Canadian Citizenship

What a lovely convenience it represents, to have a Canadian passport. Canada is such a welcoming country, a wonderful place to live. There are so many social benefits, personal security is excellent, and aspirations can be fulfilled for those who wish to explore all the many opportunities available to people who respect one another and are willing to work for a living. And those unable to do that are maintained by social programs meant to offer quality of life to all Canadian citizens.

Who wouldn't want a Canadian passport? To be deemed a citizen of a country respected throughout the world as a modest middle-country in size, influence and wealth. Prospects are beyond good, they're compelling. It is just so damn convenient. And Canada has such an amazing reputation for its compassionate welcoming of people from every corner of the world. Come to Canada for safe haven. We value your potential.

Criminals, thugs, human-rights abusers need not apply. Except, surprise, they do. And then Canada sternly unmasks them after it's discovered that their backgrounds do not comply with Canada's values and priorities. Accused of heinous crimes against their own people, diplomats and former government representatives are escorted out of the country, thank you very much.

It's mostly the discreet, covert activity that is not apprehended in good time. People who have had their applications for entry, for residence, for permanent status rejected, and invited to leave. And who do not. And then Canada goes hunting for them, kind of, more or less. Good old Canada has experienced a problem of late with the realization that there are home-grown as it were, Canadians who have responded to the jihadist recruitment drives, irresistible to some young men.

Who then leave the country with their citizenship intact and their passports in hand, and go off to train in foreign countries which are at war with the very idea of democracy and peace and good governance. Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia come to mind.  The Sahara desert attack on the Algerian gas plant that resulted in the death of  37 workers and 29 jihadists was said to have included two Canadians of Arab descent, according to the Algerians.

The RCMP is working on it.

And now they're working on a new investigation, this one surrounding a Lebanese-Canadian who left Canada a decade ago, at age 12. And who settled in Lebanon, with his mother. Returning to Canada briefly, sporadically, to visit relatives.  Who, with his Canadian passport intact, was recruited by Hezbollah and took part in a terrorist suicide-bombing of a bus in Bulgaria, killing Israeli tourists, the Bulgarian bus driver and wounding many others.

"We have followed their entire activities in Australia and Canada so we have information about financing and their membership in Hezbollah. A reasonable assumption can be made that the two of them were members of the militant wing of Hezbollah", announced Bulgaria's interior minister, Tsvetan Tsvetanov - of an Australian and a Canadian involved in the deadly attack.

Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs, John Baird, identified the suspect as a "dual national living in Lebanon".  There are so many dual nationals; Canadian-Lebanese, or is it Lebanese-Canadians, living in Lebanon, their passports secure in case they're required for another swift evacuation. "That Bulgaria has found convincing evidence of Hezbollah involvement in this carnage is, sadly, not surprising. It is yet more evidence of the depravity of Hezbollah", Mr. Baird said, calling upon the EU to list Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

Only the U.K. and the Netherlands currently list Hezbollah on their list of terrorists, and in the case of the U.K. only the 'militant wing' of Hezbollah is on Britain's terrorist list. The 'militant wing'? How quaintly accommodating. Though the European Union is looking at the prospect of possibly declaring Hezbollah a terrorist entity, not all its members will willingly agree, without hard 'proof'.  They might wish to interview Israelis on that score - but perhaps not, after all.

"Hezbollah continues to threaten retaliation against Israeli interests worldwide for the killing of key individuals in the past two years. Hezbollah has had a presence in Canada ... Hezbollah supporters conduct fundraising, procurement and intelligence activities in Canada, and are involved in organized crime, including fraud", according to a recently released Canadian intelligence report. Evidently European countries have no such knowledge or intelligence capability.

Another, declassified intelligence report dating pre-Burgas attack, indicated that Hezbollah had made ten attempts to attack Israeli interests abroad partly in revenge for the death of chief terrorist Imad Mugniyah, killed by a car bomb in Damascus. Mugniyah was a gentle man who masterminded no end of violent attacks, including the 1985 hijacking of a TWA airliner when a US Navy diver was killed, and was behind the bombing at the American embassy in Beirut, as well as the 1983 attack against U.S. Marines' headquarters in Lebanon, killing over 200 Americans.

In Israel, Mugniyah is held responsible for planning the 1992 bombing of Israel's Argentina embassy where 29 people were killed, and the blast at a Buenos Aires Jewish center in 1994, killing 95 people. The Hezbollah commander was involved in terror attacks on Israel's border with Lebanon, and he was implicated in the kidnapping of a number of Israeli soldiers, and the abductions of Israeli citizen civilians.

Hezbollah does not take kindly to international or United Nations-based conclusions that implicates it as the guilty party carrying out suicide missions, assassinations, bombings, abductions, and any other levels of crime commissions. It rabidly denied having assassinated former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri in 2005, and it strenuously denies now being implicated in the Bulgaria attack.

Other Canadians of Arab origin have been conscripted into service for Hezbollah to conduct terror attacks. In 2002, Canadian Hezbollah member Fawzi Ayub was apprehended in Israel as he began organizing a bombing attack. And in 2012, Mouna Diab, a Quebec Muslim 'activist' was charged with smuggling firearms parts to Hezbollah.

Another Diab, Palestinian-Lebanese Hassan Diab, a dual Lebanese-Canadian citizen living in Quebec is sought by French authorities to be extradited to stand trial on suspicion of having been involved in the 1980 bombing of the Copernic Street synagogue that killed three Frenchmen, an Israeli woman, and wounded 22 other people. His extradition has not yet been effected. At the time he was held to be a member of the 'militant wing' of the PLO.