“Oct 7 2023”

Mayor Olivia Chow’s first annual skating party at Nathan Phillips Square was cut short on Sunday by demonstrators calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Chow had invited residents to celebrate the new year, along with city councillors and members of the new Professional Women’s Hockey League, at an event with free hot chocolate. But as soon as Chow took to the microphone to welcome attendees, she was interrupted by pro-Palestinian protesters and was soon escorted off the ice.

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow drowned out several times by pro-Palestinian demonstrators at a skating party at Nathan Phillips Square.

On Nov. 10th, Chow called for, “the immediate and unconditional return of all hostages and a ceasefire.” pic.twitter.com/8ojnGrRBTc

— Rahim Ladhani (@RLadhaniCTV) January 7, 2024

Toronto’s police chief apologized Sunday after a video posted on social media of officers handing coffee to protesters supporting Palestinians was criticized by politicians.

On Saturday, police closed the overpass on Avenue Road at Highway 401, saying on social media they were on the scene to keep demonstrators and passing traffic safe. Video from the overpass posted on Facebook by Palestine House, a community organization, shows protesters holding Palestinian flags and chanting “Free Palestine.”

Chief Demkiw of the Toronto Police issues a follow up statement. #Toronto #Gaza #Israel #Palestine #Hamas https://t.co/v7JBjHbGRY pic.twitter.com/Fu0SRSsuoh

— Fancypants Maloney (@fancypants_s) January 8, 2024

We are supposed to believe that overnight the PA has changed its spots. After all, Abbas wears a suit.

No more is it between good and bad. Now, for 2024 and beyond, it’s between bad and worse.

Take your pick. For instance, between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, which is better, which is worse?

Which terrorists, in other words, should get to run Gaza, “the day after?” Biden and his people prefer the PA…the lesser of two evils.

As the war in Gaza enters its third month, the short-attention span syndrome that characterizes our age swings in full gear to reduce it to a version of background noise. You might have noticed that the war is bowing out of front pages and dropped down several slots in TV news bulletins.

Even more interestingly we are beginning to hear growing chatter about the day-after of this tragic conflict, with the assumption that the actual fighting is heading for a close as the subtext.

Pressure mounts on Canada to support South Africa’s legal battle for ceasefire in Gaza

A new legal battle will be waged later this week in the World Court to impose a ceasefire more than three months after Hamas’ attack on southern Israel killed innocent civilians, triggering a brutal war in Gaza where Israel(opens in a new tab) vowed to eradicate Hamas militants.

South Africa is accusing Israel of violating its obligations under the Genocide Convention and is seeking an urgent order from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to immediately halt what it characterizes as “genocidal acts against the Palestinian people in Gaza.”

The goal is to have Israel labeled a genocidal state, the original CTV weasel headline to the article is in bold above.

It goes without saying that the word “genocide” has a special sound to the people of Israel. Yet today the nation that rose from the ashes of the Holocaust finds itself accused of this ultimate crime against humanity.

Protesters marching against the Israeli military assault in Gaza set fire to Star of David flags and chant “we charge you with genocide.” Activists in Toronto plastered an Indigo store with posters accusing its Jewish owner with “funding genocide.” Now the government of South Africa is going to the International Court of Justice with a claim that Israel is guilty of “genocidal” acts.

There have been assassinations, bombings and hijackings in five countries after the Hamas massacre. Events could spiral out of control

On the warm blue waters of the Strait of Hormuz, a few dozen Yemeni militiamen dressed in wetsuits and carrying Kalashnikovs hijack a British-owned, Japanese-operated ship. A Hamas leader is assassinated in a Beirut suburb. A drone drops an explosive on a US military base in Syria, and an American airstrike kills a militiaman in Baghdad. Hezbollah fires a mortar into farmland in northern Israel.

These might sound like disparate events but together they tell a different story.

Protesters at a Free Palestine demonstration clashed with police in London on Saturday.

Metropolitan Police officers attempted to break up the march held over the Israel-Gaza conflict as hundreds of people gathered at a drinking fountain in St James’s Park from noon.

A veteran medical professor at the University of British Columbia (UBC) resigned his academic post citing the school administration’s indifference to campus antisemitism.

Over 200 medical students signed a petition following the 10/7 atrocities denouncing Israel as a “settler colonial state,” guilty of “collective punishment.” The public letter made no reference to Hamas nor the hundreds of Israeli civilians taken hostage by the Palestinian terror group. “UBC’s declared support for decolonization and practices of equity, diversity and inclusion ring hollow in light of this partisan approach,” the document, which was also signed by over 100 faculty members across the university, argued in late October.

The Israeli army says it has “completed the dismantling” of Hamas’s command structure in the northern Gaza Strip.

Army spokesman Daniel Hagari told reporters that Palestinian militants are now operating in the area only sporadically and “without commanders”.

He said Israel had killed around 8,000 militants in north Gaza. The BBC cannot independently verify this number.