I want to thank my colleague for those important words and thank everybody who has risen today to have the moral courage to speak out against hate.

It’s with a heavy heart that I rise today in this place.

As people from every walk of life were gathering to sit down with friends and family on Thanksgiving weekend, as I sat down with my wife and my family, we learned of the brutal attacks against Israel by the terrorist organization Hamas. The acts we witnessed are truly evil. Not in recent memory have we seen barbarism of this magnitude. As many have pointed out, we are witnessing the largest and most weaponized example of anti-Semitism since the Holocaust and the Second World War, when Hitler sought to eliminate the Jewish people from the European continent and the face of this earth. We saw attacks on people in their homes, cars, at a music festival; children brutally, savagely murdered—all in places where they should feel safe. We saw not only the murder of men, women and children, but the assault, torture and abduction of countless innocent people. More than 1,000 Israelis have been killed, including six Canadian citizens.

In the wise words of Elie Wiesel, “For the dead and the living, we must bear witness,” and as many others have said today, in doing so, we must have the moral courage, the strength to speak out against this hate, and we must stand by Israel’s right to defend its citizens against the brutal Hamas regime—a regime that brutally suppresses the people, the children who live under the boot of this vile and disgusting group.

Let us also recognize that supporting Hamas is not supporting Palestinians. While the focus is rightly on its crimes against Israel and Jews, let us not forget what Hamas does to the Palestinians. Hamas builds its headquarters in hospitals, shelters its fighters under apartment buildings and builds its offices in schools. It uses the people of Gaza, suffering from Hamas’s misrule and oppression, as human shields. When anyone calls for the protection of civilians in Gaza, what they must mean, first and foremost, is liberating those people from the dictatorial regime of Hamas.

It is my hope that the brave men and women of the IDF will rid this world of Hamas once and for all.

While this conflict may seem a world away for some, our Jewish community here in Canada is not okay, and it is not a world away to them. I think to the countless men and women who have boarded planes, many of them chartered, to go to Israel to fight this evil; I think today—and I pray for them and their families—they should not have to live in fear, wondering if their loved ones, friends and colleagues will be found alive and returned home safely. Speaker, what’s worse is, they should not have to worry for their safety on the streets of cities like Toronto.

When we hear the words on the streets of our city, “From the River to the Sea,” we should and must call it out for what it is. Speaker, what that is is, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean—these people speak to wipe out Israel, to destroy the Jewish state and to drive the very people who live there from the river to the sea to their graves and off the face of this earth—no right to self-determination, no right to live.

I want to thank the brave men and women of Israel who are doing whatever they can to defend their country. I pray for their safety, and I wish for the well-being of the hostages who are now being held in Gaza. While our government and governments from around the world have condemned these attacks in the strongest terms, we have a responsibility to recognize the rise in anti-Semitism on our own shores, including right here in Canada and even in Ontario. As I said, I watched with many in horror at some of the rallies and some of the things and flags that we have subsequently seen on our own streets.

I wonder whether the people who stand shoulder to shoulder in those marches recall that it wasn’t too long ago, too many generations past, that brave men boarded boats and went over to fight against the evils of Nazism in Nazi Germany. Many women on the home front went into the factories and contributed ammunition to fight against the scourge that was Nazi Germany. I wonder if they remember that it was Canadians who liberated many areas of Holland.

I was recently in Holland and stood with goosebumps as I looked out to over 2,000 graves of Canadians. What struck me when I went tombstone to tombstone was the ages: 29, 18, 19, 30, 27. It was those Canadians that gave up everything to fight against a dictatorial regime, the Nazis, who sought to exterminate Jewish people and who sought a final solution that would wipe the face of the earth, the European continent from Jews.

It saddens me that the language used in these hate-filled marches in our own country includes language that would seek the same solution for those very people today. I was proud to condemn—in one of my first letters as minister, sadly—the dangerous words and imagery used by CUPE president Fred Hahn. It’s unacceptable for anyone, especially the head of a major labour union in Ontario, to support glorifying the persecution and murder of innocent Jewish people.

I’m so incredibly grateful that he does not speak for the labour movement in this great province. I’m grateful for the labour leaders and members from unions across Ontario who stood up and condemned his words, who made clear his statements do not reflect the values of the labour movement or the workers he is supposed to represent. They certainly do not reflect the values of the people of this province.

It’s more than just him. As I mentioned, groups that we’ve seen march on the streets of Toronto, supporting this sort of vile hatred and terror—it’s shocking to see anywhere, but especially, as I said, here in Canada, across the country in cities like Vancouver, Calgary and here in Toronto, organized by groups—and I will say Toronto for Palestine—organized by groups like that. Everybody watching and everybody in Ontario see them for who they are: anti-Semites, people who question the Holocaust. Make no mistake who they are. They are seeking to attempt to wash away the stains of Nazism and the very existence of the State of Israel. My message to them and to anyone who seeks to justify and normalize the brutality we saw a few weeks ago: You are on the wrong side of history, and you are not welcome in this province of Ontario.

Politicians have a responsibility to do more against such outrageous demonstrations, which is why it pains me to acknowledge that some members of this very Legislature stood shoulder to shoulder with those Holocaust deniers in the wake of these atrocities we saw. Speaker, as we stood in sombre silence that was the silence the IDF members saw when they went into the kibbutzes and saw brutally murdered men, women and children, mere hours after that, the member from Hamilton Centre stood shoulder to shoulder with Holocaust deniers, marching shoulder to shoulder to stand in support of vile groups like Hamas. Speaker, that must be condemned by everybody in this place, and I’m glad I have not seen that member in the House since.

Israel must have our unconditional support to respond to these terrorists who are seeking to eliminate them as a nation. If it did not, there would be no Israel. To the Jewish community here in Ontario, in Canada and around the world: I stand with you today and every day. Our government stands with you today and every day.

To the people of Israel: We acknowledge and support your right to defend yourselves from these evil attacks.