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Why Are Canadian Children Forced to Protest Israel Against Their Will?
Hundreds of anti-Israel protesters, primarily university students, rally at Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square on Oct. 28, 2023. Photo by Sayed Najafizada/NurPhoto
Canada prides itself on being a big tent nation — a place where bilingualism and multiculturalism are official government policy, and diversity is our greatest strength.
According to the country’s mythology, when Canadians disagree, they come up with practical solutions, resolve their differences peacefully, and are better off for it.
Canada’s commitment to inclusion is so deeply ingrained that in a 2015 debate with then-prime minister Stephen Harper, Justin Trudeau famously responded to Harper’s suggestion that revocation of citizenship might be justified in the case of a convicted terrorist by saying, “a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian.”
It was one of many one-liners that helped Trudeau become prime minister that year, and hang onto the job for the next nine and counting.
But while convicted terrorists may take comfort in their prime minister’s promise of unconditional kinship, Canada’s Jews are feeling increasingly unwelcome in their own country.
The latest outrage came from the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), which is responsible for educating roughly 238,000 children and another 100,000 “life-long learners” through adult and continuing education programs.
Like many large North American school boards, while the TDSB has failed in educating children in core competencies such as numeracy, it has compensated with additional servings of diversity, equity, inclusion, and the latest fad — decolonization.
In November 2023, one of the board’s equity advisors, Javier Dávila, earned the dubious distinction of being placed on paid home assignment for the second time in two-and-a-half years for comments about Israel.
In June, after a divisive debate, the school board decided to update its Combating Hate and Racism Student Learning Strategy to include anti-Palestinian racism.
The change was an important victory for activists, who had spent years trying to invent an anti-Palestinian racism crisis out of whole cloth, including via the school board’s 2022 census, whose “Guiding Research Principles” document went so far as to confer victimhood status on non-Palestinian supporters of the Palestinian cause.
According to the new dogma, even though people like Dávila aren’t Palestinian, and Palestinians aren’t a race, these people are nevertheless victims of anti-Palestinian racism.
Never mind that Palestinians constitute a mere 5% of the city’s Arab population — less than the number of people from Egypt, Lebanon, and Iraq, none of which get their own special category.
All of these factors metastasized in spectacular fashion this month, when 15 TDSB schools made a field trip to the Grassy Narrows River Run. The annual event is intended to raise awareness of the plight of a Northern Ontario indigenous community suffering from mercury-poisoned water.
Parents were told that students would merely “observe and learn from the presentations and discussions” and would not be participating in an actual protest.
Indigenous students were “invited to wear their regalia,” while “settlers” were “asked to wear blue, if possible.”
In a particularly unusual instruction, parents were told, “media will be present at the event, and there is a chance our group will pass by cameras. If there are any issues around this, please let me know and we will make every effort to keep faces obscured.”
One would be hard-pressed to come up with another example of a publicly-funded educational field trip in which kids are instructed to divide themselves into tribes of virtuous and odious, and wear masks for fear of being identified as attendees.
Shortly thereafter, video emerged that looked eerily similar to the youth indoctrination rituals in totalitarian regimes.
Small children, some as young as eight-years-old and most of whom were dutifully sporting their settler blue, were led in a call and response: “From Turtle Island to Palestine, occupation is a crime. No justice, no peace. No racist, no peace.”
It would be difficult to come up with a pithier slogan to encapsulate the omnicause of the neo-Marxist left, who believe there is a direct thread running between the long-ago conquest of the Americas by Europeans, the mere existence of the State of Israel, police brutality, and the scourge of racism in general.
Students allegedly came home with “Zionism Kills” stickers, which were being doled out by some TDSB teachers.
But please — don’t call them antisemites.
If Canadian Jews are losers in yet another alienating episode, so are indigenous Canadians, whose event was co-opted by radicals with dreams of playing Model UN, and whose disgraceful conduct ended up taking the spotlight.
There is little question that the failure of Canada — despite years of promises — to bring clean drinking water to many indigenous communities is a moral stain that demands serious solutions.
Indeed, it was in that spirit that when my own daughter’s middle school held a 2022 assembly on the issue of contaminated water on indigenous reserves, I followed up by getting the President and Chief Global Water Officer of charity: water, an American not-for-profit that has brought clean drinking water to close to 20 million people in 29 countries, to agree to speak to the students.
Over the course of two academic years, the school never took me up on the offer.
That’s because for many radical Canadians, activism isn’t about solving problems. That work is hard and often boring.
Rather, the activist’s job is to protest and attack systemic bogeymen, thereby solving all of the world’s problems in one conceptual fell swoop — all without having to learn or do much of anything.
And if some Jews are offended along the way, they should — as one teacher advised one of the children who was dragged to this event — “get over it.”
Two of the schools that participated in this shameful episode have been named in press reports.
I’ve asked the TDSB several times to name the other 13, as they are clearly hostile environments for Jewish children, and Jewish parents have a right to know which schools to avoid.
As of this writing, the Board has denied my requests. However, the Ministry of Education has ordered an investigation into the matter, so it seems probable those names will eventually come out.
One can only hope the end result of the investigation will be a removal of ideology from the curriculum.
If all the Board does is put a few of the shrillest voices on paid leave while allowing their worst ideas to remain on the lesson plan, Toronto’s Jewish community should brace for more episodes like this.
Ian Cooper is a Toronto-based lawyer
The post Why Are Canadian Children Forced to Protest Israel Against Their Will? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Italian Port Blocks Arms for Israel as Worker Protests Mount
Illustrative: Demonstrators participate in a pro-Palestinian protest in Piazza Duomo in Milan, Italy, on Nov. 23, 2024. Photo: Alessandro Bremec/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect
The Italian Adriatic port of Ravenna on Thursday refused entry to two trucks said to be carrying arms to Israel, as protests mount among Italian dockworkers and other labor groups against the offensive in Gaza.
The center-left mayor of Ravenna, Alessandro Barattoni, told reporters the port authority had accepted the request from him and the regional government to deny access to the lorries carrying explosives en route to the Israeli port of Haifa.
“The Italian state says it has blocked the sale of arms to Israel but it is unacceptable that, thank to bureaucratic loopholes, they can pass through Italy from other countries,” Barattoni said in a statement.
He did not provide details on where the containers had come from or provide evidence of their contents.
Similar action to block arms shipments to Israel has been taken by dockworkers in other European countries such as France, Sweden, and Greece.
Ravenna’s decision reflects growing mobilization in Italy against Israel‘s military campaign and in support of an international flotilla trying to deliver aid to the Palestinians.
A spokesperson from the Israeli embassy in Rome said they did not have sufficiently detailed information about the case and so declined to comment. Israel‘s government sometimes accuses Europea nations of bias against it and swallowing propaganda by the Hamas terrorist group whom it is fighting in Gaza.
On Friday Italy’s largest trade union body, the CGIL, will hold a national half-day strike and marches in Rome and other cities, while on Sept. 22 two other unions will halt work and try to block activity in the large ports of Genoa and Livorno.
“We won’t let a single pin through the port,” said Riccardo Rudino from the Calp dockers’ union in Genoa.
Israel launched its offensive after Hamas-led terrorists attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing more than 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.
The CGIL said its protests were aimed at generating pressure on Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government “to suspend all commercial and military cooperation agreements with Israel, lift the humanitarian embargo, and recognize the State of Palestine.”
Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said on Thursday Italy would support EU sanctions against violent Israeli settlers and Israeli ministers who have made “unacceptable” comments on Gaza and the West Bank, and was open to considering trade sanctions.
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Israeli Tanks, Infantry Advance in Gaza City Offensive as Enclave Hit by Telecoms Blackout
Smoke rises following Israeli strikes during a military operation, in Gaza City, Sept. 18, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ebrahim Hajjaj
Israeli tanks were advancing on Thursday in two Gaza City areas that are gateways to the city center, while internet and phone lines were cut off across the Gaza Strip, a sign that ground operations were likely to further escalate imminently.
Israeli forces control Gaza City’s eastern suburbs and in recent days have been pounding the Sheikh Radwan and Tel Al-Hawa areas, from where they would be positioned to advance on central and western areas where most of the population is sheltering.
In separate developments, Israel attacked Hezbollah military targets in southern Lebanon, while two Israelis were killed at Allenby Crossing between the West Bank and Jordan, in what the Israeli military called a “terror attack.”
INFANTRY, TANKS, ARTILLERY ADVANCING TOWARDS INNER CITY
Israeli army spokesperson Nadav Shoshani said Israeli forces had been operating in the periphery of Gaza City for several weeks but since the night of Monday to Tuesday large numbers of troops had begun moving towards the inner city.
He said a combination of infantry, tanks, and artillery was advancing, backed up by the air force, and that it was a gradual process that would increase as time went on.
“The strategy right now is to defeat Hamas and apply pressure on Hamas, which can lead to a deal or can lead to rescue missions [to free hostages],” Shoshani told Reuters on the Israeli side of the border with Gaza.
A total of 48 hostages captured during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, remain in Gaza and Israeli officials believe around 20 are still alive.
Hostage families have been imploring Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop the offensive on Gaza and instead negotiate a ceasefire with Hamas to free their loved ones, but Netanyahu says military victory will bring them home.
The armed wing of Hamas said on Thursday the hostages were distributed throughout the neighborhoods of Gaza City.
“The start of this criminal operation and its expansion means you will not receive any captive, alive or dead,” it said in a written statement.
MANY FLEEING AMID TELECOMS BLACKOUT, MANY MORE STAYING PUT
The Palestinian Telecommunications Company said in a statement that its services had been cut off “due to the ongoing aggression and the targeting of the main network routes.”
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have fled Gaza City since Israel announced on Aug. 10 it intended to take control, but a greater number are staying put, either in battered homes among the ruins or in makeshift tent encampments.
The military has been dropping leaflets urging residents to flee towards a designated “humanitarian zone” in the south of the territory, but aid agencies say conditions there are dire, with insufficient food, medicine, shelter, and basic hygiene.
The World Health Organization warned on Thursday that critical shortages of blood in Gaza hospitals could see key services grind to a halt within days.
FAMILIES WITH BELONGINGS EVACUATE TOWARDS THE SOUTH
Along the coastal road, an unbroken column of every type of vehicle from carts and beaten-up cars to vans designed to carry goods was moving south, heavily laden with mattresses, gas cylinders, and entire families perching on their belongings.
“We are heading to go sleep on the streets towards the beach, like this, barefoot, we don’t know where to go,” said Yasser Saleh, speaking as he stood on the edge of a rickety trailer being pulled by a car.
The war was triggered by the Oct. 7 attacks, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage.
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Syria’s Foreign Minister in Washington, a First in 25 Years
Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shibani speaks during a press conference in Moscow, Russia, July 31, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Shamil Zhumatov/Pool
Syria’s foreign minister arrived in Washington on Thursday, the first official visit at that level in more than 25 years as the US makes a pro-Damascus policy push, lifting sanctions and mediating between the new Islamist rulers and Israel.
Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani will meet US lawmakers to discuss the lifting of remaining US sanctions on his country, Senator Lindsey Graham was quoted as saying by Axios. Two sources familiar with the trip confirmed the visit to Reuters.
It comes after some senior US diplomats focused on Syria were abruptly let go from their posts amid Washington‘s pivot, as the US seeks to integrate its longtime Syrian Kurdish allies with the central administration of President Ahmed al-Sharaa.
The United States has also been mediating between Israel and Syria. Sharaa, who is due to visit New York next week for the UN General Assembly, said negotiations to reach a security pact with Israel could yield results “in the coming days.”
The United States had placed crippling sanctions on Syria since 2011 after former President Bashar al-Assad, an ally of Iran and Russia, cracked down protests against him that triggered an almost 14-year civil war.
After he was toppled by Sharaa’s forces in a quick sweep in December, Washington and Damascus have been working to warm up ties, with US President Donald Trump announcing that he would move to lift the sanctions after meeting Sharaa in May.