We were beside the border with Gaza, in Israel’s South, when the artillery shell hit. The explosion was pretty big, and it landed behind where I was standing.

I was there with a mostly-American film crew to shoot our documentary, The Campaign. It’s about the propaganda war against Israel and the West. At the moment the shell exploded, I had been relating how Hamas took out communications and warning systems on October 7, 2023.

The explosion shook the ground, and members of the crew dove for cover. I didn’t really think about what I did, until afterwards, when one of the film’s producers sent me the clip of the moment.

I didn’t move. I just stood there. Kind of dumb, I know, but I figure I had become an unofficial Israeli at that moment.

I know this from spending several weeks in Israel over the past year. When you are there, sirens go off pretty regularly, and everyone starts to hustle – or, increasingly, stroll – towards a bomb shelter. The shelters have lots of different names: mamad, miklat, merhav mugan, migunit, and quite a few others. Like, you know, the Inuit have many different words for “snow” – because there is so much of it.

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What began as an investigation into antisemitism and bias led us to something much bigger:

A coordinated, well-funded global effort to distort the truth about Gaza, demonize Israel, and push propaganda across the West — online, on campuses, and in our institutions.

We’ve traveled, filmed, and uncovered the real story — and you’ll get a glimpse of it in this trailer here.

But to finish the film and expose this disinformation machine, we need your help:

Please watch the trailer, back us on Kickstarter (every dollar counts), and share this campaign as far and wide as you can.

Your support gets us one step closer to our goal of ensuring this documentary is seen.

 

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“Pierre Poilievre, call 911.

A banker has broken into your place, and is stealing all of your ideas.”

It’s a bit of an exaggeration to make a point, of course – Liberal Mark Carney hasn’t stolen all of the Conservative leader’s ideas. But it’s mostly true.

Ascertaining Carney’s motive isn’t difficult: under Justin Trudeau, the Liberal Party (and the government it led) had careened wildly to the Left. The Grits had become unmoored from their historic positions on a host of issues, and had devolved into a pious, preachy woke-ist cult, one that ceaselessly lectured everyone about how they should run their lives.

As predicted in this space, Trudeau left, Trump arrived, and Mark Carney appeared at precisely the right moment. He immediately commenced stealing Conservative policy planks.  Here’s a roundup of the top five stolen items.

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Long, long ago, in the prehistoric times before the Internet, I was a reporter at a fine Postmedia paper, the Calgary Herald. I’d work there on weekends during law school, to keep myself in Kraft Dinner.

One of my jobs was listening to the police scanner.  Whenever there was a big car crash on some local roadway, I’d head out, occasionally with a photographer in tow. When merited, I’d write a few paragraphs about the crash, and the photographer would take some pictures.

Later on, people would inevitably call in to say we are ghouls and grave robbers and that they were sick of our negativity. They’d say they were cancelling their subscription (we checked, they never did).

But here’s the thing I’d observe when out at the scene of every car crash: everyone – and I mean everyone – would slow down to take a look. Sometimes, Grandma would even totter out of her car to snap a photo on her Kodak Instamatic.

That’s the thing about negative stuff: people say they don’t like it, but they’re fibbing. They pay attention to it, they remember it, they are motivated by it. Negative stuff sells. Every politico and reporter knows that. If it bleeds, it leads, etc.

Watching the bromance of Donald Trump and Elon Musk implode on social media this week, I was reminded of this collective fondness for nastiness. The entire world, pretty much, was glued to their devices, watching for the next instalment in the Donald and Elon Show. For many of us, it was better than the playoffs (go Oilers).

Trump threatened to cancel Musk’s government contracts. Musk agreed that Trump should be impeached. Trump suggested Musk was mentally ill. Musk said Trump was in the Epstein file. And so on and so on.

Trump’s White House staffers frantically convened meetings to figure out ways to get the boys to step away from the downward cycle of mutually-assured social media destruction. They knew that billions of people – leaders of nations included – were observing the spectacle. It was bad for business, they told media, anonymously. It needed to stop.

Predictably, Republican politicians became highly adverse to microphones pointed their way. My favourite riposte came from Senator John Kennedy (definitely no relation): “I have a rule, I never get between a dog and a fire hydrant.” (It is unknown if any reporters asked who was the dog, and who was the fire hydrant, in Kennedy’s top-rung use of metaphor.)

The commentariat was tut-tutting about it all, however. “Pathetic,” said The Guardian. “A broligarchy blowup of the highest order,” said The New York Times.  “Broooos please noooooo. We love you both so much,” said Kanye West, a Hitler fan and former celebrity.

Personally, I don’t think it hurts either guy, at all. Why? Because it’s on-brand for both.

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An Ontario farm that has received federal funding is being taken to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario – for allegedly refusing to hire a man because he is an Israeli.

As revealed in the Sun last June, a self-described “regenerative farm” farm called Evermeadow near Cobourg was advertising online for what it called “home stays.” When Israeli Tal Nahum contacted Evermeadow co-owner Joshua Noiseux to apply, Noiseux wrote back.

According to the complaint, Noiseux’s message said: “We have a policy regarding requests of people from Israel. If you are against the current genocide and in favour of Palestinian liberation we would be happy to entertain your request to stay … if you are in support of militarist Zionism we will be unable to host you.”

Evermeadow has received thousands from the Government of Canada in between 2021 and 2024 for “creating jobs,” Employment and Social Development Canada documents confirm. The program’s own rules explicitly outlaw discrimination on prohibited grounds, such as sex, religion, race, disability, or sexual orientation.

Refusing accommodation or employment because someone is a Jew is also contrary to provincial human rights codes, across Canada.

In his complaint to the Human Rights Tribunal, Nahum describes Evermeadow’s treatment as “a blatant act of discrimination” because he is a citizen of Israel and “of Jewish ancestry.” Nahum, who has worked on other farms in Canada, is interested in agriculture. Noiseux’s response shocked him, his complaint says, and injured his dignity, feelings and self-respect.

Noiseux was contacted for comment about the human rights action, as well as whether Evermeadow should have been eligible for federal funds. He did not reply before deadline. However, previously, he asked this writer to be “considerate of our family’s privacy as we endure this smear campaign.”

Despite that desire for privacy, word of Noiseux’s alleged refusal to employ a “Zionist” circulated widely online. The former mayor of Peterborough, Diane Therrien, even weighed in, writing to Noiseux: “Sounds like you avoided a real dangerous situation having that person around! Zios keep showing us how violent and unhinged they are. Sorry you are having to deal with this, your community appreciates you!”

The American Jewish Committee has said that “antisemites often use ‘Zionist’ or ‘Zio’ as shorthand for Jew.” The neologism “Zio” was reportedly first popularized by David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Contacted for comment about her use of that term, Therrien – now an executive with the Canadian Union of Public Employees – did not respond.

In his filed response to Nahum’s complaint, Noiseux acknowledges writing his message to the Nahum. “It was important… that any guest residing in [our] home be aware of [our] political views,” he states, and then goes on to claim that human rights law does not apply because he and his wife were only seeking “casual help” on their farm, and there was no discrimination.

A mediation hearing in the human rights case is scheduled for August, in which Nahum is seeking $50,000 in damages and a requirement that Evermeadow’s operators get human rights training. Nahum’s lawyer, Marty Gobin, declined further comment on the action, saying only: “The proceeding before the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario has not concluded and the applicant has no comment at this time.”

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Words.

In Washington, D.C., two Israeli embassy staff were gunned down in the street on May 21. They were assassinated as they were leaving the Capital Jewish Museum by a man who fired 21 bullets into the bodies of the young couple, whose names were Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky.

The man waited for the police to arrive. When they did, he pulled out a red keffiyeh and started shouting “free free Palestine.” Some time later, when speaking to investigators, the man said: “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza.”

Words.

A couple days later, in the obligatory reports about the dark origins of the alleged killer’s hate, it was revealed that he had written a manifesto titled “Escalate For Gaza, Bring The War Home.” The manifesto railed against “atrocities committed by the Israelis against Palestine” and called for “armed action.” Violence is “the only sane thing to do,” the manifesto said.

Previously, the alleged killer had many years of involvement with something called the Party for Liberation and Socialism. Among other things, that group has celebrated Hamas’ slaughter of 1,200 Jews in Israel on October 7, 2023, and published a statement on that date declaring: “Resistance to apartheid and fascist-type oppression is not a crime!…The actions of the resistance over the course of the last day is a morally and legally legitimate response to occupation.” 

Words.

Eleven days after the killings in Washington, another attack on Jews: this time, in Boulder, Colorado. As a small group of elderly Jews gathered to call for Hamas to release the remaining Israeli hostages, a man threw firebombs at them, injuring eight, some critically. Police said the accused had a “makeshift flamethrower,” as well, and – like the shooter in Washington – had been yelling “free Palestine. “End Zionists,” too.

The man, an Egyptian national, had reportedly been in the United States illegally. Less is known about how he was radicalized. It’s noteworthy, however, that he and the Washington, shooter allegedly used the same words: “free Palestine.”

Words.

Those words – like “genocide,” “Intifada,” “from the river to the sea,” and others – have been heard many, many times in the 600-odd days since the atrocities of October 7. They are ubiquitous now, tossed around like confetti at “anti-Zionist” university encampments, and at antisemitic mob scenes outside synagogues and gatherings of Jews, across North America and Europe.

The words are important, because hateful words always, always precede hateful deeds. You cannot have one without the other. You cannot fashion a Jew-hating terrorist out of thin air. You need to radicalize him, first, using words that denude Jews and their allies of their humanity, and which obliterate all truth.

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