First They Come For the Jews ... Your Turn Next

"We have to take parliamentary security more seriously. We need as Canadians to open our eyes and recognize that political violence is not something that just occurs somewhere else, but that it is happening here in our own communities."

"[People have constitutional rights to express a point of view and disagree with fellow Canadians including parliamentarians], But it's also true that we're seeing more threats, more intimidation, more harassment, which can lead to harms both online and in the community."

(former) Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino

 

"My home has been outfitted with a greater degree of security than I feel is ordinary or that I'm personally even comfortable with."

"But when security officials tell you they need to make certain decisions in your best interest when it comes to personal safety and security, you listen to them."

Housing Minister Sean Fraser

Investigators collect evidence after the Montreal office of federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller was vandalized July 18, 2024. Photo by John Mahoney /Montreal Gazette

Overnight Thursday the Montreal office of Immigration Minister Marc Miller was vandalized, according to police. "Marc Miller Child Killer" was spray painted across the building's exterior, the office windows were smashed and pink paint sloshed on the front of the building. Calling the vandalizing a "criminal act" on social media, Miller said his office had been "daily" threatened for months. "This was no longer a peaceful demonstration."

 

It didn't take long for anti-Israel protesters to proudly take responsibility on Instagram and Twitter for the act. The action, said an Instagram post is "a reminder that the mobilizations will not end and that we will not give in to the genocidal state". 

 

Police are determining whether the office was equipped with an alarm system and if it was, why no alert had been received at 911 central. Police were informed of the incident when a passerby called 911 to report the damage. Police spokesperson Sabrina Gauthier confirmed that the interior damage was severe. Nearby surveillance cameras are to be examined for clues on the unfolding of the incident. 

 

Montreal police believe pro-Palestinian activists may be responsible for vandalizing Liberal MP Marc Miller's constituency office in Montreal. (Simon-Marc Charron/Radio-Canada)

 

Coincidentally Marco Mendicino, former public safety minister, has been calling for the creation of "protective zones" around political constituency offices to shield staff and members of Parliament from a rising tide of threatening incidents. Under the plan anyone who intimidates or harasses people would be subject to harsher criminal penalties, up to jail time.

Several Members of Parliament from various parties have had their constituency offices targeted in the last few years. Graffiti spray-painted on the exterior and rocks tossed through windows. Mr. Mendicino received "a barrage of death threats", his family also has been targeted. As he walked to his office one day, a man spat on him When booking appointments with members of the public, he and his constituency staff are more now prudent, sparing more effort to screening.

 

Police say all vandalism, including property damage in the office, was committed from outside. (Gabrielle Proulx/Radio-Canada)

 

It is these MPs' own government that has been the source of the problem, in failing to properly vet those they appoint to critical human rights positions. As long as the anti-Israel, pro-Hamas 'protesters' targeted Jews, Liberal Members of Parliament were disinterested in pursuing any avenues of responding to the threats they faced. Now that they are themselves becoming targets it suddenly becomes a matter of great importance to provide them with protection.

Jewish shop owners, Jewish children attending parochial school, Jews attending synagogue to worship or community centres were harassed and threatened by the presence of these 'protesters'. Encampments set up at university campuses sought to exclude Jewish students from their classes, Jewish faculty members from their lectures, all the while slandering Jews and Israel, calling for a global Intifada, for a 'final solution' to the 'Jewish problem'. And no level of government intervened.

That permissiveness emboldened the 'protesters' who claimed it their constitutional right to free speech when they blocked roads, entrances to hospitals, invaded municipal buildings, demanded that schools and local officials denounce Israel. By doing nothing to protect the Jewish public, officials who shrugged and turned away, lent practical support to the pro-Hamas gangs that disrupted social life and engaged in active antisemitism.

Betraying Israel, Rewarding Terror

"Our NDP motion does not mean Canada would be recognizing Hamas."

"Hamas is a terrorist organization and it is not the government of Gaza. In fact, it is far from it."

"This was supposed to be a motion that aligned with international law, aligns with Canadian policy. So we're hopeful that we will have some support from the Liberals and we're certainly seeing more movement from them over the last few days."

"[Canada's official position that there should not be movement toward recognition until after final-status talks between the two parties is] an excuse."

"This is a moment in time where we need to come up with a better solution for peace in the Middle East." 

"I don't believe that stopping killing children, the end of the bloodshed, the end of starvation, getting humanitarian aid to innocent people, getting the conflict to stop so that we are, we are able to move toward something that's more peaceful and just for Israelis and Palestinians, I don't think that's rewarding Hamas."

NDP Member of Parliament Heather McPherson

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.

In mid-March, in the Canadian House of Commons, parliamentarians saw members of the New Democratic Party wearing keffiyeh scarves, putting forward a motion that would recognize a Palestinian state. This is the sentiment of the Liberal-government-supporting NDP; that Palestinians deserve a state of their own, one they've yearned to achieve for close to 80 years, while simultaneously using every opportunity they can muster to denigrate and violently attack Israel. Israel, apparently, is the aggressor as an 'occupier' forced to defend itself from deadly Palestinian attacks.

Palestinians view themselves as victims of a catastrophe that occurred when the United Nations in 1947 offered a solution to Jews and Arabs in the area of the Middle East historically from the age of the Roman occupation, called 'Palestine'. Both Jews -- whose ancestral land it is, dating back thousands of years -- and Arabs -- who claim the land to be their heritage, though they migrated there in fairly modern history -- reacted differently to the UN's Partition Plan. Although the area offered represented a modest part of Judaic geography for a nascent State of Israel, the Jews gratefully accepted.

Palestinian leaders rejected the very idea of sharing the land they claimed for themselves with Israel, and launched violent attacks against Jewish towns. When Israel declared itself an independent state in 1948, surrounding Arab nations assembled a joint military to counter Israel's declaration, while sending Jews who had lived for generations in Arab and North African countries into exile, some 800,000 who then mostly gravitated to Israel, while the 700,000 Arabs calling themselves 'Palestinians' left as refugees, some voluntarily with the intention of returning once Israel was vanquished and others forced out.

When the Palestinian refugees entered neighbouring Arab states they assembled in refugee camps with the aid of the United Nations. And since the invading Arab militaries failed to achieve their objective to destroy Israel left no option for the Palestinian refugees to return, they were refused citizenship in the Arab countries they had migrated to. The intention being to keep them as a festering sore of discontented victims dedicated to ongoing violence against the Jewish State.

Since the ghastly October 7 invasion of southern Israel by Hamas terrorists resulting in a heinously savage massacre of Jewish children, women and men and the hostage abduction of hundreds of children, men and women by Hamas, taking raped and mutilated women, alive and dead, back to Gaza, a number of polls taken by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research have revealed how Palestinians both in Gaza and the West Bank feel about their prospects of statehood, a statehood they could have had in 1948 had they not rejected it then, and multiple times since then when Palestinian leaders rejected every peace initiative Israeli negotiators offered.

 

 

When the poll asked about how to "break the stalemate", 55 percent of Palestinians supported confrontations and armed intifada", and 45 percent chose "unarmed popular resistance". Asked to make a choice of a method to end Israeli occupation and establish an independent state, 39 percent of Gazans chose "armed struggle" over "negotiations". And since the October 7 massacre a March 20 poll saw a strong wish to have Hamas continue control of the Gaza Strip once the current conflict is resolved.

"If it was up to you, which of [these[ would you prefer to see in control of the Gaza Strip?" In Gaza, 52 percent of respondents chose Hamas; significantly greater than the 21 percent who wanted the Palestinian Authority to rule -- under someone other than its current President, Mahmoud Abbas. Asked how satisfied Gazans felt with the Hamas performance and its leader Yahya Sinwar, a total of 62 percent were satisfied, with 52 percent satisfied with Sinwar.

The poll established that should elections be held now, 34 percent of Gazans would vote for Hamas, the second choice was Fatah, the party of the ruling PA in the West Bank. An earlier survey, post-October 7 held by the Arab World for Research and Development found close to 60 percent of Gazans held a positive opinion of Hamas. Still, when McPherson addressed Parliament with her motion, she claimed Gazans do not support Hamas, and Canadians "were horrified on Oct 7 by the vile terrorist attack on innocent civilians in Israel by Hamas terrorists".

 

March 18, 2024 - "We've given the Liberals our red lines," says NDP foreign affairs critic Heather McPherson ahead of a vote on the opposition day motion brought forward by her party. The non-binding motion calls on the Canadian government to take a number of actions in response to the war in the Gaza Strip, including "officially" recognizing "the State of Palestine." Plus, we have reaction from Liberal MP Anthony Housefather, who is calling the motion a "huge slap in the face" for Canada's Jewish community.

 

One would expect Canadians to be repulsed by the slaughter of 1,200 people, the raping and gang-rape of women before they were murdered, the tortured men, women and children, the mutilated bodies and kidnapping of 250 people. These horribly epic events had ample proof they occurred since the Hamas terrorists proudly took videos of their vile, sadistic actions, and circulated them on social media.  Among Palestinians who had not seen the videos, 87 percent said Hamas committed no atrocities on Oct.7

Among those who had seen the videos, 81percent claimed no atrocities were committed by Hamas. Four of five Palestinians who had watched the videos must have felt the atrocities were just desserts for Israelis, with Hamas behaving quite acceptably against an enemy by its barbarous atrocities against civilians. Canada, and its governing parties, the Liberals and the NDP, are anxious to recognize Palestinians' state aspirations, preferring to believe they would accept a two-state solution and peace, despite ravening pro-Palestinian crowds protesting the Israel response to October 7, with cries of "From the River to the Sea!", "Intefada!", and "Final Solution!".

"[Canada's Jewish community is feeling] demoralized and intimidated [as it grapples with a spike in antisemitism]".

"[The motion] rewards Hamas [because it creates] a false equivalency between the State of Israel and the terrorist organization Hamas."

"Canada should be standing with Israel. Canada should be defending the right of Israel to fight back against a terrorist organization. We should not be passing motions that make a terrorist organization equivalent to a democratic state."

Liberal MP Anthony Housefather

Relatives mourn at Kibbutz Beeri  Aris MESSINIS / AFP