By Yves Engler

The NDP has been even more resistant to challenging Canada’s role in supporting apartheid and genocide.

The leader of the Ontario NDP caved to a genocidal Jewish supremacist organization amidst Israel’s horrors in Gaza. It was disgraceful but may still reflect progress.

After attending a recent Taste of the Middle East event Marit Stiles posted four photos to X alongside the statement, “From beautiful Palestinian embroidery, to young entrepreneurs, to savoury kebabs and sweet baklava, the Taste of the Middle East is an unforgettable experience.”

Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (FSWC) quote tweeted the Ontario NDP leader noting, “The ‘beautiful Palestinian embroidery’ that you speak of represents the erasure of Israel and its Jewish people, Marit Stiles. It is unbecoming of a political leader to celebrate such a display, which causes harm to Jews in Canada and Israel. An apology is owed to the community.”

In the same week Israel destroyed five separate schools in Gaza, Stiles partly acceded to the genocidal Jewish supremacist group, removing the post and replacing it with one that omitted the photo of a woman who is next to a small embroidery with a watermelon in the shape of historic Palestine.

Palestinian activist Ghada Sasa opined, “The real scandal here is not that a notorious government-funded Zionist organization placed quotes around beautiful Palestinian embroidery and defamed it as antisemitic. It’s that Marit Stiles as the leader of this province’s most ‘progressive’ political party responded by deleting her post and republishing it with different photos, erasing Palestine.”

It is appalling Stiles caved to genocidal Jewish supremacists’ days after The Lancet reported Israel was likely responsible for 186,000 deaths in Gaza.

However odious, Stiles’ action seems almost brave when compared to what an Ontario NDP predecessor did. In 1975 Ontario NDP leader Stephen Lewis demanded the federal government cancel a major United Nations conference scheduled for Toronto because the Palestine Liberation Organization was granted observer status at the UN the previous year and their representatives might attend (the conference had nothing to do with Palestine).

In a 1977 speech to pro-Israel fundraiser United Jewish Appeal, which the Canadian Jewish News titled “Lewis praises [Conservative premier Bill] Davis for Stand on Israel”, Lewis denounced the UN’s “wantonly anti-social attitude to Israel” and told the pro-Israel audience that “the anti-Semitism that lurks underneath the surface is diabolical.”

“Diabolical” anti-Palestinianism continues to “lurk” among Ontario’s social democratic left, as the removal of Stiles’ tweet and Sarah Jama from the party’s caucus highlights.

In another example, former ‘progressive’ NDP MPP Cheri DiNovo boasted to vicious anti-Palestinian/Islamophobe Toronto Sun columnist Sue-Ann Levy that she aided B’nai B’rith and the Jewish Defence League’s successful bid to cancel a 2019 event at her church by the Palestinian Youth Movement “to celebrate the artistic and cultural contributions of Palestinians in the diaspora.”

During her time as an MPP DiNovo regularly met Israel’s consul in Toronto, appeared at events organized by FSWC and promoted a 2010 Ontario Legislature resolution condemning Israeli Apartheid Week.

In another sign of diabolical anti-Palestinianism, Ontario’s most prominent labour leader at the start of the century, Buzz Hargrove, visited Israel in 2006 with Heather Reisman and Jerry Schwartz, the billionaire power couple who created the Heseg Foundation to support non-Israelis who joined the country’s military.

Hargrove’s Canadian Auto Workers released many statements echoing Israel’s narrative, from its 2006 war on Lebanon to an effort to oust Mohamed Elmasry as head of the Canadian Islamic Congress.

Hargrove criticized the Canadian Union of Public Employees (Ontario) vote in favour of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which calls for non-violent pressure on Israel to respect international law and offer Palestinian citizens equal rights.

In a Toronto Star column Hargrove attacked unions’ “claim that Israel is equivalent to the former South African apartheid regime.” (As many South Africans have pointed out, it’s far worse.)

He added: “Supporters of a two-state solution to the conflict must recognize the genuine progress that has been made — even, surprisingly, under the leadership of the old warhorse, Ariel Sharon. Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip and proposed relocating more than 80,000 settlers from the West Bank, sparking a huge controversy within Israel.”

In Laying It On The Line: Buzz Hargrove he devotes a couple of pages to berating CUPE Ontario President Sid Ryan for defending Palestinian rights. In his 2009 biography Hargrove also notes, “I never gave a Council report without referring to events in the Middle East.”

The Ontario labour movement’s position has improved significantly, as the Ontario Federation of Labour’s response to the University of Toronto divestment encampment demonstrates. But pockets of genocidal Jewish supremacism still “lurk” in Ontario labour.

The most egregious example is the Mancinelli dominated Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA). In October, Joseph Mancinelli, LIUNA vice-president and Regional Manager for Central and Eastern Canada, wrote a Toronto Sun commentary calling on the “union movement” to “denounce the terrible actions of CUPE” supporting Palestinians’ right to resist colonial oppression. LIUNA director of public relations, Victoria Mancinelli, has repeatedly justified Israel’s holocaust in Gaza and even sued a Palestinian Canadian for criticizing her support of Israel’s genocide.

The union’s pension fund began investing in Israel Bonds in the early 1980s and in 1999 Joe Mancinelli visited Israel to see the construction and infrastructure projects financed by Israel Bonds. In 2000 Hamilton’s Jewish National Fund, a racist and colonial organization, dedicated its Negev Dinner to Enrico and Joe Mancinelli.

It’s only over the past decade that most Ontario unions have been willing to condemn Israeli discrimination against Palestinians and call for non-violent pressure to ensure Palestinian human rights.

The NDP has been even more resistant to challenging Canada’s role in supporting apartheid and genocide.

So maybe we should damn with faint praise the current Ontario NDP leader for even acknowledging Palestine.

 – Yves Engler is the author of Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid and a number of other books. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle. Visit his website: yvesengler.com.