The Inhumane Cost of Conflict

"Humanitarian aid to Gaza?"

"No electric switch will be turned on, no water tap will be opened, and no fuel truck will enter  until the Israeli abductees are returned home."

Israel Katz, Israeli Defense Minister 

Many Gaza residents are suffering from long-term respiratory and eye issues due to using wood for cooking instead of scarce gas and electricity.   Photo: Fadi Thabet, Nuseirat

 

War is an unkind enemy of humanity. In Gaza, Palestinians suffer the impact of a war that the governing Hamas terrorists provoked. The savagery of the invasion of southern Israel by thousands of terrorists linked to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, lead by Hamas operatives was an exercise in unspeakable sadistic atrocities in the mass rape of girls and women, the  anguish they suffered through torture, the massacre of children, parents, the elderly,  and the abduction of infants, ailing men and women, held in Gaza to be used as trade pawns for Palestinian terrorists held in Israeli prisons.

Proof exists that civilian Palestinians followed the terrorists in their invasion to prey on civilians living in kibbutzim that had employed Palestinians from Gaza in farm labour. Trusted Palestinians who broke bread with their Israeli employers, and who in turn revealed to Hamas commanders planning the invasion, valuable details of the farming villages and their security protocols. Israeli hostages were held not only by Hamas terrorists, but by Palestinian civilians as well; mistreatment of the hostages was universal; humiliation, rape, deprivation of fresh air, of food and water.

Israeli children, women and men who were forced to live in tunnels, deprived of sunlight, of hygiene, of medicine for chronic health conditions, whom even the International Red Cross made no effort to make contact with. The threatened, abused and starved Israeli hostages served a purpose that the terrorists exploited; held in part by civilians working with Hamas, a significant number perished. Despite the Israel Defense Forces search for members of Hamas with the firm intention of permanently destroying the group's capacity to ever again prey on Israelis and Jews, missiles continue to rain down from Gaza to Israel.

 

Palestinians crowd around a bakery in Gaza. Photograph: Fatima Shbair/AP

 

How likely is it that any nation whose military is on the offensive would constrain their military targeting to protect civilians as Israel does? The civilian casualty rate in Gaza has been steep, as it has been in any conflict anywhere in the world. Hamas commanding elites made it clear in public fora that they have no intention of relenting in their goal of destroying Israel and murdering Jews; pledging to repeat the October 7, 2023 butchery over and over again until no Jews would be left. 

Gazans are now and have been for a year, living with major life inconveniences. Apart from the need to constantly move from one area in the Gaza Strip to another in advance of IDF planned attacks on Hamas infrastructure, their impermanence has necessitated that they live rough amongst destroyed and crumbling infrastructure  in many areas. There is a lack of potable running water, and no electricity. The lethal designs of Hamas created complete destruction, insecurity and the potential for death in the Gaza population, given the terrorist group's propensity to situate themselves and their weaponry in the midst of heavily populated areas.

 

Israel launched retaliatory strikes on Gaza after the attacks by Hamas  Reuters

 

"Every night is a struggle for us", 36-year-old Abu Amra says, living in Deir al Balah, central Gaza where she now cooks over a fire and laundry is done by hand. Israel, pre-Oct 7 attack supplied Gaza with electricity. In the immediate aftermath of the atrocities, the electricity to Gaza via Israel was shut down. The Palestinian population of Gaza which, in the vast majority favours Hamas rule and approves of the attack, whose result is the reason they now suffer may or may not now regret that choice. More likely they credit Israel alone with their suffering.

The electricity infrastructure of Gaza suffered over the years as a result of previous conflicts that Hamas had been responsible for initiating. The funding that Hamas has received from humanitarian groups, the European Union, the United Nations and Western democracies in general  has not gone into upgrading the civil infrastructure of the Strip, much less its electricity and water grids. It was used instead to create the massive, sometimes-sophisticated tunnel system that runs under the territory.

And while there are many civilians in Gaza for whom life has become a misery of scarcity of everything one depends upon in life in the modern era, there are those among them who view the current situation as a splendid opportunity to become wealthy over those scarcities and the misery of their fellow citizens. Like 23-year-old Mohammed Samra who bought solar panels for a new family business in central Gaza where he charges one shekel to charge a cellphone.

Police officers keep guard at a hospital in the southern Gaza Strip [File: Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters]

Malicious Advice by Antisemitism-Embracing Progressives

"[Israel must] ensure accountability for ongoing acts of violence against Palestinians by extremist settlers, reverse the record expansion of settlements in the West Bank which are illegal under international law, and work towards a two-state solution." 

"Israel must listen to the concerns of the international community."

"The protection of civilians is paramount and a requirement under international humanitarian law. Palestinian civilians cannot be made to pay the price of defeating Hamas. It must end."

"We call on parties to the conflict to agree to the [proposed Biden] deal. Any delay will only see more lives lost."

Joint statement from Canada, Australia, New Zealand

"The Jewish people are not conquerors in their own land -- not in our eternal capital Jerusalem and not in the land of our ancestors in Judea and Samaria."

"No false decision in The Hague will distort this historical truth and likewise the legality of Israeli settlement in all the territories of our homeland cannot be contested."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Protesters holding a banner "From the river to the sea" at European March organized by a coalition of organizations including the ABP to demand an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, Brussels, Belgium, May 19, 2024. (Photo: Sophie HUGON / Hans Lucas)

The more often and more horrendously Israel is attacked by those whom the international community view as entitled, despite their inhumane, sadistic and savage atrocities, to 'share' geographic space with the very state those attacks target the more isolated Israel becomes. Needless to say, those in the forefront of encouraging Israel to restrain its response to barbaric onslaughts on its civilian population, have never themselves been forced by circumstances beyond their control to confront the reality of a savage neighbour for whom slaughter of innocents is viewed as a right by 'oppressed' people.

 

Oppressed simply as a result of the neighbour endlessly targeted for bloodshed, forced by those circumstances to maintain a military vigil to apprehend terrorist attacks in a never-ending effort to protect its population. A neighbour whose leaders have never missed an opportunity to spurn opportunities to have a state of their own which would call upon them to recognize the legitimacy of the Jewish state and an obligation to put a halt to assaulting it in efforts to pry the state loose from its geography.

 

For four thousand years evidence links Judaean life with the ancestral lands that have become a controversial international concern. The plan for Partition allotted both Jews and Arabs their own particular portions on what was traditionally Jewish geographic territory. Jewish leaders were willing to surrender their quest for the greater proportion of the land that represented their heritage, while the Arabs who took on the mantle of 'Palestinians' (nomenclature dating from the Roman Era to identify land dedicated to ancestral Jewish land) spurned the opportunity to accept their portion.

 

They have spurned it ever since. The West speaks of the solution inherent in the 'two-state' condition of Partition, as a fair division of land enabling two states to live side-by-side. Palestinians speaking to the West agree, while conspiring among themselves, adhere to a 'one-state' solution; envisioning Israel absent the land that would revert in its totality to their sponsorship as 'Palestine' engulfing both areas, with a Jewish state no longer a reality.

 

Yet the prime minister of Canada and his Australian and New Zealand counterparts feel justified in pressing Israel to agree to a 'compromise' reflecting their idea of a solution. In reality what they impress upon Israel is their agenda that the Jewish State set aside the horrors of October 7 in favour of supporting an official, internationally approved Palestinian State to be established as a neighbour, one which will inevitably return to its 'resistance' mode against the presence of Israel to fulfill its larger scheme of the one-state solution.

 

The International Court of Justice non-binding opinion representing condemnation of Israel's supervision of lands captured 57 years ago, handily neglects to consider that this was accomplished in defending the state from a series of  neighbourly military attacks to unseat it from the region, and all failed. In no other part of the world, by no other country, would it be seen as 'illegal' internationally when a country in defending itself from military aggression takes possession of disputed land; borders historically have seen alterations and have never been internationally challenged.

All three Western countries are adamant in their renewed calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. So in that event, Hamas can reconstitute itself, rearm, recruit, and repeat -- as it promised was its intention -- the Satanic acts of unrestrained inhumanity that it demonstrated on October 7, 2023 it was so capable of, and revelling in, an extent of bloodletting that was never sufficiently repugnant to satiate the terrorists' appetite for torture, mutilation, excruciating pain and ghoulish acts of sexual depravity before murdering their victims.

These three lily-livered leaders of once-credible countries outperform themselves in the depths of their concern for humanity expressed toward a nation whose dedication to human rights far exceeds their own, whose system of justice is more than fully capable of punishing miscreants of its own in the event of their civilly-unapproved actions, and whose military has done more to protect civilian lives than any other nation's military in history. 

"Israel will continue to defend itself against hostile attacks on seven fronts, all directed by Iran through its proxies in the region."

"We call upon Canada, as a nation that values international law and institutions that uphold it, to do all it can to prevent those who try to disrupt global order from achieving their goals."

Israeli Ambassador to Canada, Iddo Moed

From One Indigenous Peoples To Another...

"As Anishinaabe, we are troubled by the expressions of hatred against Jews and Zionists, and the disappointing ignorance, fuelled by misinformation coming from universities."

"Ignorance about the indigeneity of the Jewish people in the region that is Israel. Ignorance about the values that Israel, as a democracy, stands for -- as imperfect as it is. Ignorance about the rights and responsibilities Israel has as a nation state and member of the United Nations. Ignorance about Zionism -- its compatibility with Palestinian self-determination, a two-state solution, and the fact that the vast majority of Jewish people identify with Israel. Ignorance about the current reconciliation efforts of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians. Ignorance about our shared  history and the intentions of our original relationship."

"And how quickly the sadistic savagery of Hamas's invasion of Israel and its promises to repeat October 7 again and again and again are forgotten."

Harry Laforme, Karen Restoule, Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation; Dokis First Nation

Anti Israel protesters rally at the University of Toronto’s Convocation Hall as the university’s deadline to remove the encampment has passed, Monday May 27, 2024. Photo by Peter J. Thompson /National Post

Karen Restoule specializes in public affairs, and with her law degree she is a vice-president with Crestview Strategy, honourary witness to Hamas's October 7 attack suffered by Israel. Harry Laforme is a retired appellate court judge, and practising lawyer. They submitted their impressions of the recent takeover of Canadian university grounds by pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protesters, on unceded First Nations territory and their outrage at the protestors' bald assertions that First Nations are in support of their slanders against Israel and intimidation campaign against Canadian Jews.

 

For them the land in question has a spiritual essence that calls out to Canada's Indigenous population as the original inhabitants of the great land mass called Canada: "All relations with Indigenous peoples need to be based on the recognition and implementation of their right to self-determination", which universities claim to recognize, respecting rights and Treaties governing authentic First Nations lands. "The Land has spiritual essence and we are its custodians", a reality of "duty to consult" when Treaty Lands are used. 

Their written submission to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights Study of Antisemitism notes the fact that on the Treaty Lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation six universities are positioned and that universities recognize the Indigenous peoples whose territory it is they occupy. Universities display fidelity to reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, express awareness of Indigenous presence and land rights but often fail to respect the Treaties that govern the lands, as they have latterly been doing in permitting, without consultation of their Indigenous partners, the occupation of areas falling within the lands, for a purpose insulting to and opposed by them.

Of the six universities on Treaty Lands, five host encampments without having consulted the MCFN, where encampment occupiers along with pro-Palestinian protesters have taken control in illegal actions, excluding Jewish and Zionist students and faculty, limited their access to Treaty Lands and threatening them. The evident hatefulness of exclusion, bigotry, harassment, antisemitism, lawlessness and unadulterated antipathy are offensive to the values of the Treaty Land owners on their sacred land who are affronted by the level of lawlessness on full display.

The narratives of false history, rampant slander, and fiction posing as fact to delegitimize Israel and its historical claims of ancestry vastly predating by millennia any slender claims made by former Egyptian migrants to Palestine, as the original 'Palestinians' are offensive both to reason, and truthful history. Their goal of isolating and spreading hate against Jews offend the concept of equal human rights. To the Indigenous peoples of Canada the proponents of hate's use of sacred ceremonies like lighting of a Sacred Fire, smudging, drumming by activists in encampments on university campuses are beyond the pale in misappropriation of another culture.

The accusations of "colonizer", "settler", and "decolonize" as part of the slanderous public relations machinery of those who celebrate the Hamas atrocities against Israeli civilians to justify terror, kidnapping, rape and massacres are anathema to humanity's most core values of civilization. "These words are used to assert revolutionary violence 'by any means necessary' and that 'all forms of resistance', are justified. ... We unequivocally reject these assertions and any allyship with those who hold such views", the authors of the submission wrote in justifiable outrage.

 

Supporters walk past a sign at the pro-Palestinian protest encampment on UQAM University campus, in Montreal, on May 27. Photo by Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press

"We, as Anishinaabe Zionists, are made to feel unwelcome on our Treaty Lands by treaty scofflaws and encampment occupiers, who self describe as part of the current colonial regime that marginalizes and oppresses Indigenous peoples -- us. Perhaps, they should begin an examination of the illogic of their own activities on our ancestral Treaty Lands."

"Our Treaty partners must enforce the law and codes of conduct on campuses and communities across the country Codes of conduct consistent with the Treaties and The Seven Sacred Teachings should be developed."

"The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism must be applied by all who fall within areas of federal oversight, influence, and authority. Indigenous people should be consulted with, about how Treaty Lands will be used. Universities must stop the false narratives. Facts, reality, truth -- not fiction, feelings and ideology -- should be taught."

Harry Laforme,  Mississaugas of the Credit First Nations

Karen Restoule, Dokis First Nation

Canada's Abandonment of Democratic Embattled Israel

"About a year ago, we had this whole debate about judicial reform. That didn't actually happen in the end, right? So right now, at this point in time ... there's absolutely no argument about how independent the courts in Israel are."

"When it comes to civilian casualties, every strike, every single strike, goes through legal evaluation. Also the larger humanitarian situation within war zones, and Gaza specifically, is always something which the international law department of the army always accompanies. And so you always have this legal envelope in order to ensure that everything is done according to international law."

"Canada as a country over the years, has been an incredible friend of Israel. But after having said that, I have to say that I've been very disappointed with a lot of things that have come out of Canada."

"...Since October 7, in the beginning, we felt a lot of support, but then very quickly, we've seen a lot of actions we've been very disappointed with. That includes the famous vote [in Parliament]."

"And yes, there's a lot we've been very disappointed with in Canada's policy in general."

Dan Illouz, transplanted Montrealer, current Likud member of Israeli Knesset

"It's likely that they will issue these warrants that the prosecutor asked for, which means that the prime minister and the defence minister can no longer travel to any country in western Europe."

"So this means that if the president of France wants to speak with the prime minister of Israel, he'll have to come here."

Shmuel Rosner, Israeli journalist, political commentator

Karim Khan, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. Credit: Loey Felipe/U.N. Photo

 

Arrest warrants, according to International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan are awaiting production. Three meant for the Hamas leaders who are responsible for the orchestration through practise, and eventual execution of a planned-for border invasion from Gaza into Israel for the very specific purpose of terrorizing and victimizing Israeli citizens, mostly Jews, but including some Muslim Israelis and a number of foreign farm workers. In total 1,200 people were mercilessly slaughtered while countless Jewish girls and women were systematically raped, tortured and murdered.

As were infants and children, along with their families, many burned alive when their homes were set fire, their safe rooms that sheltered them becoming the ovens of their destruction. The sheer savagery of the attacks represented a hell on Earth; men, women and children slaughtered because they were Jewish Israelis. Jewish Israelis living in border kibbutzim who empathized with Palestinians living in Gaza to the extent that many of the Jews committed to hiring Palestinians as farm workers, and many others were regularly transported as a humanitarian gesture to Israeli hospitals for treatment.

None were spared. Among the Palestinian civilians who flooded across the border from Gaza into Israel with the terrorist invaders were those who had formerly shared food in the kibbutz mess halls with Israelis when they worked on the kibbutz farms. They knew the locations within the kibbutzim of the buildings that housed the community's security personnel, and those were the first of the buildings to be entered by the terrorists, their security residents summarily executed before moving on to the homes of community families.

The estimated 3,000 members of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, alongside Palestinian Gazan civilians dispatched any Jews they could find, and there were hundreds hunted down and murdered at the site of the Nova music festival taking place that holiday weekend in southern Israel, young men and women gathered for a celebratory music festival when their gaiety and comradeship suddenly turned on Saturday, October 7 into a desperate flight for survival that not all succeeded with.

Karim Khan's announcement of the arrest warrant requests included Israel's Prime Minister and its Defence Minister; Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant. Nothing to distinguish these two Jewish-Israeli leaders who are overseeing their nation's response to that mass murder of October 7 by invading Gaza with the direct purpose of destroying terrorism's future opportunities to wreak such sadistic violence again on Israel's citizens. Acting in complete accordance with international standards of conflict, but in the style that Israel has pioneered, with far fewer civilian casualties than any similar conflict.

It should be noted that the International Criminal Court's mission is not to prosecute figures from nations with law-objective judiciaries enabled to handle their interior/exterior affairs in the finest tradition of Western democracies where any and all potential violations of international are investigated thoroughly without fear or favour. Dan Illouz with his law degree from McGill University served with the Israel Defense Forces as an adviser on international law. The IDF is mindful that its actions be in keeping with international obligations, supported by strict procedures. 

In Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau , his foreign minister and deputy prime minister refused to take a position to deny support for the ICC's request for arrest warrants, much less whether Canada would commit to arresting Israeli state figures should the warrants be granted. It has been made abundantly clear over the months since the October 7 invasion that equivocation, uncertainty, and eventual abandonment now marks Canada's relationship with its erstwhile friend and partner in democracy.

 

Seven in ten Palestinians responding to a poll approved of the Hamas barbarity of October 7. The Palestinian Authority's Mahmoud Abbas has an approval rating in the single digits; seven in ten Palestinians call on his resignation. Abbas at 88 won his electoral mandate close to two decades ago. It is a certainty that if an election were called today for leadership of the West Bank and Gaza Strip Hamas would win a wide and clear majority of votes. Not only is the Trudeau government playing to its home audience comprised of a far larger Muslim than Jewish population among whom Palestinians  have mounted a pro-Hamas campaign, but it seems to find itself in favour of promoting a Hamas future government as well.

"[The attempt to get Netanyahu and Gallant arrested is an] unrestrained frontal assault on the victims of October 7 and our 128 hostages in Gaza."

"While Hamas murderers and rapists commit crimes against humanity against our brothers and sisters, the prosecutor mentions in the same breath the prime minister and defense minister of Israel alongside the vile Nazi-like monsters of Hamas—a historical disgrace that will be remembered forever."

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz

"The statement of the chief prosecutor at the International Court of Justice on his request for arrest warrants against Israel’s leaders is a shameful act of moral bankruptcy."

"Comparing Israel—a democracy that cherishes and protects civilian life—to Hamas terrorists who commit atrocities and glorify death, is a scandalous and shameful distortion of justice. …"

"This disgrace must be strongly condemned and will not be allowed to pass without a strong response."

Dan Illouz, Likud Knesset member

In the wake of the recent release of a video showing the abduction of female soldiers from the Nahal Oz base, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has requested the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to release a modified version of the 43-minute video documenting the brutal events of the Hamas massacre on Oct. 7. JNS

United Nations Corrupt Justice/Criminal Arms

"The State of Israel is committed to continue fighting to return its hostages and promise the security of its citizens -- wherever and whenever necessary -- including in Rafah."

"We will continue operating in accordance with international law wherever we might operate, while safe-guarding to the best extent possible the civilian population."

"Not because of the ICJ, but because of who we are and the values we stand for."

Benny Gantz, Israeli war cabinet member 

Troops of the Nahal Brigade operate in eastern Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, in a handout image published May 22, 2024. (Israel Defense Forces)

 

There is no arm of the United Nations which has not been permeated with a solid antipathy toward the State of Israel. The entire mission of the United Nations; equality, peace and security for all,  has been perverted for decades with the steady infiltration of cadres of UN authorities and employees of the institution that harbour an ingrained message of antisemitic rejection, one that singles Israel out in every conceivable way to use it as the proverbial whipping-boy for all that may be wrong anywhere in the world; yet seldom in Israel.

In the direct wake of the International Criminal Court condemning Israel for its incursion into Gaza for the express purpose of routing and defeating its terrorist government in direct response to the Hamas terrorist attack in southern Israel that left 1,200 Israelis, mostly citizens dead, the Palestinian terrorists having taken body cam videos of devastatingly savage and psychologically sadistic rapes and accompanying mutilations, where infants, children, the elderly and infirm were all slaughtered, a second censure from the International Court of Justice followed.

 

There is no nation on Earth, self-respecting and committed to the defence of its population, that would not respond to the brutality, the depths of depravity committed and the horrors of invaders murdering their people as Israel has done. The terrorist group Hamas has refused to surrender any of the 135 hostages of the original 250 it had captured and brought back to Gaza. Maintaining them in the countless tunnels that honeycomb the Gaza Strip, they are abused and used as human shields knowing how Israel values the lives of all its citizens.

 

Israel's sworn intention to destroy the Palestinian terrorist ability to continue their barbaric attacks on its people includes not only the destruction of the stockpiled weapons in the possession of the terror groups, but their operatives as well. It is the least that any other country would designate their ultimate goal. Yet ostensible collegial Western countries choose to chastise Israel for placing the lives of Palestinian citizens at risk, even while the Israel Defense Forces take precautions no other military would undertake in similar circumstances.

 

That the International Court of Justice's order that Israel halt its military offensive immediately, in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, it has no capacity to enforce the order and Israel will not accept the court's jurisdiction. Yet both the courts' judicial and prejudicial interventions slamming Israel and supporting the Palestinian 'cause' prejudice unjustly Israel's flagging global reputation. 

"The International Court of Justice's decision opens up the possibility for relief, but only if governments use their leverage, including through arms embargoes and targeted sanctions, to press Israel to urgently enforce the court's measures."

Balkees Jarrah, associate international justice director, Human Rights Watch

 

"[Fears the court expressed earlier this year about an operation in Rafah have] materialized. [Israel must] immediately halt its military offensive [in the city and anything else that might result in conditions that could cause the] physical destruction in whole or in  part [of Palestinians there]."

Nawaf Salam, ICJ president

Two weeks ago, Israel began disseminating evacuation orders as military operations began on the city's edge. The IDF says an estimated million Palestinians have since left the immediate area as Israeli forces press deeper within. Rafah is considered the last and ultimate stronghold of Hamas, where four of its divisions are sheltering, and it is there as well that Israel expects the bulk of the Israeli hostages may be found.  

Judges arrive at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to rule on South Africa's request on a Rafah and wider Gaza war ceasefire, in The Hague, on May 24, 2024 (Nick Gammon / AFP)

The Wandering Jew No More

"Only in [a] bizarro world and America would Islamism be considered Progressive."

"In reality, Islamism is the most regressive, misogynist, racist, exclusivist, supremacist of ideologies."

"Read Fida and Qutb, or keep on getting your Ivy League education through TikTok."

Hussain Abdul-Hussain, research fellow, Foundation for the Defence of Democracies

 

"In 2022, there was one resolution each to criticize Iran, Syria, North Korea, Myanmar and the United States for its embargo on Cuba."

"There were six resolutions last year on Russia because of its war in Ukraine. The total of all these is 13. Yet on Israel alone, the [General Assembly] passed 15 condemnatory resolutions."

"Not a single [General Assembly] resolution was introduced on the human rights situation in China, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Turkey, Egypt, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, Qatar, Vietnam, Algeria or 175 other countries."

Hillel Neuer, UN Watch

 

"One doesn't see the instant outpouring of emotions, the pain and anger, when Muslim populations across various conflict zones and under various dictatorial regimes suffer far more atrocities than the Palestinians."

Raheel Raza, Council of Muslims Against Antisemitism

Israel Defense Forces via AP

Accusations against evil-doing Jews are legendary throughout the ages; once held responsible for the Black Plague in the Medieval era, closer to our collective memory the Coronavirus Pandemic for which Jews were once again singled out as the cause of another catalyst of global collective death. Following the Roman Empire's putting down of a rebellion by Jews against centuries of domination/occupation by the Romans, when the Second Temple of Solomon was destroyed in the conflict and Jews were expelled from their ancestral homeland, a great diaspora took place when Jews were scattered all over the world.

Wherever they went on the globe, east, west, south, north, they were viewed with suspicion and frequently outright hostility. Their presence succeeded in benefiting the countries where they were allowed to settle, in technical innovations, scientific enquiry, medical progress and economic enterprise, but eventually they were hounded and expelled as they were in Spain and Portugal by the Inquisition. Expelled in Austria and Britain, eventually to return. In Eastern Europe land ownership was denied them, and pogroms resulted whenever area authorities wanted to divert the public's attention from their own administrative incompetence.

In Germany, where Jews were well established, proud of their assimilation into German culture, social and professional life, the final iteration of a carefully calibrated campaign of oppression, intimidation, threats and pogroms burst into a state-sponsored-and-designed elimination of the right to consider themselves human, as the machinery of annihilation of a people went into full gear. The world heard rumours of death camps but preferred to remain oblivious of state-organized slaughter on a scale never before imagined.

Genocide is a wound that can never heal, its perpetrators can never rehabilitate their nationhood, destroyed along with the uncountable human souls they destroyed. Jews realized throughout their endless mourning that the curse that followed them through an eternity of existence had lifted but it was a temporary reprieve. Now, Islam, a religious devotion sacred to an immense global population has offspring infected with a religious fervour to complete what European fascism aimed for.

A number of fanatical Islamist sources within the greater Islamic population treasure a covenant to destroy Jewish life and with it the reborn geographic heritage that led to the final chapter in the legend of the wandering Jew. Terrorist groups incited, armed, trained and loyal to genocidal regimes dedicated to the obliteration of the State of Israel. Their oil wealth and their interpretation of Islam's sacred scriptures lead them to the belief that it is their version of god that instructs them to commit genocide anew.

 

Palestinians taking Israeli hostage to Gaza ... AP

 

They have become skilled in the social-human art of propaganda and social conditioning inherent in 'public relations' where they portray themselves as avenging saviours of the world's longest-reigning 'victims' whom Jewish cunning and evil-mindedness has deprived of their freedom, their land, their hopes for the future. The ancestral homecoming of the Jewish diaspora enraged the Arab League and the UN's Organization of Islamic Cooperation. Arab armies combined to launch wars in 1948, 1967 and 1973 in the fledgling rebirth of Israel. They were repelled, defeated by the infinitely smaller, poorly equipped defence forces of the Jewish State.

"No peace with Israel, no negotiations with Israel and no recognition of Israel", was the guiding light of response from the Arab League following the 1967 war, when Israel's defence won territory in Egypt and Syria which it was willing to surrender for peace. The most recent war now takes place in Gaza, which Israel unilaterally surrendered to the Palestinians hoping the gesture would result in peace. The terrorist group Hamas had other ideas. Its covenant is clear; its goal is Israel's destruction.

There are many ways to destroy a people; one begins with slander that holds them to be less than human, accusing them of planning the wholesale death of others, of perpetrating the worst horrors imaginable upon helpless civilians, when in fact, they have engaged in conflict to inflict a penalty upon a conscienceless group of Islamist terrorists whose savagery mutilated and murdered Israeli civilians setting Israel on a course of destroying those that would destroy it and its people.

 

Elderly hostage from Kfar Azza kibbutz ... AP

"There is NOTHING anyone could do that would lead me to kill a child in cold blood, dismember a woman, slice her genitals, blow up parents in front of their children, laugh, sit and eat at their table." 

Shoshana Keats Jaskoll, Jewish activist and writer

Corrupting the Function of Unions

"I put up my hand, and I said I would like to speak to the fact that what you're wearing is a political statement, and it makes me feel very uncomfortable."

"And then, before I really could get any [more] words out, she mutes me."

Unidentified union member, fearful of repercussions

"Part of Israel's military occupation, apartheid and genocide ...is the erasing of cultural symbols such as the keffiyeh."

"Intimidating and harassing individuals for wearing traditional cultural clothing is a form of racism ... we do not tolerate racism in union meetings."

"Without resistance there is no union. A union is about caring for each other and struggling together for better. When you stand up to injustice I want to be there with you, because together we have the courage to never back down. I hope to serve as your Member At Large. And, let's never forget -- free Palestine!"

"Yes, I believe that Palestinians should be free from occupation, free from living under apartheid, and free from genocide and I will always stand for that. Being a union leader, when you are seeing people being massacred, that is a time when you need to open up your mouth and speak and say that is wrong -- just like I stand with the rights of workers -- I will always stand by the rights of oppressed people."

Canadian Union of Public Employees Toronto chapter union 905 president Katherine Grzejszczak

 

"Our union president speaks of inclusive spaces, but without Jewish perspectives."

"When the person who was supposed to represent us all wears clothing that has roots linked with terrorism, we do not feel safe or represented."

"Her personal views should not represent our union views."

Unidentified Union member, fearful of repercussions

In this screenshot from a video meeting, Katherine Grzejszczak’s laptop can be seen adorned with a large Palestinian flag sticker.

Toronto area CUPE 905 representing 6,000 municipal government and library workers across York Region held a video conference on remote-work policies on April 17. They were greeted with an unusual sight. Union president Katherine Grzejszczak's laptop facing the audience had a large Palestinian flag sticker facing the audience. One member responded by altering their own display picture with an Israeli flag. In the video Grzejszczak is first seen wearing a black T-shirt, then changing to a flowing red keffiyeh.

Upon which when one union member protested the sight of the union president swaddled in the keffiyeh, she responded: "We're not allowed to talk about anything political." The protester responded: "By you putting on that scarf, you're making it political". The response from the union president was to mute the protester. "We're all very afraid of the repercussions", one union member confessed in a journal interview.

Later at a follow-up meeting Grzejszczak brought forward a motion to fund her candidacy for another position with the union. Her campaign emphasized the concept of "resistance". CUPE 905 members who wee taken aback by the situation said that after the October 7 atrocities committed by Hamas they are still awaiting any reference by her to the hostages taken by Hamas, on the terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians, much less steadily rising antisemitism in Canada. "I don't feel it's a safe place for Jewish people", a source stated.

 

A woman wears a keffiyeh during a rally in support of Palestinians. The scarf's ubiquity in anti-Israel protests since Hamas’s October 7 attacks has made it a divisive symbol for many of Israel’s supporters. Photo by Thomas Coex/AFP via Getty Images

A female participant at the meeting who was herself wearing a black keffiyeh pledged her support for the president's candidacy, elaborating at some length on the importance of Free Palestine and the history of the conflict, as she saw it. "I was silenced for this topic. She is being political. Why is she not being muted?" asked the union member who had protested and had been muted as a result. She was thereupon once again muted. 

Additional members of the union expressed their own feelings of frustration over a labour forum purportedly dedicated to public-sector workers in York Region being diverted by its president for personal political reasons, to focus on a conflict occurring thousands of miles distance from Canada. "It's so bad that  you can't even concentrate on labour because this is ongoing, all the time", another union member reported.

 

Grzejszczak’s pitch to members centres on the concept of “resistance.”

 

"What we did in the Ontario legislature was make sure that our Jewish members and our Jewish constituents feel safe and able to debate with merit rather than props [when the Speaker of the Legislature banned the keffiyeh's presence in the chamber]."

"I would suggest that, given the class action lawsuits that I've seen crop up against the province as a result of antisemitism in some of the unions, union leaders should be more cognizant of the harm that they may be doing to people's mental health."

Ontario MPP Lisa McLeod

The High Price of Terrorism

"The criminal enemy is driven by the spirit of revenge and murder and does not value any standards of laws."

"The enemy believes that by targeting the families of the leaders, it will push them to give up the demands of our people."

"Anyone who believes that targeting my sons will push Hamas to change its position is delusional."

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh 

An Israeli raid claimed the lives of three sons and three grandchildren of Hamas' political bureau leader, Ismail Haniyeh. (Photo: video grab)

 

Delusional, as in the incapacity to recognize reality, leading one to believe irrationally that one's criminal activity directed against a perceived enemy is totally within reason and represents an honourable action. That slaughtering innocent people represents a qualified success in persuading that enemy that they will never succeed in arguing it is better for all involved to live in peace by demonstrating that instead of peace enabling two different cultures, religions, ethnicities to abide one another's presence without resorting to conflict, it is far more effective to launch deadly attacks to deliver the message of absolute rejection.

Delusion is the attitude that surfaces of disbelief and fury leading to the sanctimonious censure of the 'enemy' that strikes back in a message that declares no one is untouchable who is involved in the murder of our citizens, particularly if they are themselves 'sensitive' subjects of familial concern, in the wake of a remorseless barbarism of savagery unleashed on helpless civilian children, women and the elderly. One that remains unresolved with the condition of hostages still held as bargaining chips unknown, although some are held to have been murdered while in captivity.

 

People gathered for vigils in Jerusalem and around the world to remember those killed or taken hostage on Oct. 7. CBC still from video

Three sons of Hamas leader Haniyeh, themselves part of the Hamas terrorist operation, given their father's leading role in the deaths of thousands of Israelis over the years were assassinated as just dues of the October 7 mass murder of Israelis, eliciting condemnation from Haniyeh at the 'criminal' actions of a nation's military tasked to protect and perserve the lives of their own population. Whereas Haniyeh is fond and proud of declaring at every opportunity how proud he is that Palestinians willingly offer their lives as 'martyrs' for the cause of destroying Israel.

 

What is unfortunate is that Palestinian terrorists never quite believe they will one day have their lives extinguished in attacks countering their own. Which leads to the death of innocents, both Israeli and Palestinian. Three of Haniyeh's grandchildren were killed in the Israeli strike that dispatched their fathers, Hazem, Ameer and Mohammed Haniyeh, when the vehicle they were all travelling in was struck by a drone within the Gaza Strip's al-Shati camp. Children anywhere deserve to live and to flourish and to become decent human beings.

"From a military point of view, Hamas is defeated. Its fighters are eliminated or in hiding [and its capabilities [crippled]."

"Fighting against Hamas will take time. Boys who are now in middle school will still fight in the 
Gaza Strip."

"Wherever there are terrorist targets, the Israel Defense Forces will be there."

Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz

Ismail Haniyeh said the car containing members of his family was targeted as they were visiting the Shati refugee camp for Eid. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Canada's Resurgent Antisemitism

"Specifically, I'd like to hear from someone who wants a ceasefire/is finding it hard to be pro-Israel right now OR someone who supports the war despite the high cost of civilian life -- and how their personal lived experiences inform those views."

"Please let me know if you might want to write something along those lines, and if so, what would your take be."

CBC programming editor

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Ottawa

Canada's publicly-subscribed Crown corporation, a kind of government-allied news and entertainment source for which the public's tax dollars are dinged well over a billion dollars in upkeep yearly has a viral infection. It is often referred to as DEI (occasionally DIE) where Jews are placed within a racial hierarchy of white colonial oppressors. Critical Race Theory has its impact with the CBC, itself a colonialist-inspired stepchild of the United Kingdom's BBC, itself also a victim of that very 'progressive-woke' infection where antisemitism is freely and guiltlessly bandied about.

"Antisemitism has had a long sordid history in this country [Canada] and, for some it has always been hidden just below the surface. There was a reprieve after the guilt induced by the atrocities of the Second World War. But it is ascendant again, and surprisingly, its adherents are proudly so. Who are the purveyors of antisemitism?"

"Obviously, first are the radical Islamists importing their ancient historic Jew-hatred based on their particular interpretation of the Qur'an."

"There is the radical woke left which has, since Israel's underdog defeat of the combined armies of Jordan, Egypt and Syria in 1967, viewed Israel as an oppressor."

"Allied with those forces [of DEI, etc.], are universities and colleges, which have been temples of wokeness for years."

"The last group which I believe has been responsible for rising antisemitism are irresponsible media."

Howard Levitt, Levitt Sheikh LLP

 

The CBC, like its auntie BBC has been presenting news in a format geared to present Israel in the dim light of aggressor in its invasion of Gaza with the intention of destroying the operations instituted by the terrorist group that governs Gaza following Hamas's barbaric attack on southern Israel, where its terror operatives on October 7, launched a sordid bloodbath of civilians complete with gang rape, torture, mutilation and hostage-taking while triumphantly videoing the savagery of their sadistic, murderous rampage.

 

Shocked tones of outrage at Israel's search for and destruction of Hamas's tunnel networks, located within, under and around hospitals, schools, universities, apartment complexes emanate from the CBC on a regular basis, while condemnation of Palestinian terrorist groups like Hamas, the PLFP, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Iran's IRGC and the Islamic Republic for violently inciting and provoking Israel's military to respond resulting in often unavoidable civilian Palestinian deaths have placed most legacy media and certainly the CBC in league by default with Islamist terrorism.

 

Hamas is never described other than as a self-defense group, of 'activists', never as terrorists although they are listed as such on Canada's terror list, as is Hezbollah and other infamously Jewish/Israeli-death-dealing Palestinian organizations. When the CBC swiftly condemned and accused Israel of bombing a hospital, killing hundreds of Palestinians, it has never since apologized after the truth was revealed that the bombing resulted from a terrorist missile gone afoul in a misfire.

 

According to a columnist in the Toronto Sun -- Warren Kinsella -- the CBC struck a committee to oversee its Israel coverage. Which did not include Jewish journalists who point out that their takes of the situation through their journalistic reports are routinely ignored at the CBC. Months ago, the CBC opened its publishing portals to "deeply personal essays" relating to what it meant to be Jewish and Canadian in today's Canada, welcoming Jewish Canadians to add their voices to its coverage.

A Canadian Jewish writer -- Shawna Cohen -- responded by submitting a personal essay relating to just that required topic. The response from the CBC was to ask her specifically for sentiments other than what she had written. She may not have been surprised that the CBC editors rejected her original essay, outlining for her what their expectations were should she be interested in re-writing the essay from a different perspective and re-submitting it.

"As a Jewish person, I feel I have a responsibility to let you know that the specific angle CBC is searching for is dangerous and narrow-minded. The Jewish community is feeling extremely unsafe -- in Canada and beyond."

"Rather than providing writers with an opportunity to share how and why Jews are feeling this way, CBC has reverse-engineered the narrative. It is specifically seeking out a rare breed of Jew who doesn't support Israel and/or is willing to negotiate with a terrorist organization. Taking this approach only contributes to anti-Israel propaganda."

"To be honest, I was reluctant to pitch my story to CBC because of its established record of anti-Israel and anti-Zionist bias. From your response, it is clear that CBC does not welcome genuine opinions or perspectives that are not viewed through its own narrow, sociopolitical lens. This reality is unconscionable for a publicly funded broadcaster that considers itself the voice of a nation."

Shawna Cohen, Toronto writer

Protesters wave Israeli flags and hold placards in front of Big Ben at the Houses of Parliament in central London on Nov. 26, 2023 during a demonstration to protest against antisemitism. Photo by JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP via Getty Images)