“Oct 7 2023”

A senior Canadian diplomat says the situation around the stop-start evacuation of Canadians from Gaza has been “profoundly frustrating,” with the Rafah crossing set to potentially reopen on Sunday.

“I was hoping, obviously, that we would have had everyone out by now,” Julie Sunday told CBC News in Cairo. She is an assistant deputy minister at Global Affairs Canada and was recently appointed as Canada’s representative on hostage issues.

Gaza’s border authority announced on Saturday that the Rafah land crossing into Egypt would reopen on Sunday for foreign passport holders. For weeks, the status of the border has been a primary concern for countries like Canada, with hundreds of citizens, permanent residents and their families stuck in war-torn Gaza.

I find myself unmoved …

Muslim Democrats Andre Carson, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar say they are “horrified” by GOP plans that would halt Palestinian legal immigration to the United States.

This week, Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT) and other House Republicans introduced legislation to ban the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from providing green cards, visas, refugee status, and parole to Palestinians.

Jewish and Muslim communities in Canada’s biggest cities are growing fearful, as reports of hate-related incidents that appear to be connected to the religious and cultural tensions aggravated by Israel’s war against Hamas become more commonplace.

In Montreal, after a week marred by several suspected hate crimes targeting Jewish institutions, including gunshots fired on empty Jewish schools and Molotov cocktails ignited at a synagogue, the city’s police department said it has ramped up preventative operations.

No one seems to want to discuss how we got here.

Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Rally (RN) party in France, formerly known as the Front National, told French radio station RTL on Wednesday morning that she would “of course” participate in Sunday’s demonstration against antisemitism in Paris. On X, formerly Twitter, she wrote: “Our compatriots of the Jewish faith have long been confronted with an ideology that I have always fought: Islamist ideology.” She said that she would be there, alongside RN party president Jordan Bardella and other elected officials of the party.

However, President of the French National Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet, who along with the president of the French Senate called for the march — and whose Jewish grandparents settled in France after fleeing Germany and Poland — said Wednesday on France’s TF1 television that no political parties had been invited to participate and that she would not march “next to” Le Pen.

After a while, it became a parody worthy of classic comedy skits: the Biden administration’s reflexive need to launch into a condemnation of “Islamophobia” every time the discomfiting topic of antisemitism came up — which, you may have noticed, it does quite a bit these days.

Progressives hate antisemitism. Not, unfortunately, the concept . . . the word. It holds a mirror up to their internal contradictions.

Nah, plenty of lefty Jews to go round.

Peruse campus literature. Watch clips from university protests. Scan interviews with pro-Hamas protestors. Read the chalk propaganda sketched on campus sidewalks. Talk to raging students in the free speech area. And the one common denominator— besides their arrogance—is their abject ignorance. Take their following tired talking points:

“Refugees”

On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher discussed a letter signed by journalists on media coverage of the Israel-Hamas war and stated that media coverage of the Israel-Hamas war “couldn’t be more pro-Hamas than it is now.”

New York Times columnist Pamela Paul said that no one at the Times signed the letter, and they’re not allowed to.

Maher responded, “But I bet you there [are] lots of people who work there who would, who wanted to.”

I have just added 700 names to our law firm’s never-hire list.

Last Saturday’s column discussed an anti-Semitic petition signed by 74 law students at the Lincoln Alexander School of Law at Toronto Metropolitan University that “denied that Israel is even a country” but stated instead, it is a brand of a “settler colony” and voiced support for “all” forms of Palestinian resistance. Closely following the Hamas terror attack, its meaning could not be clearer. I commented that these students had made themselves unemployable and that some have already had job offers rescinded. After all, what law firm would hire them?

Pro-Palestinian protesters were seen carrying “extreme anti-Semitic” signs comparing Gaza to Auschwitz and Benjamin Netanyahu to Hitler at a demonstration in London on Saturday.

Another placard showed a snake in the colours of the Israeli flag wrapped around the globe, an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory about Jewish control.

When Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly sat down with the Star’s editorial board a couple of weeks ago, she described the rising Middle East tension this way: “Of all the geopolitical crises, this is one that is the most emotionally difficult for all.”

That reality was also discussed a couple of weeks ago when Justin Trudeau sat down privately with New Democrat Leader Jagmeet Singh, Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet and Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong, along with their aides.

Because they imported the problem and now are helpless to stop it.

How did this tiny country go from a beacon of democracy in the Middle East to being so utterly reviled – especially by young progressives?

Last Saturday, I met a man named Faisal Salama at a pro-Palestinian rally in Vancouver. Mr. Salama, 30, had just moved to the city. He is Palestinian – born in Kuwait, raised in Edmonton – and still has family in Gaza, including an aunt and first cousins, now displaced from the north as Israeli bombs rain down. His family was relocated to Gaza in 1948 when they lost their home in Ashdod, a city on the Mediterranean coast. Mr. Salama’s father, who was 7 at the time, still lives in Kuwait as a stateless refugee.

My heart was breaking, listening to his story. It was also pounding.

Pro-Palestine demonstators in Columbus Circle confront an Israel supporter who starts sobbing.

“Cry, bitch! Cry!” a Palestine supporter yells at her. pic.twitter.com/oLLtuUhnE1

— Steven Vago (@Vagoish) November 10, 2023

h/t Sweetpea

Thousands of people set off marching from Hyde Park in London today as part of a huge demonstration in solidarity with the people of Palestine as they called for an immediate ceasefire.

The march, which coincides with Armistice Day, will head towards the US embassy in Vauxhall, south of the Thames.

Chants of ‘free Palestine’ and ‘ceasefire now’ could be heard as the protesters set off, with police saying those gathered had so far been peaceful with no incidents reported.

Headband styled Hamas supporters in London. Ok, I will leave it there! pic.twitter.com/5wvjj8FdEm

— JD (@adamjon83) November 11, 2023

London and all over the UK: Organisers expect today’s march for peace and justice in Palestine to be one of the biggest ever demonstrations in British history. pic.twitter.com/LCh1TpcXlo

— Husam Zomlot (@hzomlot) November 11, 2023