GOLDSTEIN: Wars against Israel are wars against Jews

Unprecedented levels of terrorism and antisemitism since 2023 Hamas attack on Israel clearly demonstrate what Mideast conflict is really about

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Published May 23, 2026  •  3 minute read

Smoke rises from the site of an Israeli strike that targeted the southern Lebanese village of Mansoura on Saturday, May 23, 2026. Photo by KAWNAT HAJU / AFP /Getty Images

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Anyone who understands the history of the Middle East knows the wars against Israel by the Arab-Muslim world are in reality wars against Jews.

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That doesn’t mean criticism of Israel is antisemitic.

It means the constant condemnations by Prime Minister Mark Carney and Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand of Israel wilfully ignore the motives of those waging war against it.

It means the so-called “two-state” solution to achieve peace is doomed to fail, not only because Hamas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu oppose it.

Conflict not about land

It’s doomed because the root of the conflict is not about land.

There’s plenty of land. The 22-member nations of the Arab League have a combined land mass of 8.16 million square kilometres, none of which they are willing to commit to alleviating the conflict.

Israel has a land mass of 13,715 square kilometres, excluding the West Bank and Gaza, which is smaller than New Jersey.

It’s not about Palestinian suffering. If it was, the Muslim Ummah would denounce Palestinian suffering caused by Muslims and Arab states, not just by Israel.

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What unites the Ummah is not compassion for Palestinians but hatred of Jews.

Not about occupation, either

It’s not about the occupation.

There was no occupation for the first 19 years of Israel’s existence and yet by then, Israel had fought and won two wars aimed at annihilating it, before it captured Gaza from Egypt and the West Bank from Jordan in 1967.

On May 15, 1948, the day after Israel became a nation, the armies of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Transjordan (now Jordan) and two Palestinian irregular forces launched their first attempt to “drive the Jews into the sea.”

That was the forerunner of the antisemitic chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, a call for the destruction of the world’s only Jewish state — from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

Enemies want Israel to become Palestine

The real source of the conflict is that Israel’s enemies want the country to become Palestine, cleansed of Jews.

Israel’s 1948 War of Independence was followed by the Six-Day War of 1967 and the Yom Kippur War of 1973.

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Had Israel lost any of them, it would have ceased to exist.

What ended Israel’s wars with Egypt — its major enemy at the time of its founding — was the signing of a peace treaty in 1979 under which Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt that it captured during the Six-Day War.

Israel also signed a peace treaty with Jordan — which also attacked Israel the day after it became a nation — in 1994.

Both treaties have held but they did not end the war against Jews.

Enemy changed to Iran

Rather, the enemy changed — to the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is even more devoted to killing Jews when it isn’t killing Iranians.

The campaigns continued through the first and second intifadas in 1987 and 2000, two wars with Lebanon in 1982 and 2006, and decades of terrorist attacks, first by the Palestine Liberation Organization, headed by Yasser Arafat, and later by Hamas, which has fought five wars with Israel since 2008.

In an historic blunder, Israel initially supported Hamas as a bulwark against the PLO and later, to weaken the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

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Hostilities between Israel and Iran began following the 1979 Islamist revolution which toppled the Shah.

A state sponsor of terrorism, Iran’s leaders provide funding, weapons and training through the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and other groups, committed to the eradication of Israel. All are classified as terrorist groups by Canada.

But while Carney condemns violence by Jewish settlers in the West Bank against Palestinians, Canada remained silent when Iran was nominated to a UN advisory committee shaping policy on terrorism prevention.

The unprecedented levels of terrorism and antisemitism against Jews in Canada and globally since Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, clearly demonstrate what the Mideast conflict is really about.

It’s a war on Jews.

Read More

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   OPINION: I set out to document Jewish identity. Then the ground shifted
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   HANSON: The Four Horsemen of the new antisemitism

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