Ezra Levant critiques Canada’s Bill C9, a Liberal hate crime law targeting Nazi symbols while ignoring anti-Semitic harassment—like Thornhill synagogue vandalism left unpunished—and mass immigration from countries with 96-97% anti-Semitic sentiment. He compares it to Bill C2, exposing government overreach, and warns that symbolic bans won’t curb Islamist radicalization in Europe or North America, where groups like Hamas evade prosecution despite U.S. designations since 2008. Police enforcement, he argues, is politically biased, leaving foreign activists unchecked while domestic infrastructure deals risk being hijacked by unrelated climate agendas. The law’s focus on symbols over systemic threats reveals a hollow approach to hate. [Automatically generated summary]
Is that possible even to change someone's feelings?
Hate's a human feeling, an emotion.
Can you change someone's feelings just by passing a law?
I'll take you through it line by line.
But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
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Tonight, the liberals won't do anything about pro-Hamas protesters harassing Jews in residential neighborhoods, so they've announced a bill to ban German Nazi symbols to distract you.
It's November 25th, and this is the Esther Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
I was really worried about the Liberals' online censorship law in the last parliament called the Online Harms Act.
I've seen what it's been doing in other countries that have similar laws like the UK.
That Canadian law was absolutely on track to be passed and enacted.
The Liberals, the NDP, and the bloc all supported the bill, so it was a mathematical certainty.
But then the collapse of the Trudeau government and the election had the effect of canceling all bills in Parliament that hadn't been passed yet.
So that was saved by the bell.
So the Online Harms Act itself has not yet been reintroduced, at least according to the parliamentary website, which is pretty detailed.
But other bills have that same censorship content in it.
I tell you, they're obsessed with censorship.
The Liberal government puts a higher premium on censoring Canadian citizens than on pretty much any other policy.
Bill C2, for example, we talked about it in passing before.
It would allow Canada Post to open any letter or package without a search warrant.
I'm sorry, that's crazy.
But let me focus on Bill C9, which the Liberals call the Combating Hate Act.
Now, let me stop you right there.
Hate is a human emotion.
You can no more tell someone not to feel an emotion that they are feeling than you can command someone to feel an emotion that they aren't feeling.
That's just not how people work.
It's not how emotions work.
If all it took was to pass a law, we'd have passed the Everyone Love Each Other Act a long time ago and we'd be done.
People don't work that way.
But the good thing is, we don't have to command people to feel a certain way because what really matters is what people do with their feelings.
You can use a feeling of hatred or anger as fuel to, I don't know, inspire your fight for peaceful change.
You can be motivated by love or by hate or by frustration or by whatever.
As long as you keep it positive, constructive, that's a good thing.
I think this idea that the state gets to tell you what you can or can't feel is inherently dangerous.
And of course, it's authoritarian and invasive of your privacy.
What's in your heart is up to you.
It's what you do with your hands.
It's more relevant.
And that's right there in the title of the bill.
They are going to combat your feelings.
That's not going to work, is it?
Now, by the way, there absolutely has been an explosion of hate in Canada over the past two years and more generally over the past decade.
Part of it is the woke left, often white, old stock Canadians, university students, leftists in general, who have been taught critical race theory and that white men are oppressors and Jews are impressors.
At least Israel is.
But I think it's pretty clear just by watching what's going on on the streets in the last two years in Toronto and Montreal and Mississauga and Ottawa and even in Calgary and Vancouver, the bulk of the overt hate, the anti-Semitic hate in Canada, it's imported from Muslim countries.
I'm sorry to be blunt about it.
It just is.
A recent study showed that 96% of people in Indonesia were anti-Semitic.
That's quite something, given that there are only about 200 Jews in the entire country.
It's less than one in a million people that are Jews, but they all hate Jews.
97% of people in Kuwait, 97% of people in the West Bank and Gaza, they hate Jews.
So if you bring in thousands, hundreds of thousands of people from these countries, why would it be a surprise that they have brought with them an ancient hatred?
If you really wanted to stop hate, the human emotion, frankly, the way to do it would be not to try and rewire Canadians' feelings, but to stop the mass importation of people who have a profound cultural hatred towards Jews, in many cases, towards Christians, towards the West in general.
If you were really trying to stop hate, don't bring it in.
But back to the bill.
Let's go through it.
It's only 10 pages long.
Let me take you through it.
Section one is just the name of the bill.
Section two is interesting.
It's called Willful Promotion of Hatred, Terrorism and Hate Symbols.
Everyone commits an offense who willfully promotes hatred against any identifiable group by displaying in a public place, A, a symbol that is principally used by or principally associated with a listed entity as defined in subsection 83.01.
So what is that list?
Well, it refers to the designated terrorist groups in Canada.
You can see the entire list here.
There's a few exceptions to the rule, but it's pretty much all Muslim terrorist groups.
You can see that Canada has added narco-terrorists at the request of Donald Trump earlier this year, but it's pretty much a bunch of Muslim terrorist groups.
So my read of this law is that flying the flag of a terrorist group would now become a crime in Canada.
Now, I'm skeptical.
Police, especially in big cities like Montreal and Toronto, have been ordered not to lay charges against pro-Hamas activists for other crimes like assault, harassment, trespass, uttering threats, or even just traffic offenses.
I mean, compare the lack of enforcement against pro-Hamas extremists to the over-enforcement against peaceful truckers.
To me, the craziest moment was that when the pro-Hamas extremists in my own neighborhood literally reenacted a scene involving a mannequin that was supposed to look like the former head of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the Hamas terrorist Yahya Sinwar in a Jewish neighborhood.
They reenacted his last moments while blocking Jews on the sidewalk and screaming at Jews through a loudspeaker.
Yeah, pretty sure that if assault charges aren't filed against Hamas protesters, flying a flag charges won't either.
But we'll see.
Of course, terrorist supporters can move faster than the law.
In Canada and around the West, Hamas supporters have made up two new symbols.
Believe it or not, one is a watermelon slice.
So that's the symbol for Hamas and for attacking Israel.
It's pretty tough to ban a watermelon image.
And for some reason, Hamas supporters wear the watermelon slice.
Here's an employee of Flare Airlines wearing the Hamas watermelon.
Always a good feeling to know that a terrorist supporter works for a Canadian airline, yikes.
And they also use the upside-down red triangle, which unfortunately looks like the Canadian tire symbol.
It's a nod to Hamas propaganda videos where that red triangle indicates Hamas trying to kill someone.
It's the targeting.
Now, I've seen a few terrorist flags flying in Canada, for sure.
And you see some crazy things out there.
Here's David Menzies interviewing a delightful young lady who happens to be a terrorist supporter who is wearing machine gun earrings in Mississauga.
But look, the problem in Canada really isn't with a flag or with earrings or with symbols, is it?
It's with the law breaking.
And the law breaking and the symbols comes from people that if you bring in 2 million or 3 million people to Canada who hate Jews, who hate Christians, who hate the West, look, earrings are the least of it.
The flags are the least of it.
The primary problem, the root of the problem, is mass immigration.
It's not the secondary issues, really.
Secondary issues like the police being terrified to do anything about this.
It's all coming back to the primary problem.
The flag is not the problem.
It's the people who would hold the flag.
But let's keep moving.
I want to go through the bill.
You'll see that in addition to terrorist symbols being added, so are the old Nazi symbols, or at least a couple of them.
Let me read.
The Nazi Hockenkreits, also known as the Nazi swastika, or the Nazi double Sigrun, also known as the SS Bolts, or a symbol that so nearly resembles a symbol described in paragraph A or B, that is likely to be confused with that symbol.
So they're banning basically the swastika and the SS symbol.
Now, I don't like Nazi flags or symbols.
Again, there are plenty more, by the way.
If you ban those, there's a Nazi symbol of the black sun, and there's a skull called the Totenko.
Believe me, the Nazis have plenty of symbols.
I don't think banning those symbols is going to change someone's mind.
It's sort of like telling someone to shut up in an argument.
Even if they do shut up, you haven't changed their mind.
The primary problem remains.
By the way, the number one users of Nazi symbols in Canada are pro-Hamas protesters.
I haven't seen this many swastikas in my entire life combined as I have at a single one of these pro-Hamas marches.
They bring swastikas every weekend to their anti-Israel protests, but not to fly in their own name.
They're smarter than that.
They fly the swastika to accuse the Jews of being Nazis.
I would expect that they would challenge this law on constitutional Constitutional grounds or challenge the use of it against them by claiming, no, no, no, we don't support the Nazis.
We're accusing the Jews of supporting Nazis.
That's why we have this WASCA.
Mark my words, they're going to say that.
By the way, that offense of showing those symbols comes with a maximum two-year sentence.
But look at the defenses.
This is tailor-made for the pro-Hamas protesters.
This lists the defenses to this banning of the symbols.
No person shall be convicted of an offense under subsection 2.2, A, if the display of the symbol was for a legitimate purpose, including a legitimate purpose related to journalism, religion, education, or art, that is not contrary to the public interest, or B, if in good faith the display of the symbol was intended to point out for the purpose of removal matters producing or tending to produce feelings of hatred towards an identifiable group in Canada.
Let me translate into plain English.
Absolutely, that will be used as an argument by Hamas supporters that they were flying the Nazi flags not as self-identification, but as accusations against the Jews to reveal what the Jewish Nazis are doing.
That's what they say.
Of course, that would say that in a court of law.
And according to the bill, that would be a defense.
Look, you cannot use the law to change a feeling in someone's heart.
If you're serious about stopping hatred, you pretty much have to do that in your immigration policy, not in your after-the-fact police charges.
And that's why I'm worried about this law, because I 100% know who is going to actually be targeted by it.
You might see one or two token charges against terrorist flag flyers, maybe, maybe one a year.
Though I haven't seen any charges for terrorism lately, even though synagogues and Jewish schools are vandalized so often, it doesn't even make the news anymore.
I mean, look at this story: police investigating after North York synagogue vandalized for 10th time.
Yeah, that's just what police and politicians consider acceptable in Canada.
Now, that's the new normal in Canada now.
No charges.
I mean, 10 attacks on this synagogue?
If police cared, surely they'd set up a camera of some sort or even actually stake it out.
But they don't really care, do they?
I'll keep moving.
The new law defines hatred, which is interesting.
They say hatred means the emotion that involves detestation or vilification and that is stronger than disdain or dislike.
All right, okay.
So again, we're back to regulating emotions now.
Funny, whenever some anti-Semitic criminal gets arrested, some terrorist, they're never called hate criminals, are they?
They're always called mentally ill, aren't they?
All right, back to the bill.
They've revived the online Harms Act proposal of having a standalone hate crime.
This is actually the worst part of the bill.
Quote: Everyone who commits an offense, referred to in this section as the included offense, under this act or any act of parliament, if the commission of the included offense is motivated by hatred based on race, national, or ethnic origin, language, color, religion,
sex, age, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity or expression, is guilty of an indictable offense and liable to punishment provided for in subsection 5, or guilty of an offense punishable on summary conviction.
You could be, if you're charged with any law in the country, if you feel hate in your heart at the same time, you can be also charged under the standalone hate crime, including if you disagree with or antagonistic to someone's gender identity.
Gee, I wonder who they're going to use this against.
And here's the penalty.
Everyone who is found guilty of an indictable offense under subsection one is liable to a term of imprisonment of not more than, and then they have this sort of chart.
Depends on the original offense.
It could be five years.
It could be 10 years.
It could be 14 years or absolutely incredible.
If the life, if the maximum term of imprisonment for the included offense is 14 years or more, up to life in prison, just for the feelings you have in your heart, this is a different offense than whatever crime you may commit.
Enforcing Religious Protection Laws00:07:48
You don't get life in prison even for murder in Canada, I don't think, but you'll get life in prison for having very strong feelings of detestation.
That shows you the priorities of this government, doesn't it?
All right, next section of the bill.
Every person commits an offense who engages in any conduct with the intent to provoke a state of fear in a person in order to impede their access to a building or structure or part of a building or structure that's primarily used for religious worship or by an identifiable group as defined in subsection 318.4 for administrative, social, cultural, or sports activities or events, as an educational institution, including a daycare center or as a residence for seniors or a cemetery.
So this is basically designed to stop pro-Hamas extremists from standing outside synagogues and harassing Jews and shouting at them and blocking them at synagogues or other Jewish places.
That is the only thing that's been happening in Canada.
That has never happened to a mosque in Canada.
I've never heard of it happen to a church, but it happens routinely to synagogues in Canada.
With no consequence, by the way.
Here's one of the worst of these, about a year ago in Thornhill.
Go to the other side!
Now, we're not in Gaza.
We're not under Sharia law, sir.
They have every right to protest.
they could do it in a peaceful place like City Hall, but not in front of a synagogue.
What's your help?
This place of worship has chosen to make their venue.
A leader of state is so illegally occupied.
But here's the thing.
Hassling people at a synagogue or church or mosque, it's already illegal.
It's been in the criminal code for decades.
It's just that the police refuse to lay any charges.
The law is, I remember it off by heart because I remember talking about it so much during COVID times, Section 176.2.
Everyone who willfully disturbs or interrupts an assemblage of persons met for religious worship or for a moral, social, or benevolent purpose is guilty of an offense.
So that's already on the books.
I mean, it couldn't be clear.
If you hassle a church or synagogue, that's against the law.
But police refuse to enforce it.
A year or so ago, I asked Ontario's Solicitor General, who's in charge of police and prosecutors, to say, well, why haven't you done this?
Now, he happens to be Jewish himself, by the way.
Here's how he answered that question.
How come there were no charges under Section 176.2 of the criminal code besetting a house of worship when all those protesters were outside the Bayat Synagogue in Thornhill?
Well, that's a question that you're going to have to ask the York Regional Police or the Attorney General.
I'm here because I'm not going to see my community intimidated.
I speak out all the time in support of our Jewish community.
I'm not afraid to wear my kippah.
I'm not afraid to go to synagogue every Sabbath, every Shabbat.
And I'm going to do everything that I can to stand up for our inherent right to live safely in our own homes and communities.
And I'm not going to stop.
Everything short of prosecuting them, though, right?
I mean, the U of T remains encamped with an illegal encampment.
You're very good on Twitter, but have you actually done any prosecutions?
Well, again, this is something that you have to speak to the Attorney General.
He's your colleague.
You're in the government.
Why shouldn't you inside?
No, what I can tell you is I'm working every day to that our legislation, that our regulations are adhered to.
I'm standing up with my community.
I've been 34 weeks almost every single week to the rally of Bathurst and Shepherd in support of remembering the hostages who have been held against their will in captivity in Gaza, and it's not acceptable.
And that's exactly what I'm saying.
It obviously is acceptable since you're not prosecuting it.
You have condoned it.
You've created a new normal where people can engage in low-level, permanent, anti-Semitic crimes, assault, threats, mischief, because you guys don't prosecute.
But there you are on Twitter, though, so congrats for that.
It's important that the Jewish community sees a person from their own community in the Ontario legislature standing up against hate every single day, who has the support of a premier who has called it out.
Where are the other levels of government today who exercise the same voice that Premier Ford does, that we will not accept anti-Semitism?
And have accepted it.
Where's the prosecution?
Again, this is something you can ask Minister Varani.
You can ask the Prime Minister.
The province.
The province prosecutes.
The province prosecutes.
Better save your boss.
So yeah, a duplicate law.
If we don't enforce the first law, why would we enforce the second law?
Police, prosecutors, there's a 10-year term associated with it.
But so why would it be used if the replica law isn't being used now?
And look at this.
Exception.
No person is guilty of an offense under subsection two by reason only that they attend at or near or approach a building or structure referred to in paragraph 1A or a cemetery for purpose only of obtaining or communicating information.
Got it.
So again, these Hamas supporters will absolutely claim that they were there to communicate information, namely that they think Jews are the new Nazis, that Hamas is legitimate, that Israel should be cleared from the river to the sea, that the Intifada race riots should be made international.
These are the things they say with complete impunity now.
And if this last section says that they're merely communicating to those Jews how odious they are, no problem.
So what does this law really do?
What is it really about?
I suppose it is new in that it bans people from flying terrorist flags.
Do you really think that's going to be enforced?
I don't.
It bans Nazi flags, but you saw the wrinkle here only for actual Nazis.
Palestinians, pro-Hamas activists, can still use the Nazi flag to accuse Jews of being Nazis.
So my reading of this law is if you actually support Nazism, you cannot use the Nazi swastika.
But if you're accusing the Jews of being Nazis, you can fly the Nazi flags.
All right, but again, the law already says that, but it is never enforced.
And if it's never enforced, and if it is ever enforced, the Hamas protesters can simply say, we were just communicating to the Jews inside.
They're going to win that in the court.
So, the only real thing here is the new standalone hate crime, punishable by up to life in prison.
That's really the only new thing here.
And who do you think is more likely for that to be used against?
Hamas supporters or some Canadian trucker who irritates the prime minister?
Stay with us for more.
Islamification Of Birmingham00:15:44
Whenever I go to Europe, one of the things on my mind is the Islamification of society.
When I was in Birmingham a couple of weeks ago to see what that town was like when a Jewish-Israeli football team came to town, it was sort of incredible.
Before the game, I had to find a bank machine, and I went to about four of them before I found one in the city that worked.
And in each of the places I went, just in a neighborhood, I thought, oh, I'm in the Muslim neighborhood.
And after my fourth ATM visit, I realized that Birmingham is the Muslim neighborhood of Birmingham.
It's almost a majority Muslim city.
Now, of course, thank God most Muslims are not terrorists.
They're just regular people going about their lives.
But there is a new radicalism I see in the UK, especially in parts like Birmingham, where there's a critical mass of Muslim voters.
And instead of just voting for a pro-Islam Labor Party, they're actually electing Islamic candidates running in the last election on the Lend Gaza Your Vote ticket.
It's quite extraordinary to see Islamism grow and in some areas be so dominant that it can sustain its own movement.
Quite something to see.
If I was one of the handful of Jews left in Birmingham, I'd be making plans to get out, if not just the city, then frankly, maybe the country in general.
I see something less progressed, but on the same trajectory when I'm in Ireland, when I'm in the Netherlands, in some parts of Amsterdam, when I'm in Sweden, in Malmo, when I'm in France, in places like Marseille.
It's the same trend.
America is not as progressed in this trend, but there is a radicalism that is coming to that country.
Of course, it has suffered some of the worst terrorist attacks, 9-11 being the one that is the most obvious.
But there is a bit of a reaction to it.
It's as if the rest of the world has been some sort of an alarm.
For example, about a week ago, the governor of Texas, Governor Greg Abbott, designated not only the Muslim Brotherhood, but CARE, the Council of American Islam Relations, if I got the acronym right.
And by the way, we have a branch of that in Canada called the National Council of Canadian Muslims, ANCCM.
So the governor of the state of Texas, I think that's the second or third largest state in America, deeming them a terrorist group.
And just yesterday, Donald Trump saying that the Muslim Brotherhood itself, at least certain branches of it, are now declared a terrorist group.
That's a massive change.
We'll take a lot of momentum out of the Islamification of America, put a lot of fundraisers and activists on the back foot.
What does all this mean?
Well, I think there's one person who probably follows us more closely than most.
His name is Sam Westrop.
He's the director of Islamist Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum, and he joins us now from Fort Worth, Texas.
Sam, nice to see you.
Thanks for taking the time.
Well, thank you for having me.
It's an interesting moment in the news for my subject, so I'm glad to talk about it.
Yeah, now, first of all, did I get my recitation of facts correct?
What exactly did the governor of Texas ban?
And what is his ability to ban things?
I mean, I don't know the constitutional differences between a governor of a state and the president of the United States.
What did the governor of Texas do?
Maybe start there, and then I'll ask you a little more about what Trump did just yesterday.
So the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, put out a declaration that the Brotherhood, the Muslim Brotherhood, and a group named the Council on American Islamic Relations, or CARE, as you mentioned, are now designated entities within the state of Texas.
The actual legal implications of this are a little hard to tell, and certainly the governor's office has said little other than this will prohibit or at least place limits on a group like CARE's ability to own property in Texas.
So for the moment, it looks more symbolic than a practical effort.
That said, the governor has instructed the Department of Public Safety, which is the body overseeing state law enforcement in Texas, to now investigate the Muslim Brotherhood's reach in the state.
So maybe we'll see something tangible come out of this as well.
Now, accompanying all of that, the governor has also warned that two Sharia courts or Islamic tribunals, as he calls them, are operating in North Texas against, he claims, Texas law.
So certainly Texas politicians look ready for a fight and they have latched onto the Brotherhood as the most obvious target when it comes to the subject of radical Islam.
You know, this follows on the footsteps of Governor Ronda Santis of Florida.
I remember shortly after October 7, 2023, he designated some on-campus groups that were using terrorist material.
He banned them.
So not, he, I think he had to walk a fine line at being America, the home of the First Amendment.
It was very interesting to see how they protected speech and criticism.
Criticism of Israel was permitted.
But those who were working with actual terrorist groups using their terrorist propaganda, those groups were banned from Florida universities.
I thought it was very interesting.
And I like watching these American governors use all the levers of power they have because that's not been how it's been for Republicans.
Democrats use every single lever of power to get their will through.
This might be a bit of a stretch.
This might be more symbolic than anything.
But to me, that's great.
It's a sign that up-and-coming politicians in America are still willing to fight these battles.
Well, let me be a little negative about the Texas move, because I welcome Governor Abbott's interest in the subject.
But there is a broader question here of Islamism in the state.
The Brotherhood is not the leading Islamist group active in Texas.
There are multiple Islamist movements from multiple ethnic and ideological backgrounds that pose a threat.
The Iranian regime runs directly, runs mosques down in Houston.
The Salafis have entities in North Texas.
The Deobandis, a very important South Asian sect from which the Taliban emerged, has institutions all over the state.
There is a very diverse radical threat in Texas.
And my worry is that when politicians latch on to names like the Muslim Brotherhood, they hyperfixate on this entity and allow the other Islamist groups to flourish in the background.
So yes, the focus on Islamism is good.
Let's hope they take a broader view than just the Brotherhood, not just for the sake of the Jews in the state, but for the safety of all its citizens.
These groups are indelibly tied to violence, to extremism abroad, to foreign terrorist groups abroad, but also to radicalization here at home.
And you mentioned Europe in your introduction.
One of the things the government found after years of young European Muslims rushing off to join ISIS or commit acts of terror at home, the one thing they all had in common, they've grown up within schools, communities, mosques controlled by these Islamist groups.
The Brotherhood is the tip of the iceberg.
There's a lot to do here.
And I hope Governor Abbott follows through.
You know, that's a very good point.
I mean, if it's the showiest thing and it's a big fuss, but it's not the actual problem on the ground, then you could even say he's playing us.
He's throwing us a bone in the most showy way, which is my worry about Donald Trump's statement.
Now, again, not for a second do I regret that Trump has issued, I think it's an executive order.
Yeah, let me just read from the White House press release here.
Today, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Treasury to consider whether certain chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood should be designated as foreign terrorist organizations.
The chapters in Lebanon, Egypt, and Jordan.
It mandates the Secretary of State to take action within 45 days.
And the aim is to eliminate the designated chapters' capabilities and operations, deprive them of resources, and end any threat posed to the United States.
Well, it's tough to argue with that, but I've seen some critics online who are smarter than me point out by focusing on those three countries, Lebanon, Egypt, and Jordan, the Muslim Brotherhood is banned there already, I'm told.
And this omits two of the largest benefactors of the Muslim Brotherhood, Turkey and Qatar.
And so, again, I'm happy that Trump is doing this.
I'm glad he's still fighting the good fight.
But I'm worried if this isn't just, hey, look over here while I bravely go after the weak banned chapters.
Pay no attention to the Qataris and the Turks over there.
Well, this is somewhat an echo of my point about Texas, right?
That we're focusing on the Brotherhood, where, as we should be focusing perhaps on Turkey, Qatar, but there's others I could add to that list.
You know, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Deobandis, the Salafis, the Iranian regime's proxies, and so on.
There's more that can be done, certainly.
And as I said before, the Brotherhood is the tip of the iceberg.
But this also brings into the question: what is the Brotherhood?
Is it the Egyptian organization known as the Muslim Brotherhood, or is it every branch that a Brotherhood member has ever founded?
Is it every diaspora organization that someone sympathetic to the Brotherhood has established?
The term is used loosely.
For example, the Lebanese Brotherhood, as the White House calls it in the designation, is in fact Jama'ah al-Islamiyah.
Sorry, Al-Islamiyah.
Jama' al-Islamiyah was not founded by Brotherhood members.
It was founded by people sympathetic to the Brotherhood.
So does that make it a Brotherhood group?
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that we are very loose with our definition of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is why a designation has been so difficult in the past.
Because what exactly are you designating?
My suggested solution to this is be explicit.
Name Qatar as an enemy of the United States.
Name Turkey and its Turkish Islamist proxies as enemies of the United States.
Designate South Asian Islamist movements like Jamaati Islami.
Designate certain Salafi and Dayabandi groups.
Don't refer to them as Muslim Brotherhood offshoots or branches, as too many commentators do.
Be explicit about the Islamist networks and organizations that threaten American and Canadian lives and interests.
This is the way to proceed.
Now, my final contention with the designation, and again, I welcome the interest from the political classes on this subject.
I'm glad they're doing something.
But my final contention is enforcement.
Remember, Hamas is already a designated organization in the United States.
But two years since October 7th attacks, has a single Hamas financier, charity or supporter been prosecuted in the United States or even investigated?
No.
So designated organizations do not necessarily get prosecuted, investigated or suppressed in any way.
So there's a risk here.
This designation, again, is for show and doesn't lead for anything.
Now, I'll be working very hard to make sure it does lead to something, but those two points still stand.
This is a far broader issue and it requires real political follow-up.
Those are excellent points.
You know, recently, Trump called to the White House a number of journalists and activists who have been physically attacked by Antifa, including our friend Andy No and other journalists we very much respect.
And it was interesting to me that at that moment, Trump issued an executive order naming Antifa as a terrorist group.
And the exact same questions came to mind because Antifa defenders will say, oh, it's not an organization.
It's a spirit.
It's a movement.
It's like hipsters.
It's something you do.
It's something you affiliate with.
There's no membership card.
Now, there's some truth to that.
There are some groups that absolutely call themselves Antifa.
And I wonder, well, what would happen if they simply changed their name?
I think that's the same thing here.
If you say the Muslim Brotherhood are bad dudes, all right, well, what if the same people just operate under a different name?
I mean, maybe there are excellent, easy solutions to these very basic questions I'm asking.
I'm sure that others have asked these questions before me and in a smarter way.
But as you point out, even if something as tangible as Hamas has been a terrorist group for years, what steps exactly?
I mean, part of it is Trump is dealing with Hamas in the negotiations.
He's dealing with the terrorist, the former terrorist leader, Syria.
So I suppose, on the one hand, you can't negotiate with someone you're killing.
But I don't know.
I think you're right.
I think the real test will come in six, twelve, eighteen months.
What exactly has Trump done?
Yeah, unfortunately, the refusal to prosecute Hamas has been a constant policy, a consistent policy of the United States since 2008, since the last time it prosecuted a Hamas entity, the Holy Land Foundation.
Since that point, Hamas has not only been not prosecuted in the United States, but many of its charities and front groups have received federal funding, have enjoyed partnership with government.
There's a lot of evidence to suggest they're a protected source for U.S. intelligence and law enforcement.
And indeed, that was certainly the case in Europe as well.
Your point about the change of name undoing a designation is very well made.
In fact, there's a lot of evidence for this in Europe.
You might remember the name Anjum Chowdhury, very prominent Salafi jihadist preacher in the UK.
I've interviewed him.
Well, then you very much know him.
He has simply, every time his group has been banned as a terrorist organization by the British government, has just changed the name of his organization and reset up under that group.
No, you're absolutely right.
The same will happen here.
In fact, the same already has happened here.
The American descendants of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood operate under entirely different names, and they set up new organizations every day.
I track hundreds of Islamist organizations with ties to original Muslim Brotherhood founders.
And every time they get in a bit of trouble, they set up five more organizations.
No, this is absolutely what's going to happen.
So, as I said, the Brotherhood is the tip of the iceberg.
A far broader approach is needed.
And once I see law enforcement setting up task forces, I see prosecutions, indictments made, I see state governments and local police start to understand the sheer enormity and extent of the threat, then I'll know that the political class is truly paying attention.
For the moment, this is a good first step, but we're not there yet.
Hey, I got one question for you.
In the past, individual victims of terrorist groups have hired lawyers and made private lawsuits in New York or other places and have won victories.
Obviously, the terrorists do not show up in court to defend.
So you're sort of shooting on an open net.
But even so, the judges put them through the paces, put them to proof of damages.
Executing Judgments Abroad00:04:08
So you have these judgments, and then you try and execute this judgment against a bank account somewhere or some property somewhere.
Has that ever been successful in the past?
Because maybe at least these designations gives you something to go before a judge and say, hey, judge, this is a terrorist group.
Here's proof that this terrorist group harmed my specific clients.
Now let me collect from whatever Swiss bank account or, I don't know.
Has that ever worked before?
I don't know how those cases ended, and I don't know if they could be done again.
Unless the defendant was a state with possible assets to seize, it has not worked in the past.
However, there are efforts going on at the moment to persuade U.S. courts that certain Islamist organizations are alter egos of foreign terrorist and foreign terrorist proxies.
And should those efforts be successful, we may well see Islamist groups in the U.S. financially punished by virtue of these designations and these alter ego attempts in courts, you know, and finally satisfy the demands of some of these court cases.
Look, this speaks as to the big problem of the follow-up from the designation.
You know, it's one thing saying the Muslim Brotherhood is banned.
Well, even if you take those groups in the U.S., Islamists seen most closely aligned with the Brotherhood.
Now you have to prove they are part of the Brotherhood.
And remember, the Egyptian Brotherhood is not only no longer in control of a global movement anymore, but itself is split into many parts.
It collapsed in Egypt about 10 years ago.
So there's a leadership in Istanbul, a leadership in Doha, some remnants in London, all competing with each other for control.
So who are the U.S. Islamists reporting to, if they are at all?
They're probably not.
So proving amid the chaos that these groups in the United States, such as CARE and such as the dozen other organizations that emerged from the Brotherhood nexus over the past few decades, are still connected to the groups in the Middle East that have been designated is a whole other barrier to cross.
I would much rather see the government take steps to start investigating the American organizations directly.
Remember, many of these groups, including CARE, were named as unindicted co-conspirators in a massive terrorist financing case in 2008 of the Holy Land Foundation, Hamas Front Group.
There is good legal reason for American law enforcement to be investigating already.
We don't need a designation for them to do that, just as we don't need a designation to start investigating Hamas, which is already designated under U.S. law.
So it really takes political will and law enforcement sally and guts to change the current status quo.
Yeah, this current designation, unless there's the follow-up, I know I'm sounding like a broken record here, but unless there's follow-up, it may lead to nothing.
Well, it's a very interesting turn of events.
And even if it's just symbolic, I think there is some value in it.
It's reminding Americans of the fact that they are under threat, that there are still bad guys in the world.
And in a way, it's a slightly conflicting message with Trump, you know, calling the Qataris great partners in the negotiation.
And like, I mean, I guess that's the thing about peace treaties is you make them with your enemies.
So you have to forgive a guy for hanging out with evil people if his goal is to end a conflict.
I can understand that.
But how long is that suspension of morality appropriate?
We'll find out.
Anyways, very interesting time.
Sam Westrup of Islamist Watch.
Great to spend some time with you.
Thanks for giving us the info.
Thank you so much for having me.
All right.
Our pleasure.
There he is, Sam Westbromp, and he's part of the Middle East Forum.
Stay with us.
your letters to me next.
Hey, welcome back.
Your letters to me.
Canada Needs New Pipelines00:02:03
About the ongoing anti-Israel demonstrations in Toronto, Claudette Viancourt says we need ICE.
You're exactly right.
I mean, if someone's a Canadian citizen, they have certain tenure here.
They have certain rights here.
But many of these activists are foreigners who are here as our guests.
Either they're temporary foreign workers or they're students or they're here on some privilege, not some right.
They should absolutely be kicked out.
It would be like if in your own home, if you had a Christmas party at home and one of your family members was being really rude and acting up, I suppose you have to abide it.
But if it was some guest, some stranger who's getting really, kick them out.
I think a self-respecting country would.
Johanna DFI says, police are peacekeepers.
Not fair to put this on them.
They don't come with flags in my neighborhood.
Thank God.
This is Canada.
Well, are police peacekeepers or are they law enforcement officers?
And what about when these protesters engage in harassment or assault or uttering threats?
They've done all those things.
I've seen it.
And the police give them a wide berth.
I think it's a political decision.
John Dee says, Danielle Smith is sucking up to Carney and giving him a huge PR win.
Wasn't on my bingo card.
Alberta got no guarantee of a pipeline.
They still have to convince the BCNDP and communist natives to accept one.
She just screwed Polyev and all of Canada.
Well, I don't think the final announcement.
You're talking about a pipeline deal.
And apparently on Thursday, Danielle Smith and Mark Carney, the prime minister, are going to have an announcement.
We'll see what that announcement looks like.
But I'm worried about the same things you are.
Let's see what the announcement is.
Canada needs a new pipeline, needs several new pipelines.
Of course, if it's just going to be loaded up with all sorts of graft and grift, like carbon sequestration, this and net zero that, those are things that I understand why Brookfield would want, but it makes no sense to attach those barnacles to a Canadian deal.
We'll see.
I think we'll have the news on that as soon as Thursday.