I was prepared to speak today about the particular motion in front of us, but I rise with a very heavy heart because of what happened before this debate took place today, and that is—folks, whether you’re Jewish or not Jewish, whether you’ve been to Israel or haven’t been to Israel, we saw a display in a democratic institution today where we could have upheld another democracy in this world, a democracy that stands for many human rights, stands for female leaders’ empowerment, stands up for LGBTQ rights, and instead, when the opposition had an opportunity to act democratically—as stated in the name “New Democratic Party”—they chose to do nothing.

We’ve seen history, time and time again, of governments who’ve done nothing, and we’ve seen at the end of that who suffers, and it has been the Jewish community time and time again. For those who’ve studied history, for those who are interested to learn more, we are all well aware of “none is too many.” Why is “none is too many” significant? Why is that phrase significant? There was a time when Canada could have done its part as a humanitarian leader in the world, and it did nothing. Instead, it turned a boat away and let future families, grandparents, children, people of all ages—it turned them away, deprived them from a free future here in Canada and ultimately sent them to their death.

Here today, we had an opportunity to rise above the noise, to stand up for democracy in this Legislature, and we had folks in this Legislature who did not do so. And as an individual who has fled different conflicts, whose family has fled different conflicts—we’ve all come here for a good reason: To provide voice to the voiceless, to provide both sides. We see many of that reflected in here. That wasn’t done today. It wasn’t reflecting a side; it was the status quo to just do nothing. That was a shame. I am very disappointed and very sad, and that’s why I do rise with a heavy heart.

This House today, for this motion, is seized with a grave issue. It has one of its members engaged in conduct so egregious that official censure is the only possible response. But that’s a question, Speaker: Is that the only possible response? This Assembly is meant to be a place for debate, for disagreement. Disagreements are expected, frankly. We’ve heard them many times. In fact, I think all parties and all members here welcome some of the disagreements. The bar for a censure motion, though, should be high, and it has been high. We do not make the decision to censure a member of this place lightly, nor should we support censure motions for frivolous or partisan reasons.

I’ve therefore approached my decision on this motion with the seriousness that it really deserves, and I have kept an open mind despite the vote that happened earlier today. I’ve read the statement from the member for Hamilton Centre several times, as hard as it was to read. I’ve also made note of her prior conduct, as well as her subsequent behaviour. I’ve observed first-hand the impacts her words and her actions have had on members of the Ontario Jewish community and the hurt that they felt. I fear for their safety. I’m following the debate in this place closely.

Speaker, when we think about the debate here and this democratic institution and the things we uphold, we uphold many rights. Many of those rights are codified in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that guarantees these fundamental rights. For example, a right that all of us represent as we get democratically elected is right number 2(a), “freedom of conscience and religion.” Many people from different parts of the world flee to Canada for this very coveted, respected part of our charter. When you contrast this charter that we have in our country, that all of us represent, with the Hamas charter, the Hamas charter does not give freedom of religion. It actually specifically calls out for the death of the Jewish people.

Let me quote you from the Islamic Resistance Movement, which is one of the links against the “Zionist invaders,” as you call them. This is translated from the original language, but the quote here is, “But the Jews will not be pleased with thee, neither the Christians, until thou follow their religion; say, the direction of Allah is the true direction. And verily if thou follow their desires, after the knowledge which hath been given thee, thou shalt find no patron or protector against Allah.” That’s their 120th verse.

This is the Islamic Resistance Movement, which is against one of the folks that we’re all talking about here when it comes to the conflict. They’re just invaders of the poor folks we talk about in Gaza and Palestine as they have been the invaders of what just recently happened with Israel.

But also look at section 2(b) of our charter, “freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication.” Speaker, Hamas has no freedom of press, no freedom of media or communication.

Then we have, in our charter, “freedom of peaceful assembly; and freedom of association.” We have democratic rights of citizens. Every citizen of Canada has the right to vote. We have set out maximum lengths for Parliament. But Hamas doesn’t have the right to vote for everyone.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights of life, liberty and security: “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.”

Speaker, Hamas has no rights for the Jews, unlike Israel, which has rights for every minority that chooses Israel as the place of belonging and their home. In fact, Hamas’s charter specifically calls for the death of Jewish people. Let me quote from you their charter, “The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: ‘O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.’”

They have the words “kill them” in their charter, Speaker. It’s unfathomable. I can’t stand up and vote for something that has “kill them,” no matter who it is. If it’s a Hindu, a Muslim, an Arab, a Jew, a Christian, I can’t support that. It explicitly says “kill them” in their charter. It’s a shame for anyone that could stand up and support such a thing, and certainly we don’t as Canadians. I hope we do not as Canadians, and I hope that the opposition proves me and others otherwise.

But those are the rights that we have in Canada that are not allotted to those who are represented by Hamas. My heart goes out to those individuals because not all of a them have the ability to democratically vote for their leadership and be able to vote a government like they have here, and that constitutes both the government and the opposition, and, frankly, any third-party members also who get elected.

But, Speaker, to jump ahead a little bit to my conclusion: After I’ve followed this debate intensely, read the comments that the member posted and I’ve come ahead to this conclusion: I believe the member’s conduct rises to such a level that a censure motion is the only acceptable response and I will, therefore, be supporting this motion and now will urge other members to do so. Let me tell you and let me set out my reasons.

Mr. Speaker, more Jews were killed in the Hamas attack on October 7 than any other day since the Holocaust. Of those who were slaughtered, six were Canadians, more remain kidnapped, and we pray for their safe return. We all saw photos. We all watched the videos. We heard the screams of young women being kidnapped, of children crying, of young women violated, of moms being dragged away, of parents remaining brave in the face of terror—and there’s so much horror that has occurred, I cannot read more as I won’t be able to keep it together.

But this affects us all in different ways. We all know how it affected the member for Hamilton Centre. With dead bodies still warm in the grave, the member issued a statement so heartless and vile that her own leader had to repudiate it, a statement that blamed the victim and repeated the blood libel. That statement continues to be at the very top of the member for Hamilton Centre’s social media page for all to read. She’s unapologetic. The statement is a window into her mind and into her heart, into what she really thinks about terrorism and feels about Jews like me.

Speaker, I will not dwell longer on bleak things. Instead, I’d like to spend a few minutes or two addressing a few of the factual claims that the member made in her statement that, I think, deserve a rebuttal. I will speak to them and speak to the failure of the leadership from the Leader of the Opposition.

In the impugned statement, the member called Israel an apartheid state. This is a serious charge. It is a reference to apartheid South Africa. In apartheid South Africa, people who weren’t white were denied the right to vote. They were forced into different schools. They were treated as second-class citizens. Canada, under Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, was a global leader in the fight against apartheid South Africa. Later in life, the late Nelson Mandela came to Toronto when Mike Harris was Premier, and I was still in school then—to think that I was still in school then. Mike Harris met with Nelson Mandela, and Nelson Mandela came to thank Canadians for being a leader in the fight against apartheid.

The member’s charge that Israel is an apartheid state is meant to conjure up memories of South Africa under apartheid to emotionally manipulate us, except nothing about South Africa’s analogy applies to Israel. Israeli Arabs have the right to vote. Israeli Arabs serve in its Parliament. Israeli Arabs are full citizens, be they male or female or identify as anything else. In fact, an Arab Israeli has more democratic rights and protections than a citizen of Israel’s neighbours. Speaker, let me repeat that: An Arab Israeli has more democratic rights and protections than a citizen in most of Israel’s neighbouring countries. This is because, unlike many of its neighbours, Israel is a democracy.

I have tried to address the apartheid charge related to Arabs who live within Israel, but what about Gaza? What about the West Bank? What about the deplorable conditions under which they live? I care about them just as much as I care about the conditions of Jews and the conditions they live in in Israel. But Speaker, as for Gaza, Israel evacuated the Gaza Strip in 2005. Even though it’s fashionable to say Israel occupies Gaza, the reality is this hasn’t been true for decades.

Hamas won the election in 2006, and the first thing it did was violently eliminate its main opposition. Hamas hasn’t held elections since then. Instead, it has lined its pockets with humanitarian assistance that has gone into Gaza and launched terrorist attacks against Israel. As for the West Bank, it is mostly under the control of the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian Authority leader is currently in the 18th year of what was supposed to be a four-year term, having repeatedly postponed elections.

Whatever this is, it is not Israeli apartheid. The member’s accusation that Israel is an apartheid state is an insult to the memories of those who suffered under apartheid in South Africa. It is also blood libel against the Jewish people. It is evidence of a new Jewish hate, a new anti-Semitism.

I’ll turn now to another part of the member’s statement. She accuses Israel of being a settler-colonist state. Ms. Speaker, when I first heard the words “settler colonialism,” it brought back memories to my university days. Though you should never ask a woman her age, my time in university is longer ago than I care to admit. But I remember one thing or two about academic jargon. As someone who came from the Soviet Union, I think of George Orwell, who wrote that some ideas are so dumb that only anyone with a PhD would believe them. This is the case with the term “settler colonialism.”

Settler colonialism is a term favoured by professors of decolonization studies and post-colonial studies. It’s very much academic jargon, but it is being abused and applied in the context of the Middle East. The question here is, is it properly being applied to what’s happening in the Middle East? The answer is no. Jews have been continuously present in the land of Israel since Biblical times. If people who have been there for millennia are settler colonialists, then the term “settler colonialism” has no meaning.

Let me put the question another way: If a Jew is a settler colonialist in the land of Israel, in what part of the world is he not or she not a settler? Where can she or he or they call home? Where do they come from?

I think we know the member for Hamilton Centre, and I know how they may answer. They would answer, “Nowhere.” They’d say that there’s “nowhere to go, nowhere to flee—from the river to the sea.” The settler-colonialist charge is bankrupt both intellectually and morally when you indicate things like “river to the sea.” To believe it, you either need to be a radical with tenure in a university humanities faculty, or someone with a two-digit IQ taking one of their classes.

I want to turn briefly to the Leader of the Opposition. Earlier this week, the Leader of the Opposition stood in this place and accused Israel of launching an air strike on a hospital in Gaza that killed hundreds of civilians. We now know this to have been disinformation—disinformation planted by Hamas and accepted uncritically by many different media outlets, spread and amplified by all opposition parties, spurring protests across the province. Now we know the truth. There was no air strike against the hospital. It was a Hamas rocket that failed to reach its intended target in Israel and instead landed in a hospital parking lot. Those deaths rest on the moral conscience of Hamas.

But has the Leader of the Opposition retracted her accusation that Israel launched an air strike against a hospital? Has she accepted the truth of the matter as confirmed yesterday by President Biden and a bipartisan group of American senators? Given that she rushed to accept the Hamas version of events, then spread it in this place, I believe she has a positive obligation to set the record straight—to correct the record, to tell us what she thinks. If she declines to do so, she’s allowing the blood libel that Jews launched an air strike against a hospital to spread yet further. She would be willing into existence the next “jet fuel can’t melt steel” conspiracy theory. Maybe this is her plan.

Increasingly, Mr. Speaker, I’m coming to think that the member for Hamilton Centre is not an outlier within the opposition. Maybe she may be part of its vanguard. Maybe the member for Hamilton Centre said what the opposition secretly believes to be true but are too politically astute enough not to admit it publicly. Perhaps the opposition all wish they could just wear their old university keffiyeh, find an old protest sign and join the rabble on the streets ranting and raving about Zionism every evening at 2 Bloor Street East.

Speaker, let me conclude by returning to the motion at hand, why the member for Hamilton Centre’s statement is so beyond the pale and why she must be censured. My sincere hope is that the Palestinians achieve peace with Israel. The member for Hamilton Centre wants the Palestinians to achieve peace instead of Israel. She wants peace that negates Israel’s very existence, but this is not peace. It is conquest—conquest from the river to the sea. This is why I’ll be voting to censure this member.