At the precise moment Charlie Kirk was being murdered, I was watching the end of the documentary The Road Between Us at Roy Thomson Hall.

It was sad, but somehow apt. The Road Between Us is about two Israeli parents, Noam and Gali Tibon, rushing to a kibbutz in Israel’s South in October 7 – to see if their son Amir and daughter-in-law Miri and granddaughters were dead, or to save them. Amir is a writer, a great one, and he has opinions. He survived that day.

Charlie Kirk, meanwhile, was a young man who was a writer, too, and he had opinions. He was killed for them.

The Road Between Us had been banned, for a while, by the Toronto International Film Festival – which was completely outrageous. After you see the documentary, it is even more outrageous: it is a film that promotes peace, not war. It is a film that is highly critical of Israel’s government and military.

Moreover, I could count on one hand the number of times the word “Israel” was uttered. TIFF’s decision to censor it, therefore, was deeply stupid. If it was an attempt to censor an idea, it failed.

TIFF’s CEO came on stage before the documentary started to apologize personally for the pain he and his organization caused. There were a few boos – but, mostly, the many Jewish Canadians in attendance applauded him. It was a wonderful moment, because it showed that there is a way to disagree, without resorting to hate. Without using violence.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk was a hate crime, obviously. It was a terrible act of violence. Someone who hated Kirk’s writings, someone who hated his words, decided to express their disagreement with a bullet. So they stole life from a young man with a young family, simply because they didn’t like his ideas.

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Richard Kemp is a retired soldier, but he still talks like one in active service.

Speaking to a crowd of attentive listeners at the Toronto home of former Canadian Senator Linda Frum this week, Kemp foretold Israel’s precision strikes in Qatar, just hours before they happened.

“One pressure point is Qatar,” said Kemp, who knows a thing or two about war, having served in many for the United Kingdom. “Qatar hasn’t been exploited yet – to undermine Hamas.”

Qatar is the puny oil-rich Arab nation that, among other things, hosts and funds Hamas. Directly or indirectly, Qatar has funded al-Qaeda, Syria’s al-Nusra Front, ISIS, and their philosophical nexus, the Muslim Brotherhood. It has supplied Hamas, in particular, with tens of millions to fund its terror war against Israel and the West.

(Oh, and Qatar is sponsoring and funding seven (7) films at the Toronto International Film Festival, which recently attracted some negative headlines for its hastily-recanted decision to cancel a documentary about an Israeli family on October 7. That was produced by, you know, a Jew. But we digress.)

While Richard Kemp does not explicitly advocate for Israel to take out Hamas targets in Qatar – as they attempted to do on Monday night – he says that Israel must take forceful steps if it is to win its war against Hamas. “It’s all simply a question of destroying Hamas,” he says. Something that he says is inevitable, in the near or long term.

“And,” he adds,”please don’t think I don’t have sympathy for the Palestinian people. I don’t want to see the suffering of innocent children or women or the elderly. But I believe Israel must defeat Hamas.”

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Fifty to one.

Fifty to one: that is the estimated ratio of “pro-Palestinian” to “pro-Israel” online content. If you think you are seeing far more material favouring the Palestinian side – and, too often, the Hamas side – rest assured: you are. Online, Israel is getting its proverbial ass kicked.

There can be two reasons for this. One, a majority in the West now suddenly harbour anti-Israel and/or antisemitic attitudes. But that’s not what public opinion shows. Among older cohorts, in North America and Europe, the majority clearly support Israel’s right to exist within safe and secure borders. The majority support Israel’s right to defend itself.

The other, most realistic, reason: Hamas and its axis – Hezbollah, Houthis, its parent Iran, and its echo chambers in Russia and China – have developed a formidable propaganda machine. One that has out-performed Israel’s pitiful communications efforts, for years. One that has utterly dominated the communications landscape since the horrors of October 7.

That, more than anything else, is why Hamas et al. are dominating online.

Last Summer, the IDF uncovered a cache of Hamas documents in Gaza. The previously-secret Hamas documents showing the extent of their online propaganda effort.  Hamas’ web strategy, the documents revealed, was first to guide and direct “Hamas operatives” in the West Bank, in Arabic. They did that by “controlling the narrative being pushed out about issues in Gaza,” Hamas wrote. Initially, they were also very focused on influencing and controlling “specific activities in the European arena,” the documents read, where there is a higher concentration of migrants of Arab or Muslim descent.

To do this, Hamas describes targeting anti-Hamas activists by “neutralizing them” and “damaging their reputation.” Their more-moderate political rivals in Fatah, too, were targets: the documents describe reputational attacks online that were “aimed at damaging their public image[s].”

In all, Hamas had a 160 Gaza-based member “electronic team,” as they called it.  The team could boast as many as 1.2 million immediate followers on social media, and they regularly posted in groups and forums with an additional 25 million followers.  The strategy was to use “advanced technologies [which are] designed to flood social media in a very short time,” Hamas declared.

A year later, the IDF discovered yet more documents detailing Hamas’ online communications strategy. A summary of what they found:

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No one would really care about Mohamad Fakih, if it were not for that little enamel pin on his lapel, and the letters – “C.M.” – he always seems to append to the end of his name.

The Order of Canada is what transforms Fakih, a nobody, into a somebody.

The Order of Canada is important, you see. It is the Canadian equivalent of a British Knighthood. It is like the American Presidential Medal of Freedom. The Order is awarded to a very small group of people for making significant contributions to this country.

Its motto is DESIDERANTES MELIOREM PATRIAM. That’s Latin for “they desire a better country.”

Does Mohamad Fakih desire a better country? Probably, in his own way. What we do know is that Mohamad Fakih also desires a country that prosecutes Jews who served in Israel.

Let us explain. This week, in a post that enraged Canadians from coast to coast, Fakih said that “pro-Israel bots” are “in full panic and spin mode.” Why? Unclear. But Mohamad went on to say that any Canadian “or foreigner” – read: Jews – who served in the IDF “must be prosecuted…no exceptions.”

And: he said anyone who supports Israel doesn’t care about “basic human [and] Canadian values.”

Then came the kicker: Mohamad Fakih and/or his ilk are apparently monitoring certain Canadians. Said Mohamad about those who have served in Israel’s military (where conscription is mandatory), and those who support Israel (which isn’t a crime, at least yet): “If you have done so, you will be remembered for this. This is not a threat.”

Well, actually, it kind of is. It sure feels like a threat. It feels like Fakih, or someone, is keeping the sort of list that was standard in Germany, circa 1933 or so. Names and addresses of Jews. You can go see the Nazi list at Yad Vashem, if you want, in Israel.

Mohamad Fakih is unlikely to visit Israel anytime soon, of course, because he is now way, way out there, piloting alone in some very dark waters.

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Those are the opening words to Spike Lee’s Fight The Power, one of the most important movies ever made.

It’s about racist hate and violence, and how quickly it can spread when left unchecked. It’s about how it can lead to destruction and even murder.

This is a short and simple video by Facts Matter, the group I lead to fight antisemitism in Canada.

There is a fire raging all around us, now. WAKE UP.

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What happens when the oppressed become the oppressor?

Because – make no mistake – that’s what has happened since October 7, 2023.

At the start, the pro-Palestine contingent protested the actions of Israel’s government. They protested against Israel’s military, the IDF, and its use of force in the Gaza strip. All of that was constitutionally-protected. While their rhetoric could be excessive – alleging “genocide,” for instance, without any proof whatsoever – they were allowed to do what they did. It wasn’t antisemitic, per se.

As the weeks and months went by, as the war dragged on – mainly due to Hamas’ refusal to lay down their arms, and due to their refusal to release the hostages – Palestine’s acolytes in the West grew impatient.

They started to advocate for a global revolution (“Intifada”). They started to demand that Jews be removed from their ancestral homeland (“From the river to the sea”). They started to use symbols (the red hand, the red triangle) that literally advocate murder.

And they, themselves, changed. They devolved into a dark, dangerous pro-Hamas adjunct. They fully became what they had so often accused Israel of: a violent, intolerant cabal of thugs. Capable, even, of murder, in places like Washington, D.C. or Boulder, Colorado.

Along the way, they started to terrorize kids and families who had gone to see Santa Claus in a shopping mall. They blocked major roads. They vandalized. They started to attack places linked to Jews – even hospitals. And some of them even started to firebomb or shoot up synangogues and Jewish schools. (All in Toronto.)

At that point, they became what they had claimed to always oppose. They had become haters who use force. Against everyone, anyone, who got in their way. To get their way.

Which is the literal definition of terrorism, by the by: using force to achieve some political end.

On the weekend, on a sunny and beautiful Sunday, a bunch of them shut down Ottawa’s big pride event. They actually did that: they blocked the road on which LGBTQ people were peacefully walking. They did that right on Parliament Hill, at the centre of our democracy, demanding that Ottawa Pride “boycott” Jews. In culture, in academia.

The event was cancelled.

If the haters possessed any self-awareness at all, of course, they’d take a look in the nearest mirror, and see that they have changed. They would see that they have become something else. Something bad. But they won’t.

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