Ezra Levant’s May 17, 2018 episode scrutinizes Justin Trudeau’s lavish foreign trips—like a week in India with his family and private chef—while exposing his $20K paid speeches as an MP. It highlights his hypocrisy on tolerance after flip-flopping on FGM criticism in the citizenship guide and condemns his shallow opposition to Trump, including defending Hamas’ violent border protests while ignoring Israel’s security measures. The episode also targets CJPME’s BDS tactics, like unauthorized warning labels on Israeli products, and their lawsuit against Levant’s show, calling it intimidation. Robert Walker of Hasbara Fellowship counters anti-Israel propaganda with education, framing BDS as a fringe movement despite legal challenges, while Levant ties Trudeau’s moral posturing to broader censorship pressures on Silicon Valley. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, Justin Trudeau goes on another foreign junket.
I'll show you what he was up to in New York City while things fell apart back here in Canada.
It's May 17th, and you're watching The Ezra LeVant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
You come here once a year with a sign, and you feel morally superior.
The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
Justin Trudeau has made more than 50 foreign trips as prime minister.
50.
Some of them could be called work trips if showing out for some photo ops is considered work.
For example, he spent a week in India in February, brought his whole family, oh, and he flew in his own private chef with him from Canada, because I guess they don't know how to make Indian food in India.
But he did less than one day's work all week.
So yeah, he's just continuing his lavish trust fund lifestyle.
But now instead of living off the wealth he inherited from his father and grandfather, he's living off you and me.
Now Justin Trudeau loves New York, and who doesn't?
He's always jetting down there to take in fine restaurants and shows, and he likes to play the big shot.
There was a Canadian-themed play on Broadway, and that's great.
Trudeau bought free tickets for everyone.
Like some drunk guy at a bar buying around for everybody with his rent money that he doesn't have, except that buying tickets for everybody.
That was our money.
He spent, and instead of normal guys in a bar, it was every dictatorship of the United Nations.
Trudeau invited every single dictatorship's UN ambassadors to see the play.
Most of them didn't even attend, but he paid for their tickets anyways.
He's campaigning to be on the UN Security Council.
What a loser.
But the media love him, and why not?
See, they get to travel with him.
So they fly down to New York City to cover his important stuff there.
It's a junket for them, too, which is why they don't criticize his flights.
50 trips for Trudeau is 50 trips for lucky Ottawa journalists.
Wouldn't you like to go to India and New York and Paris and the Bahamas too?
There are a lot of problems in Canada these days.
Kinder Morgan says they're going to cancel their $7.4 billion investment in a pipeline project because of political obstacles.
BC is in a constitutional war against Alberta and Saskatchewan.
In Quebec, tens of thousands of illegal migrants pour across the border from the United States and they're not sending their best.
They're America's rejects who are worried Trump will depart them and who know Trudeau is a soft touch.
Our friend Joe Warmington reported that police are on alert for the brutal MS-13 gang that destroyed El Salvador, infiltrated the United States, and is now walking into Canada.
Look at them.
They're terrifying.
And then there's foreign affairs, whether it's the failing NAFTA negotiations or Trudeau condemning Israel for stopping these Hamas rioters from crossing into Israeli territory.
So yeah, what better time for Trudeau to take his, what is it, his 56th vacation in two and a half years?
But of course, because he's always a hit in foreign countries, they love him because they don't know him the way we do, and they don't have to live under him the way we do.
And he almost always throws around gifts of our tax dollars when he's traveling, like some grand prince having servants falling behind him, throwing rose petals in his wake.
Come to think of it, I bet he did that rose petal thing in his India trip between all his fancy dancing.
Look at that.
This is a business trip.
Just look at that.
That's him on a business trip paid for by your tax dollars.
Anyways, so on trip 56, Trudeau was in New York yesterday accepting an honorary degree from a private university called NYU, New York University.
By the way, tuition for an undergraduate degree there is about 51 grand U.S.
It's about $65,000 Canadian.
So it's a nice fit for Trudeau and his two nannies and his luxury trips to that billionaire's island in the Bahamas.
Trudeau himself washed out of college.
He was just too bored to finish his environmental degree or whatever it was.
But he loves to pose and play dress up.
I mean, when he was in India, he pretended he was a Bollywood actor, even when the Bollywood actor he actually met with was dressed normally.
At NYU, he got to play dress up and he wore a costume party hat and he pretended to be a scholar.
If it were just a photo op, it might have worked.
But then the damn fool opened his mouth.
I want to show you some of the vacuous things our little shiny pony said while he was down in New York.
It's just cringy.
I really think he wrote this speech himself.
I'll show you.
Anyway, he starts off by talking about himself and his life of privilege.
I think he actually wrote this part of the speech because it's so vain.
But of course, it's his favorite topic, him and himself.
And he's so oblivious to it.
I mean, remember, he grew up as a trust fund kid.
And his father, Pierre Trudeau, was a trust fund kid.
The last Trudeau who worked for a living was his grandfather, who he never met.
So he grew up as a trust fund kid, no responsibilities, went to school if he wanted to, worked odd jobs if he wanted to, but mainly he didn't want to.
He was a near-do-well.
He once bragged to an Iranian newspaper about how he had, instead of working, he visited 90 different countries just as a tourist bum.
90 countries.
And he just sent the bills to daddy's trust fund lawyers.
Here, he's doing that again.
Look.
When I graduated in the early 1990s, I went on a trip around the world with a few good friends who actually remain good friends to this day, which is a sort of a miracle.
We trekked and traveled mostly overland from Europe to Africa to Asia.
And that remains one of the great formative experiences of my life.
It was an amazing adventure.
Hey, cool story, bro.
But you know, sometimes graduation speakers talk about the graduates.
You're talking about yourself, but not based on any achievement or any vision you have or philosophy.
You're just talking about your life of unearned luxury as a spoiled rich kid.
I mean, it's funny because he says there was a lesson in it.
He said that it made him really, really, really open-minded.
I mean, just ask him how open-minded he is.
It was also an important, a really important contributor to my continued broader education because it forced me, really for the first time as an adult, to meet, engage, befriend people whose views and experiences, ideas, values, and language were very different from my own.
Really?
This is the liberal politician who banned literally any pro-life Christians from running as liberal candidates for him.
He just banned them.
Oh, and this summer he literally is banning any pro-life Christian in the entire country from getting a summer jobs grant unless they swear they agree with his own particular point of view on abortion, gay marriage, transgender rights, whatever.
But those NYU students don't know that.
They just know that a really dreamy, cool, rich kid told them something very, very deep, that it's fun to travel around the world on daddy's money.
You should try it if you can, you guys.
Step one, get daddy's money.
Step two, travel.
That's deep, man.
He keeps talking about it.
Now, maybe some of you have talked about doing something like a great trip like that after graduation.
But I'd be willing to bet one of the first things you heard was a warning.
You can't do that in this day and age.
It's not safe.
But here's my question.
Is it really just the issue of physical safety that makes our loved ones so anxious at the idea of us getting out there?
Or is it the threat that if we look past our frames, the frames of our own lives, of our own communities, structured values and belief systems, to truly engage with people who believe fundamentally different things, we could perhaps be transformed into someone new and unfamiliar.
Well, first of all, most people who go to university, even a 65 grand a year rich kid school like NYU, they have to work after they graduate.
Not even 1%ers can afford to travel for years to 90 different countries with student debt.
But really, if a child of privilege, even if a super wealthy kid wanted to travel the entire world, including Africa, the Middle East, their parents, if they said it was dangerous, that's not parents lying to trick their children.
It is dangerous, even more now than it was in the 1990s when Peter Pan there thought he'd extend his childhood deep into his 30s.
But the pure pomposity and self-regard.
Let me show you the words that he used again.
Let me read his speech as prepared.
Or is it the threat that if we look past the frames of our own lives, of our own communities' structured values and belief systems to truly engage with people who believe fundamentally different things, we could be transformed into someone new and unfamiliar?
Hey people, you know, wandering from bar to bar and hostel to hostel with your fellow Trust Fund kids, it'll totally blow your mind and make you a much, much better person.
Not studying for sure, not working on some noble project, not charitable works, not serving others, not sacrificing yourself to further a meaningful goal.
Just do, just hang out.
That's what made him so awesome.
Not boring book stuff like NYU.
Just lots of travel and lots of weed.
The current approach on drugs is not working.
I'm in favor of legalizing it.
Five or six times in my life that I've taken a puff of protecting our children from marijuana.
So yes, five or six times in my life that the continued prohibition of marijuana, that's a lot of smoking, I've never done it except with people I know and trust.
That's Trudeau from 20 to 30, just traveling in weed.
Why Trudeau Can't Abide00:13:52
I mean, it's really tough to take a life advice or moral advice from someone who accomplished so little but has such a high self-regard.
But especially as Trudeau brutally enforces the ban on Christian groups getting summer jobs grants, this part of his speech, this next part, was just amazing.
Humanity has to fight our tribal mindset.
We go to the same church?
Cool.
You're in my tribe.
You speak my language?
You're in my tribe.
You're an NYU alumni?
You're in my tribe.
You play Pokemon Go.
You're a vegetarian.
You like the Yankees.
You go to the gun range.
You're pro-choice.
Tribe.
Tribe, tribe.
See, but of course, it's not the belonging part that is the real problem.
It's the corollary.
You are part of my tribe, and they are not.
Did he say Pokemon go in there?
That was a thing in 2016.
Hillary Clinton tried to be really cool by mentioning it back then.
I don't know who created Pokemon Go.
But I'm trying to figure out how we get them to have Pokemon go to the polls.
Oh, she's so good.
She's so natural, isn't he?
It didn't work for Hillary Clinton.
Having Trudeau make a Pokemon Go joke in 2018 is even lamer.
At least he didn't start out by calling the graduates fellow kids.
I was part of a special task force of very young-looking cops who went for tradered high schools.
How do you do, fellow kids?
What?
But who cares?
Trudeau's so dreamy, isn't he?
And he's so open-minded.
Think about it.
Saying, I tolerate you actually means something like, okay, I grudgingly admit that you have a right to exist.
Just don't get in my face about it and don't date my sister.
There's not a religion in the world that asks you to tolerate thy neighbor.
So let's try for something a little more like acceptance, respect, friendship, and yes, even love.
Actually, I wish there were more religions in the world that would at least ask you to tolerate your neighbor.
Do you think Justin Trudeau has even actually read the Bible?
Do you think Justin Trudeau and his own Palace Guard show any of that acceptance, respect, friendship, or even love towards Canadians who disagree with him on anything?
Well, not if you're some Neanderthal.
We will drag along the Neanderthals who don't agree with that, and that will be our continuing approach.
Not if you're a climate denier.
I don't generally bother talking about the science behind climate change and the role humans play in the warming of our planet because it's clear and overwhelming.
My view is that my time is far better spent acting on climate change than fighting climate change deniers.
Trudeau's right-hand man, Gerald Butts, even calls people Nazis if they disagree with him, but they don't know any of that at NYU, do they?
Our celebration of difference needs to extend to differences of values and belief, too.
Seriously, this is the guy who banned Christians from getting summer jobs.
I wonder if that even registered in his tiny mind as he read his speech, if he was thinking about what a delicious joke it was, or if he really is that vacuous and vacant that he doesn't even realize what he's saying versus what he's doing.
I won't show you more of that part of the speech.
Trudeau basically praises himself as the example of the perfect man.
And then he tells everyone to be just like him.
And if you can't afford to jet around the world for years and years, just be as totally tolerant as he is, okay?
So Trudeau thinks that diversity is our strength, but there are two things in the whole world he's decided he cannot abide.
Now let me be very clear.
This is not an endorsement of moral relativism or a declaration that all points of view are valid.
Female genital mutilation is wrong, no matter how many generations have practiced it.
Anthropogenic climate change is real, no matter how much some folks want to deny it.
That's pretty weird and out of the blue.
I say again, I think he wrote the speech himself, but female genital mutilation.
That's a weird thing just to sort of mention apropos of nothing at a graduation.
But again, it was Trudeau himself who in 2011, I bet he's forgotten this, maybe too much weed.
In 2011, he argued that the Conservatives were being racist and Islamophobic when they called female genital mutilation a barbaric cultural practice.
And when Trudeau took office, he ordered that criticisms of female genital mutilation be removed from the citizenship guide.
That's weird.
And then that man-made global warming is real and that's not even debatable.
Again, it's a pretty weird thing to choose out of all the issues in the world.
Again, weird stream of consciousness thing here.
He really did write this speech himself.
But yeah, no, politicians don't get to decide what scientific theories, including the theory of man-made global warming, are up for dispute or not.
We just don't do science that way.
That's politics.
Science, you're allowed to question anything, no matter what a trust fund kid tells you.
But it sort of puts a lie to everything he said about being open-minded and respecting your opponents, doesn't he?
Trudeau has no moral center.
He just blathers.
The only thing he knows for sure is that he's better than you.
But no foreign trip for Trudeau would be complete without him condemning Canada.
Not condemning himself, no, no, no.
Or his role in Canada, no, no, no, or anything he's done, no.
But condemning other Canadians who aren't as good as him.
It's weird apologizing for other people, but never apologizing for yourself.
Have you ever heard Trudeau apologize for something he's done?
No.
He just apologizes for you and me and the rest of Canadians.
It's not a real apology, is it?
It's just a backhanded way of complimenting himself.
So of course, on his 56th foreign trip, of course he scolds Canada, blames Canada, and doing so on a foreign stage.
Being open to others is what has gradually led Canadians to the understanding that differences can and must be a source of strength, not of weakness.
And I say gradually because 20th century Canadian history is filled with counterexamples and terrible setbacks that we're still trying to remedy today, most notably the systemic marginalization and oppression of Indigenous peoples.
Yeah, about that.
Trudeau promised to fix the problem with Indian reserves that don't have clean drinking water.
Dozens of Indian reserves that he said was his top priority.
That's what he said.
That hasn't been done.
Of course not, because it was just an empty, airy campaign promise.
But literally billions of dollars in foreign aid has been shoveled at other countries.
But yeah, it was other Canadian politicians who didn't care about Indians.
Trudeau really, really does care about them, especially in foreign speeches.
Now Trudeau tried, as he always does, to smear Donald Trump.
So much of what Trudeau says and does is just a childish reaction to Trump literally doing the opposite.
It's like the game Simon says, but in reverse.
That tweet that Trudeau tweeted last year, inviting every illegal migrant to just walk into Canada, that was his impulsive reaction to Donald Trump's immigration reforms.
That's how shallow Trudeau's own policy thinking is.
So he tried to smear Trump a bit at NYU.
Of course he did.
He always does, because I hear that's how you get a really good NAFTA deal.
This is the antithesis of the polarization, the aggressive nationalism, the identity politics that have grown so common of late.
It's harder, of course.
It's always been easier to divide than unite.
But mostly, it requires true courage.
Only Trudeau has the true courage to see past identity politics.
Really?
You know what identity politics is, right?
It's telling people to see themselves as black or gay or female instead of as just Canadians, right?
I mean, Trudeau didn't invent identity politics.
He just made it far, far worse.
He appointed unqualified women to his cabinet just to get a quota because it's 2015, he said, like this woman.
So you were born in Afghanistan, correct?
I believe I was.
Yeah, that's a quota.
There is no mosque he will not attend in full costume.
He even lectures women that they're not feminist enough.
Maternal love is the love that's going to change the future of mankind.
So we'd like you to look.
We like to say people kind, not necessarily mankind.
And of course now he's a full-tilt transgender activist.
But hey, that Donald Trump is too much into identity politics and division.
There's so much in this speech that is just weird blather though.
You know, I say again, he wrote it himself because it is so, so vacuous.
You know that before Trudeau became an MP, and then even after he was elected MP, he gave speeches for pay, 20 grand a pop.
He even charged charities.
He's a millionaire, but he charged charities to speak to them.
While he was a member of parliament, he charged charities to speak.
He would send you a bill if you asked him to give you a speech.
Even though he's a rich trust fund kid, and even if he was paid to be an MP by taxpayers, he took the money.
I want to show you a clip of a typical Trudeau speech from about a decade ago.
I think this was from 2007, when he was really cashing in.
There's so many lobby groups and unions were hiring him at 20 grand a pop, not because he had anything interesting to say, but because it was a legal way to give him 20 grand to get access to them.
And you can't donate $20,000 to a politician these days, there's a maximum.
But you can hire Trudeau to give a deep speech for 15 minutes and pay him 20 grand.
Trudeau took the money even after he became an MP.
I want to play you a one-minute clip from just such a speech.
I think it's from 2007.
I think you're going to have trouble staying focused.
It's just one minute, but when it's done, it's going to seem like it's 10 minutes from now.
Let me ask you now, can you remember a single point he makes?
Does he have a single substantive thought amidst all this fog?
Here's a minute.
So how do we do that?
How we do that is to look into ourselves and look into our values and look into our individual responsibilities as citizens of the country, citizens of the world, and step up and to start thinking long term and to start thinking responsibly and to start understanding that everything each and every one of us does matters.
Because when we find ourselves to be relevant, when we find that the things that we do are making a difference, well then life gets a whole lot better.
When we are doing something in which we can follow our passion, which we can believe, in which we know that life is meaningful and that our lives are heading in a proper direction, that we are building a country that matters, then things fall into place.
That's your Prime Minister, people.
Yeah, no, I didn't retain a word of that either because there was nothing there.
It's like someone took a stack of Hallmark greeting cards with banana clichés and just read them and read them and then collected 20 grand.
I think Trudeau's graduation speech at NYU is an embarrassment.
It was shallow and vacuous and narcissistic and him telling stories about how cool he was when he was young and how courageous he was.
I think he loves giving those speeches because they're to foreigners who don't know him and don't really care and he doesn't have to answer prickly questions afterwards.
I think that's really his happy place.
Fawning crowds of adoring, clueless young people.
I think it's gross that he takes so many vacations and skips parliament so much and sends us the bill.
But really when I think about it, I think I'd rather him lie and brag to thousands of rich New Yorkers than have him actually making decisions here in Canada.
Hamas Subsidies and Propaganda00:09:26
Wouldn't you?
Stay with us for more.
Well, we often write about paid professional protesters in Canada.
Usually we're talking about eco-activists protesting a pipeline or at Occupy Wall Street type movements.
But of course, protesters are paid around the world too, including in the Gaza Strip, an authoritarian dictatorship run by the Hamas terrorist group.
And joining us now via Skype to talk about how Hamas pays people to protest and even pays them a bounty if they're injured or killed is Daniel Greenfield.
He's a Shillman Fellow at the Freedom Center and he joins us now via Skype.
Nice to see you again, Daniel.
The news of Hamas's attack on the Israel border got an enormous amount of coverage and that's exactly what Hamas needs because it's not very good at military victories, but its victories in the press are just as impressive, aren't they?
Yeah, terrorists always win through publicity.
They can't take on an army.
If they could take on an army, they wouldn't be terrorists.
They're corrupt, they're cowardly, they're incompetent, they're good at sending other people off to die or be shot and then benefiting from the headlines.
What's so disappointing about this is Hamas does this before, the idea of human shields is not new to the Middle East or to Islamic terror groups.
I think the incredible and slavish stenography by Western liberal media is partly because it was a counterpoint to Trump.
This was a great historic moment.
Donald Trump moved the embassy of the United States to Jerusalem.
Ivanka and Jared were in town.
It was this amazing historical moment that would be to Trump's credit.
So I think the mainstream media that's generally hostile to Israel to begin with, I think they put on an extra layer because they thought, well, we don't really like Israel much anyways, but let's really counter the positive media of this embassy move with hysteria about Israel massacring Palestinians.
That's my theory because Hamas later admitted that 50 of the rioters who were killed by Israeli border police were Hamas terrorists.
I mean Hamas itself boasted about it, bragged about it, but the New York Times and CNN, they were obsessed about Israel's culpability.
That's my view of things.
That's completely correct.
And I like to say that that was the day that Hamas joined the resistance.
The H-word is the word you won't see in the media anywhere, even as they're reporting on what Hamas is doing.
Because Hamas organized the people, they sent them out.
And for the media, this was a fantastic opportunity to make Trump look bad, undermine what should have been a positive moment, which the media does throughout.
So, of course, they can't talk about the fact that Hamas did it.
Otherwise, it undermines their whole case against Trump.
Yeah.
Yeah, they called these innocent civilians.
And indeed, there were some civilians there, including someone who thought it was a good idea to bring a baby to a riot at an international border.
But you have a very important story today at frontpagemag.com.
And I'd like to show it.
And here's the headline.
Thousands of Gaza Hamas thugs attack Israel for $100 a day.
Can you tell me a little bit about this payment?
Who pays whom?
Where does the money come from?
And I understand that there's special bonuses and bounties for the families of terrorists who actually die in a terrorist operation.
Tell our viewers about that.
You asked why somebody would bring a baby to riot.
The reason is that Gaza families are receiving $100 subsidy from Hamas, and $100 is good money over there to come out and actually go to the fence and to riot.
Now, of course, they don't stop at $100 subsidy.
They're escalating pay scales.
If you're wounded, you get $200.
If you're seriously wounded, you get $500.
If you're killed, you get $3,000, in which case, your family presumably collects.
So there are these upwardly scales that actually incentivize people to get into confrontations with Israel, to actually be shot, at least to claim to be shot, because you get paid even more.
We're looking at a reporter in Gaza.
Let me just read the tweet.
Raf Sanchez says, we met some young men earlier cashing $200 checks they got from Hamas after being shot by Israeli forces on Friday.
The severely injured get $500 and the families of the dead get $3,000.
Very interesting actual pictures of the checks and the young men at the bank.
I have not seen this reported widely.
Interesting enough, though, the New York Times published a correction the other day.
I think it was the New York Times, or was it the Washington Post, forgive me?
It was one of those very prestigious liberal papers.
They had originally said it was false, a fact-check, that it was a right-wing conspiracy theory that Palestinian terrorists were paid a bounty in their fact check, but they got their own fact check wrong and they later admitted that this is official Palestinian policy.
This isn't hidden.
They call them martyrs, they call them patriots, but they're not pretending this doesn't happen.
It's the willful choice of the Western media not to report this because it's not like this is secret.
It's not secret at all.
It's routine.
Any reporter on the ground knows about this.
For that matter, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority very loudly publicize their payments.
They make ceremonies out of them.
The guys who were released, the terrorists who were released previously after kidnapping of an Israeli soldier, got $3,000 checks and high-end Ikea phones.
So they do this in public.
Saddam Hussein, for that matter, did it in public when he was funding Hamas.
Other Muslim dictators also do the same thing.
They have very splashy ceremonies because this is a big public relations thing for them.
It's like winning the Olympics.
Yeah, you know, it's a good point.
They wouldn't want it secret because the whole idea is to get hundreds or thousands of would-be martyrs, basically mercenaries.
I mean, and you're right, if someone's desperately poor, and by the way, $100 might not sound like a lot of dough to you and me.
I mean, we're in Canada, the United States.
These are expensive countries to live in.
But if you're in Gaza and if you're poor and if you're unemployed, $100 U.S., that's a month's income.
And maybe you want to get injured to get the $300.
And frankly, maybe there are some people who would say, well, my son's not doing well.
He's disgraced us, or my daughter's disgraced us in an honor incident, and she'll go be a suicide bomber that'll redeem the family's honor.
Plus, we'll get a year's worth of pay in the form of three grand.
So, it's a real moral hazard in a morally hazardous region.
Some people probably say, you know what?
I've screwed up my life.
I'm going nowhere.
Let me go out in a blaze of glory, be a hero, which I wasn't in life, and make some money for my dear old mom or something.
I know that sounds insane, but that's what it's like in a Hamas dictatorship, I suppose.
Israel has definitely caught terrorists, attempted terrorists, who have said to them that they were doing it for the money.
They wanted money, just as you said, for their families.
They felt they were at some sort of dead end.
There are kids who were rejected by their parents who had done something wrong, and so on and so forth.
So, in many cases, this is very much an asset, and there are indeed people who actually attempt to carry out attacks for the money because of the salaries that they're going to receive once they get out of prison.
Yeah.
I want to show one last thing.
I think it's related.
We played this clip the other day on my noontime show called Battleground.
It purports to be a morgue in Gaza showing the victims of cruel Israeli snipers.
And you can see they're martyrs.
You know, it's a big PR moment.
There's propaganda written on their shrouds.
But as you can see, they're alive under there.
In fact, they're sort of joking around and play fighting and tickling.
I don't think this video clip was meant to go public, but this is part of Pallywood, as they say, Palestinian Hollywood, I guess.
They know that their market is not, like, their whole purpose, it's not Israel, it's New York, London, Berlin, it's Paris.
It's the propaganda war more than the shooting war, and they have actors.
I mean, it's incredible to me that the media, which holds itself out to be so skeptical of the world, is so willfully blind to this.
It's past the point of gullible.
Last word to you, Daniel.
The media has been reporting fake news from Israel, from the region forever.
They've been complicit in staging them.
Reporters have been caught in the past paying children to throw stones.
You have the ubiquitous photos of every Israeli strike where there's a new teddy bear in the middle of this burned-out rubble.
So, the media pushes fake news.
Anti-Israel Stickers Campaign00:09:08
It pushes fake news because it supports terrorists and opposes free countries that fight them.
And it pushes fake news because, in some cases, it gains political advantage as it did when it undermined the opening of the U.S. Embassy.
Well, a powerful article today, folks, if you haven't read it yet, it's on frontpagemag.com.
Thousands of Gaza Hamas thugs attack Israel for $100 a day.
$100 a day is not bad money, even in North America.
In the Gaza Strip, it positively makes you rich.
Daniel Greenfield, thanks for being with us today.
Thank you so much for having me.
All right, there you have it.
The Shillman Fellow at the Freedom Center.
Stay with us.
More ahead on The Rebel.
Welcome back.
Well, we've told you about a group called the CJPME before, that stands for Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East.
And they have a sister organization called the CJPME Foundation.
Well, who could be against Canadians for justice and peace in the Middle East?
No one.
That's not really what the group does.
They're an anti-Israel group that supports something called boycott divestment and sanctions.
BDS is the acronym.
It's basically a modern version of the German phrase, Kaufnicht Bayuden.
Don't buy from Jews.
They have a campaign to stop Canadian stores and Canadian individuals from buying products and services that come from Israel, sometimes from Israel, sometimes from the areas they say Israel illegally occupies, in their view, the West Bank.
And they have a process, a tactic, a gimmick really, where they go into Canadian stores and put warning labels on Israeli products.
They do this surreptitiously so that the store owner doesn't know.
It's, in my view, a form of mischief or vandalism.
It's basically putting a warning label saying to customers, don't buy this.
And it's sort of a sneaky move.
We've talked about this before.
I should tell you that the CJPME is suing us for our previous work on this, but that will not stop us from reporting on what they're doing.
Joining us now to talk about a bizarre little incident involving the CJPME is Robert Walker, who's the Canadian director of Hasbara Fellowship.
It's a pro-Israel organization, and he joins us now, Vice Guy.
Robert, nice to see you.
Tell us a little bit about the Hasbara Fellowship, what you do and who you are, and then I'll ask you about the bizarre little snail mail letter that you got from the CJPME.
Sure.
Well, thank you, Ezra, for having me on.
So Hasbara Fellowships is a leading pro-Israel organization in Canada working in high schools and universities and the community, really helping to educate people and train young people, especially how to tell the truth about Israel in the face of some pretty pernicious lies that are out there.
You've got an enormous job.
It's such an uphill battle.
I mean, the sheer number of anti-Semitic groups on campus, anti-Zionist, anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, I mean, it's all different versions.
And buttressed by an enormous number of Muslim students, either, and of course not all Muslim students are anti-Israel, but there's a natural pool.
And in today's left, it's such a coalition, I think.
You're really outgunned.
Tell me, do you have non-Jewish supporters as well?
Do you reach out to Christian Zionists and just other regular Canadians who aren't Jewish or Christian who believe in Israel?
Yes, for sure.
So, you know, it's I wouldn't have known this.
I wouldn't have known just how truly widespread, you know, Canadians' beliefs are in a free and democratic country, Israel, beset by, you know, Islamo-fascist countries surrounding it until I started working here.
I mean, I'm a Hasbara student from, you know, 14 years ago, but it's very heartening, you know, when we meet students or supporters or community members, Jews, you know, observant to religious Christians, secular individuals, Muslims even.
And it's an inspiring thing because I think that contrary to the narrative that our opponents are pushing, you know, the anti-Israel cause, the anti-Semitic cause, you know, the BDS movement, the, you know, Islamic extremist ideology is a pariah in society.
It is not supported despite sometimes the best efforts on behalf of some media outlets.
It really is a fringe belief among Canadians, and that's a very heartening thing to see.
Well, I'm glad to hear that, and I'm glad to hear you say that there are obviously, and we know there are pro-Israel Muslims.
In fact, whenever I'm in Israel and I talk to Muslims and Arabs, they say that there's certainly no other country in the region they'd rather live in.
And of course, on the other side, there are plenty of Canadian-born leftist extremists for whom being anti-Israel is just part of the bundle.
So there are pro-Israel Muslims, and there are a lot of anti-Israel old stock Canadians.
This is by way of preamble.
I saw your Facebook post.
I think we might have it handy, about a bizarre letter that you received from the CJPME office.
And we just spoke about this before we turned the camera on.
You got this in an envelope.
It was signed by a volunteer there.
Tell me what was in the envelope.
Tell me what they sent you.
And then I'd like you to hold up the envelope and the letter so our viewers can see it with their own eyes.
So why don't you start off by describing what you received in the mail?
Sure.
So I received on Monday a letter in the mail, official addressed to me, Robert Walker specifically, from CJPME in Montreal.
And it contained two items.
One was a pad of stickers, the stickers that you mentioned a moment ago, and I'll hold it up for you here, that basically says, warning, do not purchase this product.
It's Israeli and so on and so forth, along with a website there.
I mean, obviously, it's mischief and it's vandalism.
It came with that, as well as an information page which said enclosed.
You know, you can find, Dear Mr. Walker, you know, enclosed, you can find these stickers.
Here's how to use them, so on and so forth.
And of course, on the back, a fundraising pitch.
So, yeah, I mean, listen, it was, you know, I don't know whether I should be angry or flattered or perhaps both that CJPME would send it to me.
You know, if this was an attempt at intimidation or bullying, you know, it only doubles down my determination with Husbar Fellowships to continue and to expand the fight that we're doing, and we're seeing more successes than ever before.
But I think that, you know, the issue of these stickers themselves, you know, these are this, these are the actions of a losing side.
These are the actions of a side when you've lost the argument, you've lost the war, you have no facts, you have nothing, you don't have a leg to stand on.
So instead, you resort to thuggery and guerrilla tactics.
And it's amateurish and it's disgraceful.
And I certainly hope that people are caught doing this and they are treated accordingly.
Yeah.
Well, it is trespass, mischief, and vandalism to go into a private store and tamper with the products in a way to stop their purchase.
I don't know if any store owner would have the willpower or the cash to proceed with taking legal steps.
Can you show me the envelope?
I'd like to see the envelope that it came in.
Was it the CJPME, the charity side, or was it their activist side?
Do you have the envelope handy there?
Sure.
So I'm just covering our address here, but you'll see that it says from CJPM, CJPME rather, itself.
Right.
Because, of course, their sister organization, the CJPME Foundation, has charitable status in Canada.
I wonder which side this came from.
It looks like the non-charitable side.
I'm a free speech guy.
I believe in the right to criticize everyone and everything.
I believe in the right to be anti-Israel.
I believe that it should be legal to be a Jew-hating anti-Semite, as many of these boycott divestments sanction people.
I mean, I don't believe you can outlaw hate.
It's a human emotion.
You have to counter it.
You have to educate it.
You have to campaign against it.
I don't think you can ban an emotion called hate that motivates a lot of these boycotters.
But I'm very frustrated that they're still proceeding with their illegal trespass and mischief and vandalism tactics, which is what those stickers suggest.
And the fact that they're emailing you and sort of taunting you.
I mean, I don't think that's certainly not a criminal act or anything, but I think it sort of makes me laugh that these people regard themselves as well-respected activists or advocates with a charitable wing, too.
Campaign Against Hate00:03:33
Last word to you, Robert.
Yeah, I mean, I think you've hit the nail on the head.
I mean, this is not respected.
This is not mainstream.
This is not high-level.
You know, I'm willing to take on any day, time, or place, you know, someone on the other side who makes scurrilous claims about Israel and the Jewish people.
But this is the kind of stuff which is just, you know, it's silly and it doesn't really.
I think it's great that they're doing this, in a sense, because it shows the weaknesses of their cause and that they're grasping at straws.
And I think the more that we can highlight this, the more that we can educate, inform, and share with Canadians that this is the best that the anti-Israel cause has to offer is putting stickers on Israeli products and grocery stores.
And if that's the best that they can do, then I think that Canadians should know that.
Yeah.
Well, thanks for coming on the show.
I just thought it was a quirky, weird, petty move.
Great to see you again, Robert, and keep up the fight out there.
Thank you.
All the best.
All right.
Stay with us.
more ahead on The Rebel.
Hey, welcome back.
On my monologue yesterday about two of Trudeau's Syrian refugees who threatened to kill their daughter multiple times.
Liza writes: The government should be protecting these women, deport the parents.
I'm sure there are many who are terrified to leave Islam and fear for their lives.
We should be supporting and protecting apostates.
Yeah, no doubt.
I mean, Aksa Parves, murdered by her brother and dad, the Shafia, four women, three daughters, and one of the polygamous wives.
Those are the ones that dig in their heels and don't bow down to the rape culture, so they're murdered.
How many say, I'm not going to get killed over this and submit?
I think the disgrace here is actually the judge and the prosecution and the society that accepts this.
Keith and Helen, right?
If the parents of the threatened girl can't contain their cultural difference and they will kill her, will that be excused again as a cultural difference?
Or will it be considered a crime?
How far are we willing to go to ignore barbarism?
Well, that's a reasonable question, but of course, you'll just be called an Islamophobe or a racist if you ask it.
On my interview with Alan Bokari of Breitbard.com, Iran writes, Tonight's show had several interesting stories.
However, the Silicon Valley censoring situation missed an important fact.
As much as I dislike the executives, it is our Western governments are ordering them to censor their customers.
There's some truth there.
I've shown you 10 times that Justin Trudeau threatened Cheryl Sandberg, the CEO of Facebook, that if she doesn't censor political news before the next federal election in Canada, he will pass laws and regulations to order her to do so.
So, yeah, there is some government at work.
But Mark Zuckerberg himself admitted it in his congressional testimony.
Silicon Valley, which is a fancy way of saying a suburb of San Francisco, is a far-left political culture.
It is the most left-wing place in America, even more so than Manhattan.
So, yeah, governments are encouraging this censorship, but I don't think Silicon Valley needed much encouragement.
Well, that's our show for today.
I hope you enjoyed it.
What do you think of Trudeau's speech at NYU?
Normally, speeches are about the graduates, but that was just him telling the graduates how cool he is and how moral he is and how rich he is.
I thought it was beneath a Canadian prime minister, don't you?