There they are in contrasting powder blue and periwinkle blue head scarves, slim, smiling. Alive, in Gaza. Sally Ghazi Ibaid and her twin sister, Dalia, were recipients of University of Waterloo’s prestigious Student Relief Fellowship (SRF). As one progressive Jewish academic in the Kitchener-Waterloo community put it,
“Several administrators and faculty worked really hard to set up and implement the scholarship scheme that was to bring these two brilliant young women to the University of Waterloo. They are heartbroken to read of the news of the deaths of Sally and Dalia.”
Each woman, aged 26, had completed a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering and now a prestigious engineering doctoral program in Canada had sponsored them to study for a doctorate in Waterloo in early 2025.
The women and their mother were at the border in Rafah arranging to leave Gaza, when the three were killed by an Israeli missile at the border on 5 Dec. 20 days ago.
The spokesman for the University of Waterloo said the women were killed by an Israeli airstrike. However, the CBC, the leader of Canada’s gutless and shrinking media, “has yet to confirm that and is awaiting a response from the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).”
Israel and its supporters could care less. The Ibaids join 45,000 other dead Palestinians that Israel has killed in the last 14 months. In the last two months, Israel has also killed 4,047 people in Lebanon, where more than 16,000 have been wounded. In the 24 hours following the Ibaids’ murders, according to Reuters, Israel killed more than 350 Palestinians in Gaza.
Yet can it be that in much of Western Europe, Australia-New Zealand, Canada, and the US criticism of Israel’s genocide is muted if not buried. Our media has a lot to do with it. Turns out that when Israel and the “official” Jewish community says “Jump!” the top people in Canada’s media ask how high. That attitude filters down through the ranks.
How else do we explain why every article, online news report, or newscast about Israel’s 14 month annihalation of Gaza and murder of one in 55 Gazans starts with a variation on this first paragraph. Sometimes they throw in a second paragraph about Palestinians deaths, sometimes not. But this one always comes first:
“The war in Gaza was triggered by a Hamas-led attack on communities in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Israel says that attack killed some 1,200 people and that about 240 hostages were taken back to Gaza.”
Or from the BBC:
“The war in Gaza was triggered by a Hamas-led attack on communities in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Israel says that attack killed some 1,200 people and that about 240 hostages were taken back to Gaza.”
Or from the Toronto Star:
“The war was sparked by Hamas’ October 2023 attack on southern Israel, where the militant group killed 1,200 people and took 250 hostages in Gaza.”
Or from The Globe and Mail:
“In an Oct. 7, 2023, attack, Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel and killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250. Around 100 hostages are still in Gaza, at least a third believed to be dead. “
Now we see more and more of this type of second paragraph tagged on to the first:
“The war was sparked by Hamas’ October 2023 attack on southern Israel, where the militant group killed 1,200 people and took 250 hostages in Gaza.”
The media plays up the 1200 Jewish dead… but what of the 45,000 dead Palestinians?
For the last few months I’ve seen the coverage and the deaths of 1200 Jews is highlighted. But now there are more and more sources confirming the horrifying 45,000 murdered Palestinians, the displaced 2.3 million and the million men, women, children and elderly – living under plastic tarps on the bombed out streets. All these figures dwarf the 1200.
Israelis drop gas poisoning in tunnels
And what of the hostages? Israel claims that about 100 are still alive. But few believe that. Ron Sherman, an Israeli soldier was one of the hostages found dead in a tunnel in Gaza in January 2024. He was found along with two other dead Israelis. Maayan Sherman, Ron’s mother was told that her son was killed in Hamas captivity. But Maayan said otherwise, “Ron was indeed murdered,” she wrote on her Facebook page on Jan. 16, 2024 but “not by Hamas.” She insisted Ron was killed by “bombings with poisonous gasses.”
One of Israel’s critical alternative media +972 Magazine reported that Maayan made her claim after reading the unsettling findings of a pathology report delivered to her by a delegation from the Israeli army’s casualties department and the 551st brigade, whose soldiers recovered Sherman’s body from Gaza. Maayan said, “The delegation told us that they don’t rule out gas poisoning as a result of IDF bombings, but they’re not certain.”
There have been reports of scores of hostages dying because of Israeli attacks. “The [Israeli military’s] first priority is to destroy the armed wing of Hamas and the other Palestinian factions, to undermine them in any way, even if it costs the lives of some of the hostages,” Omar Ashour said. Ashour is a professor of security and military studies at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies
The Israeli army previously admitted to killing Israeli captives in its war on Gaza, which caused an uproar within Israeli society. A year ago, Israeli soldiers shot and killed three Israeli men –hostages– as they escaped a building in the Shujaiya neighbourhood east of Gaza City, shirtless and holding white flags.
2500% more Palestinians killed than Israelis
A source told +972 and Local Call that during the attacks, which killed only a few dozen Hamas supporters, anyone hiding in tunnels was killed “not only from a bomb that hit them, but also from the fact that the bombings release gasses [including carbon monoxide] inside the tunnels.”
In 2021, Gadi Eizenkot, then the IDF Chief of Staff who is now Minister Without Portfolio in Netanyahu’s war cabinet, said later that the operation was intended to “turn the tunnels into a death trap” and kill hundreds of Hamas members.
But I digress—let’s look at the death count:
1706 Israelis dead versus 46,786Palestinians. That’s a slaughter – there were 2500% more Palestinian deaths than Israeli losses.
Yesterday, I was in the fitness club swimming pool and overheard M, a Jewish woman I know, talking about helping to serve Xmas dinner to 30 poor people at a local seniors’ day centre. From the side of the pool she used her cell phone to call the bakery to make sure it delivered Parkerhouse rolls on time for the meal. For years the “official” Jewish community in Halifax has been serving a holiday dinners to indigent and/or lonely people with no place to go on Christmas. So, M cares about people in need in Halifax. But she has no such commitment to stopping the genocide in Gaza – perpetrated by Jews like her own sons. On the contrary, M and other “official” Jews think Palestinians are the enemy. The Palestinians, M would agree, deserve nothing but death, murder and mutilation of their children, and literal starvation. It is Israel and Canada’s “official” Jews, who support this. They say not a word of criticism or caution about what Israel is doing. In fact we hear the opposite: boosterism for Israel, for its military might and an outcry about antisemitism in Canada.
We hear Canada’s “official” Jews berate the government which has just agreed to call a major forum on combatting antisemitism in Canada. Has there been one Canadian Jew killed or hurt in Canada since Israel started its killing spree 15 months ago? Has there been one qualified Jew deprived of a professorship at any university, deprived of patient-admitting rights at any hospital, prevented from being called to the bar after graduating law school, buying or renting a home or cottage anywhere in Canada? Has any Jew had their children turned away from admission at a public school, music lessons, buying a business or being involved in politics in Canada? Nope.
We can be suspicious…
How can it be the federal government is yielding to the demand for a national forum on antisemitism – when there has been not one inquiry (other than the police-criminal cases) about violent assaults on Muslims in Canada:
The six Muslims killed and five seriously injured at prayer at the mosque in Quebec City in 2017
The 2021premeditated murder of an entire Muslim family out for a walk in London, Ont.
The 2020 stabbing death of Mohamed-Aslim Zafis, a volunteer at a Toronto mosque
The 2018 Quebec law that “bans the wearing of face coverings for people giving or receiving a service from the state.” In practice, this means doctors, teachers, civil servants, library workers, and bus drivers cannot wear face coverings such as the Niqab and retain their jobs.
The Canadian Senate’s 2023 report, Combatting Hate: Islamophobia and its impact on Muslims in Canada reveals incidents in Edmonton, Saskatoon and across Canada in which Muslim women wearing hijabs were pushed, confronted at knife point and threatened on the streets.
The same Senate report notes that Canada’s “Muslim charities are being disproportionately scrutinized by the Canada Revenue Agency without evidence showing that Muslim charities presented any additional risk”.
Yet, as we all know, it’s taken about at least a decade and a lot of pressure from groups such as IJV (Independent Jewish Voices Canada) for the federal government to investigate and then discontinue the JNF’s (Jewish National Fund) charitable tax status.
Canada’s “official” Jews response…
Yet Canada’s “official” Jews insist they need a conference about antisemitism. Western nations are cowed by the callout of ‘antisemitism’. But it is a ruse; the conference is to divert attention away from the genocides in Gaza, and the West Bank. The conference also will perpetuate the fiction that Israel has the most moral army in the world, and that Jews are currently the most oppressed people because they are confronted with criticism about their role– and Israel’s — in perpetuating the genocide in Gaza.
Image at the top: An attack on a house in central Gaza killed at least 13 people, in the last day or two, according to Gaza’s civil defence agency as reported by the BBC here.