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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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Trump: ‘Really Great Countries’ Want to Join Abraham Accords After Iran war

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, then-US President Donald Trump, and United Arab Emirates (UAE) Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed display their copies of signed agreements as they participate in the signing ceremony of the Abraham Accords, normalizing relations between Israel and some of its Middle East neighbors, in a strategic realignment of Middle Eastern countries against Iran, on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, US, September 15, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Tom Brenner/

i24 NewsUS President Donald Trump said “some really great countries” wish to join the Abraham Accords, speaking on Sunday to Fox News.

Trump said Iran was “weeks” away from its nuclear threshhold before Israel launched a surprise operation that lasted 12 days.

The US joined the operation last month, bombing the Fordow underground uranium enrichment facility with never-before-used GBU-57 series MOPs (Massive Ordnance Penetrators), as well as other nuclear sites in Isfahan and Natanz with Tomahawk missiles.

Shortly after, Trump pushed for a ceasefire. Dozens of Israeli civilians were killed in the flare-up, while hundreds of Revolutionary Guards members and senior officials in Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs were killed.

The US and Iran have restarted negotiations on Tehran’s nuclear program, with Trump reiterating that uranium enrichment is a red line. “Enrichment doesn’t mean like air conditioning and it doesn’t mean to jack up your car. Enrichment is a bad word,” he said.

“I won’t let that happen,” he concluded.

Regarding the success of the strikes against Iranian facilities, he stressed that the enriched uranium stores were buried underground and that the nuclear sites were “destroyed.” Trump also lambasted early reports that suggested only superficial damage had been inflicted, saying that the source that leaked the preliminary assessment should be “prosecuted.”

The B-2 bombers who conducted the mission, Trump said, would be invited to meet him at the White House.

The post Trump: ‘Really Great Countries’ Want to Join Abraham Accords After Iran war first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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IAEA Chief Says Iran Could Be Enriching Uranium Within Months

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi arrives on the opening day of the agency’s quarterly Board of Governors meeting at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria, Nov. 20, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Lisa Leutner

Iran could be producing enriched uranium in a few months, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog Rafael Grossi was quoted as saying on Sunday, raising doubts about how effective US strikes to destroy Tehran’s nuclear program have been.

US officials have stated that their strikes obliterated key nuclear sites in Iran, although US President Donald Trump said on Friday he would consider bombing Iran again if Tehran is enriching uranium to worrisome levels.

“The capacities they have are there. They can have, you know, in a matter of months, I would say, a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium, or less than that,” Grossi told CBS News in an interview.

“Frankly speaking, one cannot claim that everything has disappeared and there is nothing there,” he added, according to the transcript of an interview on “Face the Nation” with Margaret Brennan due to air on Sunday.

Saying it wanted to remove any chance of Tehran developing nuclear weapons, Israel launched attacks on Iran earlier this month, igniting a 12-day air war that the US eventually joined.

Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.

Grossi, who heads the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, said the strikes on sites in Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan had significantly set back Iran’s ability to convert and enrich uranium.

However, Western powers stress that Iran’s nuclear advances provide it with an irreversible knowledge gain, suggesting that while losing experts or facilities may slow progress, the advances are permanent.

“Iran is a very sophisticated country in terms of nuclear technology,” Grossi said. “So you cannot disinvent this. You cannot undo the knowledge that you have or the capacities that you have.”

Grossi was also asked about reports of Iran moving its stock of highly enriched uranium in the run-up to the US strikes and said it was not clear where that material was.

“So some could have been destroyed as part of the attack, but some could have been moved,” he said.

The post IAEA Chief Says Iran Could Be Enriching Uranium Within Months first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Court Cancels Israel PM Netanyahu’s Trial Hearings this Week

FILE PHOTO: Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gives a statement during a visit to the site of the Weizmann Institute of Science, which was hit by an Iranian missile barrage, in the central city of Rehovot, Israel June 20, 2025. JACK GUEZ/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo

The Jerusalem District Court canceled this week’s hearings in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s long-running corruption trial, accepting a request the Israeli leader made citing classified diplomatic and security grounds.

It was unclear whether a social media post by US President Donald Trump influenced the court’s decision. Trump suggested the trial could interfere with Netanyahu’s ability to join negotiations with the Palestinian militant group Hamas and Iran.

The ruling, seen by Reuters, said that new reasons provided by Netanyahu, the head of Israel’s spy agency Mossad and the military intelligence chief justified canceling the hearings.

Netanyahu was indicted in 2019 on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust – all of which he denies. He has cast the trial against him as an orchestrated left-wing witch-hunt meant to topple a democratically elected right-wing leader.

On Friday, the court rejected a request by Netanyahu to delay his testimony for the next two weeks because of diplomatic and security matters following the 12-day conflict between Israel and Iran, which ended last Tuesday.

He was due to take the stand on Monday for cross-examination.

“It is INSANITY doing what the out-of-control prosecutors are doing to Bibi Netanyahu,” Trump said in a Truth Social post. He said Washington, having given billions of dollars worth of aid to Israel, was not going to “stand for this.”

A spokesperson for the Israeli prosecution declined to comment on Trump’s post. Netanyahu on X retweeted Trump’s post and added: “Thank you again, @realDonaldTrump. Together, we will make the Middle East Great Again!”

Trump said Netanyahu was “right now” negotiating a deal with Hamas, though neither leader provided details, and officials from both sides have voiced skepticism over prospects for a ceasefire soon.

On Friday, the Republican president told reporters he believed a ceasefire was close.

Interest in resolving the Gaza conflict has heightened in the wake of the US and Israeli bombings of Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The post Court Cancels Israel PM Netanyahu’s Trial Hearings this Week first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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