Press Release
CAAARI Ottawa, 25 June 2024
Ottawa, 25 June 2024—
The Coalition Against Antisemitism, Anti-Palestinian Racism, and Islamophobia (CAAARI - composed of nonprofit organizations Arab Canadian Lawyers Association, Canadian Muslim Public Affairs Council, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, Independent Jewish Voices, and Jewish Faculty Network, as well as a host of independent faculty, students and community members across Canada) has submitted their letter to members of the House of Commons JUST committee, opposing what they are calling sham hearings on antisemitism and Islamophobia. At the time of this writing, copies of the letter have been sent to MPs by Coalition supporters over 48,000 times.
A highly politicized optical illusion of a real parliamentary study, the JUST committee’s antisemitism hearings deliberately shut out the full range of Jewish voices. CAAARI members say that instead of addressing White supremacy and racism against all communities, hearings are wasting tax-payer dollars to defame advocates of peace and human rights at a time when Israel’s genocidal campaign against Palestinians and Canada’s complicity in it should be commanding our attention.
Testifying witnesses have actual ties to the Israel lobby, including students who held positions in pro-Israel advocacy organizations, and organizations whose mandate is boosting Israel’s image abroad. CAAARI warns that the official antisemitism report currently being drafted will likely be based on particular briefs containing a host of serious allegations that have not been verified, including false and defamatory material not accountable to any outside body, as parliamentary proceedings have complete immunity from prosecution or civil liability.
The climax of the antisemitism hearings was the interrogation of four university presidents, which played like a “mockbuster” of US congressional questioning and unfolded in the shadow of class action lawsuits against major universities for alleged failure to protect students from antisemitism on campus. SLAPP (Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation) lawsuits, or ‘lawfare’, are an offensive strategy of Israel advocacy groups against organizations supporting Palestinian rights. “Their objective is to cause reputational damage, create distraction, drain resources, and generally chill democratic discourse surrounding issues of public concern,” says Jillian Rogin, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Windsor.
“It seems that a publicly funded study is being used as an arena for lobbyists to push their particular demands to the exclusion of others,” says Eve Haque, a Professor and Research Chair at York University specializing in race/racism, language, and academic freedom. “Anti-racism strategies emphasize the need to fight all racisms, not to single out one or two. It is not possible to fight antisemitism if one’s strategy involves fomenting anti-Palestinian racism.”
CAAARI argues that while giving the illusion of equity, subsequent Islamophobia hearings confirm that Canada’s parliament is not immune to Israel’s current Islamophobic campaign abroad. Unlike those on antisemitism, Islamophobia hearings were organized without consultation with stakeholders, at short notice, with a budget $10,000 smaller, and only allowed for 19 witnesses (as opposed to 23 for antisemitism), some of whom were literally treated as second-class citizens.
Jasmin Zine, Professor of Sociology and Religion & Culture at Wilfrid Laurier University and a noted expert on Islamophobia studies and anti-Muslim racism, questions parliamentary failure to institute a specific hearing on anti-Palestinian racism (APR), which includes failing to acknowledge Palestinians as Indigenous people with rights to their homeland and denying the Nakba. The “10/7 Generation” of Muslim/Palestinian Generation Z youth in Canada are currently “facing dangerous circumstances due to their identities being demonized by recurrent Islamophobic tropes and anti-Palestinian racism resulting in them being subjected to violence and political repression,” says Zine.
The thousands of letter writers assert that the JUST parliamentary hearings on antisemitism and Islamophobia are currently serving as a platform not to address racism and religious-based hate in Canada but rather to advance a pro-Israeli, pro-war, rights-infringing agenda that continues to encourage anti-Palestinian racism.
For more information and to arrange interviews with Coalition members, contact:
Willa Holt at communications@ijvcanada.org