This past Sunday evening, I attended the Challah for #Israel, a prayer event hosted by Jewish women from Chabad Newmarket. I was honoured to pray alongside women in my community for all the innocent lives that were lost and for those in captivity in Israel.

The tragic loss of life and the terror invoked among the men, women, families and children in Israel is beyond words. I want you all to know that I condemn Hamas’s heinous acts on the people of Israel. Racism, hate and discrimination have no place in Ontario and the safety of all communities has, and always remains, of the utmost importance.

During this event, I had the privilege of kneading the challah dough, reading a memorial prayer, listening to prayers in English and in Hebrew. When we were praying, the challah dough rose and then we braided the dough. Today, I believe the braided challah has become a beacon of support, hope and prayer for the people of Israel and reflects the heartfelt sorrow we feel for those who have lost their loved ones.

I pray for a peaceable outcome for all people. For all those innocent souls lost, I pray that their souls, through the mercy of God, may rest in peace.

I have been extremely fortunate to have lived among, supported, represented and advocated for the Jewish community throughout my life and my time in office.

My best friend, growing up, was the daughter of Canada’s former Solicitor General Robert Kaplan, who was Jewish, and that was my introduction to the community. I know members of the community to be fundamentally decent people who value life and family and have no desire to harm anyone. Representatives of the community are often the first to stand up, stand shoulder to shoulder with other community or faith groups when that group has been targeted, such as joining hands around a mosque, for example, which I saw them do. Unfortunately, some faith leaders have not been so quick to reciprocate at this difficult time for Israel, but I hold out hope that they will.

Speaker, words like “strong” and “united” cannot express the extent of the resiliency of the Jewish community in my riding and abroad in recent weeks. Within my riding, organizations are hosting vigils, community fundraising dinners and workshops on how to cope during these difficult times, and we will stand by them—this government, myself and my colleagues.

Some may recall my previous member’s statement on Wednesday, before the terrorist attack on Israel. I condemned the acts of vandalism against the Jewish community, which had occurred already in my riding during the High Holy Days. With the outbreak of the war, further displays of hate and intolerance, we cannot be complacent. We must remind ourselves that mutual respect and tolerance are no small part of what makes Ontario exceptional.

When I was preparing for this debate, I looked back at a number of historical things. I thought about a lot of different things. Ultimately, what we’re talking about is the Hamas terrorist organization and the attacks that they made on Israel and the Jewish people that they killed. On October 7, it was the most Jews killed since the Holocaust. I thought about that, and I took a step back and started looking at some of the things from the Holocaust moving forward.

Last year, in January when we weren’t sitting, I had a couple of days where I took a little bit of time with my wife and actually read a couple of books. The books I read—my son joked with me that it was some light reading: The Tattooist of Auschwitz and The Holocaust by Bullets were the two books. When you read the atrocities that happened during Nazi Germany and the attacks on Jews from it, and we look at the world today, nobody holds the German people accountable for what the Nazi Party did and the atrocities that they did. I think that is one of the key things we have to remember today with this conflict. No one is saying that Palestinian citizens, those innocent individuals who live in Gaza, are responsible for this. It is the Hamas terrorist organization that has done this.

As I look back at my life and some of the things that have gone on—and I talked to my kids about this—we all live in 2023, yes, but we live in a vastly different world here in Ontario than they do in the Middle East. It’s really difficult to take what would be our standards, our norms, and apply that in Israel.

My daughter asked me about this. She said, “Why can’t we?” I said to her, “You’re 26. Have you ever heard air-raid sirens?” Her answer was no. Air-raid sirens are something that frequently go off in different communities in Israel. On October the 7th at 6:30 in the morning in Jerusalem the air-raid sirens went off.

I’m 53. The only time I’ve heard an air-raid siren go off is when they were doing some work on a building that had an air-raid siren and they made a mistake on the electrical and it went off because they thought they were removing the electricity to that siren, but they actually activated the electricity to the siren. Everyone was confused as to what that noise was. But it’s not an unusual sound to hear in Israel.

My daughter said to me, “There’s a report of the terrorists coming into the kibbutz and going into safe rooms. What’s a safe room?” When you stop and think about that for a minute, if you live in Israel, when you build your home, you build a bomb-resistant room to protect your family from terrorist attacks. We don’t live in the same world that they do, because we don’t have to have that. We don’t have anything in our Ontario building code to define what a safe room should be, or how thick the walls should be to protect you from a rocket attack. And yet, we have people who are saying this is normal. It’s not normal for us. It’s a completely different world that they’re living in. The threat of a terrorist attack is so great in Israel that they hear air-raid sirens frequently, that they have to build a room in their home that is bomb-resistant, because that’s what they face on a daily basis.

We had a number of years of peace in Israel, and when I think back again to my own childhood—I’m 53; I was born in 1970. I was not alive during the Six-Day War and I was not alive during—sorry, I was alive, but I was only three during the conflict in 1973. But I remember, in elementary school, turning on the TV and seeing on CBC, seeing on ABC or NBC—on network television, which 30-year-olds wouldn’t know anything about today because, at the time, we only had about five or six channels. But I remember seeing terrorist attacks; it seemed like it was a daily occurrence. Beirut was under attack. Tehran was under attack. Tel Aviv was under attack. It was a different world, and we got to a point where things were moving forward, where there was some semblance of peace.

The Palestine Liberation Organization was considered a terrorist organization at one point. Yasser Arafat was an enemy of most of the world at one point, and yet Israel was able to negotiate with them and come to a peace agreement. In 2000, there was an offer for a peace agreement that Hamas said no to and broke, and there have been multiple times where there have been negotiations for peace—to lay down arms and not fight—and Hamas has always said no to it. In their charter—it’s been said multiple times—in the charter for Hamas, it is the annihilation of Israel. Their statement, “From the River to the Sea,” is all of Israel.

I think back again to some of the things that I experienced as a young adult, as a teenager. I was listening to some music last night, and I know there have been a couple of times where I’ve had speeches where I’ve quoted some lyrics from songs. I’m going to do it again because I heard this last night again and it really stuck with me.

The Pink Floyd album The Final Cut: There were a lot of political statements that were in that album, but one song in particular, The Gunner’s Dream, is about Roger Waters’s father, who was a gunner in the Second World War. The lyrics—normally I don’t read stuff, I usually go from my memory, but I wanted to make sure I didn’t make a mistake on this one. Think of it from the perspective of someone who was a gunner in an aircraft in the Second World War, and the aircraft has been shot down and he’s parachuting to safety.

Floating down through the clouds

Memories come rushing up to meet me now

In the space between the heavens

And in the corner of some foreign field

I had a dream

I had a dream

Goodbye Max

Goodbye Ma

After the service when you’re walking slowly to the car

And the silver in her hair shines in the cold November air

You hear the tolling bell

And touch the silk in your lapel

And as the tear drops rise to meet the comfort of the band

You take her frail hand

And hold on to the dream

During the Second World War, the fighting was to liberate Europe, but the fighting was also because of the genocide that was being perpetrated against Jews. And the dream was that freedom. The dream was stopping the racism, the hatred and the demonizing of a race of people. The song goes on to say:

A place to stay

Enough to eat

Somewhere old heroes shuffle safely down the street

Where you can speak out loud

About your doubts and fears

And what’s more no one ever disappears

You never hear their standard issue kicking in your door

You can relax on both sides of the tracks

And maniacs don’t blow holes in bandsmen by remote control

And everyone has recourse to the law

And no one kills the children anymore

And no one kills the children anymore

Night after night

Going round and round my brain

His dream is driving me insane

In the corner of some foreign field

The gunner sleeps tonight

What’s done is done

We cannot just write off his final scene

Take heed of the dream....

That was written in 1983, and it was the memories of a musician—what his father went through fighting against an oppressive group who wanted to destroy an entire race of people because they saw those people as the source of all of their problems. When the rest of the world got involved in the war and the rest of the world stepped forward, and they saw the atrocities that were perpetuated on these individuals—we hear the stories of what it looked like in Auschwitz. We’ve seen the photos of how Jews were treated.

Germany—the Nazis—knew what they were doing was wrong, and they hid it. Hamas livestreamed what they were doing and were very proud of the fact that they went into villages and killed people, families, children. There was a peace festival going on.

Think about this. Let’s put it in perspective for North America. Taylor Swift draws how many thousands of people to one of her events? And all of those Taylor Swift fans are there, cheering on, listening to the music, and armed terrorists come in and shoot and kill 260 of them. We don’t live in a part of the world where that happens. Most people in Ontario cannot comprehend that because we’ve never had to experience that.

That’s what happened on October 7. You had thousands of people who were at a peace festival around music who got up that morning thinking they were going to have a great time, thinking they were going to be celebrating something. They were going to be with their friends. They were going to have just these memories that were going to last with them forever, and yes, they have memories now that will last forever, but those are not the memories that they should have.

For anyone to stand up and say that Hamas is justified in what they did is embarrassing. For anyone to stand up and defend Hamas, it is embarrassing.

After the Second World War, the world said, “We will not forget,” but we have people today who are advocating that we forget, who are advocating that Israel should not defend itself. There are people right now on social media from our communities who are standing up and saying Israel does not have the right to defend itself.

I remind you that, at 6:30 a.m., air-raid sirens went off in Jerusalem, not because of anything that the Jewish people in Israel did, but because a terrorist organization wanted to strike fear in an entire country, an organization whose mandate says that they are going to destroy the State of Israel.

A number of people have said that if they just lay down their weapons, it would all be over. You’re right. If Israel laid down their weapons, it would all be over. There would be no Israel. There would be an annihilation of Jews. That cannot happen. Anyone who professes to be anti-racist, anyone who stands up and says that we have to treat everyone equally, and then, in the next breath, defends Hamas is a word that I would be asked to withdraw, so I won’t say it directly, but it starts with an animal, like a hippo, and ends with a crit—

October 7 was a tragic day for Israel, the Jewish community and the entire world. The shocking events of that day saw children, the elderly and other Jewish people subject to abduction, violence and brutality at the hands of Hamas.

Hamas’s global objectives of violence are clearly stated in its charter. Its top leaders recently declared a global day of jihad on Friday, encouraging Hamas supporters worldwide to threaten Jews where they reside, including in Canada. Jewish communities in Canada received this message, leading to the cautious absence of many children from schools and community events on that day. It’s a loss for these children, missing out on significant moments due to concerns about their safety and hatred based on their identity, which is unacceptable in a nation that values religious diversity.

These terror attacks are not isolated conflicts happening in a distant part of the world; their impact is even felt in places like Ontario. The Vital-Kaploun family in Ottawa, for instance, is mourning the senseless murder of Adi Vital-Kaploun, a 33-year-old Israeli Canadian. She was targeted simply because she was Jewish. Adi was a beautiful soul and extraordinary mother to two young boys who now have to grow up without her because terrorists took her life. She had a promising future ahead of her, making her loss even more tragic.

Tragically, other Canadians have also suffered in these attacks, with six confirmed dead and two still missing due to the Hamas assault in Israel. There are no words adequate to convey the sheer scale and brutality of the largest attack on Jewish people since the Holocaust.

During the assault on Israeli border communities, terrorists killed over 1,300 people, with the majority being civilians. There is no justification for Hamas’s actions among civilized people. Mr. Speaker, silence is deafening, and we cannot afford to remain silent at this moment. Israel and Jews worldwide understand the power of words. Families are left anxiously awaiting news of their loved ones in Gaza. It’s imperative to condemn Hamas and their heinous acts of terror, which have brought immense turmoil to the region. These acts involve using innocent Palestinians as human shields to launch attacks on Israel, an inhuman tactic. There’s no excuse, no justification for the horrors witnessed.

Israel was established as a sanctuary for the Jewish people, offering safety and hope after the Holocaust. Despite facing persistent threats and attacks, Israel has maintained its commitment to the rule of law and demonstrated humility. Israel represents a beacon of hope and a safe haven for Jews worldwide. The recent terrorist attacks by Hamas have brought tragedy and a reminder of historical atrocities like the Holocaust. Israel’s continuous existence is crucial because Jews have historically faced insecurity and persecution in various regions. Israel is not only a place of safety, but also a multicultural nation exemplifying ethnic and cultural diversity.

The IDF is unified in their mission to defend their nation, including the safe return of Canadian hostages. The international community’s support for Israel has been heartening, with many voices condemning Hamas’s actions. However, it is disheartening that some members of the opposition have failed to address anti-Semitism within their ranks.

Madam Speaker, we must remain strong in our support for Israel and the Jewish people both at home and abroad. In Ontario and throughout Canada, our Jewish friends and neighbours face an ongoing threat of violence, reminding us of the need to eradicate anti-Semitism. The government has committed over $25 million through the Anti-Hate Security and Prevention Grant to address rising hate against religious and minority groups, including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. Additionally, it is investing $150,000 to support the new Toronto Holocaust Museum and has mandated Holocaust education in schools.

A better future cannot be achieved if we forget the past or lose sight of our identity and aspirations. No one in Ontario should ever face targeting due to their faith and no one should ever be afraid to practise their religion. Now more than ever, Ontario’s Jewish community needs our support. We must uphold the values that unite us and reject brutal acts of terror from Hamas and other terrorist groups around the world. As we stand strong in our support for Israel, we pray for the safety of all innocent people. Hamas’s actions and unwavering dedication to terror show no regard for human life, whether Israeli or Palestinian.

Now more than ever, we hope for lasting peace and freedom for all in the region, which can only be achieved by defeating the terrorist group Hamas for the benefit of Israel, the Palestinian people and all of humanity.

May God bless the memory of those we’ve lost, bring home those who were taken and bless the people of Israel.