Juno News - How October 7 changed Canada

00:00:00.000 My friend Dahlia Kurtz, I actually met in Israel for the first time in person.

00:00:13.520 She and I were colleagues for the same radio company some years ago,

00:00:16.960 and we had the chance to go and travel Israel as part of a delegation of Canadian journalists

00:00:22.080 and have been friends ever since.

00:00:24.540 Dahlia was working on a book about something that had nothing to do with politics,

00:00:28.460 nothing to do with Israel, but was pushed off of that project onto another one in the wake of October 7th.

00:00:35.000 That book is called Dear Zionist, You Are Not Alone, just came out in the last few days,

00:00:40.100 and Dahlia joins me on the line now.

00:00:42.740 Dahlia, wonderful to talk to you again. Thank you so much for coming today.

00:00:45.920 What's the background? What is happening here?

00:00:48.560 I thought you did that.

00:00:50.020 I do not. None. No background.

00:00:53.340 That was...

00:00:54.280 There we go. We're off to a great start.

00:00:56.540 It was the laser from Zion.

00:00:59.260 They redirected it in the inappropriate way they were supposed to use those lasers to send them...

00:01:06.060 I'm not allowed to say.

00:01:08.100 Andrew, I'm so happy to be on your show.

00:01:10.580 Well, it's good to have you here.

00:01:12.640 Let me just start...

00:01:14.120 Let's start on that comment by Chrystia Freeland,

00:01:16.400 because you have always been...

00:01:18.180 And even just now, we're talking about a serious topic,

00:01:20.320 but you've always been just this ray of sunshine in Canadian media.

00:01:23.480 Back when you did your former show,

00:01:25.920 I know you always used to highlight good news stories and positive things.

00:01:29.500 I've seen from you a lot more of an edge since October 7th,

00:01:34.160 and I don't fault you for that,

00:01:35.480 but I was wondering if you could speak about how what's happened

00:01:38.440 has really pushed the way that you are using your voice.

00:01:42.040 Well, one, when you're an independent, things change.

00:01:45.540 People don't have to tell you to not be as Jewish.

00:01:49.560 You could be Jewish, but not a Jew. 0.99

00:01:52.560 Ish part is okay.

00:01:54.520 But the other part of it is October 7th, I just put everything aside.

00:01:59.480 I dropped everything that I was doing,

00:02:01.980 because I immediately saw where this was going

00:02:05.280 and what this was going to become.

00:02:07.180 And I immediately realized,

00:02:09.100 I'm going to be that person that I always thought I would be

00:02:12.760 if something like this happens again.

00:02:14.880 And let me tell you, anybody who is a child of the Holocaust,

00:02:19.400 a grandchild of the Holocaust,

00:02:20.940 that's what you're going to think.

00:02:23.140 It's going to be in the back of your brain forever.

00:02:26.600 To hear Chrystia Friedland speak the way that she does,

00:02:30.520 I mean, the entire thing was absolutely laughable.

00:02:33.180 So all I can do is, I wrote an entire joke about it online,

00:02:38.360 but the sad part is, it was funny,

00:02:41.700 but it was only funny because it's true.

00:02:44.140 So it's actually entirely pathetic.

00:02:47.040 I wasn't in Ottawa.

00:02:48.200 I had heard what had happened.

00:02:50.180 You don't need to be in Ottawa.

00:02:51.120 She could have asked any one of the hundred plus people in that room,

00:02:54.000 like you said, to just play a little clip of the audio there.

00:02:57.720 She, which she, of course, let's all be clear,

00:03:01.360 she already heard that audio.

00:03:03.220 There's no way that she never did.

00:03:05.040 And then she has to plop in there somewhere. 1.00

00:03:08.920 Let me just say, Islamophobia is on the rise in Canada,

00:03:12.940 which she forgot to mention in that whole little spiel

00:03:16.400 is about her sweet grandfather,

00:03:18.400 who, interesting connection when, you know,

00:03:21.200 he is one of the Nazi newspapers that recruits,

00:03:27.600 hmm, who did we end up seeing in our parliament?

00:03:30.420 It was the same type of person.

00:03:32.540 There's a lot of direct lines here.

00:03:34.380 So, you know, it's not her action that I'm looking at.

00:03:38.340 It's her inaction. 1.00

00:03:39.940 And the inaction is abundantly clear.

00:03:42.980 There was a mosque that had a break in entry.

00:03:45.660 It was an attempted break in entry in Winnipeg a couple of weeks back.

00:03:50.060 Justin Trudeau drops everything.

00:03:52.820 Carbon emissions be damned.

00:03:54.860 And he gets himself to Winnipeg.

00:03:57.180 You could see like this lock was sort of broken.

00:03:59.520 And he's hand on heart, hand on heart.

00:04:03.200 Nobody should be scared of a place they worship in.

00:04:05.800 What about the hundred churches that have gone up in place?

00:04:10.180 What about the Jews who 400,000 of us with numbers dwindling as we're moving away,

00:04:18.160 making Aliyah more and more?

00:04:20.380 What about that?

00:04:21.620 What does that mean to him?

00:04:23.160 And it's come to a point where the way I feel about it is everybody keeps saying, lead, lead.

00:04:29.060 And I mean, just yesterday I shared some investigative journalism that I've done

00:04:33.600 where I looked at the person who had been campaigning for the mayor of Toronto, Olivia Chow. 0.88

00:04:39.000 And this person, Mozambique Patel, I have a video in this tweet where you can see him asking,

00:04:46.720 demanding that we kill Israel, the very person who has been campaigning with Olivia Chow.

00:04:52.140 So you know what?

00:04:53.140 I think it is absolutely ridiculous that we even ask the leaders to do better.

00:04:58.680 There's nothing to do better because one, they're leaders with air quotes.

00:05:03.680 And two, they've already failed us.

00:05:06.200 So we see what they're capable of and we see what they're not capable of.

00:05:10.040 So the leaders have failed us.

00:05:12.700 We will not fail us.

00:05:14.420 And I feel that it's up to me.

00:05:17.260 It's up to people who have a voice.

00:05:18.800 It's up to anybody who will speak up and not be afraid.

00:05:22.620 Andrew, it boggles my mind that people call me outspoken.

00:05:27.480 Why?

00:05:28.440 Because I say, don't kill the Jews.

00:05:31.520 Crazy talk.

00:05:32.380 You said something a few moments ago I wanted to revisit because you said it, I think, almost

00:05:39.060 incidentally.

00:05:40.200 But you had said the type of person, you wanted to be the type of person you thought you'd

00:05:43.260 be if something like this happened again.

00:05:45.720 And I found that word again quite jarring because you and I know that terrorism in Israel is not

00:05:51.640 sadly uncommon.

00:05:53.420 I mean, when you and I were there in 2015, there had been a spate of knife stabbings on the street.

00:05:57.260 And Israelis have a much higher than normal tolerance level for these sorts of things

00:06:03.380 there.

00:06:03.700 It takes a lot for something to rise to front page news in Israel that elsewhere in the

00:06:07.540 world would be.

00:06:08.700 But when you say never again, you're putting October 7th, as I understand it, in the same

00:06:13.240 category as the Holocaust, are you not?

00:06:15.700 A hundred percent.

00:06:16.940 And that's not even coming from my mouth directly.

00:06:20.020 That's coming from every hostage who's been released.

00:06:22.940 They have said that was a Holocaust.

00:06:25.460 It's a Holocaust. 0.94

00:06:26.340 And so I'm going to take from the people who are there, I'm going to take from the feeling

00:06:30.700 that it gave me.

00:06:33.120 And that is absolutely a Holocaust. 0.89

00:06:35.720 I shared a picture the other day.

00:06:37.480 I was looking at Columbia University and all of the students there who are blocking the

00:06:43.160 Jews from going in. 0.99

00:06:44.260 And I juxtaposed that against a picture I saw from 1938 in Vienna, where the students were

00:06:50.620 blocking the Jewish students from entering.

00:06:52.640 And I thought, I'm going to find, obviously, the similarities in this.

00:06:57.840 But what really struck me were not the similarities.

00:07:01.660 It was the dark differences.

00:07:03.080 It was the fact that now, in 2024, where it looked worse because you saw more students,

00:07:10.740 population has grown this or that.

00:07:12.800 The worst part about it is that these students who are now joining in this Kristallnacht, as

00:07:20.500 it was described by the Jewish students at Columbia, they've had the opportunity to see history.

00:07:26.520 They've had the opportunity to learn from history.

00:07:29.220 And they have chosen the side of be less than human from history.

00:07:36.580 So that choice unto itself makes this much worse than what we experienced before.

00:07:45.040 And to see the way that Canada has reacted, to see what's happening in the U.S., to see

00:07:50.600 all of these governments fail us.

00:07:52.980 I can completely understand how you create bonds and you create bonds with people.

00:08:01.100 It's the entire bond of, you know, it's the bond of being one, because you know that not

00:08:08.180 everybody is going to have your back.

00:08:10.160 So if they don't have it, you will have it.

00:08:13.780 But at the same time, there are a bunch of people who are suffering and not everybody has

00:08:19.040 the tools to cope with this.

00:08:21.180 And since October 7th, I've been receiving messages because I've been very bold and I have

00:08:26.780 been blacklisted up the wazoo, Andrew, death threats, blacklisted, my entire mission has

00:08:34.280 just gone to, okay, fine, I'm just going to pour myself into this.

00:08:39.120 You can't pay rent with pouring yourself into something.

00:08:41.680 I'll be clear about that.

00:08:42.980 But I will pour myself into this.

00:08:45.760 And if people are sending me messages from around the world saying that I'm doing something

00:08:50.740 that's helping them, well, that's absolutely fantastic.

00:08:55.720 I need to do more of this.

00:08:57.380 So I decided to write this book, Dear Zionist, You Are Not Alone, 18 Letters of Hope and Light.

00:09:04.080 And the whole idea of it, first of all, is that this is not about Jews. 0.50

00:09:08.600 It's about Jews and our non-Jew supporters. 0.88

00:09:12.100 The quickest Zionist test anybody could take, and most people don't even realize that they're 0.99

00:09:16.060 a Zionist, but the quickest Zionist test anybody could take is, do you believe Israel has a 0.64

00:09:21.100 right to exist?

00:09:22.460 And if you say yes, mazel tov, you're a Zionist. 0.91

00:09:26.540 And, you know, I got a message from one of the readers yesterday, and she said to me,

00:09:30.720 I finished reading the book, and, you know, this part about You Are Not Alone, when we're

00:09:34.380 getting to that, I know that you meant it for Jewish people, but I have to say, it really

00:09:38.400 made me feel not alone.

00:09:40.700 I didn't mean it for Jewish people.

00:09:43.100 I meant it for people.

00:09:44.260 I meant it for anybody who has a shred of humanity in them, because I can guarantee

00:09:49.540 you, you can be any religion, any color, any heritage, any ethnicity, and this book is

00:09:58.080 going to touch you in some way.

00:10:00.400 Just be careful who you sit next to on an airplane, because one of the readers was crying

00:10:04.720 next to somebody who did not quite know how to comfort them through this.

00:10:08.380 Let me ask you about the hopefulness of it, because one of the challenges in a time like

00:10:16.720 this is that we don't yet see an ended sight.

00:10:20.500 I mean, if anything, you know, the public sympathy for Israel from people that might not identify

00:10:25.380 as a Zionist was at a high point on October 7th, October 8th.

00:10:29.460 And I think it's been in decline ever since then.

00:10:31.680 And I think, you know, people often very dishonestly conflate, you know, oh, I have this

00:10:37.000 little criticism with Benjamin Netanyahu.

00:10:39.580 They use that to sort of shield.

00:10:41.700 No, you actually have a deep hatred of the Jewish people.

00:10:44.020 You're just, you know, trying to.

00:10:44.940 You're a synagogue in Toronto and Benjamin Netanyahu's in his war cabinet.

00:10:49.140 Yeah, yeah, he doesn't even, you know, know what Yonge Street is and you're out there and

00:10:53.800 you're in, you know, Forest Hill and all of that.

00:10:56.400 But where do you see this going?

00:10:59.220 Because, you know, with any sort of, you know, boiling crisis like this, the fear is that

00:11:04.160 it has to get worse before it gets better.

00:11:06.080 But at this point, it is worse.

00:11:08.160 I mean, we're seeing this.

00:11:09.080 We're seeing open calls for violence on the street.

00:11:11.280 And at this point, people are faced with two options.

00:11:14.100 They can either do something about it or they can literally do the Christopher Elon thing,

00:11:18.100 do the ostrich thing, stick your head in the sand and say, oh, I wasn't in Ottawa.

00:11:21.240 Like, like at that point, it's you can't make it more apparent than these people already have.

00:11:27.980 The hiding thing isn't hiding, it's aiding and abetting.

00:11:30.800 That's all it is.

00:11:31.560 I don't see any other way around it.

00:11:34.300 I think that things, especially this past weekend, I saw the surge and I see the surge

00:11:38.600 of violence that's going to get worse.

00:11:40.320 Somebody in person, in person.

00:11:42.540 I mean, Andrew, I get death threats.

00:11:44.520 I get people have like measured nooses for my neck.

00:11:48.100 I've had so many horrid things said to me online, but there was a person just near where

00:11:57.940 I live who saw me, gave me a dirty look and called me a Nazi.

00:12:02.960 Quick to run, mind you, because that's what they do. 0.98

00:12:07.040 Let's.

00:12:07.960 I love how defending Jews has become Nazism in 2024. 0.97

00:12:12.200 I mean, they show how devoid of historic, historic knowledge and just, you know, basic

00:12:16.880 fundamental reason these people are.

00:12:18.600 And I took the word Zionist also for the book, because one, its meaning is powerful and true.

00:12:23.540 And two, they're trying to take the word Zionist away from us.

00:12:26.920 This has been an ongoing campaign.

00:12:28.840 And this is where the Jewish people have failed themselves in fighting something like this,

00:12:35.400 which we've known for many, many years has been coming.

00:12:37.860 There has been an ongoing Palestinian campaign that is very centralized and everybody has their

00:12:46.280 documents and everybody has their way of speaking.

00:12:49.080 And there's a very clear path and it is being executed exceptionally well.

00:12:55.800 It is a very well-oiled machine.

00:12:57.960 Meanwhile, you have so many different Jewish organizations, each trying their own thing, 0.87

00:13:02.200 not necessarily working together.

00:13:04.600 And it's just ending up being a lot of noise instead of cohesiveness.

00:13:09.780 So, this entire idea of the war that is not in the field, but the war that is in the real world,

00:13:17.220 it needs to change the way that it is fought.

00:13:19.700 And for me, I look at that in a couple of folds.

00:13:22.180 One, you need to strengthen your people.

00:13:25.140 And by my people, I'm not referring to Jewish people.

00:13:28.740 I'm referring to Jewish people and our non-Jewish supporters. 0.62

00:13:32.740 And I think that the strength that is found in this book from the people who have been

00:13:37.460 at the most bitter, bitter points of darkness in their lives, the things that have happened to

00:13:43.220 them, a few of them are Holocaust survivors.

00:13:45.540 One is a war hero.

00:13:46.900 Another was on his way to terrorist camp to become a terrorist.

00:13:51.460 And then everything changed for him.

00:13:53.940 So, when you look at what these people have been through, and also a very special story about my

00:13:58.980 father because he sacrificed everything to change Canada so that people could get jobs regardless

00:14:06.100 of religion, which ended up hurting him much more later on.

00:14:09.620 But when you look at the hardships, the tragedies, the how are they going to get out of this,

00:14:16.260 and these true stories, and not only how they made it through, but how they made it through to become

00:14:23.540 exceptional successes who thrived beyond measure.

00:14:29.380 And I will say, if you've ever seen Inglourious Basterds, the last person that I highlight as a

00:14:36.500 Holocaust survivor in this book, Dr. Morris Schnitzer, it will give you a little bit of that

00:14:45.140 cathartic kick that you could get.

00:14:47.220 I'm not going to give anything away there, but really the whole point of this is, I think that's one

00:14:53.220 side of the battle is helping people, empowering people, Jews, and our non-Jewish supporters.

00:15:00.340 And that is where this book comes from.

00:15:02.580 And I have greater plans for a bigger series.

00:15:04.820 I had to get this out as quick as possible.

00:15:06.580 My second edition is going to be longer in audiobook, in paperback, and then this whole

00:15:13.380 Dear Zionist is going to move on towards other series as well.

00:15:18.500 But first, we have to work on strengthening people.

00:15:20.980 And the other side is we have to become more cohesive.

00:15:24.260 We have to create more of a singular vision in how we're going to tackle this the same way that

00:15:29.860 the PR on the other side has been working it for years, for years, for years, for years.

00:15:36.820 And that requires a lot of catching up.

00:15:38.660 But we've also learned from Israelis and Jewish people, we can be very innovative,

00:15:43.620 especially when our lives are at risk.

00:15:45.940 Yeah, very much so.

00:15:48.020 And I've always tremendously admired the resilience of Israelis.

00:15:52.980 But you have to extend that to Jewish people now.

00:15:55.060 And people that go around the world in this day and age and wear a yarmulke, walk into a synagogue, 0.51

00:15:59.940 wear a Star of David.

00:16:00.900 I mean, they're doing that knowing full well what that attracts.

00:16:03.220 And there you go.

00:16:04.180 You got the super Jew, Superman. 1.00

00:16:07.700 I don't know.

00:16:08.100 It's a little bit of both there.

00:16:09.140 Super Jew. 0.99

00:16:10.020 I love it.

00:16:10.420 I love it.

00:16:12.500 Sean, throw that book cover up there.

00:16:13.940 The book from Dahlia Kurtz called Dear Zionist, You Are Not Alone.

00:16:17.380 You can get that over on her website, DahliaKurtz.com.

00:16:20.420 Great to talk to you, Dahlia.

00:16:21.460 Thanks so much for coming on today.

00:16:22.980 Andrew, can I just mention quickly, you bought this book from me.

00:16:28.100 I didn't ask for this conversation.

00:16:29.860 I'm happy I'm here.

00:16:31.300 Usually you send media a book and that's just how it is.

00:16:35.060 You didn't even ask me for a copy like everybody else.

00:16:38.180 You paid, sir.

00:16:40.020 Worth every penny, but I will say, I mean, I, when I worked in, in daily radio, I used,

00:16:46.180 you probably did as well in Winnipeg.

00:16:47.620 I'd get from publishers.

00:16:48.740 Like it was, it got to the point where it was almost like, um, you know, like the letters

00:16:52.820 in Harry Potter and the, where they just keep coming, like all these books, like books would

00:16:56.580 just show up and I've never like asked for them or ordered them.

00:16:59.780 And then once I wrote a book for the first time, I was like, no, I can't afford to just give

00:17:04.020 everyone books.

00:17:04.580 And now I always, I always support my friends by buying the books.

00:17:06.980 So I want to know from the book at the end, you tell me your favorite quote, no pressure

00:17:10.820 to read it.

00:17:11.620 Okay.

00:17:12.020 I'll do.

00:17:12.420 Yeah.

00:17:12.660 It's always, you pick one from the middle so that everyone knows you read it and didn't

00:17:15.220 just read it.

00:17:16.420 I will read it from cover to cover.

00:17:18.020 Uh, Dahlia. 0.61

00:17:18.900 Thank you so much.

00:17:20.020 Thank you.

00:17:21.060 All right.

00:17:22.020 Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton show support the program by donating to true

00:17:26.420 north at www.tnc.news

Juno News - April 28, 2024

How October 7 changed Canada

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