Paleolithic Human Burial Culture

"This is an amazing revolutionary innovation for our species."

"It's actually the first time we are starting to use this behaviour [as a human species]."

"[The stone mound is] one of the three or four most important sites for [the] study of human evolution and behaviour during the Paleolithic time."

"Here we see a really complex set of behaviours, not related to just food and surviving." 

Yossi Zaidner, co-director, Tinshemet excavation, professor of archaeology, Hebrew University, Jerusalem 

 

"[The concept of cemeteries in prehistoric life is important because it symbolizes] a kind of a territory."

"[That same kind of claim over land where ancestors are buried still echoes in the region.] It’s a kind of claim you make to the neighbors, saying ’This is my territory, this part of the land belongs to my father and my forefather’ and so on and so on."

Israel Hershkovitz, physical anthropologist,Tel Aviv University, co-director, Tinshemet site

Volunteers work in Tinshemet Cave, where archaeologists are excavating one of the world’s oldest known burial sites, dating back 100,000 years, near Shoam, Israel, July 2025. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

  

The Paleolithic era, or 'Stone Age", so called in reflection of the initial era in the use of stone tools representing the evolutionary time of emerging primeval humanity from 3.3 million years in ancient time up until some 10,000 years ago. Recent discoveries in Israel have unearthed two intact primeval skeletons in an ancient cave. Tinshemet Cave dates from the Middle Paleolithic era which equates to 250,000 to approximately 30,000 years ago -- an enormous sweep of evolutionary time on a vastly unimaginable scale.

 

Tinshemet Cave is located in central Israel, an area of rolling hills. The archeologists working there to unearth mysteries of the far distant past feel they have discovered one of the oldest burial sites in the world at the unassuming stone mound. And where they have discovered the well-preserved skeletal remains of early humans dating back some 100,000 years. They have been gripped with the unmistakable signs of ceremonial burials, where remains were carefully arranged in pits.

 

These findings appear to build on previous discoveries in northern Israel, adding to a growing appreciation of the realization of an emerging primitive social culture specific to the origins of human burial. The intriguing discovery of objects found alongside these remains leading to speculation they may have been used during ceremonies meant to honour the dead, and could possibly lead to more of an understanding of how humanity's ancestors thought about spirituality and an afterlife advances our understanding of ancestral human evolution. 

 

Fruit bats in Tinshemet Cave, where archaeologists are excavating one of the world’s oldest known burial sites, dating back 100,000 years, near Shoam, Israel (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

 

Work has been ongoing by archaeologists at Tinshemet since 2016, with the discovery of the  remains of five early hominids, dating back to around 110,000 to 100,000 years. Discovered in pits, the skeletons had been carefully arranged in a fetal position, known as a burial position, according to Professor Zaidner. Objects such as basalt pebbles, animal remains or fragments of ochre were found buried with the remains. Some of the objects were recognized as having been found hundreds of kilometres' distant and their practical utility questioned other than serving as objects linked to the ritual of burial.

 

The Tinshemet core findings by researchers were published in Nature Human Behavior. The remains of five early humans were represented by two full skeletons and three isolated skulls, along with other bones and teeth. Although archaeologists have studied the remains for years, it has not yet been established whether they were Neanderthals, Homo sapiens, a hybrid group or an altogether other alternatives. More than 500 various-sized fragments of red and orange ochre, a pigment created by heating iron-rich stones to a certain temperature, provided evidence that early humans discovered the means by which decorative objects could be created.

 

A unique combination of ash that resulted from frequently-made fires, and atmospheric rainfall, along with the geology of acidic limestone in Israel, served to preserve the skeletons and objects; conditions that were optimal for unintended, natural preservation purposes. The local climate conditions and geology in other words, preserved these remains, much as has been seen in other parts of the Middle East; Egypt, for example. 

 

The findings at Tinshemet support analyses and hypotheses from earlier discoveries dating to the same period in northern Israel, where two similar burial sites were discovered -- Skhul Cave and Qafzeh Cave. Skhul Cave was excavated close to a century ago, while Qafzeh Cave was excavated some fifty years ago, when archaeological professionalism in its current systematic and and scientific approach was somewhat less rigorous. 

 

What has been established is that in antiquity, Israel was an evolutionary bridge between Neanderthals from Europe, and Homo Sapiens from Africa. That there was interbreeding producing cross-species is well accepted in general.  Other subgroups of early humans have been identified in the area, leading archaeologists to believe that the groups interacted and may have interbred. In people of European and Asian descent in particular, a small percentage of genetic material from Neanderthals is part of their evolutionary inheritance.

 

Professor of Archaeology Yossi Zaidner works in Tinshemet Cave, excavating one of the world’s oldest known burial sites, dating back 100,000 years. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

 

 

Canada's Liberal Government, True to Form

 

"[It was] irresponsible and unacceptable [that Heritage Canada] conducted no research or background checks before they distributed this money]."

"If the government cannot conduct a simple background check on the institutions they distribute money to, they need to reconsider their use of grants and contributions."

"According to Heritage Canada’s own Departmental Reports, in 2020-21 they employed 194 full-time employees and spent $134,607,209 to promote diversity and inclusion. How is it possible with those resources that they did not see fit to evaluate an organization before deciding to grant it $133,000?"

Shadow Minister for Canadian Heritage, MP John Nater

 

"Regardless of the hate and propaganda he promotes, for years [Marouf] was able to sell himself to the government as a legitimate enterprise, regardless of how absolutely offensive his communications were. This is problematic."

"It is profoundly troubling that this individual was supported and enabled in his hate speech, and the government needs to overhaul whatever problem is in these programs."

Jaime Kirzner-Roberts, director of policy, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies 

Laith Marouf   Photo by Peter McCabe/The Gazette

The man at the centre of this controversy in 2022, Laith Marouf, is a flaming antisemite and all-'round racist. He was the top consultant for the Community Media Advocacy Center (CMAC); in fact its founder and only 'employee'. He was given to referring to Jews as 'bags of human feces' deserving of a 'bullet to the head'. He posted regularly on social media sites such as X, and the quality and quantity of those posts were readily available for viewing in a strictly cursory, casual search. Yet, even though a Liberal MP had flagged the content of these posts to then-Minister of Canadian Heritage Ahmed Hussen, they were dismissed. 

The Community Media Advocacy Center in the six years prior to and including the 2022 revelations, received contracts from the federal government valued at $500 million representing cost support, research and advocacy (for equity and diversity programs) from the Canadian federal broadcasting agency. When the scandal of the absurdity and outrage of the federal government having hired a racist consultant to operate training sessions in anti-racism for government employees led to the contract's withdrawal and attempts to recover the funding given the CMAC, little was heard of this man and his agency again.

Now it has been revealed that he was recently arrested, then released by Lebanon's Military Intelligence Directorate, in an area adjacent to the border with Israel. The restricted area that this took place in was a border town in Lebanon, called Mais al-Jabal. Marouf had evidently failed to present the required media credentials. Held incommunicado under "extensive interrogation" at Lebanon's Defense Ministry's headquarters just outside Beirut, he was released on Tuesday, evidently without charges or conditions. 

 

This man, who was known to refer to Quebecers as 'frogs', Black people as slaves, and characterizing Israelis as 'loud-mouthed bags of human feces, aka the Jewish White Supremacists' who would one day be forced to 'go back to where they came from' had been suspended from X for hateful commentary and advocating violence. He had regularly appeared as a pundit for Iran's Press TV and the Kremlin's Sputnik propaganda platform as a supporter of the Assad regime in Syria. He began his career, in violent 'anti-Zionist' protests at Concordia University decades earlier as the son of a Syrian diplomat in Montreal. 

 

After Justin Trudeau became prime minister in 2015, Marouf's Community Media Advocacy Centre collected some $517,480 in Broadcast Participation Fund grants. Once the uproar over his having been hired as an expert anti-racist, prepared to school federal civil servants in equity and diversity had subsided from the public eye and ear, Heritage Canada which had hired him, saw their officials undergoing workshops on identifying antisemitism, with instructions on identifying racists and antisemites among grant applicants.

 

Marouf had busied himself with pro-Hezbollah 'Free Palestine Television' in Beirut, insisting his FPTV is "unaffiliated with any political party or groups", while relying heavily on interviews with fellow 'anti-Zionists', leading to sympathetic coverage of the problems facing Hezbollah after it decided to join Hamas in its conflict with the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza, post-7 October 2023. Combat videos featuring Hamas, the Mujahideen Brigades and the Al-Qassam (IRGC) Brigades figured large in Marouf's FPTV series.

 

Mais al-Jabal, the border town where Marouf was picked up on Sunday, was a Hezbollah stronghold. The IDF last October destroyed lookout posts and weapons caches and tunnels in the town, mere metres from the Israeli border. On Marouf's arrival in Mais al-Jabal, he was detained at a checkpoint, and informed he lacked authorization to be in the area. Taken to a detention centre, his driver, Hadi Hoteit, a FPTV producer and correspondent for Tehran's Press TV, was released. 

 

View overlooking the Hula Valley and the town of Kiryat Shmona in northern Israel.  Alexey Protasov/stock.adobe.com

 

About 20 kilometres from Israel's northernmost city Kiryat Shmona, Mais al-Jabal is in a strategic location, one that Hezbollah used to rain rockets down over the Golan Heights to Jewish communities below. About 22,000 Israelis lived in Kiryat Shmonia before Hezbollah joined Hamas's war on Israel in October 2023. At least fifty percent of the city's buildings had been destroyed by Hezbollah rockets, its population evacuated to temporary safety in central Israel. 

 

Israeli reserve soldiers take part in a military drill in the Golan Heights, northern Israel, May 8, 2024

(photo credit: AYAL MARGOLIN/FLASH90)

 

"[FPTV launched] with the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Flood — the name Hamas and other Palestinian groups have given to the Oct. 7 massacre. The online station is based out of Lebanon, staffed primarily by students, professors and community members."

"FPTV’s goal is to support the resistance from a media standpoint and to incite free peoples to move and fight Zionism and imperialism wherever they exist."

"Knowing that there is a huge gap left in news programming in English that is supportive of resistance and the right to liberation … we decided to bring together our communities here to start a project, a community television station."

FPTV Website 

 

"The Middle East Forum, an American conservative think tank, published a report that FPTV had links to the Lebanon-based group Al-Tajammu. According to Michael Barak, a researcher at the Institute for Counter-Terrorism at Israel’s Reichmann University, Al-Tajammu is “an international pro-Iranian platform to leverage the resistance axis against the U.S., Israel and their allies”."

"Marouf described the attacks on Al-Tajammu as “frivolous” and accused the Middle East Forum of being a “racist organization”."

National Post 

 

 

Canadian Immigration, Refugee and Migrant Intake

"While most observers attribute the persistent concern with the numbers of refugees to economic concerns and housing challenges, the survey looks at the extent to which Canadians trust immigrants and refugees and finds that amongst those Canadians who feel that there are too many immigrants, the level of trust in refugees is especially low."

"This may imply that concerns over domestic intergroup tensions may be a more important factor in concern with levels than has been previously acknowledged." 

Analysis of national Leger poll

Protesters at the Hindu Sabha Mandir temple in Brampton, Ontario.  Photograph: Nick Lachance/Toronto Star/Getty Images

 

"Intergroup tensions", as for example Canadian Hindus versus Canadian Sikhs with their traditions of suspicion and distrust, acting out within Canada in viral events of dangerous dimensions, the two solitudes coming to blows, endangering the communities and bringing international attention to their divisions. It is, in fact, the communities' propensities to have among them cliques that also engage in illegal, criminal activities domestically in Canada. But above all, the ongoing agenda of the Khalistani Sikhs who agitate for a separate Sikh state to be divided from India's interior. Canada's worst terrorist assault was one committed by British Columbia Khalistanis who placed a bomb aboard Air India Flight 182 that killed all 329 people aboard, in 1982.

 

Canada has a population of Sri Lankans, among them members of the Tamil Tigers who in the past agitated for their own separatist state, committing violent crimes in Sri Lanka in support of their sovereign aspirations against the country's military and members of government. Canadian Sri Lankans belonging to the Tamil Tigers promulgated their violent terrorist propaganda, drawing Canada involuntarily into a debate roiling another country entirely, until the Tigers were delivered a crushing blow that devastated their numbers in Sri Lanka and put their designs to rest.

 

Propaganda billboards in the region of Sri Lanka controlled by Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, April 22, 2007. (AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe)

 

But wait: the current Liberal government of prime minister Mark Carney elevated a former sympathizer of the Tigers, MP Gary Anandasangaree, to the important Cabinet post of Public Safety Minister. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, along with the Tamil Tigers and World Tamil Movement, are listed terrorist groups in Canada. Minister Anandasangaree took the step of recusing  himself from anything to do with these two groups, as Public Safety Minister. But it was discovered, that as a Member of Parliament years previous, he had written a letter in support of a former Tamil Tiger facing deportation from Canada.

 

And nor to overlook the tens of thousands of Syrian refugees brought to Canada during Syria's 14-year sectarian civil war when former regime Shia-Alawite President Bashar al-Assad barrel- and chemical-bombed Syria's Sunni population killing an estimated third of a million Syrians; years that saw half the population of the country internally displaced, and millions more seeking haven abroad. These intake refugees along with a sizeable Palestinian-Canadian population and other Muslim groups in Canada totalling almost two million have made their presence known in ongoing street protests against Israel.

 

Pro-Palestinian protesters chant during a demonstration protesters are calling a "National March for Palestine" near Parliament Hill (Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press)

 

Since the 2023 October 7 incursion of thousands of Palestinian terrorists from Gaza into southern Israel who embarked on a sadistically savage rampage of rape, mutilation and mass murder, killing 1,200 Israelis and kidnapping another 250 children, women, elderly, foreign farm workers and a number of Israeli IDF members, leading to a military response by the IDF into Gaza to route out Hamas leaders and operatives, Muslim groups in Canada, led primarily by Palestinians living in Canada have harassed Canadian Jews, threatened their security, committed violent criminal acts and behaved in a manner inconsistent with Canadian values and justice. 

"We're trying o probe here whether Canadians do have security concerns that are also driving some of the reticence or hesitation about immigration right now. My conclusion is that that is the case."

"The point of the survey is, there is an issue that we need to pay attention to. If there is a security concern associated with migration right now, it requires some attention and a need to reassure Canadians that our government and the responsible departments are taking care of those issues, are paying attention to those issues if and when they arrive, or where and when they may arise."

"We're seeing the degree of trust expressed in refugees as especially low. And particularly amongst those people who think there are too may immigrants, the trust of refugees is low, lower than it is normally."

"Whether you're born in Canada or not born in Canada, or whether you're a minority or not, this issue around trust, and the perceptions around the global instability, is affecting our perspectives around migration." 

Jack Jedwab, president, chief executive, Association for Canadian Studies and the Metropolis Institute  

The new poll in question conducted nationally for the Association for Canadian Studies and the Metropolis Institute, found 62 percent of people polled feel Canada is accepting too many people, over double the number that expressed those sentiments  six year earlier. Only 20 percent disagreed, while 19 percent responded they  don't know. Canadians were asked if they think immigrants can be trusted, and the 52 percent of Canadians who said they can, saw 36 percent responding in the negative when the issue is that of refugees being trusted -- 20 percent adamant that immigrants cannot be trusted; 23 percent felt the same about refugees.

 

For the question whether there are too many people coming to Canada, among those who declare there are, 32 percent only, trust immigrants; 28 percent felt they cannot be trusted, and for refugees those numbers were 24 percent trusting; another 32 percent felt they cannot be trusted. And it is immigrants themselves that agree, by 57 percent, that too many immigrants are arriving to Canada, near matching the numbers of non-immigrant responders. Non-white people surveyed saw 61 percent agreeing there are too many immigrants in comparison to 58 percent of white people. 

"That polarization is not based on whether you are yourself an immigrant or you are a minority, it's not. It's transcending that. So the trust issue is a critical factor. It's just not defined by, as I said, your status as an immigrant or non-immigrant or as a minority. Those groups of people are making observations to the same extent across those markers of identity."

"It is important that we properly understand what the factors are underlying the reticence about immigration. So that's where the importance ... is in trying to establish what the concerns are, how significant those concerns are, where those concerns are coming from."

"And then, on that basis, to determine how best to address them rather than dismissing them."

Jack Jedwab 

The Canadian Citizenship Ceremony  -- Still from video

 

Hamas's Role and Responsibility for Palestinian Suffering

"The statement fails to focus the pressure on Hamas and fails to recognize Hamas's role and responsibility for the situation."

"Hamas is the sole party responsible for the continuation of the war and the suffering on both sides."

"At these sensitive moments in the ongoing negotiations, it is better to avoid statements of this kind."

"Instead of agreeing to a ceasefire, Hamas is busy running a campaign to spread lies about Israel. At the same time, Hamas is deliberately acting to increase friction and harm to civilians who come to receive humanitarian aid."  

Oren Marmorstein, Israel foreign affairs ministry spokesperson 

 

"The suffering of civilians in Gaza has reached new depths. the Israeli government's aid delivery model is dangerous, fuels instability and deprives Gazans of human dignity."

"We condemn the drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food."

"[We call on the Israeli government to lift all restrictions on aid delivery and to] enable the UN and humanitarian NGOs [to do their work safely and effectively]."

Joint statement, foreign ministers of France, Britain, Japan, Canada and 24 others 

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

 

Those who signed the joint statement urging that "the war in Gaza must end now", calling on Israel to put a stop to displacing Palestinians, also condemned Hamas for continuing to hold hostages taken from Israel in the October 7, 2023 atrocities, calling for their immediate release. Adding that it is "horrifying that over 800 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid"; a death toll based on figures released both by the UN human rights office and the Hamas-operated health ministry in Gaza. 

 

The United Nations and its offshoots such as UNRWA are notorious for their underlying support for Hamas, since it was proven that UNRWA employs Hamas operatives some of whom were active participants in the October 7 atrocities that took place in  southern Israel. The cooperation between UN member-bodies and Hamas extends to the full acceptance of all Hamas propaganda statements, inclusive of body counts and accusations of Israel withholding food and medical supplies from Palestinian civilians.

 

This, when it has been well documented that Hamas itself has appropriated humanitarian aid supplied by the UN and stockpiling it in Hamas warehouses, withheld from the civilian population, most often ending up in open air markets where the humanitarian aid sells for inflated prices, the profit of which enhances Hamas's bottom line. Claims of starvation among the populace ignore the reality that many areas of Gaza have more than ample food as marketplaces and videos on social media posted by Gazans themselves demonstrate.

 

Photographs of some of those taken hostage by Hamas during the October 7 attack on Israel.   Leon Neal/Getty Images

 

That Palestinians in Gaza are suffering from the incursion of the IDF whose purpose is to defang and neutralize the terrorists that have attacked Israeli citizens for decades, culminating in the savagery of October 7, is a result of Hamas deliberately placing them in harm's way to enhance their propaganda of Israel planning a genocide of Palestinians, a narrative picked up by the Western press and given the credence that is denied Israel's denials. 

 

While the West presses Israel for a ceasefire, it ignores the simple and obvious reality that Hamas rejects that ceasefire. That a terrorist group's contentions can influence the critical thought processes of Western leaders is beyond belief, while those same leaders hold Israel to a standard that they themselves would never countenance if their nations were under attack. For Israel to unilaterally stand back and allow Hamas to continue reorganizing, rearming, and replanning attacks against the Jewish state with the intention of destroying it seems to make no inroads in the mental gymnastics the West engages in.

 

Decrying an expansion of West Bank settlements and the move to separate the West Bank from East Jerusalem, is a lesson in total hypocrisy. The Palestinians have never been satisfied with having the West Bank and Gaza Strip to themselves; they make no secret in demanding the eradication of Israel to enable their sovereignty over the entire geographic area 'from the river (Jordan) to the (Mediterranean) sea, Israel's ancestral patrimony. None of the nations decrying these issues would consider surrendering their capital cities to upstarts, yet with the steady migration of Islamism this is what their future augurs.

 

The 'two-state solution' they insist on imposing on Israel, has been rejected time and time again by Palestinian leaders. Their ideal is a one-state solution, and it is that ideal that they focus on, allowing others to speak of a two-state solution they themselves have no intention of acceding to, and so they continue to deny the 'legality' of Israel's existence. 

 

Palestinians carry supplies from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in May in this file photo.  (Hatem Khaled/Reuters)

 

The food supplies entering Gaza through the auspices of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an American contractor supported by both Israel and the United States, actually provides meals and food products and fuel and medical supplies directly to Palestinian civilians, entirely bypassing Hamas's opportunities to ransack the aid delivery trucks, removing its 'authority' to claim the aid for its own purposes. Hamas has punished Palestinians for going directly to the GHF distribution sites, as traitors to the Hamas cause of exterminating Israel. 

 

The United States, Qatar, Egypt  and Germany did not sign the letter. The first three remain at work on  a feasible ceasefire; all of their efforts to date have been rejected by Hamas. Hamas, a terrorist group whose atrocities are in and of themselves an assault in human decency, permitted to exert control because of the back-handed support given it by negotiating with it to begin with, is controlling the narrative. And the democratic state that is an outpost of Western civilization in a generally uncivilized Middle East doing catch-up to the modern era, is once again a sacrificial gift to the forces of evil. 

 

Armed Palestinians sit on trucks carrying humanitarian aid near the Zikim border crossing between Israel and Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip, June 25, 2025. (Ali Qariqa/Flash90)

 

The Syrian Druze October 7

"This is our Oct. 7." 

"Life froze. We keep watching the videos that the terrorists took of themselves butchering our families, feeling angry, anxious and completely destabilized."

Sari Halabi, Majdal Shams, Syria

 

"[The Druze attachment to Syria] is an asset to Israel, not a liability."

"This attachment opens the path to many things, which I think the terrible massacre has brought closer, including a Druze autonomy fighting and flourishing alongside Israel [on the Syrian side of the border]."

"The massacre will help settle an internal debate within the Druze community in Syria, and it will lead to more support for autonomy and self-reliance; [autonomy means deepening the alliance with Israel, which is the only major power interested in a Druze buffer zone along its northeastern border]."

"I was just sitting there watching the horror videos, one by one. Just like we all did on Oct. 7 [Hamas atrocities in southern Israel]."

Mr. Halabi, Druze citizen, Majdal Shams, Syria

 

"[The Syrian regime, led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former al-Qaeda jihadist terrorist who rose to power in December], sent an army south of Damascus, into the area that should be demilitarized, and it began to massacre the Druze."

"We could not accept this in any way."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu  

Syrian Druze protest near the Israeli-Syrian border, as seen from the town of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights on Wednesday amid the ongoing clashes between Syrian government forces and Druze armed groups in the southern Syrian city of Sweida. Photo by Leo Correa /AP

  

"We saw the pictures [massacres, beheadings and rapes, including of women and children allegedly carried out by state-sponsored militias]."

"I think Israel needs to understand: Once a jihadist, always a jihadist [al-Sharaa, a leading figure in Al-Qaeda before founding Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which led the overthrow of the Assad regime in December 2024]."

"I embrace our Druze brothers—they’re our brothers in every way."

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir  

 

"The past few terrible days followed a very difficult year."

"But it led to an act of brotherly courage that, even though it came too late, will be remembered for generations and saved many lives [Israeli strikes in Damascus, including on the Syrian army’s general staff headquarters]."

"[The strikes in Damascus were indeed meant to protect the Druze in Syria, and as such were] an unprecedented act of solidarity that will usher in a new level of integration and fraternity between Jews and Druze." 

"I’m optimistic. Just like Israel emerged from Oct 7. much stronger than it was before, so too will the Druze — and their eternal alliance with Israel." 

Abdulla Rabah, Majdal Shams, Syria 

Members of the Druze community in the Israel-annexed Golan Heights gather for a rally in solidarity with the Druze community in Syria in the village of Majdal Shams in the Golan on July 19, 2025. Photo by JALAA MAREY /AFP via Getty Images

 

What began a week ago as a disagreement between the Druze and the Bedouin communities over a single incident between a single member of each side, rapidly grew to a hostile event with the eruption of violence between the two communities' militias.  All too soon matters deteriorated to a horrifying degree with a July 13 massacre when hundreds of Druze Syrians were murdered. The government forces of Syria's interim president had been dispatched in the face of the unfolding violence, but rather than a stance of neutral separation of the two belligerents, the Syrian military took up with the Bedouin and joined their sectarian-tribal assaults against the Druze.

 

A massacre ensued, with both the Bedouin militias and the government forces (Sunnis both, as opposed to the Shia-offshoot Druze) in an unrestrained assault against the Druze began butchering civilians. Videos surfaced of men forced to leap from the top of buildings to their deaths. Of rapes, decapitations, mutilations and blood-curdling atrocities where women and children were relentlessly butchered in Sweida, the Druze holy places desecrated, Druze religious figures humiliated, elderly Druze men being forcefully shaved of their beards.

 

Young men from the Israeli Druze community crossed the border into Syria toward Sweida to help their brethren in Syria fend off the savagery. Syrian Druze in a bid to flee the violence threatening their lives, crossed the border into Israel to seek haven there, on July15. And Israel sent its warplanes into Syria to bomb a number of critical regime sites, after Israeli Druze -- some 150,000 of whom are Israeli citizens -- demanded that Israel respond to the situation in support of the Syrian Druze community in southern Syria. 

 

After the December ouster of Alawite Syrian dictatorialPresident Bashar al-Assad who had persecuted the Syrian Sunni majority and turned a protest into a 14-year civil war, where the regime bombed, strafed, used poison gas and artillery and barrel bombs against Sunni Syrian communities, the Syrian regime changed with its head, a former al-Qaeda jihadist terrorist, Ahmed al-Sharaa, taking the helm of government. Under this government, minorities -- Syrian Christians, Druze, Kurds and Alawites, feared for their security. A massacre took place previously, when Sunni militias linked to the al-Sharaa government attacked the Alawite community.

 

A massacre of Druze in Syria has shaken their kin living in Israel's Golan Heights, prompting grief, protests and a rare IDF strike in Syria. Photo by Leo Correa /AP

Russia's Threat in Eastern Europe

U.S. President Joe Biden agreed to send anti-personnel landmines to Ukraine  CBCNews

 

"Russia has never been a party to this convention and uses anti-personnel mines extremely cynically."

"Thanks to steps regarding the use of certain types of weapons, particularly anti-personnel mines, we will be able to achieve at least parity in forces and means necessary to defend against Russian aggression."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

 

"The situation has not improved on the question of Russia's aggression against Ukraine, Russia's hybrid attacks and Russia's general aggression against European and other countries."

"In addition, there have been certain concerns within Latvian society following the new administration coming into office in the United States." 

Latvia's minister of defence, Andris Sprūds

 

"[Since signing the Ottawa Treaty, threats from Moscow and its ally Belarus have] significantly increased."

"[It is] paramount [to give their troops ] flexibility and freedom of choice [to defend NATO's eastern flank]." 

"[Despite plans to leave the treaty, Poland and the Baltic states are still committed to international humanitarian laws] including the protection of civilians during armed conflict."

"Our nations will continue to uphold these principles while addressing our security needs."

Defence ministers of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland  

A Ukrainian de-mining sapper demonstrates how Russian forces place an anti-personnel mine on a fragmentation grenade in an Unspecified location, Ukraine, on July 31, 2023. (Scott Peterson / Getty Images)

"We are furious with these countries."

"They know full well that this will do nothing to help them against Russia."

"[A retreat from the global accord is] just political games [by officials trying to present themselves as defenders of national security]."

Tamar Gabelnick, director, International Campaign to Ban Landmines 

As it happens, senior military officials in three of the five countries whose parliaments voted to withdraw from the treaty have in the past expressed their professional opinion that experience has led them to believe there is actually paltry military utility in the revival of antipersonnel mines. These are weapons that offer limited defense, in their opinion, against modern armies, while posing a deadly threat to civilian populations, from children to farmers, who accidentally set them off. 

 

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had utilized landmines to divide the Soviet bloc from the West during the Cold War, to deter their citizens from illegally crossing the Iron Curtain to access a different mode of life elsewhere. Campaigners against antipersonnel mines lobbied world leaders to enact a global treaty that would ban that deadly weapon indiscriminately mutilating or killing civilian populations. The result was the Ottawa Convention, otherwise known as the Mine Ban Treaty. 

 

That initiative was spearheaded by the-then Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Lloyd Axworthy, whose pivotal role in creating, promoting and leading the implementation of the treaty was felt to represent a humanitarian breakthrough worthy of being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 in recognition of its work clearing antipersonnel weapons as the driving force behind the ban of landmines.

 

Although expressing dismay at the decision to withdraw from the treaty by Poland and the Baltics the veteran diplomat lays blame partly on the United States , feeling that the "trigger was pulled" when then-President Biden agreed last year to provide landmines to Ukraine -- a situation that accelerated when the current president slashed foreign aid and historic military aid. Neither Russia or the United States are signatories to the treaty.

 

These weapons are prohibited by most countries of the world and have been for over a quarter of a century. But as a consequence of the 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Moscow, those five countries that border Russia plan to proceed with the use of antipersonnel mines in the hope that they will be able to tighten their defenses against any future attacks resulting from Russian President Vladimir Putin's territorial expansion mania. They have no wish to once again become captured satellite states of a Greater Russia whose president yearns to emulate the past.

 

A formality in leaving the treaty that came into force in 1999, is a six-month process, ruling out an immediate surge in the use of the landmines for the present. Veronika Honkasalo, a member of the Finnish Parliament opposed to leaving the treaty, which a majority of her fellow legislators support, stated that the war in Ukraine "changed everything". Russia's invasion of Ukraine led to the reality that "people got really scared because we have a 1,300-kilometer border with Russia and a long history of war with our neighbour". 

 

Norway is the outlier among European countries sharing a land border with Russia, remaining steady in its commitment to the Mine Ban Treaty. According to the United Nations, the treaty saw the destruction of over 55 million antipersonnel mines, weapons widely used during the Cold War era, in conflicts in Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Myanmar and other countries, more latterly Yemen. They are scattered widely near and far, killing innocent people, long past the end of fighting.

 

A demining team clears a field near Yevhenika, Ukraine, on June 16, 2023. (Murray Brewster/CBCNews )

 

According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, eighty percent of casualties from antipersonnel mines are civilian, many of them children. The estimate is that the number of people killed or maimed annually has fallen to 3,500 from over 20,000 over the last two decades; "It is a horrible weapon", shudders Ms. Honkasalo. 

 

The five NATO members' defence ministers explained the need of their countries to leave the mine ban accord relates to the fact that "military threats to NATO member states bordering Russia and Belarus have significantly increased". Having joined the treaty in 2006, Ukraine initially recognized no reason to revive antipersonnel mine use, but since its failed 2023 offensive and Russia's decision to lead assaults by foot soldiers, the decision was made to make use of them.  

 

Ukraine is now thought to be the most mined nation on earth, according to the UN  Getty Images

 

 

Obeisance Not To Nature, But To LGBTQ-2+

"[Players] must be able to participate in the sport in the Gender with which they identify [and be provided with] access to such facilities in accordance with their Gender Identity or Gender Expression."

"Hockey Canada's members unanimously approve of the gender expression and gender identity policy which is effective for the 2023-2024 hockey season."

"[The gender identity and expression policy] ensures that all players, including transgender and gender-diverse athletes, can compete in hockey in a way that aligns with their gender identity."

"For greater clarity, this means that trans women can play on the women's team, trans men can play on the men's team and gender diverse players can choose between the women's and men's teams."

"Transgender and gender-diverse players have the right to access dressing rooms and other team spaces that align with their gender identity, [and] must be welcomed and accommodated in the spaces where they feel safest and most comfortable."

"Eligibility is based on a player's self-identified gender without any requirement for medical or surgical transition related care such as surgeries or hormone replacement therapies. They can participate on the team that best reflects who they are." 

Hockey Canada's 2022 Gender Expression and Gender Identity Policy 

"A male that identifies as anything other than male is still biologically a male. They can severely hurt a girl and are at a physical advantage."

"Is there any guarantee that a boy identifying as female will not prey on girls in the dressing room or on the team bus?"

Unnamed Hockey Canada coaching source in disagreement 

Gender Identity Training

The Ontario Hockey Federation (OHF) is pleased to announce the launch of a new training module for team officials to support trans-inclusive hockey in Ontario:

• Understanding Discrimination based on Gender Identity
• Gender Expression Training.

These two modules will educate team officials on this important topic. Team officials will not be approved on a team roster until both modules have been completed.

Bench staff with Hockey Canada, including coaches and trainers were notified by Hockey Canada on July 3 that they are expected to attend a course on gender identity and expression if they wish to continue as certified members of the organization. The physical safety, competitive fairness and sexual privacy of girls and women have obviously been set aside by the organization as irritatingly irrelevant in comparison to the need to service the "gender diverse" community. 

 

A copy of the contents of the test was provided surreptitiously to the news media by an  unidentified coach who took exception to the fell swoop of Hockey Canada in establishing its new guidelines as writ in stone. Coaching staff who may feel bemused, confused and even angered at this adamant new direction in policy presumably will have all their questions answered by the test they are required to attend, clarifying in no uncertain terms how, when and why the new protocol on gender eligibility is to be regarded and acted upon with no exceptions.

 

The Ontario Women's Hockey Association happened to release an updated dressing room policy for female players 22 years of age and younger with the statement: "A player has the right to utilize the dressing room or appropriate and equivalent changing area that the player considers to be most safe, inclusive and reflective of their gender identity and gender expression, and transition status", on the very same day coaching staff were informed of the mandatory test course. 

 

Expressed concerns that females might be encumbered with in respect of biological males entering their formerly sex-segregated spaces, have come up against Hockey Canada's own dressing room policy, dismissive of concerns relating to gender separation and fears of inappropriate occurrences, categorizing these concerns as irrelevant, and urban-myth-based. "This example perpetuates the myth that trans girls/women are actually boys and men who transition to gain access to girls' women's-only spaces for their own gratification."

 

 

The all-inclusive policy was "built with expert guidance from the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport, Canadian Women in Sport, stakeholders in hockey and individuals from the 2SLGTBQ+ community" according to the introductory video for the test. It might never have occurred to these decision-makers to consult beforehand with coaching staff, obviously the most knowledgeable of participants with the most experience given their time spent with players ranging in age from four years to 20, who recognize the biological differences between male and female players.

 

The course, in going to great pains to fully explain "gender diverse" to test registrants are given such details as the non-binary flag and what is represented by all of its colours. When the course has been completed they will understand that yellow represents those whose gender exists outside the male/female binary, while white represents people with many genders, and pink is for a melange for male and female. Brown, on the other hand, represents people who identify as absent any gender. 

 

 

"Gender-diverse" terms such as agender, biogender/polygender, gender-fluid, gender-queer and two-spirit all represent potentials for self-identification, for "gender-diverse" is an "umbrella term for people whose gender exists beyond the categories of man and woman. While many are raised to believe gender is strictly binary, gender diverse people experience and express gender in diverse ways. Each person's experience is unique, and these identities reflect the wide spectrum of how gender can be understood and lived". 

 

Any hockey staff who fail to agree to permit biological males to pass freely through the spaces normally segregated by sex, based on a chosen gender identity, will henceforth not be certified by Hockey Canada. The chosen identity need not necessarily be in any way consistent, since it is not tied to biological sex or medical interventions; reflecting instead the identity any individual feels reflects their persona on any given occasion. 

 

Ontario Hockey Federation