What to make of Netanyahu’s response to Trudeau’s remarks | Power Play with Vassy Kapelos

Elliot Hughes is a political commentator and Senior associate with Suma strategies he’s a former senior adviser to Liberal finance and defense ministers former Alberta MLA and cabinet minister Gary Myra is here he’s the president and CEO of the Canada West Foundation an McGrath is National director of the NDP

And Robert F is the global males Ottawa bureau chief hi everyone good to see you tonight uh Bob I’ll start with you when I spoke to Mark regev earlier on the show he seemed to actually walk back a little bit of the the criticism and say

Oh he wasn’t trying to make it personal even though uh Netanyahu tagged the prime minister in any event it did Garner a lot of reaction why do you think the Prime Minister made the comments he did when he did well look I I think the world is struck by the hor

Horrific violence that is going on in Gaza um and the images are really difficult to uh deal with the Prime Minister also has a caucus that is deeply divided about this issue between Jewish members and Arab uh Canadians or and other who are concerned about this

So uh you know he came out with a really really strong statement and there was a pretty strong backlash uh from Israel and the Jewish community and the argument is um with some legitimacy here is that you know the Americans and the Israelis say they they are command

Centers below that hospital they have to go in and clean it out uh the Prime Minister was willing to accept the word of the United States when it came to India assassinating a or murdering a Canadian citizen the argument is why don’t you accept the word of the United

States when they say that there is Hamas has um uh militants in the in a command center below that hospital um so Israel has to is going to go in there because if they are if they are in fact in below uh in that hospital that changes the

Whole equation whether these are war crimes or not because if they are hiding behind civilians I think they have a they’ll they’ll have a a strong argument to say they were justified in doing so so yeah I think I think an there’s I mean there’s the technicalities of it

And then like Bob said there’s the images that Canadians are confronted with right now which I I I I sense are pretty overwhelming for people and I think they have increased the pressure on the Prime Minister the pressures that Bob was talking about for example for

Members of his own caucus or even after he went for dinner after when 250 people sarmed him in a restaurant demanding that he call for a ceasefire he he inches closer to it without actually saying it which I am imagine must be a response to some of that pressure absolutely there’s pressure there’s

Pressure I think on every political leader during a period like this I think that people in uh Israel and in Gaza are living through a nightmare uh there are the people who have been murdered but there there the unrelenting images of and and and reality of what’s going on

In Gaza and the after effects of what happened uh after the Hamas attack in in uh in Tel Aviv and in some of the kutas and of course added to the pressure for uh the prime minister I think is the fact that uh we had the news uh just

Yesterday I think it was or earlier this week uh that that one of the people that we had hoped uh it’s a terrible thing to say that people were hoping that she had been taken hostage uh and it turns out that she was actually murdered in the

Attacked by Hamas uh Vivian silver uh from Winnipeg who who had been living in Israel for the last 50 years or so so I think that news was very shocking and very um heart-wrenching for a lot of people I mean uh I was when when we met

Uh when we met with her son and uh and we were hopeful that that that that not only would would she be released as a hostage but also hopeful because of the kind of life that she led her commitment to peace her ability to work the irony

At all her whole her whole life work was about peace between Palestinians and Israel and yeah her ability to work between uh the two communities and and I just think that that was that that was really a big a big impetus as well and Bob is right there is also a lot of

Pressure uh and division within the liberal caucus about how to deal with this but it was it was definitely stepped up last night yeah like it was a departure Elliott from uh it was a departure from what we’d heard so far and I think the other reason it was of

Note is because it wasn’t as though it was in response to a series of questions from reporters the Prime Minister made that statement very specifically in advance of his comments on an economic announcement before any questions from reporters which tells me there’s some intent there yeah absolutely that was what

Struck me as well I mean he was reading almost from some from a script or from notes he wanted to get a statement out and I think it reflects what you know both an and Bob have said I think it reflects a bit of a changing mood and I

Think it reflects frankly where a lot of Canadians are on this issue I don’t know if they’re quite you know at that sort of ceasefire point but there is this you know this push and pull around this issue and the Prime Minister and his comments you know has made it very clear

And I think frankly it’s I think where a lot of the world is I mean if you you look at in a un vote um just a couple of days ago Canada was one of the only countries sort of siding with Israel in in not calling for a ceasefire so to

Speak and I think that was felt a little bit out of Step of of where the majority of the world is and that’s a challenge for the Prime Minister uh to manage he’s also has that added complexity of having to manage the the US relationship as well and sort of standing

Shoulder-to-shoulder with them so that also brings a bit of bit of a a difficult mood and so this whole situation has evolved I would say over the last four to five six weeks where I think at the beginning it was very clear the statements were very clear it was

Sort of on the side of Israel to defend itself and as we’ve seen over the last few weeks and as these images have come out of of that part of the world it’s become harder and harder in a way to hold that line and I think what you’re

Seeing is is not only a reflection from the prime minister of where his caucus is but also where the world is and frankly where Canadians are I think the challenge there politically speaking Gary is that us regular Canadians can hold many of those same thoughts at one time right are are

We can we can be horrified at what happened to Israel and also horrified at what’s happening in Gaza but political leaders often have to take a more specific stance and you can almost see the Prime Minister up against that challenge with the way in which his own

Rhetoric has you know the departure of his own rhetoric in the last 24 hours I think you’re right vassie but before I get into that I I want to sort of go back to something that an talked about and that’s Vivian silver I I’m in your

Winnipeg Studios today and uh it is a tragedy uh that a woman who dedicated her life to peace among uh Palestinians and Jews a woman who would take sick Palestinians from Gaza and drive them to hospitals in Israel for treatment uh I think is a great loss this is a great

Canadian that we should we should be mourning the loss of who was murdered by Hamas quite frankly uh with respect to the politics of it it is challenging uh the Prime Minister does face a great challenge within his caucus among Canadians but uh I my sense would be

That if uh Canadians had a stronger sense that our foreign policy was well thought out um serious and not reactionary we would have less of a concern about the criticism of another foreign leader of our prime minister be it Xi Jinping be it Prime Minister Modi

Be it Benjamin Netanyahu uh I think it’s uh important for uh for a a deeper development of foreign policy uh and the reason why I think that’s important is is that it it every time uh the Prime Minister says something it seems to diminish uh our um our standing in the

World he’s he looks increasingly isolated in this and uh I think that foreign policy doesn’t necessarily win you domestic votes but it is something really important to focus on

The Front Bench panel weighs in on what prompted Trudeau’s remarks and the pressure facing political leaders globally amid the ongoing war.

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