OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada “believes in the work” of the International Court of Justice, but declined to say how his government would react if the court finds Israel is committing genocide.
South Africa has put a case before the ICJ accusing Israel’s military actions in Gaza of being a genocide. Israel launched an invasion in the territory following the Oct. 7 attacks where Hamas fighters invaded Israel killing 1,200 people and taking another nearly 250 hostages.
Paramount Foods was in damage control following reaction Monday to a now-deleted tweet from founder Mohamad Fakih, suggesting he doesn’t “need” money from someone who “supports baby killers.”
The member of the Order of Canada and CEO of Paramount, which operates dozens of restaurants and has an arena in Mississauga named after the company, made the controversial comments in X posts. He was responding to a poster named Eugene who wrote, “I’ll never set foot in Paramount Foods ever again” and “terrorist sympathizers don’t deserve my business.”
h/t Sweetpea
We thought we were at home in America, but no such luck.
This is a tough time for American Jews. Antisemitism has erupted to an unprecedented extent. We thought we were at home in America, but no such luck.
A few months ago, following the Oct. 7 massacre, a friend who is a major donor to Jewish, Israeli and American organizations said to me that Jews might have to leave America, just as we have left—willingly or unwillingly—many countries in the past. Another friend told me that he and all of his liberal friends are being forced to rethink what it means to be a liberal Jew in America.
South Africa’s government defends chants of ‘Kill the farmer!’ but insists that Israel is committing ‘genocide’ in Gaza.
At a massive Johannesburg rally in July 2023, Julius Malema, leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters party, grabbed the microphone and began to chant. “Kill the Boer! The farmer!” he bellowed. The crowd of 100,000 joined in the song, an old “anti-apartheid” ditty titled “Kill the Boer,” a reference to the white Afrikaner population of South Africa who are the descendants of Dutch settlers centuries ago. Progressive activists and academics immediately insisted that the song, in which the refrain “shoot the Boer” appears 20 times, should not be taken “literally”—although the crowd did not appear to be aware of this as they pointed their fingers in the air like guns for each chorus.
The answer is that it can’t. It is too obsessed with non-existent gender equity to even try.
The Welfare State, the great pride of Western civilization, the latest achievement of democracy of a civilized, democratic and well-fed West, has ended. The Toronto Sun reports that Canadian government websites no longer talk about “women”, but about “menstruating employees.”
People’s Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier thunders against Trudeau’s “gender-obsessed” government which is waging a systematic attack on masculinity and turning men “into non-binary, trans, gender-fluid, weak and effeminate sissies.”
The Yemeni-based Houthi rebel attacks on global commerce and trade finally produced a response from the Biden administration (and the United Kingdom) in the form of targeted air strikes on Houthi military facilities, such as “command and control nodes, munitions, depots, launching systems, production facilities, and air defense radar systems,” according to a CNN report. A Houthi spokesman said that the strikes killed five people and wounded six others. The same spokesman stated that the strikes “would not deter further … attacks on shipping.” On Sunday, U.S. warplanes targeted a radar site with strikes, which a Houthi spokesman described as causing no “material damages” and no injuries.
As the world’s attention is focused on the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, including South Africa’s false “genocide” charges against Israel at the International Court of Justice, in Syria Palestinians are worried about a new government law that considers them “foreigners.”
By labeling the Palestinians as “foreigners,” the Syrian government is seeking to deprive them of the ability to purchase real estate. Like the majority of the Syrians, most of the Palestinians are Arab Muslims.
Hundreds of people gathered in Toronto’s streets this weekend to enjoy the company of like-minded people in celebrating — get this — the Houthi faction of Yemen, which declared war on civilian cargo ships in November and has since taken innocent crewmen hostage.
Oh nothing. Just a few peaceful demonstrators in @oliviachow’s Toronto cheering on Houthi terrorists and calling for the murder of Jews.
— Alan Fryer 🇨🇦🇺🇦🇮🇱 (@alanfryermedia) January 15, 2024
For years, the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival has been a highlight of Vancouver’s arts scene. I once called it a “beacon of avant-garde light in the dead of winter.”
I won’t be calling it that any more. The festival has now added to the darkness of this already tragic, oppressive season.
Last week, PuSh decided to cancel its planned performances of the Canadian play The Runner at the Simon Fraser University Woodward’s Goldcorp Centre for the Arts. The one-person play, written by Christopher Morris, has received rave reviews, including from The Globe and Mail’s J. Kelly Nestruck in 2018.
The Health Ministry on Monday instructed members of the healthcare system not to cooperate with the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, citing its perceived anti-Israel stance.
In recent weeks, senior physicians and hospital staff who treated October 7 victims and released hostages have received letters and emails from the commission, which operates under the UN Council for Human Rights. The commission requested information and interviews for its investigation of international and gender-based crimes since the beginning of the current Israel-Hamas war.
OTTAWA – The security screening the federal government has brought in for people applying to flee the Gaza Strip is facing criticism from both lawyers who feel its questions are too invasive and others who think it should dig even deeper.
A special program that would allow up to 1,000 people in Gaza with relatives in Canada to apply for visas opened for applications last week, with the federal government seeking an extraordinary level of detail.
King’s College counterterrorism course, on contract to MoD, dangerously downplays extremism
King’s College London is the academic centre of Britain’s military and counterterrorism training. Its counterterrorism course, under contract to the Ministry of Defence, has been designed for civil servants and other professionals involved in this work from a number of government departments.
Now, questions have been asked in parliament after an account of the course written by a former civil servant, Anna Stanley, who participated in it a few months ago and who until this month was an open-source intelligence analyst at the Foreign Office.
An MSNBC producer called condemnation of Hamas’s violence against Israeli women “tone deaf” on Sunday and accused the IDF of perpetrating similar atrocities against Palestinians.
Nicole McReynolds, an associate video producer on Ali Velshi’s MSNBC show, scolded Big Time Rush singer James Maslow over an Instagram post that described Hamas’s murder, mutilation, and rape of Israeli women on October 7.
… But the Liberal Party since the days of Clifford Sifton in the 1890s has counted on immigrant voters for support. And between 2001 and 2021, the Muslim share of Canada’s population grew to 5 per cent from 2 per cent, even as the Jewish share of the population decreased slightly, to just below 1 per cent.
Mr. Trudeau’s promise during the 2015 election campaign to bring 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada helped him win that election. Immigrant voters, many of them Muslim, in suburban ridings surrounding Toronto and Vancouver, helped the Liberals squeak through in the 2019 and 2021 elections. Now in the wake of the Hamas atrocities on Oct. 7 and the severity of Israel’s response in Gaza, the Liberal caucus is divided.
An extremist group which organised a pro-Palestine protest in which attendees chanted “jihad” is to be banned in Britain for allegedly promoting Hamas, James Cleverly has announced.
Hizb ut-Tahrir will join a list of more than 50 proscribed organisations which includes the Islamic State group, Al Qaeda, Hamas and the Russian Wagner mercenaries.
The move means it becomes an offence to be a member of the group or to support it and carries a maximum jail sentence of up to 14 years and/or fine of up to £5,000 for doing so.
A small North American footprint but nuisance enough to be banned in multiple nations.
