Canada's Blind Eye

"The Trudeau government has been finding it a lot harder to avoid keeping company with and giving money to terror enthusiasts and antisemites than recent scandals would suggest."

"Whatever it is that's going on here it's not just a laxity in 'vetting'."

"Last week, the Canada-Palestine Parliamentary Friendship Group drew unwelcome attention to itself when it was revealed that publisher Nazih Khatatba, whose newspaper al-Meshwar is notorious for such indecencies as referring to the Holocaust as the 'Holohoax' and claiming that Jewish bankers financed the Nazi Party, was one of the guests in attendance."

Terry Glavin, National Post

"Laith Marouf's long, well-documented history of hateful statements should have automatically disqualified him from accessing any government funding."

"The obvious systemic failures in this case further prove the need for a 'whole of government' approach to the way government and its agencies vet funding applicants."

"It won't be enough for one department alone to prevent further taxpayer funds from flowing to hateful groups."

Shimon Koffler Fogel, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, Canada

NDP MP Niki Ashton, Liberal MP Salma Zahid, Green Leader Elizabeth May, and Liberal MP Omar Alghabra attend the Nov. 29 event hosted by Zahid. Photo by Twitter

Salma Zahid, Liberal Member of Parliament who convened an event that brought together supporters of the Canada-Palestine Parliamentary Friendship Group, explained when the presence of this Holocaust-denying antisemite was revealed on Parliament Hill, that it simply was not possible for her group to vet everyone who turns up at one of their events. The invitation to attend, however, went out broadly to those within the Palestinian-Canadian community and this prominent member of the community took it upon himself to attend.

 

She spoke as though she had no idea who he was, what he represents, why he would have attended the event. That she would be unaware of any of that is hugely unlikely, given her own prominent presence within the community. And now it emerges that they have a fairly close personal and professional relationship. Three years earlier a full-page advertisement for Salma Zahid appeared in the Khatatba newspaper causing her to forswear any future advertising in al Meshwar. 

 

However, when she was appointed a year later to the chair of the Parliamentary Friendship Group, he was one of 16 attendees in a Zoom meeting. Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez, prompted by the media monitoring group Honest Reporting Canada, stated his intention to investigate how Khatatba's newspaper was awarded federal COVID-19 subsidies. Documenting Antisemitism in Canada, an advocacy group noticed that the Secretary of the Fatah Movement in Canada, Nabil Nassar, was also present at the Parliamentary gathering.

 

The very fact that these people associated with terrorism in the Middle East have a presence in Canada should be troubling; that they have the freedom and the opportunity to infiltrate Canada's Parliament is another concern altogether. Nassar publicly mourned the death of Ramadan Shalah, a former leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group notorious for mounting attacks in Israel. Nassar has praised terrorists like Ali Hassan Salameh the planner of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. Khatatba laid claim that the 11 Israeli athletes' massacre represented a Mossad operation.

 

Which brings us back to August when it was revealed that federal funding went to Laith Marouf, an antisemite and racist whose declarations of hateful antisemitism on Twitter make him well known to the Jewish community and praised by the Palestinian community. Diversity and Inclusion Minister Ahmed Hussen had celebrated an "anti-racist" contract and grant doled out to Marouf's Community Media Advocacy Centre for him to instruct federally regulated broadcasters in diversity and inclusion.

With a two-decade history of "anti-Zionist" rhetoric behind him and copious numbers of antisemitic statements in his hatred of Jews, no one in government or its agencies interacting with Marouf and signing off contracts for him did any investigative background check on his character. Marouf claims Zionism to be a project of "white Jews who adopted Nazism". Knowing of Marouf's reputation, Liberal MP Anthony Housefather alerted Minister Hussen to Marouf's background.

"I persistently communicated with the minister in his office, from the day I learned about it" (the commissioned anti-racism contract awarded Marouf). A month later Hussen acknowledged the controversy, promising his intention to look into it. Mark Goldberg, a telecom industry specialist, had been warning of this man's activities for the past year and a half, having uncovered  consultation and process participation fees to the tune of $600,000 granted to Marouf by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.

The associations made by this government in a series of events, with characters of this ilk is troubling beyond measure. No one does any background checks as to the viability of associates contracted with to help operate government programs. No one knows anything, no one seems to care. Unless and until they're brought up short with revelations that reflect poorly on decision-making and associations. That there has been infiltration of a malicious group into the corridors of power is a massive problem.

That one segment of the Canadian population with loyalty to a group it advocates for that is criminally racist, celebrates terrorism, and the death of innocent people in a far-away country and goes out of its way to convince the general public of the concocted stories of 'apartheid' in a country that accepts diversification in its citizenship rolls, enables all its citizens regardless of ethnic origin to be duly elected as public representatives. slandering and demonizing Israel, is profoundly disturbing. 

Canadian Jews are smeared by association, with university campus groups championing the 'Palestinian cause', and threatening the well-being of Jewish students. BDS advocates spurred by Palestinian lies about Israel appeal to the latent antisemism that seems to simmer under the surface, readily brought to action in support of a spurious cause, does no credit to Canada, much less to its deliberately oblivious government-of-the-day.

NDP MP Niki Ashton, Liberal MP Salma Zahid, Green Leader Elizabeth May, and Liberal Transport Minister Omar Alghabra at the Nov. 29 event Canada-Palestine Parliamentary Friendship Group event