Here's a grim prediction from George Jonas, which I tend to share to some extent. I'm by no means an expert on political constituencies in Canada but I do talk to people and encounter astounding, willful ignorance and an eagerness to condemn Israeli actions, as though it were the undisputable birthright of Arabs to kill Israelis but Israelis, by virue of being Jewish, are not allowed to respond in defence (there is some perversion of reason in expecting Jews to tolerate violence and hatred directed at them, which defies all rationale). So I don't know about how Jews will vote in the next elections but I do know that Jonas is right on when he says the following, here:

The burden breaking the poor beast’s back is all the bicycle-riding vegetarians in the progressive-liberal-socialist axis of moral relativism who have been gradually toggling their anti-Zionism toward plain, old-fashioned anti-Semitism.

Let me take some of this back. Not all vegetarians ride bicycles; not all bicycle-riding vegetarians are anti-Semitic, and certainly not all anti-Semites are vegetarian. (No cracks about Hitler’s own dietary habits, thank you.) But whatever they eat or ride, too many in the progressive-liberal-socialist camp are appeasers and apologists for terror.

On July 12 this summer, Hezbollah, an Iranian- and Syrian-backed terrorist organization operating in southern Lebanon, launched an unprovoked attack into Israeli territory. In the first 48 hours, more than 500 Katyushas and mortar shells were fired into the northern part of Israel. Initially they killed two civilians and wounded hundreds more, including many women and children.

There’s no country on Earth that wouldn’t react to an assault of this kind with military measures. Whether a thrust like Hezbollah’s should or shouldn’t go unpunished, it obviously can’t go unparried, and the only way to parry rocket and artillery thrusts is to destroy the batteries and launch pads from which they’re fired.

Which is what Israel did at Qana, killing in the process a number of civilians, including children. Mr. Ignatieff isn’t wrong in saying that Qana was a war crime, only in that it was a war crime committed by the Jewish state. As a “professor of the laws of war” (his own description), Mr. Ignatieff is likely to know that the war crime was perpetrated by those who set up rocket launchers in the Lebanese town, using private homes with families residing inside as human shields. That he would nevertheless lay the blame at Israel’s door shows the moral bankruptcy of the centre-left in general, and Canada’s Liberals in particular. It also shows that a lofty professor of international law can also accommodate a lowly opportunist of domestic politics in his soul.

So what else is new?

The issue of proportionality may be new. It’s smuggled into the moral debate by terrorists and their left-lib apologists to escape the consequences of their misdeeds. First they fire mortars and Katyusha rockets at Israeli civilians, then plead proportionality — a bizarre demand in any but a sporting contest. If taken literally, it would call for modern armies to scrap their missiles and smart bombs and fight with nothing except weapons and tactics available to the Taliban.

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"It also shows that a lofty professor of international law can also accommodate a lowly opportunist of domestic politics in his soul."

This sears my heart in anguish. I did so hope that Michael Ignatieff would be a modern-age philosopher-king, a morally upright intellectual leader of practical wisdom, who will not cave in to intimidation and numbers.