Canada Calling Israel’s Ambassador to Canada Resigns Over “Different” Policy in Israel

By Candice Bodnaruk

ISRAEL’S AMBASSADOR to Canada, Ronen Hoffman, resigned in late January, citing political disagreements with Israel’s new, farright government led by Binyamin Netanyahu. Yael German, Israel’s ambassador to France, quit in December.

“With the transition to the new government and to a different policy in Israel, my personal and professional integrity has compelled me to request to shorten my post and return to Israel this summer,” Hoffman said in a tweet. Hoffman was appointed ambassador by former Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid.

Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) had been calling for Hoffman’s expulsion from Canada in the month before his resignation. At the beginning of the year, CJPME launched a campaign calling on Canada to boycott Israel’s extremist government.

Candice Bodnaruk has been involved in Palestinian issues for the past 14 years through organizations such as the Canadian BDS Coalition and Peace Alliance Winnipeg. Her political action started with feminism and continued with the peace movement, first with the No War on Iraq Coalition in 2003 in Winnipeg.

After Israel’s December election, CJPME noted that both Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly issued warm congratulations, without any mention of extremism or Israel’s increased annexation plans in the West Bank. “Canada looks forward to working together and building on our areas of shared interest,” Joly tweeted at the time.

CJPME responded by criticizing Joly on Twitter, demanding that Canada expel Hoffman, stop military trade with Israel and all trade with illegal settlements. “Canada should refuse to meet with the representatives of Israel’s far right regime,” the organization stated on their website. The Religious Zionism party, which is part of Binyamin Netanyahu’s new coalition government, has promoted vigilante violence, racial segregation and annexation of the West Bank.

CJPME’s “Tell Trudeau: Boycott Israel’s Extremist Government” campaign, encouraged people to email their political leaders. Almost 2,000 people sent emails to government representatives. In January, Michael Bueckert, vice president of CJPME, said the Canadian government must distance itself from the new, far-right regime.

“Prime Minister Trudeau must expel Israel’s ambassador and prove that Canada doesn’t hold ‘shared values’ with apartheid and a regime of Jewish supremacy.”

Responding to the ambassador’s resignation in an email to the Washington Report, Bueckert said Hoffman’s absence creates an easy opportunity for Canada to take a stand. “Therefore we are calling for Melanie Joly to refuse to recognize the diplomatic credentials of whoever Israel’s far-right, racist regime picks to replace him,” Bueckert said.

Program On Extremism And Radicalization Aims To Educate Teachers

Only two decades ago Islamic extremism was top of mind among experts who work in the field of extremism and radicalization. Now, it is white nationalism and neoNazism that are at the forefront.

Kawser Ahmed, Adjunct Political Science Professor at the University of Winnipeg and a project director with Extremism and Radicalization to Violence in Manitoba (ERIM), spoke with the Washington Report recently on the challenges and relevancy of this work in Manitoba.

The project, funded through Public Safety Canada, is the first of its kind in Canada. One of ERIM’s goals is to build awareness among teachers about extremism and radicalization. Project leaders have created a tool kit for educators that explores such topics as how to identify racist symbols on students’ clothing or backpacks of which teachers may not even be aware.

“Teachers often do not have a clue,” Ahmed said, explaining that a teacher may not have seen a white supremacist symbol before and won’t know how to deal with it.

ERIM’s educator resources help teachers understand what a symbol means and then decide how to deal with it. Empowerment through such knowledge is one of the prime objectives of the project.

Ahmed said the project is very unique because educators are in the forefront everyday talking and dealing with young people who are vulnerable in today’s world.

“I found a lot of interest among the educators in learning why this happens,” he said, adding that not all educators are on the same page or realize the severity of the issue. Some teachers have indicated extremism is not an appropriate topic for the classroom. “Racist ideologies and race superiority are discussed by kids at a young age,” Ahmed warns, noting that the program works with children as young as five. Once children become teens it is often too late to intervene.

In the past year, ERIM has sponsored lectures on countering White Nationalism in schools as well as the Canadian extremist group The Base, which has a presence in Manitoba. Ahmed believes The Base originally chose Manitoba as “its breeding ground” because the mid-size Prairie province was not on anyone’s radar. The group had plans to double in size and provide weapons training to members because there are many isolated locations in Manitoba and the province is also close to the U.S. border in North Dakota.

Shockingly, Ahmed disclosed that the core group of teachers he works with warned him that many teachers in Manitoba subscribe to white supremacy. Antiimmigration sentiments and “replacement theory” are also becoming more prevalent in the province, and “30 to 40 percent of Canadians believe they are being replaced by immigrants,” he said. The actual numbers of immigrants don’t matter in the larger view of things, what matters is perception, he said. “What I am personally trying to achieve with this project is to attack the perceptions, because perception seriously matters in today’s world,” he said. Now white nationalism and replacement theories have moved almost to the mainstream in Canada, with politicians like Federal Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre expressing sympathy for such views.

Last spring, ERIM organizers created a tool kit, “Confronting White Nationalism in Schools,” which is available on the ERIM website, <www.erimca.org/>, along with many other teacher-focused resources. “This project aims to educate our teachers about the dangers of extremism and violence among young people, so it is awareness building,” he said. “The school team is absolutely convinced that if they do not intervene and deal with it (white supremacy) it is going to be out of control,” Ahmed concluded.

MORE PROVINCIAL AND MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENTS ADOPT IHRA DEFINITION OF ANTI-SEMITISM

The Canadian government adopted the contentious International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism in 2019. Palestinian solidarity rights activists across Canada spent the past year writing letters, signing petitions and meeting with government officials, yet several provincial and municipal governments still chose to adopt the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism in 2022, including provincial and city governments in Manitoba, Alberta, New Brunswick and the Vancouver City Council.

Today, activists continue to focus on education, explaining to governments and organizations how the IHRA works and the implications of adopting the definition with all of its illustrative examples of anti-Semitism. The definition states “Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be directed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or nonJewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

What is troublesome is not this definition itself, but the examples of anti-Semitism that were created specifically for a data collection program but are now included with it, four of which refer to criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic. Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) says those examples have led their organization as well as many others, including the BC Civil Liberties Association and Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), to oppose the IHRA definition.

Aaron Lakoff, IJV’s communication and media lead, discussed the group’s campaign against the IHRA with the Washington Report recently. Lakoff said since the illustrative examples are the problematic part of the IHRA definition, activists can encourage governments to specifically not adopt the examples, which is what happened in Brampton, Ontario. “They did adopt IHRA, but then they came back and specifically said they weren’t adopting the examples because the mayor at the time was Patrick Brown, a wellknown conservative politician in Canada, who recognized how divisive the examples were,” Lakoff said.

Lakoff said his organization has also been telling the general public what IHRA is and why it should be opposed, and also why people should be finding other ways to define and fight anti-Semitism that don’t involve silencing the voices of Palestinians.

Lakoff thinks there is a certain level of fear among activists that when IHRA is adopted it may mean that the BDS movement or proPalestinian protests might be criminalized. “We haven’t seen that yet in Canada. Obviously, it’s something people should be wary of, but for now we absolutely have that space to agitate for BDS, to agitate against Israeli apartheid and we need to use that space while it’s still there,” he said. Groups may find the definition is eventually used to deny them space to hold an Israeli Apartheid Week event on campuses.

Lakoff spoke at the Montreal City Council meeting to oppose the IHRA. “There were a lot of Jews coming and speaking against IHRA. That just proves the point that we are so far away from having consensus on this definition and it’s causing such division in the Jewish community,” he said.

He said he considers it a small victory that the Canadian media has been talking about the IHRA and why it is controversial and dividing the Jewish community. The pro-Israel lobby is “losing their minds” when they see headlines in conservative newspapers like the Vancouver Sun calling the IHRA controversial. He said pro-Israel groups are trying to give the impression that the definition has broad consensus within the Jewish community which is simply not the case.

Lakoff is also concerned about the IHRA’s potential impact on universities, workplaces, and in institutions where there is a lot on the line for people speaking out. He pointed out that many Canadian academic organizations have opposed adoption of the definition and have also issued statements and led petitions against it. Queen’s University Faculty Association rejected the IHRA last year (2022) while the University of Toronto refused to adopt it in 2021.

“I think, again regardless of the kind of research you do, any academic in their right mind is going to recognize the dangers of equating support of Palestinian human rights and anti-Semitism,” Lakoff said. He explained that part of the problem with IHRA is that it exceptionalizes anti-Semitism, pitting Jewish safety and Jewish human rights against Palestinian safety and Palestinian human rights. IJV is also concerned about the possibility that the federal Heritage Minister, Ahmed Hussen, may require grant recipients to attest to the IHRA to receive Canadian Heritage funding. Many Arab or Muslim organizations regularly speak out against Israeli Apartheid, which could be deemed anti-Semitic under IHRA, and those organizations also receive Canadian Heritage money.

“Our approach has always been, yes, of course we need to be talking about fighting anti-Semitism, but let’s do that within a broader framework of fighting white supremacy, racism and anti-Palestinian racism,” Lakoff concluded. ■