Crossing the Rubicon

From pro-Hamas to pro-Iran: the protests start to undermine western democracies

While Israel endured another massive missile attack which included a direct hit on the Soroka Hospital in Be’er Sheva, the forces that are seeking to isolate and destroy the Jewish nation simply could not wait. So yesterday, the Labour/GreenLeft opposition party put forward a motion in Dutch parliament that proposed a full weapons embargo on Israel. The member of parliament promoting this, one Kati Piri, explicitly singled out Israel’s missile defence system for this. She argued that the Iron Dome is a system that is integral to what she called Nethanyahu’s aggressive war agenda and that Israel therefore should not be supplied with parts sourced from The Netherlands. So Piri went one further here, no longer offering your standard anti-Israel criticism, no, this was a deliberate move to pull defensive tools that prevents civilians in Israel from targeted murderous attacks.

The motion failed by a considerable margin, not all Dutch politicians have lost their moral compass just yet, but we should not take any comfort from this. The party that put forward the idea to expose Israel’s population centres to be destroyed by its enemies is one of the major Dutch parties and it is expected to do well in the elections scheduled for October. It is headed by Frans Timmermans, who is the former vice-president of the European Union and he is far from a fringe figure in Europe. He could well be the next Dutch prime minister and an influential one at that.

So this is what mainstreaming an anti-Israel agenda looks like: it starts with criticism and street protests, moves on to a march through universities and the media and then starts to morph into serious attempts to frame actual policy. Clear cut proposals that could throttle Israel’s very existence, shamelessly promoted and devoid of any basic human compassion. And please also don’t think that a failed parliamentary motion is the end of the story. In Rotterdam for instance the local city council is investigating how it can block weapons exports to Israel as ships that carry Lockheed Martin equipment pass through its harbour.

These people are highly motivated, well organized, have a deep reach across multiple layers of government and will stop at nothing. Every time the debate and its consequences are moved further and further, until Israel indeed is an entity exposed to existential threats that up until now its democratic allies protected it from.

Trying to cripple Israel while it is at war is one thing, it is quite another to openly side with the enemy. It is a different side of the same coin of course.

One would think that in Canada, a country that lists the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist entity, people would think twice to openly take sides with the regime in Tehran, but no. A protest is planned for this coming Sunday and among the many supporting organizations is CUPE, Canada’s largest public sector employees union. So the very people tasked with implementing Canada’s laws and regulations are actually organizing to support and obstruct the very policies - like the IRCG ruling - they should be executing. You are not overreacting if you think that this is borderline sedition.

And there is more to this. The leader of CUPE’s Ontario chapter, one Fred Hahn, has been active since October 7th in his pro-Hamas activism and it is perhaps worthwhile noting that Fred is gay and an active LGBT activist. Good for Fred, but we do not have to think for very long to visualize what will happen to Fred if he takes the pride parade to Tehran. Iran explicitly forbids and penalizes homosexuality, often by simply putting gays to death. A simple Google search provides a wealth of information as well as some gruesome execution scenes and this quote caught my eye:

“ LGBTQ+ rights campaigner Peter Tatchell also told the publication the execution follows 'a long-standing regime policy of the state-sanctioned murder of gay men, often on disputed charges after unfair trials that have been condemned by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch “

CUPE’s moral blindness has crossed into dangerous territory. It should be mentioned that Tel Aviv’s pride parade last weekend was cancelled because Iran was raining down missiles on Israel.

Left-wing and progressive forces in both Europe and North America are not only increasingly looking away from these flagrant human rights abuses, in their hate of Israel they are now becoming the spokespeople for extreme Islamist forces. They are partnering with forces that directly contradict those of free and open democracies and are beginning to form some sort of an alliance. Much like the socialist progressive resistance in Iran that teamed up with ayatollah Khomeni’s radical clerical movement to topple the Shah in1979. We know how that ended.

None of it can be called a protest or occasional virtue signalling any longer. It is a movement that has left all pretexts of morality and humanity behind, and it has deliberately crossed the Rubicon. It is now openly siding with the enemy.

Photos: pro-Hamas protestors try and disrupt Vancouver’s weekly hostage rally on June 15, 2025. Note the masks. And: Dutch MP Kati Piri during yesterday’s debate and who put forward the argument that Israel’s missile defence system should be boycotted, in front right her party leader, Frans Timmermans.