Category: Featured

No to being Elbit’s Testing Ground!

Canada Palestine Association (CPA) Vancouver strongly condemns the recent sale of Vancouver-based, International Submarine Engineering (ISE) to Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer and primary provider of land-based equipment and aerial apparatus to the Israeli military. This transaction further implicates Ebit Systems in Canadian financial institutions, military structure and technology.

While Mark Carney and government officials talk of  “Canada First”, they knowingly align Canada more deeply with foreign states and companies directly responsible for the genocide of the Palestinian people. Israel has relied on Elbit Systems weapons, which are marketed as “battle tested” in Gaza and the West Bank, to enact criminal aggression and devastation across the region, killing people in Gaza every day, terrorizing Palestinians in the West Bank, killing Canadian aid workers, occupying southern Syria, and wiping out villages in Southern Lebanon. 

After the 2024 International Criminal Court ruling that Israel has “plausibly” committed genocide in Gaza, we, along with many Canadians, have been calling for the Canadian government to impose a full, immediate Arms Embargo and sanctions. The acquisition of ISE is yet another example of the cowardice of this government, one that bows to the pressure and praise of Zionist mouthpieces.

The Centre for Israel Jewish Affairs (CIJA) rushed to praise the government for allowing the foreign takeover as “a key milestone in Canada’s strategy to help small and medium-sized businesses grow and integrate into international defense supply chains, as well as the advancement of Canada’s Defence Industrial Strategy”. Apparently, according to CIJA, it is “also another example of how Canadians and Israelis are working together, supported by our 30-year-old Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement (CIFTA), to create jobs, drive innovation and strengthen the security of both our countries.” Considering that the terms of CIFTA are in flagrant violation of Canada’s obligations under international law, it should be no surprise that the allowed acquisition only serves to establish the Canadian governments’ alliance with the genocidal Zionist state.

We and other Canadians reaffirm what we have been advocating for for years – A real arms embargo and a discontinuation of the Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement. 

Others also question who will benefit from this acquisition? We need to be asking how this contract – which was surely months,  if not years, in the making – came about? If Canadian companies, supported with Canadian taxpayers’ funds help to build the technology, who gets to weigh in on its sale? Those following this action ask for accountability, and so do we. 

ISE was a Canadian-owned company developing sophisticated marine defense technology. Yet the government falsely claims Arctic sovereignty will be protected by its acquisition to the largest Israeli arms manufacturer. In fact, what the sale does guarantee is further entanglement in Israel’s genocidal actions and deeper complicity in the current genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestine.  

ELBIT OUT OF CANADA!

Signed by: BDS Vancouver-Coast Salish & CPA Vancouver

Canadian government affirms its anti-Palestinian racism!

On September 24, 2026, “Public Safety” Canada issued a progress report on their efforts to combat anti-Semitism. This report stated that the government committed to:
“…support the recognition, understanding and response to contemporary manifestations of antisemitism, including anti-Zionism, as outlined in the Canadian Handbook on the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism.”

This is the first time that the Canadian government has, at least publicly and in writing, claimed that anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism. They follow a few other Western governments in doing this, for example Germany.

Canada Palestine Association, and many others, warned several years ago that this would be the inevitable outcome of normalizing the dangerous IHRA definition. In December of 2022, after the newly elected Ken Sim pushed through adoption of the IHRA at Vancouver City Council, we published an article on our website which said:

“The main objective of the IHRA definition is to legitimize Israel and to slander all those who expose its illegal and inhumane activities, putting a chill on the Palestinian solidarity work and covering up for Israeli war crimes.
The Israeli Hasbara 3D’s are at work: it distorts the nature of the Palestinian struggle, it distracts from the settler colonialist nature of Zionism, and defames as anti-Semites all those who expose and condemn Israeli atrocities.”

And now that this has been codified by the federal government, we can expect other levels of government to follow suit. This is why we have always maintained that the IHRA definition is not just bankrupt but dangerous. And why we insisted over a month ago in our first comment on upcoming municipal elections that it was crucial to “Demand that all candidates for Vancouver city council commit to withdrawing the dangerous and bankrupt IHRA definition.” This is a straight-forward yes or no demand to all candidates, and something concrete that could significantly impact the Palestinian community and its supporters.

These attempts by the Zionist lobby to smear Palestinian advocacy as anti-Semitic are the desperate throes of those who know they have lost the support of public opinion.

Musicians, sports figures, anyone who voices support for Palestine are portrayed as anti-Semitic. Not only is it ludicrous but it also debases the real fight against all forms of racism, including anti-Jewish racism.

In the UK, professor David Miller recently won his case against his dismissal from Bristol University when the tribunal ruled “that anti-Zionism is a legally protected belief in the United Kingdom.”

The Canadian government is on the wrong side of history on this issue, as they are on so many others. We refute this characterization of anti-Zionism and refuse to be told as Palestinians that we cannot condemn this ideology that dispossessed our whole nation and people and continues to implement our ethnic cleansing and genocide!

We are obliged to be anti-Zionist; with every fibre of our being, we will continue to resist the supremacist settler colonialist ideology that insists we are marginal and non-existent. We would ask no less of any indigenous peoples fighting for their very survival.

And finally, we tell the Zionists in the Canadian government that you are anti-Palestinian racists. Palestinians and our supporters all over the world will condemn you as such, and remember you as the bigots you are.

(Check out our “I am an anti-Zionist” video clips campaign)