Oddly one of the most significant institutional purveyors of anti-Palestinian bias in Canada operates largely below the radar. The Jewish Federations of North America, an umbrella organization representing nearly 150 organizations across Canada and the U.S., is known for supporting domestic Jewish education and funding charity projects in Israel, however, a number of Jewish federations in Canada lobby for Canadians to join the IDF in possible violation of local laws, and have run campaigns to malign Palestinians and their Jewish advocates.
While the federations claim apolitical status and operate tax-exempt charities, it’s an open secret that it is deeply political. The federations in Canada have an official lobbying arm, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, led by “unelected, unaccountable and untroubled by criticism” officers who endorse measures that shirk their espoused non-partisan agenda– “It isn’t really, at least not when it comes to Israel,” wrote Canadian columnist Andrew Cohen.
The Jewish Federations of North America was founded 1932 in New York City as the National Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds. Member federations in Canada have many public facing campaigns that raise funds for Israeli charities. Since 1970 in Canada, one federation, the United Jewish Appeal Federation of Greater Toronto, or UJA Toronto, has organized an international event, the annual Walk with Israel.
UJA Toronto also hosted another walk in 2014 during the war in Gaza, “We Will Not Be Silent! A community march against anti-Semitism and the Demonization of the Jewish State.” This march linked the out pour of criticism against Israel during the 2014 war to antisemitism. The Times of Israel reported, one of the march leaders, Holocaust survivor Bill Giled said, “Thank God for the IDF. Thank God for Israel. And remember together we must stand. Never again!”
UJA Toronto also operates an Israel Engagement program. A year ago it announced that an eight-year veteran of the IDF, Eyal Shmueli, was their new Israeli emissary and the keynote speaker at UJA Toronto’s 2020 fundraising appeal.
The federations provide tens of millions of dollars to private schools that promote an Israeli narrative. In 2018 UJA Toronto gave the principal of Robin Hebrew Academy, Claire Sumerlus, an Israel Engagement Award. Many of the schools they fund have students sing the Israeli national anthem and fly the Israeli flag. On Israel’s 70th anniversary two years ago UJA Toronto director of corporate communications, Dan Horowitz, described the Zionist ethos at one of those schools: “I drove my daughter to her Jewish day school and, upon dropping her off, I was amazed to see a veritable sea of blue and white flooding the playground, with boys and girls dressed in only those colours.”
As I recently detailed, a number of Toronto schools openly promote the Israeli military. The largest recipient of UJA Toronto school funding, TanenbaumCHAT, organizes “IDF days.” Canada’s largest private high school also has fundraisers for Israeli military initiatives and former and current Israeli soldiers talk to the students about the IDF, which sometimes appears part of the Israeli consulate’s recruitment drives.
Jewish federations in Canada have a more direct role.
In the Fall UJA Toronto held a webinar with Brant Slomovic, author of a recent photo book on foreign enlistees fighting in the Israeli army. UJA Toronto and Montreal’s Federation CJA also promotes IDF recruitment. UJA Toronto’s website advertised a June 4 event titled “Nefesh B’Nefesh VIRTUAL Webinar: Joining the IDF.” The promotion explained that individuals would learn “everything you need and want to know about joining the IDF.” Federation CJA promoted a similar event that took place three days later.
According to the Foreign Enlistment Act it is illegal to recruit for a foreign military. The act states, “any person who, within Canada, recruits or otherwise induces any person or body of persons to enlist or to accept any commission or engagement in the armed forces of any foreign state or other armed forces operating in that state is guilty of an offence.” (There is an ongoing campaign calling on the federal government to apply charges against those recruiting Canadians for the Israeli military.)
What’s more, UJA Toronto has sought to suppress the speech of those supporting Palestinian rights. In the summer it supported a bid to bankrupt Foodbenders due to the small Toronto restaurant’s support of the Palestinian cause. In another instance, the Jewish Federation of Winnipeg canceled its sponsorship of a 2019 event by Lex Rofeberg because the fourth year rabbinical student was a member of the anti-occupation (though not anti-Zionist) American Jewish group IfNotNow (Rofeberg wasn’t even going to speak about Israel). In 2009 UJA Toronto demanded the cancellation of an international conference put on by academics at Queen’s and York Universities titled “Israel/Palestine: Mapping Models of Statehood and Paths to Peace.”
Last year UJA Toronto had a whopping $165 million in revenue and $528 million in assets and planned gifts that were, at least in part, accumulated through its charitable tax status. Also subsidized by the state, Federation CJA in Montreal is about half the size.
Despite the heft of the national network of federations, there has been little public criticism of their anti-Palestinianism. While the left compares Israel to apartheid South Africa — it is worse in many ways — there is a trepidation about directly challenging Jewish institutions that enable this racist and colonial behavior. Imagine if during the struggle for racial equality in South Africa in the 1980s an organization in Toronto organized an annual Walk for South Africa, funded a major South African apartheid lobby group and various initiatives that promoted the South African military. There would certainly have been statements of condemnation and demonstrations at their office. Yet UJA Toronto does this and more to support an apartheid state with almost no protest.It’s long past time to directly challenge the Jewish federations. It’s time for those who care about peace and international justice to treat the federations the same way they would any organization that promotes racism and colonialism.
Why calling Israel an apartheid state is not enough | Middle East Eye
“Why calling Israel an apartheid state is not enough” by Lana Tatour, Middle East Eye, Jan. 18/21
EXCERPT:
“Report from B’Tselem highlighting Israel’s apartheid character is a welcome development, but this finding cannot be divorced from the state’s oppressive settler-colonialism.
“B’Tselem, a leading human rights group in Israel, recently released a report concluding that Israel is an apartheid state, with a regime of Jewish supremacy stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
“The report found that Israel meets the definition of apartheid under international law, which defines apartheid as ‘inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them’.
“The report received widespread international media attention and was described as a ‘watershed‘ moment. But it was only a watershed moment for B’Tselem, which was using the term ‘apartheid’ for the first time in its three-decade history, and for an international community that is so infatuated with Israeli voices. For Palestinians, none of this is new.
“Dominating Palestinians”
“B’Tselem is not the first human rights group to call Israel an apartheid regime. In 2009, Palestinian and South African scholars published a comprehensive report that determined Israel was committing the crime of apartheid. Two Palestinian human rights organisations, Adalah and Al-Haq, were part of this initiative.
“Two former UN special rapporteurs on human rights in Palestine reached a similar conclusion. In 2007, John Dugard determined that ‘elements of the occupation constitute forms of colonialism and of apartheid’. And, a few years ago, Richard Falk co-authored a report finding that Israel has established ‘an apartheid regime that oppresses and dominates the Palestinian people as a whole’. The UN secretary-general was quick to distance himself from the report, ordering its removal from the UN website.”
Some years ago the late Hajo Meier, an 80-year-old Holocaust survivor, was doing a speaking tour. Topic: “Never Again For Anyone.” No Toronto synagogue or other mainstream [i.e. Zionist] organization would give him a platform. He spoke at the Winchevsky Centre (left-wing/secular Jews) and at Quaker House.
I have two buttons (I have access to a button-making machine!) that say NEVER AGAIN FOR ANYONE and NEVER AGAIN BY ANYONE. I have a Zionist friend who won’t let me in her house wearing my “Jews Against the Occupation” button. But these she doesn’t object to. She doesn’t get it.