The horsemen of the apocalypse: everyone has their own.

In the Book of Revelation in the New Testament, there are four.  The horsemen aren’t explicitly named, but they are believed to be Death, Famine, War and Conquest – usually the Anti-Christ.  It varies.

In Anno Domini 2024, this writer’s are as follows: the fall of Ukraine, the collapse of support for the Jewish state, the rise of fascism, and the re-election of Donald Trump.  And, for the purposes of this opinion column, all are connected.  As in the Scriptures, so too in 2024: these Horsemen of the Apocalypse ride together.

Trump first, because he is the “horseman” who represents a real and present danger. His recent call for Russia to militarily attack any nation which has fallen short on its NATO contribution – which would include Canada, including in the Harper years – is madness. As this newspaper has editorialized, what Trump said is “irrational and dangerous.” He is a bully, as the paper declared, and his statement is “reprehensible.”

The fall of Ukraine is the next horseman, because that prophecy is edging nearer, too.

Vladimir Putin’s Satanic siege of Ukraine started two years ago next week.  Many expected Ukraine to be defeated in the first weekend.  Because of the extraordinary valor and military acumen of the Ukrainian people, it did not – to Putin’s surprise.  So, his Nazi-like blitzkrieg having failed, the Russian potentate settled upon another strategy: biding his time, and letting Donald Trump and the MAGA Republican Party do his bidding.

Time is Ukraine’s enemy.  Russia has always had more armaments and soldiers, and more resources.  So Putin elected to wait, and grind down Ukraine’s defences.

He has been greatly assisted in this strategy by Trump and the MAGA cult.  By refusing multiple attempts to provide military aid to Ukraine, House Republicans are essentially acting as Putin’s water boys.  As Republican stalwart George F. Will put it in the Washington Post:

“Substantial numbers of insubstantial congressional Republicans are contemplating an ignoble act whose imprudence exceeds even its pettiness. These Republicans could, by denying Ukraine the material means of resistance, hand Russian President Vladimir Putin a victory that might be just the beginning of Putin’s war for the restoration of ‘Greater Russia’.”

Ukraine is not some faraway outpost in the former Soviet Union.  It is a central part of Europe.  If Trump and his Republicans permit Ukraine to be defeated, as Will and many others attest, other Soviet bloc European nations will follow.

That’s just Trump, some might say: in Canada, Conservatives support Ukraine.  But do they? The Tories have now voted twice against a trade deal sought by Ukraine.  And, a February poll by the Angus Reid Institute found that – like the GOP – nearly half of their partisans say Canada is “doing too much” to support Ukraine. The isolationism of conservatives is an ominous trend.

In the case of Israel, the circumstances are different from Ukraine.  Israel, the only democracy in a sea of Middle Eastern despotism, seems to be winning its just and proper war against Hamas.  And, in the main, Canadian Conservatives (but not as many American conservatives) are offering the Jewish state unequivocal support – with the Liberals waffling, and the New Democrats beyond redemption.

But Hamas is not Israel’s only enemy.  There are legions of others who will take the place of Hamas – Hezbollah, the Houthis, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Quds Force, Islamic Jihad, and (of course) Syria and Iran.

Israel has always had those enemies, one might say, and one would be right.  But there is a new adversary, one that is arguably more lethal than all the others: the shocking and global rise of fascistic anti-Semitism.  Jew hatred is everywhere, these days – seen in trade unions, academia, classrooms, pulpits, legislatures and in the streets.

This new anti-Semitism is organized and well-funded – and brazen.  After the horrors of October 7, it was reasonable to expect that the world would sympathize with the victim.  But the reverse has happened.  The beast of fascistic Jew hatred is surging globally, in every democracy.  And that, more than Hezbollah or the Houthis or the others, represents a greater long-term threat to Israel.

Trump, as with Ukraine, has again been a destructive force.  Just days after the horrors of October 7 became known, Trump called Hezbollah “very smart” and kicked Israel when it was down, saying it “was not prepared.” His Republicans, meanwhile, are in disarray and last week failed to pass a support package for Israel, despite having the majority in the House of Representatives.

The rise of Trump and anti-Semitism, the fall in support of Ukraine and the Jewish state: all represent profound threats to democracy and decency. And these four horsemen are no mere Biblical myth.

They are real.

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This week, a mob attacked a hospital.

Not because they support Palestine.  They did it because they hate Jews.

Mount Sinai Hospital, on University Avenue in Toronto, isn’t “Jewish,” of course, any more than it is Protestant or Catholic or Muslim.  This writer’s sons were all born there, delivered by a former medic in the IDF who hummed along to John Cougar Mellencamp songs.

Nobody asked us about our religion while we were there. But Mount Sinai is indeed an important symbol for the 1.4 per cent of the Canadian population who are Jews.  Which is why the haters descended on the place on Monday night, to promote hatred.

Like snakes, spewing venom.

Mount Sinai was created 102 years ago, when some Jewish women started fundraising for a hospital – because, among other things, no other Toronto hospital would allow Jews to practice medicine.  Along with the lives regularly bettered or saved there, Mount Sinai delivers 7,000 babies every year.

You’ve likely heard about the attack on Mount Sinai Hospital because it woke up quite a few politicians from their extended slumber.  Many of them had been asleep, or the political equivalent, during previous attacks on Jewish symbols in this country.

But Mount Sinai woke them up.  Was it the mob screaming for “intifada” – a terror campaign? Was it the masked “pro-Palestinian” types climbing scaffolding affixed to the hospital’s front, waving flags, blocking peoples’ access? You know: people who were there to be admitted as patients.  The people there to get help in the Emergency Department.  The people there for cancer treatment.  Or to just have a baby.

Was it that? Who knows.  Whatever it was, the politicians woke up.  The Prime Minister, for once, called it “anti-Semitism,” and didn’t feel the need to tuck “islamophobia” into the subclause that followed.

Ontario’s Premier, who has been consistently more vocal than most, called the attack on the hospital “indecent,” because it was.  Toronto’s mayor, who previously advocated for a ceasefire – even when the anti-Israel mob was terrorizing her New Year’s family skate party – also said it was anti-Semitic.  Fine.

So, where were the police?  Good question.

There are no shortage of laws available to charge the thugs who attacked Mount Sinai Hospital this week.  There is, apparently, a shortage of police.

Reportedly, there were only two (2) on hand to deal with a parade of hundreds of thugs who were easily observed several blocks away, for many minutes, banging drums and chanting “initifada.”  Police headquarters is 850 metres away, a four-minute walk.  But the Toronto Police Service could only muster two (2) officers to deal with law-breaking on a mass scale.

And, rest assured: it was all illegal.  A new law, which Premier Ford emphasized on Tuesday, is seen in Bill C-3, and is specifically designed to protect hospitals and the people who work in them.  The Bill seeks to prevent precisely the sort of hatefest that took place on University Avenue on Monday night.  If indicted, those who violate the new law can face ten years in prison.

But that is not the only law available to police and prosecutors for the siege of Mt. Sinai.  Here are some others, with the relevant sections of the Criminal Code, for officers to tuck into their wallets for future reference:

•blocking or obstructing a highway (Section 423(1)(g))
•intimidation (Section 423(1))
•causing a disturbance (Section 175)
•common nuisance (Section 180)
•interfering with transportation facilities (Section 248)
•breach of the peace or imminent breach (Section 31)
•riots (Sections 32, 33, 64, 65, 67, 68, 69)
•unlawful assembly (Section 63)
•mischief (Section 430)

It goes without saying that it is crime to simply attempt or conspire to do any of those things.  And, that’s not all: if one of the thugs was wearing a mask while committing an offence – and masks were in widespread use Monday night – section 65(2) of the Criminal Code makes that an offence, as well.  And can also, if indicted, result in a decade behind bars.

So, lots of laws are available to prevent another attack on Mount Sinai Hospital, or any other hospital.  Or any place or person, really.

We have the laws.  In this country, we have many, many laws we can use.

What we don’t have, increasingly, is the guts to use them.

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The late, great Sunday Times writer Marie Colvin said it best:  war correspondents send back the first draft of history.

Colvin was assassinated by the Syrian regime in 2012. She, more than most, knew how difficult it is to ascertain the truth in the chaos and wreckage of wartime. The first casualty of war is indeed truth, as everyone knows.

During Israel’s overdue and righteous war against the murderous cult that is Hamas, many re-learned this lesson the hard way.  Remember that hospital in Gaza, the one that Israel supposedly destroyed back in October, purportedly killing 500 innocent Palestinians in the process?

Well, they didn’t. Destroy the hospital or kill 500 people. The hospital is still standing, and 500 bodies have yet to be produced by the Hamas-controlled health authority. However, no less than The New York Times blamed Israel on its front page, under a screaming headline.

And they were wrong. As the Times was subsequently forced to admit: “[Our] coverage — and the prominence it received in a headline, news alert and social media channels — relied too heavily on claims by Hamas, and did not make clear that those claims could not immediately be verified. The report left readers with an incorrect impression about what was known and how credible the account was.”

“Incorrect” is a bit of an understatement. When you wrongly accuse a country of a massive war crime in your front page, you need to clearly and unambiguously apologize.

You also need to do something else: not ever take the word of Hamas. In particular, don’t take the word of Hamas, or its agencies, when assessing what is happening in the war in Gaza.

Edward N. Luttwak didn’t. Luttwak has been a war correspondent and soldier himself. In a piece published this week in Tablet magazine, Luttwak carefully analyzed Israel’s conduct of the war so far. His conclusion:

“Israel’s very innovative methods to surveil, penetrate, and destroy Hamas tunnels have been markedly and unexpectedly successful. But the constraints placed on Israel’s combat operations have been very severe, and a major impediment to its fight.”

Among those constraints, of course, is that Israel is always held to a different standard. The aforementioned Syrian regime can slaughter 110,000 Muslims in 2015, many of them children, and the keffiyah-clad Gen Z protestors in the West won’t chant a thing. About Israel, of course, they’ll scream bloody murder.

And that’s even when murder has not taken place. As Luttwak writes, “The Israeli army remains wedded to the British method of intensive and prolonged individual instruction for its soldiers before their in-unit training, so that nobody enters Gaza without at least a full year’s worth of combat instruction, much more than their American counterparts had in Vietnam.”

That has kept Israeli troop casualties to a shockingly small number: less than 300. Says Luttwak: “Not in the thousands suggested by the beribboned skeptics who were gleefully echoed by the malevolent, but under 300 as of this writing. In other words, only a very, very small number, given the magnitude of the forces involved on both sides, and the exceptional complexity of the battlefield.”

Nor does Luttwak accept the wild numbers coming out of Hamas when calculating civilian deaths: “Contrary to accusations that only expensively educated U.S. college students could possibly believe, Israeli soldiers do not deliberately kill innocent civilians going about their business.”

Meanwhile, he says, thousands of trained Hamas fighters have been slain. The Israeli battlefield victories have been “exceptional,” he says.

How has Israel accomplished all of this? Three ways, he says.

One, Israeli troops did not simply charge into the maze of Hamas tunnels, which are reportedly longer than the London tube system.  Before these Israelis enter the tunnels, they are under orders to await the go-ahead of the Yahalom combat engineer unit, who are experts in tunnel warfare.

Two, the Israelis have been making use of technology that has protected them and civilians in a crowded urban environment. Their combat vehicles, for example, are nimble and more protective than any in history. Meanwhile, their drones – “remotely piloted vehicles, “as the Israelis first called them, and which the Israelis essentially invented 60 years ago – ensure that they target only Hamas, and not civilians.

Three, there is the culture and mindset of the troops themselves. To a one, Luttwak says, they have been trained to keep “fighting as hard and as long as necessary to grind down Hamas until nothing is left of its fighting strength.”

So, is victory at hand? Is the the war, which has cost the lives of many on both sides, almost over?

For the answer to that, my colleague Brian Lilley interviewed Eylon Levy, an official spokesman for the Israeli government. (Their encounter will be on this week’s Postmedia podcast.)

Asked how the war is going, Levy was succinct:

“For us, from day one, it has been very clear why we are fighting. We are fighting to bring the Hamas terror regime to justice, so that it can never again perpetrate again an atrocity like October 7, and to bring back the hostages” he says.

“We are fighting for humanity. And anything less than a total victory will be a terrible danger to the whole free world.”

And that is the truth.

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