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Hezbollah is a terrorist entity.

It is designated as a terrorist entity by Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, the U.A.E. and many other countries. Its members are called terrorists because they meet the literal definition of that word: they use violence against civilians to achieve their political goal.

Which, according to their 1985 Charter, is a “struggle [that] will end only when this entity [Israel] is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no ceasefire, and no peace agreements.”

Hezbollah has fired thousands of rockets into Israel since October 7, 2023.  Their near-daily barrages have forced 60,000 civilians from their homes in Israel’s North.  In July, one of their rockets slammed into a soccer field near the Golan Heights and killed 12 children. The children were not Jews. They were Israeli-Arabs.

So, Hezbollah is a terror group.  They kill civilians.  For most of the past year, their rocket attacks on Israel have been routinely ignored or downplayed by the Western media.

This week, Hezbollah was back in the news because of the exploding pagers story.  Mid-afternoon on Tuesday, thousands of handheld pagers used by Hezbollah exploded, simultaneously.  Hundreds of terrorists were wounded, only a handful were killed. The next day, some Hezbollah walkie-talkies exploded, too.

Israel almost certainly concocted the pager and walkie-talkie operations, but they’re not saying so publicly.  Notwithstanding that, the explosions have captivated the world, this week, because they read like something out of a James Bond movie.

The Western media and some Western nations, however, have reacted to the pagers operation like it was Nazi Germany stormtroopers invading Poland.  They have regarded it as a declaration of war – even though Hezbollah has been in a perpetual state of war with Israel since 1985 (see Charter, above).

Canada’s witless, clueless, Hezbollah-and-Hamas-coddling Minister of Global Affairs, Melanie Joly, this week said she would block any arms shipments going to Israel. Even ones originating in the United States. Meanwhile, she instructed Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations to abstain – and not oppose – a General Assembly vote calling Israel’s war against Hamas “unlawful.”

The United Nations erstwhile human rights chief, who condemns Israel for a living, is Volker Türk.  Türk said the pager operation struck “the fear and terror unleashed [that] is profound.” Because, you know, the Jews.

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By-elections don’t count, except when they count. Do last night’s count? Well, not really. By-elections are mostly symbolic.

But, given that politics is all about symbols, they still matter. They tell a story.

The story ends badly for Justin Trudeau.

Some observations. Five of them.

1. Does Trudeau need to go? Well, duh. Obviously. But until the Liberal caucus get up on their hind legs and start demanding it, he’ll get away with losing a Grit fortress.

I’ve been saying they’re a cult for years. They’ll continue to behave like a cult.

In years past, Liberal MPs would have been wielding torches and pitchforks and storming up Bank Street towards Parliament Hill by now. The fact that they haven’t is testament to their core belief that the Liberal Party is Justin Trudeau, and Justin Trudeau is the Liberal Party.

Pundits think that the Trudeau Liberal Party’s demise is the fault of Trudeau alone. But it isn’t. It is also the fault of his enablers in the Liberal caucus. Their fingerprints are on the murder weapon, too.

2. Lost in all the obituary-writing about Trudeau will be the fact that Poilievre did not have a great night last night, either.

The Tories were not even a factor in the Quebec by-election. For someone hoping to lead a national government, as Pierre Poilievre hopes to, is not helpful. It is particularly not helpful when one considers that the Parti Quebecois is favored to handily win the next Quebec election – and that the Bloc has a pretty good shot at forming the Official Opposition again in Ottawa.

I’ve long said that Poilievre’s biggest challenge is going to be the return of separatism. To
fight it, he needs a better showing in Quebec than he had last night.

3. Last night was a disaster for Trudeau, a disappointment for Poilievre, a relief for Singh and a clear signal that the Bloc will soon be back to annoy us all.

Singh tore up his pre-nup with Trudeau prior to the Winnipeg by-election, and I believe he did that to save his bacon in Elmwood-Transcona. So, it worked. But he remains deeply unpopular. The Dippers I know don’t like him.

The long-term objective, for New Democrats, is that they replace the Liberals. They want a two-party system, like the Americans do.

But they’ve always wanted that, and they’ve never gotten it. And they never will. The Liberal Party is heading towards one of its worst showings in history. But it isn’t going to disappear, notwithstanding what the commentariat are saying up in Ottawa.

4. The biggest challenge Prime Minister Poilievre is going to have is not just cleaning up Justin Trudeau’s messes. It’s going to be a revived separatist movement.

The Bloc’s surge in LaSalle-Emard-Verdun – a seat that has been a Liberal hold, pretty much, since its creation – is not good for Canada. I periodically hear from conservative knuckle draggers that we should just let Quebec go, who cares, and so on.

But they’re idiots. Pierre does not want to be remembered as the Prime Minister who presided over the breakup of Canada. I’ve been critical of him in the past for different things, but I have no doubt that he is deeply committed to keeping Canada together.

Justin Trudeau (about whom I’ve been really, really critical) doesn’t have many achievements. But one achievement that can’t be taken from him is this: separatism has remained a distant memory during his time in power.

For the sake of all of us, Pierre Poilievre needs to continue that tradition.

5. I still believe that Justin Trudeau is going to go.

He is not an idiot. He knows what the polls say better than you and I do; he polls more than anyone else in Canada. (And you pay for it.)

He has been between 15 and 20 points behind his main opponent for more than a year. That is a death sentence, politically.

I maintain my prediction that he is waiting to see the outcome of the US presidential campaign. If Kamala Harris wins, he will leave.

If Donald Trump wins – and that remains a strong possibility – he will say: do you really want Donald Trump in the White House, and Pierre Poilievre at 24 Sussex? Canada needs a progressive voice to offset what is coming from the United States, etc. etc.

Trust me: lots of Canadian voters will agree with that. They will agree with him. That, more than last night by-elections, is what Trudeau is waiting for.

Anyway, those are my five morning after observations. Yours are welcome, too, in comments below!

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From the river to the sea, CBC will be…discriminatory.

We’ve all grown used to hearing about managerial missteps at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: controversies about layoffs, controversies about mandate, controversies about executives quietly getting big bonuses.  But Canadian Jews, in particular, continue to be treated unfairly by the taxpayer-subsidized broadcaster.

This writer has documented some of that imbalance in recent months.  CBC has adamantly refused to call Hamas terrorists what they are, which is terrorists; they accept Israel-Hamas war casualty counts that come from Hamas; and they have established a secretive internal group – “Middle East 2023” – to oversee coverage of Israel, leaving Jews feeling isolated and victimized. As one former senior producer said about CBC’s treatment of the Jewish state: “It’s extremely one-sided and is only leading to more misinformation and hatred towards the Jewish community in Canada.”

And, since the atrocities of October 7, the situation is getting worse.  To cite just one example, a writer and producer for CBC’s digital team has shown up in the Toronto newsroom wearing a keffiyeh – and has posted online that Israel is “an oppressive, destructive” country and “you’re a vile human being if you still defend or excuse Israel.” Employees who complained to CBC bosses were told to mind their own business.

That’s not all: this newspaper has learned that CBC management has convened “listening sessions” for staff in the coming days – and the sessions are being led by “facilitators” who say they want to “challenge the status quo of Zionism,” who say Israel oversees “an immoral and oppressive occupation” – and one of whom has said he “wholeheartedly, unreservedly supports” an Ontario politician who has been sanctioned for antisemitic views in the provincial Legislature.

The “listening sessions” have left Jewish journalists feeling outraged. Said one: “Many of us Jewish journalists have spent our entire careers committed to fairness and making sure that the work we put out is balanced, and that it’s backed up by journalistic ethics.  And what we’ve seen within the last number of years is a pivot within the CBC from journalism to activism.”

Despite that, the CBC’s top spokesman, Chuck Thompson, was dismissive when asked about the sessions: “Respectfully, whatever meetings or sessions we may be having with employees are just that, they’re internal.”

With Jewish staff feeling targeted – and with Canadian Jews feeling like their tax dollars are being used against them by CBC – what is the solution? A British lawyer, of all people, may have one.

Trevor Asserson is an experienced litigator and Oxford-trained scholar.  He’s an award-winning member of the bar in both Israel and the U.K.  A few days ago, Asserson released a shocking report on the the CBC’s original inspiration, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) – which found “a deeply worrying pattern of bias and multiple breaches by the BBC of its own editorial guidelines on impartiality, fairness and establishing the truth.”

Asserson and a team of data scientists and neutral lawyers examined nine million words produced by the BBC across television, radio, web and podcasts. They found an “overwhelming disparity in the perception of the two sides, with sympathy for Palestinians
vastly outstripping sympathy for Israelis, even shortly after the massacre of October 7th, 2023.”

Key findings of the Asserson report:

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