CJPME, let Bianca debate as reply to pro-genocide bullies

Zionists want to shut down Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East’s NDP debate on Palestine. The best way for the advocacy organization to stand up to the bullies is to show solidarity with others who’ve faced similar attacks by genocide advocates.

Last week CJPME announced they were hosting an online NDP leadership debate on Palestine. In response the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, Toronto Sun columnist Brian Lilley, The J and others have called to suppress the event. Amidst its ongoing genocide in Gaza and violence across the region, it’s remarkable that Israel advocates continue to feel emboldened to attack freedom of expression. Unfortunately, they are likely to continue until internationalists and anti-racists take joy in putting these authoritarian genocidal Jewish supremacists in their place.

My campaign to lead the NDP faced similar attacks. Hours after I announced my plan to run, many anti-Palestinian voices demanded the party block members from being allowed to select me in the leadership race. B’nai Brith put out a statement claiming I denied the Rwandan genocide and in mid-September Zionists forces got my launch events in Toronto and Waterloo cancelled. They tried unsuccessfully to shut down subsequent events in Sarnia, Burnaby and elsewhere.

Unfortunately, a month ago the unelected secret three-person NDP vetting committee listened to anti-Palestinian voices and blocked my candidacy. The decision was deeply anti-Palestinian. Our campaign was clearly the best of all candidates’ positions on Israel and Palestine.

In a section of our platform headlined “End Canada’s Support for Genocide in Palestine” we call to:

• Ban all arms sales to Israel.
• Revoke charitable status of groups funding ethnic cleansing. Ottawa allows registered charities to contravene CRA rules by using tax deductible donations to fund the Israeli military, racist organizations, and West Bank settlements.
• Abolish the anti-Palestinian “terrorism list” which is an arbitrary political tool that grants the government powers to ban an organization without due process and the standard legal burdens of proof, used to support imperialism and undermine freedom of association and expression.
• Enforce the Foreign Enlistment Act and stop Canadians joining the Israeli military.
• Reject the anti-Palestinian IHRA definition which is a broad and sweeping definition used as a political tool to silence or marginalize those criticizing Israel, Palestinian dispossession and supporting the Palestinian civil-society led Boycott-Divestment-Sanction (BDS) movement.
• Reject “bubble zones” bylaws as they criminalise solidarity and are an unconstitutional limit on the right to protest under the Freedom of Association.
• Stop promoting genocide through special envoy. The Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism is a government funded envoy that has used its position in various ways to support genocide and protect genocide-supporters from criticism or investigation.
• Abrogate Israel Free Trade Agreement. Nearly $2 billion in 2021, the agreement allows products originating from the illegally occupied West Bank settlements to enter Canada duty free helping to fund colonial expansion, in violation of Canada’s obligations under international law.
• End Operation Proteus: a Canadian military program that costs hundreds of millions of dollars in training, equipping and supporting the Palestinian Authority (PA) forces which are used to violently suppress Palestinian opposition and resistance.
• Prosecute Canadians who fought in Gaza under the War Crimes Act. Israeli military returnees are a potential public safety concern and are willingly complicit in genocide.
• Stop the demonization of Hamas and other groups involved in the armed struggle against Israeli occupation, as armed resistance is legal and justified when under occupation.
• Follow International Law and support the right to resistance, including armed resistance, under occupation and genocide.
• Defend the sovereignty of Palestinians.
• Support the Boycott Divestment Sanction (BDS) movement.

In response to the NDP’s acquiescence to genocidal forces, the activists who crafted and promoted the pro-Palestinian, anti-imperialist, platform submitted a new candidate for the NDP race: Bianca Mugyenyi. The unelected three person NDP vetting committee may simply block her candidacy. But after some 5,000 emailed the NDP federal council complaining about the suppression of my candidacy they may not want the bad publicity.

By the time of the upcoming CJPME Palestine debate on January 21 it will have been three weeks since Mugyenyi submitted her nomination package. That’s enough time for the NDP vetting committee to have decided.

Instead of outright rejecting her candidacy, the NDP vetters may wait until just days before the official deadline — January 28 — to pay the party the $100 000 fee to accept Mugyenyi. That would make it near impossible to raise the money to participate in the race and would exclude the main anti-genocide campaign from the Palestine debate.

As organizers of the debate, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East should let Bianca Mugyenyi participate in the NDP Palestine debate. This would send a loud and clear message to the genocide supporters that we are not afraid of them.

To raise the NDP fee in short order we’ve begun collecting donation pledges that will only be activated if Bianca is allowed to run. $40,000 has already been pledged. The money will be collected through the official NDP financial portal, and donations will come with an Elections Canada tax credit. If you want Palestine solidarity and anti-imperialism in the NDP leadership race please consider pledging to Bianca’s campaign through this form.