The Time to Act on Never Again Is Now

By Majed El Shafie

Over three months have passed since Hamas perpetrated its deadly rampage on innocent Israeli civilians in Israel. Efforts to deny the realities of the terrorist attack persists. It’s fueled by blatant antisemitism and demands a greater response from Israel’s allies to investigate and report the truth. 

Weaponzied misinformation and anti-Israel propaganda are deploying the same tactics that are common with Holocaust denialism. Variations of “they deserved it,” to “they are exaggerating or fabricating how bad it actually was,” to “they did it themselves to justify war” are shockingly mainstream. 

History teaches us that left unchecked, this form of denialism fuels hatred and dehumanizes Jewish people around the world. In the extreme, it leads to violence or worse.

The centuries-old Jew-hatred of antisemitism persists, fueling conspiracy theories and dehumanizing Jewish people. However the new, more pervasive form of today’s antisemitism has morphed into anti-Zionism and seeks to delegitimize the modern state of Israel at every turn. 

People use “the Zionists” as a slur, dehumanizing and vilifying anyone who supports the existence of Israel, the world’s only Jewish state. This choice of language is motivated by hate and does nothing to advance “resistance” for the cause of Palestine, nor build a path for peace in creating a two-state solution.

Worse, calling out antisemitism and the violent attacks on Jewish institutions in Canada in recent months has faced bogus, counter accusations that the Jewish community and their allies are engaged in Islamophobia. This backward thinking is an infection in our society that supports the hateful ideology Hamas acts on. 

One Free World International embarked on a fact-finding mission to Israel in the aftermath of the October 7 attack. Capturing footage, making sense of the social media streams of images and videos online, and documenting the barbarity of Hamas’s actions. 

The findings are in a report, Anatomy of an Attack: The Truth Behind October 7 and were presented to the State of Israel at an event at their Consulate in Toronto. The findings are clear. Hamas had been planning this terrorist attack for two years.

It worked with other radical Islamist organizations, including the ISIS-Egyptian affiliate, Wilayat Sinai to train their terrorist militants and openly celebrated their massacre for the world to see. The barbaric brutality executed in the attack was eerily similar to the tactics ISIS perpetrated across Iraq and Syria during its brutal campaign from 2014-2020.

October 7th was the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust. The savage attacks on civilian populations, including rape and targeting children, demands a better response from the entire world. Misguided calls for a one-sided ceasefire are naive, an act of negligence even that fails to recognize the parties to this conflict are not equal. 

While Israeli society vigorously debates within democratic institutions what Israel should be doing, Hamas, with its explicit aims to commit a genocide and wipe Israel from the map, has no regard for human life and thinks they are winning. The world cannot let them.

People often talk of the need to speak truth to power. Today, our leaders need to speak truth to people they are elected to lead, which the Trudeau government is failing to do. The bogus blood libel claims Israel is the party in this conflict committing genocide, and it demands a vigorous rebuke from global leaders with the courage to speak the truth.

Being an “honest broker” requires more than Instagram posts and silence masked as diplomacy. If it was not for Jewish Canadians, and activists from Ukrainian, Iranian and other diaspora communities who know the brutal realities of authoritarian regimes without any regard for human rights or human life, the Trudeau government would have been more muted, trying to curry favour with political progressives tripping over themselves to bemoan Zionists and the existence of Israel.

The reality is that the Government of Canada has limited means to affect change on the ground in the region. Rather than supporting a hollow motion for a ceasefire at the UN and sitting silent as Israel now must defend against accusations of genocide at the International Court of Justice. 

The “Canada’s back” ideals this government once trumpeted should find the courage of their purported convictions. South Africa’s accusation of genocide are dubious and its own track record supporting human rights abuses in South Sudan warrants international censure. 

The Prime Minister has finally responded to calls for the Canadian government to take tangible actions to investigate the sexual based violence perpetrated by Hamas. Hopefully this leads to meaningful action.

People must know the truth of what happened in the October 7 terrorist attack and the perpetrators held accountable. Investigating and reporting the truth will make it harder for those to deny reality, and equip leaders and educators with the facts to confront resurgent antisemitism head on. The time for action for “never again” is now.

Majed El Shafie is the President & Founder of One Free World International (ofwi.org). The persecution he suffered after converting from Islam to Christianity in his native Egypt inspired its founding nearly 20 years ago.