No Country For Anyone

Anti-semitism is running rampant and people are treating it like the new normal:

It’s hard to imagine Monday’s rally outside Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital — in which pro-Palestinian demonstrators blocked the entrance, held signs glorifying terrorists and chanted in support of committing violence against Israelis — endearing anyone to the Palestinian cause. But it seems to have worked on Amira Elghawaby, Canada’s Islamophobia czar, who used the opportunity to excuse the protesters’ reprehensible actions and opine on geopolitical issues.

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Monday’s protest snaked through downtown Toronto, eventually making its way to the Israeli consulate. While demonstrating in front of the consulate of a foreign government whose actions you disagree with is perfectly legitimate, the choice to target this particular hospital shows that the protesters had far more sinister motives.

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Mount Sinai is located on a stretch on University Avenue known as “Hospital Row,” because it’s home to five different hospitals. Mount Sinai just so happens to be the only one with a logo resembling the Jewish Star of David. It was opened in 1923 to cater to the city’s growing Jewish immigrant population, who faced discrimination and language barriers at other medical facilities, and employ Jewish doctors, who were barred from working in the city’s other hospitals.

It’s now a public hospital that serves everyone, but it still offers special accommodations for religious Jews, including kosher meals and Shabbat elevators. Like the weeks-long protest at the Avenue Road overpass, in the heart of one of the country’s largest Jewish neighbourhoods, the targeting of Mount Sinai was clearly intended to send the message that these demonstrators are not merely voicing their opposition to a foreign government, but to Jews in general. ...

Taking to the social media platform formally known as Twitter on Tuesday, Elghawaby noted that blocking the entrance to a public hospital was “troubling,” but also criticized “the rush to label protesters as antisemitic and/or terrorist sympathizers.”

Never mind that they deliberately targeted an institution with Jewish roots. Never mind that signs could clearly be seen portraying terrorists as freedom fighters. And never mind that they were loudly chanting, “Long live the intefadeh,” a reference to the two Palestinian uprisings, in which hundreds of Israeli civilians were killed in suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks, many of which were committed by Hamas, the perpetrator of the Oct. 7 massacre.

 

 Justin doesn't need this headache now:

Diverse views in the Liberal party are a source of strength, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau insisted Thursday as questions persisted about caucus discord over the government's policy on the Israel-Hamas war.

"We have a large number of Muslim MPs. We have a large number of Jewish MPs," Trudeau said at a news conference in Winnipeg.

"The kinds of conversations that go on within our party are not always easy, but they reflect the diversity of conversations happening across the country."

Trudeau was responding to a question about a CBC News report detailing a leaked phone call between a constituent and Rob Oliphant, a parliamentary secretary to Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly.

In that call, Oliphant told the constituent that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is "hurting Israel," CBC reported.

He also criticized the government's communication around a genocide allegation against Israel at the International Court of Justice and its decision to pause funding for a UN agency as it investigates staff members accused of involvement in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

On Parliament Hill, NDP foreign-affairs critic Heather McPherson said Oliphant should be brave enough to say such things publicly. He told CBC he didn't say anything on the call he would not be willing to defend in public.

Asked whether Oliphant should resign, McPherson said the Toronto MP "is the only one saying the right things, albeit privately."

 

These people represent swathes of the Canadian public.

Israel no longer has a friend in Canada, nor can citizens expect any support:

“On Oct. 7, at the Nova Festival, in the kibbutz, (Hamas) was raping, mutilating and destroying the souls and bodies of women, elderly and men and they’re still doing that,” said Maayan Shavit, whose cousin, Carmel Gat, was captured on Oct. 7 in an interview with National Post. “It’s not a one-time rape or a one-time lesson. It’s happening now, as we speak. The (hostages) that have returned, they tell their stories of the women that are still left behind and people are still not willing to accept it… People are walking like horses (with blinders on…) They prefer to close their eyes and continue to be bystanders without understanding that it’s happening now.”

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A 39-year-old occupational therapist and yoga practitioner from Tel Aviv, Gat was visiting her parents near the border with Gaza when Hamas attacked, killing her mother and kidnapping her from her parents’ home. Her brother and his daughter were able to escape, while her sister-in-law was released during negotiations between Israel and Hamas in November. Hostages who interacted with Gat that were released said that she is being held captive with children and, to make them feel safe, was practicing yoga once a day with them, according to a Times of Israel article.

“Stop looking the other way,” said Shavit during her speech. “Stop thinking that someone else will take care of this. Do not pass the ball to someone else. This is happening now, as I speak, the fate of these women and men are in our hands.”

Anyone still appalled by the unspeakable atrocities Hamas committed on October 7th (oh, yes, they did) knows that Hamas must be destroyed and not a single support allowed into the country:

Pretending that Israel has total control in this terrorist enclave is a dangerous lie. Hamas is a savage, Islamist death cult that celebrates martyrdom. Its founding ideology calls for the annihilation of Israel and the killing of Jews everywhere.

Gaza’s leadership — and many supporters on Canadian streets and throughout the West — celebrated the Oct. 7 massacre. In spite of its open savagery, many western “progressives” have decided that Hamas is a beacon of moral clarity. ..

The fantasies of Hamas and Iran to establish a global caliphate are no less serious. They begin with the destruction of Israel, but by no means end there. Rafah is the last hub of Hamas power, and it must be destroyed. This is a war on the West.

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From that perspective, Israel’s war objective — the elimination of Gaza’s Hamas regime — is essential. Leaving the job unfinished, with Hamas’s existence tolerated and its actions contained, has been tried, and it has failed. The Israeli people cannot be reasonably asked to return to the pre-war status quo. That is the position our own nations took toward the attacks launched by Nazi Germany against us. Israel has as absolute a right to absolute security now as we did then.

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Egypt is building a wall and is levelling land near its border with the Gaza Strip ahead of a planned Israeli offensive targeting the border city of Rafah, satellite images analyzed Friday by The Associated Press show.

Egypt, which has not publicly acknowledged the construction, repeatedly has warned Israel not to forcibly expel the over one million Palestinians now displaced in Rafah across the border into its territory while it battles the militant group Hamas for a fifth month.