(June 8, 2024) Introduction: We received the following email from a young Jewish Winnipegger re the BB Camp controversy, which we’ve reported on extensively on this website. We thought it important to post the email as a separate piece rather than as an add-on to an article in which we printed other emails from readers expressing their disappointment at what happened to Jacob Brodovsky, the former co-executive director of BB Camp:

Dear Mr. Bellan,

Thank you for once again cutting through the noise with your April 23rd column, “What the sordid BB Camp affair says about our community.” Your clarity and courage in calling out our rush to judgment and our narrowing definition of “Jewish identity” are deeply appreciated, especially by those of us who feel increasingly alienated in Winnipeg.

I also want to share a troubling observation about one of the loudest voices attacking Jacob Brodovsky: theJ.ca. Their articles—bylines like “Ron East” or “TheJ.ca Staff”—are, in fact, almost entirely generated by artificial intelligence. They contain no verifiable sourcing, frequently hallucinate details, and appear to be little more than a far-right newsletter running smear campaigns under the guise of “journalism.” The entire BB Camp series reads like an AI trained on extremist talking points, regurgitated daily to bully our community into silence.

As a young Jew in Winnipeg, I—and many of my peers—are horrified by the transformation we’re witnessing. What was once a warm, progressive community is now dominated by:

Bigots and Bullies: Parents threatening to pull their kids unless the camp bows to extremist demands.

Florida-style Republican Judaism: A narrow, intolerant ideology portrayed as the only “true” Jewishness.

Collapsing Leadership: Our Jewish Federation leaders, including Jeff Lieberman, have shown they lack the vision or backbone to navigate this crisis.

We stand at a dangerous inflection point. Our community is on the verge of a total and irreversible fascist takeover—an outcome no amount of regret or retrospective apologies can undo.

Please consider reading firsthand accounts from community members who have bravely spoken out:

I know this letter is anonymous and won’t be published, but I hope you see it as proof that many of us are desperate for ethical, forward-looking leadership. Thank you again for using your platform to remind us what Jewish community should mean: diversity of thought, compassion for all people, and the moral courage to call out extremism—no matter where it comes from.

This was NEVER a community of far-right Israelis. This is a shame beyond words.

With gratitude and urgency,

A Concerned Young Jew in Winnipeg

Post script: We had heard from many different sources (who all asked to remain anonymous) that the Jewish Federation’s decision to force the BB Camp board to fire Jacob Brodovsky came as a result of pressure from one or more big donors to the Combined Jewish Appeal. We sent an email to Jeff Lieberman, asking Jeff whether the Jewish Federation’s decision to force the resignation of Jacob Brodovsky as co-executive director of BB Camp came as a result of a donor (or donors) to the Combined Jewish Appeal threatening to withdraw their donation(s) this year unless Jacob were fired. I don’t think anyone would be surprised to learn that Jeff did not bother responding to my request for information.

The Jewish Federation used to advertise elections to its board in The Jewish Post & News for many years, but no longer does so (in the Jewish Post). Instead, it submits a slate of new appointees to its board to members of the current board to be rubber stamped. Is it any surprise that the donors who contribute the most money call the shots for the Federation (which is as its always been. The only difference is the Jewish Federation and the Winnipeg Jewish Community Council before it used to operate with a patina of democracy. Sadly, that is no longer the case.)

We would urge anyone on the Federation board who could give information about what led the board to force the resignation of Jacob Brodovsky to contact us. We would give full anonymity, as we have to the writer of the above letter.

-Bernie Bellan

By BERNIE BELLAN (Posted May 11) I’ve been called a lot of names in my lifetime, but until today I had never seen myself referred to as a “Goldfish Jew.” I don’t make a habit of reading a website called thej.ca (which, by the way, played an instrumental role in having Jacob Brodovsky removed as co-executive director of BB Camp.) But, there it was: a lengthy diatribe denouncing me over my coming to the defence of Jacob Brodovsky.

It may surprise readers of this website who may have read my articles about the BB Camp controversy, but I rather like Ron East. (And Ron, if you’re reading this, you may be the most surprised of all to read that. I know how many challenges you’ve had in your life and I wish you nothing but the best.)

But you really confounded me with this line in the article in which you really went after me hard: “Bellan and his woke coterie epitomize the Goldfish Jew syndrome: virtuous but shallow, blissfully unaware of the churning antisemitic currents around them. Their moral posturing yields real-world consequences.”

Wow! “Goldfish Jew?” I tried to look it up to see whether that term has any sort of real definition. Here’s all I could come up with:

The phrase “goldfish jew” is not a term with a widely recognized meaning and may not be intended as a literal reference. The phrase could be interpreted in a few ways:

1. Literally: 
As a play on words, referencing a literal goldfish and its potential connection to Jewish culture. Goldfish are sometimes used as decorations or symbols in Jewish cultural contexts, like Nowruz celebrations. 



2. Cultural Reference:

As a reference to a specific type of gefilte fish, a traditional Jewish dish. Some variations of gefilte fish are considered “sweet” or “savory,” reflecting the cultural preferences of different Ashkenazi Jewish communities in Europe, according to Wikipedia. 

3. Jokes and Humor:

As a humorous reference, potentially based on the appearance of goldfish or a play on words involving the term “jew.” The term “Jewish” can be used in a humorous or lighthearted way in certain contexts, as seen in posts on Instagram or YouTube. 

In summary: “Goldfish jew” can be interpreted in several ways, ranging from literal references to Jewish culture, to humorous uses of the term.

But none of those definitions seem to make sense if you’re trying to take me down a notch. I did respond to your long diatribe about me though – but so far I haven’t seen my comment appear following your article about me. What I wrote was that I would challenge you to reprint some columns written by your late, great father, Yoram Hamizrachi, in which he severely criticized Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians. (For those of you who don’t know who Yoram was, he was a colonel in the Israeli army who served as a liaison between the Israel Defence Forces and the Christian Lebanese forces who were battling various Muslim groups in Lebanon during the 1970s, including the Palestine Liberation Organization. Yoram spoke perfect Arabic and was a long-time writer for The Jewish Post once he immigrated to Canada in 1982. His understanding of the forces at play in the Middle East led to him being a much sought-after speaker and lecturer on the Middle East.)

Unfortunately though, Ron, I’m afraid your father, if he were still alive, would be described as “woke,” whatever the hell that means these days. So, go after me as much as you want – I’m used to be being labeled an “anti-Zionist,” even though I lived in Israel for a year myself, and have visited there 14 times altogether. I suppose the late Vivian Silver, who was killed during the October 7 massacre, would also have been described as “woke” too, because she spent so much of her life working for peace between Israeli Jews and Palestinians. But “Goldfish Jew?”

What have you got against Goldfish? I know they’r e not kosher to eat – but you’ll have to expand on what you mean by calling me one. Still, I can ask the Oxford Dictionary whether they’re willing to add the term to the list of new terms in their next dictionary. And – if you want me to send you reprints of any of your father’s columns where he calls for peaceful co-existence between Israeli Jews and Palestinians, I’d be glad to do so, and then you can publish them on your website. But wouldn’t you be worried that if you did that, you’d be called a traitor to Israel – and the Jewish Federation might even call an emergency meeting to discuss what they’re going to do about you? (What if some major donors threatened the Federation to cancel their donations in response to anti-Zionist material on your website?)

By BERNIE BELLAN (Posted April 23) I’ve been asked by quite a few people why I’ve stopped writing my “Short takes” column for the Jewish Post newspaper. (I still write opinion pieces for this website on occasion.)
Frankly, I was tired and needed a break from churning out what had become a regular opinion piece that I initially began to write over 15 years ago and what I thought would be only an occasional column when I first started doing it.

But what’s happened within the Winnipeg Jewish community these past two weeks has motivated me to offer an opinion piece, once again – on the subject of how we define “Jewish community.”
I also want to make it clear that in every instance where I have written an article for the paper that is now under new ownership I’ve tried to keep my own opinions separate from whatever subject it is that I’ve chosen to write about. (I wish that other writers for the paper could attempt to do the same. There is a clear distinction between reporting and editorializing.)

This latest controversy over what’s happened at BB Camp and the removal of Jacob Brodovsky as camp co-executive director has really galled me (and, by the way, someone with a title should not have that title capitalized unless it is a part of that title, so that, for instance, Mark Carney is the prime minister of Canada, but his title is Prime Minister Mark Carney. In the same way, the repeated references to Brodovsky as “co-Executive Director” are misplaced, unless he is doing something like signing a letter as “Jacob Brodovsky, co-Executive Director, BB Camp.”)

Just how do we define our “Jewish community” these days? As I noted in an article that you can read at https://jewishpostandnews.ca/wjn/new-report-from-pew-research-center-provides-interesting-information-about-high-number-of-jews-who-still-identify-as-jewish/“caring about Israel” only placed sixth highest among ten attributes that Jews in the United States said was an essential element of what defined them as Jewish in a poll that was released in 2020.
Of course, everything has changed since October 7, 2023. But, with a war continuing well past the date when any of us expected it to be over – and with a good many hostages still not released, are we to define unwavering allegiance to an Israel that itself is so bitterly divided as some sort of litmus test for who can call themselves a “good Jew?”
I tried to make it clear in my article about BB Camp elsewhere on this website (at https://jewishpostandnews.ca/faqs/rokmicronews-fp-1/bb-camp-finds-itself-embroiled-in-controversy-over-camp-director-jacob-brrodovsky/) that I don’t know Jacob Brodovsky personally and I was in no position to assess the accuracy of comments that were being made about him.
That being said, however, the degree to which Brodovsky is being judged over his apparent failure to give unswerving support to the State of Israel, especially at a time when Israel is so deeply mired in controversy over what has been happening in Gaza (also the West Bank to a lesser extent) is a perfect example of how someone’s political views have unfairly tarnished their reputation.
I had never thought of BB Camp as a “Zionist” camp; it was rather a fabulous camp where Jewish kids could meet (also a fair number of non-Jewish kids) and have a great outdoor experience within a Jewish milieu. That is not to say that it was the polar opposite of Camp Massad, which wanted kids to experience being in a Hebrew-speaking Jewish milieu, it simply didn’t place the same kind of emphasis that Massad did in playing up the Israel connection.

Winnipeg’s Jewish community, however, has changed over the years. As the number of immigrants to this community from other countries, in particular Israel, has grown, the identity of the community – if it can be said to have one, has changed appreciably. I have argued though, that the 2021 census figures don’t lend credence to the argument that there are many thousands of newcomers to Winnipeg who call themselves Jewish. According to the 2021 census there were only 1,435 individuals who gave “Israeli” as their ethnic origin, for instance. One might have expected that figure to be quite a bit higher, based on the message that we were constantly receiving from our Jewish Federation that our Jewish population had grown greatly.
Now, while it is true that there may be a great many other individuals who gave different ethnicities but who may have also lived in Israel, my point is that there has always been a tendency to exaggerate (especially on the part of our Jewish Federation and other Jewish organizations) the number of Israelis living in Winnipeg. In fact, as I showed in several different articles in 2022 and 2023 (which you can find on my website jewishpostandnews.ca simply by entering the words “Jewish population of Winnipeg” in the “search archives” category), the number of individuals in Winnipeg who identify as Jewish, either by religion or ethnicity has remained quite static over the years.

I often tell people that a few years back though that I was part of a conversation with a group of Israelis – most of whom had emigrated to Israel from Eastern Europe, and the discussion turned to what they were looking for from the Jewish community. There were about 15 people in that conversation and the answer I was given was that they weren’t looking to join a synagogue or even send their kids either to Gray Academy or to Brock Corydon’s Hebrew bilingual program because their kids were already speaking Hebrew.
What they did want, I was told, was to have their kids go to a Jewish camp, so that they would meet other Jewish kids and ultimately, it was their hope, marry other Jewish kids. We didn’t get around to discussing the merits of Massad or BB, but I was struck by how much of a consensus there was among all those newcomers that sending their kids to a Jewish camp was high on their priority list.

Now, I suppose it’s fair to say that the majority of Israelis who have arrived here – whatever the number is, remain deeply attached to Israel in a way that those of us who were either born in Winnipeg or somewhere else in North America do not feel to the same extent. But, in so many ways, unswerving support for what Israel – and by Israel, I mean the Israel of Netanyahu, has become a defining characteristic of what many Jews now say constitutes Jewish “identity.”
But, where does that leave a great many of us who are sickened by what has been going on in Gaza, yet still consider ourselves prideful Jews? I have read many comments about Jacob Brodovsky on another website- (some of which I note could be considered defamatory), but there are a great many other young Jews (and not-so-young Jews as well) who are also highly critical of what Israel has been doing in Gaza. Are we, too, to be marginalized and castigated for daring to criticize Israel’s behaviour and express sympathy for Palestinians?
When I was still publisher of The Jewish Post & News I lamented the inability of individuals who held views similar to those I have just expressed to find a way of meeting with one another to vent their frustration with mainstream Jewish organizations that would not countenance any overt criticism of Israeli government policy. Instead we meet each other socially and complain about how our Jewish Federation and organizations like CIJA and B’nai Brith are only interested in talking about antisemitism without talking about what is going on in Gaza.
And so, someone like Jacob Brodovsky becomes a symbol for all that the supposedly “pro-Israel” Jews say is a betrayal of support for the State of Israel.
To them, I say, no, Jacob Brodovsky is not a traitor; he is quite typical of a great many other Jews, both young and old, who have disengaged themselves from offering unqualified support for Israel and who have expressed sympathy for Palestinians. Whether Brodovsky was competent in his position is a wholly separate matter that is not at issue. What is at issue is the rapidity with which the BB Camp Board succumbed to outside pressure to remove their co-executive director – and how much that angers so many of us who will probably remain on the margins of a community that has no room for a diversity of views.

If you would like to comment on this post (or any other post), click on the “”Click to comment” box at the bottom of this page and send us your comment. If there’s anything defamatory in your comment it won’t get posted. Otherwise though, we’ll add it to the end of this post and mark it as a comment so long as you include your full name in the comment.

To illustrate, here is an email we received earlier today from a BB Camp staffer who wanted to know how he could get a letter to the editor of the Jewish Post published. I gave him the contact information, but I also asked him to send me whatever he was sending to the print paper.

Here is what he wrote (which is also something he said he had sent to the BB Camp Board):

To the BB Camp Board

I am almost at a loss for words to describe what I’m feeling following the board’s recent email announcing the departure of Jacob Brodovsky as co-Executive Director of BB Camp. 

Disgusted, appalled, and ashamed might be good places to start.

I have been a BB camp member for 11 years, the final 4 of which were under Jacob and Lexie’s leadership, both as a camper and as a staff member. During my time at BB, I never felt as welcomed, supported, and empowered as I did with Jacob as my director. In his short time at the helm, I witnessed a meteoric improvement in BB camp life. Our site on Town Island looks fantastic; staff are happy, and more competent; and most importantly, the children who come to Town Island arrive at the safest and most inclusive version of BB camp that there has ever been.

The decision to “amicably part ways” with Jacob is disgraceful. While I was surprised by the publication of Jacob’s social media “likes,” and while I may have considered those “likes” a display of poor judgement, I did and do not feel that his actions were in any way anti-Semitic or anti-Zionist. Jacob has always supported Israeli programming at BB camp, and it was not difficult for me to digest the idea that he might support Israel and also support a ceasefire and the basic human rights of Palestinian people.

The response from the board and from the BB camp community at large have been far more appalling and, frankly, far more violent than anything I have heard Jacob Brodovsky say, or seen him do. The apology he was forced to make, the constant calls for his head, and the harsh, blown out of proportion coverage of Jacob’s social media activities have left me feeling sick to my stomach.

I understand that at this point, little can be done. The Board has made its decision, and there is no going back. But I am incredibly disappointed that you would turn your back on a good person like Jacob Brodovsky; a person who has given much of his life trying to make BB camp a better place and who, in my experience, succeeded.

I have always been proud to be a BB camper – but today, I feel ashamed. With the board’s recent decision, and the community’s response to this issue, I am not sure to what extent my pride can ever recover. That’s a scary feeling, and I hope that you hear it.

Regards,

Elijah Neville

Here’s another email that we had received 2 days ago about the BB Camp affair:

This is an email that l I wrote the Jewish Federation that was never answered:

After receiving a mass email from the federation regarding the current leadership of the BB Camp, I thought it was my responsibility as a Jewish person, a member of this community, and a Jewish scholar and educator to express my discomfort and criticism of what was communicated in this email. 

I do not know Jacob and Lexi nor did I attend the BB camp. I am new in this city and only represent myself and my own opinions. 

I was born and raised in Israel, educated in New York, and moved here a decade ago to teach for the Judaic Studies program at the University of Manitoba where I teach Yiddish, Hebrew, and modern Jewish studies. As a scholar and educator and a practicing Jew, I always advocated for pluralism of opinions and freedom of speech. I also strongly believe that people are entitled to express their opinions freely as long as they have done so as private people. No one should lose their job based on their personal social media activity (as long as they haven’t violated any law), nor should they live in fear.

At the UofM I often teach students who attended your camp and they seem to have had a wonderful experience that made their Jewish identity stronger. This suggests to me that you are doing a good and important job.

In these difficult times, I urge you not to cancel, defame, and censor alternative voices calling for peace and love of all humans. One needs to remember this community heritage of supporting human rights, equality, and democratic values. The heritage of the Peretz school, for instance, who taught students true Yidishkeyt and to be a Mentsh. 

Why make Jews even more isolated than they already are? As an experienced Jewish educator, I think it is important for Jews to show they are not monolithic and can sustain their differences and stay a one big Mishpokhe. 

I ask you to stand up for what is right and allow more nuanced and critical voices to be heard. This will make your campers happy and stronger. 

-Dr. Itay Zutra

Here’s another email:

Thank you. I’ve appreciated your writing regarding the BB Camp Blunder and this new opinion piece had me nodding my head as I read. Your final sentence about remaining on the margins of a community due to its lack of welcoming any view that veers from a very narrow one is one I can relate to. 

The “moral” of this story is of what, exactly? That Jews should be expelled from our community if they feel empathy for others? That Jews should be forced to resign from Jewish workplaces and cultural organizations because they interacted with something online that shows their nuanced levels of care and compassion? His actions were so inoffensive. What are we to learn from this? 

I read a book last year called The Jews of Summer which was a non-fiction book about Jewish summer camps. A huge takeaway for me was that there were tons of options for all types of Jews. There were camps with a Zionist focus, a religious focus, a secular focus, socialist focus, Yiddish focus, etc. This mirrors our city and communities of Jews worldwide who used to be able to have layered conversations and debates about beliefs and culture and politics. Now, that’s been completely abolished. I’d be made a pariah by expressing feelings and opinions that aren’t radical. 

Our heritage is one of wrestling with G-d, repair, ethics, and survival. We seem to have completely “lost the plot” (as the young people say). It’s felt nearly impossible to keep my connections with my culture when Winnipeg’s Jewish community as a whole has been lashing out with fear as their motivator. 

So thank you for writing that opinion piece. It makes me feel less isolated. 

Name withheld by request

Comment received April 25:

Yasher koach to Bernie Bellan for his sharp reporting and equally sharp op-ed on the “sordid BB Camp affair.” Bernie has rightfully pointed out in his reportage how power really operates in the Winnipeg Jewish Community, and how quickly institutions purporting to represent the Jewish community as a whole cave in to pressure groups. Bernie is truly a brave, independent journalistic voice, and a Winnipeg treasure. -Mark Libin

This year, the highly acclaimed Moneymaker Tour is finally coming to Canada for the first time. Previously hosted just across the US, the Moneymaker Tour’s Canadian leg marks only its second time abroad. The first time was last year’s Moneymaker Tour Aruba, which was held in October. During this leg, the Caribbean island country also hosted a USD$200,000 (CAD$285,527) guaranteed Main Event.

Following this successful overseas experience, the team behind the Moneymaker Tour, led by its namesake, Chris Moneymaker himself, will host 23 events in Kahnawake, just some minutes from downtown Montreal.

Chris Moneymaker and his poker legacy

A certified living poker legend, Chris Moneymaker is credited with kickstarting the early 2000s poker boom. A former accountant who qualified via (what was then relatively new) online satellite means, Moneymaker went on to win the 2003 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event with a USD$2.5 million (CAD$3.5 million) prize. His win marked a turning point in the industry, as it convinced thousands that poker was now more accessible and promising than ever. Since then, Moneymaker has won multiple bracelets and has been included in the Poker Hall of Fame.

Over the years, Moneymaker has expanded his presence on the felt as a poker pro for ACR Poker, which is the US’ leading online poker site. Since 2001, it’s been known for its huge tourneys, secure gaming and banking methods, and an impressive roster of poker personalities. Moneymaker was officially brought on in this capacity in 2021. In recognition of Chris’ influence, the site has even begun hosting special weekly promotions called The Sunday Moneymaker, which offer supersized guarantees of up to USD$300,000 (CAD$428,397). This is, of course, aside from the Moneymaker Tour itself, which is also hosted in partnership with the operator across several US cities, nearby territories, and now in international locations, like Canada.

What to expect from the Moneymaker Tour in Canada

Set to be held from May 7-20, the Canadian leg of the Moneymaker Tour will be hosted in cooperation with local casino and cardroom Playground. As mentioned above, there will be 23 events, during which there will be a USD$980,343 (CAD$1.4 million) guaranteed prize pool across the board. From May 16 onwards, the events will be dedicated to the Main Event, where there is a USD$350,122 (CAD$500,000) guarantee.

Designed to provide an opportunity for poker players of all skill levels and backgrounds to experience their own extraordinary poker wins inspired by Moneymaker, the tour’s events notably feature considerably lower buy-ins. In the Canadian leg, for instance, the Main Event’s buy-in is only USD$805 (CAD$1,150). With this in mind, reports state that players from across Canada, the US, and other neighboring countries are expected to join in. 

Per executives behind the Moneymaker Tour, this foray into the Canadian poker scene will ideally set the scene for future activations. That said, whether the tour will extend to other provinces is yet to be determined, considering that there are varying stances on gambling. For instance, in Alberta, there are still some delays in regulatory gambling launches. This has pushed back the legal release of potential gaming opportunities, especially in iGaming. However, since most citizens and legislators see the value in exploring this issue positively, it bodes well for any future poker events, including Moneymakers’.

Esports is a rapidly growing industry stemming from the popularity of video games and gaming as a lucrative pastime and activity. Findings from Grand View Research indicate that the Canadian esports market generated $54.7 million in 2023 and is expected to reach $294.4 million by 2030 at a compound annual growth rate of 27.2%. As of 2023, Canada accounts for 2.4% of the global esports market revenue and is the fastest-growing regional market in North America. Similar to sports events like the Pan American Maccabi Games, esports games nowadays are streamed and readily accessible on platforms like YouTube and Twitch.

Today, some of the biggest esports names in the world stem from Canada. The growing list includes Call of Duty League team Toronto Ultra and the now-defunct Overwatch team Toronto Defiant. Former Counter-Strike professional and one of the biggest gaming Twitch streamers, shroud, also hails from Toronto, along with former Valorant teammate and two-time champion TenZ, who was born in Nanaimo, Canada.

It seems no coincidence, then, that many of the biggest global esports events have taken place in Toronto. This year, the industry’s biggest esports titles are bringing major events — including a championship finale — to The Megacity. Below, we’ll look at some of the major esports events taking place in Toronto in 2025:

Call of Duty League Championship

One of the biggest esports events to take place in Toronto this year is the Call of Duty League (CDL) Championship. The fast-paced first-person shooter from Blizzard has maintained a thriving esports scene modeled after traditional sports leagues, where teams are named after and based in North American cities, such as Atlanta FaZe or reigning champions OpTic Texas. Last year, the CDL Championship bracket culminated in OpTic Texas dominating the New York Subliners and claiming victory on homeground. The tournament was held in Allen, Texas in July, and OpTic Texas brought home $800,000 for taking first place. Notably, Toronto Ultra bagged $320,000 for coming in third following a grueling lower-bracket run.

Hosting the CDL Championship event in Toronto will be a great morale boost for the team, allowing them to game with a home crowd advantage. Toronto-based CoD fans who want to bet on Call of Duty will benefit from a better vantage point by attending live games, and they’ll be able to witness how everything unfolds in real-time. Esports betting platform Thunderpick features various odds like Futures and Under/Over, and being able to see teams’ and players’ mood and morale throughout the tournament can help fans make more informed betting decisions for long-term bets like Futures.

Valorant Champions Tour: Masters Toronto

Another major esports event happening in Toronto in June is part of Riot Games’ Valorant esports circuit. The game’s esports department recently introduced new changes to the esports league for 2025, including an expanded calendar to shorten the offseason and provide teams with more rest and preparation time between competitions. While the recently concluded Kickoff tournament concluded to determine the top two teams from each region heading to Bangkok, Thailand, for Masters Bangkok, Stage 1 will see teams compete to qualify for Masters Toronto.

The Valorant Champions Tour’s (VCT) Masters events are high-stakes inter-regional tournaments pitting the best of the best teams from around the world. Many Masters-winning teams in the past have remained formidable and iconic rosters and players through the years. The coveted list includes the only team to hold two Masters trophies, Sentinels, and players like FNATIC’s Chronicle, who was the first player to bag two Masters trophies (under two different orgs). Doing well at this year’s Masters Toronto will help set the tone for teams looking to make deep runs at VCT Champions Paris and even lift the final trophy.

League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational

Finally, another Riot Games esports title, League of Legends, is also taking the best teams from around the world to Toronto for the Mid-Season Invitation. Commonly referred to as MSI, it’s the first cross-regional competition of the annual LoL esports schedule. In May 2024, MSI was held in Chengdu, China. South Korean team Gen.G won the event and scored a direct pass to the eventual Worlds event in South Korea.

The new rule is also in effect for the 2025 LoL esports season, so avid League of Legends will have to tune into MSI 2025 in Toronto to get a better idea of which teams will be making it to the 2025 Worlds event, set to take place in Beijing, Shanghai, and Chengdu. Of course, MSI results are only a part of the puzzle. For example, legendary LoL player Faker and his team T1 only bagged third place at MSI 2024 but went on to win Worlds for the second consecutive year after winning 2023 as well.

Online gambling and betting in Canada is booming, with each province allowed to regulate its own space. Ontario, Canada’s most populated province, turned two this year after leading the way in April 2022. In what should motivate Alberta and other provinces, Ontario is already reaping the rewards, generating $100 million annually in gambling revenue. Will the local administration in Alberta do what is needed?

Talks have been rife that Alberta is considering going the Ontario way by having an open-licensing system. In July 2023, the minister for Service Alberta and Red Tape Reduction, Dale Nally, issued a mandate to make this province a hub of online sports betting and gambling.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith recently asked Nally to cooperate with indigenous partners and other stakeholders to develop an online gaming strategy. The main focus will be on revenue generation and responsible gambling. In light of this, Nally said Alberta’s primary focus is becoming a “leading hub for iGaming” with streamlined regulations and low corporate taxes. Such conditions should position Alberta to become a leading iGaming destination.

A few weeks ago, the minister attended the ICE international gaming conference held in London. Together with Ontario’s Attorney General, Doug Downey, and other stakeholders, Nally participated in a roundtable discussion regarding the status of iGaming in Canada. CDC Gaming Reports also revealed that the discussion highlighted the success of iGaming in Ontario and how Alberta can emulate this success story.

Looking into the Alberta Budget 2024, it’s evident that state monopoly could soon give way to Canadian casinos to thrive in the province. Alberta took the first baby steps towards a more liberal gambling sector after setting aside $1 million for gambling. This budget will support the looming review of the Gaming, Liquor, and Cannabis Act and supporting Regulation. The idea is to review the entire regulatory framework to find more funding ways for Alberta charities and community projects.

Major operators like BetMGM, PointsBet, and PokerStars have since hired lobbyists to ensure commercial operators become a reality in Alberta. Speaking to investors and industry analysts in March this year, PointsBet CEO Sam Swanell tipped Alberta and British Columbia to legalize online betting soon. He noted that this could provide the much-needed expansion of that TAM.

Alberta is yet to take full advantage of online gambling despite being the country’s fourth-largest province, with around 4.3 million people. Smaller markets in North America, such as West Virginia and Connecticut, are already benefiting from commercialized online gambling. The good news is that noises about legal online gambling are getting louder in Alberta. It’s just a matter of when the government will make the announcement.

What Next for Online Gambling and Betting in Alberta?

Including a $1 million gambling review budget is definitely a step in the right direction. However, there’s still much to do to end Alberta’s long-standing gambling status quo. But at least the budget opens the door for further discussions and reforms regarding iGaming in Alberta. That discussion has been underway, although the momentum has increased in the last year or so.

As it stands, PlayAlberta.ca is the only regulated online gaming platform in Alberta. It’s a government-run website operated by the AGLC (Alberta Gaming Liquor and Cannabis). Besides casino games, this website provides sports betting and lottery-style gaming experiences. The legal sign-up age on PlayAlberta.ca is 18 years.

For Albertans who prefer more gambling freedom, the government doesn’t restrict anyone from joining offshore operators. Most gaming sites operating in Alberta are licensed in Curacao, the UK, and Malta. Compared to PlayAlberta.ca, these websites provide a more extensive variety of games, rewards, and general experience.

In conclusion, it’s just a matter of when Alberta will introduce an open-licensing market. This approach has proved to be a success elsewhere, especially in Ontario. A recent Ipsos report in Ontario revealed that only 13.6% of the residents prefer to gamble on offshore websites. Alberta could soon follow this path, although there’s much work to do to realize this dream.

By MYRON LOVE I remember many years ago attending a presentation by Simon Wiesenthal, the world’s leading Nazi hunter, during which he made the point that the focus of Holocaust education should not be on the number six million – the number of estimated Jews who were murdered – but rather on the 12 million martyrs – including other targeted groups such as the Roma, people who were gay, the mentally and physically handicapped and the many great many Slavic people who were also murdered. After the Jews, the Slavs were next on the list.
By focusing strictly on Germans killing Jews, he observed, it became too easy to make it out to be only Germans versus Jews – thereby making it easier for Holocaust deniers and absolving the other European peoples who were complicit in the killings.
Similarly, while we naturally mourn our Jewish brethren who were so horribly slaughtered on October 7, we need to also bear in mind that Hamas made no distinction in its murderous rampage between Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs or between Israelis and foreign workers.
In a posting for The Gatestone Institute on November 30, Israeli-Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh noted that he Hamas terrorists who attacked Israel on October 7 did not slaughter Jews alone. The terrorists also murdered and kidnapped scores of Muslim citizens of Israel, including members of the Bedouin community. The terrorists’ murder spree made zero distinction between young and old, Muslim and Jew.
“Scores of Arab Israelis were wounded, murdered or taken prisoner,” he reported.
One such brave individual was 23-year-old Awad Darawshe, an Arab-Israeli paramedic who was on duty at the music festival near Kibbutz Re’im, which was among the first locations under attack. When the medical staff on site were ordered to flee, he insisted on remaining behind to treat the wounded.
Abu Toameh suggests that the paramedic thought that because he was Arab, he could reason with the killers. He was murdered nonetheless.
Another courageous Arab-Israeli that the writer noted, 50-year-old Abed al-Rahman Alnasasrah, was murdered by Hamas terrorists when he attempted to rescue people from the music festival. He was married and a father of six children.
Fatima Altallaqat, 35, from the Bedouin village near Ofakim, was murdered while working with her husband near the city of Ofakim in southern Israel. She was a mother of nine children, the eldest nine years old.
Abu Toameh quotes her husband as saying: “We’re a religious Muslim family and she wore the traditional headdress of a devout woman. It is inconceivable they [Hamas terrorists] could not see who was inside [the car]. They were five meters away from her as they passed.”
Forty bullets were fired into her.
Abu Toameh further cites the comments of Suleiman Zayadneh, brother and uncle, respectively, to four of the Arab-Israeli hostages, who describes himself “as proud to be a Palestinian and Muslim”.
‘The people who came to shoot and kill — they know nothing of religion,” the writer quoted Zayadneh as saying. “These [Hamas] people came and killed left and right.”
Abu Toameh went on to reference the words of Nuseir Yassin, a video blogger with 65 million followers. Two days after the massacre, he wrote: “I realized that… to a terrorist invading Israel, all citizens are targets. More than 40 of them [the murdered] are Arabs. Killed by other Arabs. And I do not want to live under a Palestinian government. Which means I only have one home, even if I’m not Jewish: Israel…. So from today forward, I view myself as… Israeli first. Palestinian second. Sometimes it takes a shock like this to see so clearly.”
Abu Toameh reported that “there have been many storie about reciprocal inter-communal generosity and heroism in the aftermath of this national tragedy, and they create hope for the future”.
He quoted a statement by the Darwashe Family:
“We are very proud of Awad’s actions… This is what we would expect from him and what we expect from everyone in our family — to be human, to stay human and to die human.”
Abu Toameh also quoted Ali Alziadna, four of whose family members were kidnapped, as saying that he was “touched by the outpouring of support” by other Israelis.
“People from all over the country have come to hug and support our family,” Alziadna said. “The entire nation is one family now.”

Abu Toameh pointed out that many Arab citizens of Israel serve as IDF officers and policemen, risking their lives for their fellow Israelis. Many are serving at the front lines, saving lives.
Undoubtedly, Abu Toameh suggested, one of the objectives of the Hamas massacre, in addition to slaughtering as many Israelis as possible, was to thwart normalization between Israel and Arab countries, especially Saudi Arabia. Hamas may also have aimed to damage relations between Jews and Arabs inside Israel.
”The terror group was, without doubt, hoping that we would witness another cycle of violence between Jews and Arabs inside Israel, similar to that which erupted in May 2021,’ Abu Toameh posited. “Then, Hamas succeeded in inciting a large number of Arab citizens of Israel to take to the streets and attack their Jewish neighbors and Israeli police officers.
“This time, however, the Arab-Israelis have not heeded the calls by Hamas. One reason is that Arab-Israelis saw, with their own eyes, how Hamas terrorists make no distinction between Jews and Muslims.
“Hamas has repeatedly demonstrated that it cares nothing for the well-being of Arabs and Muslims. From their luxury homes and hotel rooms in the safety of Qatar and Turkey, Hamas leaders give the orders to attack Israel and then sit back and let the world weep over the destruction they wrought upon their own people.
“On October 7,” Abu Toameh concluded, “Hamas metaphorically shot itself in the foot by showing the world, with unfathomably ghoulish pride, by way of Go-Pro cameras and other self-documentation, that it has neither a religious nor a secular-humanist set of values. Perhaps the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip should look at the Arab citizens of Israel and note how they enjoy equal rights, democracy, freedom of speech and a free media. If Palestinians wish to live well, like the Arab-Israelis, this is the time for them to get rid of Hamas and all the terror leaders who, for seven decades, have brought them nothing but one disaster after another.”
It is too bad that so many gullible fools in our Western societies refuse to open their eyes to the truth.

By MICHAEL POSNER
Copyright @ great untold stories inc.
Reprinted with permission

Nov 27, 2023
I’m not worried about Israel.
Israel can — Israel will — look after itself. It may take a few months, but the IDF will eliminate Hamas as a military entity of any consequence, demolish its billion-dollar network of tunnels (paid for in part by the gullible European community), and destroy what the Gaza Strip has effectively been for 15 years, the world’s largest urban terrorist camp, and a forward base of Iranian subversion.
Much of the heavy lifting — all of northern Gaza, parts of Gaza City — has already been done. Hamas’ parliament, such as it pretended to be, lies in ruins. Thousands of its foot soldiers have been dispatched, ostensibly to frolic with the 72 virgins. Others will follow. Ismail Haniyeh and the rest of the charming Hamas cabal — billionaires barricaded in five-star Qatari hotels — would be best advised to buy UVeyes, the hi-tech device that scans vehicles for bombs. An Israeli invention, by the way. Southern Gaza, particularly Khan Younis, remains, a formidable tactical challenge, but not insurmountable.
In deference to the jackals on the Arab street, moderate Arab leaders have denounced Israel’s prosecution of the war, invoking the familiar canards — proportionality, ethnic cleansing, apartheid and collective punishment, yada, yada. Privately, however, they are cheering Israel on, grateful that it is doing what they would gladly do themselves, given half a chance. A few have even bold enough to say it out loud.
It’s instructive that, while Israel’s critics convulse in paroxysms of grief, not a single Arab or Muslim nation has offered to harbour a single Palestinian — not for an hour. Egypt, which shares a border with Gaza, dragged its heels even on delivery of aid, and on the release of Gazans holding dual citizenship. Can we speak the truth? The wider Arab world reviles Palestinians far more than any Israeli. And justifiably, given the havoc Palestinians have wrought in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Kuwait.
Exemplars of equivocation, paragons of posturing, earnest European politicians descended on the region, predictably condemning violence on both sides. They shook hands, nodded heads and then they expressed their deeply considered position. It boiled down to this: ‘you, Israel, clearly have the right to defend yourself. Just make sure you don’t kill anyone, okay?’
Speaking of double standards, the International Red Cross ought to win this year’s Golden Tourniquet award. The IRC navigates freely in dozens of challenging war zones, but in Gaza, it somehow could not manage to deliver a single bandage to any of the estimated 240 hostages, until the exchanges began. In fact, it took six weeks for the IRC president just to schedule a meeting with hostage family members in Geneva. Of course, it did manage a humanitarian visit to Hamas prisoners in Israel.
The IRC is part of Gaza’s vast, bureaucratic labyrinth. No fewer than 23 United Nations agencies maintain a presence there, manoeuvring within the nightmare of Hamas’ iron-fisted governance. But what applies to every journalist operating within the Strip, and to every doctor or nurse in hospitals that double as Hamas hideouts and weapon arsenals, also applies to UN staff. They are compromised. They can or will say nothing critical of the regime, for fear of their lives. Scan a decade of UN Commission of Human Rights reports, and you are unlikely to even find the word Hamas. In the Kafkaesque universe of UN rapporteurs, only Israel is guilty of human rights abuses. Some agency employees are actually complicit in promoting terror, using school curricula that lionize martyrs and teach Palestinian children to demonize Jews.
Another UN agency, UNICEF, which ostensibly exists to protect children, went to visit Gaza, but then managed to cancel plans to meet with parents and grandparents of the estimated 40 children taken as hostages by Hamas.
And the Western media? It is to laugh, or cry. Reporters for the BBC, CBC, the New York Times, Reuters, Associated Press, the Guardian — all the usual suspects — might double as contortionists with Cirque du Soleil, so expertly did they twist every Hamas claim and statistic into unvarnished truth, and every Israeli talking point into “an allegation we have not been able to independently verify.” These organizations served an unending diet of stories that invariably cast Israel as the villain of the piece. No wonder, then, the animus directed at it by a heavily propagandized, ill-informed public.
Everyone with half a brain knows that Israel’s destruction of these Iranian proxies is a victory for light over darkness, and good over unadulterated evil. Alas, the number of people with less than half a brain seems to be rising exponentially.
In the early 1920s, the visionary Ze’ev Jabotinsky maintained that Arabs in what was then British-mandate Palestine would never voluntarily acquiesce to the Zionist enterprise. They would only acquiesce involuntarily, and only when they finally understood and resigned themselves to that fact that no campaign of Arab terrorism, no coalition of armed forces, no amount of outside pressure — nothing — would ever breach Israel’s iron wall. For iron wall, read: military might. Or, invincibility. Only then, Jabotinsky argued, would Arab extremists be forced to yield to Arab moderates, willing to sue for an enduring peace.
Transparently, we are not there yet; we may never be there. As former Knesset member Einat Wulf noted recently, the essence of the conflict is simply this: Israel is dedicated to the preservation of the Jewish state. The Palestinians are pledged to its annihilation. Everything else is a detail.
But the IDF’s campaign in Gaza, and the threat of its extension to Hezbollah, to Lebanon and implicitly to Iran, is a projection of Jabotinsky’s iron wall. For 15 frustrating years, Israel fought Hamas with one hand behind its back, restrained by Western diplomatic pressure, and by a reluctance to sacrifice the lives of Israel soldiers in a bloody ground campaign. The time for half measures is over. On October 7th, the Hamas death cult issued an invitation to total war; Israel promptly RSVPed. Don’t mess with the Zohan.
True, years will be required for Israelis to recover from the collective trauma of the pogrom, and before its shattered faith in its security apparatus is restored. Politically, a national reckoning is required. A leadership transition doubtless will occur — in the prime minister’s office, the IDF, the Shin Bet. All bear some degree of culpability for the events of October 7th. There also remains a smorgasbord of contentious domestic issues, including judicial reform, that are still unresolved. None of this will be easy. But in time, the Israeli nation will be whole again.
The real crisis is elsewhere. The real crisis is here. No one who has watched what is happening on Western streets, no one who has objectively absorbed the response to the atrocities committed on October 7th, can be sanguine about our future. It is Western civilization that looks increasingly vulnerable.
Let’s start with Europe. The Europe that incubated the Renaissance and spawned the Enlightenment, is effectively finished. Not tomorrow. Not next year. But inevitably. The Arabic handwriting is already on the wall.
Three decades or more of largely unrestricted immigration from Muslim and other third world countries is rapidly redrawing the demographic maps of the UK, Germany, France, Austria, Holland, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Sweden and Denmark. What record immigration levels started — the de facto Islamification of Europe — the higher birth rate will finish. Ten years? Twenty? Fifty? It hardly matters. The collapse of Europe, as we knew it, is inevitable.
It’s inevitable because, as everyone knows (but seldom concedes), new migrant groups overwhelmingly do not truly assimilate, do not embrace the traditional values and practices of their host countries. Immigrants may shop at the same supermarkets, and wear the same Nikes, but they cling to mores, customs and ways of thinking fundamentally antithetical to secular liberalism. The mystery is why anyone ever thought it would be otherwise.
“Multiculturalism makes no demands of the newcomer to integrate,” former British Home Secretary Suella Braverman recently lamented. “It has failed because it allowed people to come to our society and live parallel lives in it.” A month or so after making her comments, Braverman was fired from the Conservative cabinet, another victim of cancel culture. It is one thing to know the truth; God forbid you should speak it.
Braverman’s remarks echoed those of former German Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2010, who shocked the world by acknowledging that “this [multicultural] approach has failed, utterly failed.” Nevertheless, in a humanitarian gesture, Germany admitted 2.1 million new migrants in 2015, almost 300,000 Muslims from Syria alone.
Far from embracing their host culture, many immigrants revile it. At least five thousand Europeans travelled to the Middle East to join Isis. Remember Isis — the Islamic State? Those fine Salafalists who made snuff films of beheadings of journalists and aid workers?
Some young European Islamists are easily radicalized: they have genuine grievances. Poor jobs (if any), inferior housing, and the dim likelihood of ever clawing their way into the shrinking middle class. Add the incitement from the mosques, the anti-integrationist, anti-western dogma delivered by imams — et voila: the next suicide bomber is born.
Extremism aside, does anyone seriously believe that the hard-won fruits of the liberal tradition — gender equality, lgbtq+ rights, freedom of speech — apply within the teeming Muslim communities of Malmo, Birmingham, Bradford, Brussels, Avignon, Marseilles, etc.? Those rights and others — habeas corpus, due process, freedom of the press — are rare in the Muslim world. Indeed, according to Islam, all commitments to the inviolability of human rights are expressly preempted by Sharia law, soft-pedalled though it is.
So: on the assumption that the West’s secular liberal values are worth preserving and defending, will they survive when a critical demographic mass no longer exists?
A decade after Merkel’s truth bomb, the romantic vision of multicultural cross-pollination peddled by other western governments has been exposed as a myth. It is simply not possible to reconcile the comforting, kumbaya fairy tale that we are all brothers and sisters — ‘you savour my shawarma and I’ll devour your poutine’ — and then take to the streets to rip posters of kidnapped children from light standards, shoot bullets at synagogues and Jewish schools, and glorify death-cult jihadists intent on unholy war. The chasm cannot be bridged.
The virtue-signalling on pluralism has gone hand in hand with incessant bromides about diversity. As others have noted (Frank Furedi, Mark Steyn), the diversity agenda emerged first in Europe, as a hoped-for antidote to the evils of nationalism, which had yielded two world wars, left millions dead, and the continent in rubble. The ostensible lesson: patriotism bad, diversity good.
Be careful what you wish for. Diversity, it turns out, is the incubator of identity politics, everyone now required to wear a tribal badge for race, ethnicity, gender and pronoun preferences. And what a winner identity politics has been, eh?
While performative politicians like Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau continue to sing ad nauseum from the multicultural/diversity hymn book, the grim reality has been on display for weeks: hundreds of thousands, in every major European city and many in North America, openly calling for the death of Jews, thirsting for a ‘multicultural’ pogrom, and valourizing murderers, rapists, and kidnappers.
Despite elaborate attempts to fudge its meaning, their kindergarten chant, “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” is a clarion call for a genocide of the Jews. (That phrase, not incidentally, was first invoked in the mid-1930s, when Arab leaders told Britain’s Peel Commission that they would countenance no Jewish state anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea). Not a few of these aspiring Einsatzgruppen — no small irony — are Jewish, or claim to be. Indeed, the hate marches, as Suella Braverman accurately characterized them, have been populated by a United Nations of antisemites — not unlike the United Nations itself.
Notably, there were no such demonstrations when 158,000 Muslims died in the Yemenite civil war, nor any public protests when the Kuwaitis evicted almost 300,000 Palestinians (ethnic cleansing, anyone?), no demands for ceasefire when Syrian strongman Bashir Al-Assad killed 3,900 Palestinians, bombed their schools and hospitals, deployed nerve gas, and catalyzed the exodus of 5.7 million Syrians.
In this light, it’s difficult — actually, it’s impossible — not to conclude that what really motivates the protesters has very little to do with the suffering of their Arabs brothers, and almost everything to do with unfiltered, unfettered Jew-hatred.
Hypocrisy notwithstanding, the world’s oldest virus, long-suppressed, has been loosed from the laboratory and is spreading, fast. Millions are now afflicted, demonstrably in the grip of some kind of mass hysteria. Baying mobs, acts of vandalism, the unapologetic embrace of toxic ideology — can anyone doubt their yearning to do to Jewish communities around the world precisely what Hamas did to the hapless residents of Israel?
About militant Islam, the West remains largely in denial. Far too many people still naively believe the conflict is territorial, that if only Israel made sufficient concessions, a two-state solution could be found, and peace would be made. But land, West Bank settlements, the so-called occupation — none of this is remotely the issue. The shaheeds of the fledgling Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1964 were attacking Jews and Jewish settlers long before the 1967 war, before Israel acquired a single hectare of the West Bank.
Before the Six-Day War, Jordan controlled all of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Temple Mount; Egypt controlled the Sinai. Did anyone then say Palestinians deserved a state of their own? Did anyone campaign for Palestinian self-determination? No— not a word.
The point is, movements birthed by the Muslim Brotherhood, including Sunni radicals like Hamas, regard any Israeli presence in the holy land as a cancer to be excised. All of Israel— Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem— is therefore deemed an illegal occupation. And the Islamists are obsessively committed to slaughtering the infidel occupiers. One prominent spiritual leader, the late Yusuf al-Qaradawi, regarded Adolf Hitler as a divine punishment for the Jews, and advocated for another Holocaust, “inflicted by the hand of the Faithful” —i.e., Muslims.
To that end, any means is justified. What the western mind seems unable to grasp is that, as philosopher Sam Harris has explained, jihadists feel no compunction using civilians as human shields, because they know “any Muslims who get killed will go to Paradise for eternity…If you don’t understand that jihadists sincerely believe these things, you don’t understand the problem Israel faces. The problem isn’t merely Palestinian nationalism, or resource competition, or any other normal terrestrial grievance. In fact, the problem isn’t even hatred, though there is enough of that to go around. The problem is religious certainty.”
Perhaps October 7th will help move the needle of our understanding; I’m not optimistic.
It will be argued, inevitably, that the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful. That is undeniable. But is it relevant? Where are these peaceful Muslims in the current controversy? Have there been any counter-demonstrations — of any size — by moderate Muslims, to protest the haters of London, Paris, New York, Toronto, etc.? How many moderate Muslim politicians, imams, intellectuals or TikTok/Instagram influencers have penned op-ed pieces, given sermons, appeared on television, or recorded videos to say, in effect, ‘I categorically and unreservedly disown the Hamas massacre, and these marchers; they are giving Islam a bad name’?
There’s an obvious reason why this almost never happens. The moderates are intimidated, effectively cowed. They may privately rail against Islamic fundamentalism, but it is simply too dangerous to speak out.
Moreover, if even .01 percent of the world’s 1.8 billion Muslims is a murderous zealot, that’s 1.8 million — the equivalent of a city the size of Mosul.
Another common argument is that, however precise Israel’s weapons, however scrupulous the IDF’s efforts to minimize casualties, many innocent Gazans are dying — and thus radicalizing the next generation. This thesis, too, is yawn-worthy, because all the evidence suggests that if (in the unlikely event) democratic elections were ever held in Gaza or the West Bank, Hamas or some facsimile would win the vote handily. A recent poll conducted by Arab World for Research and Development reported that 75 percent of Palestinians support the massacre of October 7th, and 83 per cent endorse the slaughtering of Jews. In other words, most of them already have murder on their minds— what difference a few more?
For Jews, one of the most worrying aspects of the weekly hate orgies has been the apparent unwillingness of the police — except in Germany— to intervene aggressively. Yes, the authorities are hopelessly outnumbered. But the larger concern is that police forces themselves have become increasingly politicized, indoctrinated in the same progressive ideology as many of the protesters — champions of diversity, equity and inclusion. DEI is the ugly stepchild of critical race theory, which assumes a priori that the West is irredeemably evil, racist, and colonialist, and that its demise should be welcomed, not mourned.
Thus, the manifestations of moral inversion: Instead of preventing people from stripping off the kidnap posters, some police officials have actually joined in. Instead of arresting demonstrators calling for a new intifada — remember the intifada? When Palestinian suicide bombers blew up Israeli buses and children buying pizza? — most police forces have stood idly by. Yet while letting hate speech go uncurbed, British cops actually arrested a man who had the temerity to post a video objecting to the dozens of Palestinian flags in his neighbourhood.
“Two things form the bedrock of any open society,” writer Salmon Rushdie has said. “Freedom of expression and rule of law. If you don’t have those things, you don’t have a free country.” Ultimately, rigorous, impartial enforcement of the rule of law is all that stands between social order and anarchy, between where we are today and the next Kristallnacht — or worse.
One would like to think the outlook in American, Australia or Canada is rosier than Europe. It isn’t.
On Veterans Day in the United States, pro-Palestinian protesters in New York City climbed lamp posts to tear down the American flag, and replace it with the Palestinian flag.
In Sydney, even before the Israelis had finished counting their corpses, emissaries of the religion of peace were in the streets, calling for the gassing of Jews.
In Canada, a country with “no core identity” according to its jejune prime minister, Remembrance Day was marked by speeches that ignored the heroic sacrifices of previous wartime generations, to rail against — you guessed it — white supremacy, colonialism and racism. In other words, the West, by virtue of is original sins, deserves the kinds of barbarism associated with Hamas, Hezbollah, Isis and Iran.
Two weeks ago, Sarah Jama, an independent member of the Ontario legislature — evicted earlier from the New Democratic Party for spewing anti-Jewish hate — co-signed a letter to Canadian parliamentarians, urging them to end support for Israel. In a measure of their moral derangement, the signatories — describing themselves as “residents of so-called Canada”— alleged that no women were raped during the Hamas assault, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. You can’t make this stuff up.
How did we arrive at this morally blighted moment? There is no single cause, but our colleges and universities must bear much of the blame. Once beacons of truth, free expression and open-ended inquiry, they have been become indoctrination camps worthy of Mao and Pol Pot. What they now teach, especially in the humanities and social sciences, is cultural totalitarianism.
“Openness used to be the virtue that permitted us to seek the good by using reason,” Allan Bloom wrote in The Closing of the American Mind (in 1987!). “It now means accepting everything and denying reason’s power…We are like ignorant shepherds living on a site where great civilizations once flourished. The shepherds play with the fragments that pop up to the surface, having no notion of the beautiful structures of which they were once a part.”
Among the millions marching for ‘Palestine’ are ostensibly well- educated college students, some of whom spearheaded the recent attacks on Jews on campuses. But it’s not only students. The moral rot is systemic.
This week, more than 100 faculty members of that once-elite institution known as Harvard denounce duniversity president Claudine Gay for daring to issue an anodyne statement opposing antisemitism; they claimed she was curtailing free speech.
Individual scholars at various institutions have been outspoken in support of Hamas’ brutality. Cornell professor of history Russell Rickford, for example, told a cheering throng of Palestinian supporters that news of the murders, rapes, beheadings and incineration of infants committed on October 7th was “exhilarating” and “energizing.” Chastised by his employer, Rickford later issued a lukewarm apology, but who would give it credence?
Other marchers have proudly hoisted ‘Queers for Palestine’ placards, a laughable display of ignorance on several levels. For starters, merely to hold such a sign (let alone to be caught in flagrante delicto) in Gaza City, Ramallah, Baghdad, Damascus or virtually anywhere in Muslimdom would likely lead to a swift act of defenestration.
And then there are the social justice commandos — hyper-sensitive people ‘triggered’ by every perceived ‘micro-aggression’ or ‘violent’ insult. Invoke the wrong pronoun in addressing ‘they/them,’ and you’re liable to provoke a human rights complaint. But they have no trouble celebrating maniacal terrorists, who gleefully sodomize grandmothers in wheelchairs, and subject young women to serial rape, decapitate them on camera, and then send the videos to parents.
Of course, no angry rally speech — no chant, social media post, or press interview — has been complete without multiple invocations of the word ‘Palestine.’ As if there actually were such a place, or it could be magically wished into existence by mere incantation. Deploying this term is at once a mind game and a perversion of language, because at no time in history has there been a nation ruled by Arabs called Palestine. It is a make-believe country for, as former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir bravely acknowledged, a make-believe people, invented by the KGB in 1964, using its hand-picked stooge, Yasir Arafat — a native Egyptian.
It gets worse. The war on reason — the intellectual death spiral of our colleges and universities — has been underway for more than thirty years. Today, the jack-booted brigades of wokeism — drunk on moral relativism and the denial of objective truth — have infiltrated and taken power in our major institutions, corporations, labour unions, the civil service, public agencies, the media, and artistic communities. As writer Bari Weiss noted in a recent speech, in the topsy-turvy progressive universe, colour blindness has been replaced with race obsession; ideas with identity; debate with denunciation; persuasion with public shaming; and the rule of law with the fury of the mob.
The validity of Weiss’s observation was confirmed last week on, appropriately enough, TikTok, which comedian Sacha Baron Cohen aptly said was creating “the biggest antisemitic movement since the Nazis.” Online, someone stumbled upon Osama bin Laden’s 2002 Letter to America, which attempted to justify 9/11 by accusing the U. S. government of being in the pocket of, naturally, the Jews, and therefore complicit in bombing Palestinians home. And before you could say ‘protocols of the elders of Zion,’ fevered TikTokers had experienced a life-altering epiphany, and concluded that Osama was actually a victim — and therefore, automatically, the good guy — and America was the satanic oppressor. In short, a perfect illustration of the historical ignorance and moral obtuseness that plagues Millennials and GenZ.
As a snapshot of our current predicament, the TikTok episode should be framed.
Literally unspeakable crimes were committed on October 7th. We don’t really have a vocabulary that can fully capture the butchery. The savagery of Hamas out-ISISed ISIS, no small achievement. But the response of the vox populi — the millions savouring these atrocities as a victory for ‘the resistance’— testifies eloquently, tragically, to how damaged the West’s moral compass has become. Jews are always society’s coal mine canary, and the epidemic of Jew-hate we are now seeing marks a decisive turning, what Joe Biden likes to call an inflection point. Our civilization is breaking down, and it is likely to get worse, before it gets worse.

By Prof. BRYAN SCHWARTZ Oct. 17, 2023 (Originally posted to The Times of Israel)
1 No peace is possible with Hamas. It is genocidally antisemitic. This position is foundational, not rhetorical or mutable. Waiting for the emergence of a “pragmatic” version of Hamas is suicidally naïve.
2 Peace and cooperation are possible with most of Israel’s non-Iranian neighbours. They are militarily threatened by Iran, not Israel. For many in those countries, Iran’s version of Islam might be more problematic from the religious perspective than Israel’s Jewishness.
3 Hamas’ attack was partly to prevent a Saudi deal and a long-term economic cooperation
4 Israel has no territorial claim to Gaza and no material, religious, or ideological interest in running it.
5 Israel has vital moral and material interests in the emergence of a peaceful, demilitarized, and prosperous Gaza. If that can occur in the medium term, a long-term reconciliation of the Palestinians with Israel is achievable.
6 As and when Hamas is evicted from power, Gaza will need some new form of government.
7 The Palestinian authority probably cannot be trusted to take over Gaza. It is corrupt and lacked- and probably still lacks- credibility with a majority of the population in Gaza.
8 There used to be a concept called trusteeship in international law, whereby foreign powers would govern a territory in its best interests until its final status is clarified at the wishes of its own people.
9 The United Nations cannot be trusted to administer Gaza – any more than it has shown to be trustworthy to maintain strategic security in Southern Lebanon or to operate UNWRA in a manner that is effective for Palestinians and not hostile to Israel.
10 Consider this alternative. After Hamas is evicted from power, there is an interim period- say five to seven to ten years -of governance over Gaza by an Arab trusteeship council. The Council members are appointed primarily by Arab states sympathetic to Israel and eager to see the people of Gaza thrive. This Council could include local Gaza representatives and a representative of the Palestinian Authority but the majority would be representative of states like Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia.
11 The trusteeship agreement would be formal, agreed to by Israel, and unequivocally state its objectives, including:
-demilitarizing Gaza;
-defining the sole purposes for which outside reconstruction and development money can be spent and requiring strict accounting
-ensuring that the education system in Gaza is not contaminated by antisemitic hatred;
-promoting sound administration of Gaza, including providing for transparent and non-corrupt government, with significant safeguards for human rights, and conformity to the rule of law;
-promoting the development of a real economy for Gaza, not one fuelled primarily by international subsidies.
13 No state could participate in the Council without having a peace agreement with Israel.
14 In fact, the creation of the Council and Saudi participation in it could be part of a peace deal with Saudi Arabia. The deal could involve a reconstruction package from the Saudis for Gaza, which would help secure the support of the people of Gaza for the Council arrangement as an interim measure.
15 Policing would be carried out by a force composed of Palestinians and members of the police forces of Trusteeship states, under the direction of the Council.
16 The net effect would be to remove Gaza from Iran’s influence and establish temporary control by a consortium of mostly Sunni states. The latter would be chosen from among those that are at least reasonably friendly to Israel and genuinely committed to good governance in Gaza.
17 The definitive solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict can only be achieved in a series of steps. Compromises are even more painful if they are framed as permanent. But if practical peace, stability, and some prosperity can be achieved in the medium term in Gaza and the West Bank, an amicable and enduring resolution should be achievable with the Palestinians.
18 While Israel is under severe military menace right now, it is not too early to think about how a positive political outcome can be achieved after the necessary and painful battle is concluded.
19 The current catastrophe is a so-far successful attempt by the regime in Teheran to disrupt peace negotiations involving Israel, the United States, and Saudi Arabia. Political vision along with military force might enable Israel to turn around the situation and complete and consolidate a lasting peace with almost all of its Arab neighbours and to set the stage for a formal and enduring peace with the Palestinians. The Teheran regime would be isolated, diminished in prestige, and more likely to be replaced from within.
About the Author
Bryan’s Jewish-themed musical “Consoulation: A Musical Mediation” premiered in the Spring of of 2018; https://consoulation.com His new album will appear in the coming months. Bryan Schwartz graduated with a doctorate in law from Yale School and holds an endowed chair at the University of Manitoba Law School. He is the author or editor of over thirty books and collections of essays. Bryan also created and helps to deliver an annual summer program at Hebrew University in Israeli law and society. He has served as a visiting Professor at both HU and Reichman university. . As a practising lawyer, Bryan has argued a number of cases at the Supreme Court of Canada, advised governments, and served as an arbitrator at the provincial, national and international level.

Usually when I write my column in The Jewish Post & News titled “Short takes,” I focus on one or two themes. This time, I’m departing from that style. Instead, I’m going to offer a series of true “short takes.”
To begin with, I have to admit my surprise at a story that Sid Halpern related to me – about former Winnipeg Blue Bomber great Willard Reaves. Reaves, who is running once again for the Liberals in the upcoming provincial election in the riding of Whyte Ridge, against another former Blue Bomber great, Obby Khan, was speaking at the Simkin Centre at a current events program that Sid runs (and which I occasionally host as well).
At that recent program, Reaves told the Simkin Centre residents who were gathered to hear him that his late father was Jewish and that he was buried in Israel.
When Sid related that story to me my reaction was – and I’m sure it would be the same for anyone else who knows who Willard Reaves is: “You’re kidding. What’s the story behind that?”
So, I contacted Willard and asked him to fill me in. He told me that his father, whose name was Johnny Reaves, had been a brilliant engineer who worked for General Dynamics in Fort Worth, Texas. Willard said that his parents separated when he was young and that he grew up in Flagstaff, Arizona, although he and a brother of his did spend half a year living with their father in Fort Worth.
According to Willard, his father was interested in finding out about different denominations, including Judaism. Eventually, Johnny Reaves converted to Judaism and, in 2016, he moved to Israel, saying “good bye to me,” Willard said, adding that his father also said “I will die in Israel.”
It was in Israel that Johnny Reaves took the Hebrew name “Tzadok Avraham,” Willard added. He also became fluent in Hebrew, Willard said (in addition to four other languages he spoke). In 2021 Johnny Reaves – or Tzadok Avraham, as he was then known, died. Willard said that he had wanted to fly to Israel for the funeral, but was told that his father was going to be buried the next day – which wouldn’t have given Willard enough time to make it there for the funeral.
Quite the story, but to give equal time to Obby Khan, about whom I’ve written in the past, when he sponsored a floor hockey tournament at the Rady JCC in memory of Obby’s late mentor, Richard Tapper, Obby will also be appearing at the Simkin Centre in September – and when he does, we’ll try and grab an interview with him as well.

The movie “Golda” has received fairly awful reviews from critics – and deservedly so. It’s hard to understand why this movie was even made. Aside from having an A-list star, Helen Mirren, in the title role, honestly, how many people out there who aren’t Jewish and of a certain age would be interested in seeing a movie about Golda Meir?
It’s the kind of movie that you might expect to have been made for a streaming service rather than be given a theatrical release. It’s quite dark – and despite the action revolving around the Yom Kippur War, there’s no dramatization of any battle scenes nor, for that matter, is there much in the way of actual footage from the war – which could have easily be integrated into the film.
Like a lot of others who have already commented on “Golda,” I’m trying to figure out what the motivation was of whoever was behind it?

By this time of year one would have expected to see the report of the Jewish Federation’s Budget and Allocations Committee. That particular committee is tasked with divvying up funds for the 13 beneficiary agencies of the Jewish Federation and, although I’m told each agency has been informed by now what the allocation they will be receiving will be, the Federation’s fiscal year begins September 1, and in the past we’ve been able to report on the allocations either in June or July at the latest.
There have been a series of changes at the top level of the Jewish Federation this past year, including the most recent one – which, of course, we’ve given major attention, that being the hiring of Jeff Lieberman as the Federation’s new CEO.
But the awful slowness in receiving the report of the Budget and Allocations Committee points to how much the Federation has been missing the absolutely key contribution that Faye Rosenberg Cohen made in her capacity as the Federation’s Chief Planning and Allocations Officer. Faye, who had been an employee of the Federation since 1994 – up until her retirement this past December, was largely responsible for drawing up the report of the Budget and Allocations Committee.
And, although the committee always has a number of experienced volunteers serving on it, nothing can replace the type of experience that a seasoned staff member such as Faye was able to bring to the job. Sharon Graham has been hired as Faye’s replacement and, although we’re sure that Sharon will prove fully capable of filling Faye’s shoes, replacing someone with 29 years experience in a job can’t happen overnight.

In addition to Faye’s retirement, there have been two other notable departures from the Federation in recent months. In June we announced that Rebecca Brask was leaving the position of Chief Development Officer for the Federation. Rebecca’s replacement is Graciela Najenson, who has been with the Federation since 2017. The fact that Graciela had been serving as Development Director makes her transition to the role previously held by Rebecca somewhat easier.
And, just recently Carlos Benesdra moved on from being Chief Financial Officer of the Federation to CFO of Gray Academy, while Shannon Slater has moved over from the Asper Jewish Community Campus to take over as Federation CFO.
Those are four major moves within a three-month period. Based on my recent experience of not being able to get information about the all-important allocations that our Jewish agencies are going to be receiving, I can only surmise that the Federation is in a state of flux.

The success of the Israel pavilion continues to reverberate. As I note in my look back at the early days of the Israel pavilion on page 1, back in 1970 it would have been impossible to anticipate how important both Foklorama – and the Israel pavilion, would become. As David Greaves writes in his paean to the Israel pavilion on page 16 of this issue, the role that the Israel pavilion now plays in boosting Israel’s image is immeasurable.

The sale of the Etz Chayim is not yet complete. Although there is an offer on the table, nothing has been finalized, according to congregation president Avrom Charach.
Here is an email exchange I had with Avrom on August 23:

“Hi Avrom,
“I’ve heard that the building has been sold – again. Can you confirm?
“-Bernie”

Avrom responded (less than an hour after I emailed him. That could be a lesson for some other Jewish organizations in this city, where respondents often don’t respond or take an interminable amount of time to respond):
“We accepted an offer within two weeks of the previous deal not closing.
Their due diligence period has not yet finished but we are getting close to the day when it does.
“As such I can confirm we are conditionally sold but nothing more than that.”

otage from the war –