And So, Canada, Were You Invaded?

"Yemen, Yemen, make us proud! turn another ship around!"

"Gaza called, Yemen answered. All Israeli ships are cancelled." 

Canadian anti-Israel rallies

"Why is it always the non-Iranians who support the terrorist Islamic Regime in Iran?"

"As an Iranian-Canadian, it makes me sick to my stomach to see my fellow Canadians openly supporting a terrorist Islamofascist dictatorship that murders innocent Iranians."

"This is not the Canada my parents immigrated to in order to escape persecution by the terrorist Islamofascist Ayatollahs."

MPP Goldie Ghamari

Palestinians and supporters congregated at Toronto's Nathan Phillips Square two days after the October 7 massacre by Hamas in southern Israel. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)

 

Cities in Canada saw wild scenes of open celebration even before news emerged of the Islamic Republic of Iran's Islamic Republican Guards Corp having launched a prolonged direct air attack on Israel. There is little doubt that many Iranians living in Tehran and detesting their ruling Ayatollahs viewed this event with sorrow. In Canada, the majority of the Iranian diaspora who arrived post-Iranian Revolution were anything but pleased. Which didn't stop the abundant presence of Palestinians, Syrians and other Middle East diaspora-Canadian-Arabs from jubilantly celebrating the event.

Keffiyeh-wearing demonstrators were seen in one circulated video cheering, banging drums, and sending up celebratory smoke bombs, while a speaker declared the wonderful news that "the Islamic Republic of Iran has just sent tens of drones toward Israel"; a 44-second video posted by Caryma Sa'd, Toronto lawyer who often documents such events taking place in Toronto. "Protesters react to breaking news of Iran launching drones at Israel in retaliatory attack for a strike which killed a top Iranian commander", he captioned.

 

 

This was April 14 when the IRGC air division launched over 300 drones and ballistic missiles into Israeli airspace. Israel and its regional and international supporters were prepared; forewarned of an imminent attack, they had their warjets on standby and reacted according to plan, knowing it would take up to seven hours for any of the missiles and 'suicide' drones to reach Israel. Israel, the United States, Britain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates all had a hand in ensuring that none of the deadly projectiles reached their intended goal.

One can only imagine the dejection and disappointment of the celebrants of Iran's attack must have felt when it was announced by the Israel Defense Forces than the upshot of the Saturday/Sunday declaration of war turned out that 99 percent of the weapons were shot down. A 7-year-old Bedouin child in Israel was the sole unfortunate casualty when detritus from a destroyed missile fell on her family home, as was a lightly-impacted northern-Israel air base, which continued operations afterward.

 

People carry a Palestinian flag during a rally in front of City Hall in Toronto, October 9, 2023. (credit: REUTERS/Kyaw Soe Oo)

 

The Canadian celebrabrants were not to be put off by reality, continuing into Sunday. On the Instagram account of Ottawa4Palestine a speaker in Ottawa sang an improvised ditty to the tune of Yankee Doodle with the phrase: "leave Palestine alone and Jews go back to Europe". Another video of a Montreal rally featured demonstrators changing "put the bullet in the house of fire ... we are your men, Sinwar", referring to Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, a chief architect of October 7's bloodthirsty savagery in southern Israel.

An Iranian exile in Calgary -- Bahar Bahari, long a vocal critic of Iran's theocracy, and a frequent attendee at pro-Israel demonstrations had posted the Montreal video. The Jerusalem Post took note of the celebrations in Canada, publishing the headline "Toronto protesters cheer as Iran fires drones at Israel", even while Israeli counter-batteries just completed the last of the incoming missiles being shot down.

The burgeoning anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian movement has been defiantly open with their hate messages against Israel, their threats against Canadian Jews, and their masked presence, disrupting traffic, blocking bridges, issuing insults against Canadian police forces, harassing Jewish business owners and Synagogue congregants, although their actions and activities defy Canadian hate law. Issues of violence perpetrated on Jewish parochial schools, Jewish social centres and Synagogues remain unsolved.

Key organizers of the hate-fests against the Jewish state are well known for their activities, bordering on and often substantially illegal criminal acts; Toronto4Palestine, Samidoun and the Palestinian Youth Movement who organized joyful rallies within hours of the ghastly October 7 mass rapes and massacres. Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea have also been matters of organized celebrations thanks to these organizers, all of whom if the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau was the least bit interested in security and following their own laws against terrorism would join Canada's list of terror groups.

Two rallies were held in Halifax on Thanksgiving Monday — one in support of Israel, the other in support of the Palestinian territories. (Jeorge Sadi/CBC)

Everyone Love a Party, Though Some Execrate Them

"But if we think there are risks, depending on our analysis of the context, we have fallback scenarios. There are Plan Bs and Plan Cs."

"[Organizers could decide to shorten the itinerary of the parade on the Seine, and even to] repatriate the ceremony to the Stade de France".

"It's a world first. We can do it and we will do it."

"We want to work towards an Olympic truce and I think it is an occasion for me to engage with a lot of our partners."

French President Emmanuel Macron

President Macron visiting the Grand Palais, which will host some of the Games  Getty Images

France feels it is prepared to deal with the very real possibility of a terrorist attack during the Paris Olympics. It has, after all, experienced a number of such devastating attacks by Muslim terrorists in the past. The show must go on. In Munich, Germany, the host country of the 1972 Olympic Games, it was unlikely that their intelligence service picked up the potential for a terrorist attack; that Black September of the extreme branch of the extremist Islamist PLO would plan an attack leading to the deaths of 11 Israeli Olympians. A half-century has passed but not the danger inherent in the rank hatred of Islamists murderers wreaking mayhem and havoc.

 

The Israeli Olympic delegation parades during the opening of the Munich Olympic Games on Aug. 26, 1972. West German organizers wanted to give the Games a light atmosphere, trying to break from Germany's prior Olympics under the Nazis in 1936.  AFP via Getty Images

Of course it is not only Israel and Jews that excite the hatred and deathly malice of Islamists. Jews first, perhaps, but their focus also turns to the West, and any who spurn their version of Islam, including other Muslims. They reserve the right of their entitlement to martyrdom and the gift of the dead to Islam's rigorous calls to  jihad, their zeal in promoting the benefits of both earning them the loathing fear and terror of those unwilling to become another statistic in the volumes of their lethal exploits.

So, ahead of the Paris Olympics and Paralympics, France is of necessity on high security alert. Millions of visitors are expected to be drawn to Paris to glory in the international sportsmanship of competition, but not the gore of slaughter. The unique opening ceremony for the Paris Olympics sees the River Seine the locale of the opening ceremonies. As many as 600,000 spectators were originally envisioned to witness from the riverbanks the 10,500 athletes parading on boats along the Seine, the route to end in front of the Trocadero in the heart of Paris on July 26.

 

Still from video: paris-olympics-splashy-river-seine-curtain-raiser-faces-security-transport-challenges

 

This exceptional opening ceremony involving boats carrying athletes along the Seine on a six-kilometre parade with a huge crowd watching from the embankments has understandably excited security concerns to a  high pitch. France's president has addressed the issue, assuring both his citizens and the world community that law enforcement forces in France will be mobilized to ensure security of the opening event, at a level of alert exceptionality set to match the level of the event itself.

The organizers' ambitious original plans -- in the interests of logistical concerns linked to security -- have been reluctantly and progressively scaled back. Overall number of spectators reduced to 300,000. Despite which, President Macron insists that plans for the opening ceremony remain the same, at least for the present. Repeatedly struck by deadly Islamic State attacks, the most deadly of which was the Bataclan theatre massacre of 2015 when terrorists opened fire on concertgoers, holding some as hostages for hours, is never far from the mind of authorities determined to protect from another like it.

Countdown clock reading 100 days before the Olympics opening in Paris. AP Photo