Does Canada recognize states led by homicidal, Jew-hating monsters?
Generally, we do not. At one time, we had bilateral relations with Afghanistan, for example. But when the Taliban took over in 2021, we severed ties. That was around the time, too, that the last Afghani Jews left. They had been warned they could be kidnapped or killed by the Taliban.
Similarly, Canada had ceased diplomatic relations with Syria in 2012. By then, the few remaining Syrian Jews – having had their property confiscated, and having experienced years of human rights abuses at the hands of that county’s barbarous Ba’athist leaders – left, as well.
As a nation, then, we like to profess that we do not have diplomatic relations with terrorist groups, which these days are overwhelmingly antisemitic. We are a large nation with little diplomatic and military clout. So, we make symbolic statements. Like we did with the Taliban or the Ba’athists in Syria.
There have been exceptions, however, and they have been truly monstrous. Liberal William Lyon Mackenzie King, our longest-serving Prime Minister, was one of the earliest and most ardent fans of Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist Party.
In fact, King was the most shameless appeaser of Naziism in the Commonwealth, in the 1930s. He spoke German, having grown up in Berlin, Ontario – now Kitchener – and flew to Germany as early as 1937 to lay accolades at the feet of Hitler.
King enthusiastically praised the Nazi leader, calling him a “eminently wise,” a “deliverer of his people from tyranny,” and a “sweet man.” He had “smooth skin,” King enthused. Meeting Hitler was “the day for which I was born,” he remarked. King said that Hitler was “a man of deep sincerity” who had to resort to ruthless methods. By then, those methods included building death camps at Buchenwald (60,000 mostly Jews slaughtered) and Sachsenhausen (30,000 mostly Jews slaughtered).
It was all disgusting and appalling, of course. It was vomitous. But, by 1939, Canada had declared war on Mackenzie King’s sweet friend.
Which brings us to now, to September 2025, the beginning of the holiest days in the Jewish calendar – which stretches back to Centuries before Christ, by the by, in the very place that is Israel. At the start of the Jewish new year, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney chose to formally recognize the “state” of Palestine. Another place in the Middle East run by homicidal, Jew-hating monsters: Hamas.
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When they finally do something you’ve been demanding they do, applaud.
So, let’s give some credit to the Carney government. On antisemitism, on an issue that is critically-important to the Jewish minority, they’ve finally done something right.
For the longest time, it seemed like they were incapable of it. From the outset, Prime Minister Mark Carney and his Liberal government have orbited between callow indifference and outright hostility towards Jews and the Jewish state.
Next week, for example, the Carney Liberals plan to recognize a state (Palestine) that is run by a designated terrorist entity (Hamas). For that to happen, they lamely insist that a number of conditions be met. None have been – not one. They plan to go ahead with recognizing Hamas-led Palestine, just the same.
A few days ago, too, Carney’s foreign affairs minister said they were “evaluating” ties with Israel, which is an historic ally. Back in July, Carney’s government accused Israel of violating international law. They have condemned Israel for “escalating the conflict in Gaza” – not Hamas, mind you, which broke a ceasefire and started the war on October 7, 2023 with the slaughter of civilians. Israel.
Carney’s government called Israel’s attempt to eliminate Hamas leaders in Qatar – one of the leading sponsors of terror in the world – “an intolerable expansion of violence and an affront to Qatar’s sovereignty.” And, notably, the firebombing of Canadian synangogues, the Canadian Jewish schools being shot up, the explosion in antisemitic violence on Canadian soil? All have been followed by lots of tweets of the “thoughts and prayers” variety. But precious little action.
Like we say: Canada isn’t the Jewish state’s enemy, per se, but it certainly is no longer the Jewish state’s ally. Which makes recent moves by Mark Carney’s government all the more remarkable.
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At the precise moment Charlie Kirk was being murdered, I was watching the end of the documentary The Road Between Us at Roy Thomson Hall.
It was sad, but somehow apt. The Road Between Us is about two Israeli parents, Noam and Gali Tibon, rushing to a kibbutz in Israel’s South in October 7 – to see if their son Amir and daughter-in-law Miri and granddaughters were dead, or to save them. Amir is a writer, a great one, and he has opinions. He survived that day.
Charlie Kirk, meanwhile, was a young man who was a writer, too, and he had opinions. He was killed for them.
The Road Between Us had been banned, for a while, by the Toronto International Film Festival – which was completely outrageous. After you see the documentary, it is even more outrageous: it is a film that promotes peace, not war. It is a film that is highly critical of Israel’s government and military.
Moreover, I could count on one hand the number of times the word “Israel” was uttered. TIFF’s decision to censor it, therefore, was deeply stupid. If it was an attempt to censor an idea, it failed.
TIFF’s CEO came on stage before the documentary started to apologize personally for the pain he and his organization caused. There were a few boos – but, mostly, the many Jewish Canadians in attendance applauded him. It was a wonderful moment, because it showed that there is a way to disagree, without resorting to hate. Without using violence.
The assassination of Charlie Kirk was a hate crime, obviously. It was a terrible act of violence. Someone who hated Kirk’s writings, someone who hated his words, decided to express their disagreement with a bullet. So they stole life from a young man with a young family, simply because they didn’t like his ideas.
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Richard Kemp is a retired soldier, but he still talks like one in active service.
Speaking to a crowd of attentive listeners at the Toronto home of former Canadian Senator Linda Frum this week, Kemp foretold Israel’s precision strikes in Qatar, just hours before they happened.
“One pressure point is Qatar,” said Kemp, who knows a thing or two about war, having served in many for the United Kingdom. “Qatar hasn’t been exploited yet – to undermine Hamas.”
Qatar is the puny oil-rich Arab nation that, among other things, hosts and funds Hamas. Directly or indirectly, Qatar has funded al-Qaeda, Syria’s al-Nusra Front, ISIS, and their philosophical nexus, the Muslim Brotherhood. It has supplied Hamas, in particular, with tens of millions to fund its terror war against Israel and the West.
(Oh, and Qatar is sponsoring and funding seven (7) films at the Toronto International Film Festival, which recently attracted some negative headlines for its hastily-recanted decision to cancel a documentary about an Israeli family on October 7. That was produced by, you know, a Jew. But we digress.)
While Richard Kemp does not explicitly advocate for Israel to take out Hamas targets in Qatar – as they attempted to do on Monday night – he says that Israel must take forceful steps if it is to win its war against Hamas. “It’s all simply a question of destroying Hamas,” he says. Something that he says is inevitable, in the near or long term.
“And,” he adds,”please don’t think I don’t have sympathy for the Palestinian people. I don’t want to see the suffering of innocent children or women or the elderly. But I believe Israel must defeat Hamas.”
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Fifty to one.
Fifty to one: that is the estimated ratio of “pro-Palestinian” to “pro-Israel” online content. If you think you are seeing far more material favouring the Palestinian side – and, too often, the Hamas side – rest assured: you are. Online, Israel is getting its proverbial ass kicked.
There can be two reasons for this. One, a majority in the West now suddenly harbour anti-Israel and/or antisemitic attitudes. But that’s not what public opinion shows. Among older cohorts, in North America and Europe, the majority clearly support Israel’s right to exist within safe and secure borders. The majority support Israel’s right to defend itself.
The other, most realistic, reason: Hamas and its axis – Hezbollah, Houthis, its parent Iran, and its echo chambers in Russia and China – have developed a formidable propaganda machine. One that has out-performed Israel’s pitiful communications efforts, for years. One that has utterly dominated the communications landscape since the horrors of October 7.
That, more than anything else, is why Hamas et al. are dominating online.
Last Summer, the IDF uncovered a cache of Hamas documents in Gaza. The previously-secret Hamas documents showing the extent of their online propaganda effort. Hamas’ web strategy, the documents revealed, was first to guide and direct “Hamas operatives” in the West Bank, in Arabic. They did that by “controlling the narrative being pushed out about issues in Gaza,” Hamas wrote. Initially, they were also very focused on influencing and controlling “specific activities in the European arena,” the documents read, where there is a higher concentration of migrants of Arab or Muslim descent.
To do this, Hamas describes targeting anti-Hamas activists by “neutralizing them” and “damaging their reputation.” Their more-moderate political rivals in Fatah, too, were targets: the documents describe reputational attacks online that were “aimed at damaging their public image[s].”
In all, Hamas had a 160 Gaza-based member “electronic team,” as they called it. The team could boast as many as 1.2 million immediate followers on social media, and they regularly posted in groups and forums with an additional 25 million followers. The strategy was to use “advanced technologies [which are] designed to flood social media in a very short time,” Hamas declared.
A year later, the IDF discovered yet more documents detailing Hamas’ online communications strategy. A summary of what they found:
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