Why is David Suzuki speaking at a forum initiated by the explicitly racist Jewish National Fund?
On June 8 Suzuki is scheduled to speak at a Climate Solutions Prize (CSP) event in Montreal. The talk will be moderated by CSP head Galith Levy, who previously directed the Jewish National Fund of Montreal and led a 2024 JNF delegation to Israel.
CSP is a multimillion-dollar project launched by JNF Canada, which is co-sponsored by its parent Israeli organization Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael, Start-Up Nation Central and the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation. Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet announced the launch of CSP five years ago and Israeli President Isaac Herzog presented the inaugural prize for an initiative described as “a way for Israel to become a global hub for green tech.”
In a 2024 Jerusalem Post article headlined “Israel is leading the fight against the climate crisis”, CSP founders Galith Levy and Jeff Hart wrote, “From solving its water shortages with drip irrigation and desalination [then exporting those technologies around the world] to protecting its people with the Iron Dome, Israel has a remarkable track record in solving seemingly insurmountable existential challenges. With the Climate Solutions Prize, we look forward to supporting Israel as a world leader in helping solve this global challenge.”
JNF is an explicitly racist organization with exclusionary colonialist land policies its raison d’être. For many years JNF Canada’s Twitter tag said it “is the caretaker of the land of Israel, on behalf of its owners — Jewish people everywhere.” In 2024 the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) revoked its charitable status due to opaque funding of its Israeli parent organization and support for the Israeli military and West Bank colonies.
Suzuki’s participation in CSP is likely driven by two wealthy donors. CSP co-founder Hart helped launch the Suzuki Foundation in Quebec twenty years ago. Part of a 2024 JNF trip to Israel and JNF Montreal’s 2020 Negev Gala Honouree, Hart is currently leading the annual fundraising drive for Montreal’s Federation CJA, which sponsors the genocidal Jewish supremacist lobby group Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs.
The other individual likely spurring Suzuki’s dalliance with an Israeli initiative, set up by an explicitly racist Canadian organization, is Liberal party fundraising chair Stephen Bronfman. Incredibly, Bronfman has been on the board of the Suzuki Foundation for 30 years.
The scion of an arch Zionist family, who ran guns for the Zionist forces that ethnically cleansed Palestine in 1948, Bronfman boasted to the Globe and Mail that he brought soon to be Liberal leader Justin Trudeau to Israel. In 2013 the Globe reported: “Mr. Bronfman helped raise $2-million for Mr. Trudeau’s leadership campaign. Mr. Bronfman is hoping to win back the Jewish community, whose fundraising dollars have been going more and more to the Tories because of the party’s pro-Israel stand. ‘We’ll work hard on that,’ said Mr. Bronfman, adding that ‘Stephen Harper has never been to Israel and I took Justin there five years ago and he was referring at the end of the trip to Israel as ‘we.’ So I thought that was pretty good.’”
There’s no indication Bronfman, who has significant business interests in Israel, has softened his Zionism amidst the recent horrors in Gaza, Lebanon and elsewhere. Last year he told the Canadian Jewish News that “Trump and his administration have been very good for the Jewish people.”
Does Bronfman not embarrass the Suzuki Foundation or is his money just too important?
Suzuki’s participation in the JNF/Israeli initiative initially surprised me. In my 2021 “David Suzuki an environmentalist to emulate”, I praised him for rebuking “infamous former Green Party senior advisor Noah Zatzman” for his anti-Palestinian antisemitism smears.
But searching for what Suzuki has said about the genocide in Gaza (little) and learning about his longstanding ties to Bronfman and Hart, puts it into perspective.
Suzuki should be pressured to withdraw from an event instigated by an explicitly racist organization. But he’s likely loath to do so as it would anger a few wealthy genocidal Jewish supremacist donors.
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