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Source: National Post (Opinions)

Dolly Parton performs at the Academy of Country Music Awards on March 7, 2022, in Las Vegas. The beloved singer/songwriter/philanthropist died on Tuesday, Aug. 25 at the age of 80.

Over her long and delightful career, people stopped laughing at Dolly Parton and simply began loving her.

She had joined in the jokes from the beginning, defusing the disdain they contained for the hillbilly girl from the hovels in the hollers, who took the bus to Nashville the day after her high school graduation, her belongings packed into four shopping bags from the local Piggly Wiggly.

She wanted to be a music star and the 18-year-old who grew up in a one-room cabin with neither electricity nor running water was utterly confident that she could be. With an astonishing songwriting ability — her publishing catalogue contains thousands of songs — and a voice to match, she stepped into her high heels and marched out of grinding poverty, becoming one of the most glamorous figures in country music.

At five-foot-nothing, she created an outsized persona, the buxom blonde in big wigs and tight costumes, all glitter and rhinestones. She revelled in it even more than those who ridiculed it. She never appeared in public without being fully made up, telling all and sundry that “it takes a lot of money to make me look this cheap!”

When she arrived in Nashville in the 1960s, there were few female country music stars. They knew well that certain good ol’ boys might seek to take advantage of what they likely regarded as a dirt-poor dumb blonde, desperate to make it. The grand old dames assured Dolly that they had her back.

“It’s not my back the old fellers are interested in,” Dolly laughed back.

It turned out that Dolly could take care of herself, proving to be more savvy than the old fellers in the business of music. Famously, she declined to let Elvis Presley cover her “ I Will Always Love You” when his manager insisted on 50 per cent of future royalties. Whitney Houston would later make it one of the monster hits of all time, and Dolly made so much money that she chuckled, “I could buy Graceland!”

While recording chart-topping and award-winning songs in the 1970s, Dolly shifted from something of a caricature to become an admired character with the 1980 movie 9 to 5 , where she held her own with established actresses Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda. The comedy told the story about working-class women who were badly treated by the old fellers. The eponymous song was a hit. Underneath the fake hair and fake nails was a woman who told true stories — her own and those of so many such women — with sincerity and sympathy. And the songs were so very good.

At the end of the 1980s, Dolly returned to the big screen in Steel Magnolias , taking her place this time alongside accomplished actresses Shirley MacLaine, Olympia Dukakis, Sally Field, Julia Roberts and Daryl Hannah. It was an endearing tale of Southern women telling stories about being Southern women, pretty as flowers and strong as steel. Dolly wrote “ Eagle When She Flies” for the film, though it was not used. She released it later herself, telling her story in song; indeed she would later call herself a “songteller.”

“She’s a woman/ she knows how to dish it out or take it all,” Dolly wrote, as much about herself as her role. “Her heart’s as soft as feathers, still she weathers stormy skies/ And she’s a sparrow when she’s broken/ But she’s an eagle when she flies.”

“Gentle as the sweet magnolia, strong as steel her faith and pride/ She hurts deep, and when she weeps, she’s just as fragile as a child … Oh, bless her, Lord.”

The screenplay for Steel Magnolias allowed Dolly’s character — Truvy Jones, the hairdresser who owned her own beauty parlour — to speak as Dolly, the storyteller.

“There is no such thing as natural beauty,” Truvy declares in her salon, where women share burdens, wisdom and gossip.

“Laughter through tears is my favourite emotion,” Truvy says, explaining many of Dolly’s greatest hits. “I really wish I had some words of wisdom but I don’t so why don’t just focus on the joy of the situation.”

Or put more directly: “I have a strict policy that no one cries alone in my presence.” When Dolly sang sad songs, it was so that others might be a little less sad.

Forty years ago, Dolly opened the Dollywood amusement park in the marvellously monikered Pigeon Forge, Tenn., in her native Sevier County and near the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Dollywood was the flagship enterprise of the Dolly Parton business empire, making her one of her generation’s most successful women entrepreneurs.

With her profits she pioneered a different kind of philanthropy, in addition to the usual things rich people do, like donating to the children’s hospital in Knoxville, Tenn., which bears her name after an undisclosed “generational” contribution.

Ten years ago, she sent $1,000 cheques for six months to families in Sevier County who lost their homes in the Smoky Mountains wildfires in 2016.

Growing up one of 12 children to a hard-working, creative but illiterate father, Dolly started the Imagination Library 30 years ago, sending free books to families in Sevier County — one book a month from birth to six years old. The Imagination Library, now in partnerships across the U.S. and abroad, including in Canada , has sent more than 322 million books to young children. Songtellers first need to read stories before they can write their own.

When Taylor Swift was looking for a philanthropic dimension to her summer wedding last month, she gave $2 million to the Imagination Library.

At Dollywood there is a pavilion for bald eagles that cannot live in the wild due to injury or disability. At daily exhibitions, visitors can witness the beauty and majesty of birds which would otherwise be overlooked, beaten down by life, hidden away in the hollers.

Broken like sparrows, the eagles have a place at Dollywood, and in Dolly’s heart, which was the biggest thing about her.

National Post

Click here for more Canada

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during an event in the Oval Office of the White House on August 27, 2026 in Washington, DC.

Late Wednesday the federal government announced that it was removing seafood from Canada’s list of retaliatory tariffs. The finance ministry justified the move stating , “Based on feedback, we have made select adjustments to protect against broader economic harms, including removing seafood and fish products from our list of counter tariffs.”

The invocation of economic harm here is a tell, because it should be obvious to everyone, our politicians included, that tariffs on foreign products are a tax paid for by domestic consumers.

In fact, our politicians, both federal and provincial, have accurately pointed out that economic truth several times when talking about President Donald Trump’s tariffs. Ontario Premier Doug Ford told CBS News last year that “A tariff on Canada is a tax on Americans.” When the latest potential deal fell through last weekend, Prime Minister Mark Carney echoed that same sentiment: “tariffs are taxes, taxes which are ultimately paid by U.S. consumers,” he said in a statement.

Saying this to the press should have immediately undermined the case for Canada to enact counter-tariffs, and our politicians should not have given in to the emotional response that “well, we have to do something.” If Trump is going to make life more expensive for American consumers with tariffs, our response should not be to engage in his economic delusions. Doing so makes life more expensive for Canadians.

When Canada first imposed retaliatory tariffs last year, the Bank of Canada found that prices on tariffed goods rose six per cent and added 0.3 percentage points to headline inflation. So when this new round of crop of counter-tariffs takes effect on Sept. 8, we can expect that at least some of the costs will be passed on to Canadian consumers. But it gets worse, because Ottawa has committed $7.5 billion in support for workers and businesses affected by the tariffs, which means that Canadians are paying twice: first as consumers, and then again as taxpayers.

Many have justified a counter-response for the purpose of getting the U.S. to change course. Commentators and former federal staffers have argued that our counter-tariffs are worth the domestic cost because Canada has the opportunity to cause pain for Americans, so much so that it could impact the upcoming midterm elections.

The thought process here is that if Canada can strategically impact those swing states, voters will vote for Democrats, who could remove tariff power from the president and get us back to something resembling normalcy.

This viewpoint seems rather straightforward, but it is incredibly naive. To pass a bill revoking Trump’s tariff powers, both the House and the Senate would need a two-thirds majority to be able to override a presidential veto. However, there is no fathomable scenario where the Democrats sweep enough of the midterms to have two-thirds of either house.

There are 20 toss-up congressional districts, which is simply not enough to get the Democrats anywhere close to where they would need to be. There are only six potential Senate seats the Democrats could reasonably flip if we are being generous , again nowhere near what would be needed. This reality needs to be acknowledged because enacting a tax on ourselves to try and generate a political outcome that appears impossible is nonsensical.

Now, some may argue that a simple repeal of some of Trump’s tariffs would just require a majority in the House and 60 votes in the Senate to avoid a filibuster. While a congressional majority might be possible, getting to 60 in the Senate is not.

But, let’s say that by some miracle the unexpected happened and the Democrats did garner the votes needed to repeal the tariffs. Would they do so? Almost certainly not.

Democratic Governor of California Gavin Newsom, who is a potential Democratic nominee for president, was pressed by CTV’s Vassey Kapelos on that very question earlier this week. He not only justified what he called “targeted tariffs policies” but also flat-out said that he could not guarantee that the U.S. under Democratic leadership would repeal the tariffs. He even admitted that President Joe Biden kept many of Trump’s tariffs from his first term. All he could guarantee is that the disrespectful talk of Canada being a 51st state would end.

These hard realities should call into question why we would retaliate with our own tariffs, because the reasoning for it has to stretch beyond keeping our pride. We can not, and should not, enact a tax on ourselves for the pipe dream of influencing advantageous political outcomes south of the border. Strip away the bravado and the case for counter-tariffs falls apart into a chain of assumptions, each weaker than the last.

Can counter-tariffs meaningfully move votes to the Democrats in American swing states enough for them to repeal the tariffs? And if they got that power, would they actually do it? The answers to those questions don’t pan out in Canada’s favour.

So the question remains for those cheerleading the tax increase: Should Canada copy Trump’s economic mistakes for a political payoff that only exists in theory? I don’t think so.

National Post

David Clement is the policy director at the Consumer Choice Center.

Click here for more Canada

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during an event in the Oval Office of the White House on August 27, 2026 in Washington, DC.

Late Wednesday the federal government announced that it was removing seafood from Canada’s list of retaliatory tariffs. The finance ministry justified the move stating , “Based on feedback, we have made select adjustments to protect against broader economic harms, including removing seafood and fish products from our list of counter tariffs.”

The invocation of economic harm here is a tell, because it should be obvious to everyone, our politicians included, that tariffs on foreign products are a tax paid for by domestic consumers.

In fact, our politicians, both federal and provincial, have accurately pointed out that economic truth several times when talking about President Donald Trump’s tariffs. Ontario Premier Doug Ford told CBS News last year that “A tariff on Canada is a tax on Americans.” When the latest potential deal fell through last weekend, Prime Minister Mark Carney echoed that same sentiment: “tariffs are taxes, taxes which are ultimately paid by U.S. consumers,” he said in a statement.

Saying this to the press should have immediately undermined the case for Canada to enact counter-tariffs, and our politicians should not have given in to the emotional response that “well, we have to do something.” If Trump is going to make life more expensive for American consumers with tariffs, our response should not be to engage in his economic delusions. Doing so makes life more expensive for Canadians.

When Canada first imposed retaliatory tariffs last year, the Bank of Canada found that prices on tariffed goods rose six per cent and added 0.3 percentage points to headline inflation. So when this new round of crop of counter-tariffs takes effect on Sept. 8, we can expect that at least some of the costs will be passed on to Canadian consumers. But it gets worse, because Ottawa has committed $7.5 billion in support for workers and businesses affected by the tariffs, which means that Canadians are paying twice: first as consumers, and then again as taxpayers.

Many have justified a counter-response for the purpose of getting the U.S. to change course. Commentators and former federal staffers have argued that our counter-tariffs are worth the domestic cost because Canada has the opportunity to cause pain for Americans, so much so that it could impact the upcoming midterm elections.

The thought process here is that if Canada can strategically impact those swing states, voters will vote for Democrats, who could remove tariff power from the president and get us back to something resembling normalcy.

This viewpoint seems rather straightforward, but it is incredibly naive. To pass a bill revoking Trump’s tariff powers, both the House and the Senate would need a two-thirds majority to be able to override a presidential veto. However, there is no fathomable scenario where the Democrats sweep enough of the midterms to have two-thirds of either house.

There are 20 toss-up congressional districts, which is simply not enough to get the Democrats anywhere close to where they would need to be. There are only six potential Senate seats the Democrats could reasonably flip if we are being generous , again nowhere near what would be needed. This reality needs to be acknowledged because enacting a tax on ourselves to try and generate a political outcome that appears impossible is nonsensical.

Now, some may argue that a simple repeal of some of Trump’s tariffs would just require a majority in the House and 60 votes in the Senate to avoid a filibuster. While a congressional majority might be possible, getting to 60 in the Senate is not.

But, let’s say that by some miracle the unexpected happened and the Democrats did garner the votes needed to repeal the tariffs. Would they do so? Almost certainly not.

Democratic Governor of California Gavin Newsom, who is a potential Democratic nominee for president, was pressed by CTV’s Vassey Kapelos on that very question earlier this week. He not only justified what he called “targeted tariffs policies” but also flat-out said that he could not guarantee that the U.S. under Democratic leadership would repeal the tariffs. He even admitted that President Joe Biden kept many of Trump’s tariffs from his first term. All he could guarantee is that the disrespectful talk of Canada being a 51st state would end.

These hard realities should call into question why we would retaliate with our own tariffs, because the reasoning for it has to stretch beyond keeping our pride. We can not, and should not, enact a tax on ourselves for the pipe dream of influencing advantageous political outcomes south of the border. Strip away the bravado and the case for counter-tariffs falls apart into a chain of assumptions, each weaker than the last.

Can counter-tariffs meaningfully move votes to the Democrats in American swing states enough for them to repeal the tariffs? And if they got that power, would they actually do it? The answers to those questions don’t pan out in Canada’s favour.

So the question remains for those cheerleading the tax increase: Should Canada copy Trump’s economic mistakes for a political payoff that only exists in theory? I don’t think so.

National Post

David Clement is the policy director at the Consumer Choice Center.

Click here for more Canada

On Friday last week, Global Affairs Canada published an official advisory telling Canadian businesses to stay away from an entire category of lawful commerce. The document warns of “significant legal, financial and reputational risks” tied to Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and advises companies against “investments, financial transactions, procurement, purchases and tourism” connected to them. Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand framed this warning as an extension of Canada’s “long-standing position” that the settlements are “illegal under international law” and “constitute a serious obstacle to a just and lasting peace.”

This advisory threatens to sanction both Israelis abroad and Canadians.

This is a serious problem. This decision does not come from a Canadian court or statute. It was not made by members of Parliament. It comes from Ottawa deciding, on its own authority, that the matter is closed. There is an important distinction Ottawa is blurring: Canada’s foreign-policy position is not the same thing as Canadian law. Parliament has debated the issue. NDP MP Heather McPherson introduced Motion M-28 in March calling for, among other things, targeted sanctions connected to settlements. But Parliament has not enacted a general prohibition on Canadians doing business connected to Israeli settlements. This matters.

The advisory’s argument appears to rest on a single premise: Israeli settlements are “illegal under international law.” This claim rests on a contested interpretation of Article 49(6) of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention , which says an occupying power “shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” The treaty does not define “transfer” in that provision or expressly say civilians are prohibited from moving voluntarily. The legal dispute is over how broadly “transfer” should be interpreted and what degree of government encouragement, assistance or involvement is sufficient to constitute one. Credentialed international lawyers have disputed these questions for decades.

In the advisory, Ottawa points to the United Nations as the source of its reasoning. Fair enough. But let’s be precise about what the UN has actually said and done.

UN Security Council Resolution 2334 calls the settlements a violation of international law. But it was passed under Chapter VI of the UN Charter, not Chapter VII, which authorizes enforcement. Whatever diplomatic and legal significance Resolution 2334 carries internationally, it does not itself make settlement commerce a crime under Canadian statute. A UN Security Council resolution addressed to states does not, by itself, make it illegal under Canadian law for a Canadian to buy a bottle of wine, for instance, produced in a West Bank settlement. Wine is not unique, it is simply a useful example because settlement-produced wine has already been tested in Canadian courts Canada has dealt with precisely such wines before, the resulting Canadian litigation concerned how they could be labelled, not whether Canadians were prohibited from buying them.

Ottawa’s strongest argument is the International Court of Justice’s 2024 advisory opinion . But an advisory opinion is not legally binding, and several judges issued separate or dissenting opinions. A government may consider it, but it should not relay it to its citizens as Canadian law they break at their peril.

Here is the honest truth. There is a strong international consensus against the settlements, but there is also a decades-old legal dispute. Ottawa can acknowledge both. What it cannot do is turn international consensus into settled Canadian law.

None of this requires minimizing settler violence. There have been serious and documented attacks by extremist Israeli settlers against Palestinians, and those responsible should be investigated, prosecuted and, where justified, sanctioned. Canada has already sanctioned specific individuals and entities connected to extremist settler violence. That proves the point: target those responsible through defined legal mechanisms. Do not use their crimes to cast suspicion over every Israeli who lives beyond the Green Line , or every Canadian who lawfully does business with one.

Ottawa knows the difference. It has not asked Parliament to make settlement commerce illegal. It has not pursued a Canadian court ruling that it is unlawful. Instead, it is using an advisory to discourage conduct Parliament has not prohibited. This advisory casts a cloud of legal risk over a sweeping range of otherwise lawful activity, from investment and purchasing to tourism, without actually prohibiting any of it. It is prohibition by insinuation.

Then comes the part written to be skimmed past. Businesses that decline to comply “may result in the withdrawal of Trade Commissioner Service support and potential future support from Export Development Canada and the Canadian Commercial Corporation.”

This consequence is real. A Canadian business engaged in commerce that no Canadian law prohibits can risk losing federal support simply because Ottawa considers that commerce connected, even “indirectly,” to a settlement. But what does “indirectly” mean? A supplier? An investment fund with distant exposure? Ottawa does not draw the line. Businesses are left to guess, and the safest choice is obvious: walk away. That is how an advisory becomes a chill on lawful commerce without Parliament ever banning it.

You can hold any view you like about the West Bank and still see what this is. This is not about whether settlements are wise, good or just. It is about who gets to decide that something is illegal, by what process and with what accountability. Governments confident in their legal grounds pass laws. Governments that suspect they would lose the vote, or lose in court, issue advisories.

Ottawa reached a verdict against a defendant it never charged, in a case no court has heard, and now bills Canadian businesses to enforce it.

If this trade is illegal, prove it. Table the legislation. Name the conduct. Define it. Put it to a vote, and defend it before a judge who can strike it down. That is what the rule of law requires.

Until then, stop leaning on citizens you are unwilling to legislate against. Withdraw the advisory.

National Post

Matthew Taub is the founder and executive director of Unapologetically Jewish. A nationally registered non-profit fighting antisemitism.

Click here for more Canada

On Friday last week, Global Affairs Canada published an official advisory telling Canadian businesses to stay away from an entire category of lawful commerce. The document warns of “significant legal, financial and reputational risks” tied to Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and advises companies against “investments, financial transactions, procurement, purchases and tourism” connected to them. Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand framed this warning as an extension of Canada’s “long-standing position” that the settlements are “illegal under international law” and “constitute a serious obstacle to a just and lasting peace.”

This advisory threatens to sanction both Israelis abroad and Canadians.

This is a serious problem. This decision does not come from a Canadian court or statute. It was not made by members of Parliament. It comes from Ottawa deciding, on its own authority, that the matter is closed. There is an important distinction Ottawa is blurring: Canada’s foreign-policy position is not the same thing as Canadian law. Parliament has debated the issue. NDP MP Heather McPherson introduced Motion M-28 in March calling for, among other things, targeted sanctions connected to settlements. But Parliament has not enacted a general prohibition on Canadians doing business connected to Israeli settlements. This matters.

The advisory’s argument appears to rest on a single premise: Israeli settlements are “illegal under international law.” This claim rests on a contested interpretation of Article 49(6) of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention , which says an occupying power “shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” The treaty does not define “transfer” in that provision or expressly say civilians are prohibited from moving voluntarily. The legal dispute is over how broadly “transfer” should be interpreted and what degree of government encouragement, assistance or involvement is sufficient to constitute one. Credentialed international lawyers have disputed these questions for decades.

In the advisory, Ottawa points to the United Nations as the source of its reasoning. Fair enough. But let’s be precise about what the UN has actually said and done.

UN Security Council Resolution 2334 calls the settlements a violation of international law. But it was passed under Chapter VI of the UN Charter, not Chapter VII, which authorizes enforcement. Whatever diplomatic and legal significance Resolution 2334 carries internationally, it does not itself make settlement commerce a crime under Canadian statute. A UN Security Council resolution addressed to states does not, by itself, make it illegal under Canadian law for a Canadian to buy a bottle of wine, for instance, produced in a West Bank settlement. Wine is not unique, it is simply a useful example because settlement-produced wine has already been tested in Canadian courts Canada has dealt with precisely such wines before, the resulting Canadian litigation concerned how they could be labelled, not whether Canadians were prohibited from buying them.

Ottawa’s strongest argument is the International Court of Justice’s 2024 advisory opinion . But an advisory opinion is not legally binding, and several judges issued separate or dissenting opinions. A government may consider it, but it should not relay it to its citizens as Canadian law they break at their peril.

Here is the honest truth. There is a strong international consensus against the settlements, but there is also a decades-old legal dispute. Ottawa can acknowledge both. What it cannot do is turn international consensus into settled Canadian law.

None of this requires minimizing settler violence. There have been serious and documented attacks by extremist Israeli settlers against Palestinians, and those responsible should be investigated, prosecuted and, where justified, sanctioned. Canada has already sanctioned specific individuals and entities connected to extremist settler violence. That proves the point: target those responsible through defined legal mechanisms. Do not use their crimes to cast suspicion over every Israeli who lives beyond the Green Line , or every Canadian who lawfully does business with one.

Ottawa knows the difference. It has not asked Parliament to make settlement commerce illegal. It has not pursued a Canadian court ruling that it is unlawful. Instead, it is using an advisory to discourage conduct Parliament has not prohibited. This advisory casts a cloud of legal risk over a sweeping range of otherwise lawful activity, from investment and purchasing to tourism, without actually prohibiting any of it. It is prohibition by insinuation.

Then comes the part written to be skimmed past. Businesses that decline to comply “may result in the withdrawal of Trade Commissioner Service support and potential future support from Export Development Canada and the Canadian Commercial Corporation.”

This consequence is real. A Canadian business engaged in commerce that no Canadian law prohibits can risk losing federal support simply because Ottawa considers that commerce connected, even “indirectly,” to a settlement. But what does “indirectly” mean? A supplier? An investment fund with distant exposure? Ottawa does not draw the line. Businesses are left to guess, and the safest choice is obvious: walk away. That is how an advisory becomes a chill on lawful commerce without Parliament ever banning it.

You can hold any view you like about the West Bank and still see what this is. This is not about whether settlements are wise, good or just. It is about who gets to decide that something is illegal, by what process and with what accountability. Governments confident in their legal grounds pass laws. Governments that suspect they would lose the vote, or lose in court, issue advisories.

Ottawa reached a verdict against a defendant it never charged, in a case no court has heard, and now bills Canadian businesses to enforce it.

If this trade is illegal, prove it. Table the legislation. Name the conduct. Define it. Put it to a vote, and defend it before a judge who can strike it down. That is what the rule of law requires.

Until then, stop leaning on citizens you are unwilling to legislate against. Withdraw the advisory.

National Post

Matthew Taub is the founder and executive director of Unapologetically Jewish. A nationally registered non-profit fighting antisemitism.

Click here for more Canada

Palestinian students attend an UNRWA-run primary school in Gaza City in 2008.

U.S. special envoy Jared Kushner recently said that Gaza will not be rebuilt until it’s demilitarized. His reasoning was straightforward: no one wants to pour billions of dollars into reconstruction only to see the territory taken over by terrorists or destroyed again. He is right about the problem. But demilitarization alone will not solve it.

Taking away the terrorist’s weapons is necessary. But so is asking what made generations of young people willing to carry them in the first place.

If Gaza is to have a different future, reconstruction and rehabilitation must happen together. One to rebuild the physical environment, and the other to rebuild the institutions and ideas that shape future generations. I know this because I grew up in Gaza.

In fourth grade, my Islamic education teacher called me to the front of the classroom. He ran toward me, performed a military-style roll, then stood with his hands positioned around an imaginary rifle.

“You need to learn these movements,” he told us. We needed to become soldiers, he said. The war against the Jews would continue until the end of time, and killing Jews, according to my teacher, was an act of worship.

I was around nine years old at the time. The same teacher condemned the Oslo Accords and called the Palestinian Authority traitors. I did not know what the Oslo Accords were. I did not even know where Oslo was. I knew who I was supposed to hate before I even understood the conflict.

By secondary school, the imaginary rifle became a real Kalashnikov. We had a class in which we learned to disassemble and reassemble weapons. The instructor belonged to Hamas’s security apparatus. Once, his rifle accidentally discharged and a bullet tore through a classroom wall.

My father was furious when he learned that I was being trained with weapons. He went to the school and objected. Two days later, the principal humiliated me during morning assembly, calling me weak because I had brought my father instead of behaving like the “men” who fight to liberate Palestine.

My father understood something my school did not: patriotism did not require turning his son into a soldier. This is why the debate over Gaza’s reconstruction cannot be limited to buildings.

A school is not rehabilitated because someone replaces its windows, pours new concrete and installs new desks. What matters is what happens after children sit at those desks.

The United States and its partners therefore need to think about Gaza’s reconstruction in two inseparable tracks: demilitarization and deradicalization, physical reconstruction and civic rehabilitation.

That does not mean erasing Palestinian identity or political aspirations. Palestinians should be free to advocate for statehood, challenge Israeli policies and tell their own history. Deradicalization cannot become a euphemism for political submission.

It should mean something much more specific: ending the institutional glorification of violence, religious hatred and the militarization of children. Washington should make that principle part of any reconstruction framework.

International funding for education should require independent reviews of the curricula and teaching materials. Teachers and administrators should be screened for involvement in armed organizations. Schools should be strictly separated from military activities. Religious instruction should not be used to dehumanize Jews or sanctify violence against civilians.

Teacher training matters just as much as textbooks. A beautifully written curriculum means little if the adult standing in front of the classroom teaches children that compromise is treason and death in battle is the highest form of achievement.

Gaza will also need alternatives, not simply prohibitions. Young Palestinians need civic institutions, sports, arts, entrepreneurship, political debate and education that gives them ways to pursue dignity and purpose outside armed movements. Deradicalization succeeds when another identity becomes more compelling: student, engineer, entrepreneur, artist, citizen.

And Palestinian parents who resist militarization need protection and support. My father was one of them. He did not need an outsider to teach him that putting a Kalashnikov in his son’s hands was wrong. He needed a system that stood behind him when he said “no.” Instead, the system humiliated his child.

That distinction should matter enormously to Americans and others throughout the West. Gaza is not a population of two million irredeemable extremists. It is a society in which people have lived for decades under institutions and political forces that have profoundly shaped its citizens, starting from their formative years in the classroom. Yet institutions can change.

Kushner is right that rebuilding Gaza without demilitarizing it risks financing another war. But removing rifles and tunnels addresses only half of the problem.

I remember an imaginary rifle in my teacher’s hands when I was nine. Years later, there was a real one in mine. The distance between those two rifles is where Gaza’s future will be decided. Reconstruction must begin there.

National Post

Moumen Al-Natour is a Palestinian lawyer from Gaza and a co-organizer of the 2019 “We Want to Live” street demonstrations against Hamas.

Click here for more Canada

Palestinian students attend an UNRWA-run primary school in Gaza City in 2008.

U.S. special envoy Jared Kushner recently said that Gaza will not be rebuilt until it’s demilitarized. His reasoning was straightforward: no one wants to pour billions of dollars into reconstruction only to see the territory taken over by terrorists or destroyed again. He is right about the problem. But demilitarization alone will not solve it.

Taking away the terrorist’s weapons is necessary. But so is asking what made generations of young people willing to carry them in the first place.

If Gaza is to have a different future, reconstruction and rehabilitation must happen together. One to rebuild the physical environment, and the other to rebuild the institutions and ideas that shape future generations. I know this because I grew up in Gaza.

In fourth grade, my Islamic education teacher called me to the front of the classroom. He ran toward me, performed a military-style roll, then stood with his hands positioned around an imaginary rifle.

“You need to learn these movements,” he told us. We needed to become soldiers, he said. The war against the Jews would continue until the end of time, and killing Jews, according to my teacher, was an act of worship.

I was around nine years old at the time. The same teacher condemned the Oslo Accords and called the Palestinian Authority traitors. I did not know what the Oslo Accords were. I did not even know where Oslo was. I knew who I was supposed to hate before I even understood the conflict.

By secondary school, the imaginary rifle became a real Kalashnikov. We had a class in which we learned to disassemble and reassemble weapons. The instructor belonged to Hamas’s security apparatus. Once, his rifle accidentally discharged and a bullet tore through a classroom wall.

My father was furious when he learned that I was being trained with weapons. He went to the school and objected. Two days later, the principal humiliated me during morning assembly, calling me weak because I had brought my father instead of behaving like the “men” who fight to liberate Palestine.

My father understood something my school did not: patriotism did not require turning his son into a soldier. This is why the debate over Gaza’s reconstruction cannot be limited to buildings.

A school is not rehabilitated because someone replaces its windows, pours new concrete and installs new desks. What matters is what happens after children sit at those desks.

The United States and its partners therefore need to think about Gaza’s reconstruction in two inseparable tracks: demilitarization and deradicalization, physical reconstruction and civic rehabilitation.

That does not mean erasing Palestinian identity or political aspirations. Palestinians should be free to advocate for statehood, challenge Israeli policies and tell their own history. Deradicalization cannot become a euphemism for political submission.

It should mean something much more specific: ending the institutional glorification of violence, religious hatred and the militarization of children. Washington should make that principle part of any reconstruction framework.

International funding for education should require independent reviews of the curricula and teaching materials. Teachers and administrators should be screened for involvement in armed organizations. Schools should be strictly separated from military activities. Religious instruction should not be used to dehumanize Jews or sanctify violence against civilians.

Teacher training matters just as much as textbooks. A beautifully written curriculum means little if the adult standing in front of the classroom teaches children that compromise is treason and death in battle is the highest form of achievement.

Gaza will also need alternatives, not simply prohibitions. Young Palestinians need civic institutions, sports, arts, entrepreneurship, political debate and education that gives them ways to pursue dignity and purpose outside armed movements. Deradicalization succeeds when another identity becomes more compelling: student, engineer, entrepreneur, artist, citizen.

And Palestinian parents who resist militarization need protection and support. My father was one of them. He did not need an outsider to teach him that putting a Kalashnikov in his son’s hands was wrong. He needed a system that stood behind him when he said “no.” Instead, the system humiliated his child.

That distinction should matter enormously to Americans and others throughout the West. Gaza is not a population of two million irredeemable extremists. It is a society in which people have lived for decades under institutions and political forces that have profoundly shaped its citizens, starting from their formative years in the classroom. Yet institutions can change.

Kushner is right that rebuilding Gaza without demilitarizing it risks financing another war. But removing rifles and tunnels addresses only half of the problem.

I remember an imaginary rifle in my teacher’s hands when I was nine. Years later, there was a real one in mine. The distance between those two rifles is where Gaza’s future will be decided. Reconstruction must begin there.

National Post

Moumen Al-Natour is a Palestinian lawyer from Gaza and a co-organizer of the 2019 “We Want to Live” street demonstrations against Hamas.

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The 'Trump Avenue' street sign is seen in a west side suburb in Ottawa on Jan. 26, 2021.

I couldn’t help ruminating on yesterday’s news of a renewed push to find a more suitable name for Trump Avenue in Ottawa’s Central Park neighbourhood. We live in an era of woke iconoclasm — some would say in the dying days of one — but this is obviously a different sort of matter. Trump Avenue started making national headlines in 2021, when city council polled residents about the offending nomenclature but failed to secure a majority in favour of a change that would involve some inconvenience and expense. Trump had just been ejected from the White House, a process accompanied by a smattering of violent resistance; perhaps the good people of Trump Avenue hoped he would retreat safely into the crumbling pages of history and spare them the trouble of revision. Didn’t we all.

In 2026, as in 2021, reporters covering the Trump Avenue controversy have been a tad elliptical about how Trump Avenue came by its name. One might be forgiven for thinking that the personal connection to Donald J. Trump was incidental; a photo caption on Wikipedia at the time of writing has the effrontery to describe the street as “indirectly named” for Trump. The truth is that the developers who turned an experimental farm into the Central Park subdivision in the 1990s named a street very directly after renowned real-estate developer Donald J. Trump for explicitly articulated marketing reasons.

All the streets in Central Park contain themed references to the posh parts of New York, but there is no original “Trump Avenue” in NYC. His name is just plastered all over the place — and in the ’90s that name still denoted glitz, wealth and commercial vision rather than destructive lunacy. People were expected to want to buy property on Trump Avenue, and did buy it.

Those whose brains aren’t wriggling with ideological nematodes naturally prefer that the names of the byways they use and the places they inhabit be as permanent as possible, which is why so many of us fume over acts of re-naming contrived to serve as humiliation rituals or gestures of obeisance. This is, as it turns out, an excellent reason not to name or re-name things after living people, or in pursuit of other ephemeral trends. Even leaving all such considerations aside, it was stupid in the first place for Ottawa to tolerate the creation of a “Central Park” full of names imitating another capital’s landmarks. Developers cannot seem to resist this sort of crap, which is how Calgary and Edmonton recently sprouted twin outer-suburban neighbourhoods that are both called “The Hamptons.” (Note: they do not resemble the Hamptons.)

What makes this case exceptional is that celebrity developer Trump turned President Trump has not only abused power in a multitude of ways and threatened the integrity of the Canadian state; he has just now followed through on his threats and ordered the U.S. federal government to rename Lake Ontario (as it renamed the Gulf of Mexico) in pursuit of his vendetta against Canada. It might be one thing, an understandable but obnoxious thing, to impulsively rename Berlin, Ontario, because you are at war with a state that claims to represent all Germans. But Trump is now the world’s most notorious practitioner of crazed onomastic revision itself!

And, as we all know, his amour-propre has the size and flammable nature of a zeppelin: he will actually feel indignant and aggrieved if he gets wind that the impulsively named Trump Avenue has suddenly been re-branded. One is tempted to suggest “Mamdani Boulevard” or “Ocasio-Cortez Way,” but let’s try for our own sake to achieve nirvana and exit the St. Petersburg-Petrograd-Leningrad-St. Petersburg cycle of political renamings.

National Post

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The 'Trump Avenue' street sign is seen in a west side suburb in Ottawa on Jan. 26, 2021.

I couldn’t help ruminating on yesterday’s news of a renewed push to find a more suitable name for Trump Avenue in Ottawa’s Central Park neighbourhood. We live in an era of woke iconoclasm — some would say in the dying days of one — but this is obviously a different sort of matter. Trump Avenue started making national headlines in 2021, when city council polled residents about the offending nomenclature but failed to secure a majority in favour of a change that would involve some inconvenience and expense. Trump had just been ejected from the White House, a process accompanied by a smattering of violent resistance; perhaps the good people of Trump Avenue hoped he would retreat safely into the crumbling pages of history and spare them the trouble of revision. Didn’t we all.

In 2026, as in 2021, reporters covering the Trump Avenue controversy have been a tad elliptical about how Trump Avenue came by its name. One might be forgiven for thinking that the personal connection to Donald J. Trump was incidental; a photo caption on Wikipedia at the time of writing has the effrontery to describe the street as “indirectly named” for Trump. The truth is that the developers who turned an experimental farm into the Central Park subdivision in the 1990s named a street very directly after renowned real-estate developer Donald J. Trump for explicitly articulated marketing reasons.

All the streets in Central Park contain themed references to the posh parts of New York, but there is no original “Trump Avenue” in NYC. His name is just plastered all over the place — and in the ’90s that name still denoted glitz, wealth and commercial vision rather than destructive lunacy. People were expected to want to buy property on Trump Avenue, and did buy it.

Those whose brains aren’t wriggling with ideological nematodes naturally prefer that the names of the byways they use and the places they inhabit be as permanent as possible, which is why so many of us fume over acts of re-naming contrived to serve as humiliation rituals or gestures of obeisance. This is, as it turns out, an excellent reason not to name or re-name things after living people, or in pursuit of other ephemeral trends. Even leaving all such considerations aside, it was stupid in the first place for Ottawa to tolerate the creation of a “Central Park” full of names imitating another capital’s landmarks. Developers cannot seem to resist this sort of crap, which is how Calgary and Edmonton recently sprouted twin outer-suburban neighbourhoods that are both called “The Hamptons.” (Note: they do not resemble the Hamptons.)

What makes this case exceptional is that celebrity developer Trump turned President Trump has not only abused power in a multitude of ways and threatened the integrity of the Canadian state; he has just now followed through on his threats and ordered the U.S. federal government to rename Lake Ontario (as it renamed the Gulf of Mexico) in pursuit of his vendetta against Canada. It might be one thing, an understandable but obnoxious thing, to impulsively rename Berlin, Ontario, because you are at war with a state that claims to represent all Germans. But Trump is now the world’s most notorious practitioner of crazed onomastic revision itself!

And, as we all know, his amour-propre has the size and flammable nature of a zeppelin: he will actually feel indignant and aggrieved if he gets wind that the impulsively named Trump Avenue has suddenly been re-branded. One is tempted to suggest “Mamdani Boulevard” or “Ocasio-Cortez Way,” but let’s try for our own sake to achieve nirvana and exit the St. Petersburg-Petrograd-Leningrad-St. Petersburg cycle of political renamings.

National Post

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On a Finance Canada call with stakeholders on Tuesday, Canadian producers expressed concerns that the government had pledged to impose a 25 per cent tariff on U.S. seafood, including Maine lobster, even though the list of U.S. targets did not include Canadian seafood products.

If crisis management is about preventing a bad situation from getting worse, the federal government deserves full marks for its decision to adjust the list of American goods that will be subject to tariffs.

Late on Wednesday, Finance Canada announced that it was removing U.S. seafood and fish products from the list of tariffed goods, “based on feedback.”

That feedback was white-hot anger expressed by Canadian seafood producers, who threatened to go public with their frustration, creating a breach in the united Team Canada front.

On a Finance Canada call with stakeholders on Tuesday, producers expressed concerns that the government had pledged to impose a 25 per cent tariff on U.S. seafood, including Maine lobster, even though the list of U.S. targets did not include Canadian seafood products.

The producers were terrified that the Americans would respond with a 50 per cent tariff that would kill the market for the 80 per cent of Canadian aquaculture products that go south.

From the perspective of exacting maximum political pressure on Donald Trump, the imposition of a tariff on Maine lobster was inspired. The seat of Republican Senator Susan Collins is up for grabs in November’s midterm elections and it is considered a toss-up by most predictive markets.

A relieved Collins posted on X Thursday that she appreciated Canada’s decision to remove seafood and fish products from its retaliatory tariff list.

“I urge the U.S. to respond to this show of good faith from our Canadian friends by returning to the negotiating table and working to amicably resolve this trade dispute,” she said.

A 25 per cent tariff imposed by Canada would likely prove to be highly damaging, given that up to 60 per cent of the state’s lobster catch is sent to Atlantic Canada to be processed. Canada has historically bought around $400 million of Maine’s catch. “Maine lobstermen and the industry as a whole didn’t start this fight. We are just the ones getting hit with the bill,” wrote the MaineWonk, a popular policy commentator based in northern Maine.

However, the Canadian industry argued that not only would jobs involved with processing and storing the $1 billion of American seafood imports be at risk but the viability of an aquaculture sector that exports $4 billion south would be in question if the Americans retaliated.

The Canadian Aquaculture Industry Alliance is understood to have written to Finance Canada, giving the government 48 hours to roll back the policy or it would consider going public with its concerns.

While exerting maximum political pressure was one of the competing objectives considered by the government in drawing up its list of targets, the priority, at least according to Industry Minister Mélanie Joly, is to protect jobs and businesses.

The latest news from Canada-U.S. Minister Dominic LeBlanc is that talks might resume if the Americans “clarify” their position on sticking points like language and culture policies. That followed a CBC interview with the U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, in which he said that such issues were not a red line.

In such an environment, imposing tariffs in sectors that have not been targeted by the White House would be unnecessarily provocative – and potentially costly to Canada.

The decision to show flexibility in response to Canadian businesses, while being clear that the dollar-for-dollar retaliatory tariffs are immutable until a deal is reached, is smart politics.

jivison@criffel.ca
Twitter.com/IvisonJ

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