The racist double standards are outrageous. Many Canadian Jewish organizations provide huge sums of (taxpayer subsidized) assistance to a genocidal military, yet a Palestinian Canadian activist is charged with “terrorism” for purportedly verbalizing support for resistance to occupation and genocide.
In a major escalation of the Toronto Police Service’s anti-Palestinian repression, the TPS has turned to Canada’s anti-Palestinian, civil-liberties-violating, post-9/11 terror law to charge a prominent Palestinian activist. The TPS charged Ahmad Hajahmad with “Participating in or Contributing to Activities of a Terrorist Group” for offering rhetorical support for Hamas’ armed resistance to Israeli colonial rule. As the Globe and Mail reported, “according to experts, the Toronto Police’s allegations against Mr. Hajahmad are potentially novel because they stem from words he said during a protest, which police say furthered the interests of Hamas.”
While they target a Palestinian Canadian for his words at demonstrations, they ignore Jewish Torontonians providing verbal, organizational, monetary and other material assistance to Israeli violence against Palestinians.
Over the past two decades Toronto power couple Heather Reisman and Gerry Schwartz have put $200 million into the HESEG Foundation for Lone Soldiers. Incredibly, the billionaires recoup most of their donations through “charitable” tax credits despite supporting non-Israelis joining an occupation force brutalizing Palestinians. HESEG violates Canada Revenue Agency rules for registered charities, which state that “supporting the armed forces of another country is not” charitable activity.
Many other Toronto registered ‘charities’ assist the Israel (illegal) occupation forces (IOF). Some have also provided funds for West Bank colonizers to purchase arms, as a recent Al Jazeera documentary “Complicit: How the West is Helping Israel Seize the West Bank” details.
Many Jewish private schools, which are registered charities, push young Toronto Jews to join a force killing and dispossessing Palestinians. At Toronto’s Bnei Akiva (Or Chaim) high school a significant proportion of the students join the IOF. A July 2024 Canadian Jewish News podcast about an alumni gravely injured while serving on an army base in the illegally occupied Shebaa Farms, quoted the mother of a student in the school saying “a quarter of the class” joined the Israeli military.
The school almost certainly violates the Foreign Enlistment Act. According to that law, “Any person who, within Canada, recruits or otherwise induces any person or body of persons to enlist or to accept any commission or engagement in the armed forces of any foreign state or other armed forces operating in that state is guilty of an offence.”
In February, the Israeli military noted that 1,500 Canadians were in the IOF. Considering the incredible destruction the Israeli military wrought in Gaza and elsewhere, any of them who return to Canada should be investigated for violating Canada’s War Crimes Act and Crimes Against Humanity. It notes, “Every person who, either before or after the coming into force of this section, commits outside Canada (a) genocide, (b) a crime against humanity, or (c) a war crime, is guilty of an indictable offence and may be prosecuted for that offence.”
Dozens of individuals currently in Toronto have likely killed Palestinians, but it doesn’t appear any of these genocidaires have been charged or even investigated.
Canadian law also criminalizes promoting genocidal ideology. Under Canada’s Criminal Code “Every person who advocates or promotes genocide is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than five years.” Many Canadians have openly defended and promoted Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
For the legal system, including the police, to have legitimacy it must treat all equally. It cannot selectively enforce laws against people who the powerful want to prosecute and ignore enforcement of laws against those who have the ears of the police.
The charge against Ahmad Hajahmad highlights anti-Palestinian racism. It must be opposed.
Support Yves’ work. Donate Now.
You must be logged in to post a comment.