The Liberals have betrayed Israel and the Canadian Jewish community by Brian Henry

For Canadians who care about Israel, our only hope is a Conservative government. The Conservatives have strongly and consistently stood by Israel, and by the Jewish community here in Canada. The Liberals not so much, and under Mark Carney this won’t change.

A couple of incidents stand out. In a talk in Calgary, a heckler shouted out that there’s a genocide going on in Gaza.

Carney responded: “I know … I’m aware. That is why we have an arms embargo against Israel.”

He later claimed he wasn’t agreeing with the heckler, that he didn’t hear the word “genocide.” You can believe his explanation if you like. But I have not heard him point out that the accusation is a rank lie. Nor have I heard him remind people that the KGB started accusing Israel of genocide 60 years ago and that antisemites have simply been repeating the accusation ever since. (More here).

For his part, Jagmeet Singh has given up on being taken seriously. In both the French and English leaders’ debate, he called on Carney to repeat the slander that Israel’s committing genocide, knowing that Carney wouldn’t take the bait and thereby hoping to make the NDP stand out as the party of choice for people who froth at the mouth when Israel is mentioned.

However, even the NDP is out-fringed by the Green Party. Elizabeth May has declared: “I take my marching orders from the permanent representative of Palestine to Canada” (here).

For his part, the Greens’ co-leader Jonathan Pedneault has Tweeted that we need to “contextualize” Hamas’s mass murder, mass rape, mass torture, and mass kidnappings. To “contextualize” it is the polite way of saying Israelis deserved it.

While Carney retracted his accusation of genocide, he’s all in on continuing Canada’s arms embargo against Israel. Carney has spent a lot of time out of the country, but surely, even he ought to know that Canada always claimed to be Israel’s ally – right up until the minute Israel suffered a massive terror attack. Then the Liberals counted votes and calculated that Canadians who’d like to see Israel wiped off the map greatly outnumber Canadian Jews.

Six months ago, the Liberal Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly put this into words. An interviewer asked about the Liberals’ “incomprehensible” position of claiming to support Israel’s right to self-defence while also banning arms sales to Israel. Joly replied: “Have you seen the demographics of my riding?” (See here.)

Upon becoming PM, Carney promptly reappointed Joly as Foreign Affairs Minister.

NDP MPs in parliament dressed up in keffiyehs and giving power salute

A second incident. Carney Tweeted:

Canada must work with our allies to stand up for international law to promote sustainable peace and security in the Middle East and to support full access to humanitarian aid for Palestinian families. As this work continues, both parties must work towards the return of all hostages.

“Both parties” – what does that even mean?! One party is holding hostages. The other party is trying to free them. This is like calling on Robert Pickton and the RCMP to sit down and work towards stopping the killing of women and feeding them to pigs – as if it’s a problem they need to compromise on, maybe offer Pickton some compensation or allow him to murder only half as many women.

But with these differences: Hamas has committed worse crimes than Pickton ever imagined, and while Pickton is now safely dead, Hamas has declared it will go on committing atrocities, if the world will just give it a chance.

Also, while Carney has criticized Israel – notably for stopping Gaza’s supply of free electricity (while praising Doug Ford for threatening to cut off electricity to the U.S.) – I’ve noticed he has yet to say a word about Egypt.

Like much of the world, Carney seems to be geographically challenged. He’s forgotten Gaza borders two countries – one of which (the one called Egypt) has refused to let a single truckload of aid cross its border into Gaza for the past year.

The other country bordering Gaza – Israel, the country Gaza invaded – has allowed tens of thousands of truckloads of aid to cross its border, even though much of that aid is stolen by Hamas, with Hamas then selling what it doesn’t want to the civilians.

But while Carney intends to continue the Liberal policy of demanding behaviour from Israel not expected of any other country in the world, many Liberal candidates are much worse.

Adam van Koeverden, the Liberal member for Burlington North–Milton West slandered Israel with the genocide charge just days after Carney back-peddled on his gaffe (here).

Moreover, van Koeverden is one of 20 Liberal candidates who has signed on to the “Vote Palestine” platform, which was put together by numerous groups that celebrate Hamas’s October 7 terrorist invasion of Israel. (Full list of Liberals who have signed on to this platform below.)

As of March 31, 124 NDP candidates had also endorsed the Vote Palestine platform, including party leader Jagmeet Singh, and also 44 candidates for the Green Party, including its two leaders.

No Conservative candidate has endorsed it.

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre at pro-Israel rally in Ottawa

The Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) is one of groups that put together the platform. The PYM is very closely associated with the PFLP and Samidoun terrorist groups. (Some details of these links here.)

The PFLP took part in the terrorist atrocities against Israelis on October 7, and has a history of murdering innocents, going back to the 1960s and ‘70s when it favoured spectacular terror attacks such as the 1972 murder of two dozen passengers at Israel’s Ben-Gurion International Airport. (More on the PFLP here.)

Samidoun is a sub-group of the PFLP, with branches in at least 14 countries but headquartered here in Canada. Samidoun spreads pro-terrorism propaganda, fund-raises, and recruits people to the terrorist movement. Canada and other democracies list both the PFLP and Samidoun as terrorist groups.

Despite its many links to the PFLP and Samidoun, the Palestinian Youth Movement continues to operate freely in Canada, primarily in universities and high schools. Along with Samidoun, it’s been responsible for many of the anti-Israel demonstrations across Canada and of course for anti-Israel propaganda, including this Vote Palestine platform.

The Vote Palestine platform promotes several central propaganda aims of the Palestinian terrorist groups:

Recognizing a Palestinian state.

Recognizing a Palestinian state, particularly now, is to give up on peace. It says to the Palestinians: no need to negotiate. Commit mass murder, mass rapes, and mass kidnappings; commit the most horrifying atrocities against Jews since the Holocaust, film it and upload it all to social media for the world to see – do that, and we will reward you with a state.

What are the borders of this Palestinian state? One of the criteria for recognizing a state is that it should have recognized borders. There's never been a Palestinian state, so its borders have never been determined. There have been attempts – Israel has made several territorial offers, but the Palestinian Authority has rejected them all and has never made a counter-offer. As for the PFLP and Hamas, the only borders they'll ever recognize include all of Israel.

The NDP has long campaigned to skip peace and go straight to recognizing a Palestinian state (more here). Indeed, the NDP supports every part of the Vote Palestine platform.

Palestinian Youth Movement poster celebrating Oct 7 massacres

Endorsing the notion of anti-Palestinian racism. 

Palestinians already enjoy legal protection against discrimination, as does every national group in Canada. But anti-Palestinian racism, as defined by groups backing this campaign, includes any disagreement with the Palestinian “narrative.” If you disagree with the anti-Israel mob, they want you branded as a racist.

Banning cultural or academic exchanges with Israeli students, artists, or any other Jew living in the West Bank.

The groups behind the Vote Palestine platform want to cut “Zionists” off from the rest of humanity – no contact of any kind with any Jewish Israeli or anyone supporting Israel’s continuing existence. Banning contact with Jews living in the West Back is a baby step they’ve guessed they can get a lot of people to go along with.

(More about both anti-Palestinian racism and the movement to shun “Zionists” here.)

Endorsing the slander that Israel tests out new weapons on Palestinians.

The groups behind Vote Palestine see Israel as a demonic entity – a state that kills Palestinians to try out new weapons or simply for sport. Because the Vote Palestine platform is meant for the general public, they’ve tried to hide their extremism (and outright craziness), but here it peeks out.

They want Canada to extend the ban on selling weapons to Israel to an additional ban on Canada buying weapons from Israel. To justify this, they pull out this absurd accusation about Israel testing out weapons on Palestinians.

And again, this is a policy the NDP endorses.

Funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). 

UNRWA is a UN agency, but in Gaza, it’s run by Hamas – which is not a surprise. Hamas has governed Gaza for 18 years. Every agency in Gaza answers to Hamas.

But UNRWA is more important than most, partly because it channeled a billion dollars to Hamas (here), but also because Gazan children all went to UNRWA schools, which taught them to hate Jews and to aspire to become martyrs in the holy war to wipe Israel off the map (here).

Altogether, Israel has identified 14 UNRWA employees who took part in the October 7 attack, and another 1,200 who are members of terrorist groups, plus numerous incidences of UNRWA facilities doubling as Hamas facilities. (More here).

The Liberals and the NDP already support funding UNRWA. The Conservative do not.

Protesters from Samidoun terrorist group burn Canadian flag

The Vote Palestine platform never mentions Hamas, although Hamas started this war and Hamas continues this war which has led to such disaster for Gaza. Thousands of Gazans hate Hamas and risk torture and death to protest its rule (here).

So why don’t the groups behind Vote Palestine platform mention Hamas? Simple: they care much more about wiping out Israel than they care about protecting Palestinians.

Of course, for all of us, there are other issues in this election, notably President Trump’s tariffs and his bid to make Canada the 51^st state. In regard to this issue, though, the question isn’t: who will stand up to Trump? All the parties would.

The question is: who will strengthen Canada’s economy so that we can stand up to this threat? For this, the smart money is on the Conservatives, not the Liberals, who have spent the past nine years hobbling our economy.

Still, despite the Liberals’ betrayal of Israel, if I lived in Anthony Housefather’s riding in Montreal or Ben Carr’s riding in Winnipeg, I’d vote Liberal myself, because it’s important to have strong pro-Israel voices in the Liberal caucus.

On the other hand, there are these Liberals who support the Vote Palestine platform. They’re only a half-step away from supporting terrorism:

Ontario:

Sima Acan, Oakville West

Shafqat Ali (incumbent), Brampton—Chinguacousy Park

Fares Abu Al Soud, Mississauga Centre

Chris Bittle (incumbent), St. Catharines

Sean Carscadden, Wellington–Halton Hills North

Shaun Chen (incumbent), Scarborough North

Nate Erskine-Smith (incumbent), Beaches-East York

Kurt Keenan, Middlesex—London

Iqra Khalid (incumbent), Mississauga—Erin Mills

Tim Louis (incumbent), Kitchener—Conestoga

Aslam Rana, Hamilton Centre

Jenna Sudds (incumbent), Kanata

Kristina Tesser Derksen, Milton East–Halton Hills South

Adam van Koeverden (incumbent), Burlington North—Milton West

Salma Zahid (incumbent), Scarborough Centre—Don Valley East

PEI:

Sean Casey (incumbent), Charlottetown

Quebec:

Alexandra Mendès (incumbent), Brossard—Saint-Lambert

Sameer Zuberi (incumbent), Pierrefonds—Dollard

Alberta:

Shahnaz Munir, Calgary Crowfoot

B.C.:

Patrick Weiler (incumbent), West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country

In Nunavut, the Yukon, the Northwest Territories, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland and Labrador, no Liberal candidates have signed on to the Vote Palestine platform. In these provinces and territories, you need to vote NDP or Green to support terrorism.

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Note: I’ve previously written on the Liberals’ betrayal and in particular on the betrayal of the Jewish community by my own Member of Parliament, in York Centre here.

This piece was originally published on the Canadian Zionist Forum.

To read more of my commentary, click here (and scroll down).