Jesse Kline: Thanks to Trudeau, Hamas is winning the propaganda war (2024)

The two major international conflicts currently roiling the world, in Ukraine and Israel, should be fairly morally unambiguous, but a new poll shows a stark contrast in how Canadians view them.

Although there are clear differences between Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine and Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack on Israel, both were unprovoked acts of aggression against western-aligned states orchestrated by dictatorships intent on upending the liberal postwar international order. Both Kyiv and Jerusalem have been forced to fight existential wars they did not ask for, against enemies with military ambitions that go far beyond the current conflicts.

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Nevertheless, only 12 per cent of Canadians think our government hasn’t offered enough support to Israel, compared to 18 per cent who feel that way about Ukraine, while 26 per cent actually think Ottawa has been too supportive of the Jewish state, according to a new Leger poll conducted for the National Post. When it comes to Ukraine, the poll found that only 16 per cent believe the government has been too supportive.

The discrepancy becomes even more stark when we consider that Canada has offered billions of dollars in aid and military hardware to Kyiv, while implementing a de facto arms embargo against Jerusalem.

The survey also found that nearly half of respondents (45 per cent) believe the lie that “Israel is committing ‘genocide’ in the Gaza Strip.” This, despite the fact that Israel has taken concrete steps to increase the flow of aid into Gaza, including the recently announced “tactical pause” in fighting during daytime hours along a key humanitarian supply line through Rafah.

It also moved nearly a million Palestinians into newly built tent cities before its invasion of Rafah, has sent tens of millions of messages warning civilians to evacuate areas about to be targeted by airstrikes and takes great pains to ensure planned attacks comply with international law and avoid civilian casualties where possible.

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These are not the types of actions a country intent on committing genocide would take, and not even Hamas’s inflated death tolls are consistent with what we’d expect to see if that charge were true. So what explains the apparent willingness of so many Canadians to buy into Hamas propaganda and show significantly lower levels of support for one ally (Israel) over another (Ukraine)?

One answer is that the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is far more complex. Indeed, the Leger poll found that 48 per cent of Canadians admitted to having a poor understanding of the Middle East conflict, compared to 38 per cent for the one in eastern Europe.

And it’s easy to see why. Moscow’s unprovoked invasion was a clear violation of the territorial integrity of a sovereign state, in contravention of its treaty obligations under the Budapest Memorandum, which saw Ukraine give up its Soviet-era nuclear arsenal in exchange for since-violated security guarantees.

The Middle East conflict, however, is far less easy to understand, as it involves two groups of people whose claim over the same tiny strip of land has proved an intractable problem for the international community for nearly a century. Unlike in Ukraine, where Russian President Vladimir Putin used the BS excuse that he was conducting a campaign of “denazification,” both Israelis and Palestinians have legitimate grievances.

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The fact that so many Palestinians have got the short end of the stick for so long, though only partly of Israel’s making, has been exploited by Hamas to try to justify its brutal October 7 massacre, in which 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were savagely raped and murdered, and around 250 more were taken hostage. As the Leger poll suggests, this is a propaganda war the terrorists seem to be winning.

Part of the blame for this rests with the Israeli government, which has not been nearly as effective at relaying its point of view or detailing all the steps it’s taking to address international concerns about the humanitarian situation in Gaza.

It certainly doesn’t help that the hard-line members of Israel’s current governing coalition have been playing right into their enemies’ hands by supporting Israeli resettlement of Gaza and talking about displacing the Palestinian population.

But there is also a stark contrast between how our own government has framed the two conflicts. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made a point of travelling to Ukraine three times since the war broke out, and has pledged billions in aid, security assistance and weaponry for the beleaguered country. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was also given the honour of addressing the Canadian Parliament last fall.

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In contrast, although Trudeau “unequivocally” condemned the October 7 massacre and has consistently said that Israel has a “right to defend itself,” he has shamelessly worked to distance Canada from the only democracy in the Middle East and has refused to support the Jewish state in its time of need.

Trudeau was one of the few western leaders who couldn’t be bothered to pay a visit to Israel after October 7. His government quietly stopped approving the sale of military equipment to Israel at the beginning of the year and then publicly voted to make it official policy by backing a despicable anti-Israel motion originally put forward by the NDP.

And the prime minister’s claim that Israel has a right to self-defence is repeatedly contradicted by his relentless calls for Israel to stop fighting, even while Hamas continues to hold innocent Israelis hostage and promises to repeat the events of October 7 over and over until the Jewish state is wiped off the face of the earth.

In this environment, it’s hardly any wonder that Israel appears to have lower levels of support in this country compared to Ukraine, or that a high percentage of Canadians seem to be confused by the mixed messages they’re hearing about the Israel-Hamas war.

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It certainly doesn’t help that so much of the media has shown a clear bias against Israel, which most Canadians seem to be wholly unaware of (17 per cent of respondents to the Leger poll said the mainstream media has been more favourable toward Israel, while 22 per cent said the coverage has been balanced and 38 per cent were unsure).

If there’s any saving grace, it’s that, contrary to what the noisy protests in our streets and on university campuses may suggest, many Canadians have tuned out: 48 per cent of respondents told pollsters they’re not following events in the Mideast very closely, while 56 per cent said the same about the conflict in Ukraine.

Although my livelihood depends on Canadians feeling a need to stay informed, I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing that many people simply want to go about their lives and don’t want to get caught up in the passions of conflicts taking place half a world away.

The scandal is not that many Canadians don’t care all that much about these wars, but that our government has only provided clear moral direction on one of them. This has allowed Hamas and its terror-supporting allies here in Canada to spread misinformation and drum up support for an organization that’s antithetical to the liberal values this country has traditionally stood for.

National Post
jkline@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/accessd

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