Liberals and NDP turned their backs on Jews — in Israel and Canada

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On Oct. 7, Hamas terrorists launched a massive attack against Israeli civilians that, I expect, succeeded beyond their wildest expectations. Operation Al-Aqsa Flood had been planned for years, with training support of every kind from the Islamic Republic of Iran and other Islamist proxies in the region.

The goal was not only to invade southern Israel but to reach the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem; to “flood” the mosque with holy warriors — jihadis — and destroy Israel along the way.

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On social media and other platforms on Oct. 7, Hamas released images in real time that were horrifyingly brutal, rivalling the worst of ISIS. I have seen the 47-minute compilation of raw footage taken that morning from body and GoPro cams of Hamas murderers, Palestinian civilians who joined the killing spree and the phones of the victims.

The savagery is incomprehensible.

They were ecstatic as they slaughtered. Chopping off the head of a dead soldier with a machete. With each one of five energetic swings, a chorus shouting: “Allahu akbar!” And then one Hamas murderer plays with the head. He swings it like a toy. A trophy. The footage is unsparing and represents a mere fraction of the barbarism unleashed that day and since.

Unlike the leaders of most western countries, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said nothing in the hours following the attack. He was silent until late in the day on Sunday, Oct. 8.

Very few Liberal and NDP MPs have seen the 47 minutes, by choice.

Trudeau has distinguished himself as being the only G7 leader — aside from Japan’s Fumio Kishida — who has not visited Israel in a show of western solidarity. His snub has been noticed in Jerusalem, as has Canada’s peculiar handling of every aspect of this crisis, both domestically and in terms of foreign policy.

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One moment, Trudeau makes platitudinous statements about supporting Israel’s right to defend itself. The next he delivers fiery orations for the oppressed, pummelled Palestinians. He pounced, repeatedly, to accuse Israel of the most heinous atrocities with no evidence, but mulled, pensively, when denunciation of Hamas was warranted. Vacuous, unprincipled, low-level political pandering.

This all came to a head on March 18, when the prime minister and his caucus overwhelmingly supported a motion brought to the House of Commons by NDP foreign affairs critic Heather McPherson. Initially, the motion called for Canada to “officially” recognize the “State of Palestine,” along with calling for a ban on military exports to Israel and the release of “all” hostages, which McPherson takes to include Palestinians held in Israeli prisons for committing crimes, including acts of terrorism.

Amid much drama, the original wording of the motion was modified to remove recognition of a Palestinian state, replacing that with support for “a negotiated two-state solution” so that Trudeau and the less overtly pro-Hamas members of his caucus would vote for it.

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The motion passed with overwhelming support.

On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacked Israeli soldiers and civilians, unprovoked, and went on a mad spree of torture and murder. Palestinian civilians also partook in all aspects of the savagery and looting. For hours and with no mercy.

Simply put, Hamas started a war.

Wars have rules, and consequences. When one side — Hamas — uses hospitals as military bases, the special protection accorded such facilities under international law no longer applies in a blanket manner. When one side — Hamas — intentionally places civilians in harm’s way in order to prevent its enemy (Israel) from defending itself, that is a war crime. When one side — Hamas — takes infants, children, men, women and the elderly hostage, and denies them access to basic humanitarian needs, like food and medical care, that is a war crime. When one side also beats, tortures and rapes its captives and refuses any access for the International Red Cross or other humanitarian organizations operating in the Gaza Strip, that is a war crime.

McPherson and the MPs who supported her motion, of course, see things differently.

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She would take the position, as she has done repeatedly, that Israel is committing a genocide in the Gaza Strip. That Israel is engaged in ethnic cleansing. That Israel is bombing and entering hospitals indiscriminately. That Israel is preventing the delivery of humanitarian aid to the civilian population of the Gaza Strip. And these acts are war crimes.

There are two rather serious problems with McPherson’s position. Firstly, she is egregiously misinformed as to what is happening on the ground in the Gaza Strip.

Secondly and most importantly, McPherson and her parliamentary colleagues are ignorant with respect to the basic tenets of international law, which they proclaim and apply with boundless confidence. Genocide, for example, is a term with a quite precise definition in international legal jurisprudence and commentary. The commission of a genocide turns on intention. That means — as Hamas boasts repeatedly — that the killing is done with the intention of annihilating an identifiable people or ethnic group.

But McPherson and her colleagues have decided that genocide is an arithmetical matter. So, if Israeli forces kill more Palestinians than Hamas slaughtered on Oct. 7, well, then Israel is the genocidal actor.

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Not so.

Were that the case, then the Allied forces during the Second World War would have been the genocidal fanatics, not the Nazis and Axis powers. Because in order to defeat Germany, the Allies pulverized the civilian population of Germany with merciless air strikes. Many more Germans died than did Allied civilians.

Numbers do not constitute principle. Nor do they clarify intention. To ascertain intention requires thought. And I would suggest that to do that, one might begin by analyzing the statements and political charters of Hamas and its allies.

By promoting the Islamist agenda of Hamas in this critical historical moment, the Canadian government has openly aligned with forces that promote the establishment of a global caliphate.

Hamas — and its companion Islamist organizations, Hezbollah, the Houthis and the Islamic Republic of Iran — openly call for the annihilation of Israel and the killing of all Jews. If one has any doubt regarding the veracity of this comment, I suggest that they watch the 47 minutes. Or read the charters of any one of these groups. Or listen to their leaders speak. They are not at all shy about declaring their intentions to destroy Israel, murder all Jews and, over time, achieve the Islamization of the world. And that includes Canada.

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Polls taken since Oct. 7 confirm that 71 per cent of Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip support the massacre. Calls to repeat the slaughter have been all over social media, but most chilling was the promise of Hamas political bureau official Ghazi Hamad that there will be repeats of Oct. 7, until Israel is annihilated. This is just one of many examples of incitement to commit genocide that seem to have gone unnoticed by McPherson and Canadian MPs.

Tellingly, throughout the 47 minutes, the Hamas killers refer to corpses of the murdered as ”Jews,” “dogs” and “settlers.” Not once do they refer to them as Israelis. They cannot bring themselves to utter the word. The victims are utterly dehumanized and demonized.

This is the Middle East. Not Kanata, Ont., or suburban Edmonton.

I am not applauding the suffering of civilians in the Gaza Strip. What I am doing is suggesting that the concern of Canada’s parliamentarians is dangerously misdirected. They should be pressuring Hamas and its sponsor, Qatar, unceasingly. Hamas leaders have declared openly that they do not busy themselves with civilian welfare. That, they say, is for UNRWA. Hamas kills. Hamas exists to annihilate Israel. That is genocidal intent.

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Early on in the war, a Qatar-based senior Hamas political bureau official stated that the responsibility for protecting civilians in the Gaza Strip falls to the United Nations and Israel. In fact, he specified that the more than 400 kilometres of tunnels beneath the Strip is for protecting terrorists only.

Earlier this week, there was a horribly tragic accident in which Israeli drones targeted three vehicles operated by the international NGO World Central Kitchen. In spite of having had its route along the humanitarian corridor pre-approved by the Israel Defence Forces, the attack occurred and seven humanitarian aid workers, including one Canadian, were killed.

That this event transpired as it did is deeply disturbing to Israelis. Interviewed on Israel’s Channel 12 on April 3, World Central Kitchen founder and celebrity chef José Andrés was beyond eloquent, stating: “The airstrikes on our convoy, I don’t think were an unfortunate mistake. It was really a direct attack on clearly marked vehicles whose movements were known by everybody at the IDF.…

“I know Israelis. I have many friends that are Israelis and Jewish. I know Israelis, they are better than this war being waged. I know that they are better than blocking food and medicines to civilians.”

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I share Andrés’ rage and hope that the attack was not intentional. I also share his questions as to how this could have occurred in error. But tragic mistakes do happen in war.  Among them the American strike on an Afghan hospital in Kunduz in 2015, which killed 42 innocents. The United States took responsibility and apologized. Israel did the same regarding the Gaza tragedy.

Should we learn at a later date that this attack was, indeed, intentional, I can assure the world that there will be rage among Israelis directed at the IDF and government. But even if the worst case scenario is proven to be true, it still does not constitute genocide.

Genocide is what befell the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. Cultural genocide is occurring at this moment against the Uighur Muslims in China. But not in the Gaza Strip.

From Oct. 7, Israel made clear that the return of all hostages immediately may avert an armed conflict. But for Hamas, the Al-Aqsa Flood was just beginning.

Immediately following the vote supporting her motion, McPherson, sporting a keffiyeh — which has become the international sartorial symbol of Palestinian statehood and triumphalism over Israel — back-slapped other MPs also wearing keffiyehs. It was unmitigated joy all round, reminiscent of the partying in Mississauga, Montreal and elsewhere in Canada on Oct. 7.

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From her earliest statements in October, she called the Israeli response to the Hamas attack a war crime. The “siege.” Lack of food and water. Casualties. But there was and is no intention to annihilate or commit genocide. There was, however, a profound urgency to create an incentive for Hamas to release the hostages. Israel did not begin its ground invasion of the Gaza Strip for three weeks after Oct. 7. In that time, only four female hostages (out of more than 240, including an infant and many children) were released on compassionate grounds.

In her motion, McPherson calls for the immediate release of all hostages. By “hostages,” she means the civilian captives held by Hamas, as well as security prisoners — as in convicted mass murderers — held in Israeli prisons. They are one and the same in her moral universe. What that tells us is that she supports Hamas in this war and regards its conduct as “legitimate resistance.”

This motion also calls for an immediate halt of all exports of military-grade weapons from Canada to Israel. In doing so, the Canadian government, in one broad stroke, imputes all moral responsibility for this crisis to Israel.

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As Ron Dermer, Israel’s minister of strategic affairs and former ambassador to the United States, commented shortly after the motion was passed, Canada has made it very clear that it is aligned in values and worldview with Islamist extremists. The damage to Canada’s credibility globally, he stated, is severe and will take decades to restore.

The ideological foundation of the Trudeau government’s worldview, if one can call it that, is critical race theory (CRT), which applies a simplistic, binary prism to everything. One is either white (bad) or a person of colour (good). Skin colour determines moral character. If white, then you are an oppressor. You likely do not even realize that you are an evil, racist oppressor. It is programmed into your DNA.

Jews have been deemed to be white (factually incorrect), oppressive settlers, which places them at the apex of the CRT pyramid of evil.

Muslims, on the other hand, are people of colour. Therefore, they are oppressed, occupied and virtuous.

And there are far more Muslims in Canada today than Jews. In 2017, there were approximately one-million Muslims in Canada. Today, that population has nearly doubled, with many of these new Canadians having immigrated from highly radicalized countries.

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As the cliche goes, all politics are local. And Canada is a different country from what it was a decade ago. Ten per cent of the population of Toronto, Canada’s largest city, is Muslim. And to date, Muslims have voted for Justin Trudeau’s Liberal party, overwhelmingly.

Since Oct. 7, physical attacks and threats against Jewish institutions — including schools, nurseries, synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses have become “normal.” Bomb threats. Harassment of neighbourhoods with large Jewish populations.

Trudeau insists these are “peaceful protests.” Nonsense. There is nothing peaceful about them. Hateful chants of incitement for the annihilation of Israel and murder of Jews are neither peaceful nor legal. Masking in public gatherings — as the “peaceful protesters” do — is illegal. Blocking highways and streets without permits — illegal. Actual violence? Illegal. Targeting Jews to threaten, harass and intimidate? Illegal.

Trudeau and his caucus have set a tone. From the top. Yes, there are similar demonstrations in other western countries, primarily Europe. Nowhere, however, is the appeasing gobbledygook we hear from our prime minister matched. He emboldens and empowers the haters.

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Over the last eight years, the image and reality of Canada have been altered, irrevocably.

When elected in 2015, our federal leadership was the shiny new toy. Young. Attractive. Diverse. Compassionate. Inclusive. The world could not get enough of the woke messiah, Justin Trudeau, and his entourage.

But the perception of Canada has changed. India fiasco. The manner in which the Emergencies Act was invoked in response to the “national threat of insurgency” presented by the trucker convoy. The decline of Canada economically and rather extreme social engineering that is promoted by the federal government as being consistent with a progressive agenda. The very high tolerance of governments at all levels for pro-Hamas protests that target and threaten Canadian Jews, with unambiguous hatred and, in some cases, violence.

Canada is no longer seen to be a nice and polite nation. We are not seen to have truly liberal democratic western values. We are not seen to be principled. We are an unserious country that babbles on at the highest levels about absolute garbage. Gender inclusive demining programs in Ukraine. Abundant supply of tampons in men’s washrooms. And this very effusive embrace of radical Islamism.

In the Middle East, and throughout the West, one question is constantly being asked: “What the hell is going on in Canada?”

Justin Trudeau, Heather McPherson, Jagmeet Singh and our current government are showing us, openly, who they are and what they value.

Believe them.

National Post

Vivian Bercovici is a former Canadian ambassador to Israel and the founder of the State of Tel Aviv.

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