OTTAWA – Jewish students from major Canadian universities appeared on Parliament Hill Wednesday to raise the alarm about a rise in antisemitism on their campuses amid the Israel-Hamas war.
They spoke with several Liberal MPs including Anthony Housefather, who helped initiate a parliamentary committee study about antisemitism on campuses scheduled to begin Thursday.
Housefather cited concerns from Jewish students and faculty who say they are experiencing more antisemitic behaviour since Oct. 7.
Somebody wrote Joe Biden’s teleprompter a very nice speech to deliver at the Holocaust museum.
There’s one problem with it… it doesn’t reflect reality.
During the week of Yom ha-Shoah, the commemoration of the Holocaust, activists taunted a memorial march that was making its way from the Auschwitz death camp in Poland to the nearby crematoria at Birkenau. In Athens, Greek riot police dispersed a braying mob that was trying to break into a hotel where some Israelis were reported to be staying, at Omonia Square.
Justin Trudeau nearly lost a loyal Liberal lawmaker amid rising internal tensions in Canada’s Parliament over the Israel-Hamas war.
Anthony Housefather, an outspoken Jewish MP from Montreal, toyed with leaving his party to join the Conservatives after most of Trudeau’s Liberals voted in favor of a non-binding motion in the House of Commons that took direct aim at Israel. It’s the latest example of how the conflict is straining center-left politics across the globe — and challenging the place of Jewish leaders in mainstream progressive politics.
TORONTO — King’s College Circle on the University of Toronto campus was a lot less rowdy on Tuesday morning than it was late last week, when anti-Israel protesters breached the fencing that had been set up around an area intended to host a convocation event and began occupying the sprawling courtyard. But the demonstrators’ messaging was no less contradictory or grotesque.
The Iranian-orchestrated Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 — which resulted in mass rapes, the murders of 1,200 men, women, children and infants; taking more than 250 hostages and firing thousands of rockets at Israeli towns and cities — has shown that China, which Israel might have thought was an ally, turned out to be, sadly, more of an enemy.
China refused to condemn Hamas and its terrorist invasion of Israel, choosing instead to condemn Israel just a week after the massacre and before Israel had even launched its ground operation in the Gaza Strip.
An Israeli-Canadian businessman has been murdered in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, with some early evidence suggesting the attack was an antisemitic hate crime that was also motivated by anger over the war in Gaza.
OTTAWA – City officials say they’ve cancelled plans to host a flag-raising ceremony at Ottawa City Hall marking the establishment of Israel because of security concerns.
The Israeli flag will be raised next Tuesday to mark Yom Ha’atzmaut, but a ceremony involving the mayor, diplomats and members of the Jewish community will not go ahead.
The city said it has intelligence that suggests the event would pose “a substantial risk to public safety.” It did not offer details about the nature of that concern.
One of the most troubling aspects of the anti-Israel protests taking place across North America is the sense of impunity exhibited by the protesters: they know there will be no consequences for their actions.
Happily, that may not be the case in the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal application filed by 70 Jewish members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees against CUPE Ontario and its president Fred Hahn.
Nearly half of Canadians are opposed to university protest encampments, poll suggests
OTTAWA, Ill. – A new opinion poll suggests nearly half of Canadians oppose the pro-Palestinian encampments that have cropped up on some university campuses.
Just 31 per cent of people who took the Leger survey last weekend said they support the encampments, while 48 per cent were against the demonstrations. About one in five said they don’t know.
The US last week paused a bomb shipment for Israel over concerns it was going ahead with a major ground operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, a senior US administration official said.
The shipment consisted of 1,800 2,000lb (907kg) bombs and 1,700 500lb bombs, the official told the BBC.
Israel has not “fully addressed” US concerns over humanitarian needs of civilians in Rafah, the official said.
A new poll shows 81 percent of college students want anti-Israel protesters to be held accountable for the chaos they have caused in recent weeks on campuses across the United States.
Eighty-one percent of college students say the protesters who destroyed, vandalized, or illegally occupied campus property should be held responsible by their universities, according to a Generation Lab poll conducted between Friday and Monday.
A religious studies teacher at a Catholic school has been suspended and reported to the police after saying that Hamas had “committed no crime”.
Ronan Preastuin, a Year 9 tutor, also described the Oct 7 attacks as a “justified act of resistance” and called for “Glory to Hamas”, adding: “The destruction of the racist state of #Isarel [sic] is coming soon.”
Republican Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska introduced a resolution on Tuesday to censure Representative Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) for saying that some Jewish Americans are “pro-genocide” during a visit to Columbia University’s anti-Israel encampment last month.
