Letter to the Editor, Toronto Star, April 11 addressing bias byAl-Qazzaz suggeting Gaza is a federal election issue

Re: Opinion | Why Gaza matters to every Canadian in the federal election, By Khaled Al-Qazzaz, April 7, 2025, Toronto Star

April 11, 2025

Dear Editor,

Within Khaled Al-Qazzaz's column lies the crux of the problem in Gaza. His assumption that only Israel is breaking international laws, ignores that it was Hamas that broke the truce it had negotiated with the Jewish state to attack it on Oct. 7, 2023, plus breaking every single other truce it had with Israel as a prelude to earlier Hamas attacks. Breaking truces is an abrogation of international law, a fact accepted by governments all over the world, most of which have demanded that Hamas be removed from governing Gaza.

Two other outrageous violations of International law committed by Hamas have been whitewashed by Al-Qazzaz and these are Hamas's using Gazan civilians as human shields and kidnapping Israelis and holding them as hostages.

Here is another seldom mentioned crime and that is that prior to Oct. 7, 2023, Israel had issued thousands of work permits to Gazans who came into Israel every day for jobs paying far more that similar jobs in Gaza. Most of these workers worked in Southern Israel. It was determined that many of them were doing double duty as spies for Hamas checking out the layouts and security measures, even who had dogs in the homes of the Israeli residents Hamas was planning to attack. These workers were spies for Hamas and have forever ruined the possibility that Israel would trust Gazans to work in Israel. This is a greater economic calamity for Gazans than it is for Israel which has no shortage of foreign workers from other countries including we heard from Syria.

Al-Qazzaz has hopes that a Carney government will accept a blame Israel first policy, and if Carney carries on with Justin Trudeau's foreign policy, he certainly will. Indications are that Carney will not deviate from Trudeau's position on Israel, which can be summed up as, when Canadian Jews complain about antisemitism, Liberals insist on adding islamophobia to balance out the hatreds, but when Muslims complain about islamophobia, their concerns are not diluted by adding antisemitism.

Larry Shapiro, Calgary