SENATORS’ STATEMENTS — Anniversary of October 7 Attack on Israel

Honourable senators, October 7, 2023, was the deadliest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. On that day, Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and slaughtered innocent people. They filmed their crimes and published videos for the world to see.

One of the most lasting images of their sick glee was the video of them parading the mutilated body of Shani Louk through the streets of Gaza on the back of a pickup truck.

Another woman’s mutilated body was filmed being pulled out from the trunk of a vehicle, her pants soaked with blood.

The testimony is no less harrowing. One woman described watching her friend gang-raped and her breasts cut off, then shot in the head while her attacker was still raping her.

Israeli first responders found young women, some in their early teens, without pants and with evidence of rape on their bodies. Others had broken pelvises, so violent was the assault. Rape was used as a weapon, honourable colleagues. That is something that should infuriate everyone in this chamber who has ever spoken out about violence against women.

They killed eight Canadians: Judih Weinstein Haggai, Vivian Silver, Ben Mizrachi, Alexandre Look, Tiferet Lapidot, Shir Georgy, Netta Epstein and Adi Vital-Kaploun. Adi was shot in her home in front of her two small sons. Her mother, Jacqui, born and raised in Ottawa, was visiting family in this city when she learned that her daughter was dead. Having sat across from Jacqui, the sheer weight of her loss is impossible for me to forget.

Honourable senators, it is frankly infuriating that, three years later, I’m still standing here in this Parliament having to explain what happened on October 7.

It was not simply the opening chapter of a war, as CTV shamefully reported this morning before taking it down from their website.

It was not an act of resistance nor an abstract conflict to be sanitized, reframed or glossed over by headlines. It was a targeted, horrific massacre of Jewish people, and every single event, every drop of blood and all the destruction across the region stems squarely from what Hamas did that particular morning.

That hate has spilled over into every part of the world, including right here in our streets, where Jewish people are the number one target of crimes despite making up only 1% of our population.

Mere weeks ago, a synagogue here in Belleville was shot on Yom Kippur. Today, synagogues and schools require police protection. Jewish families are actively asking whether their children have a future in this country, and many have decided they do not.

To ignore where this hatred originated, to indulge in moral equivalency or to forget the unspeakable savagery of October 7 is a complete betrayal of its victims, Jewish Canadians and our Western principles.

“Never again” cannot be a passive phrase reserved for history books; it demands unequivocal moral clarity today and every day. We must call evil by its name, stand unyielding with Jewish communities here at home and around the world and honour the memory of every victim stolen from us on that dark day.

Thank you, honourable colleagues.