by Israel otherwise. The government’s offensive began from Daraa, targeting western Swaida. Resistance followed—not only from al-Hajari’s groups but also from Rejal El Karama, who supported integration with the state but were not consulted and opposed the incursion."

"A video showing Druze fighters humiliating government forces—including handcuffing and verbally abusing them—prompted further army mobilization. Later videos appeared to show the government forces being executed. The incident intensified the government fighters’ resolve, and the Druze’s basic defenses were quickly overrun. Government forces entered al-Mazra’a, a key village, without resistance. Still, reports of looting and burning houses emerged."

"As the offensive pushed forward, shelling hit residential areas, with reports of significant casualties and destruction of properties. To minimize casualties, identical statements from al-Hajari and Jarbouh welcomed state forces; however, violence continued. Videos surfaced showing fighters without uniforms, foreign accents, homes ablaze, and the public humiliation of elderly civilians. Al-Hajari said the government coerced him into the statement to prevent further bloodshed, but after continued attacks, he called for mass mobilization."

"Numerous Facebook videos showed killings, looting, and shelling. Druze ambushes intensified, and al-Hajari again called for international protection. Israeli airstrikes soon followed, targeting heavy weaponry and demanding a full army withdrawal. The violence triggered a broader popular uprising beyond organized armed groups, forcing many regime forces to retreat."

By Majd AlGhatrif, Atlantic Council 

One of the Druze injured from the city of Sweida receiving treatment at the National Hospital following the battles that took place between the Bedouins and the Druze factions in Sweida, Syria.

(Hasan Belal/For The Times)

 

 Ahmed al-Sharaa, once named Abu Mohammad al-Juliani when he led a terrorist group allied with al-Qaeda, has won the support of Western leaders, most notably U.S. President Donald Trump who was charmed by the young man wearing immaculately designed Western suits, bearded and smiling, claiming "He's a young, attractive guy. He's got a real shot at holding it together", as interim president of a new Syria. A Syria that the new president, after the ouster of Bashar al-Assad with a 14-year civil war of vicious attrition behind him, promised would respect the human rights of Syria's minorities. 

 

Minorities in Syria -- Alawites, Christians, Druze, Kurds, weren't so sure. Nor was Israel, that al-Sharaa/al-Juliano could be trusted to maintain a firm  hold over the Islamist groups that comprised part of the new government's military from the temptation to shoot rockets over the Golan Heights again, at Israeli towns and villages. The Syrian minorities had little option but to wait and see whether the new government's vow to preserve the rights of Syria's minority sects and clans would eventuate, even while the West was persuaded that this was an entirely new Syria.

 

And then, in March and April the coalition of extremists that comprised the new Syrian military went on a rampage within the Alawite community when some 1,500 Alawites were slaughtered. Giving due cause for the other minorities to wonder when their turn would be next. Al-Sharaa/Al-Juliano was shocked, shocked at the carnage, denying his military was involved, claiming that these were outlier Islamist groups -- nothing to do with him and his government. Then the Christians became targets.

 

And finally a week ago, government troops joined local Bedouin tribes to enter the Druze town of Sweida near the Syrian border with Jordan. Long-standing sectarian and ethnic antagonism was on full display as soldiers and Bedouin fighters entered the Sweida hospital to murder patients in their beds. The city of 75,000 was treated to widespread brutality. Reports of rape and Druze women taken hostage. reports of a man tied to a chair and set on fire, his wife and children forced to watch. Young Druze men were bound and forced to jump at gunpoint from balconies.

 

The outbreak of violence in southern Syria's Druze-majority Suweida province has caused alarm in recent days. Jon Donnison, BBC

 

Syrian soldiers, in one video clip, were shown to rip the moustache from a man's face, along with the skin, to great laughter. Druze men were humiliated, forcefully having their moustaches shaved off, where in Druze culture the moustache is a sign of respect and manhood. Hundreds of Druze from Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights crossed into Syria to fight with their Syrian Druze brethren. The IDF warned them to return to Israel. And in response to appeals from Israeli Druze who are loyal Israeli citizens, the IDF took to the skies to bomb government troops in defense of the Syrian Druze.

 

Tensions between the Bedouin and Druze in the area periodically erupted into violence since the fall of the Assad government, but the attack on Sweida was wholesale slaughter, the Druze overwhelmed by the numbers of Sunni Islamist groups joining the Bedouin clans and government soldiers in their murderous rampage. Israel's protective response against Syrian government forces did not win favour in the Trump White house. President Trump's boasts of easily turning swords into ploughshares have not gone well in Ukraine and Gaza.

 

Around 1,500 people from Bedouin tribal families who had been held in Sweida governorate were evacuated earlier this week under a ceasefire agreement, following fierce clashes between tribal forces and Druze gunmen loyal to religious leader Hikmat al-Hijri.  (Rami Alsayed / NurPhoto via Getty Images)

 

 

Biological Science Trumps Transgender 'Truth'

"In recent years I have received concerning reports from countless women and girls and their allies in which they detail how they have been vilified, ostracized, threatened and attacked for arguing that sex and sex-related data matter in the analysis of discrimination and inequality."

"They have lost their jobs, positions and support for defending language for or about women. Scientists and biologists have been attacked for asserting what science tells us that sex is as binary as it gets and that it is real."

"Medical doctors politicians, whistleblowers and women, human rights defenders have received death threats for pointing out the harms of socially and medically transitioning vulnerable children, including girls who have a right to the highest standards of physical and mental health and whose care must always be guided by their best interest and the best available evidence." 

Reem Alsalem, UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls

Allowing male-bodied athletes to compete in women’s sport rejected by female athletes by wide margin  Macdonald-Laurier Institute

 

The socially cataclysmic emergence of 'transgender rights' has reached astonishing proportions of acceptance from society at every level, from political support, to support from within the medical community, the sports community, social services community, academic community to the point where to disagree places anyone, whether celebrity, figure of social influence, or ordinary individual who expresses incredulity at the very assertion that sex is fluid, readily disposable, interchangeable or immaterial becomes a social outcast.

 

Even among members of the LGBTQ-2 community, lesbians, gays and bisexuals have taken to giving transgenderism a  wide berth of avoidance. The transgender community is no friendly support to those of the gay, lesbian and bisexual community on the other hand, so the distance is mutual. Gays know they are male; their sexual attraction is to other males; while lesbians make no pretense of not being female, and for the same reason. 

 

Women's Sports Policy Working Group

 

The bullying of those insisting that sex identified at birth does a disservice to their 'science' of biological dissonance with the binary reality of male and female, cows those who disagree. No one likes to be labelled a Nazi, an enemy of the militant transgender community now in favour in academia, medicine, politics and social media. Militant transgender groups' spite at having their verities questioned has become legendary in its reach. To the point where even a justice of the Supreme Court of Canada is uncertain of describing what it is to be female.

 

It is not unheard of to hear or read of individuals being described as 'people with a womb'. Of men posing as women to declare that they menstruate and are capable of bearing children. Women in the nursing profession expressing their opinions on the verity of two sexes risk having their careers thrown off the rails. This is an era where trained pediatricians lend themselves to the fiction of child decision-making over rejecting their acknowledged gender to prefer another leading to hormonal drug therapy and often irreversible surgeries.

 

Drag queens Feather Talia, Honey Dillia and Kymera read stories of inclusive families and love to children at the Canadian Museum of Human Rights. Rainbow Tales was one of many events at the museum this spring that celebrate Pride.  CBCNews

 

"Let me be frank. I never imagined the day would come where my mandate would deem it necessary to prepare a report affirming that the words women and girls refer to distinct biological and legal categories."

"The consequences of this blatant disregard of the material reality of sex have been devastating. The erosion of women and sex specific language, the conflation of sex, gender and gender identity have produced flawed data, overall weakened protection for motherhood women and girls, including lesbians, as well as women who do not identify as women, and girls who may be experiencing gender dysphoria."

"Recently, there has been a concerted international push to delink the definition of men and women from their biological sex and erase the legal category of 'women'."

"Such efforts have undermined the practical achievement of equality between men and women. Women are therefore being denied their rightful recognition as a distinct category in law and society."

"It is a form of 'coercive inclusion' that relies on the expectation that women will be kind enough to sacrifice their own recognition and protection for the sake of others."

Reem Alsalem, UN special rapporteur 

In school libraries children are exposed to books promoting transgenderism by leading children to wonder whether they really are the sex they've been known as since birth. The transference by implication to vulnerable children that they have the right to shed their sex in favour of another that holds appeal to them is encouraged by those within the school community who have adopted the mantra of the transgender community who assert that anyone can decide for themselves their sex preferences. Drag shows, promoted as suitable entertainment for children bolster the idea that changing sex is fun, so why not try it?

 

Toronto performers Kaleb Robertson, left, and JP Kane in their drag personas Fluffy Soufflé and Fay Slift on the set of The Fabulous Show on Family Jr. Canada. The award-winning performers say they won't stop reading to kids despite protests condemning drag storytime events. (submitted by JP Kane and Kaleb Robertson )

 

Women and girls who have worked for years to perfect their athletic prowess skills in various fields of sport accomplishments now are forced to compete in their chosen field against men purporting to be women. Sports associations have generally consigned women to accepting the presence of physically dominant males insisting they're now female, competing against women and winning tournaments because their male size, musculature, strength and capacity overwhelms those of women. 

 

Women's and girls' privacy in intimate settings such as bathrooms change rooms and other similar areas have been invaded by men calling themselves women. Men attesting to be female, where their word is often sufficient without any type of medical, surgical-hormonal-intervention to support their claims, are now placed in women's penal institutions where shared locker rooms, showers, and cells can expose female inmates to the predatory presence of males, some of whom have been incarcerated for crimes of violence against women, including rape.

 

Protesters at a recent drag storytime in Calgary had to gather 100 metres away from where the event was being held after city council brought in a new safety bylaw that prohibits demonstrations from taking place near the entrances of libraries or recreation centres. (Mia Sheldon/CBC )

 

The Homecoming 'Militant'/Terrorist Hero

"This is a victory for justice, but it is also a political scandal that he was not released before, thanks to the behaviour of the United States and successive French presidents."

"He seemed very happy about his upcoming release, even though he knows he is returning to the Middle East in an extremely tough context for Lebanese and Palestinian populations."

Jean-Louis Chalanset, lawyer for Georges Ibrahim Abdallah

 

"[The FARL --Lebanese Revolutionary Armed Factions -- long disbanded Marxist anti-Zionist group] had not committed a violent action since 1984."

"[Abdallah] today represented a past symbol of the Palestinian struggle."

"[Appeals judges found the length of  his detention] disproportionate [to the crimes ... and given his age]."

French Appeals Court

 

"The United States opposes the release of convicted terrorist Georges Ibrahim Abdallah."

"His release not only endangers the safety of U.S. diplomats abroad, but also betrays the memory of the victims and their families."

U.S. Embassy, Paris  

Abdallah was eventually released from Lannemezan prison in southern France in the early hours of Friday  AFP

 He has the reputation of being the inmate in  French prison who has logged the longest incarceration rate -- 40 years -- for his terrorist past, as a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and later the founder of the Marxist, anti-Israel Lebanese Revolutionary Armed Factions (FARL). But it was his involvement in the assassination of two diplomats that had him incarcerated at Lannemezan prison. In France, inmates serving life sentences typically serve fewer than 30 years. This man was an exception.

 

Detained in 1984, sentenced to life in prison in 1987 for the murders of U.S. military attache Charles Robert Ray, and Israeli diplomat Yacov Barsimantov in Paris, he was finally released from prison on July 25 with the proviso that he immediately leave France. In the early morning hours a convoy of six vehicles left the Lannemezan penitentiary, lights flashing. He returned to Lebanon, to the village that is his family home, and was greeted with pride and honour.   

 

Georges, seen here between two police officers, was convicted in the 1980s  Getty Images

 

 At age 74, he is prepared to once again take up the banner of defending Palestinian rights, accompanied with the propaganda formula that Israel  abuses those rights. In lock-step with Palestinian terrorists of the present time, he repeats charges of Israeli genocide, the starvation of Palestinian children, the trampling of the Palestinians by an Israeli aggressor, oppressing the people of Palestine. 

 

Eligible for release since 1999, his requests were denied when the United States, as a civil party to the case, consistently opposed his leaving prison. Once he was discharged from prison, Abdallah ws to be transported to the Tarbes airport. There, a police plane was scheduled to fly him to Roissey for a further flight on to Beirut. 

 

A demonstration outside the Lannemezan prison calling for the release of Lebanese national Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, founder of the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions (LARF) and former PFLP member jailed for life in 1987 for complicity in the killing of US and Israeli diplomats in 1982, in Lannemezan, south-western France, on October 26, 2024. (Valentine Chapuis / AFP)

 

During Israel's invasion of Lebanon, Abdallah had been wounded in 1978. He joined the Marxist-Leninist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, when a string of plane hijackings in the 1960s and 1970s were taking place. The PLFP is banned as a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union, along with other Western countries. In the late 1970s, Abdallah, though a Christian, founded his LARF group, in contact with other extreme left-wing groups such as Italy's Red Brigades the the German Red Army Faction (RAF).

Abdallah, interviewed by AFP at the detention centre before his release, stated that for over four decades he had continued to be a 'militant with a struggle'. And evidently this is what he is now returning to. French police had discovered sub-machine guns and transceiver stations in one of his Paris apartments after  his arrest in 1984. But his Lebanese Revolutionary Armed Factions that he founded has been long disbanded. 

 

He will doubtless find other ways to make an impact defending the Palestinian right to continue slaughtering Jews on their way to taking possession of the land Israel stands on, for a Greater Palestine. 

 

KOBAYAT: Lebanese army soldiers stand guard as pro-Palestinian Lebanese terrorist Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, 74, prepares to give a press conference upon his arrival in his village of Kobayat in Lebanon’s northern Akkar region on July 25, 2025, after serving more than 40 years in jail in France. – AFP

Gaza Statement Damning Israel

"The war in Gaza must end now."

"The suffering of civilians in Gaza has reached new depths. The Israeli government's aid delivery model is dangerous, fuels instability and deprives Gazans of human dignity."

"We condemn the drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food."

"[It is] horrifying that over 800 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid." 

"[Israel's aid distribution system is] dangerous." 

 Joint statement; 25 national signatories

 

"The statement fails to focus the pressure on Hamas and fails to recognize Hamas's role and responsibility for the situation. Hamas is the sole party responsible for the continuation of the war and the suffering on both sides."

"At these sensitive moments in the ongoing negotiations, it is better to avoid statements of this kind."

Oren Marmorstein, spokesman, Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry 

Palestinians gather as they carry aid supplies that entered Gaza through Israel, amid a hunger crisis, in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip July 20, 2025.   Dawoud Abu Alkas/Reuters

 

Israel is held responsible by the international community for a situation engineered by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. Nations that have historically supported Israel's legitimate existence as a homeland for the world's Jews, re-established on Judean ancestral land, recognizing its democratic nature in harmony with their own, with a diverse population given equal citizenship and a justice system equal to their own, have taken to chiding Israel in essence for responding to deadly carnage by an enemy sworn to obliterate the Jewish state.

 

What's more, while recognizing Hamas for what it is, a terrorist entity that has time and again attacked Israel with the intention of destroying the country so that in its absence the land that has been in contention since 1948 would fall to Arab Palestinians who claim it as their own heritage, those same countries view that terrorist group on an equal footing with Israel. 'Palestine' has always been historically Jewish, with a population augmented by waves of migrants primarily from Egypt, along with those of other Arab countries. Just as Judaism's precepts and prophets were pilfered to flesh out the Koran, the land consecrated to Judaism by its ancient and ongoing presence has been claimed by Arab Palestinians.  

 

Palestinian propaganda has found a home in the West, where corrupted reality alters history and miraculously changes the violent predator into a victim, the actual victim into an oppressor. Where violently lethal atrocities can be viewed as the unfortunate excesses of an 'oppressed' people struggling to be free from the oversight of a country forced to defend itself from the barbarity of those portraying themselves as victims, dedicated to the destruction of a Jewish presence in the Middle East. 

 

When a situation is as plain to recognize as the reality that abundant humanitarian aid is available for Palestinians in Gaza whose leadership has deliberately sacrificed them for the greater goal of diminishing Israel's credibility in the opinion of the civilized West, while the United Nations insists in supplying that aid through Hamas which amasses the food, fuel and medical supplies in its warehouses rather than distributing it to the population, Israel is condemned. The distribution of humanitarian aid through another source working in tandem with the U.S. and Israel is penalized by the UN refusing to work with it, while Hamas threatens Palestinians who gather that aid from a source Hamas considers in competition with its goal of controlling the aid by selling it at high prices at food markets.

 

The signatories of the statement of condemnation, insisting that Israel stop 'the war in Gaza', include France, Japan and Britain, as well as Canada, traditional allies of Israel, all of which now prefer to believe Hamas's propaganda of 'genocide'. Israel lost no time rejecting the joint statement, which included the pro forma addition of condemning Hamas for holding the remnants of the 251 hostages they kidnapped from Israel on October 7, 2023 when thousands of Palestinian terrorists swarmed into southern Israel to rape, torture and murder Israeli children and their families.

 

Those who signed the statement damned the Israeli proposal to expand settlements in the 'Palestinian territories', and any move to divide the 'West Bank' from East Jerusalem, Israel's capital. Such moves, they decry, would "critically undermine the two-state solution". That would be the Two-State Solution that Palestinian leaders have always rejected in their adamant, timeless refusal to recognize Israel's right of existence. The same Two-State Solution that Palestinians refused in 1947, and have continued to reject ever since.

 

The Two-State Solution that died completely on October 7, 2023. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation posts regular updates on social media relating to its life-saving distribution of humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza. It also posts notices of Hamas killing and injuring their GHF humanitarian workers. As well as threats and attacks against Palestinians who frequent the GHF distribution centers. Besides the U.S., Germany was the only other G7 country that failed to endorse the joint statement of condemnation against Israel.

 

An aid distribution point set up by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation near the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza on June 25. Eyad Baba / AFP - Getty Images file

 

Canada's Liberal Government, True to Form

"[It was] irresponsible and unacceptable [that Heritage Canada] conducted no research or background checks before they distributed this money]."

"If the government cannot conduct a simple background check on the institutions they distribute money to, they need to reconsider their use of grants and contributions."

"According to Heritage Canada’s own Departmental Reports, in 2020-21 they employed 194 full-time employees and spent $134,607,209 to promote diversity and inclusion. How is it possible with those resources that they did not see fit to evaluate an organization before deciding to grant it $133,000?"

Shadow Minister for Canadian Heritage, MP John Nater

 

"Regardless of the hate and propaganda he promotes, for years [Marouf] was able to sell himself to the government as a legitimate enterprise, regardless of how absolutely offensive his communications were. This is problematic."

"It is profoundly troubling that this individual was supported and enabled in his hate speech, and the government needs to overhaul whatever problem is in these programs."

Jaime Kirzner-Roberts, director of policy, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies 

Laith Marouf   Photo by Peter McCabe/The Gazette

The man at the centre of this controversy in 2022, Laith Marouf, is a flaming antisemite and all-'round racist. He was the top consultant for the Community Media Advocacy Center (CMAC); in fact its founder and only 'employee'. He was given to referring to Jews as 'bags of human feces' deserving of a 'bullet to the head'. He posted regularly on social media sites such as X, and the quality and quantity of those posts were readily available for viewing in a strictly cursory, casual search. Yet, even though a Liberal MP had flagged the content of these posts to then-Minister of Canadian Heritage Ahmed Hussen, they were dismissed. 

The Community Media Advocacy Center in the six years prior to and including the 2022 revelations, received contracts from the federal government valued at $500 million representing cost support, research and advocacy (for equity and diversity programs) from the Canadian federal broadcasting agency. When the scandal of the absurdity and outrage of the federal government having hired a racist consultant to operate training sessions in anti-racism for government employees led to the contract's withdrawal and attempts to recover the funding given the CMAC, little was heard of this man and his agency again.

Now it has been revealed that he was recently arrested, then released by Lebanon's Military Intelligence Directorate, in an area adjacent to the border with Israel. The restricted area that this took place in was a border town in Lebanon, called Mais al-Jabal. Marouf had evidently failed to present the required media credentials. Held incommunicado under "extensive interrogation" at Lebanon's Defense Ministry's headquarters just outside Beirut, he was released on Tuesday, evidently without charges or conditions. 

 

This man, who was known to refer to Quebecers as 'frogs', Black people as slaves, and characterizing Israelis as 'loud-mouthed bags of human feces, aka the Jewish White Supremacists' who would one day be forced to 'go back to where they came from' had been suspended from X for hateful commentary and advocating violence. He had regularly appeared as a pundit for Iran's Press TV and the Kremlin's Sputnik propaganda platform as a supporter of the Assad regime in Syria. He began his career, in violent 'anti-Zionist' protests at Concordia University decades earlier as the son of a Syrian diplomat in Montreal. 

 

After Justin Trudeau became prime minister in 2015, Marouf's Community Media Advocacy Centre collected some $517,480 in Broadcast Participation Fund grants. Once the uproar over his having been hired as an expert anti-racist, prepared to school federal civil servants in equity and diversity had subsided from the public eye and ear, Heritage Canada which had hired him, saw their officials undergoing workshops on identifying antisemitism, with instructions on identifying racists and antisemites among grant applicants.

 

Marouf had busied himself with pro-Hezbollah 'Free Palestine Television' in Beirut, insisting his FPTV is "unaffiliated with any political party or groups", while relying heavily on interviews with fellow 'anti-Zionists', leading to sympathetic coverage of the problems facing Hezbollah after it decided to join Hamas in its conflict with the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza, post-7 October 2023. Combat videos featuring Hamas, the Mujahideen Brigades and the Al-Qassam (IRGC) Brigades figured large in Marouf's FPTV series.

 

Mais al-Jabal, the border town where Marouf was picked up on Sunday, was a Hezbollah stronghold. The IDF last October destroyed lookout posts and weapons caches and tunnels in the town, mere metres from the Israeli border. On Marouf's arrival in Mais al-Jabal, he was detained at a checkpoint, and informed he lacked authorization to be in the area. Taken to a detention centre, his driver, Hadi Hoteit, a FPTV producer and correspondent for Tehran's Press TV, was released. 

 

View overlooking the Hula Valley and the town of Kiryat Shmona in northern Israel.  Alexey Protasov/stock.adobe.com

 

About 20 kilometres from Israel's northernmost city Kiryat Shmona, Mais al-Jabal is in a strategic location, one that Hezbollah used to rain rockets down over the Golan Heights to Jewish communities below. About 22,000 Israelis lived in Kiryat Shmonia before Hezbollah joined Hamas's war on Israel in October 2023. At least fifty percent of the city's buildings had been destroyed by Hezbollah rockets, its population evacuated to temporary safety in central Israel. 

 

Israeli reserve soldiers take part in a military drill in the Golan Heights, northern Israel, May 8, 2024

(photo credit: AYAL MARGOLIN/FLASH90)

 

"[FPTV launched] with the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Flood — the name Hamas and other Palestinian groups have given to the Oct. 7 massacre. The online station is based out of Lebanon, staffed primarily by students, professors and community members."

"FPTV’s goal is to support the resistance from a media standpoint and to incite free peoples to move and fight Zionism and imperialism wherever they exist."

"Knowing that there is a huge gap left in news programming in English that is supportive of resistance and the right to liberation … we decided to bring together our communities here to start a project, a community television station."

FPTV Website 

 

"The Middle East Forum, an American conservative think tank, published a report that FPTV had links to the Lebanon-based group Al-Tajammu. According to Michael Barak, a researcher at the Institute for Counter-Terrorism at Israel’s Reichmann University, Al-Tajammu is “an international pro-Iranian platform to leverage the resistance axis against the U.S., Israel and their allies”."

"Marouf described the attacks on Al-Tajammu as “frivolous” and accused the Middle East Forum of being a “racist organization”."

National Post