The Arab/Muslim/Palestinian Lobby in Canada

"While we stand firmly behind protections against discrimination for al communities, including Palestinians, [anti-Palestinian racism] crosses a line by targeting expressions of Jewish identity linked to Israel."

"Holding differing opinions is not a breach of human rights."

Richard Marceau, vice-president, external affairs, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs

"[A meeting with the prime minister took place to] highlight how Islamophobia, and its intersections with anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab racism, continues to harm our social fabric, undermines pluralism and poses a direct threat to our democracy."

Amira Elghawaby, anti-Islamophobia representative

"Racism is an appropriate construct for describing the experiences of Palestinians."

"Israel's treatment of Palestinians is ... at its essence[,] predicated on the superiority and dominance of one group of people over another."

"A form of anti-Arab racism that silences, excludes, erases, stereotypes, defames or dehumanizes Palestinians or their narratives."

Arab Canadian Lawyers Association 2022 report

Amira Elghawaby, Canada's special representative on combating Islamophobia. Photo by Jacques Boissinot/The Canadian Press

 

The very height of unredeemable hypocrisy expressed by the Arab Lawyers slandering Israel's treatment of Palestinians, typical and predictable of Muslim interpretation of justice, when it is Palestinian violence meted out in constant death threats and active attempts and successes in random attacks killing Jews within Israel that is the real issue in the ongoing standoff between Israel and the Palestinians. Surpassed in inhumane savagery by the Palestinian terrorist attack led by Hamas on October 7 2023, when  thousands breached the border fence in southern Israel to slaughter 1,200 Jews and rape innumerable Israeli girls and women, mutilating many in sheer sadistic inhumanity.

Added to the fact that Arab, Muslim and Palestinian 'public relation' campaigns endlessly stereotype, defame and dehumanize Jews and the State of Israel, entirely reversing reality in pursuit of demonizing the Jewish State and Jews worldwide as oppressors of Palestinian victims of Jewish cruelty. Now, those who have celebrated the October 7, 2023 massacre of innocent Israeli civilians and who portray those rapes and murders as just desserts in punishment for those who victimize Palestinians -- which is to say a state that defends its citizens from mass psychopathy -- are lobbying Canada's government to make it a crime to slander Palestinians.

Irony upon irony; the very people who expend endless time and energy on slandering Jews insist the world is obliged to protect them from opinions garnered from their violent performance in mass murder, along with their anti-social machinations in never-ending loud and sometimes-violent, always-threatening marches and demonstrations calling for the destruction of the Jewish State and the ouster of Jews from Canada; to 'send them back to Europe' -- ostensibly to the Holocaust ovens of annihilation -- continue to portray themselves as victims, not the victimizers that they are.

The concern within the Jewish community is that accepting the thrust of the argument that Muslims deserve a law that would outlaw criticism of Palestinians and by extension Muslims who have, in the past year, broken myriad Canadian laws with impunity, it would become a criminal offence for Jews to criticize the mobs who threaten them on the streets, in their communities and their businesses. The issue of conflating pro-Israel declarations with racism, in the process insulating Palestinian interpretations of history and present performances from criticism is beyond incomprehensible to a logical, neutral mind.

 

Adil Charkaoui, speaking Arabic, denounced "Zionist aggressors" and called on Allah to "kill the enemies of the people of Gaza and to spare none of them."Adil Charkaoui's speech has drawn broad condemnation from politicians like Premier François Legault and groups like the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. (Adil Charkaoui/X)

 

At the very time that Canada's civil compact of community equality and plural social mores of acceptance and civil tolerance of others are being turned into a psycho-social morass of harassment, threats and unsubstantiated claims of Jewish supremacy plotting the genocide of Palestinians, the Palestinians, their defenders and allies are accusing Canadian Jews of plotting against them and turning society into a critical mass of Palestinian denigration. The classic of victimizer cloaking itself as victim.

"Denying the Nakba" will become grounds of prosecution should the Arab Canadian Lawyers group's definition of 'racism' against Palestinians -- a group that can hardly be claimed to be a race to begin with -- be agreed to by the Liberal government. The 'Nakba' is a term used to describe the displacement of Palestinians in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war when the nascent Jewish State declared itself and combined Arab armies marched on Israel to destroy it, and 750,000 Arabs calling themselves Palestinians fled, to become refugees while believing Israel would fall, and they could immediately return to claim the land their very own.

Balance that against the estimated 800,000 Arab Jews who were expelled, their properties taken, by the Arab countries where they had lived for centuries in the diaspora forced upon indigenous Jews by the Roman Empire in the 2nd century BC, dispersing Judeans from their ancestral lands. Jewish organizations are concerned that equating the Holocaust with the Palestinian 'Nakba' "risks opening the door to Holocaust minimization".

"These comparisons are problematic because they equate the Holocaust -- a systematic industrial-scale genocide in which six million Jews were targeted and exterminated solely for their identity -- with the displacement of approximately750,000 Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War."

"This framing not only undermines the historical uniqueness and gravity of the Holocaust but also fosters perceptions that Jews are committing atrocities similar to those they endured."

"By blurring these distinctions, anti-Palestinian racism diminishes the specific trauma of the Holocaust and undermines the educational impact of Holocaust memory."

Richard Marceau, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs

Canada had accepted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism for the purpose of combating forms of anti-Zionism; a distinct form of antisemitism. The IHRA definition was added to Canada's anti-racism strategy in 2019. It states "manifestations [of antisemitism] might include the targeting of the state of Israel conceived as a Jewish collectivity". As an example, "denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour"; as well, "drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis".

All of which, manifestly, the pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel lobby in Canada has engaged in, fulsomely, loudly and in public demonstrations of noxious and society-disturbing magnitude. Justin Trudeau was the recipient of criticism for failing to mention anti-Palestinian racism in a strategy update of Canada's anti-racism to guide the federal anti-racism program. Liberal MP Salma Zahid faulted the Prime Minister for failing to mention anti-Palestinian racism in a strategy update this year. Now she purrs on the strength of the meeting held by Amira Elghawaby with Justin Trudeau.

Liberal member of Parliament Salma Zahid talks to reporters as she arrives to a caucus meeting in Ottawa on Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2023. Photo by Sean Kilpatrick /The Canadian Press

"I welcome the prime minister's commitment to recognizing and adopting a definition of anti-Palestinian racism."

"In Canada in recent months, we have seen increasing levels of Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian racism and antisemitism."

"Before we can fight against such hatred, we need to be able to recognize what it is and what it looks like."

"I look forward to working with the government to move this forward."

Liberal MP Salma Zahid