TORONTO – It does not seem so long ago that protests in public places against Israelis and Jews would have been unimaginable. In Canada, the USA, in Europe, in Italy…And yet, here we are in 2023 with anti-Israel marches everywhere. 

In Toronto, some of them composed of hundreds of elementary-school-aged children chanting pro Palestinian “freedom slogans”. High schools shutting down to permit their teenage students to organize and participate in what are arguably as much expressions of hate for Israel (anti-Semitic) as they are manifestations of support for Gaza. I would like to be wrong.

The demonstrations, most recently composed of university student activists and pro-Palestinian Canadians, may be an insidious show of what we are becoming as a country: an amorphous collection of separate “entities”, each resistant of integrating with the others; and, each determined to bend others to their will in the name of [heaven only knows] rights embedded in the prevailing “culture” in the moment. It sounds eerily like the “perverse” definition of Canada posited by a former Canadian Prime Minister, Joe Clark, in the late seventies of the last century.

The Corriere Canadese, as others, expressed due outrage and dismay at the news of the butchery reported at the October 7 attack by an Hamas-led Gazan-Palestinians incursion into Israel. We focused on mourning the wounded, the tortured, the raped and the dead. According to Israeli sources there were 1400 dead and 242 hostages. It was a [relatively] quick strike. How could this have happened?

Gaza is literally a strip of land on the Mediterranean coast adjacent to Israel. At approximately 365 square km, it is about one half the size of Metro Toronto. A previously considered impenetrable, heavily-guarded, wall separates it from Israel it is an engineering feat looming over barren terrain which any vandal must traverse to gain access to “the land of milk and honey”. Should any foolhardy invader attempt a sortie with malicious intent, an “iron dome” equipped with the latest technology the military-industrial complex has to offer anywhere, will annihilate it before the potential incursion can cross a virtual border.

Yet, “Hamas-led guerillas” were able to escape the detection of [probably] the best trained and equipped army money can buy; then scurry away to the “safety” of an underground network/refuge of such prodigious size as to be classified a wonder of the world with its 242 hostages. The Israeli national annual budget allocates as many billions of dollars to military spending as does Canada’s – but it has barely one quarter of the population and covers a country whose terrain barely exceeds the territory between Niagara Falls and Kingston Ontario.

The Corriere Canadese and its editorial team are firm believers in Israel’s right to exist. It has trouble understanding why Bibi Netanyahu refuses to let mere truckloads of humanitarian aid into Occupied Gaza when convoys of 400 such trucks were required daily before the war. Forty three percent (43%) of Gaza’s population is apparently below the age of fourteen. International Humanitarian agencies say at least 10,000 Gazans have died as a result of the war so far. The images depicting the destruction suggest that Gaza will cease to exist as a habitable location or the reconstruction project may run into the Trillions of dollars.

Little wonder that world “leaders” have been urging Bibi Netanyahu to “cool his jets”. Bibi’s blind ambition has prompted five national elections in the last four years. He and his family have been under clouds of bribery and corruption for so long that he has resorted to calling for the reform of the Supreme Court so that the Law not depict him as the crook his enemies claim him to be.

Back in Canada our leadership is in the soft-peddling mode so that it not be considered anti anyone and for no one. We cannot even get our own citizens out of the area. But…