Federal report deems it “racist” to criticize anti-Israel activists

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TOP STORY

The federal government has dropped a new guide that, according to critics, deems it “racist” to criticize Palestinian advocacy or extremism.

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The guide also defines both “sharia” and “jihad” as benign terms that are misrepresented by Westerners, with sharia defined as a means “to establish justice and peace in society.”

It’s contained in “The Canadian Guide to Understanding and Combatting Islamophobia,” a document published last week by the Department of Canadian Heritage.

The report endorses the idea of “anti-Palestinian racism,” an activist term with such a broad definition that it technically deems any criticism of Palestinians or “their narratives” to be racist.

“Public discourse often unfairly associates Palestinian and Muslim identities with terrorism,” reads the guide.

The new guide specifically links to a definition of the term circulated by the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association. Their 99-word definition says that it’s racist to link the Palestinian cause to terrorism, to describe it as “inherently antisemitic” or to say that Palestinians are not “an Indigenous people.”

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The term is broad enough that merely acknowledging the existence of Israel could fall under its rubric. The definition describes the Jewish state as “occupied and historic Palestine,” and its creation as “the Nakba” (catastrophe). “Denying the Nakba” is specifically cited as one of the markers of “anti-Palestinian racism.”

In a March 4 statement criticizing the new federal report, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) said that the term is so vague that “denouncing Hamas – the terrorists behind the October 7 massacre – could be portrayed as an act of racism.”

The new report was praised, meanwhile, by the vocally anti-Israel Centre for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, which called Ottawa’s embrace of the term anti-Palestinian racism “groundbreaking.”

“We are extremely pleased that Canada, through this guide, finally recognizes the unique racism that Palestinians experience daily,” said the group’s acting president Michael Bueckert.

The federal government’s new guide writes that Canada’s “understanding of anti-Palestinian racism” is growing, and directs readers to a 2022 report on the phenomenon by the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association.

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Among the examples of anti-Palestinian racism cited by the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association is the case of Javier Davila, a Toronto District School Board equity advisor who was investigated after using an internal mailing list to circulate a guide that used a Palestinian terrorist group as a source. Specifically, Davila’s guide cited materials published the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Canadian listed terror entity.

As the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association describes it, Davila was silenced after “he shared resources on Palestinian human rights with TDSB educators to help students understand the events taking place in Palestine at the time.”

Another cited example of “anti-Palestinian racism” was CBC host Duncan McCue apologizing for using the word “Palestine” on air in 2020, saying he instead should have used the broadcaster’s usual term of “Palestinian territories.”

The Canadian Guide to Understanding and Combatting Islamophobia is written by Amira Elghawaby, the Trudeau government’s Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia.

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A former staffer at the National Council of Canadian Muslims, Elghawaby has frequently run into controversy in her role, which she started only in early 2023.

Soon after her appointment, multiple Quebec politicians – as well as Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre – called for Elghawaby’s resignation over a 2019 column in which she wrote “unfortunately, the majority of Quebecers appear to be swayed not by the rule of law, but by anti-Muslim sentiment.”

Elghawaby’s new report was published at the same time that the Government of Canada is also funding an “anti-Palestinian racism” film festival. The newly founded Film Project on Anti-Palestinian Racism, which is currently seeking submissions, cites the Government of Canada as its main funder.

IN OTHER NEWS

With Mark Carney now occupying the eerie twilight position of being a “prime minister designate,” here’s a few odd facets to his leadership win and pending appointment that you may have missed:

• As noted by the Toronto Sun’s Bryan Passifiume, Mark Carney is Catholic, something that he shares with six of the last 11 prime ministers (Louis St. Laurent, Pierre Trudeau, Joe Clark, John Turner, Brian Mulroney, Jean Chrétien). These prime ministers haven’t been particularly observant Catholics, but it’s a good showing for a country that hasn’t always had fond feelings for Catholicism.
• It’s the second time that a woman who’s served as deputy prime minister in a Liberal government attempted to become actual prime minister – and lost prodigiously in the effort. In the 2003 Liberal leadership election, former deputy prime minister Sheila Copps won just six per cent of delegate ballots. This time around, former deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland received 7.3 per cent.
• He will be the first Canadian prime minister to have never won an election for public office. There have been prime ministers who, like Carney, weren’t MPs at the time of their appointment – but all of them had at least some experience in elected office. Carney has never been an MP, MLA or a city councillor – and he’s never even attempted to run for any of these jobs.

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The B.C. Conservative Party first became a viable contender for power after a dustup over a social media post. In 2022, MLA John Rustad was kicked out of the B.C. Liberal caucus for a social media post that urged readers to “celebrate CO2,” saying that the case for carbon emissions as the “control knob of global temperature gets weaker every day.” So, Rustad instead became leader of the B.C. Conservatives and led them through a political renaissance that consumed his former party and brought him to the very doorstep of becoming B.C. premier in the 2024 provincial election. In an ironic twist, however, his party is now being torn apart over a dustup about a social media post. Rustad told one of his MLAs, Dallas Brodie, to delete an X.com post saying there were “zero” confirmed child burials at the former site of the Kamloops Indian Residential School. When she refused, he ejected her from caucus – prompting two other members to leave in protest.

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