Sorry, the Freedom Convoy doesn't count
From morn to noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve.
-Milton
He’s lost it. It is no longer a question. His day is in its twilight, the flash has departed, the novelty exhausted.
Inside Canada, and on the international stage, Justin Trudeau is floundering. He appears distracted, anxious and seems to spend his
time on the sidelines.
On the most current crisis, the attack on Israel, he has a new position, or a revised position every second day, not that either his new or revised position have much weight in the counsels of those actual parties who are seriously — that is the key term — trying to unwind the crisis, or at least limit its ineluctable brutalities. Interesting — how swift the fall, and how many the scandals or pervasive the misgovernment preceded it. For but a while he glided over it all. Now all, and he, are both on the ground.
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A few weeks ago, like the proverbially drowning swimmer, he might have reached for that lonely straw on the bank. There are no more straws. For Mr. T., I’m not sure now there’s even a bank for the no-straws to be on.
Subtract Jagmeet Singh, (an arithmetic function many are praying for) and Justin Trudeau would be facing and lose a confidence motion as soon as one could be put forward in the House. He remains prime minister, not due to popular support, but because of a deal with one other politician like himself.
Mr. Trudeau is now in the painful situation of a leader seeing the end near, spooked by the polls, shedding of charisma, greatly anxious over mummerings and a minor revolt (carbon tax retreat) of his own caucus, the dwindling welcomes and facing multiplying protests wherever he goes in Canada.
As mentioned he’s a shadow attendee at high gatherings of world leaders and he’s being pummelled in popularity by Pierre Poilievre. All this leaving him caught, brooding on staying or going, and a caucus entertaining faint thoughts — faint for the moment — of mutiny.
“Authority forgets a dying king.” Mr. Trudeau, he is a very weak leader during the worst possible time, at odds with India, the Chinese leadership, and probably not on the best terms with either the German or Japanese governments (“no business case,” for either, remember).
Outside his crash in popularity here at home — it has been swift and devastating — in the foreign press and in foreign capitals he has been taking quite a beating, editorialists and columnists have marked him for rebuke or outright mockery.
The Vogue-picture-perfect man who came in bragging that with him as prime minister (lucky Canada having been saved by him, and him alone, Justin Potter from Voldemort Harper) Canada was “back.” The world was waiting for our wisdom and serenity not that Justin Trudeau was to advance on the world stage. We’re not back. We’re outside looking in
Trudeau has through his fumbles, his eccentric flightiness, his inane energy policies, and sometimes strange, awkward performances abroad — his costumed tour of India, his disrespect during the Queen’s funeral, has effectively pushed Canada to the second row.
On the crisis involving Israel, Trudeau has been a most major disappointment. I speak of the absolutely vicious day of murder, rape and kidnapping, Oct. 7, the day the terrorists of Hamas, in body armour, equipped with all the most powerful military weapons mercilessly slaughtered 1,200 men, women and children (mainly Jews of course) and took 250 hostages.
They took children from their parents — some very young, some infants (those they did not horribly kill), some very old and sick. Have we since that day, has Mr. Trudeau since that day or his government, tried to imagine if a proportionate number of Canadians (5,000 is a close estimate) were targeted how we would have felt and reacted? Imagine what it would be like here in Canada after such a slaughter and outrage. What would it be like if it were Canadian parents, five weeks later still wondering where their kidnapped children were? How they were being treated, whether they were even alive?
Our whole country and everyone in it would be in an abyss of grief, anxiety and anger and numb from shock. Every moment since we would have been grimly fixated on a great tragedy
Have our leaders tried to imagine, executed an act of real empathy and for a while tried to sit in the minds of those so situated in Israel? — tried to imagine what the whole population of Canada would have felt on such a day; how deep the wound to the whole country, from an act that truly falls into the category of barbarism, sadistic, wanton, jubilant in the evil perpetrated?
Hamas crossed every line, and drew a few new ones just to cross them as well. As so many Israelis in sorrow point out, the worst days for Jews, as Jews, since the extermination of Hitler’s version of Hamas, the SS.
The world has not met the measure of that day. Even now just five weeks past, the outrage of Nov. 7 — is perplexingly, unbelievably, passed over; is it because it was done to Israel, to the Jewish nation (emphasis on Jewish) that it has slid — if not out of memory, out of its significance.
Now the pressure is on Israel. There are mass demonstrations in every Western capital flying Palestinian flags, accusing Israel of genocide and being an apartheid state — two vile slanders, neither even with a glimpse of truth in them. These protests are on the surface, or so they claim, in support of the Palestinians.
What they never contain is a call for Hamas to return the hostage, the kids and babies. What they never contain is full, harsh and relentless condemnation of one of the vilest acts in modern times. Instead we have witless TikTokers spitting on Israel, tearing down posters of loved ones lost to captivity, a rape crisis centre! in Canada issuing a statement suggesting the rapes were a lie, others (manically) claiming the whole thing either never happened, or if it did, Israel, the Jews, were behind it. Where are the feminists screaming over how women and girls were so brutally treated and killed?
We have — this is so upside down — the greatest surge in antisemitism since the days of the Third Reich.
I think, in part, the protests give “permission” for a great outburst of pure Jew hatred.
I think the numbers we see at all the protests are so large, not because Western college students, or the whole grotty clan of professional “activists” actually care for the Palestinians. The frequency and volume of these protests come from two elements; (a) they are in most cases, the mass ones especially, organized; and (b) more significantly, under the thin flag of “caring for Palestinians” they offer cover for mass insult or hatred of Israel; offer cover in other words for the never quite far underground, deep, vile antisemitism that has plagued the Jewish people since there have been Jews.
Never Again is one of the greatest and cruellest lies of our time. For some, it only meant Never Again – Until we get a chance. Hamas would agree.
For all those posters I have seen – the accusation of genocide is both vile and ludicrous. Only hate-shattered minds would make the accusation, and only brain-empty skulls would say it or believe it.
Calling Israel “colonialist” is something that could only emerge from hate shattered minds on a brain holiday. A strange colonial power that was attacked on its founding in 1948 and has faced existential threats ever since.
We do not see condemnations of the Hamas terror slaughter and kidnappings. Our prime minister who I think actually bonded with Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine — they’ve traded visits, Trudeau has sent billions and machines.
Israel — he has yet to visit. Even Joe Biden, old and failing, made the journey. Other leaders too. Why not ours?
He actually offered patronizing advice to the Israeli leadership, impudent enough in itself, but more shocking because his “advice” was not preceded with a full, unqualified condemnation of Hamas murderers, sadists, rapists and baby-stealers. It should be spoken in rage at the viciousness of it all. Patronizing because what has he dealt with on the scale that Israel has faced since 1948? The Ottawa “occupation” doesn’t qualify, honking is not an armed raid by Islamist fanatics.
Oct. 7 was the beginning of all that we now are seeing. All of it. None of what now troubles the world would have happened. None.
Can we not hear this said out loud and often that Hamas is the origin of the present war, that Hamas threw away all conscience, and it is they who are the agents of Palestinian suffering, the precipitators, origin and source?
Parliament should have been called to special session solely for the purpose of condemning the Hamas terror. Has Jagmeet Singh condemned Hamas? Has the NDP he ambiguously leads?
As always Israel is the exception. The rules for other nations do not apply. A clear voice from Canada, a moral voice, offering full support, extending sympathy, and offering in any way Canada can to relieve the suffering and anxiety of Israeli citizens would be something. And I have no doubt that whenever we see the day that Canada is really back — such derelictions and temporizing and feeble uttering as we have seen from the bunch so fixed on politics will be over.
For now, effectively, Canada has a broken leadership, and as much as it is crippled at home, it has fallen far deeper in esteem with much of the world during this highly charged and dangerous moment. Mr. Trudeau has shown himself inadequate to the crisis.
National Post
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