Hon Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
Hon Minister of Foreign Affairs Melanie Joly
Government of Canada
Ottawa, ON
Dear Mr. Prime Minister Trudeau and Minister Joly;
I am writing on behalf of the Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation (CAEF). We are deeply dismayed and extremely concerned by the increasing and unprecedented antisemitism in Canada. The Jewish community in Canada is feeling extremely ill-at-ease and vulnerable.
While strong words of condemnation are welcome, it is not enough. Action is required. We suggest the following three action steps:
1. Sanction the organizations driving extremist actions against Jews
As has been covered often, virtually the entire Canadian anti-Israel cause has been promoted and coordinated by just three organizations: Toronto4Palestine (and its affiliates), Samidoun and Palestinian Youth Movement.
Pro-Intifada university encampments, highway and overpass blockades, anti-Jewish boycotts, protests outside the homes of federal cabinet ministers: All of these have featured the explicit involvement of a least one of the trio of anti-Israel organizations.
Samidoun was banned in Germany pretty quickly after October 7, after the group helped organize a wave of German rallies explicitly celebrating Hamas’s murder of 1,200 Jews and foreign nationals, including babies, pregnant women, elderly Holocaust survivors, tourists, students, men, women, girls and boys, in Israel.
Canada should follow this example by designating Samidoun as a terrorist organization; it is quite open about its ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which is already listed as a terrorist organization by Canada.
As an immediate first step, Canada should withdraw Samidoun’s non-profit status and the non-profit status of PaleSign, a fundraising group closely associated with Toronto4Palestine that was founded in Ajax, Ont. in the immediate wake of the October 7 attacks.
2. Threaten and follow up with deportations of non-citizens involved in extremist demonstrations
The aforementioned Samidoun is led by Charlotte Kates and Khaled Barakat, neither of whom are known to have Canadian citizenship. Kates has praised the October 7 massacres several times and both Kates and Barakat have held rallies calling for the eradication of Israel.
French President Emmanual Macron ordered a review of all foreign citizens within France, to see if any qualified for deportation as a result of radical activities (and thus far, some have).
Canada should immediately do the same.
3. Pull federal funding from bodies engaging in anti-Jewish discrimination
The Vancouver Comic Arts Festival just permanently banned Vancouver artist Miriam Libicki from ever participating in one of its events. The cited reason? She’s Israeli, and is thus complicit in an “ongoing genocide.”
Many organizations like the Vancouver Comic Arts Festival, benefit from federal funding distributed via the Department of Canadian Heritage, a body directly overseen by the Cabinet. Such funding is already subject to a latticework of conditions.
Your government has required applicants to adhere to everything from racial quotas to a public declaration that they support abortion. It would only require a prime ministerial order-in-council to immediately suspend taxpayer funding to arts organizations engaging in overt discrimination against Israelis or (as was the case with Vancouver’s PuSh festival) works of art that merely have Israel as a setting.
In closing, we would appreciate a prompt response to this letter and ongoing status reports as to the timing and implementation of the above recommendations.
Your continued communication with us on these issues will be greatly appreciated.
Yours truly,
Charles Cooke, Government Relations Representative of CAEF