Category: CPA Statements

Open letters and statements to the public from the Canada Palestine Association.

#StopTheJNF…We will not Stop, We will not Rest!

News broke earlier this week about Canada Revenue Agency’s intention to revoke the JNF’s charitable status. Although this was positive news, only brought on by enormous grassroots pressure, we must be cautious in considering this a victory. It is not yet a done deal and the JNF, in its own July 25 media statement, announced that they were appealing and “JNF Canada will continue its charitable activity including collecting and receipting donations and distributing funds while the legal challenge is before the Federal Court of Appeal…JNF Canada is continuing its work”. So for now, JNF Canada (and by extension Canadian taxpayers) are still funding genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Attached are photos and a video from multiple #StopTheJNF pickets in Vancouver, initiated by CPA over the last 20 years.

Zionism and its lobby groups are bankrupt!

Future historians will study how a settler colonial regime, engaged in a vicious genocide, managed to promote the false narrative of themselves as the “victim”. Academics will marvel at how this narrative was adopted and parroted by Western politicians, institutions and the media, even those claiming to be progressive. 

They will be dumbfounded how the U.S.-Israeli aggression on Gaza committed massacre after massacre, but would then escape criticism by rushing to recycle some debunked claims from nine months earlier. And observers will also note how the outrageous weaponization of “anti-Semitism” by the Zionist lobby resulted in an increase of real anti-Jewish racism in the West. 

Two recent examples in Canada illustrate how this process functions with amazing efficiency. One is the outrageous smear campaign against a Palestinian community member in Vancouver, in which the BC NDP premier participated, and the other is the deleting of a photograph about Palestinian embroidery by Ontario’s NDP leader. In both cases, pro-Israel lobby groups had come out swinging to denounce what was legitimate political protest in the first situation, and basic cultural expression in the second. 

We know the Zionist groups are becoming more desperate by the day, and really can’t comprehend why a large segment of the population refuses to support their genocidal campaign. As such, their attacks on activists are also becoming more vicious and unhinged. 

Earlier this month, activists in BC held a protest at an international women’s softball tournament that featured a game between Canada and Israel. An open letter denouncing the targeting of Dania Barakat noted that she “has been subjected to vicious smears and doxing by organized pro-Israeli racists. This happened after she participated in a July 3, 2024 protest against Team Israel, who were shamefully welcomed in Surrey to play in the Canada Women’s Softball Cup tournament.” 

We are not surprised when Zionist advocates launch these kind of fabricated charges against activists, but what is really galling is how so many of our politicians are willing to “pile on” without even the most cursory checks of what actually happened. Nonetheless they use their social media accounts to spread these outrageous smears and help inflame campaigns that have resulted in people losing their livelihoods, their future careers and even being charged with “hate crimes”. Their behaviour has real-life consequences, consequences that are devastating for the individuals involved (curiously in the Vancouver area, most of the individuals targeted have been women).  

In Ontario, NDP leader Maria Stiles quickly deleted a photo of a booth promoting Palestinian embroidery after being chastised by Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center FSWC as follows: “The ‘beautiful Palestinian embroidery’ that you speak of represents the erasure of Israel and its Jewish people…It is unbecoming of a political leader to celebrate such a display, which causes harm to Jews in Canada and Israel.” 

She complied and removed the photo, thereby promoting the racism that even forms of Palestinian cultural expression are forbidden. One of the embroidery pieces had dared to show the map of historical Palestine, and this was too much for FSWC, who demanded an apology.  

As Zionism moves close to its inevitable demise, the Israeli state and its supporters are attacking anyone and anything that dares to stand up and support Palestine. But their movement tactics are bankrupt, as bankrupt as the Eilat port, and we are certain this vicious ideology will soon be in the dustbin of history!

(cover photo Michael YC Tseng) 

Stand with Dania! Shame on our Political Leaders!

Are our politicians not ashamed of the way they all line up to “pile on” and attack whoever the major pro-Israel groups decide is the current persona non grata? And that they do this within just a few hours of each other? …Time and again we have seen this pattern of rushing to condemn some specific protestor or group.  Our politicians, and many of the mainstream media, seem to have no shame when it comes to proving their loyalty to the Zionist project. 

Sign the open letter here: Open Letter to Premier Eby and BC Green’s Furstenau: Rescind Slanderous, Anti-Palestinian Statements (google.com)

We won’t be intimidated, We will Stand Together!

New statement from BCCLA: 2024-06-11-BCCLA-Letter-to-VPD-regarding-Charlotte-Kates-1.pdf

Community efforts to defend activist Charlotte Kates have all emphasized that her recent arrest, and the pending “hate charges” against her, are clearly part of a larger on-going campaign to delegitimize and ban Samidoun. In fact, the leading pro-Israel lobby group Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) lists this issue as one of the priorities on their website. 

A March 27 report published by the Canadian Jewish News offered revealing insights into a Vancouver connection on all of this. In a private meeting with local Zionists, PM Justin Trudeau apparently “promised to follow up on the Vancouver group’s three main asks: renew and expand the permanent federal Security Infrastructure Program grants to include security guards stationed at Jewish buildings in light of Oct. 7; encourage provincial attorney’s general to prosecute protesters who intimidate Jews and use hate speech; add the Samidoun organization to Canada’s list of designated terrorist entities”. 

Point 2 is already underway with Kates’ arrest and we take note of Point 3. 

(Also attending this private meeting was Taleeb Noormohamed, the MP for Vancouver Granville, who was key in negatively influencing  the March 18th House of Commons motion, and seamlessly moves from iftar photo-ops with Trudeau to meetings with Zionists.) 

The pro-Israel lobby knows it is losing public support as each new massacre of Palestinians horrifies more people; their only response is to crank up efforts to criminalize pro-Palestinian activists. Last week, MP Anthony Housefather during a speech in the House of Commons on anti-Semitism, rushed to offer the ludicrous solution of designating Samidoun as a “terrorist entity”. 

As the Vancouver Police Department VPD increase their violent repression of all Palestinian solidarity, most recently at the May 31 rail blockade, and even allow their officers who previously wore the “punisher logo” to attack our protests, do we really expect any fair treatment from such a body? Do we really think they can conduct an impartial investigation into charges against activists standing up for Palestinian rights?  

We cannot and do not trust pro-Zionist government officials and politicians, and certainly not the cops that have been actively harassing our protests for almost 8 months. They must all be held to account.
We will rely on our ourselves and stand together to defend our right to speak up for Palestine! 

(Cover photo Michael YC Tseng)

Don’t lecture Palestinians about “violence”!

Expanded version of this article on AlMayadeen English: We will never stop advocating for Palestine! | Al Mayadeen English

Almost eight months of live-streamed genocide and still no end in sight. No meaningful moves by Western powers to halt the Israeli daily atrocities, in fact each day brings new evidence of their complicity. And the Zionist military just announced it wishes to continue for another seven months! 

Recently a small community in British Columbia, Canada held a successful film showing and meeting to support Palestinians and Gaza. They showed the film “Where Should the Birds Fly”, which documents the horrific experiences of one young girl and her friends/family during the 2008-2009 Israeli onslaught. 

A speaker after the film told the audience: “Understand that the kids you saw in that movie are today’s resistance fighters”. And until the Zionist settler colonialist project is truly defeated, then Palestinians will resist and fight for a brighter future, “from generation to generation, until return and total liberation”.  

In an article written late last year, I wrote: “Can you imagine how tired Palestinians are of trying to explain to the world why they deserve to be treated humanely? How tired they are of constantly having to justify why their voices should be not just heard, but trusted? Anyone just waking up to the Palestinian reality in the last two months should know Palestinians have been carrying this burden of telling and re-telling their story for decades, with minimal global response.” 

We also need to address the underlying and deeply entrenched racism that has helped facilitate this genocide. The longevity of the “mass rape” story, despite being debunked repeatedly, has drawn back the curtain on the depth of anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab racism in Western societies. The Zionist lobby seems to have decided from day one that this particular piece of “atrocity propaganda” would engage the most support and sympathy. 

There is of course the normal revulsion at the sexual abuse of any person, male or female, which the Zionists have manipulated par excellence. But this still does not fully explain the ease with which this story keeps getting recycled and amplified and believed in the West, which relies on the centuries old distrust and stereotypes of “Arab men”. Arab men as bloodthirsty, violent, lusting after women (and white women in particular), undisciplined and intensely misogynistic. 

Professor Rudolph Ware has pointed out that this is an age-old tactic that was (and is still) used against the black community in the U.S., detailing how false rape allegations in the US often led to mass lynchings. He also talked about how the issue of “safety” is also weaponized against people of colour, as we are now seeing on many university campuses. 

So, please, don’t watch Palestinian babies burn to death and then lecture those same people about how to resist and when to resist. Don’t wring your hands now about the Rafah massacres if you are in anyway complicit in enabling that trajectory to occur. “Nothing can wash the blood from your hands,” said the Reverend Munther Isaac at an Easter vigil for Gaza, addressing the hypocrisy of Western regimes. 

Now is not the time (if one ever existed) for Western supporters to appoint themselves as the moral arbiters on what constitutes acceptable liberation tactics and behaviour. Now is not the time for them to declare who is a “good” Palestinian or a “bad” Palestinian. If they are genuinely interested in supporting the Palestinian struggle, they must focus all their attention on ridding themselves of their own rotten governments, media and institutions that have been supporting this genocide and have burdened the world with such inhumanity. 

By Marion Kawas