Juno News - October 10, 2023Protesters defend Hamas terrorism
Episode Stats
Summary
In the wake of the latest attack on Israel, many have been quick to point the finger at Hamas as being responsible for the deaths of Israeli soldiers and civilians. Is this right or wrong? Is it possible that babies and toddlers could be considered "civilians" in the eyes of the Israeli military?
Transcript
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This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.
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this is the Andrew Lawton Show here on True North. I was going to say that I hope you all had a happy
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Thanksgiving and that's not to say you couldn't have and weren't entitled to but I know for
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a lot of people in this country and a lot of people around the world it was not that at all
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and I want to just begin the show before I get into the meat of it of which there is a great deal
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express my sympathies and condolences to anyone who's family members, friends, anyone who lost
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their life or was injured in the horrific attacks on Israel that took place over the weekend at the
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hands of Hamas. It was a very well-orchestrated attack, clearly. It's been called, understandably
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so, Israel's 9-11. And there are a great many questions that need to be answered, such as how
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Israel, which has such a sophisticated military defense system intelligence network, did not see
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this coming or if it did was not adequately prepared those questions I believe will be
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answered and must be answered but let us not let those questions distract from the most important
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part of this which is being able to look at this and say definitively and unequivocally what
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happened this was a series of terrorist attacks by a terrorist group committed in the most
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barbaric and brutal way possible. I'm talking, of course, about Hamas. This is not just me saying
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it's a terror group. Canadian officials have recognized it as such, as have governments
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around the world in the Canadian case for the better part of two decades. This is not something
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that we can or should both size, as we're seeing so many of the chattering classes do in the last
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few days, where they try to say, well, yes, you know, I don't like innocent life being shed on
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either side because you actually have to delve into the meat of what people mean when they say
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that. For example, this is a comment made by one of the speakers at Edmonton's pro-Hamas rally
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referring to the fact that in his view, no one in Israel is a civilian.
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Let me explain this. There's no civilians. There's no civilians. First off, any Israeli
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is under the israeli law should enlist and serve in the israeli army there is no civilians
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they're either on or off duty army forces they're not civilians and if they're civilians what are
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they doing in a protested border if they are civilians and they care about their livelihoods
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they should stay away away from the border why would israel put civilians that are not israelis
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On the border, if it's a border, and you know it's contested, let your civilians be here.
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I'm going to get into that in just a moment, but I just want to first establish the context.
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What this man is saying is that every Israeli, in his view, is fair game to be a casualty of war.
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Hamas can go in and kill any Israeli without needing to worry about committing war crimes
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by unfairly and summerly killing Israeli civilians because, oh, well, there are no Israeli civilians.
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Now, yes, many Israelis are in the IDF or are reservists after completing their military service,
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People who are over, I believe it's the age of 40,
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People who are minors, people who are exempt for religious reasons such as being orthodox
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are not at all members of the military in any way whatsoever.
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And surely we could perhaps say that infants can qualify as civilians.
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It's hard to even explain exactly just the mass casualties that happened right here.
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In fact, the Israeli military says they still don't have a clear number.
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But I'm talking to some of the soldiers and they say what they've witnessed as they've been walking through these different houses, these different communities, babies, their heads cut off.
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You can see some of these soldiers right now comforting each other.
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babies with their heads cut off now i should qualify that clip by saying this is a reporter
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conveying what she was told by israeli soldiers but i will also say that photos have been seen
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i have seen some of the photos and i will not make you go through that process as well if you're
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really inclined you can look them up of people who were given such a fate at kibbutzim in israel
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And this is, again, I would say to the person in Edmonton that stands up and says there is no Israeli civilian, will you extend that to the infants whose lives were lost because of the Hamas terrorism?
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Would you say they are fair game in this conflict, this liberation movement?
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People like Fred Hahn, who is the head of CUPE Ontario, tweeted this out on the weekend, a nice little Thanksgiving greeting, that he is thankful for the power of workers and the power of resistance, because resistance is fruitful, and no matter what some might say, resistance brings progress, and for that I'm thankful.
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Now, I don't use profanity on this program or on social media, generally speaking.
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In fact, I did a bit of a search, and I think I've dropped the F-bomb once on Twitter up until this morning
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if children being beheaded was an example of the F-ing resistance that he is so grateful for on this Thanksgiving.
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we have had, and I'm very grateful for this, a relatively unanimous condemnation of Hamas and
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Hamas's actions from political leaders. Justin Trudeau and Pierre Polyev both gave very thoughtful
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and very moving, and I would say very unequivocal remarks speaking last night at an event in Ottawa
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to show solidarity with the people of Israel. I'll play both of those because I think it's
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important to give credit where it's due and say that the federal government, while it has done
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a number of things incorrectly on this, has ultimately said what it needed to say as far
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as contextualizing what Hamas is and what its actions are in relation to those of Israel. This
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is what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had to say. Glorification of death and violence and terror
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has no place anywhere, including and especially here in Canada.
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And no one in Canada should be supporting them, much less celebrating them.
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very well said we'll get to who it is he's referring to in just a moment but just to
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give the other side of it here was conservative leader pierre paliev at the same event in starting
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my remarks tonight let me be explicitly clear hamas is not a militant organization it is not
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an activist organization, it is surely not a government. It is a sadistic, demonic, genocidal
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terrorist death cult, and it must be defeated and destroyed. The incredible carnage that this
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terrorist death cult has unleashed in the last 72 hours would be bad enough were it not for
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the apparent pleasure and sadistic pride with which it was carried out. And so I say to those
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who might not perhaps have strong opinions about the Middle East, what kind of organization
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would carry out such hideous violence against such obviously innocent people and do it in the most
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cruel and odious manner and then willingly publicize it for all the world to see
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this is evil in its purest form and that evil must be defeated
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now why those comments are important is because the narrative that we see which is at its core
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i believe coming from a pure place when people say you know what it's the civilians on both sides
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that are caught up on this. What they're missing when they say that is that this is not a both
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sides war. This is not the Axis versus the Allies. This is not Russia versus Ukraine. This is not
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Armenia versus Azerbaijan. This is an insurgent group. This is a group of terrorists that are
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attacking Israeli civilians predominantly. Of the death toll, which has eclipsed, I believe,
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15, 1600 at last blush, the Israeli side of that is predominantly civilian. The captives
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are predominantly, if not exclusively, civilian. The babies who were beheaded, according to multiple
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reports were civilians the concert goers who were raped and murdered were civilians so the number
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of people that are making comments like this one from a professor who else professor emil j joseph
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who puts this brilliant observation ahead for all to see post-colonial anti-colonial and decolonial
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are not just words you heard in your EDI workshop.
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diversity, equity, and inclusion, and equity, or die.
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that people on the right have liked to criticize
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that's what this is. We should all be celebrating it. If you're committed to leftist principles
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like decolonialism, you should be up there cheering for Hamas. That's what these people
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are saying. That tweet from Fred Hahn that I mentioned earlier on when he lauds resistance.
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Sid Ryan, another big labor guy and a longtime NDP activist, actually condemned Jagmeet Singh,
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the NDP leader, for daring to condemn Hamas terrorism. This is what Sid Ryan had to say.
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WTF are you talking about? Palestinians have lived with Israeli terrorism for the past 75 years.
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They're indiscriminately slaughtered by Israeli forces without any condemnation from the NDP.
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You are such a disappointment. So even when someone like Jagmeet Singh stands up there and
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says, you know, despite my leftist principles and my criticism of Israel, I can accept and
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denounce this as terrorism. That is not sufficient for the diversity, equity, inclusion, or post-colonial
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left. You'll hear a lot of people use a bunch of slogans and catchphrases. In Australia, when the
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pro-Hamas demonstrators were assembling, they were chanting, gas the Jews, which is not exactly what
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you hear in your average post-colonialism workshop. But you'll also hear this one,
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from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. Now, yes, it has a good meter to it. It's got a
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good cadence. It rhymes. That's nice. But from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. What
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does that mean? I want to go back to basics here and do a bit of a geography lesson. I know the
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Middle East quite well. I've been there on a couple of occasions, in particular to Israel, but I've
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also been into the Palestinian Authority-led West Bank, which is on the opposite side of the country.
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But let's put up a map for you. Now, this is not a sophisticated or contentious map. This comes
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courtesy of Google Maps. I took the screenshot myself. That big giant blue bit on the west side
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there is the Mediterranean Sea. Now, on the right, just after where it says West Bank, you'll see
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like a little small area of blue. That's the Dead Sea. Now, the line going north from the Dead Sea
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and the line going south from the Dead Sea, that is the Jordan River. Jordan River, very relevant
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in history. You can read all about it in the Bible. Baptisms in the Jordan River are quite
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common even today among Christian pilgrims. That's the river. The Mediterranean on the west is the
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sea. So when they say from the river to the sea, they're talking about the entirety of that area,
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which is the, as it happens, entirety of Israel. They want Israel to be obliterated. They want it
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to be destroyed. They do not wish to coexist. They do not seek a two-state solution. They seek the
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annihilation of Israel and of Israelis, and yes, of the Jewish people. This is a stated purpose of
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the Hamas charter. So absolutely, we should call this out for what it is. We're not just talking
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about people that are standing up for peace, that are standing up for the innocent civilians
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who are caught in the crosshairs of the conflict. And yes, whether they are Palestinians
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or Israelis should be supported and should be left out of it. But there's a bit of a difference
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because Hamas actually loves Palestinian casualties. Hamas loves dead Palestinians.
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The reason why is because they get to turn around and use that as an excuse to take aim
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This is why Hamas will launch rockets from civilian apartment buildings, why Hamas will
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put its headquarters in office towers that have offices run by completely non-Hamas businesses
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Because when Israel turns around and takes aim at Hamas infrastructure, Hamas wants to
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be able to use these innocent people as human shields, as tools in its propaganda. Israel
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goes through painstaking lengths to avoid civilian casualties, its own and the people of Gaza, which
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is why they provide advance warning both through overhead announcements and also through, I believe,
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mass text messages they send out to phones in a particular area to warn them that an airstrike
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is imminent now of course they're also giving the warning to the terrorists who are able to relocate
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and pack up and move on but this false equivalence that people do that oh well yes it's Israel on
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one side and Hamas on the other side just two sides of the same coin is absolutely despicable
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and it shows a complete lack of knowledge of anything and everything to do with this conflict
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now I don't expect everyone to be an expert and I will be the first to admit this is very
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complicated. It is an incredibly difficult part of history to understand, to go from the partition
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that was proposed by the United Nations in 1947, to the Arab-Israeli War, to the Six Days War in
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1967, the Yom Kippur War in 1972, to the Intifadas, all of them, to the current conflict. It is
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tremendously difficult to understand the difference between the West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinian
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authority and Hamas is difficult. It is also difficult to reconcile the reality that exists
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for Gazan civilians, who, yes, I am completely sympathetic to in understanding how difficult,
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if not impossible, it is for them to leave where they live. But you also have to understand the
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problem from Israel's point of view. Israel used to have much more of a presence in Gaza.
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About 15 years ago, they made the decision to unilaterally disengage. They said, fine,
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we will pull out of Gaza altogether. We'll patrol the border around it and that is it.
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And what has happened since then? Hamas has become the de facto government of the area and not just
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this militant group, but they have become the authority or the claimed authority for the people
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of Gaza. Any aid that goes to Palestinian civilians has to go through Hamas. Hamas is profiting off
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of the philanthropy of the West, which is something that is not often spoken about
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and the UN is absolutely well aware of. So whenever people stand up and speak in general
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terms about Palestinian liberation, when they use terms like by all means necessary, by any means
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necessary, what they are defending, even if they don't use the words, is the beheading of infants,
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the kidnapping of seniors, the murder, the indiscriminate murder of Jewish and Israeli
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civilians. That is exactly what is at stake here. Now, there was another clip that I wanted to share
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from you here, or for you here, which is from Melanie Jolie. Now, I gave Justin Trudeau credit
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for being unequivocal in his condemnation of Hamas. Melanie Jolie yesterday was doing an interview
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on CBC. And she failed to give a clear answer on whether she condemns these pro-Hamas protests.
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There have been calls for your government to condemn these protests here in Canada. Will you
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do that? Well, we know that according to Canadian law, Hamas is a terrorist organization. So of
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course, we don't support it. And at the same time, we've always been clear when it comes to
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our relationship with Israel. So the position of our government stands. At the same time,
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there have been hostages. Hostages must be released. And like I said, civilian lives must
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be protected. So these will be difficult days ahead and right now and ahead for Israeli people,
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for Palestinian people, for Canadians, for the world. And you Canadians can know that the
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government and the Prime Minister and myself are absolutely engaged 24-7 on this issue.
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But Minister, what do you say to Canadians or other people in this country who might go to a
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protest uh that that critics say is purporting to celebrate what hamas has done i mean should
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these protests be happening there have been some calls by others to maybe find a way to prosecute
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this over supporting terrorism i i don't know if if it goes that far or not in your view uh but
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what is your message to canadians that might attend these protests given what's happened in
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the last 48 hours or so oh we don't we don't support hamas we don't support also what they've
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done and we don't support hate speech that's what i can tell you and meanwhile of course
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the minister of public safety will do its work working with local authorities but do you condemn
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the protest minister i guess that's what i'm trying to understand there have been calls directly for
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the prime minister to do it uh because i'm here i'm going to ask you but david i'm answering your
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question of course we can't support the celebration of hamas terrorist attack of course we don't so we
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don't she says she's been answering the question but actually i mean she never really got to the
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question. She said, we don't support celebrating Hamas, but it was a very clear question. Do you
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condemn these protests which are supporting Hamas? And she didn't really give an answer,
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despite her own party leader, Justin Trudeau, being more clear on this issue. Now,
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I do not believe that this is a case of Melanie Jolie or the liberal government
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secretly being pro-Hamas. I believe it is a case of having a foreign affairs minister who is so
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utterly inept that she cannot answer a clear-cut question. These people are celebrating a group
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that the Canadian government says is a terror group. Do you condemn them? Yes or no? Well,
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yeah, you know, I don't like, yeah, well, you know, it's just yes or no. There are very few
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questions in politics that are as easy to answer as that. You shouldn't need to have rehearsed the
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line to get that answer right and to actually give a clear answer. But that's the problem
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that we're dealing with in Canada. And it's not all that surprising that Canada was left out of
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this one joint statement by five countries. Now, this is the so-called QUINT, which is the five
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countries that are part of this network that have nuclear weapons or access to nuclear weapons
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through sharing agreements with NATO. Italy is the one there. But if you look at this statement,
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And what's fascinating is that Canada was not invited to be a part of it.
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The leaders of France, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom, and United States of America
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released this joint statement, and Canada was not on the call.
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Now, people have said, well, yes, but Canada's not part of the quint.
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But why was this not being brought up in the auspices of the Five Eyes?
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Why was Canada, which is, as a matter of policy, a pro-Israel country,
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That's a question for which we don't yet have an answer.
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and I don't mean to besmirch the people of Yellowknife,
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in the midst of an international crisis, you'd think that flying off to the remote north might
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not be your top priority. And yes, you know, he's presumably going to have cell reception on the
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plane and up in the north. But that's an area where I'm like, perhaps our prime minister should
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be in Ottawa right now helping manage this crisis as it comes. So all of this right now is, I think,
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contributing to what is a very real problem. And Jewish people in Canada, this is not just
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theoretical for them. This is something where the people I've spoken to that have family members and
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friends who have either been forced to leave their homes, who have lost people in their lives, who
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have themselves died or been injured. It's not a short list. The connections between the Middle
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East and Canada on both sides of this are quite significant. And even among the pro-Palestinian
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demonstrators, many of them may have family. And I'm sympathetic to any innocent people that are
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caught up in this conflict on any side of it. But I'm also not going to both sides the conduct.
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And this is something we've seen far too much of. Janela Massa, who is a former, I believe,
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CBC anchor, had tweeted out before she turned her account to protected mode, this lengthy,
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lengthy thing here where she says that agree with the tactics or not, you can't talk about this war
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without basic context. She says, it's not unprovoked. And as though there is a debate to be
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had about the tactics of, the news about beheading babies hadn't come out yet, but the news about
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kidnapping and raping teenagers had. So kidnapping seniors, we knew about that. Are we going to just
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say, well, you know, maybe I agree or disagree with those tactics? No, that is a load of crap.
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A few years ago, I was in Israel. It was 2015. I was on my second visit there. And I was there
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with a group of journalists, Candace Malcolm. It was actually one of the places where I got to
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know her well because she was on that trip as well. And we sat down at one point with a Palestinian
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talk radio host. So I was going to say he's the Andrew Lawton of the West Bank, but I don't
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actually want to claim that comparison for obvious reasons in a moment. Now, he was a very candid guy.
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He said he would love a one-state solution because if Palestinians and Israelis were all in one
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country, you give it a generation and Palestinians would have outbred the Jews and they would have
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a Palestinian state once and for all. But beyond that, at the time there had been a spate of knife
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attacks where there were Palestinians that were going into Jerusalem and were just stabbing Jews
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in the street. Maybe they'd injure them, maybe they'd kill them, but this was happening with
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alarming frequency at this particular point in 2015. And he was telling us this story of when
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That was the, like, imagine Harrison Faulkner doing his comment question when he asked you
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to weigh in on an issue, and the question that he's pulling, that he thinks is contentious
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enough to have divided opinion on is, is it okay to kill a certain group?
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That's what was being asked on this West Bank talk show, I believe broadcast out of Ramallah.
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Nevertheless, he said to me very proudly, most said no.
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most. So there was a large enough contingent of people calling into talk radio saying, yes,
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murdering Jews in the streets is justified. This is why Israel has to insist on a border
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with the Palestinian territories. This is why people in Gaza have been put in the situation
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they are in. And it is absolutely gut-wrenching that people are held up in this. But the reality
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that you've seen circulating on social media that I think is an important one to reiterate here
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is as follows. If the Palestinian people, and by that I mean the militants that are fighting for
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that cause, the Hamas and the like, if they were to lay down their arms, there would be peace.
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If Israel were to lay down its arms, there would be no Israel. I'll let that thought sit with you
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as I move on from this right now. I do want to turn to a related, although distinct aspect of
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this, which is that we were in the midst of an international crisis. People were trying to figure
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out if their family members were okay. They were trying to get on top of it. And if you were in
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Canada, you had a heck of a time getting access to this news on social media, specifically on
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Facebook. Now, if you were a Twitter user, there was actually a high volume of content coming out
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of the Middle East over the weekend. But on Facebook, there was nothing. News links were
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banned because, yet again, Bill C-18 has forced social media and tech companies into the untenable
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position of having to cut off the flow of information to avoid being strong-armed by
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the government and by the legacy media outlets. Chris Sims is normally with us on Mondays, but we
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had a bit of a day off for Thanksgiving, so she's with us now. Chris, obviously a horrific context
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for this, but whenever a crisis happens, it brings around, I think, exactly why C-18 has been such a
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dangerous piece of legislation exactly andrew you and i have spent enough time in newsrooms both
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legacy media and our current whatever our new media is that we're talking on right now to
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understand that uh the government shouldn't be screwing this up and they're at risk of screwing
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it up even more and c18 as you point out we already see its effects with facebook so people
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can't you know share news links uh they can't comment on the non-existent news links and
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therefore share more information with each other they then can't basically gather and grow and
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you know commune with each other and share share this information and in more canadian
00:29:29.540
taxpayers federation context than normal times that would usually mean something like about the
00:29:34.500
carbon tax or being able to recall a politician who was you know not keeping up their end of the
00:29:39.860
bargain but in this current context it really puts into perspective how important it is to be
00:29:45.140
able to have access to information and news media that you need now google is saying yeah you know
00:29:53.140
what we're probably going to side with facebook here and we're going to do the same thing so we
00:29:58.100
have a deadline i think it's december 19th okay it's coming up very quickly uh with them saying
00:30:04.900
we're not going to have links news links to news stories posted on google anymore
00:30:11.520
i'm curious google owns youtube like does that mean that there won't be any more news links
00:30:20.160
on youtube like that is how a lot of people especially for my daughter's generation and a
00:30:26.320
little bit older that's their understanding of screen time like they don't have cable they
00:30:32.460
didn't grow up with bunny ears the way I did. They don't get any other form of information
00:30:38.320
superhighway. That's their superhighway. What happens then? And so this is why we're saying
00:30:43.500
the government needs to back right off of this C-18 because now it is directly affecting
00:30:50.220
Canadians' access to information. And I would just say on the Google thing,
00:30:54.780
one of the points that I stress to people of all political persuasions is to never trust
00:31:00.540
one particular source. I mean, I am very proud of the work that I do and I stand by it. And I love
00:31:05.400
that people trust me and come to True North for their news. But I say you should verify anything
00:31:09.500
and everything, even the best meaning people get it wrong. Just to give one very pertinent example
00:31:14.220
of this, at the beginning of the show, when I wanted to get the latest death toll, I went to
00:31:18.220
Google and I said, Israel Gaza death toll. And I got four or five articles and I checked every
00:31:24.240
single one of them to find the number. And there were distinctions between there based on the age
00:31:28.740
of the story. So if Google were to take away those links, I would have to go to an individual
00:31:35.080
site. I could go to the New York Times or BBC or Al Jazeera, True North, CNN. I could do that,
00:31:40.480
sure. But I lose that ability to get that cross section, which is exactly what the internet has
00:31:47.120
been great for. And you move this to a Twitter context. Now, for the most part, X, as it's now
00:31:53.260
called has kind of managed to fly under the radar of the C-18 discussions, but it's not exactly
00:31:59.400
clear that they'll get a pass on this. No, it's not clear they're going to get a pass on that.
00:32:04.500
And remember what feels now like a million years ago, like last Tuesday when C-11 was really
00:32:11.720
stomping all over us when it comes to things like podcasts and online shows. We need to stress that
00:32:18.180
this isn't just podcasts. This is online shows. And does Twitter slash X now qualify under that?
00:32:26.540
Well, why wouldn't it? So their spaces are live. It's interactive. People are constantly getting
00:32:32.960
interviewed on them. In some cases, it's hundreds of thousands of people listening.
00:32:37.660
They have web videos on there all the time. They have audio on there all the time. That's content.
00:32:43.640
That is content, according to what everything I've ever read under CRTC definitions.
00:32:51.280
And to rewind, if people are missing what I'm saying here, remember back when C11 was
00:32:56.700
passed, folks like you and me and Andrew and like lots of folks, you know, not lots, some
00:33:02.280
folks on the left in other podcast spaces were also warning about it as well, that C11
00:33:07.060
would alter Canadians' ability to choose what they want to see, hear, and share online.
00:33:13.640
Now, it was floated as part of Canadian culture, Canadian heritage, the CRTC is just going to make sure that you see enough of CBC Gem promoted and enough moose meat recipes and ice hockey scores and all that great Canadian stuff.
00:33:29.240
But the insidious and troubling part of this is that once you give the government the chance to regulate and downgrade what's visible to you, you've given them the ability to make things invisible to you.
00:33:42.820
And so that means that Canadians, no matter where they're coming from on the political spectrum, will have a limited amount of news.
00:33:51.100
Now, there's two regulations that have been released last week.
00:33:57.400
Any online body, to paraphrase, that hosts podcasts or programming or content now must register with the Trudeau government, the CRTC.
00:34:10.740
The risk here, Andrew, is that why would big tech do this?
00:34:16.520
In the same way that Meta said no thanks to C18 and now we can't see news on Facebook,
00:34:22.040
what's in it for these big companies with a fractional Canadian audience by comparison?
00:34:28.160
What's in it for them to put up with this headache with the Canadian government?
00:34:31.240
It's very likely that they could just say, you know what, we're switching that part off
00:34:36.460
Yes, and I would also point out, I mean, when you discuss, Chris,
00:34:39.560
and I think it's a very valid point that I hadn't really gotten around to thinking of in this
00:34:43.920
particular context of promoting Canadian content. Well, we're talking about an international crisis
00:34:49.520
that's happening right now here. I would say the highest value content in terms of understanding
00:34:54.380
what's happening on the ground is going to be content that's produced closest to the source.
00:34:57.780
When you log into YouTube, it's going to give you the CBC version, the CTV version, the global
00:35:02.600
version. And that's not to say those outlets don't have stringers that they're using and reports from
00:35:06.760
there. But it's a bias against everywhere else in the world that is being baked into the system,
00:35:12.440
which is not the way the news is supposed to be. No, and that's not the way that the internet has
00:35:18.960
been for since it started. It's always been in addition to and other than. So it's always been
00:35:27.500
the ability to go straight to the source and watch something live, literally from somebody's phone
00:35:32.580
now. You can just watch it happen. And so that has always been kind of the great equalizer. And
00:35:38.520
again, to your point, by all means, watch legacy media, read legacy newspapers, watch alternative
00:35:44.600
stuff, make up your own mind. The point here is now you're going to have the less and less and
00:35:50.640
less ability to be able to check the internet and see what the news is and read what these
00:35:57.100
alternative news sites are saying and watch these videos, maybe right from the place that it's
00:36:02.180
happening and make up your own mind and choose. And so this is where, you know, to try to put a
00:36:07.860
smile on people's faces, that's what former President Reagan meant when he said, I'm from
00:36:13.340
the government and I'm here to help. You know, no scarier words. You know, this balance of
00:36:18.900
alternative or independent online news media and legacy media and legacy media's ability to share
00:36:26.780
links on the internet and get its broadcast message out there, that was working fine.
00:36:33.520
That was working fine. It didn't need the Trudeau government to come in there and fix and help and
00:36:39.060
do stuff. But it has. It's neck deep in it now. It's making a terrible mess of it. And they have
00:36:46.100
got to realize this. They have got to stop and realize, whoa, we're doing way more harm than
00:36:51.900
good here. We are limiting people's ability to get information. Sorry, we're backing off. That's
00:36:58.180
what they need to do. Yes. And I want to just speak on behalf of an independent outlet here,
00:37:03.240
which is True North in my context. And I think we've had in the last few years, a level of
00:37:07.720
growth we're very grateful for, but we're still a small outlet that's unknown to a lot of people
00:37:11.880
in Canada. What we rely on as an organization is for one of our stories or one of our shows to go
00:37:17.680
viral and people start sharing it. So it attracts new eyes. People that wouldn't necessarily go to
00:37:23.700
www.tncnews in the morning to check out what's happening in the world that learn of us that way.
00:37:29.700
And that's what this has killed. It's killed that organic growth. No, they haven't taken us offline.
00:37:35.100
They haven't banned us from being accessed just yet. But what they have done is they've limited
00:37:39.780
the organic growth and they've limited the organic growth of videos that you might do at the CTF.
00:37:44.640
and they've limited the organic growth of outlets out there that are independent in nature that I've
00:37:49.240
never heard of because CBC, CTV, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, they have enough, I mean
00:37:55.560
street cred to, for lack of a better term, they have enough name recognition that there are people
00:38:00.540
that if you just tell them to go to a news website, they're probably going to remember one of those
00:38:05.280
and go to it. We don't necessarily have that to the masses. They're established. Yes. That's why
00:38:12.240
they're the establishment and that's why this is alternative and it's growing and it's new
00:38:17.840
so exactly to your point andrew like that that impulse you have say uh you're talking to a normie
00:38:25.520
friend of yours who's part of your family maybe i don't have many normies i know carry on many of
00:38:31.120
them have bailed on me as well too so but say say one had one and say one we're talking about it
00:38:37.840
over Thanksgiving dinner. That's that sort of impulse of that share, share, share, that sense
00:38:45.580
of sharing on Facebook, sharing on X, sharing on the internet, being able to share that information
00:38:53.580
and that article with your friends and family and old former colleagues and maybe high school
00:38:58.440
people that you've been in touch with. That's the whole point. That is the whole point of sharing
00:39:03.040
information and now our access to information is getting tighter and tighter and tighter and there's
00:39:08.420
no good reason for it. Like I need to stress because sometimes people just coming into the
00:39:12.880
middle of conversation might wonder like what kind of stuff are you guys wanting to be watching on
00:39:16.700
the internet? Like what are you afraid of? No, we're not talking about heinous criminal things
00:39:22.740
like terrible things that people want to be sharing on the internet that are against the
00:39:27.600
criminal code. Those things are already illegal. Andrew, if you and I started promoting that
00:39:32.980
garbage right now between the two of us, we could be criminally charged in Canada for doing such
00:39:37.900
things. That is part of the criminal code. That is not what C-11 is about. C-11 is about Canadian
00:39:45.160
heritage. It is about content. It is about culture. That is the risk here because they're
00:39:53.620
trying to squeeze and stifle that, okay? And that is what is squeezing your access to information
00:40:00.180
here. And then we have something like C18. So it's like this two-headed monster. We have C18,
00:40:06.860
which is now literally blocking our ability to see and share news on one of the biggest social
00:40:14.540
media platforms in Canada. I think the last stat I saw, something like 20 million Canadians
00:40:19.680
have a facebook account that's enormous and now they can't see news on it and now google just
00:40:26.080
announced you know what we're not playing this game either we're going to take our ball and go
00:40:30.020
home folks you need to contact your mp i know there's a lot going on right now but you need
00:40:35.380
to tell your mp hey my access to news and information is a voting issue for me you guys
00:40:40.260
got to get this all repealed chris sims from the canadian taxpayers federation always a pleasure
00:40:46.720
thanks so much for coming on today. Thanks, Andrew. All right. We will see you next Monday
00:40:51.140
at the regular time. I just want to, on the note of freedom of speech there, talk about very briefly
00:40:58.140
this rally situation that I mentioned earlier on when you had people demonstrating across the
00:41:04.180
country. I was going to say Canadians, but to be honest, I don't know how many of them are Canadian
00:41:07.640
citizens versus just residents, but you had people in this country preaching in some cases some very
00:41:13.600
radical and very hateful things. Now, I saw a lot of calls over the weekend to shut these things
00:41:19.620
down, to ban these protests from taking place, and I vehemently and unequivocally objected to those.
00:41:25.720
I made a comment on Twitter, which I can't remember the exact wording of now, but I basically said the
00:41:30.880
answer to these things is to let them expose themselves, let them express their vile beliefs
00:41:36.720
and their anti-Semitism, and then denounce it, condemn it, call them out, do whatever you want
00:41:41.300
to respond to it, but do not prevent them from speaking. And I've had a, I mean, it's triggered
00:41:48.000
a discussion that I think is a very interesting one. And I even had a, I won't say who it was,
00:41:52.540
but I had one person who is in politics reach out to me and say, you know, they didn't like
00:41:57.240
sort of the implication that I was accusing them of censorship, which was not my intent at any
00:42:02.360
individual person or group, except to say that there was an impulse that I saw, which I didn't
00:42:07.700
like, which is to take these vile, heinous things and say we need to shut them down. Now, I want to
00:42:13.320
provide a bit more nuance than my initial tweet on this offered up, because there is in Canada a
00:42:19.400
legal restriction on freedom of speech. There are several, but when you're talking about inciting
00:42:24.600
violence, inciting hate, incitement is the key word here, there is a criminal threshold that exists.
00:42:35.760
I couldn't tell you exactly how that line is drawn,
00:42:38.080
except to say that it is a very, very high bar.
00:42:41.020
And to be honest, I think outside of direct threats
00:42:53.060
I believe that it is justified for Hamas to do what it did,
00:43:00.720
I do not believe it is or should be illegal versus someone getting up and encouraging other people
00:43:06.660
to engage in that act. And this is a very difficult and uncomfortable distinction because
00:43:11.960
ultimately to support free speech means you are defending the vilest forms of expression
00:43:17.340
imaginable. But I will tell you what I've said time and time again, you do not need freedom of
00:43:22.280
speech protections for unobjectionable speech. You need freedom of speech protections for heinous
00:43:27.660
speech. But I can say that glorifying terrorism and glorifying terror groups is very, very, very
00:43:34.540
close to the line. In fact, you can say it's teetering on the line. And there's one woman
00:43:38.920
who knows the hatred directed at the Jewish people very well. And that's my colleague,
00:43:43.520
Sue Ann Levy, who joins me now. Sue Ann, I want to talk about the pro-Israel rally that took place
00:43:49.240
last night. But I also want to get your take on this because you've covered these groups and
00:43:53.800
these protests for years, none of this vile antisemitism from the last few days can be at
00:43:59.400
all called new. The only thing that might be new is some people are paying attention for the first
00:44:04.260
time, right? Absolutely. I mean, that's a great part of it. Look, Andrew, I covered the, I don't
00:44:15.320
know what you want to call it, the insurrection in 2020, and the hate speech that came out of
00:44:20.840
school boards and universities and from the activists was just over the top at least now
00:44:27.320
people are paying attention although the people who espouse uh i guess glorifying
00:44:36.120
the heinous crimes that happened in israel and we keep hearing more and more every hour
00:44:41.560
uh try to hide in the shadows and uh i have found some incredible things they use social
00:44:47.880
media, then social media, and Israel knows this well, social media is where some of the war is
00:44:55.380
being waged, not just out on your television set, not just out in the battleground, but certainly
00:45:00.840
on social media. And they use social media very, very well to espouse their views. Make no mistakes.
00:45:09.240
One thing that I wanted to ask you about is that, I mean, to be honest, I'm amazed at how explicit
00:45:20.760
they try to hide their real beliefs behind language.
00:45:24.200
I mean, one distinction you'll hear all the time is,
00:45:26.600
no, no, no, I'm not an anti-Semite, I'm an anti-Zionist.
00:45:29.720
And yes, you can oppose Zionism without being an anti-Semite.
00:45:41.160
Well, I think that the IHRA definition has changed that. That's the International Holocaust Remembrance definition of anti-Semitism. And anybody who obsesses about the Jewish state and about Zionism and use those precise words, that's just a cover up.
00:46:01.020
That is just what they're using words dressed in the guise of anti-Semitism.
00:46:06.760
And I remember, I mean, I've been covering this for years and years and years, ever since the Queers Against Israeli Apartheid marched in the Pride Parade back in 2009.
00:46:16.580
And I remember when you couldn't dare mention that these people were anti-Semitic.
00:46:22.060
No, no, no, no. They were just criticizing Israel.
00:46:27.720
And in fact, there's a very wise lawyer out of, well, she was out of New York City.
00:46:32.280
She's now living in Israel, Brooke Goldstein, who's involved in the Lawfare Project, you know.
00:46:37.300
And she actually, I attended a seminar just a few weeks ago when she spoke.
00:46:45.960
Like Black Lives Matter, we should be calling it End Jew Hatred.
00:46:50.600
And that's what I've been doing over the course of the last couple of days.
00:46:54.100
hashtag end Jew hatred, because that is what it is, pure and simply. The fact that these
00:47:00.340
people who are protesting in downtown Toronto or in downtown Vancouver or in Montreal
00:47:05.780
can glorify the horrendous, horrendous crimes that have occurred, even chopping off the heads
00:47:15.760
of 40 babies. I mean, I heard that this morning. It made me cry. They can glorify this. There's
00:47:21.820
nothing short of anti-Semitism and let's not couch it in anything else.
00:47:27.900
One thing, you mentioned queers against Israeli apartheid. And I mean, this sounds like something
00:47:33.220
out of a South Park sketch because it's so absurd that any queer identifying individual doesn't
00:47:40.600
realize that there's only one country in the Middle East in which they have rights, and that
00:47:44.360
is Israel. And I would love to see the gay pride march through Gaza City. I would love to see the
00:47:49.600
gay pride march through Riyadh. Every now and then they march gays through the streets of Tehran
00:47:54.460
before they execute them. So why, but like, this is the obvious point. It's the low hanging fruit
00:48:01.000
of this all. Why did they not see this? I mean, people like Fred Hahn, who's a very open and
00:48:06.440
passionate advocate for gay rights as a gay man himself, like he does not exist in the society
00:48:13.240
that he is trying to basically aid in the Middle East right now. They've deluded themselves in
00:48:19.540
into thinking that they're anti-oppression activists.
00:48:28.740
but they're ignorant about the geopolitics over there.
00:48:34.960
that Hamas is the one who's governing the Gaza Strip,
00:48:42.320
and Hamas and all of the Arab states that surround Israel
00:48:47.320
would chop off your head kill you push you off a balcony for being gay openly gay and in fact
00:48:54.520
it happened to one person just a couple of weeks ago this person who identified as gay
00:48:59.860
was actually killed killed his head chopped off believe it or not it is gut-wrenching and i i
00:49:09.000
think the only saving grace of this all such as it is was seeing how many people have despite all
00:49:14.800
of this come out and supported Israel through this. I know you were in Toronto last night at
00:49:20.600
the vigil there. 20,000 people came out, which is astronomical. And I mean, Justin Trudeau,
00:49:26.340
whatever my misgivings about his government's handling of a number of files, he struck the
00:49:30.620
right chord last night, as did Pierre Polyev. What was your take from that event?
00:49:35.400
It was tremendously moving. They had people speaking from Israel, talking about what they're
00:49:41.560
experiencing, how they're living in bomb shelters. They stopped short of showing the footage of some
00:49:47.520
of the atrocities, but spoke about them. And I have to say that all the leaders from the provincial
00:49:53.520
premier to Krista Freeland and Mayor Olivia Chow and some of her councillors, all of them came out
00:50:00.980
and spoke words of support. Doug Ford was the most moving. He was on fire, and I've got to give him a
00:50:08.020
lot of credit for what he said um but uh just being my wife and i said just being amongst all
00:50:15.320
these people um and crowded into me uh mel lastman square there was tremendous police security i have
00:50:22.500
to tell you but just being crowded into that square amongst people like-minded people who
00:50:27.740
are suffering we're mourning we're more it i didn't lose any family but israel is my family
00:50:34.700
is my homeland and i feel tremendous ties to it my wife has family there and we're keeping in touch
00:50:40.880
but we all are mourning we are all disheartened and i can't begin to tell you how upset we've
00:50:48.600
both been all weekend as is my family by all of this well i'm glad uh that uh you know the family
00:50:55.800
that your wife has over there are okay given the circumstances i i know that will not be a flash
00:51:01.480
in the pan what's happening there, as some of these other flare-ups have. This is going to go
00:51:04.980
on for a while, and I know you're going to continue reporting on it. Sue Ann, thank you so much for
00:51:09.180
coming on. Oh, you're very welcome, Andrew. All right. Sue Ann Levy, we'll have more coverage
00:51:14.140
from her through the week at truenorthtnc.news. And I will share some of my own, we're already
00:51:20.320
over time today, but I'll share some of my own reflections on Israel itself and why the country
00:51:24.720
means so much to me tomorrow. It's not because I'm on the take as some paid Zionist shill,
00:51:29.980
despite what some of the people in the comments are trying to say.
00:51:34.020
No, I will support Israel without receiving a dime
00:51:40.220
But in the meantime, my thoughts and prayers to the people of Israel
00:51:43.700
and to the innocent people in the Palestinian territories,
00:51:48.460
in Gaza specifically, because yes, this is not meant to be callous or cruel.
00:51:54.440
but I also believe we need to have a level of realism
00:51:56.660
in how we deal with and understand this conflict.
00:51:59.980
And you can't do that if you're devoid of the history of this region.
00:52:13.860
Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:52:15.900
Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.