Leo Housakos

By Joel Goldenberg
The Suburban

Federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre received a thunderous welcome during his standing-room only speech at Côte St. Luc’s Beth Israel Beth Aaron Synagogue March 26, which attracted some 1,400 people who gave Poilievre numerous standing ovations and waited in line for hours to take a picture with him.

It was so large, that it prompted prominent Conservative supporter Anthony Koch to tweet Liberal MP Anthony Housefather, currently reflecting on his future with the Liberals, about it. Hampstead Mayor Jeremy Levi replied, “I have no doubt our riding (Mount Royal) is going blue in a very big way!” And when Housefather earlier posted about “hopping from one party to the other” during Purim, Levi replied, “hopping from one party to the other is fun indeed (even when it’s not Purim!)” Previously, Levi posted that he was endorsing the Mount Royal Conservative candidate, and he was hoping it would be Housefather.

The federal Conservative leader, currently riding high in the polls, was joined at the synagogue by Conservatives Senator Leo Housakos and Quebec City-area MP Pierre Paul-Hus, and many other notables.

Before Poilievre spoke, Federation CJA board chair Steve Sebag condemned the passage of the recent “disgraceful” Liberal-NDP motion on the Israel-Hamas conflict, and lauded the Conservatives for their unanimous No vote. “Your moral clarity and steadfast support of the Jewish people in Israel is deeply needed and appreciated in these dark hours,” Sebag added. “Thank you for your friendship.”

The Conservative leader, who has visited Israel, said “the Jewish people are the only people I know of who, in the same language, worship the same faith, on the same land, in the same country as they did 3,000 years ago. That is a true indigenous people!” Thunderous applause followed.

Turning to current events, Poilievre said that “We know, since the [Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel], it has been necessary for us to turn our attention to the defense of our shared values, our eternal values.” He pointed out that before the attack, Israel had achieved peace through the Abraham Accords with several Arab countries, and it looked like Saudi Arabia might be next.

“Could you imagine what a breakthrough for peace it would have been?! This would have charted in a new era of peace and friendship among all of the Abrahamic peoples! It was this hope that most terrified the terrorists who carried out their attack on Oct. 7 and, more importantly, the state sponsors who orchestrated it all out of Tehran. They worried that their mission to destroy the Jewish people and Israel would be mortally wounded, their mission would be impossible, if Muslims and Jews were able to unite together in peace. What scared them even more was the possibility that the Palestinians had a hopeful future, a vested interest in the days ahead of them.”

Poilievre also pointed out that Hamas had total independence to run Gaza, as Israel had pulled out all Jews from the area in 2005. “When they say, ‘end the occupation’, in Gaza, the only occupier was Iran. Iran was occupying Gaza through its intermediary, Hamas!…And so they orchestrated the attack. The Hamas leaders travelled to Tehran, they got weapons and funding, and ultimately coordination. I’m sorry, but I refuse to believe that ragtag terrorists in Gaza were able to accumulate all of those weapons and all of that intelligence and coordination on their own! This was an outside job!”

Poilievre said Iran’s involvement “forms our policy as a country towards Tehran, and its terror arm, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The IRGC murdered 55 Canadian citizens and 30 permanent residents by firing an unprovoked missile at a civilian commercial aircraft, PS 752, over three years ago. This group can recruit, coordinate, mobilize, fundraise legally on Canadian soil. What is our Prime Minister thinking?! It’s time to ban the IRGC!”

Poilievre said he would also pressure the Trudeau government to streamline funding for the security infrastructure program, “so that shuls and all places of worship can put up the security to protect their people. I think it is appalling synagogues and churches are buried in paperwork for what what should be a very simple rebate program!” Poilievre also promised, to very long and sustained applause, that his party will stand with Jewish students on campuses, “fighting antisemitism at universities. We will also go line by line through all the groups that get dollars from the federal government and defund every single one of those that promote antisemitism in our country!…. We will continue to stand up for the right of Israel to defend itself and reject any motions and resolutions before the UN that unfairly target the Jewish State!”

Poilievre says he conveys the same message in mosques. “I say ‘I’m a friend of the State of Israel,’ and I will be a friend of Israel everywhere I go.

“Conservatives will stand with you! You are not alone in these struggles, you have friends!….I want you to look at the echo of the unmatched history of the eternal Jewish people!…The trashcan of history is filled with those who have tried and failed to destroy the Jewish people! I don’t know what will happen next year, or in a hundred years but I know that in a thousand years whatever is going on, on Fridays as the sun goes down, there will be Shabbat in Israel! The Jewish people will still go on, and they will say “am Yisrael Chai!” n