Testimonies Without Boundaries

"[I do this] To speak up for those whose voice was taken [those who were murdered] but also to those tortured, raped, wounded, held hostage, abused; to the victims' families and the massacre's survivors, who want their story and the truth out, but some of them are still too traumatized, mentally unprepared, to share these stories themselves."

"I documented the atrocities and wrote the book because already on October 7, I immediately foresaw the worldwide denial that we would face. I realized the urgency for documentation. I knew something must be created so that what happened would be commemorated for generations to come -- and so I did."

"The reason I decided to write the book in the most unfiltered, graphic and unapologetic way possible, without censoring any of the atrocities' details, as challenging as it is for the reader, was to shock the international community. To wake them up. To make them comprehend the extent of the cruelty, the evil, the inhumanity."

Alon Penzel, former IDF spokesman

 

"A lot of what Hamas was doing was recorded. So it's not like you can deny it, even though a lot of people around the world are trying to deny that this even happened."

"What we're seeing around the world, all the demonstrations, all this chanting of 'From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free', I think that people basically don't understand that means no state of Israel."

"They have no idea which river and which sea. They don't even know where we are on the globe. So a lot of people are watching TikToks of 30 seconds, and they're sure that they're experts on Israeli history."

Shelly Tal Merton, Knesset member, Yesh Atid party 

 

"The further we get from the 7th, the easier it is for people to change the narrative. If you can deny what happened on the 7th, then it's much easier to demonize and blood libel Israel."

"In Canada, many try to 'blur the lines'. Our state-funded broadcaster and mainstream media disregarding the 7th, glossing over it, to look at it like a footnote."

"[Film industry colleagues] outright minimized the rape of Israeli women, [some denying rapes occurred at all]."

Igal Hecht, October 7 documentary film The Killing Roads

 

"I actually have family members who either don't believe October 7 happened, or that it was an inside job planned by Netanyahu."

"I've met others with similar and worse beliefs. It's put a strain on my family, and I've lost friends over this."

"It's also interesting that these people refuse to watch our film."

Chris Atkins, filmmaker

Moshe Weitzman, left, one of the first EMIs to respond after the October 7 attacks, is filmed by Igal Hecht, who released his October 7 documentary The Killing Roads online for free in hopes of cutting through misinformation and denialism over the 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel. Photo by Igal Hecht

 

Knesset member Shelly Tal Meron, acting chair of the Knesset Committee on the Status of Women and Gender Equality, wrote over 100 letters to human rights organizations and women's groups in weeks after the October 7 atrocities in southern Israel, inviting them to condemn sexual assaults as a war weapon. "It's not the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It's not right or left. It's simply the moral thing to do, to say that this is wrong. Nobody responded. Not one."

 

Former IDF spokesman Alon Penzel spoke last year at Radboud University in Nijmegen, Netherlands. His efforts led to protesters breaking windows, threatening him with violence, denying the atrocities committed by Palestinian terrorists led by Hamas, screaming "lies", insisting no women were raped on October 7, 2023.  That experience will not deter him from his goal to take speaking engagements across Canada, two years after the invasion of Israeli troops into Gaza.

 

An assistant professor of geography at Radboud university, Harry Pettit, added his own take to Penzel's initiative, posting that he was a "terrorist", on social media, and that Israel was committing a "holocaust". The school, this professor avowed, "should refuse to normalize platforming Zionists". 

 

Documentary filmmaker Igal Hecht. Photo by Igal Hecht.

 

Five months following the October 7 atrocities, Alon Penzel wrote Testimonies Without Boundaries, Israel: October 7th 2023. The publication contained fifty first-hand accounts of the horrors victims had suffered, in an effort to record the reality of what happened, against a tsunami of rejection of the reality of the situation, replacing the actual event with self-serving ideological propaganda seething with hatred of Israel and condemnation of Jews everywhere.

 

Mr. Penzel's speaking tour is organized by the group StandWithUs, through a combination of appearances before student groups at university campuses and at community events, to counter the narrative so widely accepted that characterizes the war in Gaza as a deliberate ploy to destroy Palestinian lives in a 'genocide', shredding the actual atrocities that took place in southern Israel as a figment of imaginary Israeli public relations to turn the world against Palestinians. What motivates Mr. Penzel's determination is the shock of witnessing the world public accepting Hamas's distortion of reality.

 

Shelly Tal Meron, on the other hand, has met with a level of success through a coalition along with France's minister of gender equality, to lead others around the world in acknowledgement that sexual assault is being normalized as a war weapon "not only Israeli, Yazidi women, Ukrainian women, Druze women that just suffered this in Syria and many other conflict areas". Even some countries without Israeli ties have agreed to support the committee against war rape.

 

In the near wake of the October 7 monstrosity, filmmaker Chris Atkins was contacted by a friend, human rights advocate Majed el-Shaffie, Egyptian-born, with a like intention to record the event. Majed el-Shaffie had contracted with a cameraman in Israel to initiate the documenting of the atrocities. Both Atkins and el-Shafie, Christians, agreed to partner in putting together footage and work together to document Dying to Live, screened November 2024 in Toronto. The film documents areas devastated by violence, including the Nova music festival site, using October 7 archival footage, interviewing survivors and victims' families.

 

Toronto lawyer Adam Hummel published Essays from Afar: 700 Days of the Diaspora Experience Since October 7, containing collected accounts from his Catch Substack and two years' worth of weekly commentary in his concern that scant few sources have taken the trouble to fully comprehend what precipitated the Gaza war, how it is being conducted, and the Hamas scheme to sacrifice the lives of Gazans to round out its anti-Israel propaganda fed to the West.  

"[The UN Commission of Inquiry report alleging "genocide" perpetrated by Israel is an  unfortunately misguided piece of fiction."

"I often say that if Israel wanted to kill all the Palestinians, this war would have been over on October 8, 2023."

"They do not, however, which is why 900-plus Israeli soldiers have been killed over the last two years, because Israel has gone above and beyond to protect the lives of innocent Palestinians in Gaza, who have been put in the line of fire because of their own leaders."

Adam Hummel, Toronto lawyer 

 

Who Stands on Guard for Islamist-Threats Against Canadian Jews?

"Antisemitism in Canada has reached a crisis point. Jewish schools, community centres, and synagogues are being  targeted by gunshots and Molotov cocktails."

"Swastikas are openly displayed, while mezuzahs are torn from the doorways of Jewish residences."

"Chants glorifying terrorist violence against Jews are heard on streets and campuses, without consequence."

"Jewish students are afraid to go to class."

"The Government of Canada must act decisively to confront the alarming rise in hate threatening Jewish Canadians and Canada's inclusive, democratic society."

Coalition of Jewish leaders press release 

Hundreds of demonstrators blocked access to CANSEC, North America’s largest weapons and military technology expo, in protest against what they call Canadian complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

 

Since the Palestinian terrorist atrocity committed on October 7, 2023, when thousands of terrorist operatives led by Hamas swarmed out of Gaza across the border into southern Israel to rape, maim and murder over a thousand Israelis and kidnap hundreds more into Gaza, Jews in Canada have witnessed an almost-overnight change in their status as loyal Canadian citizens. Suddenly government leaders at all levels from municipal, provincial to federal, and their policing forces appear to have forgotten the values and customs and laws of justice and equality. Jews are left to fend for themselves against a phalanx of Jew-haters loudly and confidently making their presence known. 

 

No sooner had news erupted out of the Middle East that a mass pogrom had taken place, leaving Israel traumatized, and the expectation that this declaration of war by Palestinian terrorist groups would be confronted by an Israeli military response, Muslim Canadians launched demonstration after  demonstration, accusing Israel of 'genocide', while slandering Jews in Canada and calling for a global intifada, chanting 'Final Solution!', 'Jews go back to Poland' with the obvious message of another Holocaust.

 

Gathering in Place des Arts in the heart of downtown Montreal, demonstrators showed their support for Palestine (CBC)

 

Canada has laws against criminal behaviour; hate-mongering to the extent of inciting to murder -- threatening an identifiable demographic, interfering with people attempting to enter places of worship, defacing buildings with offensive messages, entering private property to harass clients, disrupting legal social gatherings, marching through ethnic-specific neighbourhoods to threaten residents -- are all criminal acts for which the law has remedies. But they have never been enforced in the case of Muslims vs Jews.

 

While governments at all levels intone formulaic rejection of antisemitism, there is no comfort in words which lack relevant action to put a stop to the incitement and the threats. Nor is it particularly comforting that authority figures condemn antisemitism, and in the same breath add 'Islamophobia', when it is in fact those faithful to Islam who primarily threaten and slander Jews, while advocating for the general public to join them, which some are willing to do now that overt antisemitism appears to be normalized in Canada.

 

(JERRY ZHANG/ THE EYEOPENER)

 

Ongoing for two years, with no stop to the constant haranguing, intimidation, and threats, episodes become more violent and openly aggressive. Jews must now build physical barriers around their community centres, synagogues and parochial schools for protection, employing security guards and  hoping this will forestall the events that have seen synagogues firebombed and vandalized, along with privately owned Jewish businesses, and Jewish elementary schools shot at. 

"Since the Hamas-orchestrated October 7, 2023 massacre, Canada has experienced a dramatic increase in violent antisemitism.¹ This dangerous spike is concurrent with an increase in activity by an interconnected and coordinated network of NGOs, whose campaigns of anti-Israel demonization, antisemitism, and intimidation create a hostile environment throughout Canada. A number of the leading groups are linked to Palestinian terror organizations and hide their sources of funding." 

"NGO Monitor’s mapping of Canadian anti-Israel groups, partnerships, and funding shows the extent of NGO cooperation in advancing their agendas of isolating Israel and attacking the Jewish State’s supporters (and perceived supporters). This NGO network is responsible for violent public events, student encampments, statements, and legal actions. Ominously, many of these groups have publicly celebrated the Oct. 7th atrocities, and expressed support for Hamas and other Canadian-designated terrorist organizations."

• There is a blatant lack of transparency regarding the funding sources that enable the NGOs in the network. 
• 38 out of the 111 groups are registered with Canada Revenue as a business or charity. 29 organizations are known to have received some funding from the Government of Canada or provinces.
• Samidoun – a Palestinian terror-linked NGO with chapters in Vancouver, Toronto and Ottawa – is one of the key groups promoting hate and incitement in Canada through its planning and promotion of numerous antisemitic events and extensive partnerships across the country.
• Independent Jewish Voices (IJV), which claims to have 9 university and 18 regional chapters, has the most connections, partnering with 76 out of the 111 groups.
• While small in numbers, campus organizations are prominent in the network and have partnered with many NGOs, including those that receive Canadian government funding.
• On the cluster map, organizations are situated closer to other organizations with which they have more links (“force-directed layout”). Legal NGOs appear to be fairly central and connected, suggesting  that they are providing important services to many of the activist groups.

NGO Monitor 

 

If the federal government's inaction when Canadian Jews are relentlessly targeted leaves those Jews with the impression that they have little option but to leave the country they have lived in for centuries, they may succeed, even as the federal government welcomes immigration and refugee and migrant intake of Muslims fleeing violence in their countries of origin, bringing with them traditions of maliciously dangerous Jew-hate. 

 

Among Canada's lengthy list of proscribed terror groups, Hezbollah and Hamas have an honoured place, as do other groups such as the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network. Canadian Intelligence has warned that members of Hamas and Hezbollah have a presence in Canada, diligently working to undermine safety for Jews by inciting to violence. They alternately turn to harassing people at shopping centers and at Christmas Markets. Samidoun's leader and co-founder, Charlotte Kates established Vancouver as her group's national headquarters. Despite advocating against Israel as well as Canada's legitimacy, burning a Canadian flag at a demonstration, no lasting charges of hate-mongering resulted.

 

 The Canadian Integrated Threat Assessment Centre stated the "realistic possibility" of a violent attack against Jews in Canada, following the Bondi Beach atrocity in Australia, since both countries now share a progressive-left ideology that sacrifices the safety and security of their Jewish populations, while catering to the 'Islamophobia' myth that censures any criticism of Islamist threats and violence. This latest assessment is certainly not the only one acknowledging Canada's dysfunctional response to Islamist violence, awaiting the sudden occurrence of an Islamofascist attack on a Jewish event in Canada.

 

Waleed Khan, Osman Azizov and Fahad Sadaat are facing a combined total of 79 charges according to police, including attempted kidnapping with a firearm and sexual assault with a weapon, police say. Khan is also accused of funding ISIS and aiding terrorist activity, the RCMP said. (Toronto Police Service/YouTube)

 

"Our intelligence officials have made it clear that the ingredients that were in place in Sydney are also in place here in Canada."

"[The extremism that] fuelled mass murder on the beach in Sydney is present here in the GTA [Greater Toronto Area] and Canada and it is time for Canadians and Canadian leaders in particular to wake up before it is too late."

Noah Shack, CEO, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs 

 

 

Screams Before Silence

"Hamas is a political force."

"When you think of Hamas, you should not necessarily think of cutthroats, people armed to the teeth, or fighters. It's not like that." 

"Our collective obliviousness to what led, 100 years ago, to the Third Reich’s expansionism and the genocide of people not in conformity with the 'pure race' is asinine. And it is leading to the commission of yet another genocide..."

"Fellow Europeans, Italians, Germans: after the Holocaust, we should instinctively know that Genocide starts with dehumanizing the Other. If Israel's current attack agst [sic] Palestinians doesnt [sic] prompt our strong reaction, the darkest page of our recent history has taught us nothing."

"...Many Jewish people worldwide, unconditionally in love with Israel, live a lie. Premised upon the invisibilization/erasure [sic] of the Palestinians, Israel's founding ideology [and lie] is now leading to a genocide. What a disgraceful epilogue."

"Time to #UNseatIsrael from the UN."

UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese  

A general view shows the assembly during a special session of the UN Human Rights Council on the situation in Iran, at the United Nations in Geneva. (Valentin Flauraud/AFP)

  

After two years of conflict between Israel and the terrorist group Hamas in Gaza, following hard on Palestinian terrorism committing unspeakable atrocities in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, the guns are silent. Almost. The guns are still there. But the full-blown assaults one on the other have been stilled. Hamas deliberately and with malice aforethought planned a devastatingly traumatic event in an orgy of hate and blood-lust, when it dispatched four thousand operatives, mostly representing Hamas, but also Fatah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, with orders to commit mass rape, torture, a wide arc of killing, and the abduction of Israeli children, civilian men and women, and foreign farm workers as hostages.

 

Matters were too silent for too long as far as Hamas, which had signed a ceasefire/hudna with Israel, felt, and matters were proceeding that disturbed their agenda of isolating Israel, demoralizing its population and finagling the Jewish state's elimination, when important Arab/Muslim countries like the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan, joined Egypt and Jordan in signing a peace agreement with Israel  under the Abraham Accords, with signals that more would follow. The atrocities the Palestinian terrorist groups, joined by two thousand ordinary Palestinian civilians, wrought in Israel that day were flagrant examples of sadistic savagery meant to traumatize the Israeli population and shock its government. It did all of that.

 

 

And then the enormity of the event, the depth of the depravity in mutilating girls and women while raping and murdering them, of burning entire families alive in their homes, of killing anyone the marauding terrorists found in the streets unaware of a vicious armed invasion taking place, and hunting down thousands of fearful young Israelis at a music festival  to rape, murder and abduct, galvanized the Israeli government and the Israeli Defense Forces into a response, where the military following government orders set out to destroy Palestinian terror, its infrastructures, its weapons depots, its hiding places, while searching for the hostages.

 

The Gaza population was offered as a sacrifice to terrorism's goals with the deliberate intention on the part of Hamas leaders, to have as much collateral damage as possible inflicted on their populace to serve as a springboard in presenting Israel as a genocidal aggressor, augmenting their general representation of Palestinian victimhood at the hands of an oppressor that had nothing better to do than target Palestinians for death, a complete inversion of the Hamas covenant that bound it to the complete eradication of the Jewish state from the Middle East, and the death of Jews anywhere.

 

Screams Before Silence, presents testimonies from victims, rescuers, and researchers about the violence perpetrated by Hamas on October 7

 

Latent antisemitism comes alive when Israel is portrayed as a heartless aggressor, and those in any society that seem to have Jew-hate imprinted in their DNA are always eager to take such charges at face value, justifying their own beliefs about Jewish intentions to rule the world. The United Nations, the international institution whose stated goal is world peace, assigned an arm to oversee conditions and give aid to Palestinians in Gaza through UNRWA, and like the UN's Francesca Albanese, its appointed heads have always been thorough antisemites, while their employment of local Palestinians featured members of the various terrorist groups; neutrality is an unknown concept there, as is fairness and decency.

 

The people of Gaza have been ruled for the past several decades by an Islamist totalitarian government. Funded by the international community, overseen by the United Nations which has never had a problem defending the ongoing violence that Palestinians perpetrated over the last 80 years on Israel, while their leaders refused time and again to lay down arms and malice and agree to recognizing Israel's right of existence and establishing a state of their own alongside Israel. Their solution was a one-state settlement; a Palestinian state and no room for the presence of a Jewish state.

 

Armed fighters in Khan Younis, southern Gaza on Monday.  Abed Rahim Khatib / DPA via Getty Images

 

Now that the conflict has been paused, settled, awaiting results, plans are afoot to reconstruct Gaza once Hamas has surrendered its arms and faded into history. Hamas has no intention of doing either, despite its agreement to the ceasefire and its conditions, and the anxiety of the Middle East (with the exception of the Iran axis) to cement peace between Israel and 'Palestine'. In foreign parts across the world, Europe and North America, the massed protests supporting Palestine (and Hamas) calling for a ceasefire, should rightly see a mass sigh of relief, but those who were dedicated to achieving a ceasefire, were also firmly dedicated to opposing Israel's existence.

 

That hasn't changed, thanks to a massive influx of Muslim supporters of Palestine having over time infiltrated Western society, finding common cause with Western homegrown socialists, Marxists, 'progressive' academics and unions and just plain old closet Jew-haters, feeling free now to exit their dank basements to rally alongside fellow antisemites. 

 

And Gaza? How's it faring? If you're a member of Hamas, very well. As a civilian Palestinian who desperately wants an end to endless conflict, to repression, to threats and violence, not so good. Because, no longer distracted with shielding itself from Israeli fire meant to destroy the presence of terrorists, Hamas can now devote all its time to rebranding itself as the rightful governance of the territory they plotted to be the recipient of an Israeli response. Now Hamas is free to 'identify' those Palestinians they claim opposed their rule, and chose to collaborate with Israel or with Palestinian clans opposed to Hamas.

 

The order of the day now in Gaza is threats, beatings, public executions and full-blown violence between Hamas operatives charged to destroy family clans that reject Hamas as the ruling power in Gaza. Hamas once again rules that part of the territory where the IDF has no presence. Insisting they are implementing law and order, and executing the 'criminals' in Palestinian society. The population of Gaza once again faces the threat of death from its leaders, now that Hamas gangsters have emerged fully uniformed from their tunnels. Score-settling has turned a war zone into a death zone.

 

Masked gunmen prepare to execute a group of men in Gaza City.  via Reuters

 

  

The Nobility of Defacing a Holocaust Memorial

"[I had discussed my hunger strike with family to prepare them in advance -- it was not an] impulsive decision."

"I thought about it a long time. It wasn't some sort of product or symptom of mental illness."

"It's a product of a deeply found or held moral belief in what's right."

Iain Aspenlieder, 46, Ottawa resident

 

"There is an undeniable humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza. As Prime Minister Mark Carney stated, Israel’s handling of humanitarian aid in Gaza constitutes ‘a violation of international law.’ People are starving. Children are dying."

"Mr. Aspenlieder has accepted responsibility for his actions. When he is sentenced later this year, the court will hear that his conduct, while unlawful, was driven by a profound sense of compassion and moral urgency—not by hatred or prejudice. He looks forward to demonstrating that his motivation was rooted in a desire to call attention to human suffering, not to cause harm or spread intolerance."

Michael Spratt, lawyer for Iain Aspenlieder 

 

"The Ottawa Police Service (OPS) is investigating an act of vandalism that occurred overnight at the National Holocaust Monument, located at 1918 Chaudière Crossing."

"The monument was defaced with red paint."

"The Hate and Bias Crime Unit is actively leading the investigation and urges anyone with information to contact their tip line at 613-236-1222, extension 5625."

"The OPS treats incidents of this nature seriously and recognizes the profound impact they have on the community."

"We encourage anyone who witnesses or experiences such incidents to report them to police. Reporting hate-motivated incidents is an important step in stopping cycles of hatred."

Ottawa Police Service, June 9, 2025

 

"That person is no longer an employee [in the legal department] at the City of Ottawa."

"The National Holocaust Monument is a sacred place in our city, an important place in our city."

"And I know that members of the Jewish community were very distraught and disturbed to see it vandalized."

Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe, June 29, 2025 

The City of Ottawa has fired one of its lawyers after he was charged earlier this month with vandalizing the National Holocaust Monument. He was on leave at the time of the incident. CBCNews

 

According to the Law Society of Ontario website, a man named Iain David Aspenlieder -- who was until recently employed by the City of Ottawa as a legal counsel, and released from his position when he was arrested on June 27 and charged with mischief to a war monument, mischief exceeding $5,000 and harassment by threatening conduct -- has been "suspended administratively" and is no longer permitted to practice law.

 

The Ottawa Holocaust memorial, dedicated to the memory of the six million Jews who were murdered during World War II by state action of the Nazi government in Germany, was defaced with red paint, the words "FEED ME" scrawled in large block letters across its austere side. The man who perpetrated this unspeakable act of malicious disrespect to the memory of millions of innocent people sacrificed to the excesses of racist hatred pleaded guilty on Friday to the charges brought against him.

 

Court documents register "an acknowledgement of criminal responsibility". Imprisoned since his arrest, the man who professes a 'deeply held moral belief in what's right' as his motivation for scorning and defacing a memorial to man's inhumanity to man, is to be under strict house arrest now, with GPS monitoring in line with a plan proposed for his release on bail, pending sentencing.

 

Aspenlieder was caught by surveillance cameras on his arrival by bicycle at the monument at 2:59 a.m. on June 9, along with bags containing cans of paint. The video shows him throwing paint cans at the monument and brushing his "FEED ME" malice on the monument, then evacuating the area at 3:08 a.m. He had left behind his red-painted handprint for good measure. But this act of contempt is not to be viewed as anything but the expression of moral outrage over Israel's response to the Hamas carnage in southern Israel that necessitated a siege of Gaza.

 

When he was arrested, Aspenlieder wore a shirt with red paint spattered on it informing police he was wearing 'incriminating evidence'. Police seized a backpack, a Palestinian flag, a floral cap and running shoes, all of which were, given the red paint each revealed, 'incriminating evidence'. A bicycle, also sporting red paint, along with booklets and magazine  with titles sch as "Why does Canada choose to be complicit in Israel Apartheid?" and "Five Principles for Dismantling Antisemitism" were also taken as evidence of the man's moral outrage.

 

While affirming to police that he accepted responsibility, he deigned not to provide information of his beliefs, ideology or the disposal of the paintbrush he had used, while denying mental health disorders prompted his behaviour. Court was informed during a June 28 bail hearing that Aspenlieder was engaged in a hunger strike that would end only when Prime Minister Mark Carney stated that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was a 'war criminal', 'complicit in genocide'. Presto, Carney obliged without any prompting on this criminal's part, and the hunger strike is over. 

 

According to Justice of the Peace Stephen Louis Dibblee, the painted message "FEED ME" lacked context and it appears to him to represent Aspenlieder's hunger strike as "he takes a radical means of voicing his position on the (Israel-Palestine) conflict". For his part, Carney wrote on Twitter that Israel was violating international law by imposing blockades on desperately needed humanitarian aid reaching starving Palestinians, accusing the Israeli government of failing to prevent the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. No mention, evidently of Hamas.

 

No one has yet recommended that Carney and his foreign minister be stripped of their official duties as morally incompetent and politically focused on the reactions to be evidenced on the part of newly-arrived Gaza 'refugees' joining the cohorts already present in Canada and working ferociously day and night to foment civil unrest, and divisions between Canadian communities as they fire up the sleeping embers of antisemitism into a  blast furnace of hate against Canadian Jews.

 

Police investigating vandalism to the National Holocaust Monument in downtown Ottawa on June, 9, 2025. Photo by Jean Levac /Postmedia

 

"My father is a Holocaust survivor. His sister and his mother and father were all killed. My daughter is named after his sister" said Lawrence Greenspon, co-chair of the monument committee.

"When somebody defaces the National Holocaust Monument, it is personal and it hurts, and particularly when it is such an act of hatred and antisemitism."

Greenspon called on world leaders to go beyond 'bland and banal' condemnations and take action against antisemitism. He also said government leaders should "stop blaming Israel for the current conflict in the Middle East" — a clear shot at Carney. 

"Every time that a leader, including our own prime minister, stands with the leaders of France and Britain and condemns Israel for the situation in Gaza, it just feeds the fuels of antisemitism."

Toronto Sun 

Gaza Statement Damning Israel

"The war in Gaza must end now."

"The suffering of civilians in Gaza has reached new depths. The Israeli government's aid delivery model is dangerous, fuels instability and deprives Gazans of human dignity."

"We condemn the drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food."

"[It is] horrifying that over 800 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid." 

"[Israel's aid distribution system is] dangerous." 

 Joint statement; 25 national signatories

 

"The statement fails to focus the pressure on Hamas and fails to recognize Hamas's role and responsibility for the situation. Hamas is the sole party responsible for the continuation of the war and the suffering on both sides."

"At these sensitive moments in the ongoing negotiations, it is better to avoid statements of this kind."

Oren Marmorstein, spokesman, Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry 

Palestinians gather as they carry aid supplies that entered Gaza through Israel, amid a hunger crisis, in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip July 20, 2025.   Dawoud Abu Alkas/Reuters

 

Israel is held responsible by the international community for a situation engineered by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. Nations that have historically supported Israel's legitimate existence as a homeland for the world's Jews, re-established on Judean ancestral land, recognizing its democratic nature in harmony with their own, with a diverse population given equal citizenship and a justice system equal to their own, have taken to chiding Israel in essence for responding to deadly carnage by an enemy sworn to obliterate the Jewish state.

 

What's more, while recognizing Hamas for what it is, a terrorist entity that has time and again attacked Israel with the intention of destroying the country so that in its absence the land that has been in contention since 1948 would fall to Arab Palestinians who claim it as their own heritage, those same countries view that terrorist group on an equal footing with Israel. 'Palestine' has always been historically Jewish, with a population augmented by waves of migrants primarily from Egypt, along with those of other Arab countries. Just as Judaism's precepts and prophets were pilfered to flesh out the Koran, the land consecrated to Judaism by its ancient and ongoing presence has been claimed by Arab Palestinians.  

 

Palestinian propaganda has found a home in the West, where corrupted reality alters history and miraculously changes the violent predator into a victim, the actual victim into an oppressor. Where violently lethal atrocities can be viewed as the unfortunate excesses of an 'oppressed' people struggling to be free from the oversight of a country forced to defend itself from the barbarity of those portraying themselves as victims, dedicated to the destruction of a Jewish presence in the Middle East. 

 

When a situation is as plain to recognize as the reality that abundant humanitarian aid is available for Palestinians in Gaza whose leadership has deliberately sacrificed them for the greater goal of diminishing Israel's credibility in the opinion of the civilized West, while the United Nations insists in supplying that aid through Hamas which amasses the food, fuel and medical supplies in its warehouses rather than distributing it to the population, Israel is condemned. The distribution of humanitarian aid through another source working in tandem with the U.S. and Israel is penalized by the UN refusing to work with it, while Hamas threatens Palestinians who gather that aid from a source Hamas considers in competition with its goal of controlling the aid by selling it at high prices at food markets.

 

The signatories of the statement of condemnation, insisting that Israel stop 'the war in Gaza', include France, Japan and Britain, as well as Canada, traditional allies of Israel, all of which now prefer to believe Hamas's propaganda of 'genocide'. Israel lost no time rejecting the joint statement, which included the pro forma addition of condemning Hamas for holding the remnants of the 251 hostages they kidnapped from Israel on October 7, 2023 when thousands of Palestinian terrorists swarmed into southern Israel to rape, torture and murder Israeli children and their families.

 

Those who signed the statement damned the Israeli proposal to expand settlements in the 'Palestinian territories', and any move to divide the 'West Bank' from East Jerusalem, Israel's capital. Such moves, they decry, would "critically undermine the two-state solution". That would be the Two-State Solution that Palestinian leaders have always rejected in their adamant, timeless refusal to recognize Israel's right of existence. The same Two-State Solution that Palestinians refused in 1947, and have continued to reject ever since.

 

The Two-State Solution that died completely on October 7, 2023. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation posts regular updates on social media relating to its life-saving distribution of humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza. It also posts notices of Hamas killing and injuring their GHF humanitarian workers. As well as threats and attacks against Palestinians who frequent the GHF distribution centers. Besides the U.S., Germany was the only other G7 country that failed to endorse the joint statement of condemnation against Israel.

 

An aid distribution point set up by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation near the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza on June 25. Eyad Baba / AFP - Getty Images file

 

Release of Israeli Hostages

"Dear President Trump, first of all we want to say thank you for the happy moments we felt this week. But we want to tell you we still have 94 hostages, we need them all at home."

"Please do not stop. Please continue to press and do everything so that all the 94 hostages will come home immediately."

Ayelet Samerano, Israeli mother of hostage Yonatan Samerano

Israeli female soldier hostages Naama Levy, Daniella Gilboa, Karina Ariev and Liri Albag seen on a stage set up by Hamas in front of a Palestinian crowd before being handed over to the Red Cross in Gaza City, Jan. 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Abed Hajjar)

On Saturday, four members of the Israeli military, taken hostage by Hamas terrorists on 7 October 2023 during a horrific orgy of mass rape, mutilations,and mass murder, were released finally from their ordeal as captive prisoners held in Gaza by Hamas operatives. They were all four female soldiers: Karina Ariev, 20; Danielia Gilboa,20; Naama Levy, 20; and Liri Albag, 19. 

 

Naama Levy captured the world's attention, her plight seen through photographs and video footage taken by bodycams worn by Hamas operatives as they documented their horrific abuse of Israeli citizens in border farming communities by thousands of Palestinian terrorists prowling through villages killing and raping and looting, laying waste to the villages, burning entire families alive in their homes, hunting down youthful revellers at a nearby music festival, and taking hundreds of children, women, elderly and soldiers hostage into Gaza.

 

One of those soldiers was Naana Levy, seen in the trunk of a car and ordered into another one, her pants bloodied, hands tied behind her back, ankles bleeding, deliberately slashed to keep her from attempting to flee her captors who had raped and mutilated her. Seven female members of the Israel Defense Forces had been taken prisoner that day, from the Nahal Oz military base. Their duty there was to serve as lookouts.

 

Ori Megidish, one of the seven, was rescued on October 30, 2023 in a raid conducted by the IDF. Noa Marciano, 19, killed in Gaza, her body repatriated on November 17, 2023. Among the 33 hostages named by the Israeli government for release during the first phase of the temporary ceasefire is the fifth female soldier, Agam Berger. Israel agreed to free dozens of Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli jails for terrorist activities in exchange for the hostages.

Hamas terrirusts stormed the Nova festival on 7 October and killed hundreds

In Israel's estimation, a third of the 94 Israeli hostages remaining in Hamas hands in Gaza, are dead although Hamas has failed to release agreed upon definitive information detailing how many of the Israelis held captive remain alive, or listing the names of those who have died. The initial phase of the ceasefire deal is to see 33 of the hostages released in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians held prisoner in Israel.

 

It took 90 Palestinian prisoners to secure the release of the first three Israeli hostages a week ago Sunday. Some 100 of the hostages had been released through a brief ceasefire in November of 2023. Since then, the bodies of around three dozen hostages have been recovered, and eight hostages were rescued. "We cannot continue living in uncertainty. All hostages must return, and none of them has time left", cautioned Ayelet Samerano. 

Naama Levy (L) is seen with her hands bound and with a bloodied face in the newly released video footage, which was filmed by Hamas terrorists  Hostages and Missing Families Forum

Capitulating to the Imperative to Rescue Israeli Hostages

 

"A few minutes ago, I received the final word that all obstacles have been overcome and that the agreement is underway."

"Now they are working on the final technical wording."

"I want to congratulate Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu; he is responsible for the agreement."

Aryeh Deri, chairman, Israel's ultra-Orthodox Shas Party

"I fully expect that implementation will begin, as we said, on Sunday. Look, it's not exactly surprising that in a process in a negotiation, that has been this challenging this fraught, you may get a loose end."

"We're tying up that loose end as we speak; I've been on the phone, in one way or another, all morning with [U.S. National Security Council coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa] Brett McGurk, with our Qatari friends, and I am very confident this is moving forward."

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken

This photo provided by the Israeli Government Press Office shows Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, centre, with his security cabinet in Jerusalem to vote on a ceasefire deal after confirming an agreement had been reached that would pause the 15-month war with Hamas in Gaza. (Koby Gideon/Israeli Government Press Office/The Associated Press)

Earlier in the day on Thursday, the Israeli Prime Minister's Office revealed that Hamas had reneged on parts of the ceasefire agreement that had been announced on Wednesday; Hamas making an effort to extort last-minute concessions on a ceasefire agreement that would halt Israel's bombing of Hamas installations in Gaza, while returning up to a thousand Palestinian prisoners currently held in Israeli prisons for criminal terrorist activities in exchange for Israeli and foreign hostages left in Hamas hands.

The Axios news outlet cited an American government source confirming that the final disputes setting the ceasefire-for-hostages-and-terrorists-release agreement had been "resolved, and the agreement is now done". The agreement is now scheduled to be greenlit  Friday morning following a vote in the full cabinet. The agreement is set to go into effect on Sunday. The White House stated it is confident the ceasefire could yet be implemented.

The Palestinian Hamas organization was seen by Israeli negotiators as attempting to change the rules of the agreement, backtracking parts of the deal "in an effort to extort last-minute concessions". Hamas, a terrorist organization, feels entitled in its conflict with Israel, to appear the underdog, yet it negotiates as though it scents victory in its ongoing campaign to discredit the Jewish State internationally while continuing to pose a threat through continued deadly attacks, even while its position has changed from one of strength of personnel and military hardware to one of critical losses of both under Israel's Gaza invasion and destruction of its weapons caches and elite commanders.

Thirty-three named hostages both living and dead carved out of the 98 still held by Hamas in Gaza over a period 468 days -- since thousands of terrorists stormed southern Israel farming communities on October 7, 2023, to slaughter 1,200 Israelis, rape countless girls and women, burn entire families in their homes, commit sadistic acts of torture and dismemberment, killing infants to the elderly -- are now slated to be freed, to return to their families in Israel.

 

In exchange, up to a thousand Palestinians, found guilty of crimes are to be freed from Israeli prisons. Among the 33 Israelis, there are nine ill and wounded hostages to be released in exchange for the release of 110 Palestinians in prison serving life sentences. A withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces from the critical Philadelphi Corridor (along which weapons for Hamas were delivered from Egypt to Gaza) was a new demand that Hamas attempted to write into the agreement. PM Netanyahu "strongly insisted" the Hamas additional request be dropped.

The Philadelphi corridor has been implicated in past smuggling of arms and personnel into Gaza, and as such represents a need for Israeli troops to be present in the sensitive zone, since it was "crucial to stop weapons smuggling", as asserted by Mr. Netanyahu.

Furthermore the Religious Zionism Party signalled it would consider exiting the coalition with its seven Knesset members over the ceasefire deal. A member of Mr. Netanyahu's Likud Party, Israeli Minister for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism announced his intention to resign "if there is a withdrawal from the Philadelphi Corridor [before the war goals are achieved], or if we do not return to fighting to achieve the war goals". 

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich demanded a commitment to resuming the war's intention to fully dismantle Hamas and secure release of all hostages following this first phase; a condition for his party's continued presence in the government coalition. To do otherwise is to allow Hamas to regroup, recruit, rearm and get on with its promise to continue to commit additional October 7 atrocities, as long as it takes to destroy Israel.

An Israeli woman holds a candle during a pro-ceasefire agreement rally in Jerusalem late Thursday. The long-awaited agreement would take effect Sunday and involve the initial exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners. (John Wessels/AFP/Getty Images)

Israel Roaring in the Lion's Den

"Israel has every right to remove this threat and return our citizens to their home safely. And that's exactly what we're doing ... we'll continue degrading Hezbollah until all our objectives are met."

"Just imagine if terrorists turned El Paso and San Diego into ghost towns ... How long would the American government tolerate that?"

"Yet Israel has been tolerating this intolerable situation for almost a year."

"Well, I've come here today to say: Enough is enough."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back at critics of his campaigns against Hamas and Hezbollah in a speech at the UN General Assembly, justifying his military operations as necessary. Still from video

 

A 'precise strike' was the message conveyed by the Israeli military on Hezbollah central headquarters in Beirut. A set of buildings in the Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh were levelled after a precision strike by the Israeli Air Force, acting in conjunction with the Israeli Secret Intelligence Service. In service of yet another deadly strike against high-profile terrorist leaders, from Gaza to Lebanon to Iran. Intelligence comes in many forms, and it is worth pondering on the kind of humint that offers insider secret information enabling Israel to produce its pinpoint precision strikes where it knows its targets will be located.

Those with entree to the inner circles of Israel's terrorist enemies are obviously no loyal allies of those they betray; their betrayals owe to the fact that insiders privy to security secrets they may be, but their loyalties are to their countries which have been throttled by force, threat, intimidation and violence by the death-to-Israel-groups curried by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Betrayals of the mullahs of Iran holding their own people in thrall to a deadly ideology, along with those of their proxies stifling the lives of people whose countries they have control over.

Following Prime Minister Netanyahu's address to the United Nations where he stressed that nothing would deter Israel from its campaign against Hezbollah, just as it is engaged in destroying Hamas, both of which terrorist groups threaten Jewish lives and the State of Israel with annihilation in coordination with the Islamic Republic, assent was given for the IAF to strike Hezbollah's central headquarters.

The ultimate target of the strikes was Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. The size and timing of the destructive blast ensured the presence of a high-value target necessitating the attack. Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Haggari announced that the main Hezbollah headquarters, positioned  under residential buildings was the target. Four buildings, as a result, were reduced to rubble by the powerful blast that rattled windows and shook houses up to 30 kilometres north of Beirut. 

Israel had good reason after enduring thousands of rockets striking northern Israel for almost a year, displacing 60,000 Israelis internally, unable to return to their homes under constant bombardment. Forests, farms and towns under constant fire leading to ravaging wildfires destroying both environment and infrastructure and the hopes of returnees. There is a planned ground invasion for the purpose of installing a wide berth on the border of southern Lebanon and northern Israel clear of Hezbollah terrorists.

During his speech, President Netanyahu, a formidably skilled communicator, gave his audience a lesson on what a determined nation is capable of doing to a relentless enemy intent on destroying a country dedicated to the preservation of world Jewry. Visual aids skilfully deployed enabled him to defend Israel's response to the horrendous October 7 atrocities perpetrated on unarmed Israeli civilians that resulted in Israel's military operation to destroy the threat represented by Hamas.

Israel, he emphasized, desired peace, and he delivered a special message to Iran: "If you strike us, we will strike you." Placing ultimate responsibility where it belongs. For its part, Lebanon has fair reason to fear a repeat of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict of 2006, the cause of massive destruction in areas of the country which harbours and submits to the direly destructive presence of the 'Party of God'.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly, Sept. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

The Arab-Muslim/Canadian Divide

"[With respect to] the increasing push for Liberal staff members to phone bank and door knock, while many of us started our political careers in elections as volunteers, we can no longer in good conscience campaign for a party that excludes us and our values."

"[They will not participate in activities as party members until the government changes its diplomatic posture to] join our allies in explicitly condemning Israel for its numerous war crimes and for the genocidal rhetoric from members of the Israeli Cabinet."

"[Canada must] join our allies, including Norway, Spain, and Ireland in recognizing the state of Palestine [and] acknowledge anti-Palestinian racism as a unique form of hate and work to address it in Canada."

"[As well as an end to] all research collaboration on military and dual-use technologies between Canadian and Israeli researchers." 

"Over the past months we have expressed our growing concerns in relation to the human rights violations experienced by Palestinians and advocated for a change in policy towards a posture that is aligned with our values,"

"We have often felt unheard by the leadership of our party."

Arab and Muslim Liberal ministerial staffers

"They're far more brave than we are. We held back our money, sure.... They're putting their own livelihood at risk."

"I'm hoping that the party recognizes that this is not some people who may or may not be donating. Maybe they think they can find other donors, but you can't just find 50 staff overnight."

"What [the staff] are really trying to do is help the Liberal Party wake up, and they're taking this extreme step to do so."

Hussein Hamdani, founding member, Network 100-GTA

Dozens of Arab and Muslim staffers with the federal Liberals have threatened to sit out of the upcoming Montreal byelection over the government’s stance on the war in Gaza and its policies on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. CBCNews

Perhaps it was inevitable under the Liberal, 'progressive', 'post-national' agenda of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that a large contingent of ministerial staff numbering 52, who happen to be Arab or Muslim have issued an ultimatum to the Liberal Party that they are no longer prepared to act as objective, non-partial staffers in Parliament to ministerial offices until such time as the government actively pursues the staffers' personalized agenda of condemning Israel for responding to the October 7, 2023 mass atrocity visited upon the Jewish state's southern border region of farming communities, devastated by mass slaughter at the hands of Hamas terrorists.

 

What Israelis recognize as an existential threat to their survival within a Jewish state, and Palestinians interpret as a threat to their ambition of using the ancestral Judaic geography to be dedicated to a state for Palestinians is the issue at the heart of these 52 dissenters' demands of the Canadian government. That no country on the globe would ever hesitate to protect itself and its people from criminal violence, much less a mass atrocity on the scale of what Israelis were subjected to on October 7 is no impediment to the demands of these Liberal staffers who would surely feel more at home in Gaza than Canada.

 

Under international law any country that is attacked in less extreme a manner than what Israel was forced to experience, is entitled, and expected to take any and all steps required to ensure the safety and security of its population. It is the primary obligation of any state. Palestinian terrorists have proven themselves over the decades to be resolutely committed to the destruction of Israel. Violent, deadly attacks have been non-stop. They are countered by Israel's military and its intelligence branches' efforts to apprehend any attacks in their planning stages, preemption that occasionally fails.

The scope and barbaric severity of the last terrorist attack on southern Israel, makes it impossible for matters to proceed as they have for 70 years; Israel can no longer handle each crisis as it arises; the time has come for the complete and total eradication of Palestinian terrorism, its structures, infrastructure, operatives, stores of weaponry, all to be demolished. As would any other nation commit to under similar unending violent attacks requiring the nation-target to be ever on alert, ever prepared to meet new lethal challenges. The time has come, simply put.

Arab and Muslim demographics in Canada choosing to support terrorism against a Western democratic country have no place in this country, much less feel entitled by sheer force of numbers, to declare themselves at war with a foreign country, and to aspire to force the government of a country that has given them the opportunity to live peacefully in a framework of peaceful co-existence of all ethnic/religious groups that have made Canada their home through a century of immigration.

Threatening to quit their jobs? Why wait? Their challenge could be swiftly accommodated by relieving them of their employment. The Arab/Muslim Liberal ministers in the Cabinet and caucus can continue to do their jobs as best they can without such staff, as a lesson learned in how critical it is to hire staffers capable of doing the work assigned to them, rather than deploy themselves as arbiters of how government must react to international situations, to suit their personal standards of justice and accountability. 

 

The sooner, the better.

 

Salma Zahid, Liberal MP for Scarborough Centre, speaks during a discussion titled “Voices for Peace” organized by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Youth Association in the Parliamentary Precinct of Ottawa. Canada shifted its stance to join international calls for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Spencer Colby

"We fully stand behind the comprehensive ceasefire deal, outlined by President Biden and endorsed by the UN Security Council. We call on parties to the conflict to agree to the deal. Any delay will only see more lives lost."

"[Hamas must lay down its arms and release all hostages, civilians must be protected and a sustained increase in the flow of humanitarian assistance throughout Gaza]."

"The Liberal Party of Canada firmly believes that everyone should feel safe, welcome, and included in our movement — and we'll continue working very hard to engage volunteers and supporters on their priorities to keep moving forward."

Liberal Party statement