It’s bad enough Prime Minister Mark Carney handed Hamas a diplomatic victory when Canada became the first G7 nation to recognize a Palestinian state on Sept. 21, 2025.

Hamas promptly thanked Canada and other countries for doing so, calling it the “the fruits of ” its Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack on Israel.

Apparently Hamas – designated a terrorist organization by Canada in 2002 – didn’t get the memo from Carney insisting that recognizing Palestinian statehood, “in no way legitimizes terrorism, nor is it any reward for it.”

That was the third time Hamas thanked Canada’s Liberal government for its actions since Oct. 7, 2023.

Small wonder Hamas is pleased.

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Carney recognized Palestinian statehood prior to achieving the conditions he himself said would be necessary to create, “a sovereign, democratic, and viable State of Palestine building its future in peace and security alongside the State of Israel.”

Those are (or rather were) that Hamas would be disarmed and would not participate in the election to determine the governance of Palestine, now scheduled for Nov. 26.

In fact, Hamas hasn’t disarmed, and far from playing no role in the future governance of Palestine, has vowed to participate in the upcoming election.

Carney’s assumption this would not happen was “predicated” as he put it, on a “commitment” from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that Hamas would be defanged prior to the election, and that Abbas would initiate needed democratic reforms in Palestinian governance.

Abbas, who is 90 years old, has been widely condemned as an antisemite and Holocaust denier .

While he described the Holocaust as “the most heinous crime” in modern history in 2014 when he was trying to curry favour with Israelis and the U.S., nine years later, in 2023, he claimed Hitler didn’t exterminate Jews because of their religion, but because they were money lenders.

In his 1982 doctoral thesis at a Russian university and in his 1984 book – The Other Side: The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism – Abbas argued Zionists conspired with Hitler to carry out the Holocaust so it would force Jews to emigrate to Palestine, while also suggesting the number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust was under one million, not six million.

Polls show Abbas has little popular support among Palestinians, with the overwhelming majority wanting him to resign because they think he is ineffective and because they believe the Palestinian Authority, which has received billions of dollars in foreign aid, is corrupt.

Up to now, Abbas has refused to hold Palestinian elections since 2006, when his Fatah party lost to Hamas.

Hamas and Fatah fought an internal civil war in 2007, which left Hamas in control of Gaza while the Palestinian Authority rules in the West Bank – the two parts of what is supposed to be the new Palestinian state.

That’s who Carney is relying on to create, again in his words, “a sovereign, democratic, and viable State of Palestine building its future in peace and security alongside the State of Israel.”

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Or course there was no mention of any of this last week, when, in the lead-up to the holiest days on the Jewish calendar – Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur – Carney, U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham and French President Emmanuel Macron declared that the major impediment to the creation of a Palestinian state is violence against the Palestinians by Israeli settlers living in the West Bank, and the Israeli government’s illegal policy of expanding these settlements.

Because of this they will take steps “to ban the importation of goods from settlements and enforce targeted measures against settlements and those who facilitate them.”

In effect, this marks the fourth time Hamas has praised Canada’s Liberal government since Oct. 7, 2023, although technically this time Hamas singled out the U.K. for praise, after its foreign secretary descried the actions of the Israeli settlers as “ethnic cleansing.”

Indeed, foreign ministers from a dozen western democracies in concert with Carney, Burnham and Macron simultaneously chimed in that Israel’s actions in the West Bank “are undermining the possibility of a two-state solution.”

That’s true but the real obstacle to a two-state solution is not just that the Israeli government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – who faces an election on Oct. 27 – opposes it, so does Hamas, which wants all of Israel as the new Palestinian state.

But as usual, Hamas gets a pass while Israel gets the blame from Canada and other countries as they make demands of Israel, while simultaneously claiming they want “a close and productive partnership with Israel” and pledging “our enduring support for the Israeli people and our unwavering commitment to Israel’s security.”

That’s what they say, not what they do.

lgoldstein@postmedia.com