In The Weekly Wrap, Sean Speer, our editor-at-large, analyses for Hub subscribers the big stories shaping politics, policy, and the economy in the week that was.
The Palestinians’ future is in their own hands
The agreement announced this week that could finally bring an end to the war between Israel and Hamas is, above all, a huge relief to the families of those who have remained hostage for nearly 740 days. Their suffering has been a constant reminder of the horror that began on October 7, 2023. The prospect that they might soon be reunited with their loved ones is the best news that Israelis have received in more than two years.
The overwhelming reaction inside Israel underscores that truth. For all the noise and criticism abroad, Israelis have been united in one overriding goal: to bring their people home and to prevent another such massacre.
Those who claimed that Israel’s actions were motivated by anything else—revenge, conquest, or expansion—were wrong. This moment confirms it. The war’s purpose was never destruction for its own sake. It was to recover the hostages and to undermine Hamas’s capacity for future attacks.
Just as on October 6, 2023—the day before the world changed—Israelis ultimately want to live in peace and security. Whether that can be achieved will now depend, in large part, on whether the Palestinians want the same. That outstanding question looms over what’s otherwise the self-evidently good news of this agreement.
The deal’s decision to set aside the disarmament of Hamas and its possible role in Gaza’s future governance puts an onus squarely on Palestinians to choose a different future. If they use this opportunity to rebuild rather than to rearm, then perhaps this painful chapter can mark the beginning of something better.
As for our own country, there is rebuilding to do as well. The October 7 attacks and the subsequent war have exposed an ugliness within our society that’s hard to forget. We cannot unhear what we’ve heard or unsee what we’ve seen, including an alarming increase in antisemitic hate crimes.
In its aftermath, we must confront difficult yet necessary questions about the meaning of principled pluralism—a pluralism that accommodates the multiplicity of views in our increasingly diverse society but itself doesn’t succumb to relativism or acquiesce to antisemitism.
For now, though, we can simply rejoice in the relief that, at long last, the immediacy of the war may be finally over.
Removing charitable status from religious institutions would be a terrible mistake
One upside of spending a bit of time in Ottawa is that you’re exposed to issues that haven’t quite reached beyond the national capital.
One such example in the lead-up to next month’s budget is an obscure yet outstanding recommendation from the House Finance Committee’s pre-budget submission to the government that it ought to, among other things, eliminate the “advancement of religion” as an eligible charitable activity.
This would be a huge deal. In practice, such a legislative change to Canada’s charitable rules would essentially make places of worship—churches, synagogues, mosques, and so on—ineligible for charitable status. It would represent a radical change in Canadian public policy and presumably put many such institutions in financial jeopardy.
