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Fabric Unravelling? A Dialogue on Society’s Shift: A Fireside Chat with Warren Kinsella and Stephanie Smyth

Join B’nai Brith Canada’s Special Advisory Council to the League for Human Rights (SAC-LHR) on Thursday, March 21 at 7pm EST for a riveting virtual event. The evening will include two powerhouses, @kinsellawarren, Canadian lawyer, author, political consultant, and commentator, hosted by award winning broadcast journalist and media expert, @stephaniesmyth.

Warren Kinsella is the strategic mastermind behind countless successful political campaigns and is the president of the Daisy Group. Previously Special Assistant to the Rt. Hon. Jean Chrétien, he has guided the Ontario Liberal Party to victory and played a pivotal role in the Biden-Harris campaign. Kinsella has been one of the country’s most vocal supporters of Jewish Canadians and his captivating insights are not to be missed!

Stephanie Smyth, is an award-winning broadcast journalist who has been at the heart of some of Canada’s most critical news moments. As the former Managing Editor of CP24, Smyth has been the guiding force behind ground-breaking news coverage, earning accolades and respect across the nation.

Expect a night of lively discussion, deep insights, and compelling conversations that will leave you inspired and informed. Whether you’re passionate about politics, media, or the shifting dynamics of our society, this is one fireside chat you won’t want to miss!
Click here to save the event to your calendar or to register: bnaibrith.ca/eventssa/march…

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What’s it going to take?

To charge someone with a hate crime, that is. It’s been less than a week since a mob descended on a Toronto Jewish synagogue, and the perpetrators are still walking the streets. How is that possible?

Because, make no mistake, what took place at the Beth Avraham Yoseph synagogue in Thornhill on Thursday certainly looked like hate. It looked like a hate crime, in fact.

Up till this point, Ontario’s Jew-haters have gone after Jewish symbols – bookstores, delicatessens, restaurants, and even hospitals – but not actual places of worship. In Quebec, synagogues have been firebombed. But in Ontario, the anti-Israel mob hasn’t gone after a place of worship.

On Thursday, they did. Beth Avraham Yoseph is a modern Orthodox synagogue, meaning members are supposed to engage fully with the modern, outside world. They are expected to promote love and justice in their own community, and outside their community. They’re supposed to care for people who are less fortunate, and they do.

As one of their rabbis has put it, the modern Orthodox Jew is expected “to transform the world to benefit all humanity.”

It’s hard to see how anyone could object to that. But several hundred Israel-haters did on Thursday, and showed up allegedly to protest a real estate fair taking place at the synagogue, one that has been showing up in Toronto for two decades. It’s for people who want to make aliyah – that is, move to Israel.

Lawyer Caryma Sa’d was there. Sa’d has become well-known for the gutsy eyewitness videos shot by her and her team – at everything from political protests to political events. Her videos are raw and objective and have become invaluable to the news media.

Remember the footage of Toronto police officers carrying doughnuts to anti-Israel protestors who had targeted a Jewish neighborhood? That was Caryma Sa’d’s work. She was there.

And, on Thursday, she was at the Beth Avraham Yoseph synagogue, as well.

“Objectively, I think there were individuals whose language crossed the threshold for hate,” says Sa’d, noting that many of the protestors were chanting about “Zionists,” quote unquote. Which she also sees as problematic: “The word Zionist has undergone a similar treatment to fascist or Nazi…where it has been stripped of its actual meaning, and can be used as a stand-in for something hateful.

“Which is unfortunate.”

Also unfortunate, to say the least, are some of the other statements made on Thursday. ”The whole world hates you!” one anti-Israel protestor screamed.  Another: “F**k these Jews!” And: “They are demons!” And: ”Go back to Europe!” some chanted.

They grabbed Israeli flags and spat on them and kicked them into the dirt. There was pushing and shoving. There were fights. There were arrests.

Meir Weinstein, who runs the Never Again Live Podcast, was present. Recalls Weinstein: “I witnessed pro-Hamas supporters outside the synagogue chanting that [we are all] terrorists and racists. Some had a sign that said: ‘This is not a synagogue, this is a SINagogue.'”

Most media reports – with Sun colleague Joe Warmington being the notable exception – missed the most outrageous thing of all. Namely, that the “protestors” had targeted a synagogue. A place of worship.

And that is clearly against Canada’s Criminal Code. Here’s what section 319 says:

“Every one who, by communicating statements in any public place, incites hatred against any identifiable group where such incitement is likely to lead to a breach of the peace is guilty of an indictable offence and is liable to imprisonment.”

All the elements are there: hateful statements were communicated about Jews, at a Jewish holy place, to clearly incite hatred. There wasn’t just the possibility of a breach of the peace – the peace had already been breached, necessitating the presence of dozens of armed police.

Calling a synagogue a place of “sin” eliminates any doubt. What happened on Thursday wasn’t about Israel’s government, or Israeli policy. It was explicitly an attack on a religion and the people who belong to that religion – at a “SINagogue.”

The sin, then, is committed here by the police, prosecutors and politicians who see that, and shrug.

The real sin is in doing nothing, and letting things get worse.

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GENOCIDE IS NOT KOSHER.

That is what the sign said, all-caps.  If not for who was holding it, and if not for where it was being held up, the sign would have been the sort of casual anti-Semitism that is seemingly everywhere, these days.

And this needs to be said: the sign was objectionable not because it was critical of the government of Israel. Every single Jew this writer has spoken to, in recent months, is critical of the ultra-conservative government led by Benjamin Netanyahu.

All of them, publicly or privately, blame Netanyahu for permitting Hamas to flourish, and for being unprepared for Hamas’ barbaric assault on October 7.  Every one of them looks forward to Netanyahu being gone after the war. Polling in Israel overwhelmingly shows the same thing.

No, the sign was bad because it explicitly associated genocide (the most serious crime extant) with an important religious precept (the kashrut dietary laws of the Jewish faith).

And what made the sign even worse was this: it was being held up by a child, perhaps six or seven years old, a few feet from a cenotaph in Picton, Ont., this past Saturday. A cenotaph dedicated to those Canadians who gave their lives fighting Naziism.

Who does that? Who gives a child a sign like that – knowing full well that the child does not understand what is either genocidal or kosher – and tells them to stand in a scared place, in a driving cold rain on the Jewish sabbath, to act as a propaganda tool? Who does that?

And what about the actors who showed up at the Oscars, on the very same weekend, wearing pins with the bloody red hand? For them, that question would be different.  We know who decided to wear the pins: Billie Eilish, Jessica Chastain, Richard Gere,Cate Blanchett and Mahershala Ali. Others, too.

They are (arguably) adults, and they made the decision to wear lapel pins bearing the bloody red hand.  Being big stars, being paid obscene amounts of money to pretend to be someone else, we presume they were the ones who decided to display a hand covered in blood for all the cameras to see.

But did they all know what it means?  For those of us in the Irish diaspora, we know very well what it means: it is the symbol of a warrior, covered in the blood of the warrior’s vanquished enemy.  In Ireland’s North, the Red Hand is capitalized, and has been appropriated by both sides in serial campaigns of murder, for decades.

In the Israel-Gaza context, the red hand is an explicit reference to a photo from a lynching and bloody dismemberment of Israeli soldiers by Palestinians during the intifada in 2000. It is a celebration of murder.

Was that what Billie Eilish and others were celebrating? Did they – like the little kid with the anti-Semitic sign in far-away Picton, Ontario – know what they were saying?  Maybe, maybe not.  But the corrosive effect remains the same.

It is propaganda, yes.  But it is inarguably worse than that: it is holding something up to signal that someone else – in this case, Jews – are inferior.  Are bad.  Are worthy of detestation.

The holding up of awful signs, the wearing of awful pins, is happening a lot, these days.  And that is important.  Because, through repetition, hate is made routine.

In Sander van der Linden’s remarkable 2023 book, Foolproof: How Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity, that sad truth – how evil, per Hannah Arendt, is made banal – is discussed.  Writes van den Linden, a Cambridge social psychology professor:

“Belief in the truth of a claim goes up as a function of repetition.  In others words, the more often you hear a statement, the more ‘true’ it sounds.  This has become known as the illusory truth effect.”

So, real journalism gets dismissed, over and over, as “fake news.” Crowds chant “stop the steal” about elections that were free and fair.  Jewish civilians, wherever they are, however innocent they may be, get falsely accused of “genocide.” Over and over and over.

Hate propaganda becomes effective not when it is said just once.  It becomes effective when it is repeated, endlessly.

Just ask one of the pioneers of the most notorious anti-Semitic campaigns in history, Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels.  Like he said:

Repeat a lie often enough, and it becomes the truth.

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Genocide.
 
Apartheid. Occupation. Settler-colonialism.
 
Those are words we are all hearing a lot, lately. They get thrown around like confetti.
 
After October 7, when 1,200 men, women, children and babies in Israel were tortured and slaughtered – and when more than 200 were kidnapped, to be raped or killed or both – a professional and coordinated global campaign of anti-Semitism was unleashed.  Its objective was to deny or justify the horrors of October 7 and thereafter.  
 
Protestors were paid to protest, organizers were hired, slick posters and banners were generated.  The objective was to intimidate Jews and their supporters into silence with epithets and libels.  In many places, it’s worked.
 
Because, as in any pogrom, as in any act of hate-fuelled violence, language is critical.  Every historian knows that violent hate is caused by hateful propaganda. The barbaric acts of the Holocaust always first needed the horrific words in Mein Kampf.
 
So, every skinhead this writer ever interviewed had a well-thumbed Holocaust-denying tract nearby, usually memorized.  Every Jew-hating Hitler freak I’ve ever interviewed – and I’ve interviewed plenty, over the years – was radicalized first by hateful words and images. Online, or in a book or pamphlet.
 
That’s why we need to pay attention to words.  Because hateful words always precede hateful deeds.  Always.
 
Ask Justin Trudeau.  His meeting with a G7 leader in Toronto was shut down by hate-spewing Israel-haters, principally because Toronto police did nothing to stop them.  And then, a few days later, Trudeau was confronted by a man – on an Ottawa-area ski slope.  While he was snowboarding, Trudeau was followed by the skiing Israel-hater who threw angry words at him.  
 
Trudeau snowboarded away, presumably on his way to restoring funding to the Hamas-loving UNWRA.
 
More words: last week, again, a Toronto lawyer wore a hoodie to a Raptors game with the words “FREE OUR HOSTAGES” and a little Star of David on the back.  MLSE security kicked him out.
 
This week, the lawyer and some of his supporters showed up wearing the same sort of messages on their clothing.  MLSE’s response? They handed the Jews cards containing warnings – you know, kind of like how the actual Nazis used to hand out stars for Jews to wear on their clothing.
 
And, another recent example: a group calling itself “Health Workers for Palestine” has created a secret (until now) petition aimed at words in common use.  Specifically, to stop healthcare workers – doctors, nurses – from using the International Holocaust Remembrance Association’s working definition of anti-Semitism: 
 
“Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”
 
Sounds pretty accurate, right? Well, the Canadian “Health Workers Alliance for Palestine” want to kill that definition – because it’s being used against anti-Semites.  In their secret petition, the pro-Palestine health workers say they’re being “silenced” by those who object to the foul anti-Semitic words they use.  So, their solution? Change the definition of “anti-Semitism.”  Make it okay to accuse people of “genocide,” “apartheid,” “occupation,” and  “settler-colonialism.”
 
Even though their petition is still under wraps, 142 people have signed it, most of them with what appear to be Arabic names.  None appear to be Jewish. 
 
One Jewish doctor, who fears retribution and asks that his name not be used, says: “The Health Care Workers Alliance for Palestine [have been] harassing an array of Jewish Mount Sinai physicians online. They and their collaborators are trying to tell the hospitals what counts as anti-Semitism, including by trying to bully them into denying obvious anti-Semitism.”
 
And that, as with all fights about language, is the key objective: to control the narrative.  To dominate.
 
Jews and their allies are fighting back (this writer, full disclosure, is suing a neighbor who falsely accused me of supporting genocide).  The media are looking more critically at the false claims of the Israel-haters.  So the haters are responding as propagandists always do: by trying to change the true meaning of the words we use.
 
It’s what Hitler and his propagandists did: they told big lies, over and over. And they did for the same reason: 
 
To eliminate Jews and those who would oppose them.

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NEW YORK – Bill Blair haunts us still.

He’s not dead or anything. In fact, he’s still the Minister of National Defence. He’s alive.

But his legacy as Toronto’s Chief of Police haunts us, as noted. And not in a good way.

Remember the G20? International leaders coming to Canada, to agree on things that few can can remember, and literally no one now cares about?

Bill probably wishes you wouldn’t. The G20 took place in Toronto at the back end of June 2010. More than 1,100 people were arrested, many of them illegally, just like in they do in Russia or China.

As media and others looked on, Blair’s G20 police force used excessive force, teargas, pepper spray and rubber bullets against protesters – but also people who weren’t protesting at all. They beat and brutalized people who had done nothing wrong. They turned Toronto into a mini-police state, basically.

Litigation dragged on for a decade, but the Toronto Police Service was eventually forced to pay almost $20 million in damages to citizens who had been illegally detained or beaten. And the courts forced them to acknowledge their mistakes, as well.

Here’s what they said; “We understand and acknowledge that in attempting to preserve peace and safety during those two days, there were times when matters were not addressed in the way they should have been and many hundreds of member of the public were detained or arrested when they should not have been and were held in detention in conditions that were unacceptable. We regret that mistakes were made.”

That word – “mistakes” – doesn’t quite cover it. Not even close. This writer, for example, would drive along Eastern Avenue every day before, during and after the G20, and see scores of incarcerated citizens behind chain link fences, looking out. It was like our very own Guantanamo North.

Also: a mother and veterinarian I knew woke up, mid-G20, to find men in black standing above her in the dead of night. They yelled at her to take her screaming baby, and go outside, where she saw her husband – also a professional – hogtied on the front lawn. They did not identify themselves as police.

They were, however. And they were in the wrong place. Without so much as an apology, they untied the woman’s husband and left. They had the wrong address.

And: one day I agreed to drive my teenage daughter to the MTV video awards on Queen Street West. Back then, we had a toy crow on the front dash of our family van. Another van, full of burly men in civilian clothes who were clearly police, pulled up close beside us and stared through the open windows.

They loudly demanded to know the significance of the crow. Seriously, they did that. I told them it was a toy. They glared some more, then sped away, in the direction of some sirens.

And: a lawyer friend was near a barricaded street downtown, and alongside a young woman who was blowing bubbles, like kids do. As my friend looked on, a burly cop demanded that the young woman stop blowing bubbles – or he would have her arrested.

She pointed out she wasn’t hurting anyone with soap bubbles. He arrested her.

Those are just the things I experienced myself. Across Toronto that June, many people heard and saw similar things. Bill Blair’s G20 police force essentially lost their minds, and unleashed the biggest violation of civil rights in Canada in living memory.

Which brings us to now, and why the Toronto Police Service is really doing nothing about the wave of anti-Semitic crime targeting the city’s Jews.

Jewish businesses have been firebombed. Jewish businesses have been vandalized and attacked. Jewish citizens have been assaulted and vilified and threatened. Jewish places of worship, and Jewish neighborhoods, have been targeted for intimidation campaigns.

There has even been attacks on places – like hospitals – simply because anti-Semitic thugs considered them to be too Jewish.
And, after all of that, the Toronto Police Service have been essentially invisible. They have done little or nothing to prevent Jews from being attacked in the city of Toronto.

Why? Well, there are three possibilities.

One, they don’t care. I have heard from enough rank and file police officers, however, to know this is not true. Many do.

Two, they have been told to do nothing by the city’s political leaders. But this isn’t true, either. Most uniformed Toronto police are not fans of Mayor Olivia Chow or her city councilors. And besides: politicians are not allowed to direct police, ever.

Three – and this is the likeliest possibility: it’s the ghost of Bill Blair, haunting us like some Dickensian nightmare.

More than a decade after they were humiliated for their conduct at the G20, Toronto police have gone to the opposite extreme: having once been accused of doing too much, they have now decided to do too little.

The message to Toronto’s Jewish community has been clear: you’re on your own, folks. Unlike in places like New York City, where I now am, Toronto’s police don’t seem to give a sweet damn about the fact that Toronto in 2024 sometimes resembles 1938 in Berlin.

For that, I think we can thank the ghost of Bill Blair.

Too much policing has given way to none at all.

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NEW YORK – This is a tale of two police forces.

One police force knows how to deal swiftly and effectively with pro-Hamas thugs breaking the law.

The other is a Police Farce.

Here in New York City on the weekend, we witnessed a police force that is competent. Toronto police – whose budget just got a big boost – should watch and learn.

But they won’t.

Every Saturday, New York City’s Washington Square Park is the weekend gathering place for musicians, dog-walkers and produce vendors. This Saturday, the park was filled with what can only be described as a mob.

They called it a “Millions March for Palestine.” There weren’t a million of them, but they certainly started to march. They headed towards Times Square.

Police watched them every step of the way, forcing them onto the sidewalk. By the time they reached Times Square, near 42nd Street and Seventh Avenue they were angry and ugly.

Right around then, my partner and I were a couple blocks away, heading to see a play at the Samuel Friedman Theater called A Prayer for French Republic. Which, ironically enough, is about generations of a Jewish family facing violence and persecution – for being Jews.

Also happening right around then: an Uber driver somehow got close enough to drop off a passenger in Times Square. Who had left a hand grenade in the back seat of the Nissan Ultima.

It wasn’t a real hand grenade, thank God. But it certainly looked real.  The Uber driver called the police. The cops immediately deployed the bomb squad – a unit of the New York Police Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau, located pretty close to Times Square.

The bomb squad couldn’t get to the Uber because the Israel-haters were actually and actively blocking them. Chaos ensued. The mob was chanting and surrounding police cars.

So, New York’s finest did what police are supposed to do: they took action. They promptly shut down access to the area, and they pushed up against the mob to create a perimeter around the Uber. And then – pay attention, Toronto “police” – they started to make arrests.

You know: using their legal authority to take persons into custody. NYPD Deputy Commissioner Kaz Daughtry tweeted what happened next: “Happy Saturday to all! Except the people who thought it was a good idea to block an NYPD ESU vehicle on the way to a bomb threat call. They will be spending their Saturday where they belong – in jail.”

Eleven of the thugs were dropped into a jail cell that night. In the meantime, the hand grenade was found to be “inert,” police said.

Now, Times Square is always a circus, jammed with people and vehicles and noise and lights. That’s certainly what my partner and I observed on Saturday, right near the spot where police were dealing with a real riot and an unreal bomb. We saw and heard the sirens and the cops, but Times Square was never, ever shut down.

But in Toronto, the meeting place of two G7 leaders was. By a similar mob of Israel-haters – and a totally ineffective police force.

On the very same day, right around the same time as the Times Square melee, there was supposed to be a meeting of the Prime Ministers of Italy and Canada at the Art Gallery of Ontario. You know, the elected leaders of two G7 countries.

As in New York, an Israel-hating mob descended on the AGO building. As in New York, they chanted calls for violent revolution and blocked access. As in New York, they screamed and attacked people.

Unlike New York, the Toronto police effectively did nothing. They essentially let the bad guys win.

One of Justin Trudeau’s caucus members, pro-Israel MP Francesco Sorbara, tweeted what happened. Wrote Francesco:

“Last night members of the Italian-Canadian community from across Canada came together in anticipation to greet PM Meloni & PM Trudeau but instead were spat on, physically assaulted, and verbally abused. It was absolutely disgusting and unacceptable.”

Now – full disclosure – Francesco is an old friend of mine. As such, I can tell you that he is a moderate and sensible guy, not given to overstatement. When he says that was what happened, you can rest assured: that is what happened.

So, in a bit of karma or kismet, Toronto was experiencing the same sort of thing the New York was experiencing, on the very same day, at the very same time: Israel-hating mob, violence, intimidation, abuse.

The difference: New York cops dealt with it. Toronto cops didn’t.

The usual dance ensued: the Prime Minister’s Office quietly suggested that the cops were to blame for shutting down the meeting. The Toronto police subtly suggested the PMO was to blame.

For once, I believe Trudeau’s PMO. I’ve worked for a Prime Minister. When it comes to matters of security, we always listened to what the police say. We did what they told us to do. Period.

Since October 7, for months, the Toronto Police Service has distinguished itself with one thing: total incompetence. In dealing with the Israel hating-thugs that have threatened Jewish neighborhoods, attacked Jews and Jewish businesses, firebombed Jewish delis, they have been an abject failure. They have been a joke.

Jews won’t say that, because they’re scared and don’t want to lose what little police protection they’ve received. But I’m a pro-police Irish Catholic, and that’s what I think: Toronto’s Police Service has become a joke.

Want proof? Take a look at what happened in New York City on Saturday. Then take a look at what happened in the city of Toronto on Saturday.

Here in New York, the cops did and do their job.

In Toronto, they don’t.

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It started on October 8.  Literally, the day after.

Think about that: a slick, global, and professional-looking propaganda campaign – one that would promote violent anti-Semitism, and deny the horrors of October 7 –  was underway the very next day.  October 7: the biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

October 8: a campaign immediately starts to deny October 7, or justify it.

This writer has been involved in politics in the Americas and the Middle East for a long time.  It is impossible – literally impossible – to develop and deploy a coordinated global propaganda campaign in a single day.  It can’t be done.

But if you have millions of dollars to pay for it, and bot farms in Egypt, Britain and America to push it out – and, most importantly, if you knew October 7 was going to happen before it did – then you could do it.  And thereby reach, and manipulate, millions upon millions of people, in multiple languages.

That, along with other disturbing revelations, comes out of our latest discussion with the brilliant Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor, Executve Director of CyberWell, an Israeli tech nonprofit that targets and combats the spread of anti-Semitism on social media.  Speaking from Amsterdam, Cohen Montemayor shared some startling, and disturbing findings from CyberWell’s latest report.

“We found evidence of October 7 denials – and support and celebration of it – as early as October 8, 10 and 11,” she says. “And we have evidence of accounts on X’s platform with only 3,000 followers tweeting out October 7 denial and misinformation – and getting three million views.  That’s highly suspicious.”

Other disturbing findings: there are specific anti-Semitic messages showing up on each of the major social media platforms.

•Facebook: “Jews control the world – or are dominating the world order.”
•Instagram: “The Rothschild conspiracy theory”  so named after the well-to-do Jewish family that has long been targeted by Jew haters
•TikTok: “Jews are the enemy.”
•X (or Twitter): “Jews are the enemy.”
•YouTube: “Jews are the synagogue of Satan.”

Anyone who has ever worked on a political campaign knows what that is: micro-targeting.  That is, pushing out messages that are targeted to specific demographics, based on age, gender, geography and education.  That just doesn’t happen organically.  It requires money and organization.

Now, more than 150,000 examples of that sort of anti-Semitic propaganda were flagged by CyberWell for removal by the main social media platforms.  And (some good news) the platforms are getting somewhat better at removing hate.

Cohen Montemayor says that the removal rate is now around 32 percent across all the social platforms – an improvement of almost ten per cent from 2022.  And Elon Musk’s X, where some of the worst stuff is found, has finally bowed to pressure, and is hiring 150 new employees at his Texas headquarters to identify and remove online hate.

But the bad stuff is still getting through, turbo-charged by algorithms that make the anti-Semitic content a little bit worse every time someone sees it.  CyberWell took the hateful postings and presented them to the social media bosses.  Their responses were not helpful, she says.

“X threw out the rulebook entirely when it came to content moderation, [when they decided] to no longer remove hate speech,” she says.  Thereby making X one of the worst places for anti-anti-Semitism on Earth.

This past week, the Trudeau Liberals rolled out a massive and controversial legislative package to curb online hate and harm.  But, to experts like Cohen Montemayor, the problem goes far beyond mere words.  Because the harmful words are resulting in violence, she says.

“We’ve seen this with the 9/11 bombers.  We’ve seen it with January 6 insurrection. YouTube was the number one platform cited by January 6 insurrection participants as their source of information. These very smart algorithms are meant to grab your attention, and get you addicted…the content is meant to stir emotions, to make people upset, to isolate them socially,” says Cohen Montemayor.

“Mainstream social media platforms are being used to radicalize people, leading to very violent results. October 7 was the largest-ever hijacking of social media platforms by terrorist groups.  It should’ve indicated to every Western democracy that these platforms will be exploited by terrorist groups.”

In conclusion, Cohen Montemayor makes one point several times – which is that the problem goes far beyond words. It’s an issue of national security, too.

And not just Jews will be the victims, Cohen Montemayor says, adding:  “After the October 7 massacre by Hamas, the following weekend, 800 Christians were massacred in Sudan. That massacre was uploaded directly, and streamed directly, onto Facebook.  Why? They’re learning.  These terrorist groups are learning from each other.”

It’s a chilling report, and one that all civilized nations should heed.

Because the haters are getting better at what they do.  And they’re winning the propaganda war.

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The biggest achievements in politics – the only achievements, really – are the ones involving risk.

As in, taking a risk. Making a decision, making a statement, making a law that entails risk to you and your career.

Brian Mulroney took risks.

I didn’t work for him. In fact, I worked for Jean Chretien, his Liberal Party opponent. And part of my job was to make the Mulroney government miserable.

Despite that – and when behind closed doors – Martin Brian Mulroney, PC, CC, GOQ, was a bit of a marvel to us. Because he took risks. Because he had guts.

Case in point: South Africa.

In the Eighties, when Mulroney was Prime Minister – and presiding over two successive super-majorities – South Africa still practiced apartheid. Apartheid was institutionalized racism, essentially. It was racial segregation and discrimination that had been forced on the black majority in South Africa by a white minority.

Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were Brian Mulroney’s closest allies internationally. They professed to oppose apartheid – but they vociferously opposed international sanctions to bring it to an end. Thatcher called them “counterproductive.”

Brian Mulroney stood up to Reagan and Thatcher – and many within his own Conservative Party. In September 1986, Mulroney imposed tough sanctions on the apartheid regime, and encouraged other nations to do likewise. Said he: “I viewed apartheid with the same degree of disgust that I attached to the Nazis — the authors of the most odious offence in modern history.”

Nelson Mandela thanked him for that, saying that Mulroney, and Canada, would be forever remembered for their support.

Mulroney’s other great and courageous achievement: free trade.

And, yes, we Liberals initially opposed it – or, at least, the John Turner-era Grits did (Chretien, as the country would soon see, not so much). But Brian Mulroney saw where the world was heading – with technology ushering in an era of lightning-fast global commerce, dominated by companies all too willing to move to where they could do more business for less.

Mulroney’s free trade stance was targeted by Turner during the 1988 federal election – and, for a while, it very nearly turned the tide against the Tory leader. He could have blinked, then, and backed away. He could have reversed himself. He didn’t. Mulroney persisted – and won another huge majority, and signed a comprehensive free trade deal with the United States.

There were other, less notable, parts to the man. On the Hill, in the pre-Twitter days – when things were more civilized – all of us heard stories about Brian Mulroney’s human side. A gift of ties to Brian Tobin, his Liberal tormentor, when the MP’s son was born.

A call to Chretien during a health scare. Quiet wishes whenever a Liberal was going through personal hardship. Not for publication, ever. But never forgotten by the recipients.

Brian Mulroney was not a great politician and Prime Minister because he won two big elections. He was one of the great ones because he took risks – because he took risks with things that mattered, the things that will be remembered by history.

My deepest condolences to his family, some of whom I now know and consider good friends.

Your Dad was a great one. He will be missed.

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