The Search for New Recruits In a Large Body-Count Conflict

"The body is turning into a public good [in Russia]."

A woman's body is a producer of children, and a man's body is the ability to pull the trigger."

Andrew Makarychev, professor University of Tartu, Estonia 

Russian soldiers during a rehearsal for the Victory Day parade . Photo: Valya Egorshin/AFP

 

In Russia recently the government doubled sign-up bonuses for contract military personnel. Social media and city streets are covered with recruitment advertisements. A new law makes official what Moscow had already countenanced; allowing criminal suspects to avoid trial should they enlist. They can join those already in prison who had been promised commuting of sentences if they agree to join the military in Ukraine.

A child crawls as she plays on the paving stones of Red Square in central Moscow, in front of St. Basil's Cathedral. (Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty Images)

 

Russia's Vladimir Putin decreed that a national priority is the increase of births among the population. A new bill was introduced to outlaw advocacy for a lifestyle unencumbered by offspring. These campaigns form part of the  Kremlin's efforts to enlist Russians in the country's campaign to prevail over the West. In the short term, the army requires more soldiers, in reflection of the 1,000 daily casualties in its Ukraine war of attrition.

Russia needs more people to give support to an increasingly isolated economy, to reduce reliance on immigration, and provide the recruitment pool for future wars. Russia's military was mandated by Mr. Putin to a 180,000 increase in service members to 1.5 million serving in the military. An ambition which would give Russia the second-largest military in the world after China's.

"It is necessary to take care of the population, to increase the fertility rate. To make it fashionable to have many children, as it used to be in Russia in the past -- seven, nine, ten people in families", said Mr. Putin, waxing nostalgic. Of course he is also nostalgic about Russia's past glories and revels in the thought of a return to the USSR, with himself as the new Stalin.

To boost the population of a nation where the fertility rate has diminished over the years, and continues to be far lower than replacement deems ideal at a time when childbirth is at its lowest in a quarter century, declining by 1.8 million since 2020, women giving birth to their first child can expect a gift of $6,700. Lawmakers a month ago introduced a bill to "prohibit the propaganda of the conscious refusal to have children" bolstered by fines up to $50,000.

Ukraine does it differently. Military recruitment officers now raid restaurants, bars and a concert hall in Kyiv to check military registration documents, detaining men not in compliance. Kyiv's Palace of Sports following a concert spawned video footage aired on media outlets showing officers stationed outside the concert hall doors to intercept men as they exit. The video shows that some men were forcibly detained by officers.

 

Moment Ukrainian men yell 'get away from me' as they are dragged out of nightclubs and restaurants by army recruiters during targeted raids

 

Upscale shopping centre Goodwine, and Avalon, a popular restaurant received similar attention. These raids reflect Ukraine's desperate requirement for fresh recruits in a nation where all men 25 to 60 are eligible for conscription and men between 18 and 60 are not permitted to flee the country. Laws in April lowered the draft-eligible age for men from 27 to 25, with some draft exemptions done away with. Across other Ukrainian cities raids were conducted in clubs and restaurants; Kharkiv and Dnipro included.

Men eligible for military service since spring must input information into an online system; failure to do so has consequences in penalties. In the meantime, a Russian-controlled oil terminal in the partly-occupied Luhansk region that provides fuel for Russia's war machinery was struck by the Ukraine military. According to Russia's Defence Ministry, 47 Ukrainian drones were intercepted and destroyed by its air defence systems Saturday. The Ukrainian air force for its part, announced air defences shot down 24 of 28 drones launched against Ukraine overnight.

A woman walks next to a house heavily damaged by a Russian airstrike in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, on Saturday. (Reuters)

Canada's Immoral/Political/Social Distancing from Israel

"The Canadian government made some important and timely statements but the actions it has taken have not been supportive."

"Doing that [putting in place an arms embargo on Israel] in the midst of a just war that Israel is prosecuting as it exerts its right to self-defence means rewarding Hamas. While it is not the intention, it ends up being the effect."

"I am under constant security protection. After October 7, my wife and I attended the March for Israel in Washington, D.C. When we flew back to Montreal, security asked us not to leave the airport. Security personnel spoke to me and informed me of what has been characterized as imminent and lethal threats." 

Irwin Cotler, Montreal Liberal, former Attorney General of Canada

In a still of a video posted online, protesters at a pro-Palestinian rally are seen burning a Canadian flag as some chant 'death to Canada, death to the United States and death to Israel.' (Jarryd Jäger/Western Standard)

 

"We are Hezbollah and we are Hamas!" was chanted in Vancouver on the first anniversary of the horrendous October 7, 2023 organized Palestinian terrorist attack in southern Israel that saw thousands of terrorists along with ordinary Palestinian citizens flood across the border from Gaza into Israel with the intention of mass slaughter. And mass slaughter is what occurred that day, with the savage killing of 1,200 mostly civilian Israelis, from infants to the elderly, alongside mass rape and mutilation of Israeli girls and women.

 

While normal people are aghast at the devastating human loss and anxious to have the Israeli girls, women, elderly men and others still in captivity as hostages in Gaza -- tormented, tortured and threatened with rape and death -- returned to Israel, in Canada, Palestinians, other Muslim-Canadians and their leftist 'progressive' champions are satisfied that these barbaric acts of vicious sadism merely represent the entirely forgivable acts of defiance of an oppressed people, shaking the bars of occupation. 

 

People write in chalk outside of a building during a pro-Palestine rally marking the anniversary of a Hamas attack on Israel in Vancouver, B.C., Monday, Oct. 7, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ethan Cairns

 

Mass 'protests' against Israel's very existence continue in the streets of Canadian cities. Harassment of Jewish neighbourhoods and persecution of Canadian Jews have become so normalized that it leads to the real potential of unstoppable violence. Unstoppable because no authorities appear to be the least bit concerned that by not taking action against violent speech those that engage in it are encouraged to go further in their unlawful pursuits of delegitimizing an entire people and the country representing their interests.

At the federal level -- which is where the crackdown on illegal marches closing off thoroughfares, taking over public arenas, creating totally hostile atmospheres and indulging in slanderous statements against Jewish Canadians, using the word 'Zionist' as a vile pejorative, inviting Jews to return to Europe where they purportedly belong, and not in their ancestral geography where their presence is an irritant to peace in the opinion of religious/social/ethnic bigots -- nothing is done to dissuade antisemitic hordes from their zealotry of Jew-hate.

 

Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly says Canada’s goal right now ‘is to make sure there is no full-scale war in the Middle East.’ CBC

 

When the Conservative Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre judges Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs in the House of Commons of being a tool of Palestinian terrorism in her attitudinal declarations, he is accused by  Melanie Joly of being a Nazi. His charges of "pandering to Hamas supporters" by the Trudeau government are deemed out of line in Parliament, when he is merely pointing out the obvious.

The lack of reaction of the Liberal government to acts of social dysfunction on the part of pro-Hamas crowds has led to actual violence, as when for the second time a Jewish parochial school for girls was

shot up in Toronto several days ago.

From being a firm advocate for and supporter of the State of Israel under the Conservative leadership of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Canada has undergone a sea change of allegiances where the current Trudeau-led government of Canada now votes against Israel's interests at the United Nations, where the  government at home fails to protect a loyal ethnic minority against the verbal predations of a much larger ethnic/religious group whose numbers have multiplied in the last few years, leading to division and hostility.

Following the October 7, 2023 savage pogrom in southern Israel when farming communities were reduced to ashes after being pillaged, residents killed, wounded or taken hostage, survivors forced to flee for their lives, world leaders and those in the G7 of developed nations, travelled to Israel as a demonstration of their solidarity with a fellow democracy severely wounded. Heads of government of the United States, Cyprus, France, Greece, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, the United Kingdom, along with the head of the European Union and Japan travelled to Israel to commiserate with its misfortune. Canada's leader did not.

Israel now knows whom, on the world stage, of its fellow democracies can be relied upon. Canada is not alone in its distancing from Israel for there are others whose original support has slowly dissipated, but Canada stands alone in its loud and disturbing official position that has decided Canadian Jews can look after their own affairs in security and safety from the disequilibrium brought to them by a demographic of vile Jew-haters, among whom the majority of the Trudeau cabinet appear to fit comfortably within.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who spoke Wednesday to G7 leaders about the situation in the Middle East: 'As an international community we have to continue to do everything we can to call for peace and stability.' CBC

 

"We are engaged in a battle between democracies and tyrannies."

"Democracies should stand together. In that sense, Canada has not been sufficiently supportive [of Israel]."

Irwin Cotler

"Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has expressed concern about Israel’s policies, saying that he has no immediate plans to invite his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu to the country."

"Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Trudeau reiterated Canada’s opposition to Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, which are illegal under international law."

“We recognize the violence going on right now. It is difficult for people across the region — both Israelis and Palestinians,” the Canadian prime minister said."

“We’re calling for de-escalation and peace and working through some of the flashpoints that are happening. Canada has a longstanding position that settlements and the settlement process is illegal. And we need to stand against that.”

"Trudeau added that, while Canada is a “steadfast” friend of Israel, the two countries have points of disagreement."

“We’re also very concerned about the judicial reforms that the Israeli government is determined to move forward with,” Trudeau said, adding that he will encourage Netanyahu to seek “greater consensus” for the plan."

Al Jazeera

 

 

Terrorist Pro-Hamas Supporting Groups in Canada

"[T]he plaintiffs plead that the Samidoun Defendants have committed offences including, but not limited to, providing or collecting property for terrorist activity, providing or collecting property for the benefit of persons facilitating or carrying out terrorist activity, participating in the activity of a terrorist group, leaving Canada to participate in the activity of a terrorist group, and facilitating terrorist activity."

Statement of Claim in Ontario Superior Court of Justice

 

"[Criteria enabling the federal government to list a terrorist entity is if the person or group in question has] knowingly acted on behalf of, at the direction of or in association with an entity that has knowingly carried out, attempted to carry out, participated in or facilitated a terrorist activity."

Canada's Criminal Code

"Samidoun is knowingly acting on behalf of, at the direction of or in association with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a terrorist group under the Criminal Code."

"This qualifies Samidoun for a terrorist listing."

"Why hasn't this happened?"

Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong

"These are resistance fighters."

"These are our heroes. These are those who are sacrificing so that we can live and speak and struggle and fight."

"These are the people whose blood is being shed to defend humanity and to defend the world."

Charlotte Kates, international coordinator for Samidoun

"The expiration of her conditions of release will allow her to continue to initiate hate and division against the local Jewish community."

"If we value respect, inclusion, and diversity the Crown must approve and lay the charges recommended by the Vancouver Police Department."

Ezra Shanken, CEO, Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver

 

Samidoun, a clearly terrorist-supporting group that has established itself in Vancouver with branches elsewhere across Canada, has declared itself a solidarity network for Palestinian prisoners. Its founder, Khaled Barakat, married to Charlotte Kates, Samidoun leader, also happens to be identified as a senior figure in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, itself a listed terrorist organization in Canada, the U.S., Israel, the U.K. and the European Union. Yet this group that has been at the forefront of organizing countless pro-Hamas demonstrations across Canada, enjoys charitable status in Canada.

And irrespective of its representation of a proscribed terrorist group listed as such in Canada, the federal Liberal government refuses to address the issue of allowing such a group to operate in Canada, despite the social upheaval it has been part of, in demonizing Israel and harassing Jewish Canadians. There are, in fact, Muslim Members of Parliament at the ministerial level that had signed a contract with Khaled Barakat to conduct instructive human rights sessions for various government departments, until it was revealed that the man had a background linked to terrorism.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine has an established record of having pioneered the carrying out of assassinations, suicide bombings, hijackings and murders. Shortly following Germany expelling Kates and Barakat, they established Samidoun in Vancouver as the headquarters of its global operation. A number of Members of Parliament have called upon the federal government to designate Samidoun for what it is, a terrorist organization. Muslim MPs will resist that, and the Trudeau Liberals will not go out of their way to alienate the large and growing Muslim-Canadian demographic, since it's a poor vote-garnering technique.

At a Samidoun-organized commemoration of the glories of the October 7, 2023 slaughter of 1,200 Israelis, the savage mass rape of Israeli girls and women, their pitiless mutilation and torture, and the abduction of 250 Israeli children, elderly, women and girls on its one-year anniversary when protesters burned the Canadian flag while chanting 'death to Canada', 'death to the United States', and "we are Hezbollah and we are Hamas", declaring 'Death to Israel'. 

Samidoun was 'mourning' the death of Hamas's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, vowing its intention to continue its "...jihadist path [and] follow [Nasrallah's] methodology". While Justin Trudeau's government has failed to advance remedial action against the rancid antisemitism that Samidoun and other pro-Hamas groups in Canada relish exhibiting in the public arena, Canada's Conservative Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre vows that when he becomes prime minister he will quickly intervene to declare Samidoun an outlawed terrorist group.

In a still of a video posted online, protesters at a pro-Palestinian rally are seen burning a Canadian flag as some chant 'death to Canada, death to the United States and death to Israel.' (Jarryd Jäger/Western Standard)

"So, if burning a Canadian flag, if calling for the death of Canadians, if fomenting hate in this country and most of all being a front for an already-listed terrorist organization is not enough to put them on the [federal government's terrorist] list, then what the hell is it going to take for them to ban them?"

Liberal-Led Government of Canada Policy on Israel-Hamas Conflict: Clear as Mud

"Canadians will honour their memories. We stand with Jewish people. We will not relent until the last hostage returns home."

"We all in this House, I hope, are against any form of antisemitism or any form of discrimination."

"I hope, even more negotiations at a negotiating table where there are Israelis, Hamas and Qatar, which is present ... as a moderator."

"Our policy is clear: We will not have any form of arms or parts of arms be sent to Gaza. Period."

Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly

Minister of Foreign Affairs Mélanie Joly speaks in the Foyer of the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, on Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Spencer Colby

 

In her own words, discretion thrown to the winds, Melanie Joly admitted that her anti-Israel policy revealed through the aftermath reactions of the October 7 atrocities committed by Palestinian terrorists in southern Israel, Canada's minister of foreign affairs' actions and reactions have been motivated by her anxiety for re-election and her longer-range ambition to lead Canada as prime minister. With an eye to her constituents, and a critical mass of Muslim demographics in her riding of Montreal. Quebec is regarded as one of the two Canadian cities most populated by Muslim-Canadians. 

The inclusion, respect for, safety and security of the much smaller Jewish-Canadian population not quite as urgent as the need for Melanie Joly to secure her place in Canada's political history, in her regard and actions. "Thomas, have you seen the demographics of my riding?" was the reaction to former NDP leader Thomas Mulcair's questions interviewing the minister for a CTV column when he spoke related to her Israel-Hamas conflict position.

"I was astonished to hear such a candid admission that very local politics were playing such a role in shaping Canada's foreign policy on this highly complex and sensitive issue", Mr. Mulcair wrote afterward. His question was geared toward eliciting an explanation from Canada's minister of foreign affairs relative to her government's lack of attention and action in not responding to the pro-Hamas rallies that have been roiling Canadian cities and the threats they comprise to the safety and security of the Canadian Jewish community.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said in the House of Commons that Joly "continues to pander to Hamas supporters", for which he was barred by the Speaker for the rest of the day, from speaking. A question period exchange was the impetus when Mr. Poilievre made note of the celebratory rallies in Canadian cities marking the first anniversary of the October 7 massacre in Israel.

"Will the government clearly and unequivocally condemn these genocidal chants from hateful mobs on our streets?", he pressed. In turn, Joly accused Poilievre of playing politics. This, from a foreign minister who has gone out of her way to spearhead conspicuously anti-Israel foreign policy during the year following those attacks in southern Israel. Although she is on record that Israel has a right to defend itself, she has taken pains to condemn the Israeli response against the Hamas pogrom; effectively supporting a terrorist group whose covenant is the destruction of the Jewish state.

Before a full month had elapsed after the slaughter of Israelis and hostage taking, Joly called for negotiations between Israel and the commanders of Hamas. Her soft reaction to Hamas places her in direct opposition to Canada's Minister of Defence Bill Blair, who fully supports the Israeli goal to destroy Hamas and its genocidal plans to murder Jews: "Quite frankly, Hamas has to be eliminated as a threat not just to Israel but to the world. They are a terrorist organization." Ceasefire calls, he understands, will accomplish nothing, since Hamas has no intention of laying down its arms.

Hamas, on the other hand, is mindful of Canada's generosity and empathy with its position on Israel, as evidenced by Canada's newly adopted hostility to Israel's need to defend itself from a Medieval death cult. Hamas expressed its appreciation when Canada supported a UN vote that called for a unilateral Israeli ceasefire in Gaza. Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad cited Canada's vote: "We welcome these developments and consider them in the right direction toward isolating the fascist Israeli government globally."

Joly's full approval of a Canadian embargo on military exports to Israel followed, despite that Canada never has provided military aid to Israel. Israel has signed purchase contracts of military goods from Canadian suppliers such as parts for their F-35 fighter jets; one of 60 countries that signed similar contracts. Until March when Joly exercised her authority to negate and nullify such contracts with Israel for gear as innocuous as night-vision goggles.

A proportionally large Arab and Muslim population dignifies the Montreal riding of Ahuntsic-Cartierville which Joly represents. The riding of 114,410 people in the 2016 census had 7,130 residents for whom Arabic is their first language; the vast majority were native French speakers. Recently, mass Islamic prayers were conducted in public in Parc des Hirondelles, leading the borough mayor to announce she would consider enacting a blanket ban on public religious events.

While Monreal's Jewish community held several memorials honouring those who were killed and taken hostage by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023, pro-Palestinian protests took to the streets over Israel's retaliatory military campaign. CBC

In Canada : The Glorification of Terrorism

 

"The terror apologists' celebration of the solemn occasion of October 7 as 'resistance' and an opportunity to target Canadian Jews is a testament to the Trudeau government's laissez-faire approach to crime, national security, immigration and integration."

"By failing to give law enforcement greater powers to crack down on protesters' intimidation and harassment of Jews and others, the government has enabled repugnant behaviour to escalate."

"Moreover, with Canada battling a teen terrorism problem, these protests are fertile grounds for radicalization." 

Joe Adam George, national security analyst, Middle East affairs, contributing writer, Macdonald-Laurier Institute

Montreal Imam Adil Charkaoui's speech has drawn broad condemnation for inciting an anti-Israel mob from the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. (Adil Charkaoui/X)

 

Suddenly the Canada that celebrates itself for its peaceful, tolerant multiculturalism has become a country no longer recognizable. Cradling to its bosom a large contingent of the population to the tune of 1.8 million Muslims whose presence totally eclipses the much smaller demographic of Canadian Jews numbering 300,000 nation-wide. Jews in Canada also vastly pre-dated the entry of Muslims as Canadian citizens and landed immigrants; in a sense mirroring the situation in the Middle East in the contested geography popularly known as 'Palestine', an area of traditionally Judean ancestral heritage that local Muslims originally from Syria and Egypt claim as theirs.

Jews first arrived in Canada in 1760. It took another 120 years before the first Arabs arrived, pre-dating a Muslim influx to join the Arab Christians that had come before, roughly following the end of the First World War, with the fall of the Ottoman Empire. World Jewry now stands at about 16 million, in contrast to the Muslim empire with well over a billion people. Islam is considered to be the fastest-expanding religion in the world, at the present time. Militant, political Islam has pinpointed Jews as their universal enemy, picking up where German fascism left off.

And in Canada the results have over the years simmered covertly in Muslim suspicion and distrust of Jews. It has taken a combined Palestinian terrorist pogrom, an organized mass murder and rape of Israeli Jews in a horror of marauding psychopaths in their thousands who hunted down, raped, mutilated and slaughtered Jews on October 7, 2023, to reveal the deep hatred, contempt and violence in the minds of majority Muslims and Arabs worldwide on a rampage of antisemitic rage that has taken over the streets of world capitals. In some of the countries of Europe, governments have acted to protect their Jewish populations from harassment, threats and violence.

Such has not been the case in Canada, as day by day since that horrendous atrocity in southern Israel across the border from Gaza, marches, protests and viral gatherings have assembled to indulge in clearly criminal activity to chant inventive against Jews in Canada as Israel has become a target of diabolical slander meant to isolate it while raising doubts in the minds of onlookers, many of whom are prepared to give credence to such slanders as 'apartheid' and 'genocide' being committed by the Jewish State that is a model of accommodation to other faiths and ethnic groups.

Israel has been attacked by proxy militias loyal to the Islamic Republic of Iran in its Shiite Axis of evil intentions whose focus is the elimination of Israel and the death of Jews everywhere. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; Quds division, has formed, trained and armed terrorist groups from Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Yemen, Syria and Iraq in a web of antisemitism and the aspiration to destroy the Jewish State, attacking Jews internationally through terrorist plots of lethal violence.

Roving crowds of 'pro-Palestinian' sympathizers who align themselves with the Hamas supporting diehard Jew haters demand a ceasefire, while also shouting 'Intifada', and 'from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free', chanting that Jews should leave Canada and go back to Europe, the charnel-house of the Holocaust, denying Jewish indigeneity to the Middle East, where Israel sits upon its ancestral patrimony. And so Jews are verbally assault, violently threatened, synagogues and Jewish parochial schools fire-bombed and shot at, Jewish businesses defaced.

 

 

Protest encampment at McGill University’s campus in Montreal. (Peter McCabe/Reuters)

 

And Canadian governments at all levels appear to be blind to the situation, while some among them go out of their way to be helpful and accommodating to the hordes of antisemites, whose focus on Jews strums a familiar chord in some of those authorities' own inner feelings of racist rage. "We don't want two states! Bring us back to '48!", shout many of the anti-Israel protestors, since the fact is just that; Palestinians do not, and never did, envision themselves in a parallel state with that of Israel. Only the elimination of Israel and the freeing up of the land for sole Palestinian possession suits them; both the West Bank and Gaza.

A bit of an awakening has resulted with the anti-Zionist mob ever emboldened by the lack of consequences to their group psychopathology, when there is no action from government authorities or officers of the law, persuading the haters that there are no penalties for their criminal actions and as such enticing them to be more open over the extent of their pathology. Palestinian youth collectives, at the direction of foreign agents paid by Qatar and Iran, continue their raving and organizing of anti-Israel, anti-Jew marches without interference. 

 

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered in downtown Montreal in October 2023. In November, Montreal police received a complaint about speeches made during those demonstrations. (Danielle Kadjo/Radio-Canada)

 

Honouring Hamas and Hezbollah leaders who have died as 'martyrs' as 'great men and 'heroes'. In 2011 the Macdonald-Laurier Institute study of Muslim public opinion in Canada discovered a small minority only of Canadian Muslims unequivocally rejected Hamas, Hezbollah and the Iranian regime. Among them 35 percent would not reject al-Qaeda. Recent immigrants, migrants and refugees who have arrived in Canada  under the Liberal government's generous invitation to find haven in Canada from their own governments' depredations, now support the terror they fled, because it targets Jews.

Half of the current 1.8 million Muslim demographic in Canada immigrated from 2011 onward to the present. These newcomer protesters from Lebanon, Syria and Iran came to Canada to escape the terrorist groups that targeted them, the very same terrorists they celebrate, while living in Canada. A mosque in Windsor, among many others in Canada glorified the "resistance" and "martyrs fighting Israel". Muslim youth radicalization in Canada is becoming a problem that uncontrolled immigration is not helping.

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

"A year on from the October 7 attacks, the results of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's 'post-national' Canada experiment do not bode well for the country's future."

"Canadian values and national security are under attack, and our leaders are doing nothing about it. The Trudeau government's appeasement of terror apologists has failed Canadian Jews."

"Canada now has parallel societies and mainstreamed violent extremism -- both of which have become the new normal."

Joe Adam George

"Cross-national surveys conducted in the years before the current Israel-Hamas war show that Canada was among the world’s least antisemitic countries, in the same league as Sweden and the Netherlands. To see whether this remained true during the Israel-Hamas war, I conducted a survey in February 2024 involving four independent samples of Canadians: 1,121 non-Jewish adults, 1,010 non-Jewish university students, 414 Jewish adults, and 312 Muslim adults. For non-Jews, I provided a battery of statements about Jews, half positively worded, half negatively worded, calculated an average score, and found little change in attitudes toward Jews since the period before the war. Some 87 per cent of non-Jewish Canadians have positive attitudes toward Jews".

"Yet police-recorded hate crimes against Jews have skyrocketed in Canada since the war began. For example, in Toronto, the number of hate crimes against Jews jumped 75 per cent between 2022 and 2023, with the post-Oct. 7 period responsible for most of the increase. In Toronto in 2023, Jews were the victims of 78 per cent of all police-reported hate crimes based on religion. Muslims took second place at 17 per cent."

ROBERT BRYM | OCT 07 2024, University Affairs

Canada, Embarrassing Itself -- Again

"In 2021, we discovered that one particular Nazi leader was being honoured by the memorial and it took us more than a year of very active advocacy efforts before his name was finally removed."

"We  told officials repeatedly that we believed there could be a great number of Nazis being commemorated but sadly this problem did not appear to be a priority for the department [Department of Canadian Heritage]."

"It [recent report commissioned by the department] finds that more than half of the individuals commemorated in the memorial may have been Nazis or Nazi collaborators."

"It is totally unacceptable for Nazis and collaborators to be honoured by a Canadian public memorial, especially one meant to recognize victims of state violence and tyranny."

Jaime Kirzner-Roberts, senior director, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre 

"It is important to note that many anti-communist and anti-Soviet advocates and fighters were also active Nazi collaborators, who committed documented massacres."

Global Affairs Canada

"It has come to our attention that a number of entries that have been put forward for recognition may have been affiliated in some capacity to fascist and Nazi organizations."

"For example, some of the proposed individuals were linked to the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and its military, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army ... and to a lesser extent with Baltic nationalist groups [i.e., members of the Latvian SS]."

Tristan-E. Landry, deputy director, Canadian Heritage

The winning design for the Memorial to Victims of Communism. | Tribute to Liberty

 

Over half of the 550 names on the Memorial to the Victims of Communism should be removed as a result of information that identifies them with potential links to the Nazis; alternately with questions raised relating to possible affiliations with fascist groups, government records reveal. There were originally planned to be 553 entries on the Ottawa memorial's Wall of Remembrance.

However, 50 to 60 of the names or organizations were suspected of having direct links to the Nazis, the department had determined. Canadian Heritage's 2023 report recommended that over 330 names be excluded to ensure no future embarrassment, according to the records released through an access to information request by an investigative reporter. Given a lack of information about individuals or organizations and possible links to fascist organizations or the Nazis such exclusions were recommended.

Concerns were raised over the years by both Jewish organizations and historians over the potential for names of eastern Europeans who collaborated with the Nazis during the Holocaust who have been recommended in an effort to whitewash their past actions and affiliations. The unveiling of the memorial was placed on hold, reflecting the contretemps of members of the Canadian Parliament honouring a Ukrainian solder with the Waffen-SS Galicia Division, a voluntary unit under the command of the Nazis, creating an international embarrassment.

 

At left, 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka, a veteran of Hitler’s SS, returns the salute from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Canadian Parliament. At Zelensky’s side, joining in the standing ovation for Hunka, is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland. | Screengrab / AP

 

"The review of the commemorative elements is ongoing", stated a spokesperson for Canadian Heritage. Federal officials from other government departments warned Canadian Heritage that inclusion of Nazi collaborators on the memorial would be a cause for Canada of international embarrassment, doubling down on the stain to Canada's reputation occasioned by the House of Commons' failure to recognize World War II complexities to enable them to recognize that 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka, a Ukrainian-Canadian whose wartime unit had fought alongside Nazi SS units.

 

The CBC reported that private donations had been made to the monument in the names of Nazi collaborators. Roman Shukheych, a Ukrainian nationalist and Nazi collaborator was included along with Ante Pavelic who operated a Nazi puppet regime in Croatia, considered to have been a chief perpetrator of the Holocaust in the Balkans. Even Canadian Heritage officials themselves voiced their own concerns in internal messages.

In July 2020, the construction site for Ottawa’s 'Memorial to the Victims of Communism' was vandalized with the message 'Communism will win' and several hammer-and-sickles. The controversial memorial has now been confirmed to bear the names of more than 330 'victims' who were Nazis or fascist collaborators. | Photo via Tribute to Liberty on Facebook

Israel's Fortitude and Intervention

"The Middle East may be transformed -- for the better -- in the coming months. Whereas Israel shoulders the burden for the West, the United States has committed firm support for an Israeli retaliation. Even Qatar -- the main financial support for, and gracious host to, Hamas leadership -- has been quiet."

"Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E. and all Middle Eastern countries [with the exception of Turkey, Lebanon Syria, Iran and Iraq] -- are grateful for Israel's fortitude and intervention."

"During the past few weeks, Israel has, by some estimates, obliterated more than half of Hezbollah's massive arsenal of missiles and rockets, destroyed secure communication networks and eliminated much of the organization's senior leadership."

"Iran -- the ultimate military threat to Israel -- is now exposed. With its proxies defanged, the Islamic Republic -- the directing mind of this Islamist axis -- must do its own dirty work. It will also incur the consequences."

Vivian Bercovici, former Canadian ambassador to Israel

A woman looks at pictures of Israeli hostages during a pro-Israel vigil on the anniversary of a Hamas attack on Israel that triggered the ongoing war in Gaza in front of McGill University, in Montreal, Monday, Oct. 7, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz

It took but hours of the first news of a terrorist massacre -- when thousands of Palestinian terrorists broke through the barrier separating Israel from Gaza, to launch a  horrific attack on farming villages in southern Israel -- before all of Canada's major cities saw wide public celebrations of the violence that took the lives of 1,200 Israelis and captured 250 Israeli children, women and the elderly as hostages taken back to Gaza. Closed-circuit videos from the scene taken by exultant terrorists as they raped, mutilated and murdered girls and women, burned families in their homes, ransacked and pillaged, tortured and committed savage atrocities were already being sent to wildly ecstatic Palestinian Canadians.

 

In the year that has passed since that horror was visited on Israel, over a thousand 'demonstrations' and 'marches' lionizing Hamas, praising the debauched sadism of that day, and calling for Israel's extermination have resounded in the streets of Montreal, Vancouver, Toronto and elsewhere. Firmly entrenched antisemitism of the Middle Eastern variety has ruled the public discourse with chants of 'Intifada', 'From the river to the sea', and 'Final Solution'! Government authorities at every level have failed to condemn and put a stop to these displays of pure, unadulterated hate. Municipal police services follow the dictates of their political masters to accommodate the protests.

On the one-year anniversary of the tragedy Yonge-Dundas Square in Toronto was captured by the anti-Israel protests and then they massed outside the Israeli consulate screaming a unison of 'Long live the intifada!'; armed resistance against Israel associated with terrorist suicide bombings from 2000. "We don't want two states! Bring us back to '48!" rang out. The crowds honoured the Palestinian 'martyrs'. Led by groups such as Toronto4Palestine and Palestine Youth Movement, Canada has been thoroughly infiltrated by terrorist-supporting hordes.

 

A large anti-Israel protest near Parliament Hill in Ottawa. Photo by Ashley Fraser /Postmedia

A major intersection at College Street and Spadina Avenue was commandeered by organizers with the Palestinian Youth Movement in Toronto, closing down public access, erecting a stage and amplification system in the middle of the street. And police? They were present to expedite matters, effectively assisting the protests to ensure that no violence of a physical nature breaks out; the violence of instigation of no concern to any authorities.

In Vancouver, downtown areas were closed down by celebratory marches organized by Samidoun, which the federal government allows charitable status. Outside Waterfront Station chants of "There is only one solution: Intifada revolution", and "Justin Trudeau you will see, Palestine will be free". Well, Justin Trudeau will actually be quite pleased. Palestinian flags everywhere in evidence, alongside those of Hamas and Lebanon. A Samidoun rally of "One Year of Genocide. One Year of Resistance" was a celebration of the Hamas massacre in Israeli villages.

In Ottawa, an anti-Israel rally on Parliament Hill saw police in attendance to shield the protesters from counter-demonstrators. An officer with the Parliamentary Protective Service screened access to Parliament Hill, separating those who believe Palestine "is a state" from those who fail to acknowledge that absurdity. "If you are not a supporter of Palestine, you are not permitted", a man is informed as he attempts to access the grounds of Parliament Hill.

"So I'm not allowed in certain public areas if I have certain political views?" the man responds.

"Right now, today, no", the officer replies.

Thousands of people march through the streets of Toronto on Saturday in a pro-Palestinian demonstration to mark one year of war in the Middle East.  Nick Lachance/Toronto Star