For years, “foreign interference” has been the scarecrow Ottawa drags out whenever Beijing or Moscow are on the menu. Beijing, Moscow, Tehran… the enemy list is familiar, rehearsed, and politically safe. However, a new report from Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) blows straight through that narrative at the moment when politicians act outraged about Chinese influence, a close military partner has been running its own operations on Canadian soil and getting away with it. The document isn’t written in the soft language of a funding appeal; on the page, it reads like a case file that follows how Israeli diplomats, ministries and cut-outs bankroll opinion polls, undermine consumer labelling rules, organise propaganda junkets, pump out racist disinformation and ship spyware into Canada’s policing ecosystem.
The report also makes a broader point that shouldn’t be missed. These episodes are not random. To the contrary, they sit inside a much larger state effort to shape opinion abroad. CJPME notes that Israel’s 2026 budget reserved about $730 million for overseas image management, or hasbara, suggesting that what has surfaced in Canada is likely only a fraction of the full operation.
What’s in the investigative report has nothing to do with some fuzzy “diaspora” culture war; it shows Israel moving pieces inside Canada through Canadian firms, front groups and parts of the security apparatus to protect its image after the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the assault on Lebanon, while exposing how this foreign state goes after people who refuse to look away.
In 2023, the Toronto Star reported, as cited by CJPME, that Canadian security agencies had flagged Israel as one of six states “potentially engaging in influence activities” in Canada, alongside China, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Not long after, “The Breach Investigation” cited in the report found that the Israeli consulate in Toronto had secretly commissioned a poll through Aurora Strategies Global to inflate apparent Canadian support for the war in Gaza.
The mechanics matter. Israeli officials used a Canadian firm to place polling in the public sphere, dressed up as neutral research while hiding the real client. Liberal insiders in the “Lib Friends of Israel” WhatsApp group were reportedly told the poll had been done on behalf of the consulate and discussed getting it in front of the Prime Minister’s Office before release. Calling this “debate” is a stretch; what you see here is perception management bankrolled from abroad. (more...)
THE INVISIBLE HAND: Israel’s Covert Ops in Canada, Redacted by Ottawa
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