How do you turn terrorists into victims and victims into terrorists? Look no further than the international media’s treatment of Hezbollah and Hamas. This past week, the Associated Press (AP) published

a photo essay

that could be mistaken for a human rights documentary — if not for the glaring omission of who the true aggressors are.

The piece focused on the “human toll” of Israel’s precision pager attack on Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon and laments the injuries suffered mainly by those who were, in reality, actively engaged in a terror campaign against the Jewish state.

For nearly a year, Hezbollah — a designated terrorist organization backed by Iran — rained down rockets on Israeli towns, displacing more than 60,000 civilians from their homes in Israel’s north. These Israelis were forced to live in cramped hotel rooms for months, abandoned by the world and erased by the very journalists who now empathize with Hezbollah.

On Sept. 17, 2024, after almost a year of constant aggression, Israel responded with a targeted strike using “pager bombs” that incapacitated dozens of Hezbollah operatives and ultimately eliminated the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah. The pager attack, and the brief war that followed, were successful in halting Hezbollah’s rockets.

And yet, the AP coverage describes Hezbollah members with missing eyes and fingers as tragic figures “on a slow, painful path to recovery.” Their scars are described with reverence, while their role in terror is barely acknowledged. The article acknowledges that most of the people interviewed were Hezbollah members or their relatives, yet nowhere does it ask: what were they doing with these pagers in the first place?

And where is the international media’s coverage of the Israeli victims? What of the thousands who were evacuated from their homes, the wounded IDF soldiers now learning to walk with prosthetic limbs after stepping on improvised explosive devices in Gaza or the Israeli hostages who are still being held by Hamas in inhumane conditions?

Journalists who are content to repeat false claims that Israel is committing a “genocide” are not asking how it’s possible that Hamas is still producing glossy videos and photographs and distributing them around the world..

Recently, a German newspaper revealed that Hamas had

staged propaganda photos

of Gazans holding empty pots — images that were published by major outlets without verification. The paper’s investigation found that professional photographers, some affiliated with major international news agencies, directed the civilians in these staged photos to simulate starvation.

The cruelty of this propaganda was laid bare with images of two Israeli hostages, Evyatar David and Rom Braslavski, who look like skeletons due to starvation and neglect after over 650 days in captivity. Unlike the carefully curated images of Gazan children, their pictures were barely reported. That’s not journalism — it’s wilful omission.

Even when stories are published, they are riddled with bias and sometimes outright deception. The New York Times was recently accused of “

journalistic malpractice

” after it published a front-page photo of an emaciated Gazan child, only to later admit that the child suffered from a pre-existing condition. A brief editor’s note acknowledged the error, but the damage was already done. Sympathy had already been manufactured, based on false pretenses.

Yet when grotesque propaganda videos of Israeli hostages who are actually starving surface, they are buried, if covered at all. The difference is glaring. One set of images are embraced in order to demonize Israel; the other is hidden because they challenge the anti-Israel narrative.

This type of manipulation is not new. For a long time, there has been a concerted effort among left-wing media outlets to paint Israel’s aggressors as victims and to vilify the true victims. It is no coincidence that just as Canada, the United Kingdom and France announced their intention to recognize a Palestinian state, Hamas abandoned ceasefire talks. Hamas realized that optics — not truth — wins diplomatic leverage.

This week, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar

made it clear

: western capitulation directly sabotaged the hostage deal. Yet still, there is no outrage for the hostages’ families, no front-page coverage of Evyatar David’s brutal condition, no outcry for Rom Braslavski, no real humanization of the Israeli victims. Because when it comes to much of the media, some lives simply matter more than others.

I’m under no illusion that this will change. The media has spent decades portraying terrorists as freedom fighters and Jews as oppressors when the reverse is true. But that does not mean we must remain silent. Those of us who still believe in truth and moral clarity must continue to expose this bias, educate others and demand better. The manipulation of public perception is one of the most dangerous weapons in modern warfare — and right now, it’s being wielded against the Jewish people once again.

National Post

Avi Benlolo is the CEO and chairman of the Abraham Global Peace Initiative.

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• Sheryl Saperia: Supporting Palestinian statehood means endorsing violence

There is 

some civil-liberties restlessness

 over sweeping forest-activity restrictions announced by the Nova Scotia government Tuesday in response to high province-wide fire risks, although actual fire has been minimal so far in 2025. It’s a fascinating snapshot of the post-COVID style of Canadian government. As our courts have accumulated more power to revise policies, their liberal principle of “minimal (rights) impairment” has gathered force, or ought to have. Even those who have some distaste for judge-ocracy can acknowledge that this is one of its relatively decent features — the idea that government limitations on individual conduct ought to be surgical and specific, rather than being defined expansively applied and with an axe, or perhaps a big old halberd.

Few would question the propriety of a government taking preventive action by banning obvious established sources of wildfires, such as campfires and all-terrain vehicles. But the goal of the new rules, potentially in place until Oct. 15, is just to 

encourage Nova Scotians to stay the hell out of the woods

, even if they are the owners of those woods. The province laid down an ordinary fire ban weeks ago, but now it has banned hiking, camping and fishing in all provincial and private forests.

You can visit your own forested land, but any visitors may be subject to fines. If you have a favourite body of water you might need to get through some woods to visit, the advice is somewhat ambiguous, 

according to a lapel-grasping primer in the Chronicle-Herald

: “If you can fish in water beside a provincial road that doesn’t involve going into the woods, you’re able to, but you can’t hike into the woods or drive along trails to get to your favorite lake or spot on a river.”

Ian Fairclough’s piece is meant to reflect the attitude of the government. (I’m not criticizing the author; on the contrary, I’m sure he’s representing the government’s motives accurately.) In half-explaining the new N.S. rules, it adds a caveat that asking what’s allowed is itself unsocial and haram. “If you’re wondering whether there’s something that will let you go into the woods, there probably is not. ‘Stop looking for loopholes’ is the basic message from the government.”

In defence of these aggressive measures and the fist-shaking attitude motivating them, the article adds a crescendoing bullet list of ways in which mere fishing or walking or existing might create fire hazards. A metal walking pole could clack against a rock and spark an inferno! Whoosh! Opening a glass bottle could redirect the deadly rays of the sun in unpredictable laserly ways! Pew, pew!

The government that 

wrote these rules, and backed them with gargantuan fines

, doesn’t seem to have gotten the “minimal impairment” memo. But, look, it’s not all bad news, is it? When it comes to private land, such orders — enacted through proclamation, not the Nova Scotia legislature — are bound to be extraordinary and controversial. But as far as provincial Crown land goes, the government is the custodian of a public amenity consecrated to collective use.

If “extremism in defence of public property is no vice” is to be the new rule in Canada, we are surely going to see a lot of big changes to urban public parks and other land patches, which, for a decade, have been beset by nomadic tent-dwellers who make copious and inveterate use of propane tanks, electrical heaters, camp stoves, improvised wiring from hijacked power supplies and open fires. Me, I welcome our new safetyist overlords, while reminding them to come prepared for armed crackhead violence and Charter lawsuits. No doubt they’re just around the corner — right?

National Post

I was raised in Canada to believe that moral clarity is a strength, not a liability; that democracies must draw lines, even when it’s hard; and that rewarding violence is never the path to peace. Those values — love of freedom, commitment to democracy and belief in moral clarity — shaped me profoundly: as a citizen, a Zionist and now as a member of the Israeli Knesset.

That’s why I was dismayed to hear that Canada intends on recognizing a Palestinian state. Not only is this the wrong idea at the worst possible time, it would also mark a dangerous departure from Canada’s proud tradition of moral leadership.

Canada once stood tall among the family of free nations. It defended democracy abroad and stood firm on principles at home. But under its current leadership, that legacy is in jeopardy. Again and again, Ottawa has chosen to abandon the very values it claims to uphold.

When Israel — a democratic ally — was attacked on October 7 by Iranian-backed Hamas death squads, Canada’s response should have been immediate, resolute and unapologetically clear. But instead of siding with the victim, Canada has spent the months since wavering, equivocating and sliding into the language of appeasement.

It has condemned Israel’s right to self-defence more harshly than it has condemned Hamas’s mass murder. It has tolerated antisemitic hate on its streets and university campuses, while offering little more than platitudes to its fearful Jewish community. It has pretended to pursue peace while feeding the illusion that a state can be born from the ashes of terror.

Recognizing a Palestinian state would not be an isolated misstep. It would be the clearest expression yet of a foreign policy that too often punishes democracies while accommodating dictatorships. It would be a betrayal not only of Israel, but of Canada’s own commitment to freedom, truth and responsibility.

The October 7 massacre was not just another chapter in a long conflict. It was one of the clearest moral tests the free world has faced in decades — and far too many failed it. Hamas terrorists crossed into Israel, murdered around 1,200 people — including babies, women and the elderly — and filmed their crimes with pride. Their goal was never peace — it was annihilation.

And yet, while Hamas still holds hostages, still holds power in Gaza and still vows to strike again, the world is entertaining the idea of giving it what it claims to want: a Palestinian state. That is not diplomacy. That is capitulation. It sends the message that terrorism is effective, that violence works and that even after a massacre, the world is eager to move on.

The appropriate response to such barbarism is not to reward it, but to ensure it never happens again. The path to a different future starts not with fantasy, but with truth. And the truth is that there is only one state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea — the State of Israel. It’s time for the world to affirm that fact by recognizing Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria, otherwise known as the West Bank.

This is not annexation or displacement. It is the formal application of Israeli law to the historic homeland of the Jewish people, and the recognition that this land belongs to the Jewish people by historical, moral and legal right.

Judea and Samaria are not foreign territories. They are the cradle of Jewish civilization — Hebron, Shiloh and, yes, Jerusalem. These are not just symbols. They are tangible evidence of a deep-rooted, continuous indigenous presence.

In 1920, the League of Nations recognized the right of the Jewish people to re-establish their national home in this territory through the Mandate for Palestine. The modern State of Israel is the natural inheritor of that mandate. No other sovereign power has taken its place.

For decades, Israel has governed parts of these areas under a temporary military framework — not because it lacked legitimacy, but because of a lack of political clarity. Applying sovereignty would end that ambiguity. It would normalize governance, solidify borders and protect all residents under a unified legal system — one grounded in the principles of Israeli democracy and the rule of law.

October 7 shattered illusions. It showed that Hamas does not want compromise, it wants carnage. It also made clear that the Palestinian Authority, which is mired in corruption and glorifies terror, offers no credible alternative.

To recognize a Palestinian state now would be to embolden both. It would say that the world has learned nothing, that violence is tolerable if packaged as diplomacy and that democratic countries can be pressured into moral surrender.

Recognizing Israeli sovereignty, by contrast, would send the opposite message: that terror has consequences, not rewards; that borders are not determined by rockets and massacres, but by law, history and moral clarity; and that the world still knows how to distinguish right from wrong.

This is not an argument against Palestinian dignity or hope. It is an argument against a Palestinian leadership that has destroyed both. Hamas has turned Gaza into a graveyard, and the Palestinian Authority has failed its own people.

The Palestinian people will not be helped by more foreign resolutions or symbolic gestures. They will be helped by stability, security and truth. Only when the fantasy of destroying Israel is finally abandoned — and when terror no longer brings results — can something new begin to grow.

That is what sovereignty offers: not an end to the conflict, but an end to the illusion — a firm, reality-based foundation for moving forward.

Canada was among the first countries in the world to recognize the State of Israel. It was an act of courage, clarity and of leadership.

That same clarity is needed now. Canada should not follow the crowd toward a dangerous fiction. It should lead by recognizing what history has always known and what law has always affirmed: that Judea and Samaria are part of the Jewish homeland, and that the State of Israel is the only legitimate sovereign in the Land of Israel.

That would not be a step away from peace. It would be the first honest step toward it.

National Post

Dan Illouz is a Likud member of the Israeli Knesset.

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• Sheryl Saperia: Supporting Palestinian statehood means endorsing violence

They were gathering at the conclusion of last weekend’s Shabbat at the Congregation Emmanu-El synagogue in downtown Victoria for an evening reading from the Book of Lamentations and the usual chants and prayers to mark Tisha B’Av, the holiest day of mourning in the Jewish calendar.

It’s a time of fasting and reflection that marks the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem, and the tribulations that followed the Jews down through the ages.

At the front doors of the synagogue, they found these words

scrawled on a pillar

: Jews are evil! Because genocide is evil! Stop Genocide. Stop the Jews! Jews are murdering thousands of Gentile children. In the future Palestinians will get their revenge against you child-killing Jew-monsters.

You cannot divorce the disgusting antisemitic graffiti found on a synagogue in Victoria, BC, on Shabbat, from the Prime Minister’s announcement last week. By declaring its intention to prematurely recognize a Palestinian state, the federal government has further emboldened the… pic.twitter.com/MUsGHTl9AK

— B’nai Brith Canada (@bnaibrithcanada) August 4, 2025

Saturday also happened to mark British Columbia Day, commemorating the day that James Douglas, governor of the Colony of Vancouver Island, contended with waves of marauding American gold miners in the Fraser Canyon by unilaterally declaring the establishment of the Colony of British Columbia, on the mainland.

In a peculiar symmetry, it was on that same day in 1858, August 2, that Victoria’s Jewish community held its first meeting at a dry goods and drapery shop between the Bank of North America and the Delphi Saloon, on Yates Street. Talk turned almost immediately to the matter of building a synagogue.

The following year they founded the First Hebrew Victoria Benevolent Society, the first Jewish organization west of the Great Lakes. The day their synagogue’s foundation stone was laid, on June 2, 1863, there was a grand celebration, with a parade to the site, at Blanshard and Pandora led by the St. Andrew’s Society, the Germania Sing Verein choir, the French Benevolent Society and several of the city’s other ethnic constituencies.

It was a happy time for Victoria’s Jews. The event was

noted

in the Victoria Colonist this way: “The Israelites in Victoria are a large and highly respectable body. Many of them have resided in the city from the date of its earliest existence, and their conduct and bearing has invariably been such as to earn for them the good wishes and esteem of their fellow citizens of other persuasions.”

In Victoria these days, there are marches and rallies and a weekly “Free Palestine” protest at the legislative buildings, and while these spectacles are led mostly by the University of Victoria’s Muslim Students Association (MSA), the marches attract at least as many aging white boomers.

Among the bloodcurdling events the MSA has promoted are speaking engagements featuring the hate preacher Younus Kathradra, whose ideas about Jews are rather less enlightened than the received wisdom promulgated by 19th century colonial opinion-makers.

“The Jews have an ancient and dark history of bloodshed and breaking covenants and treaties,” Kathradra has

said

in a sermon. “If Allah had willed, He could have taken vengeance upon them Himself. But He ordered armed struggle. Listen! He ordered armed struggle to test some of you by means of others.”

Only two weeks ago, Victoria police

announced

that a 28-year-old man attending one of the anti-Israel rallies at the legislature would be charged with public incitement of hatred, targeting Jews. Khalid El Boyok was arrested June 11.

You could say it’s somewhat ironic that it was Congregation Emmanu-El’s synagogue that was desecrated last weekend. Across town from the legislature, congregants have held their own weekly silent vigils carrying placards bearing the words “

Jews in Mourning for Two Peoples

,” expressing dismay at the unprecedented death and destruction in Gaza since Hamas carried out its bloody pogrom in Israel on October 7, 2023. You can be as “progressive” as you like, and still the antisemites will come after you.

Congregation Emmanu-El’s vigils are in keeping with the synagogue’s long-standing avant-garde traditions. As far back as September, 1895, for lack of a full-time rabbi at the time, the congregation

retained a woman

, San Francisco Chronicle reporter Rachel “Ray” Frank, to lecture and officiate for the high Holy Days, decades before women were to be regularly ordained.

Last weekend’s desecration was just the latest in a series of incidents that have become commonplace in Canada since the Gaza War began nearly two years ago, and while the Netanyahu government’s crushing military operations may have deeply divided Israeli society, and Canadian opinion, they have also served as a pretext for the recrudescence of ancient antisemitic hatreds in the guise of “pro-Palestine” activism. Synagogues have been firebombed and shot at in Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto, and

protest groups

like Samidoun, which is

listed terrorist entity

, have been given the run of Canadian cities.

“We have seen a disturbing permissiveness toward these groups in Canada,”

said

Nico Slobinsky, vice-president of the Centre of Israel and Jewish Affairs. “Pro-Hamas protesters shut down our streets with chants, threats, and hate, unchecked, unchallenged, and increasingly normalized.”

The 150-year-old B’nai Brith organization in Canada

says

Ottawa has to take some responsibility for this state of affairs. “You cannot divorce the disgusting antisemitic graffiti found on a synagogue in Victoria, BC, on Shabbat, from the Prime Minister’s announcement last week. By declaring its intention to prematurely recognize a Palestinian state, the federal government has further emboldened the vitriolic minority that has been targeting Canada’s Jewish community for almost two years.

“This is what happens when our leaders placate those who incite hate and sow division. Synagogues are defiled and Jewish Canadians are threatened.”

The most bitter irony in all this is that Congregation Emmanu-El is Canada’s oldest synagogue, and from its earliest days Victoria has stood as a beacon of racial and religious toleration. There were perhaps as many Gentiles as Jews among the subscribers to Emmanu-El’s construction fundraising drive in the 1860s.

Selim Franklin, elected to B.C.’s colonial legislative council in 1859, was the

first Jew ever elected to a legislature in Canada

. When Lumley Franklin was elected mayor of Victoria in 1865, he became

the first Jewish mayor in North America

. The year B.C. entered Confederation in 1871, Victoria sent Wharf Street merchant Henry Nathan to Ottawa, Canada’s

first Jewish Member of Parliament

, and an early vice-president of Congregation Emmanu-El was Samuel D. Schultz, the

first Jew to be appointed a judge in Canada

, in 1914.

This is a history to be proud of, and it only brings into sharper relief the disgrace that Canadians have allowed to be brought upon their country by pretending that grotesque Jew-hatred is really just “progressive” protest.

It’s nothing of the kind.

National Post

Given Donald Trump’s lawless and vindictive approach to trade with Canada and the pressing need for action on projects to serve the national interest, drastic reforms are needed in our governance system.

The current cabinet was constructed along conventional, cumbersome lines respecting regions, ethnicity and gender. It is replete with incoherence — three ministers plus the prime minister with responsibilities for trade; two ministers sharing responsibilities for Indigenous Affairs; and

secretaries of state

with such nebulous titles as “Combatting Crime” and “Nature.”

Ministers encroaching on exclusively provincial responsibilities, e.g. housing, have been dismal failures, as have the regional economic development portfolios. This is pork-barrelling at its worst. A government intending to invest more in our recognizable strengths should enhance the authority of those expected to deliver by removing wasteful appendages.

A complete overhaul and downsizing of cabinet is essential, allowing a maximum of 20 ministers with a few parliamentary secretaries in subordinate roles. If the Americans can cope with 15 cabinet secretaries, surely Canada can manage with one-third more.

To manage the priority projects intended to serve the national interest, specifically the development of energy and rare earth mineral assets, the government should consider the model used for the initial free trade negotiations. The Trade Negotiations Office (TNO) was created to bring together officials from key departments, reporting directly to a special cabinet committee. It was able to override typical turf-protecting squabbles between individual departments and produce consensus positions expeditiously on all issues while managing consultations with the provinces efficiently.

A Major Projects Office should be given specific authority to ensure that issues and permitting procedures move expeditiously and to stymy foot-dragging by individual provinces and/or Indigenous communities — no vetoes for either, but open opportunities for full partnerships that share the risks, responsibilities and the rewards.

Dramatic reductions of the cabinet should serve as a template for drastic reforms to the bloated public service, which grew an astonishing

42 per cent

during the Trudeau years.

The wrong way to rectify this inexcusable expansion is to charge the departments that presided over the growth to recommend 15 per cent cuts. The result will likely be indefensible obfuscation and bureaucratic bafflegab.

Here are some practical suggestions:

1.

As the government’s Chief Human Resources Officer has

attested

, there are too many senior executives in the public service, slowing productivity and creating workplace conflicts. Sharp cuts are needed to excessive ADM (Assistant Deputy Minister) positions and the government should consider eliminating one complete level of senior management — the position of Directors General. Superfluous positions like “Deputy” Director or “Associate” Deputy Minister — extra baggage causing sluggish performance — should be removed.

2.

The Treasury Board Secretariat, ostensibly responsible for program management and controlling growth, has failed abysmally at its fundamental role and should be revamped and headed by an external business executive with a proven track record for efficient results.

3.

All woke-induced prescriptions like DEI should be dropped, giving more exclusive value to meritocracy with clear descriptions of achievement goals and accountability for all senior public service positions.

4.

The government’s faint-hearted effort to recognize the importance of artificial intelligence was to designate a minister with the responsibility but with few specific duties or resources. AI is the most significant technological innovation in more than a century. Implemented with appropriate guard rails to prevent misuse, Artificial Intelligence can reduce waste in government, sharpen technological innovation, improve productivity and expedite decision-making. It will require substantial investments in energy to serve new data centres, to update our electricity grid and develop new technologies. The Americans are moving at warp speed to maintain their global lead. Canada cannot afford to stand pat.

5.

The military cannot be spared especially with the massive increase in spending it will belatedly receive. As the ranks were reduced in the past two decades, the ratio of enlisted personnel to officers rose substantially to 2.8:1 whereas the U.S. Marines is at 7.1:1. That trend undermines any notion that more funds will produce better performance. The current model of procurement is flawed with overlapping responsibilities among different departments and ever-lengthening overruns on delivery. The system should be outsourced to an independent tribunal with knowledge and experience relating to current technologies. Australia may offer a compelling model.

6.

All governments in Canada should stop pandering to Indigenous groups with gratuitous expressions of atonement as in King Charles’ speech from the throne (written by the PMO/PCO), and at major events across Canada. Giving Indigenous communities real partnerships in major, national-interest projects would do much more for their well-being than sanctimonious verbal expressions of regret.

7.

It is time to drive a stake through the climate hysteria that has stifled economic development for more than two decades. As Joe Oliver

articulated

cogently in these columns, public concern about climate change has declined dramatically in Canada. In 2022, 73 per cent of Canadians believed we were confronting a climate emergency. But now only four per cent say climate change is the No. 1 issue facing the country, according to a recent Leger poll. Many favour instead efforts to expedite pipelines to tidewater that “will bring economic growth, employment, energy security and funding for social programs or tax relief.”

Remaining vestiges of climate hypocrisy, including some in the current cabinet, stubbornly support unrealistic EV mandates and inconsistent wind-power farms that blight our physical environment. “Net-zero” targets are patently unrealistic. All are being rejected by the U.S. while it accelerates conventional energy development. Growing climate realism should give Canadian politicians the courage to implement energy projects needed to secure economic growth.

8.

For serious downsizing, the government should assign the role to an external panel of five credible business executives with relevant knowledge and experience.

Prime Minister Mark Carney gained a spectacular victory in the April election (due partly to the relatively inept performance by the Opposition Leader and his campaign team.) Carney has about six more months to demonstrate that he can act forcefully on that victory. Otherwise, confidence and trust will evaporate as quickly as it did for his predecessor. The challenge begins in the government itself where he has unfettered control.

National Post

Derek H. Burney is a former 30-year career diplomat who served as Ambassador to the United States of America from 1989-1993.

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Last week, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that Canada intends to recognize a Palestinian state in September. This would be a dangerous, highly premature decision — and a foreign policy blunder that could embarrass Canada while compounding the crisis in the Middle East instead of bringing Israelis and Palestinians anywhere closer to a lasting peace.

The government’s dubious plan is predicated on assurances from the ruling Palestinian Authority (PA) that it will demilitarize and hold elections (for the first time in nearly two decades) that exclude Hamas, the terrorist group that launched the October 7 massacre and continues to hold dozens of hostages.

Canada should know, from experience, not to treat the PA as a legitimate state actor. It has offered similar rhetorical concessions in the past, but few, if any, have ever come to fruition. Instead, despite past pledges to de-radicalize, the PA has time and again sponsored terrorism, fostered violent antisemitism in its schools, directed official media to incite hate and suppressed dissidents. Its leadership, moreover, is corrupt and has long exploited international aid for personal gain.

That Canada would entrust this governing body with self-actuating on a democratic transformation calls Ottawa’s foreign policy into question. Carney indicated that he is working directly with PA President Mahmoud Abbas, a notorious Holocaust denier whose authoritarian regime has stymied past attempts at establishing peaceful co-existence. He was elected in 2005 to a four-year term, but has ruled for nearly two decades without receiving a renewed mandate from the Palestinian people.

There are alternatives to the discredited PA, yet Carney’s decision treats the PA as the only viable option capable for reforming and leading a Palestinian state. Instead of taking a novel approach to establishing a democratic Palestine, Canada has put the cart before the horse and chosen to throw its support behind a Palestinian quasi-state that has proven to be incapable of any meaningful change. It is folly to assume that a failed state can reinvent itself into a legitimate democratic actor.

If Canada’s objective is to support Palestinian-led efforts to achieve statehood, it would be more consistent with Canadian values for our government to empower the Palestinian people to cultivate leadership that is better and more capable of honouring commitments to de-radicalization and democratic reform. The logical time to recognize a Palestinian state is once it has demonstrated that it is capable of operating as such.

Another serious problem is that Carney’s statement treats the issues of Hamas, and the Israelis it still holds hostage, as though they were ancillary concerns. It is unreasonable to expect Israel to withdraw its forces from Gaza until it has rescued the hostages and obtained Hamas’s unconditional surrender. Neither the return of the hostages or the end of Hamas is guaranteed through Canada’s premature recognition a Palestinian state.

Palestine must earn recognition from the international community; it cannot be unilaterally bestowed by foreign governments. The global focus must be on working to bring two parties capable of establishing a lasting peace to the negotiating table to determine their own future.

Hastily declaring Palestine a state may appease some on Canada’s political fringes, but the mainstream Canadian public should not tolerate a half-baked foreign policy with such a low prospect of securing a lasting and just peace.

Our foreign policy must be grounded in Canadian values and moral clarity. History will judge those of us that choose expedience over principle, sanitizing the stains of terror and placing hollow hope in an illegitimate, unworthy regime.

Postmedia Network

Richard Robertson is the director of research and advocacy at B’nai Brith Canada.

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It’s difficult to take President Donald Trump seriously when he claims a “national emergency” justifies invoking extraordinary powers but then keeps kicking the can down the road on addressing the alleged emergency. That’s what he did when he unilaterally imposed tariffs on the whole world based on a wildly broad reading of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) but then delayed levies because trade negotiations are underway. At the end of the day, if it’s all about leverage when bargaining with foreign emissaries, it’s not an emergency, and the president shouldn’t be acting on his own.

On April 2, when

announcing

“Liberation Day,” President Trump insisted that “foreign trade and economic practices have created a national emergency” that has “led to the hollowing out of our manufacturing base.” As a result, he said he was “invoking his authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA) to address the national emergency posed by the large and persistent trade deficit.”

However, on April 9, the White House released a

new executive order

suspending new, punitive tariff rates on most countries, excluding China, until July 9.

On May 12, in light of trade discussions with the People’s Republic of China, the president

suspended

some of the new tariffs on that country for 90 days.

On July 7, the White House released another

new executive order

extending the deadline for imposing higher tariffs on goods imported into the United States until August 1 “based on additional information and recommendations from various senior officials.”

Then, just last week, the president

delayed the implementation of new tariffs

— again excluding China — until October 5. The reason given was that trade partners have been “signaling their sincere intentions to permanently remedy the trade barriers that have contributed to the national emergency.”

This all may be brinksmanship and bare-knuckled haggling of the sort that extracted a

deal from the European Union

(which has sparked

finger-pointing among European officials

who resent their weakness put on public display). But extraordinary emergency powers aren’t intended to be used to give the president a better bargaining hand. They’re supposed to be used when there’s no time to consult Congress because of an actual emergency. In fact, IEEPA was passed to limit presidential authority because lawmakers thought the executive branch was going its own way far too often.

According to a 2024 report by the

Congressional Research Service

(CRS), the National Emergencies Act was passed in 1976 and IEEPA in 1977 after legislators “discovered that the United States had been in a state of emergency for more than 40 years.” During that time, presidents used earlier grants of emergency powers dating back to World War I to block the transfer of money across borders, seize assets held by foreign nationals, restrict exports, and otherwise unilaterally meddle in people’s business based upon the whims of whoever was in the White House during periods of international conflict and Cold War tensions with the Soviet Bloc.

Needless to say, an “emergency” that lasts 40 years isn’t really an emergency; it’s the ongoing state of the world. The new legislation was intended to rein in presidents, so they’d more readily consult with the legislative branch before conducting foreign economic policy. It didn’t work.

As the CRS goes on to document, IEEPA didn’t really limit presidential discretion in part because Congress never tried to terminate a national emergency. “National emergencies invoking IEEPA often last nearly a decade, although some have lasted significantly longer,” the CRS added. The emergency declared after U.S. embassy staff were taken hostage in Iran in 1979 is still in effect.

Despite that wildly broad authority and its enthusiastic implementation by presidents of both parties, there have been some limits to executive power under IEEPA. As of the 2024 publication of that report, no president had ever invoked IEEPA to impose tariffs. That makes sense, because tariffs are about taxing general trade between businesses and individuals in different countries. Despite much complaining about trade imbalances by American politicians across the political spectrum, nobody ever pretended that the flow of goods around the world and the places of their manufacture were “emergencies.” Until Donald Trump.

As Trump mentioned in his April 2 “Liberation Day” statement, he considers a large trade deficit to be a “national emergency” that justifies “responsive tariffs.” The problem with this position is that economists don’t consider trade deficits to be bad at all, let alone emergencies.

In February, George Mason University economist Donald Boudreaux, and Phil Gramm, an economist and former chairman of the Senate Banking Committee,

pointed out

in The Wall Street Journal that “between 1890 and 2024, it is impossible to find a statistically significant correlation between America’s trade balance and its economic growth.”

Boston University economist Tarek Alexander Hassan

adds

that “a trade deficit can only arise if foreigners invest more in the U.S. than Americans invest abroad” and they’re willing to do so because the U.S. is a good place for everybody to make money.

Also complicating the Trump administration’s argument is that, despite the broad authority granted by IEEPA, the president is wielding power the law doesn’t grant his office.

Summarizing arguments heard last week in a federal lawsuit challenging the president’s use of IEEPA to impose tariffs, The Washington Post’s Jason Willick

observed

that the administration received “an icy reception.” He went on to point out that “the IEEPA is a sanctions and embargo law that doesn’t even mention tariffs,” making Trump’s interpretation of his power unprecedented. By all appearances, the administration’s claims were unconvincing to the panel of judges.

President Trump claims to see an emergency where nobody else does and addresses it by invoking extraordinary powers never envisioned by the law. All the while he acts like there’s no emergency at all.

The president has proven proficient at bargaining. But his desire to cut trade deals is no emergency.

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Following a wave of public

condemnation

, Montreal Pride has announced that it will no longer ban two Jewish groups from marching in its annual parade next Sunday and has issued an apology to Quebec’s Jewish community. The festival’s rapid reversal of the ban, which was announced last week, is a welcome development — but this incident should never have occurred in the first place.

In a

statement

last Wednesday, the festival broke its longstanding neutrality on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, declaring its “opposition to genocide” and “solidarity with the Palestinian people.” By extension, the festival organizers “made the decision to deny participation in the Pride Parade to organizations spreading hateful discourse” in order to preserve “the emotional and physical safety of our communities.”

While the statement did not specify which organizations were banned, two Jewish groups — Ga’ava and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) — announced shortly afterwards that they will be excluded from this year’s festivities. Both groups are considered mainstream advocates for Jewish Canadians, and had previously marched in the parade for years without serious incident. Montreal Pride has since publicly confirmed the exclusion of Ga’ava, but not CIJA.

Ga’ava’s president, Carlos Godoy, told me in a phone interview that Montreal Pride accused both organizations of using “hate speech” because they described some of their critics as “pro-terror” and “pro-Hamas” in a

news article last month

. Godoy said that he received an initial warning from Montreal Pride last Monday, followed by an abrupt ban two days later, with no opportunity given for his organization to defend itself.

If this was indeed the ban’s rationale, and not just a pretext, then that would be deeply troubling. It is indisputable that many pro-Palestinian activists, including those opposed to the inclusion of “Zionists” in pride parades, employ the

rhetoric of “resistance” and “martyrdom

” to glorify terrorism and Hamas. There is nothing hateful about pointing out this uncomfortable reality, and participation in pride shouldn’t be contingent upon whitewashing the uglier elements of pro-Palestinian advocacy.

According to Godoy, though, this “very flimsy, ridiculous, outlandish accusation” was the culmination of a longstanding campaign by pro-Palestinian activists to exclude Jews from Pride, which has been spearheaded by two Arabic organizations:

Helem Montreal

and

Mubaadarat

.

His allegations were corroborated by a

public letter Helem published on Instagram

in August 2024, which provided a detailed timeline explaining how, between May and August that year, Helem and Mubaadarat aggressively, but unsuccessfully, lobbied Montreal Pride to boycott “any and all Israeli/Zionist participation” and ban Israeli flags.

Given that 2024 survey found that

91 per cent of Canadian Jews may be Zionists

— meaning they believe that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state — implementing these demands would have amounted to a de facto ban of most of Canada’s Jewish community.

This year, Helem launched its own alternative festival, “

Wild Pride

,” which took place last week and featured a party called “

Intifada on the Dance Floor

.” Notably, “intifada” (which translates into “uprising”) is

often seen as a pro-terrorism term

, as Palestinian militants widely used it to describe their suicide bombing campaign against Israeli civilians in the early 2000s.

And this isn’t the only thing that’s happened behind closed doors at Montreal Pride.

Further behind-the-scenes context was provided by

Artur Wilczynski

, a Jewish LGBTQ activist and retired bureaucrat who was recruited by Montreal Pride in 2023 to

help assess

the applications of new board members.

In an interview this Saturday, Wilczynski explained that Montreal Pride’s current troubles could be traced back to a “really serious kind of institutional meltdown” that occurred in 2022. That year, the festival was

abruptly canceled

just hours before it was supposed to begin, as it was discovered that organizers had recruited only half of the 200 volunteers needed to provide event security.

According to Wilczynski, the scandal pushed Montreal Pride to strictly focus on its core mandate and avoid embroilment in unrelated international conflicts. He said that the festival’s leadership told him this spring that they wanted to take a cautious approach, to avoid alienating corporate and government funders.

From Wilczynski’s understanding, the decision to ban Ga’ava and CIJA was not unanimous and “caused a schism on the board.” The day following our interview, he

publicly announced

his resignation from Montreal Pride due to the “discriminatory and indefensible” exclusion of Ga’ava, and, the day after that, the chair of Montreal Pride’s board of directors, Bernard Truong,

also resigned

, citing “personal reasons.”

The ban caused strife with some of Montreal Pride’s external partners and community supporters as well. Several days ago, for example, five Liberal MPs published a

joint letter

urging Montreal Pride to reverse its “profoundly hurtful” ban of Ga’ava, as it “sends a message that Jewish identity is not welcome in LGBTQ+ spaces.”

Both Wilczynski and Godoy alleged that Montreal Pride’s executive director, Simon Gamache, has been on sick leave since last Monday. “Pride is rudderless and without a captain on board right now,” exclaimed Godoy.

However, I was unable to corroborate these claims or others about Montreal Pride’s internal dynamics, as the festival did not respond to a detailed list of emailed questions. Their presenting sponsor, TD Bank, also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

On Tuesday, it was announced that Ga’ava and CIJA would be re-invited back to the parade following discussions with the new chair of Montreal Pride. In a press release, CIJA stated that Montreal Pride “opposes antisemitism and had no intention of excluding the Jewish community” and that “following constructive dialogue, we accepted their apology.”

“This incident — so out of step with Fierté Montréal’s (Montreal Pride’s) values of inclusion and respect, values that must be upheld in the broader struggle for Quebec’s shared values — should never have happened,” stated the press release, which went on to acknowledge the “thousands” of citizens, including politicians and influences, who condemned the exclusion. “Quebec’s Jewish community is glad to move forward.”

While moving forward is always possible, one wonders: why did this mess happen in the first place? Jewish Canadians deserve better than this erratic dysfunction.

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For two years, Hamas has used the suffering of Palestinians to manipulate global opinion. As Brian Lilley discusses with this week’s guests, it worked: the Hamas-caused hunger crisis in Gaza has prompted Canada, with France and the United Kingdom, to recognize a Palestinian state based on unenforceable conditions like democratic elections and Hamas relinquishing power — which it says it will never do. Iddo Moed, Israel’s ambassador, says the declarations have already destroyed ceasefire talks. Eylon Levy, former spokesman for the Israeli government, says such naive western “student politics” invite everlasting war. And Conservative MP Shuvaloy Majumdar, who has worked with fledgling Mideast democracies, explains how Prime Minister Mark Carney has, ironically, subverted Canada’s democracy, and interests, with his reckless decision. (Recorded Aug. 1, 2025.)

• Sheryl Saperia: Supporting Palestinian statehood means endorsing violence
• NP View: The wrong plan, the wrong reasons