Sadder than anything you can think of.

That’s how sad Michael Levy looks, when he tries to marshal a smile. It’s been a long day for him, telling his story to Canadians and Americans and anyone who will listen. He’s tired, but he can’t, won’t, stop.

The story he has to tell is deeply, irredeemably sad. And, as you look at his face – young, but unshaven; dark-eyed, but with eyes that have seen terrible days – you wonder how he goes on. But he does.

For his brother, his sister-in-law. His nephew, most of all.

He’s asked to tell the story. He starts.

“My little brother, Or, and his wife, Eynav, decided to take a short break from their day to day routine. They have a two year old son and very demanding jobs, you see, so they left their son alone with the grandparents and headed North,” he says. He pauses.

“They got to the festival at 6:20 a.m., ten minutes before Hell started. They ran into a bomb shelter not very far from the festival area. They thought they were safe. A few minutes after, a group of Hamas terrorists arrived and started throwing grenades and spraying bullets. They killed Eynav and 17 other people. My brother had to watch his wife being murdered, before he was kidnapped into Gaza.”

They were at Israel’s Supernova music festival on October 7, 2023, which was one of the worst places on Earth to be, on that bright Saturday morning. So Eynav, just 32 years old, was killed there. And Or was taken away. And no one has heard from him since.

Michael Levy, then, is on a mission: he is travelling the globe, talking to whomever who listen. Six delegations in two months. Telling the story of his brother and his brother’s family. Telling the story of the men, women, children and babies who were stolen by Hamas that Saturday morning.

When he talks about his brother, he brightens. He talks the way brothers talk about brothers.

“He is an annoying genius,” he says, almost laughing, a bit. “For me, as his older brother, it was almost hard for me to see how easily things came to him. He became a senior programmer for a successful startup. And he was always happy, always surrounded by friends, always smiling.”

He pauses again, remembering. “In terms of his family, Eynav and his son, Almog, were his whole life. They met 15 years ago. First they were great friends – and it was only after 7 or 8 years that they became a couple. Ever since, they have never been apart. They got married five years ago and their amazing son, he was born almost two and a half years ago. He was their whole life.”

They loved music. They’d go festivals, and they’d keep camping gear in their car for quick get-aways. When you look at them in photos, it’s like Michael Levy says – they were smiling all the time. They were happy. “They were soulmates,” Michael says. He looks away, to the corner of the hotel room. He doesn’t cry, but the writer who has asked to meet certainly feels like doing that.

He is asked about their son. It is an obvious question, but it has to be asked: “Is their son living with you and your family now?”

Michael Levy shakes his head. “He is moving between the grandparents. We all try to help, show him love, give him support. But obviously, nothing will be the same without his mother and father.”

Another pause.

“I understand that he asks where they are. What are you telling him?”

Michael Levy looks irredeemably sad, now. “I guess that is the toughest part. We had to tell him that his mother won’t come back. His father, we told him we are looking for his father.” He thinks. “The psychologist actually told us that we can show him videos of Or, but we cannot show him his mother. On videos, you see, she looks alive. As sad as it is, we cannot show him videos of her. That is heartbreaking.”

Meeting the other hostage families has helped him and his own family, Levy says. They all understand what they are going through. They all know what each other is thinking. Says he: “We became family in a second. Some of them actually are like my brothers. We talk every day, we get each other – only by looking at each other. We don’t even have to talk. I can understand what Hell they are going through. And they can understand what I am going through.”

The question that is hanging in the air, looming like a shadow, is whether Michael Levy thinks he will ever see his brother again. Everyone who has met a hostage family member – and this writer has now met a few – wonders that. But I still can’t ask it.

So, instead, I ask Michael Levy what he wants the world to know. What does he want to leave them with?

“The main reason why I do what I do, and why I go to those delegations almost every week ,is to tell their story. To make people understand that this is not about politics, this is not about Israel against Palestinians, this is about human beings – civilians, innocent civilians, whose only crime was that they wanted to sleep in their own beds or go to celebrate a music festival and were brutally murdered or kidnapped.”

The final pause, then he goes on. “And those people have families, they have kids and they have brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers. People tend to forget that. They look at them as a number or a name. They’re not. They are people with families and with hopes and dreams – and I think that the world should understand that this is what is important. This and nothing else.

“We can deal with politics after, but first we need to get my brother back, and get all of the other families’ loved ones back. Then we can talk politics.”

Comments (3)

It’s a deadly cancer. And it’s the new Holocaust denial.

Denying the horrors of October 7, that is. The sexual violence committed against Israeli women and girls, as well as the utter brutality of it all – the burnings, the beheadings, the torture, the cold-blooded murders. That is the new denial.

Denying acts of anti-Semitism is as old as Judaism itself. For centuries before the birth of Christ – for centuries before Palestine was even a word on a map – serial horrors have been endured by Jews. And those horrors, in turn, have been denied by those committing them – or those standing by, watching it all. Doing nothing.

In the past, anti-Semitic denialism took the form of grubby leaflets, passed out at secret night rallies – or in the ravings of madmen, speaking to their puny flocks, illuminated by nighttime cross-burnings. No longer. Not now. Now, the Jew-hating deniers merely need to tap a button on a keyboard, and their epistles of hate will be seen instantaneously, globally, by millions.

Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor is the executive director of CyberWell, a non-profit that monitors and combats online anti-Semitism. It finds online anti-Semitism, brings it to the attention of the owners of online platforms, and urges them to remove it – or at least, as Cohen Montemayor says, “de-amplfy it.”

These days, she and her group are very, very busy. At one time, Cohen Montemayor said in an interview, Jew-haters and Hitler freaks denied the Holocaust more than they denied anything else. How else to rehabilitate the reputations of Adolf Hitler and Naziism, than to deny the monstrous crimes they committed?

But now, the deniers are focussed on a newer attempt at a holocaust – Hamas’ slaughter of 1,200 men, women, children and babies in Israel on October 7, 2023. Says Cohen Montemayor over a phone line from Tel Aviv:

“With October 7 denial, unlike Holocaust denial – which was kind of limited to these fringe groups – now we’re seeing anti-Semitism in the mainstream, and amplified by algorithms to be seen by millions and millions of people. And that’s why it’s the newest and most alarming iteration of anti-Semitism today,” she says. “And it needs to be called out and stopped.”

CyberWell has produced a voluminous report on October 7 denial, released this week. A summary of its findings:

• The anti-Semitic deniers have been pushing three main themes around the globe: “there were no acts of rape; the State of Israel orchestrated the violent events; and Israel and the Jews are profiting from the massacre.”
• CyberWell looked at just 313 specific examples of online Jew hatred, on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube. What they found “had a far-reaching impact, collectively garnering over 25 million views, after being reported to the platforms, only six per cent was removed.”
• The worst offender was X, Twitter. Even after CyberWell brought examples of anti-Semitic tweets/posts to the attention of the platform owned by billionaire Elon Musk, only two per cent of it was removed. Said Cyber Well: “X is the leading platform hosting October 7 denial content.”
• The deniers wasted no time: some of them commenced denying the crimes of October 7 just hours later, on the morning of October 8. And, writes CyberWell: “While journalists and reporters led denial discourse on X, TV stars and celebrities led denial discourse on TikTok and Instagram.”

Some of the examples cited in the report are astonishing. They show that just one October 12 post – which read, in part, that “no babies were beheaded and no women were raped” – was seen 2.8 million times.

All of this – denying the violence, mocking the victims of violence – is prohibited by every major online platform, from Meta to TikTok to X to YouTube. All of them. In some cases, and in some countries like Canada, it is against the law.

But the platforms aren’t doing nearly enough to stop it. Says Cohen Montemayor: “These guys already have rules on the books. And I know they are more capable of removing anti-Semitic content online than they are presently doing.”

Hear that, Elon Musk? Your Act of Contrition tour to the death chambers at Auschwitz was a start. But when you get back to the office, you have much work to do.

Because denial of October 7 is deeply anti-Semitic – and it’s a cancer.

And it’s spreading.

Comments (5)

Canadians really, really don’t like Donald Trump.

The majority of Canadians, that is. And that’s why Justin Trudeau is again dangling the prospect of another Trump presidency as a Sword of Damocles above voters’ heads.

Now, it is true that traditional Conservative voters don’t fear Trump’s return. About 40 per cent of them say that a Trump presidency would help Canada’s economy, says the Angus Reid Institute. And a Leger poll found more than 40 per cent of Conservatives sided with Trump.

But Trudeau isn’t after Conservative voters. He’s after the NDP, Bloc, Green and Grit voters who fear Trump, and who together make up a majority.

A sampling:

• An Abacus poll released this month found that 66 per cent of Canadians want Democratic President Joe Biden re-elected
• Overwhelmingly, every Liberal, New Democrat, Bloc Québecois and Green voter felt that way – by a huge margin, sometimes as much as 90 per cent
• Also in January 2024, the Reid pollsters found the fully two-thirds of Canadian voters worry that American democracy would not survive another Trump term
• Meanwhile, the Reid Institute reported that 53 per cent of Canadians said a Biden re-election would be better for Canada – with only 18 per cent saying Trump would be better
• So, near the tail end of Trump’s reign, 338Canada’s Philippe J. Fournier pithily summarized what Canadians thought about Trump: “How much do Canadians dislike Donald Trump? A lot.”

And that’s why Trump’s expected victory in the Republican presidential nomination race represents some of the best news Justin Trudeau’s Liberals have had in months. Conservatives may dismiss it all, but they’re making a mistake if they do so: a Trump win is very good news for Trudeau. (The world, not so much.)

Proof is found in the 2015 and 2019 federal general elections. In both of those years, Trump was on the ballot in the United States – either as the GOP nominee, or as president. And, both times, Trudeau successfully used him as a stick with which to beat Tory leaders Stephen Harper and Andrew Scheer.

For example, in the 2015 campaign at a Maclean’s town hall, Trudeau was asked about Trump. Said he: “I don’t think it comes as a surprise to anyone that I stand firmly against the politics of division, the politics of fear, the politics of intolerance or hateful rhetoric.” Big applause.

Then, in the 2019 race, when Trump was still running things, Trudeau was back at it. In that contest, Liberals reminded everyone how Trudeau had responded on Twitter to Trump’s executive order banning refugees and visitors from Muslim countries:

“To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength. #WelcomeToCanada.” Trump officials – and Trump himself, who called Trudeau “so meek and mild” and “very dishonest & weak” at G7 meetings – were furious.

But every time Trump or his proxies go after Trudeau, it’s a political gift for the Liberal leader – in fact, it’s practically a campaign donation, so intensely do the majority of voters detest Trump. Which is why Trudeau has linked Trump and MAGA-style politics to successive Tory leaders.

And now he’s doing it again to Pierre Poilievre. Because it works.

Now, for those readying to run the Pierre Poilievre national campaign this year or next, there is an easy rebuttal to Trudeau’s claims: simply don’t ever let Poilievre sound like Donald Trump.

Easier said than done. As the Left-leaning National Observer has written: “Pierre Poilievre isn’t the second coming of Donald Trump, but he keeps hitting some unmistakably Trumpy notes.”

Examples include Poilievre’s Trump-style hatred of the news media, his past fervent opposition to abortion, his willingness to indulge conspiracy theories about “globalists” and the World Economic Forum, and his glee in picking unnecessary fights – as he recently, and inexplicably, did with the mayors of Montreal and Quebec City. His base eat that stuff up – but that stuff also makes it easier for Trudeau to brand Poilievre the understudy of Donald J. Trump.

The best indicator of Justin Trudeau’s future behaviour is always to look at what he’s done in the past. And, in the past, casting successive Tory leaders as MAGA fanboys has worked.

So he’s doing it again. And, with Trump inching ever-closer to the White House, it’s not a bad strategy, is it?

Comments (62)

Comments (34)

The Iranian connection.

It’s well-known, or should be, that Iran is the epicenter of much of the chaos in the world, these days. Wherever you look, the Iranian regime’s destructive presence is being felt.

Iran-backed Houthis terrorists have targeted shipping in the Red Sea, shutting down 70 per cent of a vital part of the world’s supply chain.  Iran has carried out missile strikes against Pakistan, Iraq and Syria.  

It has allied itself with South Africa’s push to have Israel falsely accused of genocide at he International Court of Justice. And, of course, Iran has provided arms and funding to Hezbollah and Hamas, both now raining missiles down on Israeli citizens.

And all of that is just in the past week.

For a longer period, Iran has been busily attempting to disrupt democracy in the West. For example, America’s cyber-defence agency has reported that Iran is now “a major threat to the security of U.S. and allied networks and data.”

Less known, however, is the extent of Iran’s criminal activity in Canada.  While the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) has acknowledged that Canadians have received “credible” death threats originating in Iran – and the Trudeau Liberals have insisted that they may designating the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist entity – Iran’s financial dealings with extremists are difficult to document.  But they exist.

In 2020, for example, Global News revealed that Iran used a Toronto-based company to wire millions of dollars to Canada despite sanctions being in place. For years, Canada has had in place laws – called the “Special Economic Measures (Iran) Regulations” – to halt any further development of nuclear weapons capability by Iran.  But the law also prohibits “entering into or facilitating any transaction” with Iran, as well as “providing any financial or related services.” The only exception is for humanitarian purposes.

The case of Laith Marouf is notorious: he was the “anti-racism” consultant who received more than $120,000 from the federal government – while he was simultaneously calling Jews “loud-mouthed bags of human feces, aka the Jewish White Supremacists” online.  Ottawa has said it wants the money back, but Marouf isn’t cooperating.

Marouf is now in Beirut, Lebanon, broadcasting more vile anti-Semitism via a channel called “Free Palestine Television.”  This newspaper, meanwhile, has obtained the program’s confidential production notes, describing Marouf as their “political commentator, Beirut studio.”

This newspaper has also been provided with documents clearly showing Marouf being paid by the state-controlled Iranian “news network.”  The problem? The payments are dated 2022 – when Marouf was still in Canada, and still being funded by the Trudeau government.  Which appears to fly in the face of the Trudeau government’s rules.

Marouf acknowledged being contacted by this newspaper, but did not say what the Iranian payments were for. 

Lesser-known groups have had secret financial dealings with Iran, too.  A self-described anarchist group – the “Anarchist Network of Vancouver Island – recently made a plea on X (formerly Twitter) for “support [for] Palestinian anarchists defending their community from genocide and apartheid against the settler-colonial state of Israel.”

The “anarchist network” – whose appeal was titled “EMERGENCY FUNDS FOR FAUDA – PALESTINIAN ANARCHISTS,” with what appeared to be blood dripping off of it – then shared a cryptocurrency address for donations.  Thousands were transmitted, in equivalent U.S. dollars.

Unsavory, yes.  But illegal? As it turns out, possibly both.  The address was for a cryptocurrency exchange called TRON – and the anarchists’ “wallet,” as it is called, was in the middle of three sanctioned Iranian crypto exchanges associated with the IRGC.  The anarchists on Vancouver Island also publicize their channel on Telegram, the encrypted platform favoured by terrorists everywhere. One of the threads was titled, in Arabic: “How to make a Molotov cocktail.” There are more than 2,000 pro-Palestinian or anarchist channels on Telegram.

Attempts to obtain a comment from the anarchist network also went unanswered.

Says Neil Schwartzman, the cyber-detective who examined the documents showing transactions to and from Iran: “It’s very, very dirty. And it raises the possibility that Iranian entities are funding some protests in Canada.”

He adds: “What we are seeing is financial interactions between local Canadian activists and groups who are potentially adjacent to, or are even actual terrorist groups. It is clear they are taking steps to prevent the origin of the funds from being seen.”

Money coming into Canada for extremism and anti-Semitism – and money going out in the direction of the major state sponsor of terrorism in the world, Iran. Will the Canadian government take action?  

Or will it look the other way, as it did for too long with Iran’s mouthpiece, Laith Marouf?

Comments (9)

The Trudeau Liberals are still a government, yes.

But make no mistake: they are dying. And they are dying without dignity.

Yes, they have all the trappings of government. The expense accounts. The limousines and chauffeurs. The legions of officials producing mountains of unread memoranda for them. All that.

But, when observed from less than a distance, the Trudeau regime has only a thin, brittle exoskeleton of power: they’re a hologram of a government. They’re as lifeless as cold ashes.

The Trudeau Liberals have 158 seats, the opposition parties have 179, a Parliamentary minority. In the real world, that is kind of the equivalent of being strapped to a death row gurney, waiting for the governor to call. (Or not.)

The Trudeau government’s may not look entirely dead, from the outside. But they are inarguably dead inside, and only a Lazarus-like miracle can revive them, now.

Proof of all that was seen, in the past week. In the Middle East, a war is raging between civilization and barbarity. That’s what it is, in its essence.

Israel and Hamas, respectively. Civilization’s victory seems likely, but is by no means a certain or permanent thing. October 7 made that clear: if the conditions are right, if the evil side are sufficiently organized, any one of us – men, women, children, babies – can die in the most horrific of ways. All captured on a smirking terrorist’s GoPro camera.

When war is being waged by civilization on one side, and utter savagery on the other, it shouldn’t be difficult to pick sides. It shouldn’t be hard. Choosing sides, as Graham Greene once wrote, is how we remain human.

The civilized world has chosen Israel. South Africa, a Russian satellite that has pimped itself out to Hamas, brought a case before the International Court of Justice, alleging that Israel is committing “genocide” against Hamas’ vassal state, Gaza.

International law, of course, is written by angels, sought by despots, and mostly ignored by the sane. But, in South Africa’s case, it was important to take sides. So, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Ireland, the European Union and others either vigorously opposed, or refused to support, South Africa’s Hamas-approved litigation.

But what of Canada? What of the Trudeau government?

On Friday afternoon, in a statement that washed up onshore like a dead whale, Trudeau said this: “Our wholehearted support of the ICJ and its processes does not mean that we support the premise of the case brought forward by South Africa.”

People poked and prodded the dead whale. It wasn’t a ringing endorsement of Israel – it wasn’t particularly clear – but it read, to most, like Canada did not support South Africa’s lawsuit against the victims of October 7. A fuller statement would be forthcoming, Trudeau hurriedly added, on that same day, Friday.

This writer, and other supporters of Israel, offered up some reluctant applause. We thought Trudeau would support South Africa’s stunt. He didn’t, it seemed. Good.

Since he made his statement on a Friday afternoon, just as the Jewish sabbath was about to begin, few Jewish spokespeople could be found to speak. So, Trudeau and his witless Global Affairs Minister snagged some applause over the weekend.

And then, this week, the truth spilled out. On CBC, no less.

A fine reporter there, Evan Dyer, wrote a story headlined thus: “After days of confusion, Trudeau government says it will abide by ICJ on genocide case against Israel.”

His sub-headline: “Prime minister, foreign affairs minister issued a statement that left many observers baffled.”

It was a “clarification,” Dyer wrote, issued by functionaries at Global Affairs on Monday. He wrote: “Sources said the government also didn’t want to signal that it was rejecting the genocide claim outright.”

Ah, now we see. Support, if necessary, for public relations purposes. But not necessarily actual support, where it counts.

The language games promptly blew up in the Trudeau regime’s faces. They achieved what would be otherwise impossible: they united both the Israeli and Palestinian sides. Both sides condemned them for their dishonesty. Their deceit and duplicity.

But it’s more than simple dishonesty, isn’t it? It’s what happens when a government is just dead inside.

Like the government of Justin Trudeau is.

Comments (54)

Governments-funded hate rallies?

Anti-Israel and anti-Semitic protestors are getting paid to protest.  That was the revelation that Postmedia shared last week.  In Canada and the United States, groups and individuals are receiving thousands – sometimes tens of thousands – to stage angry, and occasionally violent, protests against the Jewish state.

But some of that money, this newspaper has now discovered, is actually coming from levels of government.

Some will say they aren’t surprised.  The shocking tale of Laith Marouf, for example, is why.

Marouf and his “Community Media Advocacy Centre” received more than $125,000 from the federal government to ostensibly fund projects to help combat anti-racism. But, after Marouf was found posting wildly anti-Semitic content online – one tweet saw Marouf describing Jews as “loud-mouthed bags of human feces, aka the Jewish White Supremacists” – the Justin Trudeau government reluctantly agreed to try and get the money back.

But Marouf is now in Beirut, broadcasting more vile anti-Semitism – with the full support of the Iranian regime, we have learned.  And few expect the Trudeau government will be successful in getting back the $125,000.

Watchdog Honest Reporting Canada, meanwhile, has found that the feds have supplied another anti-Israel organization – the Pride Centre of Edmonton – with $138,000 in funds.  The Centre recently signed onto a notorious anti-Semitic open letter that denied that Israeli women and girls were raped, and subjected to horrific sexual violence, by Hamas on October 7. That letter referred to this country as “so-called Canada” and called on MPs to resign for their “complicity” in “genocide.”

Meanwhile, Postmedia has now confirmed that the Plenty Collective – a Victoria, B.C. group that has supplied anti-Israel protestors with as much as $20,000 a month to participate in hate rallies – has actually received monies from government.

The collective, which has organized multiple anti-Israel protests for months, received $28,000 from the Victoria Foundation, a registered charity.  The foundation, in turn, receives hundreds of thousands in funding from the Trudeau government’s “Investment Readiness Program.”

Just last year, for example, the foundation got more than half a million from the feds.  It in turn passed along thousands to the Plenty Collective for “gender equity.”  But it has now announced it has initiated a “review process” to see how that money was used.

But the anti-Israel Plenty Collective benefitted from its relationship with the Victoria-based Belfry Theatre, too.  The theatre group is a not-for-profit, putting on half-a-dozen plays a year.  But – for reasons that are unclear – the Belfry Theatre also passed along monies received from the government-supported Victoria Foundation to the Plenty Collective.

On its web site, the theatre claims that “through the Victoria Foundation Community Grants Program the Belfry similarly assisted the Plenty Collective to implement queer community building, with an intersectional lens, through nourishment, art, and connection.” But after Postmedia reported the collective was funding anti-Israel protests, the theatre hurriedly announced this:

“We have been assured by the Plenty Collective that the Victoria Foundation grant is being used for community arts-based projects. Together with the Victoria Foundation and the Plenty Collective, we are reviewing the grant activities undertaken by the Plenty Collective.”

The theatre group has not responded to this reporter’s questions about its relationship with the anti-Israel Plenty Collective – and whether federal government, non-profit or charity funds were used to fund anti-Israel protests.

Tellingly, however, the theatre has cancelled a showing of a play called The Runner, after the Plenty Collective objected to it.  The play sympathetically depicts an Orthodox Jew who works for ZAKA, an organization that collects the remains of Jews killed by terrorists. (Full disclosure: this writer has raised funds for ZAKA in the past through the sale of my paintings.)

It is a disturbing tale: anti-Israel protestors being paid to protest. And, now, multiple examples of government funding, directly or indirectly, the organizations that put on those protests.

Says Ian Ward, a councillor for Colwood on Vancouver Island, who has led the charge against anti-Semitic activity there: “As long as municipal, provincial and federal politicians refuse to condemn antisemitism, and stall on a needed call for investigations into funding, we will continue to see our cities held hostage and our democracy under threat.”

Ward is right. It’s time for an inquiry.  It’s time to follow the money.

Comments (6)