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On September 21, 2025, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that Canada officially recognizes the State of Palestine, aligning with over 140 UN member states. This decision, made ahead of the UN General Assembly, has been met with criticism, particularly from Israel, which views the move as a reward for Hamas and a setback for peace efforts. Carney emphasized that the recognition is contingent upon the Palestinian Authority holding elections in 2026 and excluding Hamas from governance (Reuters).
Critics argue that this recognition overlooks the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They point out that Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, has a history of violence and has been designated as a terrorist organization by Canada. The decision to recognize Palestine without addressing Hamas’s role raises questions about the effectiveness of such diplomatic gestures in promoting peace and stability in the region.
Furthermore, some view this move as a political maneuver to distance Canada from its traditional ally, the United States, and to align more closely with European nations that have recognized Palestinian statehood. However, without a comprehensive strategy that includes addressing the influence of Hamas and ensuring the security of all parties involved, this recognition may be seen as a symbolic gesture rather than a step toward a lasting resolution to the conflict.
References
- Reuters: Carney says Canada recognises a Palestinian state
- AP News: Canada joins other countries in recognizing a Palestinian state ahead of UN General Assembly
- New York Post: Canada, UK and Australia all recognize Palestinian state as rebuke to Israel for Gaza war
- Washington Post: U.K., Canada, Australia recognize Palestine as a state, breaking with U.S.
- Al Jazeera: Canada, UK and Australia announce recognition of Palestinian statehood
. The FAFO factor often involves the highest of stakes. The people who support Hamas really ought to give their head a shake because most of their activities place them firmly in the useful idiot category.
These excerpts from Susie Linfield‘s essay on called The Return of the Progressive Atrocity.
“In 1979, leftists who supported the Iranian Revolution had a rude awakening when the mullahs came to power and promptly executed them, along with secularists, union organizers, intellectuals, feminists, and everyone else who fit into the enormously capacious category of a counterrevolutionary. There was a lesson here: Activists have the responsibility to know who and what they support, and to separate themselves—openly and decisively—from programs and regimes that are predicated on violence and repression. Similarly, those who imagine that Hamas’s slaughters may have promoted “liberation,” “justice,” and “freedom” for Palestinians, as the banners demand, have a big surprise in store.
Unlike Iran in 1979, though, there’s no mystery as to what kind of state Hamas (an acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement) aims to create; we need only look at what it already has created. This time, no one can plead ignorance. There’s little liberation, justice, or freedom to be found in Gaza, where there are no opposition political parties, no elections, and no freedom of religion, the press, or protest. Opponents are arrested, tortured, and sometimes executed. (Yahya Sinwar, a head of Hamas’s armed wing, was known as “the butcher of Khan Younis” for his brutality toward other Palestinians.) Abortion and homosexuality are outlawed (what are those protestors with “Queers for Palestine” signs thinking?); mentioning trans rights would be unwise. It is legal for husbands to beat their wives, and so-called honor killings go unpunished. The ruling clique is notoriously corrupt, and though Gazans are very poor, Hamas is a very rich organization. “I Stand with Palestine!” demonstrators and writers proudly proclaim while lauding Hamas for having “rejuvenated a sense of political possibility” and hastening “the hour of liberation.” But what, exactly, are they standing for? And what kind of liberation will this be? Aside from the Taliban, Hamas has established the least progressive pseudo-state on Earth. The lesson of Iran has apparently not been learned; history is repeating itself not as farce but as tragedy.”
[…]
“Oppression is not a carte blanche for severing heads from bodies, shooting hundreds of young festival-goers, bludgeoning people to death, murdering children in front of parents and vice versa, killing naked women point-blank, and kidnapping babies and the elderly; there is no universe in which these are revolutionary, emancipatory, or anticolonialist acts, much less “beautiful” ones. Sadism and violence are not synonyms. Sexual torture cannot be anti-imperialist—nor is it an understandable, much less inevitable, response to oppression. An eliminationist program is not a freedom charter. History has proved, again and again, that terrorists and freedom fighters aren’t the same, which is why the former never achieve anything approaching either liberation or justice. There is no room for “yes, but.” Why, when it comes to the deaths of Israelis, is this so hard to understand? “
I’m chilled when I see so many members of our intelligentsia support and excuse heinous crimes against humanity. The Left when blinded by power-dynamics can be just as bloodthirsty as the Right.
This is the full article. I think it is important enough to not lose readers who will read an excerpt and stop there. Go to the The Free Press to get the link to the podcast –
“In the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attack, it’s important to keep in view the bright line that exists between good and a very specific form of evil. It is the evil of bad ideas—ideas so bad that they can make even ordinary human beings impossible to live with.
There’s a piece of audio from October 7 that many people have commented on. It’s a recording of a cell phone call that a member of Hamas made to his family, while he was in the process of massacring innocent men, women, and children. The man is ecstatic, telling his father and mother, and I think brother, that he has just killed ten Jews with his own hands. He had just murdered a husband and wife and was now calling his family from the dead woman’s phone.
Here’s a partial transcript of what he said:
“Hi, Dad—open my WhatsApp now, and you’ll see all those killed. Look how many I killed with my own hands! Your son killed Jews!”
And his dad says, “May God protect you.”
“Dad, I’m talking to you from a Jewish woman’s phone. I killed her, and I killed her husband. I killed ten with my own hands! Dad, ten with my own hands! Dad, open WhatsApp and see how many I killed, Dad. Open the phone, Dad. I’m calling you on WhatsApp. Open the phone, go. Dad, I killed ten. Ten with my own hands. Their blood is on their hands. [I believe that is a reference to the Quran.] Put Mom on.”
And the father says, “Oh, my son. God bless you!”
“I swear, ten with my own hands. Mother, I killed ten with my own hands!”
And his father says, “May God bring you home safely.”
“Dad, go back to WhatsApp now. Dad, I want to do a live broadcast.”
And the mother now says, “I wish I was with you.”
“Mom, your son is a hero!”
And then, apparently talking to his comrades, he yells, “Kill, kill, kill, kill them.”
And then his brother gets on the line, asking where he is. And he tells his brother the name of the town, and then he says “I killed ten! Ten with my own hands! I’m talking to you from a Jew’s phone!”
And the brother says, “You killed ten?”
“Yes, I killed ten. I swear!”
Then he says, “I am the first to enter on the protection and help of Allah! [Surely that’s another scriptural reference.] Hold your head up, father. Hold your head up! See on WhatsApp those that I killed. Open my WhatsApp.”
And his brother says, “Come back. Come back.”
And he says, “What do you mean, come back? There’s no going back. It is either death or victory! My mother gave birth to me for the religion. What’s with you? How would I return? Open WhatsApp. See the dead. Open it.”
And the mother sounds like she is trying to figure out how to open WhatsApp. . .
“Open WhatsApp on your phone and see the dead, how I killed them with my own hands.”
And she says, “Well, promise to come back.”
I don’t speak any Arabic, and it seems to me that not every word in the audio that’s being circulated was translated, but I think we get the gist. When I spoke to Graeme Wood about this, he said that to him, the mother and father sounded more shocked and worried than anything else, which would be understandable. But I would submit to you that this piece of audio is more than just the worst WhatsApp commercial ever conceived. It is a window onto a culture. As I told Graeme, this is not the type of call that would have been placed from Vietnam, by an American who just participated in the My Lai massacre. Nor is it the parental reaction one would expect from an American family, had their beloved son just called them from a killing field. I mean, as terrible as Vietnam was, can you imagine a call back to Nebraska, “Mom, I killed ten with my own hands! I killed a woman and her husband, and I’m calling from the dead woman’s phone. Mom, your son is a hero!” Do you see what a total aberration that would have been, even in extremis?
This call wasn’t a total aberration. This wasn’t Ted Bundy calling his mom. This was an ordinary member of Hamas, a group that might still win an election today, especially in the West Bank, calling an ordinary Palestinian family, and the mere existence of that call, to say nothing of its contents, reveals something about the wider culture among the Palestinians.
It’s important to point out that not only members of Hamas but ordinary Gazans appear to have taken part in the torture and murder of innocent Israelis and the taking of hostages. How many did this? And how many ordinary Gazans were dancing in the streets and spitting on the captured women and girls who were paraded before them after having been raped and tortured? What percentage of Palestinians in Gaza, or the West Bank, many of whom are said to hate Hamas for their corruption and incompetence and brutality, nevertheless support what they did on October 7 with a clear conscience, based on what they believe about Jews and the ethics of jihad? I don’t know, but I’m sure that the answers to these questions would be quite alarming. We’re talking about a culture that teaches Jew hatred and the love of martyrdom in its elementary schools, many of which are funded by the UN.
Of course, all of this horror is compounded by the irony that the Jews who were killed on October 7 were, for the most part, committed liberals and peace activists. Hamas killed the sorts of people who volunteer to drive sick Palestinians into Israel for medical treatments. They murdered the most idealistic people in Israel. They raped, tortured, and killed young people at a trance dance music festival devoted to peace, half of whom were probably on MDMA feeling nothing but love for all humanity when the jihadists arrived. In terms of a cultural and moral distance, it’s like the fucking Vikings showed up at Burning Man and butchered everyone in sight.
Just think about what happened at the Supernova music festival: at least 260 people were murdered in the most sadistically gruesome ways possible. Decapitated, burned alive, blown up with grenades. . . and from the jihadist side, this wasn’t an error. It’s not that if they could have known what was in the hearts of those beautiful young people, they would have thought, “Oh my God, we’re killing the wrong people. These people aren’t our enemies. These people are filled with love and compassion and want nothing more than to live in peace with us.” No, the true horror is that, given what jihadists believe, those were precisely the sorts of people any good Muslim should kill and send to hell where they can be tortured in fire for eternity. From the jihadist point of view, there is no mistake here. And there is no basis for remorse. Please absorb this fact: for the jihadist, all of this sadism—the torture and murder of helpless, terrified people—is an act of worship. This is the sacrament. This isn’t some nauseating departure from the path to God. This isn’t stalled spiritual progress, much less sin. This is what you do for the glory of God. This is what Muhammed himself did.
There is no substitute for understanding what our enemies actually want and believe. I’m pretty sure that many of you reading this aren’t even comfortable with my use of the term enemy, because you don’t want to believe that you have any. I understand that. But you have to understand that the people who butchered over 1,400 innocent men, women, and children in Israel on October 7 were practicing their religion, sincerely. They were being every bit as spiritual, from their point of view, as the trance dancers at the Supernova festival were being from theirs. They were equally devoted to their highest values. Equally uplifted. Ecstatic. Amazed at their good fortune. They wouldn’t want to trade places with anyone. Let this image land in your brain: they were shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) all day long, as they murdered women and children. And these people are now being celebrated the world over by those who understand exactly what they did. Yes, many of those college kids at Harvard and Stanford and Cornell are just idiots who have a lot to learn about the world. But in the Muslim community, and that includes the crowds in London and Sydney and Brooklyn, Hamas is being celebrated by people who understand exactly what motivates them.
Again, watch Hotel Mumbai or read a book about the Islamic State so that you can see jihadism in another context—where literally not one of the variables that people imagine to be important here is present. There are no settlers or blockades or daily humiliations at checkpoints or differing interpretations of history—and yet we have same grotesque distortion of the spiritual impulse, the same otherworldliness framed by murder, the same absolute evil that doesn’t require the presence of evil people, just confused ones—just true believers.
Of course, we can do our best to turn the temperature down now. And we can trust that the news cycle will get captured by another story. We can direct our attention again to Russia, or China, or climate change, or AI alignment, and I will do that on this podcast, but the problem of jihadism and the much wider problem of sympathy for it isn’t going away. And civilized people—non-Muslim and Muslim alike—have to deal with it. As I said in a previous podcast on this topic: we all live in Israel now. It’s just that most of us haven’t realized it yet.”
The response in the West to the Hamas terror attack and kidnapping of Israeli citizens is worth analyzing. Major Western institutions lent their support to the cause of “Free Palestine” and the like. It seems a bit off target to me, as better messaging would focus on Hamas freeing the hostages and surrendering the individuals responsible for committing gross acts of terror and barbarity against a civilian population.
In most of the protest coverage I’ve seen there has been little to no call for accountability upon the elected government of Gaza (Hamas). What I have seen and heard are slogans around the theme of “Palestine from the River to the Sea.”
FILE – Pro-Palestinian protesters take part in a rally to express solidarity with Palestinians, in front of the parliament, in Athens, Greece, Sunday, Nov. 5, 2023. The Jordan River is a winding, 200-plus-mile run to the east of Israel and the West Bank. The sea is the glittering Mediterranean to its west. But a phrase about the space in-between, “from the river to the sea,” has become a battle cry with new power to roil Jews and pro-Palestinian activists in the aftermath of Hamas’ murderous rampage across southern Israel Oct. 7 and Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. (AP Photo/Yorgos Karahalis, File)
So, from “The River to the Sea” is the complete erasure of the state of Israel and the expulsion/decimation of the Jewish people that live there. You would think that people involved in protests that used this slogan would be horrified and not participate in protests calling for genocide. The sentiment was repeated by union leaders in Canada:
“Mr. Hahn, whose CUPE Ontario represents almost 300,000 workers and calls itself the “political wing of the Canadian Union of Public Employees,” said in one social-media post on Sunday, the day after the initial attacks, that he was thankful for “the power of resistance around the globe.”
He added that “resistance is fruitful and no matter what some might say, resistance brings progress.” He also shared an image on Instagram that contained the text, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” – a phrase associated with calls for the destruction of Israel.
On Tuesday, Mr. Ford condemned Mr. Hahn’s posts. Mr. Ford said in a statement that he does not believe Mr. Hahn’s views reflect those of the tens of thousands of workers represented by the union.
“The comments by the president of CUPE Ontario glorifying and celebrating the rape, abduction and murder of innocent Israeli people are disturbing, and I denounce them wholeheartedly,” the statement said.”
Yeah. Canadian Universities were also getting in on celebrating or at least not speaking out against the rape, abduction, and murder of innocent people. (Some American Universities were also complicit.)
“A statement from McMaster began with the phrase, “Violence is never the answer and we hope that everyone would focus on the human costs when such attacks on civilians occur.” It added: “Our thoughts are with our students, faculty and staff, both Israeli and Palestinian, who have family and loved ones in the area.” An initial statement from the University of Toronto expressed concern for the safety of students and faculty in the Middle East, and those who have friends or family there.
Several social-media users reacted with outrage to the statements, which they characterized as inappropriately ambivalent. Andrew Morris, a professor at the University of Toronto’s faculty of medicine, was among them.”
One would think that it would be a fairly easy slam dunk to condemn actions that included the rape, torture and kidnapping of civilians. For the record –
“According to the Israeli prime minister’s office, more than 1,400 people have been killed in Israel, with 6,900 others injured. At least 32 of those killed are Americans. And Israeli officials say 239 people are being held hostage in Gaza. Ten Americans remain unaccounted for, “some significant number” of which are hostages, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Oct. 24. Israeli officials say 357 IDF soldiers have been killed since Oct. 7, including 39 since the ground campaign began.”
Canadian Unions and Universities dropped the ball on this one and at least three are being taken to court for their lack of action on antisemitism.
Hopefully the lawsuits will be a reminder to them of the Western values they should be defending.
Sorry for the incovenience of having to go to youtube to watch the happenings at the Oxford Union. It was quite a raucous affair.
Compare and contrast with the lecture at Cambridge where students as opposed to radicals came out and a productive mostly civil debate and conversation resulted.
The activist Left wants more of Oxford and less of Cambridge. I implore everyone watching to be more like Cambridge and respect others and their opinions while debating the merits of the arguments at hand.
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