UNRWA -- Rotten Through to the Core

`UNRWA has taken steps to address allegations regarding individual employees`support for terrorist organizations and demonstrated its willingness to pursue and implement reform of internal processes.`

Statement co-signed by Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea and Britain

The opening assembly of the Knesset’s winter session. (Yoav Dudkevitch/TPS-IL)

 

And despite having been updated in full by the Israeli government on the UNRWA propensity to hire Gazan Palestinians who just also happen to be members of terrorist groups, Hamas among them, somehow evidence is not proof enough to believe Israel over the word of innocence from the UN body some of whose employees took active participation on the barbaric sadism of October 7 in southern Israel. ``Ìt is not just a few rotten apples ... UNRWA in Gaza is a rotten tree entirely infected with terrorist operatives``, they were assured by the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

Yet, even so, condemnation was fairly universal from most of Israel`s democratic allies when the Israeli government made the decision to sever all ties with UNRWA, charging that the UN body is irreparably involved with terrorism. Which failed to give thoughtful pause to Canada`s foreign affairs minister Melanie Joly who threw her support to the agency that Canada continues to support financially with an annual $25 million.

Israel provided ample evidence that UNRWA facilities were appropriated by Hamas for use as command posts. That roughly one hundred Hamas commanders and operatives were on the UNRWA payroll. Israel made it clear that despite its determination to no longer cooperate with the corrupt UN agency which has pleaded ignorance of the content of the Palestinian school curricula which it supplies, and its complicity in demonizing Israel, encouraging Palestinians to reject attempts at peace, it intends to continue work with other UN agencies in the provision of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

 

Hamas terrorist Muhammad Abu Attawi and UNRWA staffer during the attack on a bomb shelter near Kibbutz Re’im on October 7, 2023. (Israel Defense Forces)

 

Under the former government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Canada`s UNRWA funding had been suspended for the very reason that it was recognized the agency`s agenda was fundamentally anti-Israel and corrupted with institutionalized antisemitism. One of the first acts of the new Trudeau government in foreign affairs had been restoration of federal funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine. It had been briefly suspended when proof had initially been given of its employee complicity in October 7, but speedily restored.

International Development Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau had stated that UNRWA would no longer be funding terrorist groups, with UNRWA instituting a `very robust oversight and reporting framework`. Perhaps she knew something that UNRWA was unaware of, since there was much that the agency purported to be unaware of with respect to its links to Palestinian terrorist groups. This, despite a dossier that up to 2,000 UNRWA employees had ties to Palestinian terrorist groups.

Much less that many schools operated by UNRWA served as entrances to the Hamas underground tunnel network, and that over a dozen known UNRWA employees had taken part in the October 7 massacres of Israel civilians. UNRWA social worker Faisal Ali Mussallem An-Naimi was seen on surveillance video dragging the dead body of a murdered victim at Kibbutz Bee`ri, where over 100 civilians were savagely murdered.

 

This image from video shows Faisal Ali Mussalem al-Naami (right) and another terrorist abducting the body of an Israeli on October 7, 2023. (Screenshot: South First Reporters)

 

Canada`s International Development Minister had claimed to have been assured by UNRWA`s pledge they had `taken immediate measures to strengthen oversight, accountability and transparency` -- for what that was worth. UNRWA fired nine of its employees admitting it seemed credible they had participated in the October 7 attacks, after all. Following the death of Hamas`s Lebanon chief Fateh Sherif Abu el-Amin in an Israeli airstrike, it was confirmed by UNRWA that he was one of their employees, a past chairman of the UNRWA Teachers`Association.

UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini, stated that el-Amin had been placed on administrative leave for political activities -- but his agency had no idea whatever that in him they had employed a senior Hamas commander. `The specific allegation at the time was that he was a part of the local leadership ... I never heard the word command before`, said Lazzarini.

Months before the October 7 atrocities took place. the German magazine BILD published an investigation of rampant antisemitism and incitement to violence among UNRWA teachers and in their textbooks. 

`Ìn an exercise for students in a 9th grade class in Gaza, a Palestinian arson attack on a bus carrying Jews is referred to as a `barbecue`.

`Germany continues to pay for hatred of Jews.`

Israeli soldiers walk inside an evacuated compound of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in Gaza City. Photo by JACK GUEZ/AFP

UNRWA's Linkage With Hamas and October 7

"We have sufficient information in order to take the actions that we're taking -- which is to say, the termination of those nine individuals."

"For nine people, the evidence was sufficient to conclude that they may have been involved in the seventh of October attacks."

"For us, any participation in the attacks is a tremendous betrayal of the sort of work that we are supposed to be doing on behalf of the Palestinian people."  

Farhan Haq, UN spokesman 

"[UNRWA's employees participated in the] raping [of Israelis]."

"Nine of your employees might have participated in the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. And no, this isn’t evidence ‘fabricated’ by us. This is straight from the [United Nations] itself."

"Your ‘relief’ agency has officially stooped to a new level of low, and it is time that the world sees your true face."

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Nadav Shoshani  

 

Although there were long-held suspicions of untoward links between the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees in the Near East and many of their employees that were locally engaged from Gaza, there was always the standard outraged denial of the UNRWA authorities of any complicity between the UN body for Palestine and the terrorist activities of Hamas in Gaza. Even when, during previous military-terrorist clashes when Israel charged that UNRWA schools were being used as weapons depots for Hamas, sanctimonious denials rained forth.

 

In the Israel Defense Forces' invasion of Gaza following the October 7 atrocities against Israelis in southern Israel adjacent the border with Gaza, it was soon enough verified with repeated discoveries unearthing the incredible extent to which UNRWA was complicit when Israeli troops discovered that Gaza UNRWA schools and hospitals acted as operation centres and weapons depots with tunnels snaking under UNRWA institutional buildings. In UNRWA's central logistics hub Hamas operated its own logistics focused on attacking Israel. 

Praise for Hamas's October 7 atrocities carried out by Islamist terrorists gushed on social media from a group of 3,000 teachers with UNRWA in Gaza. Not surprising that Palestinian children attending Gaza UNRWA schools were taught a curriculum of Jew-hate and that Israel was illegally squatting as imperialist colonialists on Palestinian land. Children were being groomed in those schools to hate and to envision their futures as martyrs for the greater glory of Islam and the restoration of 'Palestine' once Israel was wiped off the map.

The United Nations' internal investigation identified a handful of the much larger contingent of Palestinians with Hamas connections. When the public announcement of the completion of the study was pronounced the finding was that there may have been involvement by employees of UNRWA in the Hamas-led vicious savagery of rape, pillage, torture, and massacres that took place by design on October 7.

Israel had been instrumental in shaming and claiming that at minimum 19 of UNRWA's employees had been actively involved in the attack that killed 1,200 Israelis, abducting 240 other infants, women, the elderly and a handful of Israeli soldiers, along with foreign farm workers. Denials came first, until insistent demands by Israel finally led the UN to reluctantly agree to undertake an internal investigation of the allegations of UNRWA employee-Hamas connections.

Israel's initial claims and evidence to back up those claims were convincing enough to persuade Western backers of the United Nations, including top donor, the United States and others, to suspend their funding to the agency. UNRWA appealed to its donors, stressing its inability to deliver aid to Gaza with the withdrawal of funding and most of those withdrawing financial support to UNRWA have since relented and restored its funding.

"I have decided that in the case of these remaining nine staff members, they cannot work for UNRWA."

"All contracts of these staff members will be terminated in the interest of the Agency."

"The agency’s priority is to continue lifesaving and critical services for Palestine refugees in Gaza and across the region, especially in the face of the ongoing war, the instability and risk of regional escalation." 

Philippe Lazzarini, head, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)

A man collects trash while wearing a jacket bearing the logo of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), along a street in the city of Jenin in the West Bank. Photo by JAAFAR ASHTIYEH/AFP via Getty Images

Emulating, Taking Inspiration From the Third Reich

"Jews have been hated because they were poor, because they were rich, because they were not integrating, because they were integrating, because of their religion and -- when that became unacceptable -- because of their race."

"When that in turn became unacceptable, they were hated because they were stateless; when they got a state, they were hated for having it."

Douglas Murray, Political Commentator

The words “Never Again Is Now” are projected onto the Brandenburg Gate, Germany, on the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht. Paul Zinken—dpa/picture alliance/Getty Images

 

In the 1930s there arose a strangely charismatic figure born in Austria and destined to become Chancellor of Germany. A man with a vision for Germany, who dedicated himself to persuading the population that looked  up to him that clean living and expanding one's horizons led to a healthy mind which in turn would lead to a healthy, strong body. Travel, and get to know the world. Consume healthy foods and reject tobacco and alcohol. German men and women exemplified the ideal human being.

The country, however, was infested with lesser humans and their unacceptable delusion that they were German when they were really a despised, lowly race of Jews, corrupting the value of being German. The solution would be to rid Germany of their pestilential presence. And with the cooperation of all good, true German citizens it could be done, the Fuhrer would see to it. Trust me, he bellowed, I have only your best interests at heart; together we can accomplish what has never before been done!

 

WARSAW, 1943: SS troops bring a group of captured Jewish people, including women and young children, to a railway-station collection point for deportation to the Nazi death camps; in the background, police and soldiers can be seen watching the Warsaw Ghetto burn.  National Archives

That was then, and the benevolent dictator who espoused family values and the glory of the Aryan 'race'; the very ideal of physical perfection. Those in the Axis who gave their support to the Second World War led by Nazi Germany included Japan which Hitler declared to be 'honourary' Aryans. Nazi Germany is long gone. Another nation is taking its place. And irony of ironies, it is an Aryan race. Iranians are not Arabs; they are, however, Persian Aryans.

Ordinary Iranians have much in common with Jews and share an empathetic relationship. Their fundamentalist Islamist-fascist leaders, however do not. The theocracy that is Iran, as a result of their leadership has never been shy about publicly declaring their intention to annihilate the Jewish State. Over the decades they have assiduously gathered Shiite groups in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Qatar and Lebanon to form militias dedicated to furthering the fortunes of the Islamic Republic of Iran, of the minority Islamic Shiites, and their shared aspiration to kill Jews.

 Iran has taken up where Nazi Germany left off. They and their proxy militias represent the most heinously inhumane groups for whom mass murder is justified by religious decree. But they have their counterparts -- more 'moderate' in their declarations of Jew-hate, but equally willing to destroy the lives of Jews living among them -- in the West. Diaspora Jews have since time immemorial faced antisemitism; it is the very reason that the re-dedication of Israel as a homeland on ancestral Judaean land is of such vital importance to the world's Jews.

It is their historic heritage, their homeland, their haven, their hope for the future. Furious new waves of antisemitic vitriol have been roiling the streets of the world's capitals ever since the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas dispatched thousands of Palestinian terrorists into southern Israel for the sole purpose of bloody slaughter of Jews. Interspersed with sadistic mass rapes complete with mutilation of the girls and women being raped, to increase their pain and anguish, defiling their dignity as human beings.

The plight of the young and the old, the ill and the large civilian population that Palestinian terrorists slaughtered during the course of a single day when 1,200 innocent people were horribly tortured and murdered, another 240 taken hostage into Gaza, had its shock-effect initially. The savagery that was documented by the terrorists themselves, and the reports of witnesses failed, however, to convince those in the West that view Palestinians as underdogs, lapping up their propaganda as reality. 

 

Pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel students and activists gather for an eighth day at an encampment on the campus of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, on May 4, 2024. (Alexis Aubin / AFP)

 

And from that propaganda emerged a rallying for the 'human rights' of Palestinians, that slid over into admiration for the butchery committed by Hamas, explained by sanctimonious, Jew-hating academics and unions as a legitimate struggle by the underdog against colonialist 'imperialist' Jews. Europe, Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, are roiled with the marching of 'pro-Palestinian' supporters hailing the courage of Hamas terrorists, cheering the October 7 atrocities. And chanting 'Intifada' and 'Final Solution'.

 

Synagogues and Jewish parochial schools, private Jewish-owned businesses are fire-bombed and vandalized. University campuses are taken hostage to persuade their administrators to succumb to the demands of students, faculty and outside agitators that they divest from Israeli military investments when no such thing even exists. In turn a handful of administrators, cowering before the raucous demands of the truth-illiterate hate-mongers agree to boycott Israeli academics and universities, review their investments, and give special privileges to Palestinian students.

Hitler would be so proud.

Data shows a hike in hate crimes reported in the cities with Canada's largest Jewish populations, including Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa. (David Donnelly/CBC)

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

"Why did I survive? I question that myself. I was in second grade before the war and out of 30 classmates, only two of us survived. Why am I so special? I don't know the answer. I believe in God and I'm still here. To all survivors, I say be happy."

"I realized it was a selection [Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp] to kill us. I used to put sand in my shoes to make myself [appear] a little taller. Mengele came to me and asked, 'How old are you?' I said, 'I'm 14'. He said, 'You're a liar', and took his gloves and hit me over the face."

"He told me to drop my pants and my shirt and told me to turn around. He than asked, 'How come you're so dark?' I said, 'I only have one shirt. When it's a hot day the sun is out. I want to preserve that shirt, so I remove it and this is how I got a suntan'."

"I don't know if he liked my suntan, or if he liked my answer. I have no idea. He just passed me by and took the guy next to me to be killed."

91-year-old Holocaust survivor, Dr. Arnold Clevs

“To all survivors, I say, be happy,” says Holocaust survivor Dr. Arnold Clevs, left, with Zikaron BaSalon host Eylon Levy. Photo by Aviva Engel

 

Dr. Clevs was eight years of age when he, his parents and six-year-old sister were forced to relocate to the ghetto in their town in Lithuania. The family employed a live-in housekeeper, a young Lithuanian women who Dr. Clevs described as having grown up with the Clevs children. One day she appeared with a Lithuanian collaborator who came into the house and selected whatever was there that appealed to him. The young woman accommodated her companion. Dr. Clev's mother asked of her 'Could you bring us some bread?'. But they never saw her again.

There are approximately 149,000 Holocaust survivors living in Israel. Among them many were children, or babies born during the war. Monday will see the commemorative arrival of Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. On this occasion, a ritual ensued where survivors and others seeking to honour the millions of Jewish children, men and woman who perished as a result of Nazi Germany's institutionalized killing apparatus visit the death camps, a solemn occasion to look back while simultaneously looking forward.

Although 80 years have passed, the memory of those whose lives were extinguished burns bright in the hearts, minds and souls of the survivors. Memorial candles will be lit in millions of Jewish homes, in memory of those who died so prematurely because they were Jews. On October 7 of 2023, some of those Holocaust survivors experienced a scenario reminiscent of what they had lived through generations earlier when the terrorist group Hamas that governs Gaza flooded into Israel to torture, murder and kidnap civilian Israelis.

A group called Zikaron BaSalon meaning Remembrance in the Living Room dedicated to helping Holocaust survivors in their adjustment to normal life, spring into action when incidents occur that overwhelm the survivors with past memories leading to uncertainties and re-emergence of the trauma they suffered. The group knew that in the follow-up to October 7 they would be needed to help heal more recent wounds as Israelis mourned their dead and were tormented about the fate of the hostages, among them their loved ones; children, the elderly, women and men.

"When the war broke out, we realized that we were not dealing with the typical scenarios that the country is used to -- this was something different. The first group that needed our attention were the survivors, whom we knew would not only be fearful, but likely also reliving their childhood traumas. I spoke to a 93-year-old-survivor who said, 'Get me a uniform and a weapon and I'm going in'. But for the most part, Holocaust survivors were really, really traumatized like the rest of us by what they were seeing."

"These Holocaust survivors have endured the absolute worst of humanity, yet they have rebuilt their lives, created families, communities and businesses, and contributed to the establishment of the State of Israel."

Sharon Buenos, global director, Zikaron BaSalon

The immediate action undertaken was to establish an emergency call centre offering emotional support and assistance with food, shelter, medication and transportation to medical appointments for the Israelis who were left homeless after October 7, evacuated from the southern Israel area, from the towns and kibbutzim where their homes were destroyed their belongings looted, their friends murdered. The displaced Israelis were in a state of shock, particularly the children, some of whom had witnessed unbelievable savagery and loss.

Survivors of the Nova music festival and children from the regions across the border from Gaza, attacked on October 7, were connected by Zikaron BaSalon with Holocaust survivors for mentoring and a unique type of emotional assurances. A living room was set up at the Dan Acadia Herzliya Hotel for child evacuees of a community on the Gaza border that suffered agonizing casualties. Currently living at the hotel with their families, the children interacted with Holocaust survivor Hannah Gofrit who at the age of four until she was ten suffered under the Nazis.

Dr. Clevs spent two years in 11 different slave labour and concentration camps. After liberation, he was reunited with his mother and sister. He raised a family in Chicago where he practised dentistry, and eventually moved to Israel. A fellow survivor who had been in Auschwitz-Birkenau with Dr. Clevs as a 16-year-old, now living in Sderot, southern Israel, is 97.  Asked how he managed, living in a town with missiles arriving sporadically, he responded: 'It's a hell of a lot better than Birkenau'.

Crowd of thousands gathers in Tel Aviv's Hostages Square to hear testimonies from Holocaust survivors and hostage families on May 5, 2024, the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day. (Charlie Summers/Times of Israel)

Restraining Anti-Israel University Protests -- Too Little, Too Late

"[Our campuses remain open; protest activities] must not interfere with the ability of students, faculty, librarians and staff to learn, teach, research and work."

"Our preference is to start with dialogue. Those who contravene university policy or the law risk the consequences set out in various laws and policies such as the Code of Student Conduct, which could include suspension."

McGill University Statement

"Everybody in Quebec has to respect laws, and right now these encampments are illegal."

"We have to respect the law. And I want to make sure that the police officers ensure the laws are respected."

"[The Quebec Superior Court rejection of a request from two McGill students wanting the protesters barred from within 100 metres of the school; however] if  you read the decision, they say clearly that [the encampment is] illegal."

"We're all worried about what's happening in Gaza. People can show their [position] in demonstrations -- these are legal. But they cannot have encampments on a university site."

Quebec Premier Francois Legault

Police stand between counter-protesters and a protest encampment in support of Palestinians, during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, at McGill University’s campus in Montreal, Quebec, Canada May 2, 2024. REUTERS/Peter McCabe

 

Those in authority in government and university administration must surely be aware that appeasing those who insist with little experience and a lot of arrogance that they are entitled to disrupt and disengage from the social weal in executing protests relating to a foreign country -- that also happens to be a bastion of democracy in a region of autocrats, dictators, kingdoms and oil sheikhdoms where human rights and democracy are absent, espouse an agenda inimical to the values of the West -- and reason will not prevail. 

 

Submitting to their demands results in greater demands all of which run counter to reason.

"We have many, many students, many undergraduate students, graduate students from all kinds of backgrounds, all kinds of religions ... all here."

"We also have a number of faculty who are supporting us."

Erin Mackey, protest organizer, UofT Occupy for Palestine

What she failed to mention, however, is that many unauthorized personnel, outsiders from the universities under siege by 'pro-Palestine' orgies of expressions of contempt and hate for the State of Israel, and determined to make life as miserable as possible for Jewish students on campuses across Canada. Outsiders representing professional agitators linked to Muslim extremist groups and terrorist groups in the Middle East from whom they take their marching orders as loyal and rabid Jew-haters and enemies of Israel.

 

Protesters gather in an encampment set up on the University of Toronto campus in Toronto on Thursday, May 2, 2024. The demonstration has entered its second day.peaceful. (Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press)

 

From years of celebrating the 'Nakba' of Israel's founding, in the name of free speech on university campuses, and the steady infiltration of Muslim students studying in Canada eventually taking up positions on university faculties planning and supporting annual BDS events and spreading the canard of Israeli genocide on Palestinians, the suborning of students' minds, empty of historical facts and actual events, prepared to take up the popular chants of 'from the river to the sea' to be part of a brave new movement linking to antisemitism, the stage was set for today's massive anti-Israel protests.

In Toronto, as in Montreal and Vancouver and elsewhere across Canada, tents, banners and Palestinian flags have cropped up festooning campuses; signage crude and baldly antisemitic stating Jews not permitted entry on university grounds where 'pro-Palestine' agitators harass, insult and threaten Jewish students, society looks on passively and governments at every level claim 'this is not who we are', while the landscape of encampments and calls for Jews to 'go back to Poland', presumably to the death camps ring out.

In Toronto, informed by the school administration that the tents and protesters, some sporting keffiyehs, are given until 10 p.m. to vacate the encampment, little interest is evinced; they have no plans to leave. They have been given written notice acknowledging the university respects the right to assemble and protest but such unauthorized activities as encampments "are considered trespassing". The protesters are not the least bit impressed. Why should they be? Their actions and activities have had no pushback in the past.

Midweek ,a request from two McGill Jewish students seeking a judicial assent in barring protesters at the encampment from within 100 metres of any of the university's buildings were informed their request was rejected. A counter-protest by pro-Israel groups was scheduled for the sixth day of the encampment's presence, bringing a police presence to monitor proceedings. 

Members of the Jewish community counter-protest outside a protest encampment set up in support of Palestinians, during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, at McGill University’s campus in Montreal, Quebec, Canada May 2, 2024. REUTERS/Peter McCabe

Delegitimizing The Citizenship Rights of Canadian Jews

"The murder and maiming of over 1,200 people, the taking of over 250 hostages -- 134 of which remain in captivity and continue to suffer as we speak: make no mistake, that's motivated by antisemitism."

"Not because I say so, but because the perpetrators say so."

"They've repeated it, and said they'll continue October 7 over and over again until they carry out our [sic] genocidal mission -- that is the message of Hamas, and what their goals are."

"We are calling on the Canadian government to take action, to list the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization, and to impose Magnitsky sanctions against the leaders of Hamas, of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and of the various businesses and organizations that funnel them money."

Brandon Silver, human rights lawyer, Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights policy director

Israeli Ambassador to Canada Iddo Moed, Irwin Cotler and Brandon Silver (left to right) listen to speakers talking about family and the situation in Israel on Oct. 30, 2023, in Ottawa. Photo by Adrian Wyld /The Canadian Press

A rally organized by the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights based in Montreal, brought together relatives of Canadians whom the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas had raped, tortured, slaughtered and/or taken hostage into Gaza where they remain imprisoned and tormented. The gathering on Parliament Hill called out to the RCMP for an investigation to be launched into the massacre of Canadians on October 7 by a terrorist group on Canada's terror watch list.

Quoting the Hamas charter, human rights Lawyer Brandon Silver noted it calls specifically for the destruction of Israel alongside the mass murder of Jews, wherever they happen to be domiciled -- and -- he pointed out, "Including here in Canada". Given the public demonstrations by those who label themselves Palestinian supporters who in essence promote the sentiment that Hamas's sadistic, planned savagery was justifiable, the notion that sleeper agents for Hamas have infiltrated Canadian society is not too far-fetched.

These are committed Jew-haters who infest the public with blatant falsehoods about Israel and the Israel Defense Forces, in their campaign to enlist not only Arab-Canadians, other Muslims and Canadian Palestinians in their viral and grotesque campaign to sow hatred and division between groups of Canadians, but to attract others to their sordid messages of antisemitism, holding Canadian Jews responsible for the ground and air offensive in Gaza through their support of Israel's defense-and-security rather than naming the true instigator of the conflict, Hamas.

 

Ashley Waxman Bakshi advocating for Israel's hostages taken by Hamas. Photo by @ashleywaxmanbakshi/Instagram

Playing on latent antisemitism among the public, stirring it to fiery rhetoric of 'final solutions','Palestine will be free', 'Intifada', 'From the River to the Sea', all of which link to the destruction of Israel and the death of Jews by popular acclaim, popular support among these ravening crowds targets Canadian Jews shouting for them to 'go back to Europe', threatening their presence in Canada, despite that Jews have been Canadian citizens for countless generations.

The Centre For Human Rights has alerted the Government of Canada -- which has been obliviously unresponsive to the ongoing threats levelled against Canadian Jews -- of 60 individuals and entities that have been linked to the terrorist flood out of Gaza into southern Israel which led to the deaths of 1,400 Israelis and foreign farm workers, the mass rapes of Israeli girls and women, the hostage-taking of 240 frail elderly men and women, children and infants.

Visiting family in her hometown of Ottawa at the time of the October 7 attacks, Jacqui Rivers Vital who lives now in Jerusalem spoke of her daughter Adi Vital-Kaploun whom Hamas terrorists murdered in the presence of her three-year-old and six-month-old children, in her home. Adi's body was booby-trapped by the terrorists so that any rescuers would be killed, as well. The children were taken hostage, but finally left at the border.

Tiferet Lapidot, 23, daughter of Canadian parents, was kidnapped by Hamas at the Supernova music festival. "I was there when she was born" said her aunt Galit Lapidot. "She was my sunshine, I loved her like a daughter". Tiferet had called her mother from the festival as Hamas went about raping, shooting and murdering the young men and women at the music festival. "Tiferet asked, 'what shall I do? I'm running and hiding behind the bushes'", her aunt explained. A week later, her body was found.

Others speaking to reporters from the Parliament Hill rally told their own stories, like Iris Weinstein relating that her mother, 70, Judih Weinstein was taken hostage by Hamas when she was out for a morning walk with her husband on that fateful day. In late December both of the elderly people were confirmed dead. "They said there were hundreds of rockets over their heads", recalled Iris Weinstein, after her mother Judih last communicated with her daughter.

According to other reports from the kibbutz, Hamas terrorists had been garbed in uniforms of the Israel Defense Forces. There were reports by residents that terrorists went door-to-door, killing indiscriminately. They shot civilians and children in their homes, lighting the houses on fire afterward.
"Almost fifty percent, if not more, of the houses are completely burnt", said Iris Weinstein. "Massacring my hometown."

 

Pro-Palestinian protesters wave flags facing a pro-Israel demonstration in front of a synagogue hosting "the Great Israeli Real Estate Event," in Thornhill, Ont., Thursday, March 7, 2024. (Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press)

An outcry of disbelief, betrayal and anger among the Jewish community of Canada, and Jewish communities worldwide rang out at the Parliament of Canada, led by the Liberal Government of Justin Trudeau, voting for an NDP motion that before being altered by the Liberals, called for Canada to recognize Palestinian statehood. Sharren Haskel, born in Canada, now an Israeli politician and member of the Knesset, reacted with concern and outrage to the passage of the motion.

"You have failed to support Israel at a time of deep trauma, war, and need."

"Your response -- as articulated in a motion passed, resoundingly, in Canada's Parliament yesterday, undermines the legitimacy of Israel's inherent right to defend itself against brutal assaults by Hamas, an Islamist death cult which Canada lists as a terrorist organization." 

Sharren Haskel, Israeli-Canadian, Knesset member

York Regional Police and Toronto Police were present outside of the Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto synagogue on Thursday. (Chris Langenzarde/CBC)