A small victory against racism, colonialism and genocide. Congratulations to everyone who emailed and to David Suzuki for withdrawing from a forum established by the Jewish National Fund. Now we need to press other participants to withdraw from the Zionist greenwashing event and the Suzuki Foundation to sever its ties to wealthy genocidal Jewish supremacist donors.
After Just Peace Advocates and the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute instigated an email petition campaign calling on the prominent environmentalist to withdraw from an upcoming Climate Solutions Prize (CSP) event, Suzuki announced as much. The David Suzuki Foundation released a statement quoting their namesake noting, “I would like to thank the many people who have written the David Suzuki Foundation and me to provide more background on the upcoming Climate Solutions Prize Festival. I was unaware that the event was initiated by the Jewish National Fund Canada, a controversial group that has had its Canadian charitable status revoked. Knowing this, I have declined the invitation to speak.”
Suzuki deserves praise for withdrawing. As I detailed a week ago, CSP was instigated by the racist JNF of Canada with support from the Israeli government.
Other participants in the CSP should be pressed to follow Suzuki’s lead and withdraw from the June 8-9 Israeli greenwashing conference in Montreal. Representatives of numerous ‘greenish’ or ‘leftish’ organizations are set to participate in the CSP event, including a representative of the FTQ union federation’s Fonds de solidarité. Former Quebec premier Jean Charest is also on the bill.
But the bigger story is the Suzuki Foundation’s ties to wealthy Zionist donors. In response to my post announcing his withdrawal, former Vancouver city councillor and chair of journalism at Langara College, Anne Roberts wrote: “I do appreciate David Suzuki’s swift cancellation of speaking engagement at the Jewish National Fund Canada. But that’s not the main problem that has been exposed here. I was shocked to find out that wealthy Zionists like Jeff Hart and Stephen Bronfman have been on the Suzuki Foundation board for past 20 and 30 years, raising money that has been used to greenwash Israel’s racist colonialist polices since its founding and now continuing genocide in Gaza. I hope that members of the Foundation take this opportunity to examine the source of its funding. After all, war, particularly the war in Gaza and Lebanon, is a terrible loss of life and contributor to climate change.”
Should Bronfman be on the Suzuki board? Head of fundraising for the Liberal Party, Bronfman was exposed in the Paradise Papers leak of offshore financial documents to be linked “to a $60-million US offshore trust in the Cayman Islands that may have cost Canadians millions in unpaid taxes.” A 2017 CBC article also revealed “how Bronfman’s longtime law firm — which also represented other offshore clients — helped mount a lobbying campaign in Ottawa that for several years fought legislation designed to crack down on offshore trusts.”
A year ago Bronfman told the Canadian Jewish News Donald Trump was “very good for the Jewish people.” An ardent Jewish supremacist himself, Stephen Bronfman is a scion of the most important anti-Palestinian family in Canadian history.
David Suzuki’s withdrawal from a forum instigated by the racist Jewish National Fund offers an opening to deliver a major blow to the apartheid greenwashing Climate Solutions Prize. It’s also an opportunity to press the Suzuki Foundation to sever its ties to wealthy genocidal Jewish supremacist donors.
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