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Politics is show business for ugly people. It’s an old line, one for which many claim parentage.

But it’s true. And there’s been quite a bit of ugliness pinballing around in recent months. Because, too often, it works.

In 2016, Democrats didn’t believe ugliness could prevail. In that U.S. presidential election year – where, full disclosure, this writer worked for Hillary Clinton in three different states, including her Brooklyn headquarters – nobody believed that Donald Trump’s style of politicking could possibly succeed.

Trump called Clinton a criminal. He called for her to be locked up. He said Barack Obama founded ISIS. He said Mexicans were rapists, and attacked Jeb Bush for marrying one. He said John McCain wasn’t a war hero because he got caught. And so on.

Nobody believed that kind of ugliness could win an election, let alone a presidential election. But Trump did.

Eight years later, Democrats aren’t taking any chances. They’ve quoted Trump’s former chief of staff, who has called Trump a fascist. They’ve slammed Trump at every opportunity, sparing no adjective. Meanwhile, Trump’s Republican Party – because they are, indisputably, his party – held a big rally at Madison Square Gardens on the weekend and permitted all kinds of ugly things to be said.

Like that Puerto Rico is a “island of garbage” floating in the ocean. Like that Kamala Harris is “the antichrist” and “the devil.” And, as the Times of Israel noted, antisemitic jokes – most notably, the comedian who said that “Jews have a hard time” spending money. Because, presumably, Jews are cheap.

That kind of ugliness – the ugliness of antisemitism – has been everywhere, in the past year. CyberWell, an Israel-based watchdog that tracks antisemitism online, has issued a report that concludes antisemitism has surged by almost 40 per cent in the eleven months since the murderous attack of Hamas of October 7.

Says CyberWell’s brilliant founder and executive director, Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor: “It’s important, especially since there’s a lot of fanfare around the next administration in the United States and potentially in Canada – it’s very important if you care about what’s happening in your society – that the way to address [antisemitism] in a systematic way is to look at social media reform. We cannot shy away from it just because it’s the tech sector. In fact, the opposite. It’s the key to safer and and more stable societies at this point.”

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Francesca is a fetching Italian woman. She’s telegenic and elegant. She’s also an international lawyer, an academic, and she holds a PhD in International Refugee Law. She has many academic awards and distinctions.

She is also a bigot.

Albanese’s title, presently, is the United Nations’ “special rapporteur” on Palestine. In reality, however, she is not just an advocate for Palestinians. She is also an advocate against Jews and the Jewish state, and she devotes herself energetically to that unwritten part of her job description.

Notably, she is coming to Canada in the next few days. Albanese is conducting a “campus tour,” says Eventbrite, which is promoting her little jaunt. One of the sponsors of her excursion to the colonies is Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). In a detailed lawsuit filed against SJP in Virginia’s District Court in May, survivors of the October 7 Nova Music Festival massacre describe SJP as the “mouthpiece for [Hamas in] North America, dedicated to sanitizing Hamas’ atrocities and normalizing its terrorism.”

So, that is who is one of the sponsors of Albanese’s visit here. A group that oversaw multiple antisemitic campus occupations across Canada, and which itself has called the October 7 attack – wherein 1,200 Israeli civilians were slaughtered, 250 were taken hostage, and more than 100 woman and girls raped – “a historic win for Palestinian resistance.” That’s who Francesca Albanese is hanging out with when she gets to Canada.

In the coming days, you will be hearing lots of debate about the Special Rapporteur for Judeophobia being welcomed at our places of higher learning. Fair-minded people, Jewish and non-Jewish, will attempt to stop her campus tour. But they will likely fail, because the parlour room bigots who run many of our universities will invoke “free speech” as a defence.

So, let’s look at that, shall we? How has Francesca Albanese exercised her free speech?

Hillel Neuer, the brilliant leader of U.N. Watch (and a Canadian) has recently issued a compendious report on Albanese and her statements about Jews and the Jewish state. Here’s just a sampling.

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Trump’s hidden advantage is an electoral college that always tilts towards the GOP.

Harris’ hidden advantage is a GOTV effort that will decimate whatever the GOP has.

Why does the latter matter? Because her team is more motivated to beat him than his is to beat her. His team don’t hate Harris the way they hated Clinton.

Her team deeply, deeply hates him. That’s motivation.

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Dear Justin Trudeau:
 
Unhappy members of the Liberal Party caucus are reportedly getting ready to send you a letter, asking you to leave. So, several million of us regular Canadians got together to send you a letter, too.  Here it is.
 
We haven’t seen the Grit caucus letter, yet.  But, based upon past experience, it’s likely to be 90 per cent flattery and only about ten per cent the subject-matter, which is this: it’s time to go, big guy.
 
Do we need to persuade you of this? We doubt it.  You don’t get to be Prime Minister of Canada by being a total idiot. You can read a poll as well as the rest of us.  And the polls – all of them, no exceptions – say that you and your Liberals have been behind the Conservatives by as much as 22 per cent for more than a year. In politics, that’s death row, Justin.
 
The main reason for your party’s unpopularity isn’t a policy, per se.  Sure, Pierre has convinced lots of people that the carbon tax is the reason why every sparrow falls from the sky. After he becomes Prime Minister, however, and people still need to take out a second mortgage to fill up the tank, they’ll realize that “axing the tax” made for a boffo bumpersticker – but killing it wasn’t be the cure for every ill.
 
No, Justin, it’s not a policy that has reduced the Liberal brand to endangered-species status. It’s you.
 
Now, we’ve watched you on the job for the past almost-decade.  We’ve seen that calling you names and getting angry at you doesn’t work.  In fact, it gives you energy.  You’re like the Incredible Hulk of Canadian politics: when people come after you, you add muscle mass.
 
So, we will try a different approach.  We will be kinder and gentler, like George Bush Senior memorably once said.
 
You have nothing left to prove, Justin.  You have had three huge achievements.  You have a legacy to be proud of.
 
One, you took the Liberal Party of Canada from third place to a big, big majority.  That is something that no other party leader has done in our lifetimes. Circa 2015, the Liberal Party of Canada’s obituary had been written up by just about every member of the commentariat. But you created your own DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN moment, and made the punditocracy look like fools.
 
Two, separatism did not once raise its head during your time in power.  Every Prime Minister, for generations, has struggled with Quebec nationalism and separatism.  You, however, led the country through nearly a decade in which, blessedly, we did not hear the word “constitution.” Call it luck, call it skill. Whatever the reason, you kept the Canada-wreckers at bay.
 
(Tory leader Pierre Poilievre, we note, will not be so lucky. His biggest challenge won’t be cutting back on your fiscal excesses – in government, any monkey can wield an axe. His biggest challenge will be the return of the Parti Quebecois at the National Assembly, and the fact that Quebeckers don’t ever like anglophones telling them what to think. But we digress.)
 
The third reason why you can leave with your comely head held high: you lifted hundreds of thousands of Canadian children out of poverty. When children are going hungry, when children do not have a roof over their heads, you don’t really have a country anymore. Your Canada Child Benefit (CCB) didn’t fully eliminate child poverty – it will forever be among us, per Jesus Christ – but hundreds of thousands of Canadian children were given better lives. The last time the Tories said they’d “reform” the CCB they lost an election they should’ve won.
 
So, there you go, Justin: you shouldn’t leave because we’re mad at you (even though several million of us are). You should leave because you’ve had almost ten years at the top, and that’s as good as it gets. 
 
It matters to you, we suspect, that you led minority governments instead of majority ones.  But that doesn’t matter to us, your bosses. For most of those years, we were comfortable with you being in charge. If we weren’t, we wouldn’t have defeated Messrs. Harper, Scheer and O’Toole.
 
Anyway: that was then, this is now. It’s over. 
 
You are a proud guy, like your Dad was. In politics, you are only remembered for your last loss or win.
 
Be remembered as a winner, not a loser. Go. You’ll be happier, and so will we.  Everyone wins.
 
Sincerely,
 
Canadians
 
 

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It’s made headlines around the world: Canada’s national government believes that a malign foreign entity – India – engaged in a campaign of intimidation, harassment, assaults and murder against Canadians.

Why, then, has it been so difficult for Canada’s national government to also believe that malign foreign entities — Iran, Hamas, aided and abetted by Russia and China — have also engaged in a campaign of intimidation, harassment, assaults and attempted murder against Canadian Jews?

Because they have. Hamas and its axis are not merely conducting a war against Israel’s democracy. They are engaged in a simultaneous war against Western democracies. Canada included.

It’s not a conspiracy theory. In July, no less than the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, said this: “Iranian government actors have sought to opportunistically take advantage of ongoing protests regarding the war in Gaza, using a playbook we’ve seen other actors use over the years. We have observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters.”

It has been “an Iranian campaign,” Haines said, speaking on behalf of the FBI and the entire American intelligence establishment.

That revelation came months after reporting by this newspaper that anti-Israel, pro-Hamas extremists were indeed being paid in a malevolent campaign to cause chaos in Canadian streets, and target Canadian Jews. The participants have been a mix of antisemitic agitators in the Muslim community, radicalized students, and far-Left NGOs and individuals who hate America and Western democracy.

The allegations against India’s regime, meanwhile, are deeply serious. They include assassination plots and acts of violence against members of another religious minority, Canada’s Sikh community. India has denied the allegations, but then hurriedly withdrew six of their diplomats before the RCMP could get the opportunity to question them.

Outstanding reporting by Sam Cooper, Stewart Bell and Mercedes Stephenson has established that Justin Trudeau and his ministers were repeatedly warned about Indian criminal activity on Canadian soil. The record will ultimately show Trudeau and his cabal did nothing about it.

So, too, with the threats and attacks by agents of Hamas, Iran and by violent Marxist extremists in Canada over the past year. Trudeau and his government were warned about all of that, as well. And they again did nothing to stop it.

Consider what Canadian Jews and their allies have experienced since Oct. 7, 2023:

— Schools for young Jewish children being shot up more than once in Montreal and Toronto.

— Firebombing of Jewish businesses, community centres and synagogues across Canada.

— Hospitals, schools, businesses and even entire Jewish neighbourhoods being targeted with vandalism and violence and threats.

— Federally approved organizations like Vancouver’s Samidoun applauding the murder of Jews and unapologetically calling for “death to Canada.”

And on and on and on. Unlike the alleged Indian campaign, the Iranian version only lacks a murder victim. But it has not been for lack of trying. To some observers, it is just a matter of time before a Canadian Jew is slain.

We live in an era where outlaw regimes are aggressively exporting their wars against their enemies to Canada, the United States and other Western democracies. To the likes of India and Iran, national borders are just squiggles on a map. They are disinterested in diplomatic niceties and international law.

All of that is obvious. Less obvious, however, is this:

Canada is finally moving against India for its alleged campaign of terror against Canadians.

Why isn’t Canada also moving against Iran, Hamas et al. for their campaign of terror against Canadian Jews?

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To remain human, the writer Graham Greene once said, you have to take sides.

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has chosen a side: Jews, the Jewish state, Western democracy. Poilievre sometimes gets himself in trouble for lack of nuance.  But this week, his refusal to equivocate on Israel deserves high praise.

On Parliament Hill, Poilievre condemned the avalanche of antisemitism, the likes of which he said “we’ve never seen before in this country.” The Conservative leader cited the “firebombing of synagogues, the hateful, genocidal protests, [the] chants in front of Jewish businesses, homes and hospitals,” and – this week – the burning of the Canadian flag, and the “death to Canada” chants of Samidoun, the federally-registered nonprofit that Poilievre rightly describes as a pro-terror organization.

Said Poilievre: “Let’s unify our people…Let’s secure our borders. Let’s keep terrorists out of our country. And let’s stand up for what’s right once again, and stand with our allies against terrorism, and for decency. Let’s bring home the country that we knew and still love.”

Compare that to the spinelessness of Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow, who this week was notably absent from a Toronto ceremony to mark the terrible events of October 7, 2023. Ontario Premier Doug Ford and two dozen politicians from all levels were there. But not Chow.

She – who is mayor in a region where half of Canada’s 400,000 Jews live – literally suggested to media that the multiple invitations she was sent somehow ended up in someone’s spam folder.  When that didn’t work – because Toronto councillors had reminded her about the event in person, too – Chow actually said she didn’t go because she was, and I quote, “tired.”

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