On Oct 7, 2001, the United States began an ill-fated campaign to ‘nation build’ Afghanistan.
Now 24 years after that anniversary and 2 years after the Oct 7 attacks by Hamas, we may be on the cusp of an even worse nation-building program in Gaza that seems to have learned absolutely nothing from the disastrous nation-building operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The principal of Earl Haig Secondary School in North York has issued a letter to families following backlash over the Arabic-language version of O Canada being played during morning announcements on Oct. 7, the second anniversary of the 2023 Hamas terror attacks in Israel.
In the letter, dated Thursday, Principal Steve Yee acknowledged the timing of the broadcast was painful for many in the school community and apologized, stressing that the incident was not intentional.
(Incognito)
Israeli troops are withdrawing from Gaza as the first phase of a peace deal to end the war with Hamas begins, the military says.
The ceasefire agreement came into effect at midnight on Thursday, Israel Defense Forces said in a post on X. Since then, troops have been “positioning themselves along the updated deployment lines in preparation for the ceasefire agreement and the return of hostages.” There are still troops deployed in the area, it said, who will “continue to remove any immediate threat.”
A Palestinian woman in Halifax, N.S., is making an impassioned plea for Ottawa to step up efforts to get people safely out of war-torn Gaza, about 20 months after applying to bring her family to Canada under a temporary visa program.
Najlaa Alzaanin, who hasn’t seen 23 family members since moving to Canada in 2019, is still waiting for news on her bid to bring them here under the federal government’s special measures program.
“Canada is not fulfilling the promise that they made and they are not helping our families to get to a safer place,” Alzaanin said in an interview.
All 23 have somehow survived the “Genocide”. Imagine the odds!
Now thank President Trump your relatives aren’t mince meat.
Canada are you paying attention???!!! https://t.co/SkvFye3Luu
— Christine (@trissysmom) October 10, 2025
Nothing will change with “peace”.
Hamas loyalists are shutting down traffic in Montreal on a Thursday night under approval & protection of @SPVM, despite a peace deal being signed by both Hamas & Israel.
When there is peace they want war, and when there is war they want a ceasefire.
We tried to warn you. pic.twitter.com/Y4cqfzaXT9
— Leviathan (@l3v1at4an) October 10, 2025
Well, that’s it then. The hostages are to be released, the Israel Defence Forces will withdraw from Gaza and the Israeli-Palestinian war is over. Except Hamas is still armed to the teeth, the IDF will remain in Gaza, and the war is not over.
But there was jubilation in Gaza, and dancing and cheering in Hostages Square in Tel Aviv, and all justifiably so. Hamas negotiators and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu have agreed to a ceasefire, the return of the 20 living hostages still held captive by Hamas and the release of at least 1,700 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails. The Israel Defense Forces will pull back to an agreed-upon line within Gaza, and Hamas will hold fire.
Israel and Hamas have reached a deal for a ceasefire in Gaza after fifteen months of war, Qatari officials confirmed on Wednesday.
The full details of the deal are yet to be announced by the mediators. A draft of the agreement outlined that the first six-week stage will involve the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza strip and the release of hostages held by Hamas in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
The silence is unsettling. It’s 12 hours since President Trump announced that Israel and Hamas have assented to the first phase of his peace plan, paving the way for a ceasefire. And yet the ‘Ceasefire now’ lobby is eerily schtum. The people who’ve been noisily clamouring for an end to the war in Gaza are either mute or they’re moaning. Don’t trust that snake Benjamin Netanyahu, some say. If I thought a genocide was being executed in Gaza, a crime as cataclysmic as anything the Nazis did, I’d be on the streets celebrating this morning. Yet these people can barely be arsed to put a thumbs-up on Instagram.
How serious is US President Donald J. Trump about his peace plan? While everyone is eager to celebrate the successful completion of Phase One, with the return of the Israeli hostages in exchange for 2,000 imprisoned Palestinian terrorists, the rest remains to be seen.
The Trump Peace Plan began as an ultimatum: If Hamas would not release all the hostages within 72 hours, Israel would have the blessing of the US to “finish the job” full blast.
US President Donald Trump says Israel and Hamas have agreed to the first phase of his Gaza peace plan, in a major step towards a permanent end to their war.
It comes two years and two days after the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others taken hostage.
This triggered a massive Israeli military offensive in Gaza, which has killed more than 67,100 people, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.
With Mideast Deal, Trump Is on the Brink of a Major Diplomatic Accomplishment
President Trump is at the brink of the biggest diplomatic accomplishment of his second term — a cessation of the brutal war between Israel and Hamas — and on Wednesday evening he made clear he was eager to fly to the Middle East to preside over a cease-fire and welcome hostages who have spent two long years in underground captivity.
For Mr. Trump, success in this venture is the ultimate test of his self-described goal as a deal maker and a peacemaker — and a pathway to the Nobel Peace Prize he has so openly coveted. By chance, the winner for 2025 is scheduled to be announced just hours before he may be departing to take his victory lap in Egypt and Israel.
A Toronto high school’s decision to play an Arabic version of “O Canada” on Oct. 7 — the two-year anniversary of Hamas’s massacre of 1,200 and kidnapping of 251 in southern Israel — was not an act of inclusion. It was a calculated political statement.
The only official versions of “O Canada,” as defined by the federal National Anthem Act, are in English and French. Other languages may be shared culturally, but never as a replacement. The decision to broadcast an Arabic version on Oct. 7 by Earl Haig Secondary School was an unmistakable act of defiance.
Some of us Islamophobes have been pointing out this ‘institutional capture’ for years. Decades even.
Our school boards and provincial government first decided that anti-White hatred was an acceptable part of school curriculum.
Anti-White hatred opened the door to the antisemitism we see today.
Why are we surprised? Schools have lost the plot. This is hanging in my son’s @PeelSchools high school in Brampton. But it won’t be by the time I’m finished with them. pic.twitter.com/AsnEqxLkFy
— Convoy Karen (@MarshaC59266742) October 8, 2025
US president Donald Trump has announced that Israel and Hamas have agreed to the first phase of a peace plan, bringing the best hope yet of a definitive end to a bloody two-year conflict that has killed ten of thousands, destabilised much of the Middle East and prompted protests across the world.
“I am very proud to announce that Israel and Hamas have both signed off on the first Phase of our Peace Plan,” Trump said on his Truth Social network on Wednesday evening.
“This means that ALL of the Hostages will be released very soon, and Israel will withdraw their Troops to an agreed upon line as the first steps toward a Strong, Durable, and Everlasting Peace.”
BREAKING: The war in Gaza COMES TO A HALT after Hamas agrees to President Trump's peace plan, phase one
"Never before have you had an agreement with Hamas, 8 Arab/Muslim nations, Israel, and the United States! That is a BREAKTHROUGH! It is wonderful and joyous!"
Trump is the… pic.twitter.com/EVMecW23FP
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) October 8, 2025
BBC Live Feed: Trump says Israel and Hamas ‘both sign off’ on first phase of Gaza peace plan
JPost: Trump announces Israel, Hamas reached Gaza deal, hostages to be released in 72 hours
I have this much faith in this peace deal lasting = 0
h/t Canucklehead
On October 7, 2023, an orgy of slaughter and sexual violence was unleashed on Israeli civilians. It was a measured, premeditated pogrom, broadcast with grotesque pride. The world watched as terrorists streamed their atrocities across social media, turning murder and rape into a live propaganda show.
That day was not merely another episode in the long, tragic history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It was an operational and moral rupture, a mass atrocity whose reverberations continue to shatter families. The event also exposes an international discourse in which moral clarity too often gives way to equivocation.
It’s all a lie.
The Oct 7 massacres were not carried out to create a ‘Palestinian’ state, to break out of an ‘open air prison’ in Gaza or any of the lies the media has systemically deluged us with.
They did it to capture Jerusalem.
It is now difficult to see how the Gaza war, as we have known it for the last two years, will not be ended soon. As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has famously said, it will end “either the easy way or the hard way” but it will end.
This choice resides with the beleaguered and shell-shocked Hamas leadership, such of it as survives. The distinction is between escaping with their lives but militarily defeated, and in terms of political influence, torn out of Gaza root and branch, or being killed in hopeless combat in their tunnels in central Gaza city where they are constantly reminded of the presence of 60,000 battle-hardened Israeli counter-urban guerrilla soldiers overhead.
On the second anniversary of October 7, the elder statesman discusses its ‘profound effect’ on Israel’s standing, and on Jewish Canadians
