44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 16, 2023 11:00AM
- Oct/16/23 2:19:51 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Hamas's atrocities against Israeli civilians have been unimaginably horrific, and the sadistic crimes continue. In the carnage, five Canadians were murdered and they are not just numbers. Alexandre Look from Montreal and Ben Mizrachi of Vancouver were both murdered when Hamas opened fire on a music festival. Shir Georgy was also killed there. Adi Vital-Kaploun of Ottawa was murdered in her kibbutz; and Netta Epstein was murdered as he sheltered his girlfriend from a grenade launched at them. They are now in our memory forever and may their memory be a blessing.
Canadian citizens missing are believed to be held hostage among the 199 others by Hamas terrorists who hold their own people under siege in the gruesome grip serving as a proxy for the regime in Iran, imposing maximum terror on everyone in their path of destruction.
Among the missing believed to be held are Vivian Silver, Judih Weinstein and Tiferet Lapidot, daughters of our own citizens. Their fate is unknown. Canada could do more and it must do more and demand their release again and again. We pray for their fate and their safe return.
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- Oct/16/23 7:55:04 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I am going to split my time with the hon. member for Wellington—Halton Hills.
I stand in this debate with sadness and anger as a Canadian, as a member of the House and as a Jew. Jewish Canadians are not only mourning; they feel that they are under threat. It is our duty here to provide reassurance and protection to those who feel vulnerable, whether within the Jewish community, among the Muslim community or in any other community.
It is unfathomable to me that in 2023, anyone should fear sending their kids to school or being near a place or in a place of worship, at a community centre or in a business owned by an identifiable group at the centre of this war. It is a complete perversion of the rights and freedoms afforded to anyone in this country, and it requires more than just words like “stay vigilant”. It requires action. It requires action from every level of government.
The outright slaughter of babies, of mothers, of Holocaust survivors and of hundreds of innocent civilians should be easy to condemn, a simple moral test that too many have failed, because the visceral language of the entitled creates a fetish of blind demonization of one party in this conflict, even in the face of such obvious carnage. Instead of condemnation, too many Canadians stood and celebrated in demonstrations, dancing in the streets branded in Hamas propaganda. Too many more sought to justify, minimize or rationalize the brutality.
I would remind the House, in this vein, that the 1988 Hamas covenant and the revised charter from about five years ago must not be ignored in the conversation. The original charter is rather clear on Hamas's genocidal intentions. It calls for the complete destruction of Israel as an essential condition for the liberation of Palestine and the establishment of a theocratic state based on Islamic law. It states the need for an unrestrained and unceasing jihad to obtain that objective and the outright dismissal of any negotiated resolution or political settlement of Jewish or Muslim claim to the land. It is by every account anti-Semitic.
What happened in Israel on Saturday is true to Hamas's explicit charter edict, their objectives and their ambitions. On October 7, Hamas carried out the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust. They intentionally targeted innocent mothers, children, babies, elderly Holocaust survivors, entire families and innocent civilians carrying out their daily lives until they were so brutally cut short.
Among them were Canadians, with five murdered and three others believed to be captive. The gruesome attacks unleashed a carnage so unspeakable, so unthinkable, that it would not be believable unless it was captured on video and put on the Internet, as we see. They are not militants. They are not government. They are not a resistance movement. They are as the member for Carleton said: Hamas is a “sadistic criminal terrorist death cult, and it must be defeated.”
Israel has the right and obligation to do just that. As a defensive operation to destroy Hamas and its military capacity in Gaza continues, the pleas for restraint, compromise and peacebuilding are destined to fail with the genocidal aims of Hamas, as in their charter.
With that, it is the government's responsibility to ensure that Canadians are evacuated from the region, that missions serve those abroad who need help and that it advocates for the safe release of hostages. I would add this final critical point. If there is one thing we can take away, it is for the government to finally, as it said it would, criminalize the IRGC, the funder and convener through which the regime in Iran is fighting a proxy war to proliferate terror not only on Israelis but on those in Gaza and around the world.
We will not let the government have a free pass on this, for it is too common for Israel to have friends when it is easy and much harder for those friends to stand up when times get difficult. For the destruction of terror in Hamas, in the Iranian regime and around the world, and for the security of our ally, Hamas must be destroyed. Things will get harder.
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- Oct/16/23 8:01:26 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, Vivian Silver, alongside Judih Weinstein and the daughter, Tiferet Lapidot, of Canadians, the three hostages we know of, should be the government's primary priority right now. We must secure the release of those hostages, not only to ensure that Canadians come home safely from the grips of Hamas, who have terrorized the region as a whole, terrorized Israelis and terrorized Palestinians, but to ensure that there is no regime out there that would look to Canadians as currency. To make sure that there are no Vivians in the future and that Canadians are not taken hostage, we have to have a strong stand on this; we have to do more.
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- Oct/16/23 8:03:07 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, we will have the opportunity to speak to that bill. Hostage diplomacy is becoming all too common in this world. We have seen it before with Canadians; we see it now with Canadians; we will likely see it in the future with Canadians. It is incumbent on the government to make sure that hostages have an open line of communication with family by establishing a liaison and, more importantly, that we co-operate with those who provide the information for the secured release of those in arbitrary detention or those in a hostage situation. We want to give the ministerial authority to be able to do that, whether it is a monetary compensation or whether it is something based in citizenship, and I look forward to the support in this House for that bill.
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- Oct/16/23 8:04:43 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, we have said in this House before that Israel absolutely has the right to defend itself. Vengeance would mean that Israel does proportionately exactly the same thing as what was done to Israel. That would never happen, because that was done by the monsters in Hamas. That would mean that Israelis would engage in rape, decapitation and complete humiliation of their victims. That is not what a democratic ally and our friend Israel would ever do.
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- Oct/16/23 8:40:47 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I will ask again. The leader of the NDP used words like “revenge”, “genocide” and “collective punishment”. It sounds like he has walked those back after his prepared remarks.
I am going to ask him one more time if he believes, and this is a serious matter, that Israel is committing or is about to commit a genocide. Yes or no?
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