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Annihilation.

Bloodbath. Destruction. Massacre. Decimation. Wipeout.

Use whatever synonym you like, and it’ll apply. The Liberal Party of Canada – at one time, the most-successful political machine in Western democracy – is heading inexorably towards a defeat of truly historic proportions.

Some of us have been warning, for a long time, that this day was coming. Justin Trudeau, we opined, had turned the Liberal Party into a cult – a cult of personality. We said that, when he fell – and he would, because every leader does, if they’re in power too long – he would take the whole party down with him.

We said that the Trudeau Liberals had become tired and old. That they overpromised and under-delivered. That they had become a top-down movement – and were no longer a bottom-up political party. That they had become what they came to Ottawa to change – division, disunity, hyper-partisanship. That they couldn’t stick to a position if their lives depended on it – as with Israel, which they support or don’t support, depending on the weather.

But, even after all that, the latest numbers are just shocking.

They come to us from Nanos, a firm that the Trudeau government itself uses. It’s one of the best. And here’s many seats will change as a result of Nanos’ latest poll.

• Conservatives: projected to win 210 seats, which is 91 more than they have now
• Liberals: projected to win only 53, a drop of 107 seats
• New Democrats: projected to take 39 seats, which is 14 more than they presently have
• Greens: Nine seats, which is a pickup of seven
• Bloc Quebecois: no change

Take another look at that. Pierre Polievre’s Tories are projected to win four times as many seats as Justin Trudeau’s Grits. Four times!

Every party in the House of Commons is likely to pick up seats in the next election, as well – or, in the case of the Bloc, hold what they have. But the Trudeau Liberals, according to this Polling Canada seat model of Nanos’ numbers, are bleeding to everyone else – the Tories, the Dippers, the Greens. They are being crushed on the Left and the Right.

TruAnon winged monkeys will say, and have, that the next vote is a long way off – and that’s true. They will say that the Tories are peaking way too soon – which is arguably true. They will say that Trudeau remains their best asset, because he’s beaten the Tories thrice – and that he’s a great campaigner.

Not true. Not anymore.

If modern politics is a “daily campaign,” and it is, then Trudeau has been losing that, every single day. He and his cabal have been buffeted by too many stories about mistakes, missteps, and malfeasance. It’s impossible to credit them with a single clear win in 2023. There isn’t one. They’ve lost the daily campaign.

Similarly, Justin Trudeau can no longer be regarded as the Liberals’ secret weapon. He in fact is their biggest problem.

Way back when, this writer worked for Jean Chretien. I was pushing Chretien one day to do some press on an issue. Chretien declined. “Young man,” said he, “I don’t want or need to be in the media every single day. If you do that, people will get sick of your face.”

And that, in a Chretienite nutshell, is Trudeau’s biggest problem of all: overexposure. He’s been in our faces too often, too long. When his days were sunny, Trudeau would benefit, with Rolling Stone cover stories, and fawning media profiles. He got all the credit.

No longer. With the economy and the national mood faltering,Trudeau is now taking all the blame. In politics, you have to take the good with the bad, and Trudeau is now experiencing much more of the latter than the former.

Thus, the polls. Thus, the seat projections, which suggest 1984 and 1993-sized upsets are imminent.

For despondent Liberals, what is the only way out? Simple.

Justin, just go. For the love of God, just go.

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The street my parents lived on – and where I was born – was Coolbrook Avenue in Montreal. It was previously home to poorer Irish Catholics, but is now home to many Hasidic Jews, the Lubavitchers. It’s a nice area. Lots of trees, little parks. The Jews and the Irish got along, there.

In the early hours of Monday, someone threw a bomb – a Molotov cocktail – into the entrance area of the Jewish Community Council of Montreal, which is just on the other side of the Decarie, at Vezina.

The bomb went off and there was plenty of damage. But, thankfully, no one was injured. Police and fire fighters were there quickly.

The Suburban newspaper reported that security footage showed the bomber “arriving by car, exiting, breaking the front window and throwing the Molotov.” He or she hasn’t been caught.

So, here’s a question, specifically for Montreal police. But it also applies to police forces across Canada, too. Here it is.

What are you doing, if anything, about the explosion in anti-Semitic crime in your city? Because, everywhere, things are very, very bad.

• A Montreal Jewish school has been shot up – with actual bullets – not once, but twice. You can still see the holes on the facade of Yeshiva Gedola, days later. The police haven’t caught the perpetrator(s).
• A Jewish community centre and synagogue in the Montreal suburb of Dollard-des-Ormeaux were both the targets of firebombs in the middle of the night. The police haven’t caught the perpetrator(s).
• An imam appeared at a pro-Palestine/pro-Hamas rally in Montreal, and said the following about Jews in Arabic: “Allah, count every one of them, and kill them all, and do not exempt even one of them.” The police haven’t arrested him or charged him.

And, now, another bombing of another Jewish institution in Montreal, and no one has been arrested.

That’s the common element in each of those terror attacks: the bad guys haven’t been arrested, let alone detained. They still walk the streets, free as birds.

And, so, there’s been another attack, early on Monday, and right on the Decarie Expressway – which is as busy as the Gardiner in Toronto, or Granville in Vancouver, or the Deefoot in Calgary, or the Queensway in Ottawa.

How can that happen? How can Jews be targeted, over and over and over, in busy neighbourhoods and locations, and no one gets caught? How can that be?

Now, before any of you who live outside Montreal start patting yourselves on the back for doing better? Well, don’t.

On the very same day the Montreal Jewish Community Council was bombed, the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre in Toronto – on the edge of the University of Toronto, and on one of the busiest and best-lit streets in the city – was targeted, with foot-high graffiti blood libel: ISRAEL FUNDS GENOCIDE.

And, just days before and down the same busy street, a bookstore that happens to be owned by a Jewish woman, Indigo, was similarly attacked. Eleven adults, among them a paralegal and a music teacher, were later arrested for splashing blood-red paint on the bookstore and postering it with more madness about “funding genocide.”

Across the country, there has been an explosion in other anti-Semitic crimes – and anti-Muslim crimes, too. And, with the exception of the attack on the book store owned by a Jew in Toronto, there hasn’t been much in the way of arrests, has there?

That, despite the fact the crimes have often been committed in areas where there are many people around. That, despite the fact – as with the bullets fired at a Jewish school in Montreal – identical attacks had happened just days before.

Police agencies may be doing their best, but it’s clearly not enough. The Jew-haters (and the Muslim-haters) are getting more bold every single day. When they see that they can shoot guns or toss tombs and get away with it? Well, they’re going to keep going.

We repeat: law enforcement in Canada needs to start enforcing the law. They need to prevent more hate crimes.

Because they’re not doing that.

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Hate is everywhere, these days. How to stop it?

Jew hatred is statistically the worst, of course, with anti-Semitic crimes and incidents happening everywhere on a near-daily basis. But the Islamophobia is bad, as well. For every four anti-Semitic incidents, there is roughly one Islamophobic one.

It’s a bad situation that is getting worse. The country doesn’t resemble the one that existed before October 7. So what can governments do?

There’s plenty. I’ve been researching and reporting on hate for nearly four decades. Here’s my top ten suggestions.

1. Create bias crimes units – federally and provincially. Most people are surprised to hear that Canada’s police agencies are a patchwork when it comes to hate. Some areas don’t even have police officers trained to deal with the problem. So, the feds and the provinces need to fill in the gaps – with community-based policing where that works, and an umbrella organization of trained federal RCMP cops for the rest.

2. Fund the bias crimes units that already exist. In those few places where hate-fighting cops work, resources are minimal to nonexistent.  If the Trudeau Liberals and the Premiers are as serious about fighting hate they claim to be, they need to ensure the dollars are there for recruitment, training and deployment.

3. Create dedicated prosecutors and courts for hate prosecutions. Other jurisdictions have done this, and it works. It develops and centers expertise in the justice system, and it speeds up prosecutions of hate crime. We already do it for drug crimes. We clearly need to do it for hate crime, too.

4. Create a law prohibiting willfully promoting terror groups. There are laws against promoting hatred against identifiable groups, promoting anti-Semitism, promoting genocide. Incredibly, Canada does not have a law against promoting listed terrorist organizations like Hamas or Hezbollah. That needs to change, now.

5. Remove the Attorney-General’s approval for hate prosecutions. Police and prosecutors don’t need to get anyone’s permission to charge someone for murder or robbery. But they do for promoting hatred and related crimes. That has resulted in a completely-ridiculous situation where many hate crimes are being treated as simple cases of mischief. That needs to be fixed by the Feds. They have the power to do it.

6. Remove those who promote hate. Canada deports for serious crime, and has done so for decades. Meanwhile, it has become obvious that some who are here on study visas are abusing them – which is also grounds for revocation and deportation. The laws are there. They need to be applied with more rigor.

7. Make mandatory funding and teaching of genocide at the national level.  Ontario and British Columbia have recently announced their intention to expand, and make mandatory, teaching about the Holocaust and related genocides. Other provinces need to do likewise – because nothing breeds hate more than ignorance. And, in those provinces that can’t quickly afford to do so on their own, bring in the likes of the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center – which has long maintained a fleet of traveling buses to teach students about hate and genocide – to fill the gaps in the curriculum.

8. Defund universities who permit hate on campus. Academic freedom to say whatever you want, if it ever existed, no longer does. There have always been reasonable limits on what can be said on-campus. In the U.S. Congress, some have recently moved to eliminate federal funding for universities and colleges which permit clear expressions of hatred. Canada needs to do likewise.

9. Call a public inquiry. The Trudeau Liberals, in particular, are fond of reviews and inquiries, but not usually when they are the focus. There needs to be an all-party agreement to establish an inquiry to assess federal laws, regulations and programs – aimed, laser-like, at countering the shocking surge in hate crime and activity across the country.

10. Fund public awareness campaigns. Governments also love to launch advocacy campaigns about everything from the environment to public health. But, as noted, nothing breeds hatred better than ignorance. Canadian governments need to do what they can do better than the private sector: communicate some basic truths. Namely, what hate is, and why it is unwelcome here.

There’s ten concrete things the governments can, and should, do. Tweeting opposition to hate isn’t enough. Toothless resolutions do nothing.

We need to do more, and we need to do it now. Because a bad situation is getting worse every single day.

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If you’re LGBTQ, you’ll be fine in Palestine, right?

I mean, that’s certainly what some folks seem to believe. This week, someone hoisted a banner to that effect at a Canadian university. Here’s what it said, in all caps:

TRANS LIBERATION CAN’T HAPPEN WITHOUT PALESTINIAN LIBERATION

Universities being places of higher learning and all that, it looks like the banner-hoisters maybe forgot the apostrophe in the word “can’t.” So I added it for them.

They must have gotten up on the roof to hang the banner, too, because it’s several stories up. Interesting, that. We’ll come back to that.

Anyway, the banner’s message is clear. If you’re a trans person – if you’re LQBTQ2, too – well, your campaign for liberation is inextricably linked to the liberation of Palestine. Says so, right there on the banner at a place of higher learning.

So, let’s do a fact-check on that one, shall we?

Here’s a short summary of the reality for lesbian, gay, bi, trans, queer and two-spirited folks in Palestine, which is mainly run by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. To avoid any accusations of settler-colonial-genocidal-apartheidish bias, we’ll try and rely on non-Israeli sources, okay?

Okay. Here goes.

• The Palestinian criminal code – still in force, says Human Rights Watch and others – says that anyone who “commits an act of sodomy” faces up to a decade in prison, because it’s “acting against the laws of nature.” So, that’s the law in Palestine, apparently. Not very “liberated,” is it?
• The United Nations – which is otherwise pro-Palestine and always anti-Israel – has intervened on behalf of LGBTQ people facing persecution in Gaza and the West Bank. The UN has resettled these people to Canada, Europe and the United States. This would be the same United Nations that has passed 45 resolutions that condemn, you know, Israel.
• Despite that, a UN committee wasn’t prevented from issuing a report on anti-gay hate in Palestine, however. Said the Human Rights Council: “LGBTQ persons living under Palestinian Authority and Hamas control suffer severe persecution and ostracism. Many Palestinian homosexuals end up fleeing to Israel.” And: “Testimonies from gay Palestinians who managed to escape recount harrowing torture by both family and PA/Hamas security forces, often successful attempts to coerce them to inform on others, forced marriages and death threats, among other things.”
• Likewise, the folks at Amnesty International – who are decidedly against the Jewish state, these days – have agreed that the human rights of LGBTQ people are regularly abused in Palestine. Says Amnesty: “Authorities fail to prevent and investigate homophobic and transphobic threats and attacks.” Most recently, they noted, “[Palestinian] security forces stood by and watched as a mob beat youths and children participating in a parade organized by Ashtar Theatre in Ramallah that included rainbow flags. The attack came amid a wave of incitement to violence and hate speech against LGBTI people and feminists that the authorities failed to investigate.”
• A few years back, an actual Hamas commander, Mahmoud Ishtiwi, was executed. His crime? He was gay. Even though he came from a proud family of Hamas terrorists, even though he commanded 1,000 other homicidal maniacs, three bullets were pumped into his chest. Before that, they tortured him for several days – whipping him, hanging him from the ceiling with wires. Not so liberated.
• Another gay man, Ahmad Abu Marhia, was beheaded for being gay. He’d been seeking asylum in Israel, was kidnapped back to the West Bank, and had his head chopped off. They made sure to videotape that. His murder happened a few weeks before he was going to travel to Canada to start a new life.
• Four gay Palestinian men, and one gay Palestinian woman, recently went public with what they experienced there. One had to enter a fake marriage to avoid persecution and execution. Said this man: “Some have been punished, some have been killed. Others killed themselves. One of my best friends was gay. He took his own life.” There are hundreds of other Palestinians in Israel, seeking asylum, because they believe they will killed if they return to Palestine.

Anyway, you get the picture. It’s not a pretty one. If you are a LGBTQ person, and you relocate to a “liberated Palestine,” you’re a goner.

Which brings us back to the banner, affixed to the UBC student union building, some five floors up.

A bit ironic, that. Because, in Hamas-run Palestine, anyone hanging that banner up near the roof?

They’d be tossed off it.

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It’s a deadly virus, one that has killed for millennia. But the virus has mutated.

It’s not actually a coronavirus. It’s anti-Semitism.

Anti-Semitism – hatred of Jews – is one of the oldest viruses. It pre-dates Christ by Centuries, as far back as Abraham. Before the Common Era (BCE), Hebrews would be persecuted for refusing to conform to the religions or beliefs of regional potentates.

After Jesus Christ, anti-Semitism changed, but it did not go away. Even though Christianity was seen as another Jewish sect – and even though Christ himself was, at all relevant times, a Jew – the Romans sought to destroy the Jewish state. Roman Emperors converted to Christianity, and Jews were again persecuted for refusing to accept Christ as the Messiah. And it all got worse.

Anti-Semitism has been part of Canada for as long as Canada has existed.

Mackenzie King called Hitler “a sweet man” and kept out Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust. Social Credit types formed governments in the West and railed against “international Jewish financiers.” And in Quebec, Jew hatred was popular and mainstream, led by the likes of Lionel Groulx (a priest!) and Adrien Arcand.

When this writer first started writing about organized anti-Semitic groups, the Internet wasn’t widespread. So, in those days, haters – the Aryan Nations in Alberta, the Klan in Manitoba, the Heritage Front in Ontario – had a tougher time spreading their hateful gospel.

They were always looking for money: money to print their pamphlets, money to send members out to distribute the pamphlets, money for lawyers if the members got charged.

The Internet changed all of that. They could now reach a global audience, instantaneously, anonymously, for pennies.

The Jew-haters were among the first to embrace the dot-com revolution. For the first time in human history, they could quickly and cheaply promote their vile creed to a mass audience. All they needed was an Internet connection.

So, if you are asking yourself why you are seeing anti-Semitism everywhere these days – if you are wondering why anti-Semites seem more organized and more bold than ever before – the answer is found in your pocket or on your desktop. For the neo-Nazis and the Hitler freaks and the Jew haters, the digital revolution has been a (godless) godsend.

The anti-Semitic groups – from the Proud Boys to Hamas – use the Internet to recruit, fundraise and propagandize.  On all fronts, they have been wildly successful. If you think you are seeing anti-Semitic messages more often, and if you think that the Jew-haters are more numerous and better-organized than before, you’re right. They are.

But it’s not enough to merely say that the Internet has helped them. Those who own and control the biggest online platforms have helped them, too.

Take Elon Musk, for example (please). As the Washington Post revealed this week, in a major report: “Antisemitism was rising online. Then Elon Musk’s X supercharged it.”

Writes the Post’s Elizabeth Dwoskin: “Since Oct. 7, anti-Semitic content has surged more than 900 per cent on X and there have been more than 1,000 incidents of real-world anti-Semitic attacks, vandalism and harassment in America.”

By repeating anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, Musk has also overseen a “dramatic loosening of standards for what can be posted, and [a] boosting of voices that previously had been banned – all have made anti-Semitism more acceptable on what is still one of the world’s most influential social media platforms.”

So, the hashtag “HitlerWasRight” has been used nearly 50,000 times on X since October 7. Meanwhile, an anti-digital-hate group found 200 wildly anti-Semitic posts on X. Musk allowed 196 of them to remain online, and they went on to accumulate nearly 150 million views.

Anti-Semitism has been a seemingly-unkillable virus for Centuries. But it is a virus that is surging again, and is clearly worse than most of us have seen in our lifetimes.

The anti-Semitic virus, like all viruses, is never completely eliminated. But by letting it rampage online, unopposed, we have let it grow too big, too far, too fast.

And too many are now infected.

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Yumna was fifteen years old.

At the school she went to in London, Ont., she painted a big floor-to-ceiling mural. On it, she’d put the Earth in space, alongside the words: “Learn. Lead. Inspire.” Beside it, she wrote: “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” Purple was her favorite color.

She was a good kid. She was beautiful, with a big smile. All the kids liked her. She was going into grade ten, and she was looking forward to it. That’s what everyone remembers.

Her Dad, Salman, was 46 years old. He was a physiotherapist, and a good one. He held down two jobs – helping out seniors at the Ritz Lutheran Villa. He also worked with the elderly at the Mitchell Nursing Home. He’d worked with seniors for years, and had been a physiotherapist for a long time, too. His boss said: “He was just a beautiful person.”

Yumna’s Mom, and Salman’s wife, was Madiha, and she was 44. She was an engineer – she had her Master’s in environmental engineering, in fact. She’d won all kinds of scholarships during her time at Western University. She taught there, too. She was a great Mom.

Talat Afzaal was Salman’s Mom. She was 74 and from Pakistan, where her boy had been born. The family came to Canada years ago, in 2007, for a better life. During the pandemic, like lots of people, the family started taking nightly walks together, to get out of the house. The youngest, nine-year-old Fayez, came along too.

It was on one such walk, on a warm night in June, that black truck mounted the curb on Hyde Park Road, and killed all of them, except Fayez. The little boy somehow survived, but with serious injuries that will be with him for the rest of his life.

The rest of the family were all slaughtered, however: Yumna, Salman, Madiha and Talat. At the trial, the doctors said they all died because of “multiple trauma.” But that doesn’t quite cover it.

Talat was murdered right away. Her head, torso and extremities were crushed, mangled. She had internal bleeding. The bodies of her boy, Salman, and his wife, Madiha, were destroyed in similar ways. Yumnah was mainly killed because of what the killer did her torso with his truck.

The gas pedal on the truck was compressed “100 per cent” when it slammed into her and her parents and her grandmother and her brother. The driver had done a U-turn when he spotted the family waiting at the crosswalk, around 8:44 p.m.

He spotted them because they were all wearing traditional Pakistani clothing.

The driver was Nathaniel Veltman, age 22. He’s pale and unremarkable-looking, with a moonish face and a haircut that looks a bit military, but isn’t.

Veltman isn’t human, actually. Like the Hamas terrorists who killed 1,400 Israeli men, woman and children on October 7, Veltman killed the Afzaal family because he hated The Other. Not because he knew them, or had ever met them. Just because they had a different religion than him. Just because they somehow represented a threat to him.

Like the Hamas terrorists, Nathaniel Veltman forfeited his humanity on that day. He ceased to be a human, and became an actual monster. An un-human.

He was into Hitler, of course, like the Hamas guys are. He was into conspiracy theories and online evil, like them. He was proud of what he did – like Hamas, he insisted that the aftermath be filmed, so everyone could see it. Like them, he didn’t claim the murders were an accident. He said he “did it on purpose.”

This week, as members of the London Muslim community silently looked on, a jury found Nathaniel Veltman guilty of four counts of first-degree murder. He didn’t show any emotion, of course, because sociopathic monsters usually don’t. He’s going to be in prison for the rest of his useless, pointless, godless life.

But like his Satanic brethren in Hamas, who also killed families – grandparents, parents, children – this is what he deserves:

He deserves a noose. He deserves the needle. He deserves a firing squad. He deserves to be put down, like the rabid animal that he is.

Most of us would do it, too.

For free.

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Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

Vladimir Putin’s regime immediately commenced brutally killing Ukrainian civilians on a massive scale.

Russia committed war crimes. It committed acts of rape and infanticide. It took hostage innocent Ukrainians. It tortured them.

Canada is home to the largest Ukrainian diaspora community in the world. Here are the things that did not – did not, we emphasize – happen in Canada after February 2022.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did not piously instruct Ukraine to exercise “maximum restraint.” He did not give performative speeches, telling Ukraine how to defend itself.

His witless foreign affairs minister, Melanie Joly, did not demand a cease-fire, or attack Ukraine’s military for targeting Russian missile batteries.

No NDP member of a provincial legislature gave speeches to baselessly accuse Ukraine of genocide, or to deny Russia’s many war crimes.

Mid-war, while Russia was still waging war against Ukraine, a significant chunk of the Liberal Party caucus did not also demand a total cease fire and insist that Ukraine stop fighting back.

The Canadian media did not accept Putin’s propaganda, and call the invasion a mere “security exercise.” Our media did not treat representatives of Russia and Ukraine as having an equal moral standing or voice, and invite them to debate on-air for better ratings.

Canadian universities did not suddenly become safe havens for students to wear masks and physically assault Ukrainian students – or accuse them of genocide and apartheid. Canadian university and college professors did not go on social media to falsely accuse Ukraine of war crimes, and absolve Russia of every sin.

Pro-Russian thugs did not shoot up schools – once, twice, thrice – where Ukrainian-Canadian children were being taught the Ukrainian language and culture. They did not firebomb Ukrainian orthodox churches, or Ukrainian community centers.

No Russian religious figure appeared at rallies to call on God to “exterminate” Ukrainians everywhere.

No pro-Russian, pro-Putin mobs took to the streets every single weekend, demonizing Ukraine and its people, chanting about their desire to see Ukraine wiped off the map, “from Belarus to the Black Sea.”

No one organized boycotts of businesses owned by Ukrainian-Canadians, or businesses with an imagined connection to Ukraine. No one scrawled graffiti on thousands of walls and doors and windows – defaming Ukrainian religious symbols, or accusing Ukraine of the vilest crimes.

No one did or said any of those things, after Russia attacked Ukraine. No one did any of those things after Vladimir Putin commenced his slaughter of Ukrainian men, women and children.

But in Canada, all of those things have happened, and much more. Not to Ukrainians, however. Not them.

No, all of those things have happened in Canada to Israel and a certain religion.

Didn’t happen with Ukraine. Did with Israel.

What’s the difference, we wonder?

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If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, some people will eventually believe it.

The author of that one, of course, was Joseph Goebbels, and he would know. Goebbels was the chief propagandist for Germany’s Nazi Party. He helped to devise and then cover up the Shoah – the Holocaust.

Goebbels would likely approve what has happened in the days following the modern Shoah, October 7. Since October 7, words and meanings have been giddily twisted and manipulated like a rag doll in a madhouse.

Every weekend, everywhere, angry voices – pro-Palestinian, but also pro-Hamas – can be heard on city streets, screaming “from the river to the sea.” The people who use that slogan insist, over and over, that those words are benign, and express no ill-will towards Jews.

And, yes, “from the river to the sea” – from the Jordan River in the East to the Mediterranean Sea in the West – doesn’t explicitly say every inch of “Palestine is for Muslims only, Jews are warmongering Zionist Nazis, and every Muslim has an obligation to wage holy war against them until they are all gone.”

But the Hamas 1988 Charter certainly says that, and plenty more. When he was celebrating the anniversary of said Charter, Hamas’ billionaire leader Khaled Mashaal made clear what “from the river to the sea” means. Said Mashaal: “Palestine is ours, from the river to the sea, and from the South to the North. There will be no concession on any inch of the land.”

No concession. Sorry, citizens of the Jewish state: “from the river to the sea” literally means there is no room for you, and no more Israel. Everyone, from Hamas to the Palestine Liberation Organization – who used it as their official slogan, and who asserted that “armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine” – know precisely what “from the river to the sea” means. It means no Jews, no Israel. Period.

Because they are disciples of Goebbels, the pro-Hamas propagandists are also careful about their use of the word “Jew.” They prefer “Zionists.”

Zionism is a political movement that seeks a Jewish homeland, in the part of the world Jews occupied for centuries before the birth of Christ – and thousands of years before the word “Palestine” was ever uttered. Saying you oppose “Zionists” – and “the Zionist project,” which is what they call Israel – is a lot less controversial than saying you are against the Jews.

No less than Dr. Martin Luther King is the best source on the distinction. As recalled by author Seymour Lipset: “When approached by a student who attacked Zionism, Dr. King responded: ‘When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You’re talking anti-Semitism.’”

This week, this writer was on a Toronto radio panel with a man who proclaimed he was a “human rights lawyer,” but who revealed himself to perhaps regard some humans as having more rights than others.

The host, Greg Brady, did his best to challenge this man’s many whoppers, which included:

• Hamas hasn’t killed any Jews outside “occupied territories.”
• Firebombing a synagogue may not be anti-Semitic.
• A Montreal Imam who called for Jews to be exterminated, didn’t.

How can anyone, least of all a “human rights lawyer,” embrace such things, all of which are false? Who knows. The “human rights lawyer” wanted more “evidence” on the synagogue firebombing. He didn’t answer yes or no to Brady’s request that he agree that Hamas was a terrorist organization. He said the Imam called for “Zionists” to be exterminated, not “Jews” (see above).

And so on. That’s how it’s been pretty much everywhere, since October 7. The mobs – found in the streets, in faculty lounges, university classrooms and NDP caucus meetings – have manipulated and mauled language to justify, or minimize, Hamas’ mass-murder on October 7.

They have done that because they know, deep in their tiny black hearts, that they won’t win over public opinion by saying they favour eliminating every Jew in Israel. So they say they oppose the “Zionist entity” and want to merely liberate Palestine, “from the river to the sea.”

It’s all so dishonest and divisive and dangerous.

Goebbels would approve.

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