Members of the Palestinian community in Ottawa say they are being unfairly targeted by the city’s bylaw department after being issued nearly $1,500 in fines during a downtown demonstration.
Three tickets worth $490 each were issued to participants of a Saturday march organized by the Palestinian Youth Movement in support of Palestinians in Gaza during the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
The afternoon march made its way from the Human Rights Monument on Elgin Street to Rideau Street.
Judih Weinstein, a Canadian Israeli woman whose fate had been unknown since the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas, died during the initial attack, her kibbutz said in a statement on Thursday.
”With great sorrow Kibbutz Nir Oz announces the murder” of Weinstein, a news release from a kibbutz spokesperson said.
A 21-year-old Israeli-French tattoo artist who was abducted by Hamas has recalled the horrors that she faced in Gaza in her first interview, saying she “went through a holocaust” during her 54 days in captivity.
Mia Schem was asked in a preview clip of an interview with Channel 13 why she decided to open up about her experience at the hands of the terrorists.
The great irony of the tidal wave of anti-Jew invective that has come Stephen Fry’s way over the past 48 hours is that it has perfectly proved his point. He goes on TV to say we are witnessing a ‘rise in anti-Jewish racism’ and right away there’s a spike in anti-Jewish racism. Even before he’d finished his touching fireside homily on Jew hate, the Jew haters were out in force to ask: ‘Who the fuck does he think he is?’ A Jew on TV? At Christmas? Wanging on about the victimisation of Jews? Vomit emoji. That was literally the response of the army of arseholes that passes for the left these days, every one of them too dim to realise they were making Fry’s case for him.
President Erdogan of Turkey said Binyamin Netanyahu was “no different from Hitler” as he accused Israel of “war crimes” in Gaza.
Speaking at an event in Ankara, Erdogan said Turkey would welcome academics and scientists who faced persecution for their views on the conflict in Gaza, adding that western countries that supported Israel were complicit in what he called war crimes.
“They used to speak ill of Hitler. What difference do you have from Hitler? They are going to make us miss Hitler. Is what this Netanyahu is doing any less than what Hitler did? It is not,” Erdogan said. “He is richer than Hitler; he gets the support from the West. All sorts of support comes from the United States. And what did they do with all this support? They killed more than 20,000 Gazans.”
The Gospel according to Berkeley
The Gospel According to Berkeley.
A special Christmas sketch featuring @brettgelman pic.twitter.com/f10UoeA8Lp— ארץ נהדרת (@Eretz_Nehederet) December 26, 2023
h/t MP
In the final hours before Dec. 25, Canadian roads were blocked, overpasses were barricaded and malls were swarmed by screaming crowds as anti-Israel demonstrators attempted to make good on a promise to cancel Christmas.
On Saturday, a crowd of more than 100 moved through Downtown Toronto screaming for “intifada.” Demonstrators attempted to block entrances at Toronto’s Eaton Centre. And on Christmas Eve, an overpass and two approaches to Toronto’s Highway 401 were blockaded for several hours by a group waving Palestinian flags.
Israel is expanding its ground offensive into Palestinian refugee camps in central Gaza, as it warns the war with Hamas will last for months.
The UN has expressed grave concern after Israeli strikes reportedly killed dozens of people in Bureij, Nuseirat and Maghazi camps in recent days.
Heavy fighting is also continuing to the south, in the city of Khan Younis.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian president has described what is happening in Gaza as “beyond a war of annihilation”.
With the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) making good progress in their attempts to destroy the Islamist Hamas terrorist organisation, this is not the moment for the Biden administration to soften its support for Israel.
On the contrary, with the IDF exposing the true extent of Hamas’s underground terrorist infrastructure in Gaza, with many of the terrorists’ key command and control systems located either within or beneath hospitals, schools and mosques, Washington needs to give Israel the backing it needs to finish its declared objective of wiping Hamas from the face of the earth.
Even as America increasingly highlights humanitarian suffering in Gaza, planning for the “day after” there will require re-examination of past misconceptions, such as calling the Strip the world’s “largest open air prison.”
That moniker, often promoted in press accounts and pushed hard by the Qatari-owned pan-Arab network Al Jazeera, led to unprecedented foreign aid to the Palestinian territories. While Arabs in Syria, Yemen, Sudan, the Sahel, and other war-besieged territories were clamoring for outside help, Gaza received lopsided attention.
Didn’t Trudeau just rescue a whack of so called “Canadians” who lived voluntarily in the world’s ‘Largest Open Air Prison’?
Deep down, everyone who has not been driven mad by religious obscurantism or some other ideology understands the value of peace. Ordinary people want to meet partners, secure fulfilling jobs, live in comfort and find good schools for their children. In their spare time, they like to meet with friends, play sports, go to the cinema or practice obscure hobbies. They want — like Candide — to cultivate their gardens, and they recognize that this modest wish would be imperilled by war.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) was originally a small agency mandated to provide basic humanitarian relief for Palestinians, including a vote for renewal every three years. Seventy-three years and four generations later, and with more than 30,000 employees and an annual budget of more than $1 billion, it has astonishingly become one of the largest UN agencies.
Hamas is facing an “unprecedented battle” with Israel, the terror group’s leader in Gaza has said, in his first public message since the Oct 7 attacks.
Yahya Sinwar, who is believed to have been one of the masterminds of the devastating terror attack on Israel, rejected any possibility of compromising to end the war.
Hamas, he said in a letter published by Al Jazeera on Monday, is “fighting a fierce, violent and unprecedented battle against the Israeli occupation forces, and the occupation army suffered heavy losses in life and equipment”.
The New York Times ran an op-ed Sunday by Hamas’ handpicked Gaza City mayor — prompting outrage on social media from Israel supporters who slammed the Gray Lady for amplifying “Jew hate.”
The essay by Yahya R. Sarraj published on Christmas Eve comes amid fury over Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s social media post that denounced Israel as a violent occupying force and likened Jesus to Palestinians.
Recently, I wrote about the planned Polo Park protest by pro-Palestinian activists. Many of these protesters disrupt the lives of ordinary people, families, and Canadian Businesses. It seems like we already have many people in Canada inclined to justify terrorism and take the side of Hamas.
I can’t imagine why we would want to import more people who might be inclined to make lives miserable for normal families.
