Is there a safer, more community-focused girls’ group in Canada than the Girl Guides?

I doubt it. 

For more than 116 years Canadian Girl Guides have been recruiting girls and young women of all ages across the country.  In 1927, the Regina SK chapter baked and packaged cookies to sell them for fundraising.  It caught on; two years later the Guides across Canada started selling crème sandwich cookies – chocolate or vanilla (and chocolatey mint!) – which today bring in about $6.6 million annually. Selling boxed cookies is the Guides’ biggest yearly fundraiser. 

So how did the Girl Guides get in the crosshairs of the Canadian Women Against Antisemitism?  CWAA is a right-wing group of Jewish women and Israel supporters on the hunt to ruin anyone who dares to speak against Israel’s genocide.   

In Saskatoon, members of the Pathfinders, a Girl Guides’ group for girls aged 12-14, their leaders and a fabric artist discussed social justice and human rights issues. Like most young people across Canada, the girls were appalled by the scale of the death and destruction in Gaza.They wanted to make a banner for peace. 

After the Pathfinders posted the banner to their Instagram, the national Girl Guides’ office displayed it on their social media. 

Bury the banner — bury the criticism of Israel

Within a day or two, CWAA pounced.  True– it may not have been the CWAA.  It could have been a troll for CIJA (Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs), or a supposed “journalist”  from Honest Reporting Canada that turned in the Girl Guides for antisemitism and not being “sensitive to Jewish feelings.”  After all, any representation of the Palestinians, any support for their cause, the pro-Israel “burner” groups – here today and gone tomorrow – demand an apology from the leaders of Canada’s Girl Guides. 

CWAA publicly criticized Girl Guides of Canada for posting a photo of the Pathfinders’ banner on social media.  The CWAA insisted it alienated, excluded and endangered Jewish girls inside the organization.  It allegedly made Jewish members feel unsafe which flew in the face of the Guides’ mission to be a safe space for girls. Notice that CWAA assumed that young Jewish girls would NOT be bothered by the slaughter in Gaza; that every young Jewish girl would automatically support Israel. Just from recent polling, we know that’s not true. A growing proportion of Jews, and especially young Jews, disagree with the Israeli actions.

The CWAA wrote to The Girl Guides:

“We are writing to express serious concern regarding a recent post… depicting a banner created by youth that portrays an Arab woman holding a baby wrapped in a keffiyeh.   While we recognize that the original activity may have been inten=ded as a way for girls to express feelings about issues they care about, the decision to publicly amplify this image was deeply insensitive and harmful.”  (from CWAA, 19 Dec. 2025 on Instagram)

Within hours, Shannon Benner,  CEO of Girl Guides Canada released a boiler plate apology for any and all offence caused.  But naturally for the CWAA – their initial complaint was merely the opening salvo in their war on the Guides.  The CWAA in a shrill second post the very next day noted in part, 

“Girls Guides statement is a slap in the face to Jewish girls across Canada. Their inability to apologize for the harmthey caused is cowardice and racist.” 

Basically, CWAA demanded the Guides grovel.  

We understand, no other response came from the CEO. 

The issue is, what does this teach the girls and young women – inside the Girl Guides and outside?  

What does this teach girls and young women?

The first thing is that “might is right”.  In other words, though most Canadians  oppose the genocide in Gaza, Canada has broadly supported Israel by supplying it with weapons, ammunitions, armaments and more: 

• In 2021, Canada illegally supplied more than $26 million in weapons to Israel.
• In 2022, Canadian companies sold more than $21.3 million in military goods to Israel. 
• In 2023, Canadian military exports to Israel totalled over $30 million.
• In 2024, Canadian companies sold $18.9 million of military goods to Israel.  
• In recent years, Canada has exported –through the US Department of Defence – more than $100 million in Canadian-made components for the F-35 fight aircraft Israel deployed against the Palestinians in Gaza.

Secondly, the girls or young women in Guides feel badly about war, specifically the genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza.  But they learned – as I did in childhood – not to express themselves about Palestine, or Gaza or the starvation, or Israel killing women and children because the powerful in the pro-Israel lobby will come down hard on you. 

Another lesson is that with just one online complaint from the toxic CWAA, the Girl Guides decide to take down the banner, and not display it. To the group of Pathfinders, the Guides say, “what you think and want to do to express your outrage at the genocide is off limits.” 

How to stand up to injustice?

The girls also learn not to bother to question or to stand up to injustice.  In this case, they discussed common concerns about the genocide and decided to make an art project to express themselves.  Then they watched saw their role models fold on an issue of free expression and social justice.  

The Girl Guides might think they dodged a bullet.  This time they may have dodged one from CWAA and the pro-Zionist Jewish establishment.  The organization emerged unscathed, but the banner did not. But what about next time?  

Now is the time of Civil Terror – meaning that civilians in many walks of life are being threatened, harassed, and frightened by disciplinary and police actions by government, arts organizations, universities, as well as a range of employers.  Not only that, but institutions such as libraries, universities, art galleries, film distributors and even community centres have cancelled presentations and films because the pro-Israel lobby has intervened to stop them.  In Halifax for example, the YMCA rescinded Rana Zaman’s Peace Medal because she criticized Israel — as I’ve written here.

Nonprofits vulnerable to pro-Israel terror

It is the nonprofit and charitable sectors that are the most vulnerable to the Zionists’ threats. These agencies tend to rely on grants from governments and other nonprofits.  Many receive tax-deductible donations from supporters.  Yet the reign of terror by pro-Israel organizations and influencers continues without pause – to put these organizations at risk, as the Girl Guides case shows.    

In the last two years, Israel has killed more than 72,000 people in Gaza, left thousands of child amputees, and left more than 100,000 dead Palestinians trapped in the rubble of buildings destroyed by the IDF.  More than 100 children have been killed by Israel during the 13-week ceasefire.  Sure, we are talking about a terrorist state – Israel–  which has done this, and done it deliberately. But, worst of all, Israel’s helpers, the establishment Jews in Canada and their allies, are fighting tooth and nail to silence, demote, doxx, protest and even incarcerate anyone who fights Israel’s terrorism. 

The Girl Guides, like other nonprofits, are not immune. It only took a slight push – one email from the CWAA, to make the Guides jump into action, to take down the banner and to silence some girls’ voice to end the genocide.  But we all have to fight this silencing together – organizations, charities and individuals have to stand up. If not now, when?

Image at the top: photo of the Banner made by the Pathfinders in Saskatoon, December 2025. (Instagram)