Historic. Maybe the biggest victory for Palestinian solidarity activists in Canadian history.
The Jewish National Fund of Canada losing its charitable status is a blow to Israel, Zionist groups and Canada’s establishment.
But the grassroots win should embarrass much of the mainstream self-described “left”.
In response to the Canada Revenue Agency revoking the openly racist JNF’s charitable status, NDP revenue critic Niki Ashton emailed her list a fundraising appeal highlighting her recent role in challenging charities funding the Israeli military and West Bank colonies. She also re-tweeted a member of Independent Jewish Voices applauding the revocation and the union representing 17,000 CRA staff endorsing the JNF revocation. While Ashton and others in the NDP have offered the anti-JNF campaign some support in recent years, historically NDP officials have promoted this lynchpin of Zionist colonialism.
In 2016 then NDP foreign affairs critic Hélène Laverdière participated in a JNF tree planting ceremony in Jerusalem. During a visit to Israel with Canada’s Governor General Laverdière attended a ceremony with JNF World Chairman Danny Atar. A year earlier NDP MP Pat Martin spoke at a JNF event hosted by the prime minister’s wife, Laureen Harper, at 24 Sussex Drive. It was organized to “recognize and thank the people that have helped to make JNF Canada what it is today.”
Last year Ontario NDP leader Marit Stiles hosted a meeting partly organized by Noah Tepperman, a long-time directorof Windsor’s JNF branch and NDP activist in that city. In 2015 then Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath published anad in a JNF Hamilton handbook and offered words of encouragement to its fundraiser while Nova Scotia NDP Premier Darrell Dexter planted a tree at a JNF garden in 2011. Manitoba NDP Premier Gary Doer was honoured at a 2006 JNF Negev Dinner in Winnipeg and cabinet minister Christine Melnick received the same honour in 2011. During a 2010 trip to Israel subsequent Manitoba NDP Premier Greg Selinger signed an accord with the JNF to jointly develop two bird conservation sites while water stewardship minister Melnick spoke at the opening ceremony for a park built in Jaffa by the JNF, Tel Aviv Foundation and Manitoba-Israel Shared Values Roundtable. (In 2017 Melnick won a B’nai Brith Zionist action figures prize for writing an article about a friend who helped conquer East Jerusalem and then later joined the JNF). (more...)
End of JNF charitable status a big win, little thanks to ‘left’
No comments:
Post a Comment