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Many protesters bring along IEDs, grenades, knives, machetes and wire cutters. They have launched burning kites, with Molotov cocktails and other flammable devices attached, that have scorched hundreds of hectares of Israeli crops. And there have been multiple attempts to breach the fence by men carrying various weapons.

Photo by Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images

Dr. Loubani was certainly aware that these protests are anything but peaceful before he went to the border on May 14. Of the 62 fatalities on May 14, Hamas senior official Salah Bardawil said that 50 were Hamas fighters. Listed as a terror organization in Canada — and in most civilized countries — Hamas rules the Gaza Strip as a theocratic dictatorship.

Trudeau’s unstinting support of Dr. Loubani is admirable. But his statement did much more than demand an explanation for the injury. His vituperative tone was noted by media and on the street in Israel not only for its hostility but, more alarmingly, for reflecting a significant deficit of understanding as to what is actually going on at the border, and in Gaza.

We all, surely, commend Dr. Loubani’s commitment to helping those less fortunate and wish him a speedy and full recovery. Perhaps he will be more mindful, in the future, of the consequences of operating in a highly volatile and violent environment.

Photo by Khalil Hamra/AP

In August 2013, Dr. Loubani was on his way to Gaza to work in Al Shifa Hospital, when he made a stopover in Cairo. He strolled with a friend to Tahrir Square and stumbled, he says, unwittingly upon a violent anti-government riot. He reported at the time that he felt compelled to minister to the wounded on site, and the next thing he knew, he was arrested and incarcerated for two months in Cairo’s notorious Tora prison. Reports originating with the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs that Dr. Loubani was in possession of small drones were dismissed by his supporters in Canada.