Swing, batter!

Full disclosure and I confess: I campaigned for the Democrats.

Now, not every Democrat lacks a soul.  Many of them are decent. But a quite a few of them, as recent events make clear, have became willing hostages of Jew-hating, democracy-destroying, Hamas-fetishizing crypto-Nazis.

As a volunteer on Democratic presidential campaigns – for Hillary Clinton in 2016, Joe Biden in 2020 and Kamala Harris in 2024 – I was on the team that played against Donald Trump several times. In so doing, I learned three important things.

One, Trump campaigned on killing free trade, and he’s doing just that. He’s got a mandate to kill free trade, in fact, from 77 million registered voters.

Two, he may have written a book called The Art of the Deal – but he never, ever does a deal where he doesn’t come out on top. Ever.

Three, he loves making the elites look bad.

Those are the guiding principles in Donald Trump’s political career, and – along with my friends Hillary, Joe and Kamala – I’ve never forgotten them. Despite his penchant for fibbing, Trump is pretty transparent about the big picture stuff.  He is who he is. (Unfortunately.)

Which brings us to Friday afternoon, and Prime Minister Mark Carney learning the above-noted Trump Truisms™ the hard way. It’s unclear, at this point, whether Carney’s political popularity is going to take a hit.  But there’s no doubt that the Liberal leader has just experienced his first major policy and political failure.

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In a week of terrible news – antisemitic protests getting worse in Toronto and elsewhere, an Israel-hating candidate coming first in the New York City Democratic primary, polls showing a substantial number opposing Donald Trump’s justifiable attempt to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program – there is some good news.  There is.

It comes in the form of a quiet, almost-shy young woman, Noa Argamani. 

You may be unfamiliar with Noa’s name, but you have probably heard about the 28-year-old Israeli’s story.  It is an extraordinary one, and it is a story that provides some hope in dark and dangerous times.

On October 7, 2023, Noa and her boyfriend, Avinatan Or, were at the Nova Music Festival in Israel’s South. Early on the morning of that terrible day, hundreds of Hamas terrorists descended on the festival site, and commenced killing and raping and torturing the young people who had gathered there.

Nearly 350 of them were killed that day, and many more were wounded, some grievously.  Some 44 were taken hostage by Hamas.

Noa and Avinatan were among them.

Hamas filmed much of it, and posted their crimes online.  In one video clip, Noa is seen being taken away on the back of a motorcycle by a Palestinian civilian, calling out: “Don’t kill me!” Her arms are outstretched, reaching for Avinatan.  It would be the last time she saw him.  

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What’s it like living in Israel, right now?

When this writer was there last month, there were lots of sirens and alerts, but not much in the way of anxiety. Even when a Houthi ballistic missile penetrated the Iron Dome and landed right beside Terminal Three at the country’s main airport – where my partner happened to be, along with dozens of Canadian kids – nobody seemed to lose their cool. They swept up the shrapnel and the dirt, and flights continued.

These days, it’s different. There’s lots of anxiety, now.

On June 13 – one day after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) censured Iran for continuing to enrich uranium that could be used in the dictatorship’s covert nuclear weapons program – Israel acted. It had no choice. It commenced bombing Iranian military and nuclear facilities.

Iran, meanwhile, responded by targeting Israeli civilians: hospitals, schools and apartment buildings, in Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan, Rishon Lezion, Bat Yam and Rehovot in central Israel, and Haifa and Tamra in the North. Everywhere, really. And Iran continues to target civilians.

So what is that like?

Mark Berlin is an Ottawa lawyer (and, full disclosure, a longtime friend). He was invited to Israel for a mission by its Foreign Ministry to meet with the country’s thriving LGBTQ community, and to celebrate Pride month. Then war broke out. Says Berlin, now back home in Ottawa: “It was otherworldly. It was like something I’ve never experienced before.”

For Berlin, that’s no small thing. He worked in Ramallah in the West Bank for a decade, during the first and second Intifadas. He’s worked in war-torn Sudan. I know him to be brave and determined man.

After visiting the site of the Nova Music Festival and some of the kibbutzim attacked by Hamas on October 7, 2023 – when thousands of Jews and non-Jews were murdered, wounded, raped and kidnapped by the terror group – Berlin and his delegation went to Tel Aviv to join in Pride celebrations. And that’s when Hell broke out.

Says he: “The sh*t hit the fan, and we were in a war zone… When the alarms go off, you have one minute, 30 seconds to get to the shelter. And so you scramble to it. And the first day, we thought, okay, it’s gonna be once a night. Then it was twice a night.” And then, he said, it started to happen multiple times, every night – and then during the day, too. It hasn’t stopped.

“It was unrelenting,” he says. “We were getting two, three hours of sleep at best, in 45 minute chunks.” They’d sleep on the concrete floor in their hotel’s parking garage, which they’d been told was reinforced and the best protection against Iran’s barrage.

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Full disclosure: I’ve been a member of a union. I’ve advised unions, for many years. I believe unions play a critical role in protecting workers and their families.

But what happens when a union loses its mind?

Because, make no mistake, the Ontario branch of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) has. It has embraced madness.

Some background: Iran is considered to have the worst human rights record in the world, or close to it. Iran’s Islamist rulers murder, torture, imprison, dismember, rape and brutalize their own people, all the time.

Human Rights Watch – like all the other watchdogs – say that Iran is guilty of “excessive and lethal force, torture, sexual assault, and other serious abuses.” In Iran, a person can be eliminated for expressing opposition to the Iranian dictatorship. A woman can be killed for refusing to wear a hijab, a man for being a gay.

Which brings us back to CUPE, and their leader, Fred Hahn. This fact is relevant: Hahn is a gay man. He proudly describes himself as the “first openly gay president in CUPE.”

That’s good. That’s positive. That’s an achievement. So why would an openly gay man want to celebrate Iran? Because, on Sunday, that’s what Fred and CUPE intend to do.

On Sunday, Hahn and CUPE have advertised they are holding a rally in support of Iran outside the U.S. consulate in Toronto. “HANDS OFF IRAN,” the poster reads, with CUPE’s official logo affixed to the bottom.

Since October 7, 2023 – when Hamas killed, wounded, raped or kidnapped thousands of Israelis and non-Israelis – Canada and the West have descended, ever-deeper, into a madhouse without walls. CUPE, public sector unions, academics, NGOs, charities and plenty of Gen Z and Millennials have moved from being anti-Israeli-government (which is fine) to antisemitic (which isn’t).

They have claimed to be concerned about the plight of Palestinians. That, perhaps, can be spun. But supporting the Iranian regime? That can’t be spun. That can’t be rationalized. That is indefensible.

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