My latest: the rough Beast, awake

October 7, 2023 is a day that will live in infamy.

It is also a day that has caused a massive shift, everywhere – culturally, politically, militarily, strategically.

Even on the personal level, October 7 has dramatically re-ordered the lives and priorities of many who are far from the battlefields: when a Jew is afraid to wear an indication of their faith outside their home – when they are afraid of posting a representation of it on the doorframe of their home – you know that all is changed, per Yeats, changed utterly.

The news is not all bad. By war’s end, Israel will have mostly defeated Hamas, and inoculated itself against another such attack for a generation or more. Moderate Arab nations, who have been quietly applauding the demise of Hamas, will continue to forge trade and political ties with Israel.

Benjamin Netanyahu – who had been told October 7 was coming, disbelieved it, and did nothing to prevent it – will be gone, consumed by serial corruption trials or Israeli fury, or both. Israel will likely be governed by Benny Gantz, who is what Israel needs, because he represents the desired mix of military experience and centrism.

The world’s civilized nations – already brought closer by Putin’s foul war on Ukraine – will embrace a further and superior alliance, one that is better equipped to defeat terrorist threats as well as military ones. Donald Trump will not be the one to lead it.

But one glaring, shocking problem will remain. And that is that the Beast is awake.

The aforementioned William Butler Yeats wrote of it in his Second Coming poem: “What rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

Yeats’ Beast was the anti-Christ, probably, a monster that he believed would extinguish Christianity and the world. In the post-October 7, 2023 context, it is anti-Semitism – ironically reawakened in Bethlehem, which is located in Palestine. Not Israel.

The Beast of Jew hatred is everywhere – in Canada, a Jewish restaurant in Toronto vandalized, its windows smashed as in Kristallnacht, and a synagogue in Fredericton attacked on International Holocaust Remembrance Day. And that is just in the past two days. Two days.

Anti-Semitism, the oldest hatred, is everywhere we look, these days. It has shaken the historical alliance of Jews and blacks, forged in the civil rights years. It has riven academics and unionists in a way that will take a decade or more to repair. It has made the class wars far worse, because of the (provably false) perception that Jews are all rich and white.

But the Beast of anti-Semitism is seen most visibly in one place: among our youth.

This writer has seen the public opinion research, conducted in Canada, the United States, Europe and beyond. And what it reveals cannot be denied or dismissed: vast swaths of Generation Z ( who are 18 to 26) and Millennials (who are 27 to 42) are wildly, avowedly anti-Semitic. More, much more, than the university professors or public sector union bosses or anyone else you can think of.

The polling, by Leger and several other firms, is shocking. A third of young Canadians – Gen Z and Millennials – support targeting Jews. A quarter of them say they want Israel destroyed. Forty per cent of them do not want those who promote genocide – a criminal offence, in Canada – punished.

And on Hamas, that Satanic and malevolent force, they shrug. Forty per cent of them don’t care about Hamas’ butchery, and refuse to condemn it. A Harvard poll, conducted right after the carnage of October 7, found that more than half of American Gen Z support Hamas. That it was “justified.”

On the Holocaust, which was the mass-murder that Hamas was emulating, the numbers are just as depressing. Twenty per cent of young Americans call the Holocaust a myth. Thirty per cent of them “don’t know” if it is a myth. Thirty per cent of them think “Jews wield too much power.”

There’s more – too much more – but all of the pollsters have concluded the same thing: anti-Semitism is back, everywhere, and almost half of our young people have embraced it.

That, to this writer at least, represents a greater threat than Hamas, Hezbollah, and all the idiotic professors and union bosses put together. We are at risk of losing an entire generation to Jew hatred.

The Beast is awake, but it is not slouching towards Bethlehem to be born.

It has been birthed already, and it is everywhere.

And it is taking hold of our youth.


My latest: the death of the United Nations

Most Canadians believe – or believed – in the idea of the United Nations.

On paper, it all made sense.  An international body that would promote peace and security.  One that would foster better relations between countries.  A place to coordinate the actions of nations.  To create a better world.

The UN was borne out of the ashes of World War II, phoenix-like, with the initial aim of preventing future world wars.  That was a good objective.  So, four dozen nations met in San Francisco in June 1945, and hammered out the broad principles that formed the UN Charter.

There are 111 articles in the Charter, collected in 19 separate chapters. This is the very first one: “To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace.”

Those are the first words you see, really: that the United Nations would always strive to maintain peace, and take action to prevent and remove “threats to peace.”

So, what happens when it is the United Nations itself that is violating the peace?  What does it mean, when representatives of the UN – its paid staff – are actively involved in acts of aggression against innocent civilians? What then?

Because that, now, is the truly shocking news that seeped out on Friday morning, when the world was distracted by a historic ruling of the International Court of Justice.

That United Nations staff participated in the massacres on October 7.

Read that again, because it is not made up: United Nations staff participated in the massacres of 1,200 Israeli men, women, children and babies on October 7.

UNRWA – the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees – admitted it, just as the ICJ’s ruling was breaking.  Here are the words of Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s commissioner-general:

“The Israeli Authorities have provided UNRWA with information about the alleged involvement of several UNRWA employees in the horrific attacks on Israel on 7 October. To protect the Agency’s ability to deliver humanitarian assistance, I have taken the decision to immediately terminate the contracts of these staff members and launch an investigation in order to establish the truth without delay.  Any UNRWA employee who was involved in acts of terror will be held accountable, including through criminal prosecution.”

Lazzarini then “condemns in the strongest terms” what happened to Israeli civilians on October 7, and says a few words asking for the return of all remaining Israeli hostages. But, again, it is important to note that UNRWA made their admission when they knew everyone would be focussed on the stunning ruling of the International Court of Justice. (Which – against the expectations of most – declined to declare that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians.)

Why cover up? Why try and take out the trash, as journalists put it, on a Friday? Because UNRWA and the United Nations know: the damage has been done.  And the damage is irreparable.  Twelve of their employees helped to murder, maim, and kidnap Israelis.

The Israelis have been raising the alarm about UNRWA for a long time.  But, as with most things at the United Nations, nobody really listened to them.

About a week ago, to cite just one example, international human rights lawyer Hillel Neuer’s UN watchdog told the international body that 3,000 UNRWA employees were active on a Telegram feed, “replete with praise of the Hamas massacre of October 7th.”  UNRWA and the UN shrugged.  They didn’t care.

One of that group, United Nations employee #30026166, Safe al-Najjar, was an administrator of the group.  She regularly praises Hamas, calling them “holy warriors.”  Another UNRWA employee (#10777281), Weam Majdi Kalloub, praised massacres of Jews.  And on and on. So many Jew haters, there is not enough room to name and shame them.

All of that is bad enough.  All of that should be sufficient cause for concern.  But then Israel provided the United Nations with proof that its own employees had actually helped to butcher Jews.  The United States immediately announced it was stopping funding of UNRWA.  Canada, which has provided UNRWAS with $90 million between 2019 and 2023, needed to do likewise.

And, to the surprise of many, we did – late on Friday. Because of the fence-sitting for which the Trudeau regime has become notorious, it was doubtful. But they did the right thing. So, good.

But can we now expect Trudeau to finally admit that sad and shocking truth – which is that the United Nations and its agencies have become complicit in murder?

And that, like all murderers, they deserve to be punished?

Because they do not deserve to be funded, or supported, anymore.


My latest: Israel wins by not losing

Israel won.

Israel won, in particular, by not losing.

On Friday morning, the International Court of Justice declined to rule that Israel was committing genocide in its war against Hamas in Gaza.

The president of the U.N. court, American Joan E. Donoghue, spoke at this morning’s hearing. Said Donoghue:

“On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas and other armed groups present in the Gaza Strip carried out an attack in Israel, killing more than 1,200 persons, injuring thousands and abducting some 240 people, many of whom continue to be held hostage. Following this attack, Israel launched a large scale military operation in Gaza by land, air and sea, which is causing massive civilian casualties.”

South Africa had the right to take Israel to court, she said. But – against the expectations of many supporters of Israel, and perhaps Israel itself – she said two important things. One, she said on behalf of the 15-member court that that Israel must take take steps to ensure its IDF troops do not violate the Genocide Convention. Israel must prevent genocide, and punish those who incite it, she said.

But on the key question, brought forward in a packed courtroom by South Africa two weeks ago – whether Israel would be ordered to cease its military operations in Gaza, which is what South Africa, China, Russia, Iran and the world’s despots most desired – the ICJ did not order Israel to stop.

Just adhere to the Geneva Convention. Which, as the civilized world knows, Israel was already doing.

It is difficult to overstate the significance of this ruling – which was always going to be more about symbolism than reality. The UN’s court lacks the power to force Israel, or any country, to do or not do anything. But its ruling was important, and taken seriously by Israel, because the eyes of the world have been focussed on Gaza since Israel commenced its – overdue, necessary – action against Hamas at the end of October 2023.

Judge Donoghue said one thing on which both sides could agree: “Gaza has become a place of death and despair.” But the disagreement is over who is to blame for that. Israel (and too few others) says Hamas; Hamas (and too many others) says Israel.

The ICJ did not say so, but the facts are the facts: a ceasefire was in place on October 6, 2023, and on most of the days prior to that. And it was Hamas who broke the ceasefire, with an orgy of murder, torture, rape and kidnapping – of citizens, not soldiers.

The ICJ indicated that it has not passed a final ruling on the case brought by South Africa, which has effectively become a satellite of Russia and Hamas since the Mandela era. It may still rule on the specious genocide claim. But, as its practice, that ruling may take months or years to arrive.

Surprising many, Donoghue said: “The court is not required to ascertain whether any violations of Israel’s obligations under the Genocide Convention have occurred. That will happen at a later stage of the process.”

For the Israel-haters on the international stage, the ruling is a major setback. A United Nations court that has been traditionally hostile to Israel has refused to rule that genocide is taking place.

That, for Israel and its allies, is a massive victory – because it is so surprising. The UN’s General Assembly has condemned Israel no less than 14 times in 2023 alone. Most expected the International Court of Justice to do likewise.

It didn’t. And, for Israel and the cause of decency and sanity, that is a very big victory, indeed.


My latest: bring them home

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.”


My latest: the new deniers

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.


My latest: Trump’s on the ballot – in Canada

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?