The Dedicated Savagery of Palestinian Terrorism

"Since the round of fighting in May two years ago there is a decision by Hamas leadership to display unprecedented restraint and forbearance."

"For over two  years there hasn't been a single rocket fired under Hamas initiative from Gaza."

"Hamas is very, very restrained and understands the consequences of further defiance."

Israeli national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi 

 

"Dad, I am speaking to you from a Jew's phone."

"I killed her and her husband  -- killed them with my own hands."

"I am in Meflasim father. I killed 10. Ten! Ten with my own bare hands."

"Their blood is on my hands."

"Mother, your son is a hero."

October7/23 Hamas terrorist 

 

"Today, yes, today, our people resume their revolution, rectify their path and return to the plan of liberation and the establishment of the state through blood and martyrdom."

"...Today is the day of the great revolution that will end the last occupation and the last racist apartheid regime in the world."

"To the brothers in the Islamic resistance in Lebanon, Iran, Yemen, Iraq and Syria, the day has come when your resistance joins the people of Palestine."

Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif

 

"Our objective is clear: we want to liberate our land, our  holy sites, our al-Aqsa, our prisoners. This is the goal that is worthy of this battle, worthy of this heroism, worthy of this courage."

"We have only one thing to say to you [Israel]: Get out of our sight. Get out of our Jerusalem and our al-Aqsa."

"We don't want to see  you on this land. This land is ours; Jerusalem is ours, everything is ours."

"You are intruders on this pure and blessed land. There is no place for you."

Ismail Haniyeh, head, Hamas political office 

Palestinian terrorists move towards the border fence with Israel from Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on October 7.  Said Khatib/AFP/Getty Images

   

It is beyond difficult for normal, ordinary people to grasp just how it is possible that a human mind could be so gripped with a mind-consuming hatred as to make it even remotely possible that in a chaotic frenzy of deadly loathing overtaking all other emotions, that of human fraternity, compassion, empathy, rational thought and most of all that very intimate reaction to committing lethal physical harm on others, would restrain anyone, anyone at all other than those who have experienced the mass psychosis of self-assumed victimhood driving a collective thrust for vengeance against an imagined enemy. 

 

Yet continued, ongoing exposure in a tribal setting where leaders deliberately set out to convince their civilian public from infancy to youth of the grandeur of honour to be gained in the ferocious determination to slaughter those identified as their enemy will do it. Characterizing Jews -- settled as a nation in their ancestral Judean homeland, an ancient geographic reality that preceded the arrival of Arabs in the region by millennia -- as 'invaders' out to conquer the world, starting with the Arabs in the Middle East, insulting to Islam as rank imposters worshiping a false god.

 

The passion of hatred against the shared vision of a Jewish state plotting to extinguish the aspirations of Arab Palestinians on land they claim as their own, has seen a complete and utter inversion of cause and effect; Palestinians dedicated to the  eradication of Israel and the slaughter of Jews, invoking their version of reality; Israeli Jews becoming the invaders and mass murderers victimizing Palestinians, when the violent assaults against Jews by Palestinian Arabs, beginning with the Palestine Liberation Organization and morphing into the PFLP, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah and a myriad of others like Hezbollah dedicated and fully psychopathic are the actual transgressors.

Which led to four thousand terrorists, and an estimated two thousand Palestinian civilians entering Israel from Gaza, to launch a mass terror attack, a surprise incursion that had been planned and rehearsed for up to two years, until the final decision was made. Maps had been hand-drawn of farming communities showing where the security bases in each were located; maps conveniently produced by Palestinians who had been given employment as agricultural workers in those same kibbutzim whose members fully empathized with Palestinians in Gaza. The kibbutzim received the brunt of the destruction and pillaging.

But there was also a nearby music festival with thousands of Israeli youth from all over Israel in attendance. The Nova Music Festival was to have been a place of music, dancing, good fellowship and celebration. It turned into a venue of horror with mass rape, dismemberment and torture; barbarity on a grand scale. Hundreds of young people died, fleeing in panic from the bloodlust-maddened terrorists whose goal was death and destruction. The Israeli military posts, accustomed to constant barrages of rockets from Gaza, and unprepared for what was to follow, ended the day with IDF soldiers either killed or taken hostage.

 

A final count of 1,200 deaths from that fateful day which included mostly civilians, mostly Israeli Jews, but Israeli Arabs and foreign farm workers as well who suffered the same savage fate as the slaughtered Jewish children,  youth, women and men. 250 infants, children, elderly, women and men, along with IDF personnel were taken into Gaza to serve as hostages. Where they were subjected to torture, starvation, isolation and injuries that were never treated, most being kept in the network of underground tunnels that served Hamas as weapons depots, command centers, communications areas and refuge from detection for Hamas operatives.

Israel was unprepared for the carnage of October 7, 2023. Its leaders and intelligence groups had convinced themselves that the-then ceasefire arrangement with Hamas would hold. There had been no real skirmishes, to alert Israeli authorities beforehand. Even though some of the Israeli female IDF lookouts had reported suspicious activities nearby, when in fact these were rehearsals for the stealth invasion that was to follow on October 7. Their warnings were ignored; Israel's government wanted to believe that Hamas had finally relented, even though its charter was clear: the destruction of Israel. 

 

Naama Levy bodycam video taken by Hamas

That Saturday morning, the time of a national heritage holiday of Simchat Torah, a time of great rejoicing, Israelis in southern Israel heard a rocket bombardment heading from Gaza to Israel, but this in and of itself was not unusual. What was unusual was that at the border between Israel and Gaza, bulldozers were ramming the security fence separating the two, and waiting trucks, motorcyclists and those on foot swarmed through the fence on their way to disperse toward their target Israeli communities, to begin shooting people waiting at bus stops. They invaded homes to kill the inhabitants, breaking down safe rooms, and torching other homes with entire families burned to death.

 

This kind of dedicated savagery of sadistic proportions is the result of hatred so intense that a young man who had just killed ten Jews was eager to impart the good news of his heroism to his approving, congratulatory parents. The kind of sadistic savagery that saw Palestinian terrorists run down horrified, frightened girls and woman for mass rape and mutilation. Men so proud of their accomplishments that they took care to video their atrocities to air them as proof positive of their courage and heroic status.  

"We made them think that Hamas was busy with governing Gaza, and that it wanted to focus on the 2.5 million Palestinians [in Gaza] and has abandoned the resistance altogether."

"All the while, under the table, Hamas was preparing for this big attack."

Lebanon-based senior Hamas official Ali Baraka, October 8 

 

"Israel is a country that has no place on our land. We must remove that country, because it constitutes a security, military, and political catastrophe to the Arab and Islamic nation and must be finished."

"We must teach Israel a lesson, and we will do this again and again."

"The Al-Aqsa Flood is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth, because we have the determination, the resolve, and the capabilities to fight."

Hamas politburo member Ghazi Hamad  

Hamas terrorists stormed the Nova festival on 7 October and killed hundreds   BBC, Nik Millard

 

The Moral Compass

"Canadians hail from every corner of the world and are proud of being Canadian but also proud of their links to home and right now, Canadians of Muslim, Arab and particularly Palestinian origin, are extremely worried as are Canadians of the Jewish faith, Canadians with ties to Israel."

"Canadians of all backgrounds who are represented in Parliament are reflecting the very real fears and concerns that everyone has."

"Our jobs as parliamentarians, is, yes, to speak for our community, speak for our constituents, speak for Canadians and make sure everyone's fears are being heard and reflected upon and acted on. But our job is also ... to reassure everyone that this is Canada and, here, our differences must and will remain a source of strength."

"So yes, there are lots of different perspectives. But there are shared fears and concerns amongst all parliamentarians and a commitment every single day to keep everyone safe here in Canada, and everywhere around the world."

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

"We may not entirely agree on events in the Middle East but we do agree that all communities must and deserve to feel safe in Canada and we will work together to do this."

Montreal MP Anthony Housefather, chair, Canada-Israel Friendship Group

"Families don't always agree on everything [but they met] to reaffirm [their] commitment to being there for one another in the most difficult times, just as families do."

Vancouver MP Taleeb Noormohamed

“In Gaza, as elsewhere, international law, including humanitarian law, must be upheld by all. Even wars have rules,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said, lecturing Israel in the House of Commons. Photo by Patrick Doyle/The Canadian Press

It is becoming increasingly evident even to Justin Trudeau -- perhaps particularly to Trudeau -- that there is growing dissent in Parliament over the way he has handled Canada's reaction to the spectacularly brutal attack by Gazan terrorist groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, not to mention the freelance Palestinians who took advantage of a horribly gruesome invasion on Israeli border villages and kibbutzim to exercise the most barbaric atrocities against Israelis imaginable. 

Thousands of good Canadian citizens -- Palestinians, their Arab/Muslim colleagues and sympathetic others have gone out repeatedly in a surprising force of numbers to actually cheer on the deaths of over 1,400 Israelis, most of them citizens that included the elderly, infants and children, women, the disabled, along with soldiers. And the violent abduction of hundreds; children and elderly people, along with women who had been raped to hold them hostage. An explosion of celebration and congratulations greeted the sight of frightened children and fearful women as they were paraded through Gaza.

And the celebratory news of the horrific event in Israel on October 7 by the Hamas incursion meant to take Israel's security apparatus by surprise, and succeeding to an unfathomable degree has been seen on the streets of Canadian cities in wild congratulations to Hamas and Islamic Jihad by Canadian citizens of Middle Eastern descent. While the prime minister has condemned the parades of gleeful joy expressed by Canadians, he has done nothing whatever about them, despite that Hamas is listed as a terrorist group, and the crowds, holding Hamas flags aloft, have been chanting gentle phrases like "gas the Jews!" and "Death to the Jews!"

 

It is the ensuing casualty and death rate among Palestinians in Gaza as Israel responds, that consume the attention of much of legacy media, the public, Canadian unions and academia which have glossed over the abominations that Israelis have suffered. And that too was promoted by Justin Trudeau when the Hamas Health Authority -- which serves Hamas's interests -- claimed that Israel was responsible for an explosion that took place at a Gaza hospital and Canada's prime minister chose to take the word of a terrorist group against Israel's denial of responsibility -- which days later was authoritatively affirmed. 

 

Liberal Members of Parliament of Jewish origin are not entirely pleased with the performance of this prime minister for obvious reasons. Opposition Conservatives and Jewish groups in Canada have taken to criticizing the prime minister for his refusal in taking a clear position on the responsibility for the Gaza hospital explosion which was not an Israeli missile strike but in fact a failed rocket launch from Gaza itself which went awry as their rockets often do, striking the hospital parking lot where people were gathered. An immediate death toll of 500 was announced, later considerably diminished in numbers by the hospital authority.

Trudeau's statement, oblique yet obviously pointing to Israel, that this was an illegal strike according to the "rules around wars", culminated with his informing reporters he planned to take the "necessary time" to examine the evidence prior to drawing conclusions. His choice to give credence to accusations levelled by a terrorist group, rather than depending on the forthright statement issued by the Israeli government spoke volumes about his reliability as an ally to a fellow democracy heavily involved in defending itself from unspeakably lethal violence inflicted on its population.

 

In stark contrast, the U.S. president, relying on an immediate investigation result left no doubt whom he gave his support to, as did the British Prime Minister: "We don't treat what comes out of the Kremlin as the gospel truth, we should not do the same with Hamas", commented Rishi Sunak. Canada's own ambassador to the United Nations, Bob Rae, informed an Ottawa gathering that Canadians should offer support to Israel in an existential fight, drawing a direct line with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, condemned unequivocally by Canada.

 

"It is not only a fight for Israel and the Jewish people. It's a fight for all people to be able to live with security and with recognition of who they are", stated Ambassador Rae.

"Canadians have the right to feel safe to practise their faith and express their beliefs. There is no place for supporting terrorism or advocating for violence in Canada", read a joint statement from federal, provincial and territorial ministers urging "unity and respect in the face of calls for protests".

Two rallies were held in Halifax on Thanksgiving Monday — one in support of Israel, the other in support of Palestinians (Jeorge Sadi/CBC)

Hamas's Deadly Invasion Evaluated

An Israeli armored personnel carrier heads toward the Gaza border. Ohad Zwigenberg/Associated Press

"The dominant view in Israel, and not just at the political level, but also within some in the security services, was that the conflict in Gaza is manageable, that we could contain it."

"The easy answer that you hear is that Hamas is an apocalyptic terrorist movement that doesn't care about human life. That's true. But they're not irrational."

"Hamas has already said ... that it wants to exchange [the Israeli hostages] for prisoners. One objective for Hamas in doing that is to boost up its ranks by freeing prisoners [jailed in Israel] in large numbers."

Thomas Juneau, political scientist, University of Ottawa

"Hamas officials have been quite open about the fact that this [normalization] would be a huge event."

"Saudi Arabia is the custodian of the two holiest sites in Islam and I think Hamas fears that if there would be normalization with Saudi Arabia, other Muslim nations, other Arab nations would follow suit."

"Not only is it [Fatah] secular as opposed to Islamist but it believes in a two-state solution and Hamas does not."

"Hamas is not fighting for there to be a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Hamas is fighting to destroy Israel ... it's against peace in general."

Matthew Levitt, professor, Georgetown University Center for Security Studies

"I can give you a hypothesis and that is, we were in a situation where there was no peace process. There was absolutely no movement whatsoever on Palestinian issues. And I think that Hamas took the decision that they had to shuffle the deck, that they had to do something or they wanted to do something, which would make the status quo untenable."

"It's not at all clear to me how [Hamas] thought the endgame would work out. They would have known that this would have brought a major Israeli military operation, that that would include ground operations."The last Israeli ground operation [in 2014] was the biggest boost in history to Hamas's popularity."

"Clearly ... it wasn't meant to be an incremental thing. It was meant to be a game changing thing. And that includes the deliberate targeting of civilians."

"Are you going to occupy all of it? You're going to fight street by street into downtown Gaza?"

"If you destroy Hamas, who will you hand [Gaza] to when you leave? Do you want to occupy it?"

Rex Brynen, Middle East expert, McGill University

Rockets fired from Gaza City are intercepted by the Israeli Iron Dome defense missile system in the early hours of October 8, 2023. EYAD BABA/AFP via Getty Images

 

The Palestinian Authority, commented Dr. Juneau from his perspective as an academic with a focus on the Middle East, is highly incompetent and corrupt. That alone has led to resentment among Palestinians which has been responsible for growing support for radical groups like Hamas. October 7th's incursion by Hamas into Israel, he stated, represents "the most significant escalation of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict in several decades", he said, quoting the Council on Foreign Relations.

"We just don't have great insight into Hamas's strategic judgement", added political scientist Rex Brynen. October marks 50 years since the Yom Kippur War when a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria led a surprise attack on Israel, which may entirely be coincidental. Since Hamas stated the October 7 attack had been planned out carefully for a year before the event.

At the same time, Israeli public opinion and support for the current government led by Benjamin Netanyahu with the 2022 coalition government including hard-right religious factions, and the government's intention to change the judicial reform process that Israel's liberal-left supports, fracturing the country, and in the opinion of onlookers from outside the country, believing it to have been in a weakened state. Opportunity perhaps beckoned, all the more so when the dissenting opinions took place at all levels, including the IDF and its reservists, some of whom refused to serve.

 

 

The ongoing normalization process between Israel and Saudi Arabia was a red flag to Islamists and Palestinians in general, realizing it left them outside the loop; the reality being that the 'Palestinian refugee' problem was being sidelined in the greater interests of achieving regional peace that would lead to greater regional prosperity and in no small part greater security, in the majority Arab Sunni region where Shiite Islamist Republic of Iran presents as a threat.

 

An issue that Dr. Juneau expressed his  skepticism over. On the other hand, they all acknowledged, Fatah, the leading party in the Palestinian Authority and the PA itself are unpopular and viewed as weak by the  general Palestinian population they govern. Even among West Bank Palestinians Hamas is admired and supported to a far greater extent than the Palestinian Authority. Then there are relations between Fatah and Hamas; the latter despising the former as a secular group to Hamas's Islamism.

Dr. Brynen expressed his opinion that the 'success' of the Hamas attack surprised even Hamas. The much higher Israeli body count and hostage taking surpassed its expectations. And the corollary to that was a far greater response from Israel than Hamas might have anticipated.

One thing all three agreed upon in their debate was that whatever the original reasons behind the unprecedented scale of the attack -- whether to bring international attention to focus on the Palestinians; to eliminate Israel for replacement by an Islamist state; to free prisoners convicted of crimes in Israel; or to help Iran -- the ultimate goal was to effect a massive change in the region's dynamics. 

 

To that degree, and to the dimensions of the attention given its deadly exploits in the outside world, they succeeded.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators gather during a rally for Gaza outside the Israeli Consulate General in New York on Oct. 9. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

Celebrating "Friends, Love and Infinite Freedom" in Israel

"The event will take place in a powerful natural location full of trees stunning in its beauty and organized for your convenience, about an hour and a quarter south of Tel Aviv."

Publicity for The Tribe of Nova trance music festival

 

"We heard sirens and rockets, tons of rockets. We started running; we didn't now where to go. Nobody knew what to do."

"I took the car keys from a friend of mine that was really wasted and got as many people in the car as possible and started driving like crazy."

"The people who stayed, most of them got kidnapped or murdered."

"Every direction we ran we had more people shooting at us; we were running for two hours trying to escape. We started crawling in bushes. Eventually I realized I couldn't run anymore."

"We stayed silent and tried to reach the police. The police said they can't help us because too many people were kidnapped."

Millet Ben Haim, 27, music festival attendee, Israel

"We heard shots. There were cars with corpses on top of them that blocked the road. We couldn't get out."

"There were about seven to eight terrorists, and they started to shoot at us in our car."

"It's clear that there was a failure here. Now we need to get these people back who are missing. And to tell these people's stories."

Gal Raz, 31, music festival attendee, Israel

The aftermath of an attack on a music festival by Palestinian militants, near Kibbutz Reim in the Negev desert in southern Israel on October 8

 

It was billed as a night of dancing, a trance music festival, to celebrate "friends, love and infinite freedom". People were dancing, singing, the music thumped and thrummed. And just before dawn arcing through the sky over the thousands of revellers came the first rockets from Gaza, over the border. Many of the dancers took little notice of the explosions over the loud music. Accustomed to rockets from Gaza, others who did become aware shrugged them off. But not for long.

The music suddenly stopped. The thousands of young Israelis stopped dancing, snapping happy photos of the event and of each others' smiling faces. They felt a cold draft as a voice boomed over the loudspeakers over at the tented stages. "Guys, we have red alert" warned the voice. "Red alert!"

People swiftly began leaving, some jogging off, many looking at the white rocket flashes appearing in the sky just beginning to greet the dawn, as they ran. Videos showed they confused in appearance, but no one seemed to be panicking. Someone in black wearing a yellow safety vest directed crowds away from the stages. And soon the gunfire began. 

Located close to Kibbutz Re'im, the music festival became one of the initial targets the Hamas terrorists attacked in force, launching their surprise invasion of Israel in the early morning hours of Saturday as they overran the concert area, shooting into the crowd, pulling away as many hostages as they could manage. The terrorists had blocked roads, ambushed escaping cars, scouring the mostly open area for others to abduct.

When the ZAKA, an Israeli volunteer emergency response group arrived, they recovered an initial 260 bodies. Many people remain missing, according to the Israel Defense Forces. The figure has been put at over 100 by Israeli media, but it is growing, tragically. Hostages, states Hamas, are being held in tunnels and other secure locations in Gaza. If they are indeed being held in tunnels that will be an added complication since there will be plans to bomb the tunnels.

Survivors of the mass atrocity have been flooded with messages from other people frantically searching for their loved ones. Bodies were placed by the military in the back of a large refrigerated truck parked next to hundreds of abandoned cars. The shells of burned vehicles sat beside discarded tents, camping mats and coolers in one of the clearings. At a nearby intersection relatives searching for the missing said over a thousand people attended the event.  

Festivalgoers, however, estimate the true figure to be between 3,000 and 4,000 attendees. The exact location of the festival was not released until a few hours prior to the festival opening at 10 p.m. on Friday. Held five kilometres from the fence dividing Israel from the Gaza Strip, the festival was a ready target as the terrorists surged through a fence built with defensive materials and electronic devices, when explosives were used to blast through, enabling hordes of terrorists on foot, motorcycles and jeeps to enter Israel.

 

Instructions to attendees was to bring no firearms or sharp objects to the festival grounds. When the attack began, the ravers were tired, and defenceless, they were trapped in a wide-open area offering few places where they might conceal themselves from the relentless death-delivering search of the terrorists.  On the roads the terrorists were shooting at cars.

Those who tried to escape in their vehicles soon realized they couldn't get much further than a few hundred meters before they ran into groups of terrorists shooting at anything that moved. Abandoning their cars, the Israelis began running wildly, hoping to outrun their tormentors and find shelter somewhere, and as they ran passing vehicles with dead bodies. 

Ben Haim and her friends leaped out of their car and ran through the fields. Finally, she and two of her friends along with a stranger concealed themselves in a dense bush, covering their bodies with leaves. With her phone battery at two percent, after seven hours Ben Haim and her group were rescued by a local resident driving around with the intention of rescuing people. Raz was picked up eventually by the military.

The U.S. Justice System to the Rescue!

Mohammed Khalifa, a Canadian citizen who was a leading figure in the Islamic State of Iraq, was recently transferred into FBI custody. In an interview with CBC's Fifth Estate, Khalifa admitted to playing an important role in producing and disseminating Islamic State propaganda to Western audiences    CBC

"As alleged, Mohammed Khalifa not only fought for ISIS on the battlefield in Syria, but he was also the voice behind the violence."

"Through his alleged leading role in translating, narrating, and advancing ISIS's online propaganda, Khalifa promoted the terrorist group, furthered its worldwide recruitment efforts, and expanded the reach of videos that glorified the horrific murders and indiscriminate cruelty of ISIS."

Raj Parekh, Acting U.S. Attorney, Eastern District of Virginia

"[Khalifa was] a deeply ideologically committed member of the Islamic State [until his capture]."

"The ISIS higher ups also saw value in him as a media personnel, and he travelled with much of the leadership to the final holdouts."

"One of the key things he mentioned during our interview was that ISIS, as it was losing territory, started to see consistent media releases as strategically important."

"Because of all the Canadian prisoners being held in Syria, Ridwan [Mohammed Khalifa, aka Abu Ridwan Ai-Kanadi] is probably the easiest to make a case against."

"There are literally hundreds of hours of ISIS audio that he put out there, and has also admitted to multiple reporters that this was his primary role with the Islamic State."

Amarnath Amarasingam, professor, terrorism, radicalization and extremism research, Queen's University

As an adherent of the ideology of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, a Saudi-born Canadian citizen who travelled illegally from the country of his citizenship to Syria to pledge allegiance to then-ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, he was assigned to the ISIL media bureau, where he excelled in the position, becoming one of the Islamist fundamentalist group's most prominent public relations stalwarts, actively producing and distributing videos for public consumption extolling the virtues of the group and demonstrating its virtuous loyalty to Islamist principles through heinous atrocities.

 

From 2013 to 2019 his outstanding work assisted hugely in the recruiting of dedicated new ISIL members. His role as a publicity director helped amplify the Islamic State's formidably fearful reputation and was without doubt useful in convincing opposing militaries in Syria and Iraq that they hadn't a chance in hell to defend the populations their professional position demanded of them, ensuring they would melt away at the first signs that Islamic State fighters approached, leaving defenceless civilians to fend for themselves. 

 

In the invasion of Sinjar when Islamic State viciously targeted the ancient Yazidi population, the merciless killing of men and boys, the enslavement of women and girls exemplified the blood-curdling mission the Islamic State gave themselves in their jihad against minorities helpless before their onslaught. With Iraqi and Syrian military defence a pipe dream, it was left to the Kurdish militias to oppose and defend Christians and Yazidis and other groups fleeing the violent persecution and threats to annihilate them.

 

The US-led international coalition gave air cover to the Kurdish Peshmerga who alone demonstrated the capacity to give shelter to fleeing civilian populations, ethnic and religious minorities, in effectively countering the burgeoning presence of the Islamic State caliphate, but it was without doubt Kurdish valour and values and military acumen that destroyed the expansionary plans of the Islamic State. When the geographic gains of ISIL were destroyed, it was the Kurdish-majority Syrian Democratic Forces that took upon itself the imprisonment of Islamic State fighters and their women and children, freeing the occupied towns and villages from their venomous presence.

 

A Syrian Democratic Forces fighter burns an ISIS flag on the front line on the western side of Raqqa, northeast Syria, Monday, July 17, 2017. (Hussein Malla/AP Photo)

Among those imprisoned by the SDF in the prison camp established for that purpose was Canadian ISIL member Mohammed Khalifa. The SDF has repeatedly requested that foreign governments repatriate their citizens who had joined ISIL to relieve their burden. Some have complied, others have not. Some have taken back only female ISIL members and their children. Some will stand trial for their offences against humanity. It is the fate of the children for the most part that exercises the compassionate mind.

 

There can be no compassion wasted on psychopaths like Khalifa, both male and female who were complicit in the atrocities committed by the Islamic State, from their staged and videoed beheadings, crucifixions, drownings, death-by-explosives and other malicious horrors they visited on their many victims. All of which they gloried in, celebrated, proudly exhibited. Which alternately gained them new recruits willing and eager to join the death-dealing, or further burnished the dread in peoples' minds of the terrorists.

 

It can be seen as the responsibility of the government of Canada to have taken the initiative to return this man and his ilk to Canada. Less famous, as in infamous members of ISIL with Canadian citizenship are known to have returned to Canada of their own volition, are not and have never been imprisoned, nor faced trials with the reason being given that evidence against them is too difficult to obtain, to mount a criminal investigation to bring them to justice, and so supposedly they are 'under observation' by intelligence services.

 

There is more than ample evidence available for any jury to reach a decision about Khalifa; his signature is on some of the most vile, vicious, violent of Islamic State's videos and other publicity instruments meant to enhance their reputation and create a lasting impression of sadistic barbarity in the name of Islamism. Yet Canada's government has chosen to do nothing. It has chosen to exhale a sigh of relief that the United States has taken it upon itself to exact justice on behalf of the victims of Islamic State's notorious inhumanity. 

 

Thousands of videos, graphics and other images have been collected together to form a growing propaganda archive   ISD

 

"It’s very interesting that the U.S. is going forward with this case and not Canada."

"Ridwan is probably our easiest case. There are literally hundreds of hours of his voice recorded in ISIS media. Cases against other prisoners are slightly more difficult."

"I suppose the U.S. sees him as important for reasons we probably don’t know yet."

 Queen’s University professor Amarnath Amarasingam

 

"Those who left Canada to support the terror organization need to be held accountable for their crimes before a court of law."

"I'm glad the U.S. had the political courage to do what the Canadian government did not. He is a Canadian, he left from Canada. It should be the responsibility of the Canadian government to hold him accountable for his crimes."

"[Khalifa is] calm, cold, and indifferent."

"He had no remorse for what he had done and felt his actions were justified."

Leah West, professor, national security law, Carleton University