As hostages rot in Hamas tunnels, Canada rewards terrorists

Article content

The images of an emaciated Evyatar David digging his own grave in a Hamas terror tunnel should elicit outrage from the world. The video was released last week by the Al-Qassam Brigades, the elite military wing of Hamas. 

Article content

They showed the 24-year-old Israeli, who was taken hostage on Oct. 7, 2023, looking like a skeleton, but one digging his own grave in a dark, underground tunnel.

Article content

Article content

The release of the video of David came just after the release of a video from Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a fellow traveller with Hamas, of 22-year-old Rom Braslavski. The young man is seen writhing on the floor and saying that food and water must be brought to Gaza. 

I’ve seen a lot in my career, covered heinous murders, child abuse court cases, witnessed destruction firsthand, and I’ve stood in the Kibbutz homes that Hamas attacked and burned people alive in, when you could still smell the fire and the death. 

These videos shocked me, they repulsed me, I wanted to vomit. 

Article content

Article content

Yet, the people who produced these propaganda videos are the ones who have benefitted from the decision by Canada – along with France and Britain – to recognize a Palestinian State this coming September at the United Nations General Assembly. The very people who would carry out horrific terrorist attacks, take hundreds of hostages and hold them in deplorable conditions are the beneficiaries of Canada’s naive foreign policy under Prime Minister Mark Carney. 

“Canada intends to recognize the State of Palestine at the 80th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in September 2025,” Carney said last Wednesday. 

He went on to lay out a pile of conditions, including elections that will happen in 2026 – long after the vote at the UN has happened – and claims that Hamas can have no part in these elections or the future of a Palestinian state. With all due respect to Prime Minister Carney, the leaders in Gaza and the West Bank – or Judea and Samaria as it is properly known – have made these claims before to bigger countries, bigger leaders, with more to offer them, and they have broken them every single time. 

Article content

Carney, by his unilateral action, which goes against a vote in Parliament on this issue just last year, has granted a PR win for Hamas. But don’t take my word for it, here is what Hamas themselves said. 

“The initiative by several countries to recognize a Palestinian state is one of the fruits of Oct. 7,” Hamas senior member Ghāzi Hamad told Al Jazeera in an interview. 

“Without our weapons, no one would be looking in our direction.” 

In the past, Hamad has said that given the chance, Hamas would commit Oct. 7-style attacks over and over again until Israel was destroyed. He also has denounced the idea of a two-state solution and said the Oct. 7 attacks were carried out in part to thwart the normalization of relations between Israel and several Arab neighbours. 

Article content

If you think Hamad doesn’t look like he’s starving in Gaza, it’s because like most of the terror group’s senior leadership, he doesn’t live there. He and his cadre or fellow villains coordinate Hamas activities from a very safe distance in places like Beirut, Cairo or Doha. 

That includes releasing videos of hostages in emaciated states. 

Make no mistake, this Hamas video of Evyatar David, like the one released by PIJ of Rom Braslavski, are nothing but pure propaganda. If the world had its head screwed on straight these videos would have backfired by now and ramped up rage against the terrorists, instead these groups continue to garner support. 

As Israel delivers aid to the United Nations to be distributed, Hamas steals it and either feeds their fighters or sells it on the black market for a significant profit. Don’t worry though, Canada’s overstretched military, the men and women asked to fly planes in less than stellar shape just did an air drop of food aid into Gaza. 

Article content

Will any of that food aid reach Evyatar David or Rom Braslavski? That’s doubtful, but Canadians – especially Carney supporters – can stay smug. They did the right thing they can tell themselves, they did the humanitarian thing. 

In reality, they emboldened a banned terrorist group that is now taking credit for Canada’s decision to recognize a Palestinian state by calling it a fruit of Oct. 7. 

Be careful who you endorse and who you stand next to. 

Article content