Canada, Threats From Within

"It is becoming increasingly clear that Canada is a  high priority target for ISIS-inspired terrorists." 

"[The Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security must be convened for an emergency session to probe] this most recent foiled terror attack."

"They [two young men in their teens] are alleged to have formed a plan last fall to violently attack Jewish persons in Ottawa, possibly through the detonation of an explosive device at a pro-Israel rally."

Conservative members of the Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security

The Parliament Hill bomb plot is only the latest in a string of arrests related to domestic terror plots with Islamist or anti-Israel motives. Photo by Jonathan Hayward/The Canadian Press

 

Look no further than the unwieldy numbers of immigrants, refugees and illegal migrants that have penetrated Canadian society at every level; Muslims emanating from Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Sudan, Yemen and Afghanistan, and most particularly from Gaza, for starters. By no means all of these people who have entered Canada, legally and illegally, but the jihad-inspired, Jew-hating contingent and their imported Mullahs whose Friday mosque sermons and prayers urge the faithful to be true to the passages in the Koran describing Jews as the enemy, along with 'crusaders' and kafirs.

A broad import of a searing antisemitism into Canadian society that sees younger generations being taught to view Jews as usurpers of Arab land in 'Palestine', occupiers of land consecrated to Islam, turning the sacred into a sacrilegious presence of enemies of the Prophet Mohammed, routed from Medina in the 17th century, the presence of whom in modern times must meet the same fate. And to Jew-haters in Canada that translates as Canadian Jews being threatened, harassed and tormented by those who abhor their presence in the Middle East, and anywhere else the diaspora has settled.

The wild celebrations in the streets of Canada led by Israel-and-Jew-haters, organized by Arabs, Muslims and Palestinians in Canada over the admired success of Palestinian terrorists in the slaughter of 1,200 mostly civilian Israelis during the October 7, 2023 invasion of southern Israel by tens of thousands of terrorists led by Hamas, and the follow-up marches and demonstrations in honour of and defense of Palestinian terrorism has roiled Canada as it has elsewhere around the world for over a year, in the face of government inaction.

 

While the Liberal government of prime minister Justin Trudeau has repeatedly declared that 'this is not who we are', in responding to the attacks on synagogues, Jewish schools, community centres and privately-owned Jewish business, it clearly is what  we are becoming under the auspices of a government that fails to care enough about the fate of Canadian Jews, oppressed, discriminated against, and threatened, to apply Canada's laws on hate-mongering. The opposition Conservative Party on the other hand, has reacted as a responsible government should.

 

Ottawa Pro-Palestinian Rally, CTV News

The latest report of  terrorist activity in Canada itself is that of the arrest of two Ottawa teens, charged with plotting a deadly attack against pro-Israel demonstrators who came out to Parliament Hill in defence of Israel and of Canadian Jews. A Department of Justice court filing declares that the boys were in possession of the constituents of explosive devices; acetone, oxidizer, metal ball bearings. The December 2023 arrest of a 15-year-old terror suspect came with a report that a Facebook account in the father's name was rife with extremist rhetoric, calls to 'get rid' of Israelis among them.

 

RCMP anti-terror investigators in July arrested a father-son duo planning a "serious, violent attack in Toronto". Ahmed Eldidi and Mostafa Eldidi saw arrest in Richmond Hill, in the "advanced stages" of planning an attack. Pakistani national Muhammad Shahzeb Khan was arrested in September as part of a US. investigation of his intention to stage a terrorist attack against a New York City Jewish site, timed to mark the one-year anniversary of the October 7 massacres attributed largely to Hamas.

"The defendant is alleged to have planned a terrorist attack in New York City around October 7th of this year with the stated goal of slaughtering, in the name of ISIS, as many Jewish people as possible."

U.S. Attorney General Merrick R. Garland

Following a wave of shooting attacks and attempted arsons of Jewish sites, Toronto police arrested Helder Antonio De Ameida in connection with a shooting attack on Bais Chaya Mushka Elementary School for girls. De Ameida was accused of firing multiple shots into the school on October 12; found at the site were 14 shell casings. A 17-year-old accomplice was arrested along with De Amida.  In Israel in July, Zacharea Adam Quraishi of Alberta was shot dead by the Israel Defense Forces as he threatened them with a knife, rushing at armed guards outside the gates of the Israeli village of Netiv Ha'asara, screaming "Free Palestine".

Palestinian Purveyors of Hate

"Canada has turned its back on Israel. It really feels like a betrayal."

"Canada knows how Hamas has taken over UNRWA. Once [during the Conservative-led Stephen Harper government] Canada completely stopped the funding for UNRWA under a different government, because they understood what it is."

"They understand that Hamas is controlling a 2.5 million population in Gaza through UNRWA, supplying them services that are being paid for through the international community ... and through that control they're able to radicalize that population."

"[Canada's] not helping the Palestinians because aid isn't being bought with that money. It doesn't reach the Palestinian people. Hamas is taking half [of the aid] and selling it in the market, so it can pocket that money."

"They're turning schools and hospitals into military bases. They know that, yet [countries] still contribute and even top that with more money."

"That attempt of recognition of the Palestinian state, it was here in Parliament [House of Commons in the nation's capital, Ottawa] where they were trying to push it and trying to debate it -- it's absurd, this is rewarding terrorism."

"What will other terror organizations learn from that? Murder people, create the worst massacre the world has seen in recent history and then hide behind the civilian population? The international community will let you off the hook."

Canadian-born Sharren Haskel, member of Israeli Knesset

The encampments at Canadian campuses have followed months of protest marches, petitions, sit-ins and hunger strikes by pro-Palestinian activists since Israel's military response to the Oct. 7 attacks led by Hamas. (Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press)

 

Under its current government, headed by Justin Trudeau, Canada has undergone a multitude of changes, none of which has resulted in better government, or given Canadians a reason to be proud of their country. It is a nation undone as a nation, and deliberately so by a prime minister whose agenda runs counter to reason, justice and morality. In this particular instance, a country whose government has chosen to turn its back on a member-democracy that the government before this one supported wholeheartedly. When Justin Trudeau came into the position of control of the nation he described as 'post-national' he instantly turned around the preceding government's ethical, moral, political, diplomatic sureties.

 

We have become a nation divided on many issues, moving offside social mores, to natural resource extraction friction, from alienating West from East and North from South, and issues of social and criminal justice, of serving peoples' needs completely in collapse. Above all, a significant portion of Canadian ethnic identity has been fractionalized, endangered and isolated by actions taken by hostile factions within the population campaigning against Israel and by extension Jews, through loud, vulgar and slanderous antisemitism accompanied by violent criminal acts, with no remedial action by the Trudeau government in upholding the human rights of Canada's Jewish population.

 

In a speech to the Israeli Parliament in 2014, then-Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper called efforts to compare Israel to apartheid-era South Africa 'sickening' and '​​the face of the new antisemitism.' (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)

Israel's pain and grief in the aftermath of the horrors of the terrorist attacks of October 7 in southern Israel have been set aside once the initial shock settled, as irrelevant to empathetic recognition in an atmosphere of volatile, threatening and violent verbal attacks against the existence of the State of Israel, alongside physical criminal acts of sabotage targeting Jewish-owned businesses, community centres, parochial schools, synagogues and Jewish-majority neighbourhoods, with scarcely a counteractive move by government.

 

The disruptive marches organized by Palestinians and their supporters echoing the situation of antisemitic activism taking place throughout Europe and the United States, supported by left-wing 'progressives', unions, environmental and LGBTQ-2 groups has been unprecedented and demeaning of the social values of the West. Knesset member Sharren Haskel, born in Canada, now a member of the Israeli parliament, decries what she has observed of the direction that Canada has taken at the United Nations, at Canadian universities whose campuses have been allowed to fall to the Hamas-supporting factions of Jew-haters without recourse to the law to uproot their divisive, destructive tactics.

 

University of British Columbia is among nine Canadian universities that have seen encampments erected in recent days. (Chuck Chiang/The Canadian Press)

 

Skyrocketing antisemitism has shocked and threatened the well-being of diaspora Jews everywhere in this unexpected tsunami of Jew-hate orchestrated by Islamist thugs who feed off slumbering antisemitism in society, bringing it to a crescendo of full-blown antipathy destabilizing law and order while nothing is done to ensure the security of Jews and their social and religious institutions from attack and demonization. In Canada, that blase obliviousness of the government's obligation of duty to all its citizens reflects pervasive antisemitism at the core of society.

 

The sadistic sexual depravity of Palestinian terrorists against Israeli children, girls and women, the wholesale slaughter of Israeli families, the terror inflicted upon infants and teens, women and the elderly, the murder of entire families burned beyond identification in their vehicles, in their homes, on the streets of the kibbutzim, the hundreds of young men and women killed at a music festival, the hostage-taking of girls and women, the elderly and infirm, of infants and children, fails to move the empathetic dismay and outrage of civilized countries beyond the initial acknowledgement of the atrocities.

 

They are now persuaded instead that Israel, in its internationally-recognized right of response to such malignancy, determined to destroy the terrorist ghouls who repeat at every opportunity their intention to repeat October 7 endlessly until Israel is destroyed and Jews are obliterated, is being bullied and threatened by its 'allies' in democracy, by the UN General Assembly, by the International Criminal Court, to cease and desist in its mission to protect itself and its people from another genocide. 

 

Reuters

 

Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government ceased its financial support of UNRWA in the knowledge that its functionality as a UN operation dedicated to the 'victimized' Palestinians' welfare in pursuit of 'right of return' to overwhelm and destroy Israel as a Jewish state and capture its ancestral territory for a state dedicated entirely to Palestinian nationhood; a decision overturned by Justin Trudeau. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency is a major employer of Palestinians in Gaza, many of whom are members of Hamas.

Proof was given to the world at large of UN schools built over underground Hamas bunkers with rocket launchers metres from UN refugee camps. The UNRWA Gaza headquarters hosted a Hamas data centre. UNRWA employees took part in the savagery meted out to Israelis on October 7. The tent fire that took place in Rafah following an Israeli airstrike meant to target two Hamas officials did not occur as a result of the precision small-impact bombs, but rather the ammunition depot installed close to the camp exploded, lit by the bombs that hit their targets, resulting in the deaths of dozens in the camp.

And in Canada, pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas protests organized by Palestinian student groups from the days following directly on the October 7 atrocities, have roiled the public square, shutting highways, closing access to public facilities, raiding shopping centres, blocking hospital entrances, setting up blockages at bridges leading to majority Jewish neighbourhoods, carrying posters reading "From the river to the sea Palestine will be free!", in the absence of Israel. Signs congratulating Hamas, flaunting the 'intefada', promising a 'final solution'. Jewish  university students and faculty are blocked entry to universities whose campuses have become tent camps for the proliferation and promulgation of antisemitism.

This is a government for which no action is deemed required to put an end to masked provocateurs fulminating and threatening and accusing Jews of genocide against Palestinians. This is a shameful period in Canadian history, but worse, much worse, a fearful time of living on the edge of a threatening volcano being experienced by the Jewish community worldwide.

"As we witness a surge in conspiracy theories circulating online, it is worth mentioning that the history of antisemitism is full of these. Ideas about Jewish manipulation – spread among a wider segment of the population – can also be used in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They “explain” things such as the US support for Israel and the positioning of western media."

"All of these historic deeply embedded conspiracies and antisemitic beliefs feed into a fevered atmosphere where Jews can feel threatened wherever they live, and this is, unfortunately, unlikely to disappear."

The Conversation

A French police officer sits outside a Paris synagogue. Data suggests that attacks against Jews around the world goes up when there is conflict in the Middle East. AP/Alamy

Keeping Civilians Out of Harm's Way

Bipartisan candlelight vigil with members of Congress to commemorate one month since the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel  (Photo: Drew Angerer / Getty Images)

"The human tragedy that is unfolding in Gaza is heart-wrenching, especially the suffering we see in and around the Al Shifa Hospital."

"I have been clear that the price of justice cannot be the continued suffering of all Palestinian civilians. Even wars have rules."

"[Hamas needs to stop using Palestinians as human shields and release all hostages] immediately and unconditionally."

"[The violence urgently needs to stop] so that Palestinians can get access to life-saving medical services, food, fuel and water, so that all hostages can be released, so that all Canadians and other nationals can leave Gaza."

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

 

"@Justin Trudeau...It is not Israel that is deliberately targeting civilians but Hamas that beheaded, burned and massacred civilians in the worst horrors perpetrated on Jews since the Holocaust."

"While Israel ls doing everything to keep civilians out of harm's way, Hamas is doing everything to keep them in harm's way. Israel provides civilians in Gaza humanitarian corridors and safe zones, Hamas prevents them from leaving at gunpoint."

"It is Hamas not Israel that should be held accountable for committing a double war crime -- targeting civilians while hiding behind civilians."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attend a ceremony in Paris on November 11, 2018 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the armistice that ended the First World War. Photo by Francois Mori/AFP/Getty Images/File

The problem here is that it is the Israeli prime minister who is facing a dilemma; wholly invested in ensuring that Hamas will never again be capable of slaughtering Israelis because they are Jews, while at the same time Israeli forces are responding to the terrorist atrocities committed by Hamas in southern Israel, aggressively searching out the terrorist Hamas operatives in their densest most civilian-occupied areas, primarily Gaza City, while care is observed to keep civilian casualties to a minimum.

Even while the Israel Defense Forces have been dispatched to Gaza to rout out the terrorists, Hamas and Islamic Jihad have never stopped bombarding Israel with rockets, aimed at Israel's civilian population. When Israel warned Gazans to move south in the event of the IDF entering the northern regions of the Strip, Hamas ordered its civilians to remain where they were -- to be defiant -- but the agenda really was to continue their role as sacrificial martyrs to the Hamas death-cult imposed on Israel.

Netanyahu's rebuke of a democratic colleague who has never faced such a dilemma offering suggestions that appear to equate the legitimacy of a military fully involved in securing the safety of civilians while engaged in an existential battle for security for its population -- with the actions of a terrorist group that precipitated the war. Trudeau has shown himself time and again prepared to assume the worst of Israel, taking the word of Hamas, an organization listed on Canada's own terrorist list, over that of the Israeli authorities.

In repeating the Hamas mantra of Israel committing genocide by killing women, children and babies, Trudeau has selected terrorist propaganda over the concerns of a Western liberal democracy doing all it can under the circumstances to ensure that women, children and babies are as safe from harm as can be possible in a war situation where they are abused as human shields. Israel has carefully and selectively entered parts of Gaza's hospitals in its search for Hamas operatives in the knowledge that the terrorists use hospitals as covers.

Hamas command centres are set up in and under hospitals, a reality that both Hamas and the medical staff at Shifa Hospital deny. Urging "maximum restraint" upon Israel expresses a total lack of understanding of the situation and the care taken to exercise just that. War was mounted in the wake of a vicious surprise attack by Hamas terrorists on Israeli communities bordering on Gaza, where an estimated 1,200 mostly civilians were subjected to mutilation and murder; women raped, children killed in their homes alongside their parents.

Trudeau's foreign affairs minister, Melanie Joly, terming the situation unacceptable, mimicked the concerns of her political governing leader: "Civilians must be protected and enough food, fuel and water must get into Gaza so that [the UN's] life-saving work can continue"; an obvious concern to Israel, grappling with the humanitarian crisis that it did not create of its singular volition. And while Trudeau stopped short of calling for a 'ceasefire', his foreign deputy went considerably further.

It was her considered recommendation that Israel sit down with Hamas and Qatar to discuss a cessation of 'hostilities', a return of the hostages and everyone will be reconciled. In the face of the atrocities committed by Hamas, in the reality of Qatar harbouring Hamas leaders, and funding its operations, precisely who is it that this woman is recommending that Israel trust and bargain with?

Hamas terrorists move Israeli hostages down a street in Be’eri, a kibbutz in southern Israel, video posted to X shows

(Photo: Screenshot)