Canada Leaves its Citizens Adrift in Israeli Chaos

The last three days have become a blur of grotesque slaughter, torture and humiliation of Israeli civilians. Hell fell upon Israel early on Saturday morning, a holiday weekend. Indescribable carnage and cruelty. And in the midst of this horror world governments did what they do; they leapt into action to support their citizens caught up in this chaos. By Saturday late afternoon the airport was filling with people desperate to leave. Many countries had Embassy representatives in the airport assisting their citizens on-the-spot until more robust rescue initiatives could be co-ordinated. And while this is going on, and I am dealing with my daughter – who is in Tel Aviv – and friends and family, I begin to receive messages on twitter, WhatsApp, email, from Canadians. Desperate. What do we do? No one is answering at the Embassy. The call centre in Ottawa isn’t helpful, even when someone does answer.

I began to actively tweet what was going on. In real time. At a time like this, that people would respond with venal, partisan responses is so ugly. But they did. A Canadian Senator, former executive in the Department of Foreign Affairs openly tweeted that the “disinformation” being posted online should be disregarded. He assured the world that all was well and Canada was all over this. As did a Member of Parliament who was making hushed calls to media and others assuring them that what I was tweeting was all untrue.

It’s beyond disgusting that anyone holding a position of public trust would choose to promote straight up lies, particularly when the safety of Canadian citizens is an issue.

There will be much more on this in the coming days.