Ministers and secretaries of state speak with reporters on Parliament Hill ahead of the first meeting of the new federal cabinet. Prime Minister Mark Carney unveiled his cabinet on Tuesday, just over two weeks after leading the Liberals to re-election. Industry Minister Mélanie Joly comments...
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When asked by a reporter about Israel’s blockade of Gaza, Anand
could have pointed out that Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that governs the enclave, had been stealing aid and reselling it for profit. She
could have pointed out that it was Hamas that refused to continue a ceasefire with Israel that would have ended the war. She
could have pointed out that Hamas continues to hold hostages, or that it routinely inflates casualty numbers and obscures the number of fighters killed to leave the impression of higher civilian deaths. Finally, Anand
could have pointed out that Hamas started the war with Israel by committing the October 7 massacre.
She
could have pointed out any number of those things, but instead, Anand chose to attack Israel. “We cannot allow the continued use of food as a political tool,” she started, conveniently ignoring Hamas’s routine theft of aid. The organization has profited
at least US$500 million since October 7, funds it has used to bolster its terrorist ranks. For example, in October Hamas
was caught on camera hijacking 47 aid trucks in a convoy of 100.
After Israel started its blockade in March, however, Hamas started to struggle to pay its ranks, as funds from stealing
aid began to dry up.
She ignores terrorist role in starting war with Israel, in stealing aid and in refusing a ceasefire
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Chastising Israel for using food as a “political tool” while overlooking the fact humanitarian aid has been used to fund Hamas’s own war effort, demonstrates an appalling level of bad faith on the part of the foreign affairs minister.
Anand then summed up the war as one entirely of Israel’s making, while simultaneously accepting Hamas’s dubious casualty count. “Over 50,000 people have died as a result of the aggression caused against the Palestinian and the Gazan people in Palestine,” she said.
Anand, apparently, gets her information and her talking points from Hamas, which, again, started this war when it slaughtered 1200 people in southern Israel. Suggesting war is “a result of the aggression caused against” the Palestinians shows she is either very poorly informed, or deliberately pushing an anti-Israel agenda that is absent of facts.
As for the number of casualties, the Hamas controlled health ministry is an unreliable source, routinely listing deaths that never occurred, with 3,400
supposed deaths being dropped in April.
A
report in December by think tank the Henry Jackson Society found that casualty counts were regularly manipulated, including, for example, listing thousands of people who would have died whether there was a conflict or not, such as cancer patients, as among the war dead. The report found that 17,000 of the then supposed 44,000 deaths were Hamas fighters, and a majority of those killed were males between the ages of 15 and 45. Hamas also notoriously embeds itself in schools, mosques and hospitals, using its population as human shields.
Repeating Hamas’s casualty numbers without at least distinguishing between Hamas fighters and actual civilians is repeating terrorist propaganda.
Anand also said “we need to continue to work towards a ceasefire,” but, again, it is not Israel that is standing in the way of an end to hostilities. After the end o
f a 42-day ceasefire in March, Israel had agreed to a U.S. proposal to move to a second phase that would have eventually led to the end of the war. It was Hamas that refused in part because it didn’t want to agree to be disarmed.
Anand’s blaming of Israel, while ignoring the actions of Hamas continues the regrettable pattern of her predecessor,
Mélanie “have you seen the demographics of my riding” Joly. Under Joly’s “leadership,” Canada continued funding UNRWA, despite the fact some of its employees took part in October 7, an arms embargo was implemented against Israel, and Canada supported a UN motion calling for a ceasefire that placed no conditions on Hamas. Joly’s department
condemned an Israeli attack on a school that never occurred, just as Joly herself
condemned Israel for an explosion at a hospital that was
committed by the Palestinian side.
Again and again, the Canadian LIBERAL government’s position could be summed up as: Israel has a right to defend itself, so long as it doesn’t use its army. The terrorists who started all this? Well, they are the victims of “aggression,” according to Anand.
All of this would be bad enough, but Canada’s government contributes nothing to resolving the conflict. The Liberals want to snipe at Israel, painting distorted pictures of the war, without doing any of the work. By not supporting the only democracy in the Middle East, Canada forfeits any influence it might have over Israeli policy, showing that this Liberal government is just as performative as the last.
Liberals gotta Lib, or in this case, adLib.
