Pro-Israel conference disguises itself as anti-hate meeting
Written by: Yves Engler
The apartheid lobby is organizing a major gathering at Ottawa’s Shaw Centre next month, but anti-racists are unlikely to challenge the get together since it’s billed as fighting hate.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Al Haq, B’tselem and the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestinians have all concluded Israel is committing the crime of apartheid. Since the major western human rights groups concluded Israel is an apartheid state, the country has ramped up its Jewish supremacy.
Openly supremacist comments by officials in the new Israeli government are a regular occurrence. National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir recently told a TV channel that his family’s right to walk through the streets of the West Bank was “much more important” than “Arabs’ right to movement and travel – excuse me, Mohammed, but this is the reality. This is the truth. My right to life outweighs your right to move on the streets.”
Last week, a Member of the Knesset in the governing coalition, Limor Son Har-Melech, labelled the imprisonment of a settler who killed an 18-month-old Palestinian girl and her parents a “crime”. The MK helped raise over $250,000 for Amiram Ben Uliel who Melech described as a “saint” and “holy righteous man”.
Amidst ever more overt supremacism in Israel, Canada’s apartheid lobby has doubled down on claims of antisemitism to protect their beloved state from challenge. They’ve pushed governments, schools and other institutions to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s anti-Palestinian definition of antisemitism. Pro-apartheid forces also pushed Ottawa to establish a Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism. These forces also recently denounced student groups, a prominent medical school and others as anti-Jewish for expressing support for Palestinians.
Now the Israel lobby is organizing Antisemitism: Face It, Fight It.
Recently the National Post published a full-page advertisement promoting the supremacist gathering scheduled for October 16 and 17. Prominent speakers from Israel, the US and elsewhere are coming to Ottawa for the conference, including World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder and New England Patriots Owner Robert Kraft. The leader of the Conservatives, Pierre Poilievre, and the Bloc Québécois, Yves-François Blanchet, are also scheduled to speak and publicity describes a “reception with Parliamentarians” and “tour of the National Holocaust Monument hosted by a Member of Parliament.”
Letting the cat out of the bag, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) registration page says the “most important” goal of the conference is “showing our collective support for the people and land of Israel.” In a National Post interview about Antisemitism: Face It, Fight It CIJA’s CEO Shimon Koffler said, “We want to hear leadership in the political sector declare that anti-Zionism equals antisemitism.”
The conference is sponsored by the openly racist Jewish National Fund. A central organization in the colonization of Palestine, the JNF’s raison d’être is to maintain land exclusively for Jews.
Another sponsor is Canada’s Jewish Federations, which organize the annual Israel walks in Toronto and Montréal. Another sponsor is the Azrieli Foundation. Named for David Azrieli who fought to ethnically cleanse Palestine in 1948, the foundation has financed projects that benefit the Israeli military and once donated to Im Tirtzu, a group labeled “fascist” by an Israeli court. The obsessively anti-Palestinian National Post is the official media partner.
The initial speakers list includes prominent anti-Palestinian activists linked to the Israeli government’s Hasbara (propaganda) network such as Hen Mazzig and Arsen Ostrovsky. A prolific tweeter, Ostrovsky has repeatedly labeled opposition to apartheid as anti-Jewish. In a recent letter to the University of Pennsylvania president, the Australian turned Israeli called to shut down a Palestine event. Ostrovsky wrote, “with antisemitism in the United States, including at universities, already at record high, events such as the upcoming ‘Palestine Writes’ festival, only exacerbate the already hostile environment faced by Jewish students, fanning the flames of Jew hatred and potentially leading to antisemitic harassment and violence on campus.”
The head of Israel lobby organization Honest Reporting Canada, Mike Fegelman, is also scheduled to speak. Another speaker is Shai DeLuca, who sued the owner of Foodbenders as part of a concerted campaign by the Israel lobby to bankrupt the small pro-Palestinian restaurant. A former sergeant in the Israeli military, DeLuca is an aggressive proponent of Israeli military violence.
Significant resources are being plowed into this conference promoting apartheid. But they’ve chosen not to bill it as a pro-Israel event, which is an indirect admission about their ability to sell Israel.
A recent Ekos poll found that 38 per cent of Canadians with an opinion believe Israel maintains a system “similar to apartheid” and 20 percent labelled it a state that “restricted minority rights”. Only 11 per cent consider it a “vibrant democracy.”
If you are in Ottawa and oppose apartheid, you should be protesting the Antisemitism: Face It, Fight It conference.
Editor’s note: Introducing Operation 135, The Canada Files’ campaign to go from 65 to 200 consistent financial supporters. The Canada Files is the country's only news outlet focused on Canadian foreign policy. We've provided critical investigations & hard-hitting analysis on Canadian foreign policy since 2019, and need your support.
Please consider joining 65 consistent financial supporters, in setting up a monthly or annual donation through Donorbox.
Yves Engler is the author of 12 books. His latest book, available now, is "Stand on Guard For Whom? -- A People's History of the Canadian Military”.
More Articles
