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Last week was a week that saw two huge victories on the Palestine front.
Of course Israel is still murdering mainly women and children by the score every day; just this week, the US gave a record $23.5 billion in military aid.
But here in Canada, the government has revoked the JNF’s (Jewish National Fund) tax status, and that of another Jewish organization, the Ne’eman Foundation.
This is huge. For more than a decade, Independent Jewish Voices Canada and several other organizations have been fighting to have the government enforce its own rules, evoke the JNF’s tax status, and the government finally did. The JNF has been the main tool used for throwing Palestinians off their land for more than a century. The JNF has taken Palestinians’ land, destroyed their small farms, wiped out Bedouin villages and grabbed land to reforest, to bulldoze and then grow cash crops and to destroy Palestinian life and livelihoods.
In Canada after 1967, the Canadian branch of the JNF raised about $15 million US to fund a 1,700-acre park called “Canada Park”. The park was built in 1970 on the land of three Palestinian villages which had been destroyed by JNF bulldozers only days after the end of the 1967 war on the orders of then chief of the general staff Yitzhak Rabin.
Halifax doctor Ismail Zayid has battled for the revocation of the JNF tax credits for more than 50 years. Born in Beit Nuba, one of the three villages destroyed in 1967, Dr Zayid has written letters to the government, the newspapers, and appeared on CBC-TV’s Fifth Estate to remind Canadians that it is their tax money that is paying for Canada Park – and the illegal appropriation of the Palestinians’ lands. Starting around 2010, Independent Jewish Voices has campaigned against JNF Canada’s charitable status, and in 2017 it filed a formal complaint with the Canadian government seeking the revocation of JNF’s charitable status on the basis of discrimination. In August 2024, the Canadian government announced the removal of JNF Canada’s charitable status.
The second great thing to happen this week is that the Bank of Nova Scotia has agreed to cut more than 40% of its investment in Israel’s Elbit Systems Ltd, a weapons manufacturer. The bank’s investments have prompted numerous protests against Scotiabank calling for it to divest the holdings over how the weapons are being used in the war in Gaza, in which Israel has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians.
Though Scotiabank maintains the cut had nothing to do with political pressure or Canadians’ demonstrating against investing in the huge Israeli war machine, the facts appear otherwise.
Scotiabank subsidiary 1832 Asset Management’s decision to invest in the Israeli weapons maker (Elbit) sparked protests at least 35 Scotiabank’s branches across Canada – in cities like Vancouver and Toronto and smaller communities such as St John NB, St John’s NF, and Guelph, Ont. As Omri Haiven (full disclosure; he’s my son), a local organizer in Vancouver explains,
“It was a diverse coalition of different organizers in most Canadian provinces. We worked together in an ad hoc way to show that Scotiabank funds genocide and to launch the National Day of Action.”
Protesters also disrupted Canada’s prestigious Giller Prize Gala in Toronto last November, a literary award sponsored by Scotiabank. Some protesters jumped onstage with signs that read “Scotiabank funds genocide”. Gala host Rick Mercer attempted to rip one of the signs from a protester’s hands.
Video footage shows other protesters standing in the audience area shouting that Scotiabank “currently has a $500 million stake in Elbit Systems” and that “Elbit Systems is supplying the Israeli military’s genocide against the Palestinian people”.
“We will not be silent any more,” a protester added. The group was quickly escorted out by police and later arrested, according to a Giller spokesperson.
All and all it’s been a good week to see results of protests in Canada. We better keep it up. Consider this your daily reminder to never stop talking about Gaza.
Image at the top: The (formerly) ubiquitous “Blue Box” - a donation box for the JNF placed on counters near the cash at most Jewish stores across Canada.
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