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Terrorist.

And, here we go again.

The definition of “terrorist” is someone who is prepared to use violence to achieve some political objective. It’s not complicated.

At the CBC, however – and other news organizations, to be fair – the word “terrorist” is apparently verboten. CBC, and other media organizations, this week decreed that the word “militant” should be used to describe Hamas and their ilk. Not terrorist.

In a week where we are bearing witness to unspeakable horrors – in a week where we were provided with proof that Hamas actually killed babies last Saturday – it all seems insane, offensive, absurd. People in the Middle East are literally burying their dead and trying to stay alive, and over here we are debating semantics.

But we do that a lot, don’t we? Far from the front lines, some of us in the West expend a lot of energy on word games. Some of us think it’s meaningful.

It isn’t. It’s stupid. It’s a waste of time.

And, what happened is indisputably terrorism.

But if you think that the subhumans who murdered babies care what we call them, you are living in a fantasy world. If you think that innocent Israelis (and innocent Palestinians) – cowering in bombshelters, listening to death thud all around them – are preoccupied with semantics this week, you’re dreaming.

But still,  some of us over here still do it. Perhaps it makes us feel we are making a meaningful contribution.

When I started off in journalism, as a teenager, I would get to interview rock stars. I didn’t make any money doing it, but it was fun.

I did it for years: I interviewed everyone from Meat Loaf to Ted Nugent to the Sex Pistols. Every so often, one of them would complain to me about being pigeonholed in one genre or another.

Backstage one night in Vancouver with The Clash, I raised the subject with the legendary punk band’s lead singer, Joe Strummer. Stummer smiled and stuck an index finger in my chest.

“Punk rock, rock ‘n’ roll, it doesn’t matter what you call it,” he said. “The kid who is hearing the song, hearing the words, decides. The kid knows what to call it.”

The same goes for the families of the 1,200 Israelis who were slaughtered in cold blood one week ago. They know; they decide.

It was terrorism. It was mass murder. It was genocide. It was the darkest hatred. It was evil made flesh.

So, my advice is this: don’t get upset by what CBC calls it. Don’t waste time complaining to them.

Because, when all is said and done, when someone refuses to call terrorism what it is, which is terrorism? When they ignore the literal definition of “terrorist?”

It defines them, too.

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When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.

That that’s how the saying goes. When it comes to Sarah Jama, it applies.

Jama is (unfortunately for her party) a New Democrat. She is also (unfortunately for the rest of us) an actual member of the provincial legislature.

It’s pretty hard to give Jama credit for anything, but credit where credit’s due: She’s never really hidden what she truly is, which is a bigot. Which is, too, someone who maintains a deep and visceral loathing of Israel — and the people mostly found there. The Jews.

Here’s just a small sampling of some of the things that NDP MPP Sarah Jama has said and done about Israel and Jews — and, for good measure, police.

— Jama has said, many times, that Israel is “an apartheid state.” Given the fact that Israel has Palestinians in its military and legislature and judiciary, it’s not a very effective apartheid state, is it?

— Jama has said that Israel is an “illegitimate” state, and that it funds “the killing of people here, locally, and globally.” She’s offered no proof of any of that, of course. But there is plenty of proof that the myriad Palestinian terrorist groups she often celebrates have killed more than 3,500 Israelis since Israel was founded in 1948, “globally and locally.”

— Perhaps because she doesn’t want the police to feel left out, she has said that police officers “protect Naziism,” and “arbitrarily kill babies.” She has offered no proof of that, either.

This is not an exhaustive list. It also does not include her most recent remarks, published online under NDP letterhead, wherein she again falsely accused Israel of “apartheid,” and — instead of condemning the homicidal cult called Hamas — she attacked the victims, and demanded Israel “end all occupation of Palestinian land and end apartheid.”

Given that Hamas slaughtered hundreds of Israeli men, women, children and babies on Saturday, Jama’s anti-Semitism drew swift condemnation. Multiple Jewish and human rights organizations demanded her ouster from the New Democrat caucus, as did Ontario’s premier and the interim leader of the Ontario Liberal Party.

And, initially, it looked like that might actually happen. Marit Stiles, the purported leader of the provincial NDP, publicly demanded the Jama take down her statement.

She didn’t. She wouldn’t.

And, 24 hours later, her leader and her party folded like a cheap suit. They said that Jama’s “apology” — which was a case study in weasel words and conditional language — was sufficient. Everyone move along, nothing to see here, etc.

Except, well, no.

As the past few days have made depressingly clear, Canada has nothing to offer in either a military or strategic sense to Israel and her allies. We have been shut out of any meaningful role in fighting Hamas, principally because of Justin Trudeau’s long-documented performative diplomacy.

So, being a small and increasingly irrelevant country, all that we can really do is provide a good example. But — on the very day that the president of the United States stated that he had seen a video of Israeli babies decapitated by Hamas — the only Canadian example that anyone would remember was that of the Ontario NDP.

That is, to excuse and minimize Jew-hatred and praise for mass murderers.

Regrettably, within the NDP these days, Sarah Jama is not the exception, she is the norm. At all levels, for years, the New Democratic Party has been the political party most often associated with anti-Semitism. There is literally not enough room here to document all of it.

Yes, some Conservative MPs, as was first revealed by this writer, met with a German neo-Nazi. Yes, a Liberal MP invited an actual Nazi to the House of Commons. But in both those cases, the Conservative and Liberal leaders acknowledged that mistakes had been made.

Ontario’s New Democratic Party, and its leader, have not. They let Sarah Jama’s foul statement remain up. They let her remain in their caucus. They let hate win, basically.

Sarah Jama, as noted has always shown us who she is. She has not hidden it.

And, now, we all know what Ontario’s New Democratic Party is like, as well.

Which is just like her.

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There’s an old Hebrew proverb. It goes something like this:

“A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.”

It’s true. And, this week, we will get to see who really supports Israel, and who doesn’t, won’t we? Now we get to see who is a real friend.

Last week was different. Last week, after Hell opened up and disgorged Hamas serpents spitting death at children and the elderly, the Western world’s social media was full of well-meaning words and images mostly signifying nothing.

Lots of folks tweeted nice words about Israel, and posted nice pro-Israel profile banners on their Facebook pages. Governments shone Israel’s flag on their buildings at night. There were rallies. It was nice.

This week isn’t going to be nice. The coming weeks aren’t going to be nice. So, now, we will get to see who is a real friend of Israel. Now we will get to see if all those well-meaning folks with “Hate Has No Home Here” signs on their lawns really mean it.

Here’s the two main reasons why.

One, some of the highest cell phone usage in the world is found in the Middle East. The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics tells us that there are 4.2 million cellular mobile subscriptions in Palestine. In Gaza, as in the West Bank, it’s estimated that 97 per cent of households – no matter how poor – have at least one cellular mobile line.

That’s not an aberration. In places like the UAE or Qatar, smartphone penetration is just about 100 per cent. Canada, in comparison, is slightly less.

Why is all that significant? Because, when Israel sends in ground troops and artillery into Gaza this week – as they must – it is going to be one of the best-documented events in recent human history. It is going to make coverage of the moon landing look like an afterthought.

Hamas is counting on this, of course. There are going to more smart phones pointed at Israel’s soldiers than rifles. Hamas, and their Satanic brethren, wanted to provoke Israel into a disproportionate response to their mass-murder. That’s why they took as many as 150 Israeli hostages, as well: to live-stream their executions, and whip Israel into a frenzy and over-response.

Which they will then document on their ubiquitous cell phones, and beam out to a waiting world.

Which brings us to Reason Number Two. The military response.

The Yom Kippur 2023 attack on Israel, as we have all seen, is being likened to 9/11. For Israel, it was and is a Pearl Harbor moment.

Years ago, when I was last in Israel, I visited the Golan Heights, in the North. Twenty thousand Israelis are there, in about 30 settlements. While there, I heard gunshots. They sounded far away. I asked one of the soldiers I was with what the shooting was about.

He grinned. “They’re shooting at us,” he said, completely blasé. “They’re shooting at you.”

We didn’t get hit, but the episode underlined a simple truth about Israel: it is a small country, where everyone knows someone in the army, or has been in the army. Everywhere I went in the North, I saw soldiers and young people carrying automatic weapons. Many of them looked too young to vote.

Israel, even more than the United States, knows that one does not fund and maintain an army for show. You do so to use it when you have to. And Israel now must.

Cell phones notwithstanding, it must enter Gaza and drive Hamas and its ilk into the sea. It must wipe them off the face of the Earth. It must show no mercy.

These are the two reasons why the coming weeks are going to be bloody and brutal. One, Israel has no choice. And, two, anyone with an Internet connection is going to be seeing what happens.

Friends in good times aren’t friends. Friends when the going gets tough? Those are the real friends.

This week, Jews find out who their real friends are.

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The Trudeau government wants to regulate the big players on the Internet. Lots of people are concerned about that.

Here’s why, in the form of a cautionary tale.

This writer has a website, www.warrenkinsella.com. I’ve had it for more than 20 years. In the past, during election years, it could get as many as six million visitors a year. Since the advent of social media, not as much.

Anyway. There’s a guy in Ottawa, an angry little guy. He doesn’t like me very much.  He has sued me a few times and lost every time. He’s complained about me to the Law Society and the police, and lost there, too. In any legal or regulatory battle I’ve had with this guy, in fact, I’ve won.

A few years ago, this angry little man got angry about something on my website. I don’t remember what it was. It doesn’t matter.

Instead of suing or complaining to the Law Society or whatever, the angry little man contacted Media Temple, the American company that hosts my website. They got in touch with me. My lawyer said I had nothing to worry about, and to ignore it.

But Media Temple didn’t.  They said they didn’t have the time or the interest in mediating any disputes involving small fry. They didn’t care about a fight up in Canada.

So – even though their lawyer agreed I had done nothing wrong whatsoever – they said they would deplatform my website if I didn’t remove what had made the angry little man angrier.

That’s the problem, you see, with the Trudeau government’s plan to give the CRTC power over podcasts, personal websites and blogs. Angry little men and women, who can’t get at you directly, will use the legislation – to get at you indirectly.

Facebook and Google and the like have enormous power. They have enormous resources. But I guarantee you: if they hear from the CRTC about a complaint about small fry like me, the small fry will be vaporized. Poof. Gone.

Both Facebook and Google have shown how mercenary and deeply unethical they are, in their battle with Canadians over Bill C-18. The Bill simply asks that they share some of the benefits they reap from the hard work of Canadian journalists and editors.

Their response? To block your access to Canadian news – even during life-threatening events like the wildfires in Kelowna and Yellowknife, when Canadians desperately needed timely news reports.

So, that’s why the Trudeau governments plan will lead to censorship, as Elon Musk and others have said. That’s why it is dangerous: it gives angry little men a way to silence you online.

This legislation represents a real and significant threat to a free press and free expression in Canada. It is a huge mistake.

It must be stopped.

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They weren’t an army division. They were actually a criminal organization.

Of course, there’s much more to the SS division’s sordid past than that. The 14th Waffen Grenadier Division murdered many, many Jews and Polish civilians. For this, they were applauded by Heinrich Himmler, who was the leader of the Nazi Party and the architect of the Holocaust.

In a speech, Himmler said of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division: “Your homeland has become so much more beautiful since you have lost — on our initiative, I must say — those residents who were so often a dirty blemish on Galicia’s good name, namely the Jews … I know that if I ordered you to liquidate the Poles … I would be giving you permission to do what you are eager to do anyway.”

Which they were. Which they did. For their homeland, which was Ukraine.

One such atrocity took place at the Polish village of Huta Pieniacka. According to those who were there, civilians were locked in barns, which were then set on fire. Those who tried to escape were killed.

On another occasion in the spring of 1944, 2,000 women and children had sought refuge in a monastery in the Polish village of Pidkamin, which is now part of Ukraine. The SS Grenadiers captured it and murdered hundreds.

Canada’s Deschenes Commission later concluded that it was unfair to call everyone in the 14th Division a war criminal. But the fact is that the commission never travelled to Europe to interview its victims.

The Nuremberg prosecutors who did found that the Grenadiers were led by men who had participated in the mass murder of Jews and civilians. And were indeed homicidal maniacs.

As Esprit de Corps magazine concluded: “Over the decades, as Holocaust historians publish more details about the atrocities of those who served in the SS Galicia Division, it has become clear to critics that the Deschenes commission was simply a whitewash of a military unit that subscribed to and served the ideology of Adolf Hitler and SS leader Heinrich Himmler.”

And one of them — one of the Nazis — was praised in the House of Commons this week. Our Church of Government defiled by the presence of a man who subscribed to the ideology of murder, Naziism.

The fact that he was there was bad enough. But this writer had a different question: What the hell was he doing in Canada in the first place?

The answer: He came here with 2,000 other Nazis. And the Canadian government welcomed them with open arms, too.

Flight Lt. Bohdan Panchuk was their sponsor. Writes historian and Postmedia journalist David Pugliese: “Panchuk was able to get members of the 14th Waffen SS Division Galicia into Canada by lying about their past.

Members of the unit had surrendered to Allied forces and were being held in a camp in Italy. In an attempt to hide the SS connection, the unit had changed its name in the last few days of the war to the First Division Ukrainian National Army. ”

To get them into Canada, Panchuk depicted them as anti-Soviet fighters. If Canadian officials had bothered to probe deeper, they would’ve found the truth. In fact, most of the men had SS tattoos under their left arms.

Ukrainians who lived in Canada knew who they were. They raised the alarm. But nobody listened to them. The 2,000 Nazis thereafter started to arrive throughout the 1950s and got to work whitewashing their past.

Which brings us to now. And the main question.

The main question is not how this Nazi came to be in the House of Commons. By now, we all know he was invited there by the moron who is the Speaker of the House of Commons, who the Liberals and Conservatives refused to fire.

No, the more important question is this: How did this Nazi get to Canada in the first place — and why is he still here?

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