The vicious vengeance of Israel-supporters knows no bounds. They will do whatever they can to ruin the lives of those who criticize Israel. And they use extortion to do it. Read on.
In my own modest way, I have experienced this campaign.
It started quietly about 15 years ago at Saint Mary’s University. That’s when I noticed the “official” Jews tried to get us fired because we criticized Israel. The university’s vice president told my husband Larry and me there were complaints by the Jewish “community” about us, that Saint Mary’s had the reputation as “the antisemitic university.” We were both profs in the management department – because we supported Palestinians’ rights, and actively criticized Israeli apartheid.
This is what Academic Freedom is for!
The caller demanded that our university fire us. “It’s not so easy,” the VP told us he said to the caller. “There’s tenure, there’s due process. There’s a collective agreement; what did they do wrong?” The VP told us the caller said he was with the Atlantic Jewish Council. Larry and I were certain its big bullying brother, CIJA (Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs) was hovering in the wings.
Several years later, Larry and I were among the handful of Canadian Jews who founded a new and growing Jewish organization Independent Jewish Voices Canada. IJV fights for a just peace in Palestine/Israel. Halifax’s “official” Jews in were meddling – and tried to get us fired. The official Jews made a couple of other tries too.
In 2011, Paige MacPherson, at that time a Jewish student at Dalhousie university –and today a Senior Fellow at the Fraser Institute [they deserve each other], tried to block my candidacy for the board of NSPIRG (Nova Scotia Public Interest Group) a left wing research group funded by the Dalhousie Student Union. I was running for election as a community board representative. MacPherson sent a letter against me to senior people at Dalhousie University and Saint Mary’s, the Atlantic Jewish Council as well as a few prominent social activists. She wrote that I was an “outright racist” and antisemitic; in her view, I should not be allowed to run for the NSPIRG board. She said I organized anti-Semitic events and intimidated Jewish students– all fabrications
NSPIRG received MacPherson’s letter against me. Fellow board member Angela Potvin defended me in writing;
“You can’t be calling people racist and anti-Semitic. This has to stop. We’re going to stand by our board member.
“Judy, in her personal politics, doesn’t agree with a lot of Israel’s current policies, in regards to Palestinian people. That doesn’t make her antisemitic, or racist. That simply means she doesn’t agree with a specific government’s actions… Charges will be laid, if my board member, Judy Haiven, does not get an apology about this.”
A lawyer friend gave me good advice and I followed it. I wrote a letter to MacPherson and cc’d everyone she had cc’d in her letter — including the Saint Mary’s University’s president. I called her accusations defamatory and that insisted she withdraw her comments and apologize, or I’d take further action. Within 24 hours, I got MacPherson’s abject apology – cc’d to all. I always suspected she was put up to it by senior members of the “official” Jewish community.
There was another time too. A volunteer at the Saint Mary’s Women’s Centre sought help from the Atlantic Jewish Council p to oppose a group coming on campus calling abortion a “holocaust.” The AJC official suggested a quid pro quo i.e. that the Women’s Centre help to get Larry and me fired. The volunteer, a friend of our son, relayed the story to us right away. Again, it’s as if the pro-Israel folks had never heard of academic freedom.
“You can say all the right things about antisemitism. But if you’re critical of Israel—or even adjacent to pro-Palestinian politics—you’re radioactive.”
MJ Rosenberg in The New York Times
As New York Times columnist MJ Rosenberg, who once worked for several Zionist organizations, notes in his Substack newsletter, that Jews have a
“…warped political culture that now passes for ‘Jewish communal leadership,’ where the gravest threat isn’t authoritarianism, isn’t rising right-wing antisemitism, isn’t a president demanding lists of Jewish students…”
He goes on,
“You can say all the right things about antisemitism. But if you’re critical of Israel—or even adjacent to pro-Palestinian politics—you’re radioactive. And God forbid, you condemn genocide or ethnic cleansing.”
Full time permanent academics like my husband and I have some protection against this sort of skullduggery. But others, including many professionals, are more vulnerable. That brings us to the case of Canadian medical doctor Yipeng Ge. A few weeks after October 2023, he was among the first Canadian professionals to post messages on social media that sided with the Palestinians. A pro-Israel Jewish doctor on faculty at the University of Ottawa medical school, Yoni Freehofff, insisted Dr Yipeng Ge’s posts were antisemitic and demanded his suspension from the fourth and final year of his residency program.
Dr Freehoff could not accept Ge’s support of Palestinians during Israel’s relentless war on Gaza. As Dr Ge noted
“To equate what I was doing to rising antisemitism around the world is really, really hurtful and also untrue. That narrative to support Palestinians in their call for equality … to call that antisemitism, I think, does no one any good.”
From there, Dr Ge was forced to resign as a student representative on the board of the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) because of the CMA’s actions that amounted to bullying and harassing Ge because of his criticism of Israel.
Days after 7 Oct. 2023, Dr Ben Thomson, a nephrologist at Mackenzie Richmond Hill Hospital, north of Toronto, was suspended from his job. He was threatened and had his address spread online after he posted messages critical of Israel’s bombing of Gaza and pro-Palestinian views on social media.
On Twitter (now known as X) in response to the pro-Israel narrative about Jewish babies beheaded and women raped on October 7, Thomson wrote shortly afterward:
“No babies were beheaded, there have been no confirmed reports of rapes. You repeat this nonsense out of racism,” Thomson wrote on Oct. 10. “In the meantime, Palestinians are experiencing genocide and war crimes and you are silent. History will judge you very badly.”
Dr Thomson had been to Gaza as a volunteer medic with Médecins sans Frontieres (MSF) many times prior to Oct. 2023. Not only did he have to wage a legal fight to get his job back, but police informed him that his very life was under threat – from pro-Israel militants. The police advised him and his family to leave his home for months, move elsewhere and keep a low profile. Dr Thomson had to sue the hospital in order to win his job back. Remember: this was around his expressing an opinion.
Many others have lost their jobs, career opportunities, places in Universities, curatorial jobs in art galleries, roles in health care, reporting and media work and more. All because they spoke out against Israeli actions. In Canada, as in many other countries.
Two other Canadian examples:. Amjad Ramadan is a 52 year old engineer, a husband and father of five in Mississauga, Ont. He is a Palestinian Muslim. After 15 years working at NTN Canada he was fired last year. A pro-Israel organization sent his employer a photo of him protesting outside of an Indigo bookstore. As many of you know, Heather Reisman, owner of Indigo, founded Heseg, a charity that gives income and financial support to foreigners who join and fight in the Israeli Occupation Forces. Israeli forces have killed many relatives of Ramadan over the last 2-1/2 years. Read more about him here.
Extortion, pure and simple
As Faisal Bhabha, a lawyer with the Legal Centre for Palestine (LCP) noted,
“In the workplace, anti-Palestinian racism is characterized by the systematic silencing, penalization, or harassment of individuals in employment for expressing solidarity with Palestine or identifying as Palestinian, whether inside or outside the workplace. Here, the anti-Palestinian racism manifested variously, beginning with suppressing expression in the workplace. And it culminated with the employer punishing Amjad for his legitimate off-duty activities that were expressions of his Palestinian identity.”
The case of a TM is another example. TM, age 40, is of Palestinian background. She lives in a city in western Canada. She works in project planning. Recently, one of Canada’s main pro-Zionist organizations sent a letter to TM’s employer to warn that TM was an antisemite, pro-Hamas. Her company had nothing against TM who had worked for them for more than six years. But the accusers threat to inform her employer’s clients about their allegedly dangerous and antisemitic employee left them no choice but to fire her. Extortion pure and simple.
If intimidation and threats are not close enough to home– one writer’s family members have been threatened by the pro-Israel organizations. Davide Mastracci, the opinion editor and chief writer at the online news source The Maple, has just asked for support from his readers. Over the last year he has been subject to death threats, attempts to hack and doxx him, a coordinated smear campaign, and public attacks by Israeli officials – to silence him and his criticism of Israel. He endured the harassment and fear because he believes, unlike the dozens of journalists that took a free trip to Israel, in writing the truth.
He writes,
“But something changed over Christmas.
Realizing they couldn’t scare me into stopping my reporting, they shifted their focus to my family: private, non-political people who have nothing to do with my work.
“It started on Christmas Eve with harassing messages online and emails being sent to their employers. Then things moved on to criminal doxxing. Last month, the family member I mentioned got a threatening phone call from someone who asked if they were my relative.
“Meanwhile, a Mossad-linked Israeli organization has been trying to de-bank The Maple, and there’s a campaign by Zionist fanatics to have criminal charges pressed against me, solely for my work.”
There you have it: a full-blown and well-orchestrated campaign of civil terror targeting political expression. Believe it or not, it’s part of the brutal Israeli all-war all-the-time “strategy”. But that strategy has no endgame. It is an end in itself. This is extortion. The nation that liked to tout itself as “a light unto the nations” now has now stopped pretending. It now says “You all hate us; to hell with you.”
Fired, Suspended, Investigated and Barred
Below: A selection of Canadians forced from their jobs, or education because they spoke out for Palestine and against Israel’s genocide:
(with thanks to Davide Mastracci at The Maple)
Zahraa Al-Akhrass  | Journalist at Global News | Fired Oct/23 for her social media posts about Gaza |
| Arij Al Kafagi SUSPENDED | Nursing Student, University of Manitoba, president of U of M Nursing Students’ Association | Suspended for the school year 2023-24 because of posts critical of Israel (Nov/23); reinstated three months later. |
| Aarij Anwer | Muslim Chaplain at Western Univ., London, Ont | Fired Oct/23 for criticizing Israel |
| Amy Blanding | Directed of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Northern Health in BC | Fired after singing a song she wrote about Israel’s genocide in Gaza |
| Sabriena Dahab SUSPENDED | Trustee at Hamilton-Wentworth District Schoool Board | Under investigation for tweets against Israeli violence to Palestinians under occupation. (Nov/23) |
| Javier Dávila SUSPENDED | Student Equity Advisor, Toronto District School Board | Suspended, then reinstated. He supported walk out of students demanding a ceasefire (Nov/23) |
| Mostafa Ezzo SUSPENDED | Pilot employed by Air Canada | Taken “out of service” because of unacceptable pro-Palestine social media (Oct/23) |
| Katherine Grzejszczak | Paramedic at York Region Paramedic Services (near Toronto) | Fired in June/24 after posting a Facebook comment criticizing Israel |
| Sarah Jama BARRED | Former NDP-MPP for Hamilton (Ontario) | Barred from the NDP caucus because she is critical of Israel; ejected from legislature for wearing a keffiyah. |
| Yara Jamal | Journalist, CTV in Halifax | Fired from her job. She is Palestinian-Canadian fired for pro-Palestine activities when not at work |
| Shumail Mian SUSPENDED | Police constable, Toronto Police Service. | Under investigation. He was suspended because of posting Free Palestine in social media. |
| Moxies Employees | Four servers fired at a downtown Toronto restaurant | Fired after they cheered on pro-Palestine protesters (Nov/23) |
| Bashir Munye SUSPENDED | Culinary instructor at George Brown College in Toronto | Suspended while his social media posts were analysed (Nov/23) |
| Wanda Nanibush QUIT | Curator of Art Gallery of Ontario’s (AGO) Indigenous Art | She quit in Nov/23, most say her support for Palestine aggravated some at the AGO and prompted her to leave. |
| Samantha Pearson | Director of Sexual Assault Centre at University of Alberta, Edmonton | Fired for endorsing an open letter asking MPs be accountable for their total support for Israel (Nov/23) |
| Mustafa Ralmanzadeh SUSPENDED | Special constable with Toronto Police Service | Under Investigation because he asked how Jews could inflict the same torture they underwent. |
| Nisam Siddiqui SUSPENDED | Senior Analyst at the Privy Council Office | Under investigation for pro-Palestinian posts |
| Rich Ward SUSPENDED | Principal, Peel District School Board (Ont) | Under investigation for antisemitic tweets (Nov/23) |
| Christian Zaarour SUSPENDED | Anaesthesiologist at Sickkids Hospital, Toronto | Under investigation for social media critical of Israel. (Nov/23) |
| John Zeppetelli QUIT | AGO Modern and Contemporary Curator | Resigned because the AGO refused to acquire art by Jewish American artist Nan Goldin who spoke against Israel’s genocide. Plus two members of the volunteer working group on the purchase also quit. (Jan/26) |
Another ruined dinner party... 