The clearest takeaway from this study is that public opinion on Canada and Israel is not one-dimensional. Canadians may be broadly negative toward Israel overall, but that does not translate into wholesale rejection of Israel’s right to exist or defend itself.

Three quarters of Canadians, 75%, agree that Israel has a right to defend itself when threatened by other countries. Two thirds, 66%, agree that Israel has a right to exist. A majority, 57%, also say Israel faces a uniquely difficult situation in a hostile region.

At the same time, many Canadians are critical of Israel’s behaviour and intentions. Just over half, 52%, agree that Israel is its own worst enemy because it makes no effort to live peacefully with its neighbours. Only 33% believe Israel is actively seeking peace with neighbours willing to stop threatening it. In other words, many Canadians still recognize Israel’s security concerns, but they are far less convinced by the country’s current political and military posture.

Israel’s overall standing is weak across the country. Favourable opinion sits at 22% nationally, and falls to 17% in Quebec. It is also notably lower among women than men, 17% versus 27%. By voting intention, perceptions differ sharply. Conservative voters are far more likely to view Israel favourably, at 38%, while favourable opinion drops to 17% among Liberal voters and 12% among NDP voters.

Canadians who rely mainly on family and friends for Middle East news are more likely to hold a favourable impression of Israel, at 38%, than those who rely on Canadian mainstream media, at 20%. More broadly, mainstream Canadian news outlets remain the dominant source of information on Middle East issues, cited by 57% of respondents, followed by social media at 25% and mainstream international media at 20%.

Asked about the Government of Canada’s response to rising antisemitic incidents since October 7 and the subsequent Middle East conflict, 39% say Ottawa needs to do more. Only 29% say the government is doing enough, and just 7% say it is doing too much.

Canadians are clearly more negative toward Israel than they were three years ago. That shift likely reflects the cumulative effect of war, regional escalation, humanitarian devastation, and the increasingly visible costs of prolonged military action. But Canadians have not moved to a simplistic all-or-nothing position. They still affirm Israel’s right to exist. They still affirm its right to defend itself. And they also affirm homeland rights for Palestinians, almost to the same degree. 

Perception of Israel; Survey of Canadians, Leger Poll

Photo by John Mahoney/MONTREAL GAZETTE

 

The recently-published Leger poll that looked into Canadians' support for Israel has concluded that support has dropped to quite a degree since the October 7, 2023 invasion of southern Israel by thousands of Palestinians, led by the terrorist group Hamas, with a clear plan laid out to punish Jews for living on their own ancestral land, that Palestinians claimed as their own, having chosen to reject the United Nations Partition Plan that divided that historically Judean landscape to share between Jews and Palestinians. That punishment took the form of mass rape, torture, sadistic savagery on a scale unimaginable by most sane minds, to rampage through farming communities, slaughtering children, the elderly, men and women.

 

There is always a reaction of sympathy in the immediacy of Jewish tragedy revealed, and it lasts as long as it takes Jews to amass  resources to respond to their deadly persecutors. So when Israel dispatched the Israeli Defense Forces into Gaza to hunt down the mass murderers who have always used the strategy of concealing themselves behind Palestinian civilians, using schools, mosques, community centres and hospitals as headquarters, weapons storage and communications centres amidst a civilian population, the stage is set for triumphant propaganda to persuade foreign news services and governments that Israel is attacking the human rights of defenseless people.

 

That 'public relations' ploy has been perfected against a background of fairly universal, and most frequently underground hatred of Jews and they come together  with a ferocity of awakened antisemitism justifying itself on the basis of 'recognizing' ancient Jewish stereotypes and caricatures of Jews as shrewd manipulators whose goal is to rule the world for their own malign purposes. Accused of controlling world banking, news media, and governments, despite all real events pointing to the obvious opposite, a snarling global media faults Israel for 'indiscriminate' and 'disproportionate' responses to atrocities it suffers when it responds to protect its population.

 

Notionally and nominally viewed as a Western ally, a solid democracy living in a hostile environment of Middle Eastern potentates, theocracies, kingdoms and oil sheikdoms where oil resources exploited by its neighbours have earned great favour in those same Western democracies, Israel's friendships and reliance on erstwhile allies is put to the test, and particularly in these last three years, that test has failed. In the IDF's campaign to destroy the terrorist group with a covenant to destroy Israel from Gaza, other similar groups in Lebanon and Yemen, controlled by the Islamic Republic all sought to pounce in unity, and all have been put back on their heels by the tiny nation that appears as a discrete spot on the globe.

 

Countries in the Jewish diaspora where Jews have lived for centuries and sometimes millennia have latterly become unsafe for continued Jewish existence, from Germany to France, Britain to Ireland, Spain to Greece, Australia to Canada. A massive influx of Muslims has infiltrated the West through a process of immigration, refuge and migration, bringing with them their ancient scriptures demanding jihad against non-believers, beginning with Jews, and since that jihad  takes many forms, the faithful are obliged to their duty, which translates to making life unbearable for Jews wherever they live, beginning with the state of Israel.

 

Governments which commit to equality for all their citizens, suddenly find it difficult to extend that equality to their Jewish populations in view of much larger demographics of Muslim populations. News media obligingly play the role of transmitting subtle, then not-so-subtle portrayals of the Jewish state's questionable responses to threats when forced by violence to respond in kind in a geography that recognizes no other kind of reactions than militancy to be respected and anything approaching diplomacy is a byzantine puzzle to unravel.  

 

In Canada, as in much of Europe, a flood of 'progressive'-left, Critical Race Theory, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion imperatives have refashioned society through their governments' commitments to empathetic action in reaction to charges of 'colonialism' and exploitation of less-developed nations and societies during past imperialistic eras. Conflating Israel, an indigenous people to the Middle East, with 'colonialism' in lock-step with Palestinian propaganda has succeeded in isolating Israel as a holdover from a now-despised age, completely perverting history and reality.

 

The incoherent and confused Canadian reaction to the recent Leger poll reflects to a great degree that condition now prevailing where Israel has become an outcast among democratic nations, through a successful campaign of delegitimization portraying the Jewish state, and Jews in general everywhere as illegal occupiers to be shunned and condemned. That Israel's scientific and technological and agricultural advances have been admired, acclaimed and shared, doesn't spare it one iota, nor the number of Jewish Nobel Laureates, out of proportion to their global population numbers. 

 

Do any of Israel's detractors in the West even note that when Jews mount protests they do so peacefully, holding not only the  flags of Israel aloft, but flags denoting their countries of  residence. 'Pro-Palestinian' protests, on the other hand, see people masked, shouting invective, threatening the local Jewish population, chanting for the destruction of Israel, wearing keffiyehs to signal Palestinian triumphs over adversity when a death-cult mentality identifies their target as genocidal. 'Palestine' is a useful symbol for those who use it  as a cudgel, nothing more, with which to demolish Israel's place in the world. 

 

People attend a rally outside Convocation Hall on the University of Toronto campus on Monday, May 27, 2024 as members of the Ontario Federation of Labour support the pro-Palestinian encampment at the university. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press)

 

Jihad: From Lethal Violence to Stealth Persuasion

"The process of settlement is a 'Civilization-Jihadist Process' with all the word means."

"The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating the destroying the western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions."

"It is a Muslim's destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes, and there is no escape from that destiny." 

An Explanatory Memorandum for the Muslim Brotherhood's Goals in North America  

Jihad: Holy or Unholy War?
John L. Esposito
The concept and practice of jihad have been critical in the history of
Islam.1 From the rise of Islam and the creation and expansion of the Muslim
community, jihad has played a central role in Islam. Jihad (exertion or struggle)
is sometimes referred to as the Sixth Pillar of Islam. Throughout history, (as in
other faiths) sacred scripture has been used and abused, interpreted and
misinterpreted, to justify resistance and liberation struggles, extremism and
terrorism, holy and unholy wars.
The importance of jihad is rooted in the Quran’s command to struggle (the
literal meaning of the word jihad) in the path of God and in the example of the
Prophet Muhammad and his early Companions. In its most general meaning,
jihad refers to the obligation incumbent on all Muslims, individuals and the
community, to follow and realize God’s will: to lead a virtuous life and to extend
the Islamic community through preaching, education, example, writing, etc.
Jihad also includes the right, indeed the obligation, to defend Islam and the
community from aggression. Throughout history, the call to jihad has rallied
Muslims to the defense of Islam.
Since the late 20th century, the word jihad has gained remarkable
currency: used by resistance, liberation, and terrorist movements alike to
legitimate their cause and motivate their followers. The Afghan Mujahiddin, the
Taliban and the Northern Alliance, have waged a jihad in Afghanistan against
foreign powers and among themselves; Muslims in Kashmir, Chechnya,
Daghestan and the southern Philippines, Bosnia and Kosovo have fashioned
their struggles as jihads; Hizbollah, HAMAS, and Islamic Jihad Palestine have
characterized war with Israel as a jihad; Algeria’s Armed Islamic Group has
engaged in a jihad of terror against the government there and Osama Bin Laden
and al-Qaeda have waged a global jihad against Muslim governments and the West.

The Muslim Brotherhood, the century-old Egypt-based totalitarian, political, exterminationist leader in Islamist conquest for the universal elevation of Islam and the subjugation of all people on the globe -- to submit to a religion conceived by an Arab businessman in the 7th century Mecca of the Middle East who diligently mined the prophets, holy concepts, and sacred human values of the Hebrew Holy Book to freely lift those precepts and philosophical, historical antecedents to be used in the conceiving of Muhammad's own rendition of a holy scripture, the Koran, which he held to supercede those of two predecessor religions; Judaism and Christianity, as God's 'final word' -- must be recognized for the danger it is.

 

 

Since that inception in 1928 the Muslim Brotherhood has spread its tentacles throughout the world, with countless branches, both those dedicated to violent action -- in the Middle East, Africa and Asia -- and stealth persuasion -- in Western democracies; throughout Europe and the Americas, to use any and all methods between the two extremes to achieve the goal of Islamist domination. Recognizing its threat to their own status as governments, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood. It is past time for the West to catch up.

 

Moderate Muslim-majority countries are under attack by the Muslim Brotherhood's offshoots, just as Western countries are; the methodology differs, as do the techniques, but the end result is the same. Convert or die. Alternately, convert or live under Islam as taxed-and-tolerated inferiors. 

Islam is  now the fastest-growing religion on the globe, likely to overtake Christianity within the next several decades. Where Christianity sees slumping followings, Islam's is expanding. And as it expands it also exports itself everywhere across the world.

 

Through immigration, migration, and refugee claimants, Islam is infiltrating everywhere. Muslims have a tendency to obey Koranic instructions to hold themselves separate from those of other, or no religious affiliations. And since Islam is an entire way of life, subscribed by the strict tenets laid down for Muslims through their holy scriptures, there is no assimilation within another culture, their values, acceptance of a different history, and above all, laws, other than Sharia.

 

Observant Muslims heed their obligation to procreation. Through the scimitar, the Koran and the cradle, Islam grows its ummah unrelentingly, the global presence of Muslims, either in Muslim-majority countries or through the limitless diaspora. And wherever Muslims congregate to become part and apart of an established presence in non-Muslim countries they agitate for Sharia law, arguing that their numbers reaching majority status demands it. 

 

Oddly enough, for a strictly religious people, the incidence of crime among the Muslim population tends to be higher than for other groups. Illegal and criminal activities from human smuggling to trafficking in arms and prohibited substances such as recreational drugs go a long way to funding Islamist terrorism. Tellingly, Islamist groups have become proficient in their use of Western social and cultural concepts of fairness and equality, professing allegiance with social groups they have nothing in common with, and have no regard for, but to use them as helpful supports.

 

Appealing to the human rights due them, Islamists use the guise of victimhood to persuade social progressives abroad that they disproportionately suffer discrimination because of their religion, because of their culture and inherent beliefs, because of their skin colour, because their history is unappreciated, despite that Islam is a religion of peace. That criticism of Islam merely as a result of its proclivity to produce hordes of terrorists plaguing the world community in a violently constant replay of its founder's militancy of persuasion is 'Islamophobic', shaming the timid and the unaware to silence.

 

As the engine of Islamist totalitarianism the Muslim Brotherhood which has succeeded in inserting itself as an honourable representative of Islam throughout the West, with its machinations of its offshoots like    CAIR and its countless 'humanitarian charities' that purport to support the poor and the undertrodden in developing nations while siphoning the funds toward terrorism, it requires governments throughout the world to finally recognize its role in destroying what the Western world represents as democratic unions supporting human rights.