“The pictures take you back 80 years. But we were promised that those images of a living skeleton wouldn’t come back. The promise was: never again.”

So says a heartbroken Tamar Eshet, cousin of Hamas hostage Evyatar David, who was seen in a recent disturbing

video

being forced to dig his own grave in a narrow tunnel somewhere in Gaza.

In the video, David is pale, his body thin, bony, and wasted.

Hamas released the video only days after Prime Minister Mark Carney joined U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron in saying they would

recognize

a Palestinian state.

Likely emboldened by the announcements, the terrorists were happy to show the world how their depravity was starving the hostages to death. Hamas also said they would not disarm until a Palestinian state was established.

Far from pushing the path of peace forward, Carney and the others have succeeded only in giving succor to the terrorists.

National Post

interviewed Eshet, who believes Hamas saw what the three world leaders were doing and immediately reneged on a hostage deal.

“When you give (Hamas) power, when you give them a prize for their actions, then you are letting them starve the hostages because they say, ‘OK, we are going to get whatever we want anyway.’ Now the world can see the consequences of their actions, of their irresponsibility. (Hamas) took a step back from a hostage deal right now because of everything that happened and they feel like they can do anything. We are giving a prize to terror. Giving them power is justifying terror and the world has to think about what they are doing,” she said.

Evyatar David was 22 years old, a barista in a cafe, when he and his friends attended the Nova music festival that was attacked by terrorists on October 7, 2023.

David and his childhood friend, Guy Dalal, were among the 251 hostages taken by Hamas after the terrorists had butchered 1,200 people. Of those taken, 49 hostages are still in Gaza, but only about 20 are still believed to be alive.

“Evyatar was 22 when he was kidnapped. He was still thinking what to study, what does he want to do with his life” said Eshet.

However, his favourite thing in the world, she said, was playing guitar and he dreamed of becoming a music producer.

“He’s a really calm guy. He’s the advice giver to his friends, they would come to him,” she said. “And we live next to each other. Our houses are close. We are a close family, and ever since October 7, we are even closer.”

As the slaughter began at the festival, David was hiding with friends in some bushes.

“Two of his friends were murdered in a bush right next to him. He was kidnapped with one of his best friends, Guy Dalal. They know each other from kindergarten, and they’re still being held together,” said Eshet.

Well, relatives believe they are being held together, but Hamas isn’t the kind of organization that gives regular updates on its hostages.

In February, the anguished families of David and Dalal watched another Hamas propaganda video showing the two men.

Hamas

filmed

David and Dalal sitting in a van, watching a hostage handover ceremony. But the tantalizing glimpse of freedom was all that the men got. After the ceremony, they were taken back to Gaza and the tunnels where they are being imprisoned.

“We hope that they are still together,” said Eshet.

Then last weekend, Hamas released a new video, this one showing a wretched, emaciated, and clearly starving David. In the video, David marks what looks like a handmade calendar and indicates days when he has eaten and days when he has not. At another point, he is seen digging a hole and says it is to be his own grave.

But if Hamas is trying to convince the world that all of Gaza is starving, the families of the hostages are not convinced.

Eshet says that in the video an arm, presumably of a terrorist, can be seen handing a can of lentils to David. She notes that it is the arm of someone who has been well fed.

Hamas is deliberately starving the hostages, she says, but the terrorists are not going hungry.

“Hamas isn’t “an organization that fights for the Palestinian people. They don’t care about them. They starve them just as much as much as they starve Evyatar. They take away the food, they steal the food from their own people,” Eshet said.

The cruelty in the video was too much for David’s mother.

“His mother hasn’t watched the latest videos because she thinks she would break down if she sees that. She can’t see her son in this condition and she knows she has to be strong and keep on fighting for him and be strong for her other children,” said Eshet, noting that David has an older brother and a younger sister.

“It’s hard. We see the abuse, the torture, the starvation, and how cynically they do that. They use him for a video to show how they starved him. They were proud of it. They wanted to show the world how they’re starving Evyatar. And it breaks my heart to see him fighting to even talk. We can see that he’s using every breath he has to talk. It’s scary because in this condition we really don’t know how much longer he can survive.”

Eshet said she was shocked when she saw the video.

“I didn’t know what I was going to see. I froze. I was shaking and crying, and I didn’t know what to do. You feel so useless and helpless. As a Jewish person, as a person who has family who’s been in concentration camps, to see Evyatar like this, I don’t think there’s a word to describe the feeling: it’s horror, it’s pain.”

Seeing the video of David is a ghastly reminder for his family of the Holocaust and the haunting pictures of starving prisoners in the concentration camps. “Our family is here only because we escaped from the Holocaust,” said Eshet. “A lot of our great-grandparents were in concentration camps and in war camps and only my great-grandmother who came to Israel was the one who survived and had a family.

“We were promised that those pictures would never be seen again. This is the time for the world to say never again, and to make sure it doesn’t happen and to stop it.”

Eshet said the world must unite in bringing the hostages home. “We have to bring all the hostages back home. The world has to speak up, and stop giving Hamas more power and giving prizes for their actions, because that’s what’s been done in the last couple of weeks.”

David and the other hostages may not have much time left, she said. “They may have days or weeks in these conditions. The world must pressure Hamas to first give the hostages decent care, give them food and water and medicine and we know that they have this. That should be the first thing and then to get them back home. But time is not on our side.”

Eshet knows that ending the war and defeating Hamas is no simple thing. “Defeating Hamas is about defeating an idea, an ideology, and it’s much bigger than just the military aspect. It’s more complicated than that. This is all part of a campaign and the world is falling for it right now, they’re giving prizes to (Hamas) for starving Evyatar and for starving their own population. They (the politicians) need to have a responsibility when they do such things. We can’t praise terror. We have to be on the good side of history,” she said.

“I’m not an authority on how to end the war, but I think a hostage deal is the only hope” she said. “And I think it has to be as soon as possible because we’ve just seen that time is critical.”

National Post

• Michael Higgins: The United Church’s abhorrent excuses for October 7
• Terry Glavin: Synagogue vandalism shows being ‘progressive’ no shield against antisemitism

If you thought that the alliance of pro-Gaza activists, radical leftists and proponents of terror would fade away, you were wrong.

Last weekend in Australia, the “March for Humanity” paraded across the Sydney Harbour Bridge. An estimated 100,000 people

marched

to support the people of Gaza amidst a war between Israel and Hamas that has lasted for almost two years.

It was also an opportunity for bad but powerful actors to express their visceral hatred of Australia, and boast of their loyalty to terrorism. The black flag of ISIS was

brazenly waved

amidst the sea of Palestinian flags, while a portrait of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was

held aloft

near the front of the march.

At another rally in Melbourne, an Australian flag was

burned

to a crisp.

Within 48 hours, a synagogue in the British Columbia capital of Victoria was

vandalized

with vicious antisemitic graffiti: “Jews are evil … Palestinians will get their revenge against you child-killing Jew monsters.”

B.C. also played host to the

desecration

of the Canadian flag last year in Vancouver. At a rally co-led by the now-proscribed terror entity Samidoun, the red maple leaf was set alight while activists chanted, “

Death to Canada

.”

Samidoun’s leadership affirmed that the chant was meant literally and that

they desired

the destruction of the “colonial, capitalist state of Canada.”

It would be unfair to castigate every supporter of Gaza as pro-terror or anti-Canadian. On the whole, however, they have shown little to no discomfort about marching alongside their more bloodthirsty counterparts.

Western countries are equated with Israel and categorized as nothing more than artificial colonial states that must be destroyed.

Nothing symbolized this more perfectly than the burning of the Australian flag, which anti-Israel organizer Nasser Mashni

dismissed

as nothing more than a “

piece of silk

.”

That same individual

once remarked

that, “Israel and Australia share two things in common, aside from being a shithole racist, settler colony … they also have the highest incidence of skin cancer. Their skin is designed for northern Europe, where there is not much sun.”

It cannot be denied that there is a racial element to these protests. Anybody regarded as a settler is

considered

 “

subhuman,

” and this has been evident in decolonial protests from Melbourne to

rural B.C

.

Established progressive parties across the West have tried accommodating this movement. They have listened to its demands and increased their pressure on Israel to wind down its military operations.

Last week, Prime Minister Mark Carney joined his counterparts in

France

and

Great Britain

by announcing that Canada will

recognize

a Palestinian state in September, albeit under very strict conditions.

These include securing a commitment from the Palestinian Authority (PA) government of the West Bank to hold elections — which have been suspended for 20 years — in 2026. Another condition is that the terror group Hamas be excluded from the electoral process.

Unlikely as it is, let us say that these conditions are met and a sovereign Palestinian state is recognized.

The anti-Israel lobby will not magically disappear, nor will the pro-Hamas, anti-western elements that have bulldozed their way to political power. Their influence has been building for decades, and they will not give it up.

Britain’s unpopular Labour government, elected only last year, has utterly failed to contain the anti-Israel faction of its voters. Former party leader Jeremy Corbyn is set to

co-lead

a

splinter party

of Labour MPs who jumped ship over the war in Gaza.

In the United States, the failure of Kamala Harris to satisfy the demands of Arab-American voters in Michigan led many

to reject

the Democratic Party, and helped flip the state to Donald Trump.

In New York City, socialist and anti-Zionist insurgent Zohran Mamdani successfully weaponized anti-Israel sentiment to

defeat

the state’s former governor, Andrew Cuomo, in the city’s Democratic primary.

Mamdani, who is now favoured to be elected in the upcoming mayoral election, has refused to condemn the phrase, “

globalize the intifada

.”

Far from being a purely ethnic phenomenon, Australia’s anti-colonial movement

includes

both immigrants and native-born Australians.

The alignment of decolonial militants and anti-Israel radicals has become a permanent part of western politics. It is also unlikely that the rash of hate crimes perpetrated against Jews in Canada and elsewhere will abate in the near future.

Members of progressive governments have shown a disgraceful tendency to tolerate these incidents. Following the vandalism of the synagogue in Victoria, Liberal MP Will Greaves

condemned

the crime on social media, but that was as far as his party went.

They will not risk alienating the sizable part of the left wing that is obsessed with Gaza. The police are

investigating

the incident, but even if they find the perpetrator, heavy sentences are unlikely.

A Toronto-area man who was arrested after

threatening

to bomb every synagogue in the city received a sentence of just 60 days of house arrest. It seems that would-be terrorists only get timeouts in 2025.

There are two visions of Canada; one as a purely modern, multicultural and tolerant state where every religious and ethnic group is equally valid and can coexist in peace. The other is the Confederation ideal of an Anglo-French union striving for “peace, order and good government.”

Radicals in the anti-Israel movement care for neither. They abuse the Canadian habit of tolerance and spit on the colonial origins of the country.

They are emboldened, angry, and can bend politicians to their will. They will

burn Canada

to the ground if they get the chance, just as they did our flag.

National Post

• Jack Mintz: Mark Carney must combat antisemitism — not fan its flames
• Geoff Russ: Macdonald’s critics don’t just hate our first PM. They hate Canada

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.

• The inside story of how Gaza aid is diverted from the people who need it most
• 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.

• Mark Carney falls right into a Hamas trap: Full Comment podcast
• 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.

• Derek Burney: Carney won the election battle, but the trade war is far from over
• Derek Burney: Retaliate and rebuild, Canada

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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