HANNAFORD: Giving in to pro-Palestine rioters just means more riots

First, let’s not blame the police for the cancellation of a prime ministerial event on Saturday night, after a pro-Palestinian crowd blocked the entrances to the Toronto venue. The police were prepared to secure access: Instead, it was a decision of PMO tour to back out of the event.But either way, the optics are bad.Once again, an aggressive pro-Palestinian demonstration has resulted in no action from the authorities.Shopping malls invaded and police officers threatened. Jewish university students harassed. Areas with a high concentration of Jewish residents threatened. The prime minister chased out of a Vancouver restaurant, classes disrupted at universities, even a kosher kitchen attacked… it goes on and on while the perpetrators hardly face a consequence.And now another prime ministerial event — this one involving an important foreign ally — has been abruptly cancelled.After a reportedly successful day of discussions with Italy’s Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, Prime Minister Trudeau was to cap the occasion with a dinner at the Art Gallery of Ontario. However, as our story states, around 400 demonstrators turned up and blocked access to the venue.A police spokesman says investigators are reviewing the incident to see whether anything illegal happened. Of course it did. You're not allowed to block building entrances: Briefly, the Art Gallery of Ontario was in lockdown, with guests trapped inside no more able to leave than latecomers outside were able enter.Those who remember the anti-globalist riots surrounding the G-20 Toronto Summit in 2010, will have no doubt about the capacity or willingness of Ontario law enforcement to have secured the event. (The promised investigation is just a way to avoid undermining PMO talking points.) What was missing was the political will within the Prime Minister’s Office — or, let’s be honest, more likely the courage — to allow the police to do their job.Perhaps this was a moment of cognitive dissonance in which the prime minister, presented with evidence that just calling Canada a post-national country doesn’t mean everybody will just get along, couldn’t handle the truth. You have to wonder then, what it will take.But you also have to ask, what exactly was the PMO afraid of?Losing votes in heavily ethnic ridings?That even after calling for a two-state solution, somebody would think you were pro-Israel? (And why would that be bad?)A bad story for the Monday papers? Note to PMO Issues Management — you already have one.You have just confirmed for the militants of the world that the Government of Canada has so little commitment to the rule of its own law, so little pride in Canadian nationhood and so little confidence in its own constitutional authority, that it would rather cancel a diplomatic event with an important ally than confront the rag-tag demonstrators outside the venue.Perhaps it would have been different if it were truckers and people with unacceptable opinions, protesting at government overreach.But it wasn’t. It was people who think that when terrorists swarmed over the southern border of Israel and in an orgy of rapine, murdered, burned, raped and kidnapped some 1,700 people, they were doing the work of (their) God. There's an 'unacceptable opinion' for the prime minister, if he's keeping a list.For shame.Not that we have an appetite for cracked skulls but whatever we make of it in Canada, the message Mr. Trudeau has just sent to the rest of the world is that in Canada, our resolve to maintain law and order evaporates when it is the anti-Israel crowd that’s pushing the envelope.And, that on behalf of the Government of Canada and the people of this country, our prime minister can be guaranteed to roll over for these people.There is a Canadian right to peaceful protest. That would have been satisfied by a peaceful assembly that took place outside the art gallery, but did not block the entrances to it.Here is the ongoing danger. You always get more of the behaviour you reward and in this case, the message could hardly be clearer. In Canada, governments surrender to mobs, especially ethnic ones. You can therefore do what you like. Liberal governments will always look the other way.So, think big.I hope I'm wrong. But five months after the attack upon Israel, protest incidents in Canada are getting more serious, not less. And now, they are interrupting the business of government itself.

HANNAFORD: Giving in to pro-Palestine rioters just means more riots

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