Never Put Off Until Today What You Should have Said Yesterday

"There is a difference between peaceful protest and hateful intimidation."

"It is unconscionable to glorify the antisemitic violence and murder perpetrated by Hamas on October 7th."

"This rhetoric has no place in Canada. This is not who were are."

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

Anti-Israel protest in Ottawa on April 20, 2024. Photo by Dacey Media

A message of condemnation. From the Prime Minister of Canada. After months of often more muted messages of hate, threats, viral antisemitism. At no time did this man who for too long has been the executive leader of Canada see fit to condemn antisemitism without linking it to his cautions against 'Islamophobia'. Puzzling, given that Muslims in Canada face very few obstacles to living an inclusive, normal life of acceptance and equality. While at the same time Palestinian agitators have sought every opportunity to slander Israel, deny that Hamas is a terrorist entity, and harass Jewish-Canadians.

And nor is he the sole politician in Canada to look the other way and murmur approval of Canada's laws justifying free speech, even though there are other laws that condemn and criminalize the deliberate spread of racism, hate expressed against an identifiable group as an indictable offence. The steady growth of a Muslim demographic in Canada make them an impressive voting bloc, one recognized all too readily by politicians more concerned over their re-election than representing basic security issues.

This past Saturday downtown Ottawa saw swarms of masked anti-Israel protesters marching, waving banners, and flags, chanting directly before Parliament Hill to support the terrorist attacks in southern Israel that took place on October 7, 2023, killing over a thousand innocent civilian Israelis, mass-raping girls and women, mutilating their tortured bodies and slaughtering them, then taking hundreds of children, women and the elderly as hostages back with them to Gaza where it became a celebratory event.

 

Ottawa police’s hate crime unit is investigating allegations of hate speech at a pro-Palestinian rally on Parliament Hill over the weekend, where some participants were heard chanting in support of the deadly Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack in Israel.

 

"Our resistance and attacks are proof that we are almost free. October 7 is proof that we're almost free. Long live October 7. Long live the intifada. Long live every form of resistance", shouted one of the speakers. So, after all, this is Canada. The Canada that we never realized existed. But it does. And Jews in Canada are being hounded, harassed, threatened while their places of worship are vandalized, Jewish children entering their parochial school are cursed and shouted at, Jewish university students ostracized.

There was a time, early on, long before that fateful October 7, when a strong leader would have expressed his condemnation of rising antisemitism and acknowledged its source, and taken steps to criminalize the burgeoning racism splitting Canadian society. Having done nothing of the kind, even when Palestinian 'students' in Canada began organizing 'pro-Palestinian' marches celebrating the savagery visited on Israelis by Palestinian terrorist groups starting the very day following the carnage in southern Israel, the haters took it as tacit approval.

The prime minister who cannot condemn the scourge of rising and rampant antisemitism emanating from within the Canadian-Muslim demographic, without also parenthetically mentioning 'Islamophobia' has, in very fact, supported the antisemitism he has done nothing to tame, to adequately censure, to reassure Canadian Jews that their place in Canada is assured, safe and secure because Canadians care and Canadian politicians are determined to ensure that Canada remains a nation where justice and equality are not just words but conditions applicable to all its citizens.

To them a badge of dishonour by their lack of concern, by their lack of remedial action, by their lack of assurances to Canadian Jewry that Canada is their home, a place of origin where they are appreciated, where they are safe and free from threats and violence.

Police are investigating allegations of hate speech used at a pro-Palestinian rally in downtown Ottawa on Saturday. (Radio-Canada/Maxim Saavedra-Ducharmes)