Chrystia Freeland was recently challenged for supporting genocide at an event hosted by a Jewish supremacist group held in a Zionist community centre.
After our Capitalism Can’t be Fixed conference concluded Sunday, a few participants interrupted Freeland’s speech. In Toronto from BC, one protestor labelled the former foreign affairs minister and deputy prime minister a “Zionist Nazi dog.” The disruption has gone viral on multiple social media platforms. Al Jazeera and other international media have reported on it.
Freeland is deeply anti-Palestinian. In the first year of slaughter in Gaza she attended multiple genocide rallies. As Israeli officials ramped up their genocidal rhetoric, Freeland declared that “Canada stands with Israel”. After the International Criminal Court announced it would seek arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister and defence minister as well as Hamas leaders in late 2024, Freeland said it was “entirely inappropriate to equate the terrorist leaders of a terrorist organization [Hamas] with the democratically elected leaders of a democracy [Israel].” When I asked Freeland a year into the slaughter if she condemned Israel’s killing of 14,000 Palestinian children she declined to respond.
During her three years as foreign affairs minister Freeland promoted the genocidal, apartheid state. Canada’s voting record at the United Nations during that time was deeply anti-Palestinian. In December 2017, for instance, Canada sided with the US, Israel and some tiny Pacific island states in opposing a UN resolution supporting Palestinian statehood that was backed by 176 nations.
Freeland promoted the expansion of the Canada Israel free trade agreement and largely ignored Israeli violence against Palestinians. But she often expressed outrage when Israelis occupying Palestinian lands were harmed. In December 2018 Freeland tweeted, “horrified by the shooting in the West Bank in which eight people — including a Canadian and his wife — were injured.”
In fall 2018 Freeland visited Israel. During an Israel Council on Foreign Relations gathering she declared, “Canada’s commitment to Israel’s security is unwavering and ironclad.” At the November 2018 event alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Freeland added that if Canada won a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council in 2020 it would act as an “asset for Israel.” In an embarrassingly sycophantic speech that should be read in full, Freeland added that “the world also needs more Israel.”
The host of Freeland’s speech in Toronto was Canadaland. Its founder and head Jesse Brown recently spoke at the “World Symposium Against Antizionism: Confronting the Third Era of Jew-Hatred” with open racists Ben Shapiro and Gaad Saad. I wrote critically about Brown’s apartheid promotion a decade ago but before the genocide in Gaza he was generally considered a liberal media critic. Over the past three years Brown and Canadaland have become ever more aggressive shills for Israel’s horrors.
The Canadaland event took place at the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre (MNJCC). It was sponsored by United Jewish Appeal (UJA) Toronto, which runs the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. MNJCC operates an “IsraelConnection” program and promotes UJA Toronto’s annual Walk for Israel. In a sign of its commitment to Jewish supremacist colonialism, the daycare and preschool at the MNJCC has Israeli flags on the wall and describes “Israel as a Source and Resource”.
Those who promote or justify genocide committed by an apartheid state must be challenged and embarrassed. This is necessary to end Canadian complicity in crimes against humanity.
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