The Ben Mulroney Show - The Manchester terror attack - how it connects to all of us

Episode Date: October 3, 2025

GUEST:  Michael Westcott/CEO of allies for a strong Canada Guest:  Gavriel Sanders, spokesperson for the Be a Mensch Foundation If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠ Twitter: ⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠ TikTok: ⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠ Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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The whole way? The whole way. Welcome to the Ben Mulrooney show. It is Friday, October 3rd. Thank you so much for sticking around and getting to the end of the the week with us and want to remind you that there's so many different ways that you can enjoy this show obviously as a radio show on a streaming platform you can enjoy it as a podcast but you can also enjoy it if you follow us on Instagram at the Ben Mulroney show or at Ben Mulrooney show

that's what it is and of course on YouTube and we need you to like and subscribe because that's how we're going to build this community one subscriber at a time yesterday was a day that will live in infamy, a man by the name of Jihad al-Shameh, British citizen of Syrian descent, came to Britain as a young child, granted citizenship in 2006, took it upon himself for whatever reasons to, on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, run, terrorize and kill a number of Jews in Manchester. This man's name is Jihad.

Not for nothing. His name is Jihad. And we have been witnessing almost a parallel in Canada, in my estimation, of witnessing the rise of anti-Semitism in Canada, much like it's been growing

in places like England. And I wonder and I fear for the future here in this country where something like what happened in Manchester could possibly happen here in Canada. So to discuss this and so much more, we're joined by Michael Westcott. He's the CEO of Allies for a Strong Canada,

which is dedicated to combating the rise of anti-Semitism at home. Michael, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. I wish we were talking about something a little less sad, a little less depressing, a little less disheartening. but this is the world we live in. Yes, it is, unfortunately. And I think we have to call things what they are.

It feels like this was, I mean, we are the architects of this world. They've done whatever they've done in the UK, but in Canada, we have allowed anti-Semitism to run rampant. And that's been done, I don't know, by design or by accident, but it has happened on our watch. we as a society have have done this you're right ben and you know i think there's a there's a quote that i think about that kind of helps ground this and it was edmund burke who said that all evil needs to triumph and flourish is for good people to do nothing and i think what you're

seeing right now is here in canada and and across the western world very small groups of very motivated activists who do not share the values that have built Western civilization, the values that made Canada a country that was strong, prosperous, and free, out pushing their narratives, out pushing their beliefs about the way that the world should be. And in so doing, writhing a lot of the decisions that have eroded those values and ultimately created the conditions where things like the anti-Semitism that we're seeing, here in Canada and horribly the violence that we have seen in the UK to occur. Yeah.

And so, you know, what's missing here is regular Canadians who see what's going on right now, see what's happening in the world and here at home to stand up and say, like, I don't, I don't want that in my country. I don't like this. This is not my Canada. But, Michael, it feels like this started with the protests that have taken over cities like Toronto, for almost two years and there are plenty of regular everyday Canadians who just want to get along get on with their lives they don't want this to be the the drumbeat of their life and yet it

feels like it's the city and and that has repeated across north America it's the cities that are allowing these things to happen it's the governments that are allowing to happen it's the the permission structure that we've created for these protests to turn angry and from anger. It's not a far jump to violence. I'm standing looking at Nathan Phillips Square right now, and there's a giant banner across it that says, maintaining beauty requires resistance, love revolution. Yeah. These are not just words.

This is a, this is a, this is a, this is a. pattern of belief that is held by, as I say, a small but very powerful group of people, many of whom can be found in the elite institutions of civil society, like the senior levels of the civil service at the municipal level and other places, who put these narratives forth. There's a direct link between the people who say things like, you know, when protesters stand up and say things like globalize the intifada, which literally means go out and kill people. Yeah.

Which, let's not make anything. Where do we need to go out and kill people who say, no, no, no, no, that's not what they mean. And, oh, by the way, love resistance, love revolution. Like, there is a common current that runs through all of this. And then when terrible things happen, when a girl's school gets shot at, when a synagogue or church gets burned, you know, politicians rush to a microphone to say, hey, it has no place here.

But you, by allowing, by asking this sick ideology to take hold, and not only take hold, but be taught in our classrooms, be promoted on university campuses, this is the result. And then they put their hands up and say, well, I don't know how we got here. Well, it's very obvious. Yeah, I've been saying that this is not who we are and hate has no place here. To me, those are empty words, just like thoughts and prayers after a school shooting in the United States. I really have no time for it.

It's performative, and it does nothing to address the problem that has been getting worse and worse for the past two years. Now, you mentioned, Michael, that there was, that we need regular everyday Canadians to take more initiative, take more action. How can they do that? Well, there are lots of organizations out there, and I don't just want to promote my own,

but allies for a strong Canada exists to be that place where Canadians who see what's happening, particularly see what's happening with anti-Semitism in Canada. who say, look, I see what's happening. I see these hateful protests. I see the way that the Jewish community is being targeted. But I don't know what to do.

Most people don't know who their city counselor is or even their member of parliament. And the thought of picking up a phone or sending an email or going to a meeting is kind of scary because they're not really not engaged in this. But if you want to, even if you've only got five minutes, we can take that. We can help you. We can teach you what to do. We can help you to, in your own way, and to whatever degree that you have time, we can help you to go out there and say,

look, I see what's going on, and I'm not okay with it. And, you know, I'm very sensitive to the fact that it can be scary for people to stand up. And that's why we have real Canadian heroes like General Rick Hillier at the front of our organization who are standing at the vanguard saying,

like, come together. We need Canadians to come together. on this stuff and speak out because right now your city counselor your school board trustee your member of parliament your premier are only hearing from a very very small group of activists on this who are pushing an agenda that's not consistent with your value what what i try to tell people michael is my support of the jewish people of of canada in no way is an attack on anybody else i don't live in a binary world and when when i stand up for my jewish brothers and sisters i I am not standing up for them at the expense of another group.

And I refuse to engage in that, that simplistic worldview, that everything's a zero-sum game. You've got to have a winner and a loser. I don't do that. Precisely. Yeah. Precisely. Yeah. That's exactly correct.

And look, this is about the kind of country that we want to have and the kind of people we want to be. And at the end of the day, it's about saying every person who lives. in this country deserves to do so in peace and safety. Yeah. You know, I know you've talked about this on your show a lot, but we know lots of parents who send their kids to Jewish Day schools who every morning

get up before the sun rises to get on to WhatsApp groups, to check their emails and see if it's safe to take their kids to school that day. Michael, Michael, unfortunately, yeah, we've got to leave it there, my friend, but thank you so much. Thank you for all that you've done and all that you do. The organization

is allies for a strong Canada, the CEO is Michael Westcott. Thank you very much. Thanks, Ben. All right, after the break, we get the perspective from an outsider on how Canada is responding to the turmoil that we're seeing all around the world. Don't go anywhere. This is The Ben Mulroney Show. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. In our previous segment, we talked about how Canadians can empower themselves to help slow down and reverse the scurril.

and the rise of anti-Semitism. Now in this segment, we are going to, we're going to zoom out, and we're going to look at Canada's role in the world, Canada's role in this dynamic with Israel and Gaza and the Palestinian people. And for that, we're joined by Gabrielle Sanders, spokesperson for the Bea-Mensch Foundation. Thank you so much for being here. It's very great to be with you. I'm a fan. Thank you very much.

Okay, so the question that I have in my mind, and I think this is a good launching point, is has our inaction or has our permissiveness for a certain type of protest and a certain type of anger, has that led to the situation that we saw unfold in Manchester? Could you give me a little bit more coloration behind your question? Well, you know, I sit around and I watch what's happened on the streets of Toronto. And I remember very early after October 7th, I suggested on social media that if the police don't escalate by arresting people, then the protesters will escalate by increasing their rhetoric and eventually perhaps even moving into violence. The police have not necessarily moved into a place where they are forcing accountability on the protesters. and so what we've seen is more and more emboldened protesters. And I wonder whether it's from that progression can lead to what we saw in Manchester. Well, and we just had a case of it here in the lower, you know, the lower 48 with what happened

with Charlie Kirk of Blessed Memory. That was an example of what you're talking about, was it reflected in Manchester that that continuous and upscaled political rhetoric eventually. bleeds into action. And bleeding is the operative word here. Yeah, absolutely. And so my fear is that we have given up, at least on the streets of North America, there's no dialogue. There is shouting and there is protest and there's chants and there's slogans, but there is no dialogue in any meaningful way amongst the citizenry. And I don't know how we move forward if the people of a country can't even talk to each other.

You know, Ben, this is not new on the historical stage. We go back 90 years, 85 years, there was a German propagandist by the name of Goebbels who skillfully set the stage for what eventually led to the Holocaust itself, and particularly its emphasis on Jews, not only Jews, but particularly numerically, that was the biggest slice of the pie of elimination. And so that, it's called The Big Lie. And in the book that we might talk about called Extreme Trauma, we focus on that. That there's a grooming, let's call it, a psychological grooming of the public that's done very systematically and gradually. Anybody who's read the book by Saul Olenski, the Rules for Radicals, which Hillary Clinton said, he was one of her heroes, by the way. anybody who's read rules for radicals can see how this is happening, not randomly. There's a pattern to this to anybody who understands the deep structure of how you bring about change in a society.

And it's my belief. Share with many other people. I'm not sure where you stand on this. But my belief is that we're watching the slow erosion of a culture. Oh, I agree. I co-sign that with you. I wanted, though, talk about sort of perhaps hope. uh in this uh in this war uh and a hope uh in the in the person of donald trump and his peace

plan uh his peace proposal i wonder what your thoughts are on whether or not this thing is going to find purchase okay so that's a great question and it's one that i have a few different angles that we can look at and we can do this you know biologically but i have to set a backdrop to this. What's going on in Gaza, and I'm a resident of Jerusalem. I happen to be in New York at the moment for a while, but I live in Jerusalem. I was there for the Iran War. I've been there with many other, you know, the sirens going continuously. I have little red alerts in my phone that go off, even here. And so I'm very well aware of what's happened, especially since October 7th. Let me give the bottom line first. The ultimate aim on the non-Israeli side, so I'll include

some of the nations of the world in this as well, is not peace with Israel, but every piece of Israel. Okay. Let that register. Okay. That's the, and it's not a political aspiration. It's a theological ideology. So this is a theo-regional political conflict, if you want to put all those things together. Now, why do I say that? Well, I've read the Hamas Charter, the one from 1988, and the revision. That's from 2017, where the language was softened. There was different rhetoric, but still the same game. Once any land anywhere has been conquered by Islam, it's considered Islamic holy land.

It's a trust called Wachf in Arabic, W-A-Q-F. And so if it happens to fall back into the hands of somebody else, it's an Islamic duty through the mechanism of jihad to take it back. So the idea that there could be, you know, when you hear this, every American administration said this, two states for two people living side by side in peace. That's great if you smoke enough dope. But that's not the end game.

Now, there was a conference in Hartoum, Sudan, oh, many years ago, where they adopted something called phased strategies. They said, we can't beat them militarily, but we'll take it like the camel nosing through into the tent. And that's what's going on here. Now, more rockets were fired on Israel from Gaza since October 7th, then all the time since Hamas rose to ascendancy in that region, which was Udnirin, free of Jews.

I've been to 2005, two months before the turnback. It was gorgeous. what they did. The jobs they provided. It was an amazing place. And all that, of course, is ruined. So let me just, I'll say this closing thing, and I love your feedback. People need to understand, and in the West, we don't because we're not spiritually oriented so much, at least not at the governing level. You know, we're rather, I call us practical atheists, right? So we live life like there is no value system. Everything's kind of nihilistic. And that's, that doesn't work for a society building, for creating. I mean, that's what Charlie Kirk's whole message was to empower values,

especially to a young generation that's had it stripped away. And that's another source, talk about Qatar and education. So I just want people to understand. And in order to understand, you have to read their sources. They're available in it. Read the PA charter. Read the Hamas charter, both versions of it. And you come to the conclusion that they can't make peace with Israel. There's no possible way to do that because they lose faith. and that is a big issue in a shame-based society like Islamic culture. Now, I only have a couple of minutes left, Gabrielle, but the Palestinian people are not Hamas, and Hamas is not the Palestinian people.

So at various times, one has endorsed the other, but I think is there a path forward where Hamas goes the way of the dodo bird, and then peace can be achieved with some other governing force? It would require an amazingly creative, brave shift from values that have been part of the education systems, even in the UNROT textbooks that Jews are, the pigs and monkeys, and that we have to kill them. The best thing you could do is raise your child to be a martyr, and so many mothers and our mothers say they want their kids to be a martyr.

it's that all mindset, it'll take a generation for that to change with some very serious reworking. I mean, look what happened in Germany. Look what happened in Japan. You have to go back to those. Yeah. Oh, did we lose, Gabrielle? No, I'm right here. Oh, there are. Yes. Yeah, no, you're right. One thing that I pointed out is I'm shocked at how much, how empowered we've allowed Hamas to be in these peace negotiations. I mean, this is, as far as I'm concerned, this is we should be witnessing them or organizing their terms of surrender because this this is not a this is not an agreement between equals there's a victor and then and there's the vanquished we're going to have to leave it there gabriel i appreciate it thank you so much

for joining us today i honor my pleasure thank you ben all the best all right up next our political panel weighs in on well the list is long don't go anywhere this is the ben mulrooney show A kidnap child whispers dark secrets from his past in a language he no longer understands. But a lost cassette will reveal the ugly truth. From Curious cast in Blanchard House comes a cross-continental Odyssey. to recover a stolen past. This is Stop Rewind, The Lost Boy, available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music,

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