Abandoning Israel and Acquiescing to Antisemitism

"[The France/Britain/Canada joint statement condemning/warning Israel on Gaza would be] read, amplified and weaponized by those who seek to justify violence and hatred against Jews in Canada."

"When the government of Canada speaks about this conflict, it is not only addressing events in the Middle East -- it is shaping the climate for Jews in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and beyond." 

Jewish Community Council of Montreal

Left to right: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrives at the District Court in Tel Aviv on May 19, 2025. (Miriam Alster/Flash90); Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer gestures during a visit in Kingston upon Hull, England, March 13, 2025. (Oli Scarff/Pool Photo via AP); France's President Emmanuel Macron delivers a speech during the National Contest for Resistance and Deportation event, at the Elysee Palace in Paris on May 7, 2025. (Michel Euler / POOL / AFP); Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks during a campaign rally in Toronto, on April 4, 2025. (Peter Power/AFP)

It took no time at all in the wake of the initial concern expressed by Israel's allies over the dread events of October 7, 2023 -- when thousands of Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists stormed across from Gaza into southern Israel to rape, maim and murder 1,200 Israeli infants, elderly, families, foreign farm workers and IDF members, taking 250 children, women and men hostage back to Gaza to be kept in inhumane conditions as barter for exchange of Palestinian terrorists in Israeli prisons -- for those allies to turn their backs on Israel. 

 

The kibbutzim that were raided and destroyed by the terrorists were peopled by Israelis who viewed Palestinians sympathetically and hired many at good wages for agricultural work. Their empathy was rewarded in barbaric savagery. The very Palestinians with whom Israelis had forged friendly relations, offering them employment hard to come by in Gaza were among those who helped the terror invaders with hand-drawn maps indicating where Kibbutz security could be found, and some among them accompanied the terrorists as ordinary Palestinian civilians advantaging themselves of the opportunities to loot and destroy.

 

Palestinian terrorists move towards the border fence with Israel from Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on October 7.   Said Khatib/AFP/Getty Images

That kind of betrayal of the goodwill that was given them was difficult to parse as that part of human nature that is more given to evil than to good. But it is the back-stabbing betrayal of those choosing to counter Israel's response to the horrors of October 7 through its determination to finally destroy the death cult representing Palestinian terrorism in the final realization that it could never be turned around and the necessity of defeating it militarily leading to the Israel Defense Forces hunting down of Hamas operatives shielding themselves from repercussions by melting into the densely populated cities of Gaza and the myriad tunnel system with its stores of weaponry.

 

While Israel faced added assaults from Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and the Islamic regime in Iran, added to the ongoing rocket attacks from Gaza -- defending itself on all fronts, Spain, France, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands critiqued what they characterized as 'group punishment' meted out to Palestinians in the Israeli military actions to root out the terrorists from among the civilians who gave those terrorists the supporting mandate for October 7's atrocities. 

On the streets of Europe and North America a staggering number of Palestinians, Muslim immigrants and hordes of non-Muslim unions, academics, university students and others rallied in support of Palestinian 'liberation' from 'occupation', championing Hamas as 'freedom fighters', and slandering Israel as 'oppressors' of Palestinians whose leaders at every junction, turned down the opportunities given them to bargain in good faith toward an agreement to recognize Israel and form an agreed-upon state of their own. While the world echoed 'two-state solution', Palestinians taunted 'From the river to the sea', 'global Intifada', and 'Final Solution!' alongside 'Jews go back to Poland'.

 

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators outside the fenced in area of an encampment on the University of Toronto campus in Canada on May 2, 2024. Photo by Cole Burston/AFP via Getty Images.

Condemning Israel for its purported 'disproportionate' response to an existential threat that Hamas promised to repeat unendingly, France, Canada and the United Kingdom signed a condemnatory statement denouncing Israel for its military action in Gaza, citing the Gaza Health Authority on the toll taken by the Palestinian population as unacceptable to their sense of moral sanctimony. All three have chosen to abandon their own Jewish citizens to the mobs that have howled after them, threatened them and committed unlawful acts that authorities refuse to put a stop to.

 

In Canada, former Liberal prime minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet chose to lend their support to the large and growing Muslim population in Canada unified against Israel in support of the Palestinian claim to Jewish ancestral land as their own, intolerably 'occupied' by Jews. The Trudeau Liberals chose to deviate from Canada's traditional firm alliance with Israel by voting against Israel in UN General Assembly sanctions against the Jewish state. When the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trudeau signalled he would be arrested if he came to Canada.

 

Antisemitism thrived and grew under the Liberal government, and it continues to under its newly-renewed mandate to continue governing under a new prime minister who appointed the same cabinet ministers to variant portfolios, all of whom have lost no time in repeating the slanders of the past against Israel, all of whom are content to allow unbridled chaos on the streets of Canadian cities as Palestinian-organized rallies harass Canadian Jews in front of their synagogues, community centres, old-age homes, parochial schools and residential communities. 

Canadian Prime Minister and Liberal Party Leader Mark Carney speaks to his supporters after winning the Canadian Federal Election on April 29, 2025 (Photo: Getty Images)

 

 

Canada's Mismanaged Afghan Kabul Evacuations

Gen. Wayne Eyre   CBC

"We wish we could have stayed longer and rescued everyone who was so desperate to leave. That we could not is truly heartbreaking, but the circumstances on the ground rapidly deteriorated."

"[Soldiers] witnessed horrific things, they faced incredible dangers and the feeling of helplessness and guilt that arises from having to leave people behind can be overwhelming."

"I have received emails from people I worked with during my tours in Afghanistan who are desperate to get out or get their families out. Their pleas, and the photos of the families in terrible situations that accompany them, are heart-wrenching. They tear at our souls."

"Throughout the operation, we received word of multiple imminent attacks, which necessitated changes to our plans on the ground, and demanded maximum adaptability and agility on the part of our people."

"[This is the] most complex and dangerous] evacuation operation] in modern history."

Acting Chief of Defense Staff Lt.-Gen. Wayne Eyre, Ottawa, Canada

Kabul Airport Attack: 13 US service members were killed and 18 others wounded.   NDTV

"Canada's poor initial response in Kabul points to an extreme of centralized political micro-management", commented retired Canadian General Andrew Leslie, former head of the Canadian Army, elected to Parliament from 2015 to 2019, when he declined to run again, after  having served in a minor portfolio with the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau, when one of the Prime Minister's many sordid exploits that revealed his vindictive streak in ruining the career of the-then vice-chief of staff, Admiral Mark Norman, offended Mr. Leslie by its corrupt misuse of executive power.

Canada managed to airlift an estimated 3,700 people out of Afghanistan in 16 flights, before the Liberal government ended its evacuation operation on Thursday. Too little, too late. The Liberal government headed by Justin Trudeau knew for months that Canadians living in Afghanistan and Afghans who had worked alongside and with Canadians, both military and diplomatic as interpreters and aides would be in peril soon after the U.S./NATO deadline of 31 August departure from Afghanistan.

Military veterans' groups in Canada urged the government to act, to complete the paperwork, to contact the vulnerable Afghans who depended on Canada's promise it would look after their interests by removing them from the danger that threatened their lives and the lives of their families, to expedite matters and bring them to safety. The government did nothing. It issued some visas but failed to follow up, and desperate Afghans attempting to make contact with officials in Ottawa were shunted from department to department, nothing resolved.

The shabby, uncaring treatment that former Afghan allies received from a careless government whose leader was more interested in returning to a majority position from the minority government of the last election, reflected scant attention to the catastrophe unfolding in Afghanistan when the Taliban moved swiftly to confront and oust the duly elected government supported by the West, and disperse the defences of the government; the national police and the military, all three abandoned by the U.S. in its zeal to exit the country.

"There is no country in the world other than the U.S. that's got the capability of projecting force to the other side of the world, and securing an airport like that", said Lt.-Gen. Eyre in his concluding remarks to the press on the imminent departure of the U.S. by August 31. A date which 'justified' Canada's decision to end its evacuation flights as of yesterday. Citing the growing threat of terrorist attacks from the Islamic State. And then the anticipated and feared attack occurred only hours after Canada's announcement that its evacuation activity was over.

When a horrendous, "complex" and "heinous" attack with two explosions by suicide bombers took place at two entrance gates to Kabul airport. In one of the attacks where the bomber wore an explosives vest he was being questioned by U.S. Marines at a checkpoint when he detonated the vest. Thirteen Marines died in the blast and many others were injured. The twin bombs killed at least 80 Afghan men, women and children, many of whom had been waiting for hours in a foetid drainage ditch, for permission to enter the airport with their papers, on flights that would take them to freedom.

An estimated 8,000 Afghans had made application for evacuation by Canada. The number left behind is unknown, but the Canadian Armed Forces are making no apologies, just sincere regrets that their mission was halted due to extremely dangerous conditions prevailing in the area, along with the shortage of time to continue expediting passage out of Afghanistan. There was no "abandonment" of people, bridled the military. The responsibility of timing and efficiency not completely theirs however, and the prime minister adamantly makes no apologies on his part.

"[CAF members] experiences have not been made any easier by the fact that operation was carried out under intense, and often misinformed public scrutiny and criticism", remarked Lt.-Gen. Eyre. In particular as an example he mentioned reports of a video appearing to show Canadian special forces ignoring Afghans waving what they claimed to be Canadian exit documents. 

"We were surprised by the speed of the Taliban takeover of Kabul. And I'm sure there'll be much ink spilt about this. This is an extraordinary humanitarian crisis. But make no mistake, this is a crisis of the Taliban's making." And just incidentally a prime minister whose personal ambitions trumped his responsibility as chief executive of a nation that promised aid and comfort to those who worked with it under dangerous conditions and now face deathly reprisals from the Taliban.

A Canadian aircraft flies evacuees out of Kabul on 23 August    Reuters

"Watching explosions, watching death and destruction in Afghanistan is heart-breaking. Women and girls will once again be subjected to a brutal Taliban regime. There is no rule of law, no respect for rights, it's a travesty."

"We were calling for action to get people out, to work with our allies. We've been demanding this for months and, in some cases, years. The Trudeau government has failed to act and they have abandoned people on the ground in Afghanistan." 

Conservative Leader of the Parliamentary Opposition, Erin O'Toole

The New Afghanistan is the Old Afghanistan

"Make no mistake, this evacuation mission is dangerous. I cannot promise what the final outcome will be or that it will be without risk of loss. Any American who wants to come home, we will get you home."

"I have seen no questioning of our credibility from our allies around the world. I have spoken with our NATO allies. the opposite, we're acting with dispatch. It's time to end this war. I think we can get it done [get all Americans out by August 31] by then, but we're going to make that judgement as we go."

"To the best of our knowledge, the Taliban checkpoints, they are letting through people showing American passports."

"I took the consensus opinion [on withdrawal of forces]. the consensus opinion was, that in fact, it [Taliban takeover] would not occur, if it occurred, until later in the year."

U.S. President Joe Biden

US Air Force security forces raven maintains a security cordon at Hamid Karzai International Airport [Taylor Crul/US Air Force/AFP]

American allies complained bitterly that the Biden administration failed to consult with them, failed to give them timely notice of the intention to withdraw the U.S. military presence from the American bases that fell to the Taliban. Prime Minister Boris Johnson was said to have attempted fruitlessly to speak with Mr. Biden, but his request for a return call wasn't returned for a day and a half. Now, NATO allies are attempting to persuade the Biden administration to put off complete withdrawal until such time as they have succeeded in getting all of their nationals to safety and rescuing as many of the Afghan civilians that worked for and with them.

 

The Taliban control roads leading to the Kabul airport and they maintain strict control over the checkpoints leading into the airport. There are reports the Taliban are confiscating passports from Afghans desperate to make flights out of Afghanistan, and are refusing to allow people to pass through into the airport from the packed crowd-control areas where rifle butts and whips and stark orders help with the job of keeping people in line. The U.S. agreement with the Taliban not to harm Americans in exchange for non-interference is tenuous.

 

"Any attack on our forces or disruption of our operations at the airport will be met with a swift and forceful response", said the president of the Taliban airport checkpoints. In any event, pointed out the president, some of those gathered by the thousands desperate to enter the airport and be taken by magic flights away from the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan may not be who they appear to be: "There's a whole lot of Afghanis who would just as soon come to America, whether they have any involvement with the United States in the past at all rather than stay under Taliban rule or any rule".

Taliban fighters patrol in Kabul, Afghanistan [Rahmat Gul/AP Photo]

According to Democratic congressman Jason Crow sitting on the House Intelligence Committee, 100,000 Afghans who gave assistance to the United States during its 20-year tenure in Afghanistan could ultimately be left behind, that the Taliban were making use of files from Afghanistan's intelligence agency to identify U.S. 'sympathizers' for their very own special treatment. Diplomats from the Kabul U.S. embassy had sent an internal memo of "dissent" warning of swift gains by the Taliban and a collapse of Afghan security forces, back in mid-July.

And in Kabul and other cities now in the capable hands of the Taliban, an Afghan woman, ordered to pay for, provide and cook the food ingredients to serve to Taliban stationed nearby her home -- a general order that went out in an aura of increasingly scarce food supplies impoverishing Afghans -- was set on fire by the Taliban fighters she was serving who deemed her cooking to be inferior and who viewed this as just punishment for the error of her cooking skills.

It was an Afghan judge who reported on the incident following a group of Afghans waving the Afghan flag being attacked by the Taliban. Former judge and human rights campaigner Najia Ayoubi, fled when the government collapsed but continues to campaign against violence directed at women, as she did when reporting casual abuse of women taking place since the Taliban victory. "They also force families to marry their young daughters to Taliban fighters. I don't see where is the promise that they think women should be going to work, when we are seeing all of these atrocities."

 

House-to house searches in systematic manhunts for government officials, former soldiers, Afghans who had worked with foreign troops, journalists and other non-governmental workers is being carried out with great vigour despite the central Taliban leadership promising a general amnesty to former government officials and soldiers. Safe houses operated by a German charity meant to give haven to Afghan nationals connected with coalition forces, were shut down by necessity because they had become "death traps".

 

Taliban fighters stand guard at a checkpoint in the Wazir Akbar Khan neighbourhood in the city of Kabul, Afghanistan, August 22, 2021 [Rahmat Gul/AP Photo]

 

"The Taliban are going door-to-door looking for local forces. This was foreseeable and there has already been a visit to one of the safe houses by the Taliban. Thank God it was empty", said Marcus Grotian, a German soldier who operates the safe-house network. Footage has emerged of Taliban fighters on the streets of captured cities taking aside anyone they suspect of 'disloyalty' to be abused and arrested. The Taliban have reverted to form despite assurances to an international audience that all would be well.

The 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation has issued a formal statement that now is the time for all 'sides' in Afghanistan to reach a conciliation agreement, for order and good government to prevail and peace to set in. Afghanistan, they declared, should never again become a safe haven for terrorists. A confusing statement at the very least, since the Taliban is, in and of itself a terrorist group, one that enjoys quite collegial relations with al-Qaeda, and permits the presence of ISIL on Afghan soil.

With the OIC recognition of the Taliban as the new-and-improved government as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the Islamic world confers recognition of legitimacy on a terrorist group that has succeeded in short order -- through sowing terror in violent bombings and assassinations -- to oust the constitutional government of the country, prepared to set up another, under strict sharia law that will effectively ban the quality of life for Afghans. As for peace and harmony, it will not be achieved.

A desperately cowed and fearful public destined once again to adjust to their reduced position from free human beings to indentured theists suffering the oppressive tyranny of Byzantine-era armed-and-dangerous thugs who are able to mete out instant punishment over perceived sharia infractions resulting in public floggings and murder, will return Afghanistan to the stone age. But there is a reckoning on the sidelines as former members of the Northern Alliance regroup in the Panjshir Valley to eventually march in opposition to the Taliban to  return some semblance of liberty to a suffering population.

Ahmad Massoud, son of Afghanistan’s slain anti-Soviet resistance hero Ahmad Shah Massoud [File: Mohammad Ismail/Reuters]

 

 

 

The Nightmare of Afghanistan

"There are tons of people waiting outside the civilian camp [at the Kabul airport]. They just sent the same email to everyone to come here because there is a flight today."

"They [U.S. authorities] promised to open the door at 8 a.m., but they didn't open it."

"We are going home. No other choice."

UN employee, awaiting airlift out of Afghanistan

 

"The Taliban is not the North Vietnamese army."

"They’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of the embassy of the United States from Afghanistan." 
U.S. President Joe Biden, July 8

Afghans inside a U.S. military plane waiting to leave the country from Kabul’s airport on Thursday.  Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

British, American, Canadian and other NATO-allied Western governments have promised Afghans who had committed over the past two decades to assisting and working with them as interpreters, aides, administrative assistants and locally engaged filling all types of positions useful to the foreign diplomats and troops, that none of their former allies would be left behind with the departure of Western nationals. All saw it as their obligation to return the trust and help given them by Afghans by helping them to depart the country, now under control of the Islamist extremists known to much of the world as a terrorist brigade.

 

The Taliban both in the past when they ruled Afghanistan under strict sharia law interpreted to the letter of human-rights-abusive oppression and vicious punishment for any perceived sharia-interpreted infractions, and at present, known to have committed atrocities against unarmed civilians and armed national police and military alike, is held to be preparing for a vituperative bloodbath against all those whom they consider to have been betrayers of Islamist values -- Taliban values as fanatical Islamists.

 

The desperation of Afghans who know the fate that awaits them at the hands of the Taliban led thousands of Afghan civilians to follow the example of the national police and military -- to seek haven abroad, to be safe from the malevolent revenge of the Taliban. Thousands gathered inside the airport hoping for a place on an outgoing plane, many carrying documents of proof of their claims, others appearing with none including passports, hoping for a humanitarian gesture to award their trust.

 

The thousands of Afghans who performed work for Western forces, NGOs, humanitarian groups and representatives of civil authorities giving aid to Afghanistan desperately begged for rescue from the fate that would be theirs on the departure of the Western presence in their country. Britain had airlifted over 500 of their own nationals, Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy applicants for their resettlement scheme on RAF transport aircraft.

 

"U.K. military personnel are helping to maintain security at the airport in Kabul to allow hundreds of eligible people to safety depart every day", stated a Foreign Office spokesman. And then there are those trapped between the airport perimeter and the airport where Taliban security guards 'keep order' with the butts of rifles and whips. "We have all these documents, but now we have been here for eight hours in this crowd. Will we gt inside the airport?" queried Masoud Zamani showing passports and U.K. visas for himself and family.

Khalil Haqqani, a leader of the Taliban-affiliated Haqqani network, delivering remarks after Friday Prayer at the Pul-i-Khishti Mosque in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Friday.  Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

 

Seated on American Humvees they've taken possession of, the Taliban wear the fatigues taken from the Afghan army they dispatched in defeat mere days ago, maintaining stern vigil over growing crowds around the airport perimeter. The Taliban shout at the crowd to "move back", looking out for cameras, interrogating anyone holding a cellphone. One woman speaks of her sister telling her the Taliban were "throwing hot water on women" waiting at the airport's eastern gate.

 

The surging crowd packed outside the airport passed small children, hand to hand, to lift them over the perimeter wall into the hands of U.K. and U.S. soldiers, hoping their children would be taken to safety. Earlier in the week, young Afghan men had clung to the fuselage of a U.S. C-17 military jet as it flew American personnel out of Afghanistan at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. As the plane rose, the men fell to their deaths. 

 

How desperate? That desperate. 

A man hangs a Taliban flag after Friday prayers in Kabul.  Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times