"A Culture of Discrimination and Harassment"

"I feel betrayed. As a dues-paying member and local executive for 18 years, to have them turn on me like this. I feel unheard, unwelcome and totally ignored."

"I have many allies who are not Jewish asking the same questions -- why is our union spending money and time on this and not getting the approval from the membership?"

OPSEU member Daz Salama

"After everything Jewish members have already been through, it's like getting kicked when you're already down."

"Here I am, paying union dues for people to effectively call for my death at these activities."

"There must be business that's not getting done or being pushed back because of this laser-focus on international conflict. That's not fair to [union membership]."

"How are they being represented fairly when focus and resources are being taken away? How is this good for the union?"

Lindsay Gilbert, Jewish OPSEU member

"[Our membership is] united [in concern over the] spiral of death and destruction [in the region]."

"As a social justice union, we believe that unions and the broader labour movement must fight for labour rights and human rights -- not just at home, but everywhere."

"Our union has a long and proud record of actively contributing to the struggle against South African apartheid through the boycott of South African goods."

Ontario Public Service Employees Union

"Unions are exceeding their statutory mandate in advancing these agendas."

"The purpose of being in a union is not to have your union advance political issues on your behalf. The purpose of being in a union ... is to negotiate better working conditions."

"That's the unfair situation that Jewish or pro-Israel members of unions find themselves in."

Employment lawyer Daniel Lublin

"Equating the innocent hostages held by Hamas, a listed terror organization with suspected and convicted terrorists being detained by Israel is morally reprehensible."

"It is unbecoming of a Canadian union to interject itself into an international conflict and to endorse inflammatory positions that conflict with Canada's anti-racism strategy."

Richard Robertson, B'nai Brith Canada

NationalPost.com

 

Union members are unable under contract rules to opt out of paying monthly union dues. Union members feeling that their best interests are not being carried out by their union have little recourse other than to complain to union heads, who in fact have little interest in hearing from their members as they and they alone produce the rules and directives the union will follow. The Ontario Public Service Employees Union executive last month adopted a motion in support of the BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) campaign, designed to isolate Israel while supporting Palestinians.

An "immediate end to Israel's blockade, bombing and invasion of Gaza, and the mass detentions and killings of Palestinian civilians in the West Bank" forms part of the OPSEU resolution. Alongside support for an international ban on arms agreements with Israel, as well as for OPSEU locals and other unions to "advocate, mobilize and build" a number of "public campaigns" in support of Palestinians while exhibiting hostility to Israel.

Earlier in the year, OPSEU union flags were flown at an anti-Israel rally taking place in Toronto. Participants supporting shipping attacks by the Yemeni terrorist organization Houthis chanted "Yemen, Yemen make us proud, turn another ship around". Approval was evident among those present of the Yemeni Houthi slogans including "Death to Israel", and "Curse the Jews". The union's Jewish members were understandably incredulous and affronted.

Public Service Unions at the federal, provincial and academic levels -- since the October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas in southern Israel that slaughtered 1,200 Israelis and brought 240 as hostages to Gaza -- have shockingly supported Hamas, a proscribed terrorist group in Canada, while charging Israel with genocide against Palestinians. Effectively picking up the slanderous accusations levelled by the Palestinian propaganda machine to portray the charges as reality; exonerating Palestinian savagery against Israeli civilians as a necessary step in the fight for freedom from 'oppression'

It is not and never has been Israel that has attacked its neighbours; the reverse has always been the case. The Israeli military was forced to respond historically to episodic declarations of war by the Middle East's majority Islamic states, just as the Israel Defense Forces are deployed for self-protective purposes against the never-ending onslaught of violent and most often deadly attacks by Palestinians against the Israeli civilian population. October 7 represented the recent and most heinous of those deadly attacks.

Since the occurrence of the October 7 mass terror attack of murder, sexual assault, mutilation and killing of entire families in small border farming villages, union leaders have become more preoccupied with anti-Israel causes. Jewish members of the federal Public Service Alliance of Canada took their union to Canada's human rights tribunal with the accusation of the leadership having fostered a "culture of discrimination and harassment". 

As justification for OPSEU's support of the BDS movement, their statement placed Israel in the same league as the once racist apartheid South African government. Brushing away as irrelevant the reality that over twenty percent of the Israeli population is Arab Palestinian with full citizenship and the right to elect their own representatives in the Israeli parliament.

Protesters attend a rally in Toronto on Sunday Jan. 14, 2024. Photo by THE CANADIAN PRESS/Arlyn McAdorey

"BDS campaigns, which should be understood as 'ban Jews' campaigns, do nothing to promote peace, and harm efforts to bring Israelis and Palestinians closer together."

"The movement unfairly demonizes Israel as the sole perpetrator of the conflict, creating a one-sided narrative that removes all responsibility from the other parties, including Hamas -- reflecting the soft racism of low expectations."

Shimon Koffler Fogel, president, CEO, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs