Judy Haiven’s Newsletter

Why isn’t Torching a Car a Hate Crime?

Judy Haiven — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 12:21:58 GMT

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September 2, 2026 judyhaiven

Last week, Liberal MP Salma Zahid who is the only member of parliament who wears a hijab, saw her car and another in the driveway of her home torched into metal hulks. The government, and the police refused to call it hate-motivated. But when people protest a genocide, some scream it’s hate-motivated– it is antisemitic.

What kind of bad guy sets fire to two cars close to the Scarborough home of an MP?

A bad guy who is skinny, wears dark clothes and a hoodie, light socks, and running shoes. A bad guy who brings a jerry can of gasoline—and doesn’t care if he’s seen on camera sloshing it about.

This still image from surveillance video released by Toronto Police shows a suspect in an arson investigation at the home of Toronto Liberal MP Salma Zahid, in Scarborough, Ont., early on Thursday, Aug. 27, 2026. (credit: The Canadian Press/Handout – Toronto Police Service)

A bad guy who is not afraid of getting caught.

Some say this is the “signature crime” by an Israeli settler, or someone sympathetic to Israel. Jewish settlers on the West Bank set fire to Palestinians’ cars, to homes and to crops all the time.

A man looks at a damaged vehicle, which Palestinians say was burned by Israeli settlers, in Fandaqumiya, on March 22, 2026. (credit: Mohammed Torokman/Reuters)

Of course it’s arson, not a cybercrime. But it’s also a warning: the first serious physical threat against a sitting Canadian MP in years, I’m sure. And the target was a woman, a Muslim and a politician openly critical of Israel’s genocide.

But the police and security insist this may not be a hate crime. When the miscreant is found he will not merit the special long sentences (see bill C-9) that have been meted out –or will be imposed –for those at demonstrations who merely shout cruel truths — or even untruths –about Israel.

Or how about this? A man at a pro-Palestine demonstration in Toronto saw his friend get arrested. The man who was not arrested went with others to the police station to protest his friend’s arrest. When the man was arrested at the police station and then convicted, Jewish groups insisted that his sentence be extended because he had come from an “anti-semitic” demonstration to a demo at the cop shop.

As Dr Jim Turk the director of Toronto Metropolitan University’s (TMU) Centre for Free Expression notes – a person can get a ticket for jaywalking but if it’s connected to a “hate incident” there can be tougher punishment. For example if someone jaywalks across the street to go to a pro-Palestine rally, that person can be more severely punished as a jaywalker (or for littering!) because the person was then involved in a “hate incident” (i.e: a demonstration against Israel).

What happened to MP Zahid was serious.

But with today’s “out of the park” home run for the Liberal government as it handily won all three federal byelections, the Liberals are crowing about their victory.

Liberal MP Salma Zahid, second from right, meets with Palestinians in Amman, Jordan. Zahid also met with Palestinians in the West Bank during the trip. (credit: Salma Zahid/X)

No one wants to dwell on the arson attack barely a week ago in Scarborough Centre.

But it could have been serious, like the murder of UK Labour Party MP Jo Cox. Cox was a 41-year-old mother of two, when in 2016 a white man shot her three times (twice in the head) and stabbed her 15 times as she walked toward her office, where she was about to meet constituents. As he stabbed her, he said, “This is for Britain. Britain will always come first.” Her murderer was linked to the extreme right wing British National Party, the KKK in the US and other ultra-right groups. The killer saw Cox as “one of ‘the collaborators [and] a traitor” to white people.

Though no Canadian MP has been killed yet, women MPs across party lines say they receive hate mail, sexual threats and are subject to angry confrontations (usually by men) in public. In the case of MP Zahid, she is not only a woman, but also progressive, a Muslim and she has sided with the Palestinians and urged her government to stand against Israel’s genocide. Arson is a serious crime – perhaps a springboard to something undoubtedly deadly. Imagine if the car torching had happened to a Jewish MP! I believe the pressure to declare it a hate crime would be fast and furious.

Silencing criticism of Israel

Of course today the talk is about how to silence talk of Israel’s genocide, and the killings of 74,000 Palestinians. Canadian MP Zahid has spoken out against the genocide, and more recently organized an effort to get MPs across party lines to sign a letter that demanded the Canadian government call for a ceasefire in Israel’s war. In January 2024, she and four other MPs including NDP MP Heather McPherson travelled to Jordan and the West Bank to see the situation firsthand. Prior to her departure, Zahid the chair of the Canada-Palestine Parliamentary Friendship Group noted, “What we have seen in the last three months is that it is a humanitarian crisis, and the situation also in the West Bank has been worsening.”

If the arson attack at MP Zahid’s home is not a hate crime, what is? Was burning up two cars, and endangering the lives of a family in their home merely a stunt? A stunt to scare and to silence MPs like Zahid? Who the perpetrator was, we may never find out. But the main point is that when Canadians say anything critical about Israel, when people rally to oppose Israel’s genocide, when activists march to protect Palestinians’ lives and their right to live – those the establishment Jews and the government consider hate crimes and will be prosecuted as such. Other kinds of attacks? Not so much.

Cartoon at the top and below: Being Anti-Zionist is the Most Jewish Thing About Me, by Montreal-based illustrator and writer Rachel Deutsch. For more about her and Cartoonists for Palestine, read this.

Terror Trekkers

Judy Haiven — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 14:32:13 GMT

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August 25, 2026 judyhaiven

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Pretend you are Jewish. Pretend you live in Israel. For just a minute.

Your doctor suggests you get more exercise; go on a little hike or walk on the weekend. Try to get your step count increased. Hey you can bring your kids , and don’t forget to take your firearm.

No problem for you – and it seems hundreds of Israel settlers– youth and adults of all ages including families with children, accompanied by armed settlers. Hundreds of settlers go on “hikes”, outings and especially Friday rambles in Palestinian-run areas of the West Bank. What about a day trip into Area B, in Judea and Samaria (West Bank)? Though area B is supposed to be out of bounds to Israelis, as a Palestinian-controlled area –the IDF and local cops do not require coordination, or any notice at all that Jews are entering a no-go zone.

There’s no problem, you insist. After all, going on a hike can’t hurt anyone.

Except that last Friday Aug 21, in the Palestinian village of Sa’ir north of Hebron, a civilian Israeli security guard shot dead Karim Sanad Raja Shallaldeh, age 17, and seriously wounded a 70-year-old man. Observers said the “hikers” or settlers set a building on fire, and a guard from the ultra-orthodox settlement of Beitar Ilit shot the two men. Neither victim was armed. No Israelis, hikers or not, were supposed to barge into Sa’ir – let alone shoot two Palestinian residents.

Israeli security forces clash with hilltop youth as they evacuate and demolish an illegal outpost built near the Jewish settlement of Metzad, east of the Palestinian city of Sa’ir in the southern West Bank on November 17, 2025. (Credit: Menahem Kahana/AFP)

According to the 30 year old Oslo Accords, Area B (where Sa’ir is located) is supposed to be exclusively under the control of the Palestinians –with no Jewish settlers or settlements permitted. But there are settlers from many “wildcat outposts” plus from expanded existing settlements allowed in area C. Area C boasts at least 146 settlements and 360 ‘unrecognized’ outposts (sometimes called wildcat outposts) that again are illegal under international law, but supported by Israel. This means there is no shortage of violent and murderous settlers. One “hiking” group from a “moderate” settlement claims

“There is no division of the territories into A, B and C. There is only Eretz Yisrael.”

But wait a minute. The Israeli police are blaming…wait for it…the victims, they “view with severity the attack on the hikers, who did nothing to provoke it during their time in Area B, which Israelis are permitted to enter.”

But in fact the law does not allow Israelis to enter Area B at all. Civilian authority is assigned to the PA (Palestinian Authority). Palestinians think that these “hikes” through their villages and land are a “display of Jewish supremacy that puts [the Palestinians] at risk.”

Earlier last Friday, Jewish settlers vandalized a quarry and set vehicles on fire near Wadim Rahim in the South Hebron Hills. The graffiti sprayed the wrecked cars read “Regards from Shilo bloc raids.” The UN and most countries (except for Israel) point out that Jewish settlements, like Shilo, are illegal.

The day before, Jewish settlers attacked Palestinian vehicles and injured six Palestinians on the road between two Palestinian villages in Area B –not far from Ramallah. The IDF then blocked entry to al-Mughayyir because settlers were roaming the area. Then the IDF blocked the road from Abu Falah village, set off tear gas and shot a Palestinian in the face with a rubber bullet.

Less than a month ago, Israelis burst into Halat al-Hams in the South Hebron Hills on what the Israeli trekkers called a “tour”. They broke fences, terrorized villagers. A settler with a herd of goats approached a Palestinian family’s home. When a man in the house came out, the settler gestured with a rifle at him. There was a fight over the gun and it went off, killing the settler. An IDF soldier was also killed. Four Palestinians were killed and four more injured.

Palestinians see the settler attacks as provocations. If they fight back, Palestinians will be labeled terrorists. That will justify Israel demolishing their home, burning down their crops, grabbing their land and ultimately clearing the Palestinian villages— ethnic cleansing.

Settlers walking through Tell under IDF escort late last month. (Credit: Majdi Mohammed/AP)

Canadian Jews are settlers at heart?

So what do Canadian Jews say about this? The terrorism by Israeli settlers isn’t doing much good for Canadian Jews.

But many Canadian Jews are settlers at heart.

If you think might is right; if you think antisemitism will magically disappear when Israel kills 75,000 Palestinians – who had nothing to do with antisemitism, that’s a settler at heart.

After nearly three years of you ignoring the genocide perpetrated by your fellow lantsman, you are still refusing to speak about it.

First: Oct 7 –it was too terrible to think about, but you thought it would be over relatively fast.
Then you read that the Palestinian men raped and degraded Jewish women victims (now debunked here and here) so that –for you– it kind of justified Israel’s hellish wrath.
Then the IDF targeted and killed sevenWorld Central Kitchen aid workers in drone attacks—one was even a Canadian with a young baby! But what could you say? Yet just six days ago on World Humanitarian Day Aug 19, two years after the deaths, the IDF announced it was not going to pursue a criminal investigation into its fatal air strikes. The UK, Canadian and Australian governments issued a weak complaint adding that since 2025, Israel has killed more than 186 aid workers. But you did not think it was up to you to comment.
Israel’s deliberate killing of more than 1700 doctors, nurses, paramedics (including the two ambulance medics dispatched to try to save five-year-old Hind Rajab –whom Israel had murdered). Again you were uncomfortable speaking up.

There we have it. The comfort of Canada’s Jews is more important than Palestinians’ lives.

Cartoon at the top: ‘Settlers in the West Bank’ is by Emad Hajjaj who is from Jordan. He is better known in the Middle East as Abu Mahjoob. This cartoon was published August 14, 2026 by Cartoon Movement.

Denying a Live-Streamed Genocide

Judy Haiven — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 13:02:07 GMT

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August 17, 2026 judyhaiven

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Today I ran into a colleague I hadn’t seen in at least a decade. Turns out she lives around the corner from me. Also turns out she won’t – can’t – watch the news; it’s too graphic; too frightening; too in-your-face – she tells me. This is about Gaza. She can read about it, but she can’t watch it.

Originally from south Asia, she says she is haunted by Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

She knows I’m a Jew. She never thought her comments today in support of Palestinians were antisemitic. She said “of course” about the fact Israel is ethnically cleansing Palestinians.

Is criticizing Israel antisemitic??

Let’s think for a minute.

What has Israel’s (and establishment Canadian Jews’) claim that criticizing Israel is antisemitic got to do with the genocide? The question is answered by a leap in logic that shocks.

We are antisemitic if we criticize Israel. The pro-Israel lobby wants us to believe that Israel is the spiritual homeland for the Jews – though few from the Jewish diaspora are willing to live there. Indeed, only 96,000 have emigrated to Israel over the last three years, while more than 268,000 have left Israel permanently for Canada, the US or western Europe.

The right-wing insist that Israel is so important to the Jews, no one can say anything negative about it. Wait – does that make sense?

You can denounce the US — but not Israel

I don’t think so. Look at China, there’s been no end to trying to disparage that country – yet our Prime Minister has told us he respects China and the Chinese. Russia or Ukraine, no one seriously insists we never discuss that war. Sudan anyone – everyone agrees we need to support the good guys there. Hell we’re able to condemn Trump, the US and their strangling us with tariffs. Goodness, we refuse to distribute their liquor in 8 out of 10 provinces. We’re even “boycotting” the US in terms of purchasing their booze, food and imports that steal jobs from Canadians. Even our PM is “elbows up” against the Americans, and has even slagged off Trump. Yet virtually nobody says we’re anti-American for doing so.

No matter how much we disparage other countries’ actions– condemning one country alone, Israel, has nightmarish consequences including these noted below. Criticizing or opposing Israel’s genocide today makes you liable to

Be fired from your job
Have your name ruined by associating with Palestinian supporters
Be thrown out of university
Lose your job as a paramedic— or be put on trial by your professional association
Be forced out of a top job at the Art Gallery of Ontario
Not be allowed to practise medicine in your chosen specialty
Lose a job as a university professor
Get tossed as CEO at the Canadian Human Rights Commission

Speaking ill of Israel, pissing off dedicated Zionists, and those who love every murderous thing Israel does (or at the very least, they defend every murderous thing) can end your career, and your livelihood.

Israel’s Jewish narrative vs Israel’s genocide of nearly 75,000 Palestinians

What is the power of the Israel narrative, and how can it be that establishment Jews in Canada can absolutely silence Canadians who condemn Israel?

Palestinian woman Inas Abu Maamar, 36, embraces the body of her 5-year-old niece Saly, who was killed in an Israeli strike, at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, October 17, 2023. Reuters photographer Mohammad Salem was in Khan Younis on Oct. 17 at the Nasser Hospital morgue. This photo was awarded the 2024 World Press Photo of the Year.

Item:

Jewish lawyers at the criminal bar —who, as a matter of principle, like all criminal defence lawyers, defend the most appalling criminals, fight against solitary confinement of their clients, fight for humane treatment of prisoners, and even call out police for practising discrimination against racialized Canadians. Yet, when it comes to the unspeakable acts committed by Israel, these lawyers say nothing. They say nothing about the torture, the starvation, the severe beatings, the dog attacks, being forced into stress positions – – to name a handful- all illegally meted out to Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

Item:

Jewish doctors, including the 550 Jewish doctors affiliated with Temerty Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto, who typically stand up for patients’ rights, for palliative care, for patients’ quality of life, for the right to treatment and care no matter income or background are silent. How can it be these doctors ignore the more than 1700 healthcare workers including medical doctors, paramedics, nurses and other hospital staff have been deliberately killed by Israeli bombs and missiles since Oct. ‘23. How can virtually every practising Jewish doctor – especially those who deal with children – pretend the state they love has nothing to do with creating thousands of child amputees, or indeed killing more than 20,000 children.

Of course it’s not just Jewish professionals who support Israel. Universities across the country have dismissed or suspended staff and faculty who have supported the Palestinian cause. We only have to look here, here and here to find abundant proof. Journalists, especially at the CBC, complain they are not allowed to use words such as genocide, or other accurate descriptors (which even some Israeli organizations use) in stories on and off air.

So there we have it.

When do we get to criticize Israel?

We cannot easily criticize Israel. We can’t call out its supporters, its backers, its charitable flunkies that use Canadians’ tax money to fund war and arm the IDF. Libraries support “freedom to read,” yet in Halifax and elsewhere they also have shut down discussions and events on Palestine, fearing backlash from the establishment Jews.

Photo at the top and below: A Palestinian woman reacts as she returns to her destroyed house, following a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip, January 19, 2025. (credit: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas)

Is Tulsa ‘Cool Enough’ for Canadian Jews?

Judy Haiven — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 15:39:16 GMT

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August 7, 2026 judyhaiven

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Wednesday’s article in the Toronto Star “Calls emerge for U.S. refugee status as group helps Jewish families flee Canada” tells us that thousands of Canadian Jews are looking to move to Oklahoma to escape antisemitism in Toronto and in Canada.

What?

You read that right. But the article says more than that. None other than Joe Roberts, an American wolf in sheep’s clothing, who used to chair the board of J Space Canada and once claimed to be “pro-Israel, pro-peace, progressive Zionist.” Recently, he has moved to embrace Israel’s (and Trump’s) right-wing politics. He flirted with Jewish Canadian organizations opposed to Israel’s genocide. Now he embraces the right, saying,

“When a country — whether it’s a foreign dictatorship or an ally — is unwilling to take care of the challenges of a minority group, it’s one of the promises of America to extend a hand and provide a pathway.”

Canada: No Better Home?

Isn’t that funny. Just five years ago, Toronto Jewish studies professor David Koffman published a collection of essays about Canadian Jews entitled No Better Home? Jews, Canada, and the Sense of Belonging. In the introduction, he summarizes “Canada may now very well be the safest, most socially welcoming, economically secure, and possibly most religiously tolerant home for the Jews than any other diaspora country, past or present.”

Koffman also says:

“Jews are thoroughly enfranchised wherever power is wielded in this country, on Bay Street, on Parliament Hill, and in the nation’s media centres. The Jewish vote has been taken seriously and courted by successive administrations at the federal and provincial levels.”

Has all of that philosemitism gone down the toilet in a mere four years? Are Canada’s Jews willing to throw all that naches away to move to…wait for it.. Oklahoma? Well yes, if you believe the caterwauling of folks like Joe Roberts.

Roberts serves as a shill for Tulsa Tomorrow, a Jewish migration outfit that is trying to resettle Canada’s Jews – at least those desperate to exit the true north’s antisemitic wasteland. Actually the problem is that while some Canadian Jews reaction to the horror in Gaza and Lebanon is to say it’s terrible and there has to be a ceasefire (except that there is a ceasefire that Israel breaks every hour of every day) other Jews react like Jesse Brown, the Canadaland podcaster, and go crazy. They are whipping up the ‘fans’ so there is a permanent mass frenzy and fear around antisemitism in Canada– Jews say they are “scared.” Oh?

Middle-aged Toronto Jews are taking self defence courses; student transfers from public schools to parochial Hebrew day schools rose from eight percent to 24% – after October 2023. Jewish lawyers are suing six major Canadian universities for not making sure Jewish students are safe from fellow students who dare to criticize Israel or condemn the genocide. This tells us Jews are scared – but feeling scared is no objective proof of antisemitism.

Why would Canadian Jews want to go to Tulsa – surely in the US today there are many who support Palestinians’ human rights and don’t like Israel. Why take a chance on Tulsa when our Jews could go to the one place in the world with no antisemitism and complete “safety” for Jews– Israel? But that option does not seem to be so palatable any more. It seems to be Tulsa – or, I hate to say, Birmingham Alabama – are the places trying to woo Jews.

Tulsa: You can set your watch back to it!

Tulsa’s boosters tell us there is even resettlement money available to help families relocate. The weather is about as bad as Canada’s– humid summers, and snowy winters. Nothing new. But, we are warned with a smile, the “home prices [do] not make sense. The numbers next to the square footage looked like they were missing a comma, maybe two.” Boosters say Canadian Jews will be surprised to hear about the Tulsa Ballet, the Tulsa Symphony, and the Bob Dylan Center that offers exclusive “access to the creative life of one of America’s most important and influential artists.” Likely the emigrés have yet to hear about the Woody Guthrie Center that features

“the radical voice of Woody Guthrie …[and] Guthrie’s enduring fight for justice through 12 songs that confronted some of the most pressing social issues of his time.”

Somehow, I doubt that museum will be a big draw for Canadian Jews. Still, Tulsa is home to over 400,000 people, of whom nearly 3,000 are Jewish.

Now Tulsa may not be everyone’s cup of tea. For instance, one of the worst episodes of racial violence in American history took place in Tulsa in 1921 when nearly 4% of the white residents were members of the KuKluxKlan (KKK). A 19-year-old Black shoeshiner, Dick Rowland, was accused of assaulting a young white woman, an elevator operator. Over a couple of days, the white hordes set out to lynch Rowland—a fairly normal event as Oklahoma had seen 75 lynchings in as many years.

Pioneer Woman, Ponca City Oklahoma. Bronze sculpture by Bryant Baker, 1930. Donated by millionaire oilman EW Marland.

The Tulsa Race Massacre took place over two days. White residents killed up to 300 Black people and attacked Black-owned homes and businesses; the whites burned to the ground 35 square blocks of a Black neighbourhood. Thousands of Black Tulsans became homeless.

Oklahoma’s nickname is “The Sooner State”; it refers to white American settlers, Sooners, who stole land owned from Indigenous people before any law came into effect. In 1889 the Indian Appropriations Act allowed just about every land grab. The Land Rush Act of 1889, opened up millions of acres of Indigenous lands to white settlement at little to no cost.

But again, that was all in the past.

Sit-in at Katz Drug Store

In 1958, in Oklahoma City about 100 miles from Tulsa, 13 Black children and a Black teacher, Clara Luper, launched a first sit-in at the city’s Katz Drug Store lunch counter. That kicked off desegregation in the state—notably the desegregation of the city’s public schools, 66 years ago.

2005 US Post Office stamp to commemorate lunch counter sit-ins

This resulted in bussing Black children into white schools, and the attendant “white flight” to the suburbs. Today the schools that once had more than 70% Black students, now have 70% Hispanic students.

But children of Canadian Jews who move there can avoid “problems” of race at school. There is a Jewish day school in Tulsa which should make some Toronto Jews feel right at home. For the reasonable tuition of $9,000 per year, a Jewish child can attend the Mizel Jewish Community Day School.

You can join other Jewish families, including the Mueykos from Winnipeg (photo below), who toured the city. Some would-be migrants even get free accommodation, air fare and meals for a weekend as an enticement to explore moving with Tulsa Tomorrow. It’s not just Tulsa Tomorrow that is trying to get Jews facing discrimination and hardship in Canada to go to the US. The American Enterprise Institute, a conservative US think tank, is plumping for the Trump administration to “offer asylum to Canadian Jews who, per U.S. law, have a credible fear of persecution on account of their faith or ethnicity.”

Anton and Lucy Mureyko, and their children Eli and Ma’ayan, toured Tulsa neighbourhoods as they consider moving from Winnipeg, Canada. (Photo by Benyamin Cohen, Mar. 23, 2026 in Forward)

I too want to encourage Toronto’s Jews to emigrate to Tulsa – the doctors, the dentists, the university professors, the lawyers, the school teachers, the artists and the bloggers who still love Israel. Tulsa—not Israel — seems to be the new home for Jews who can’t stand the fact the tide has turned. For most Canadians, Israel is now a pariah state; Canadian pollster Leger notes 61% of Canadians see Israel unfavourably.

Chabad’s Rabbi Yehuda Weg passes out hamantashen at a Tulsa Oilers hockey game. (Photo by Benyamin Cohen)

Yet most establishment Canadian Jews look the other way, and want to distract (worse– punish) those who criticize Israel. Many Canadian Jews talk about Jewish feelings, Jewish safety, and discomfort with the way Zionism is being attacked. Some Canadian Jews are whipping themselves into a panic because the majority of Canadians oppose Israel’s genocide. Somehow Jewish feelings trump 73,000 dead Palestinians and 174,000 seriously injured; their feelings trump 10,000 women and children buried under the rubble of Gaza; their feelings blunt the fact that Israel’s missiles have created 4,000 amputees– mainly children. 100,000 children are at risk of starving to death.

But let’s be clear– Jewish feelings, Jewish concerns, count more than anyone else’s misery – especially if Israel and pro-Israel organizations created it. Yet Joe Roberts emphasizes that more than 900 Jewish Canadian families – 2000 people – are ready to move. Tulsa –here they come.

Photo at the top: Postcard of detainees forced to march by an armed mob, likely toward McNulty Park (rather than the Tulsa Convention Hall as the card states. This is the first postcard of the Riot, published in 1921 (credit: University of Tulsa Archives).

In NS- you may get today off work but it could be without pay!

Judy Haiven — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 10:32:04 GMT

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KJIPUKTUK (Halifax) – On Monday Aug. 3, Nova Scotia celebrates Natal Day – a day off with pay for the lucky 25% of workers who are represented by a trade union. But it’s likely a normal workday for people who work in retail, food service, tourism and accommodation.

Retail workers, shop assistants, grocery clerks, gas station attendants, are among the many low paid workers who must work on Natal Day. If your workplace whether an office, a warehouse, a garage, or florist is closed, you get the day off, but the employer is not obliged to pay you for your day off.

Cherries Ripe, by Mary Pratt (2000). This painting is at the Owens Art Gallery, Mt Allison University, Sackville, NB. Pratt was born in Fredericton in 1935, and died in St John’s NL in 2018.

Natal Day is a “civic” rather than a public holiday and it does not have to be paid, or even observed. There are only 6 statutory holidays (or paid public holidays) in Nova Scotia each year – we tie with Newfoundland and Labrador for the lowest number of paid holidays off work.

Almost every store and business in NS will be open on Natal Day, some at reduced hours. But it is not a retail closing day, so any store or shop is entitled to choose whether or not to be open. And what is worse, if you work on Monday, you will work for your regular pay; there is usually no premium paid for work on Natal Day (unless you are represented by a union).

This is another “punishing” holiday from the NS government.

For the next paid holiday (public holiday), you will have to wait until Labour Day, Monday September 7.

If you want to get a paid holiday on Natal Day next year, please contact me to find out how to organize a union. You deserve the day off with pay.

Statutory holiday provision in Canadian provinces:

Painting at the top and below: Nenookassi –Ruby-throated Hummingbird (2025) by Dee Barsy who is Ojibwe, from Treaty 1 territory (near Winnipeg).

What to Watch, What to Read in August’s Dog Days of Summer. . .

Judy Haiven — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 10:29:49 GMT

August 2, 2026 judyhaiven

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What to Watch. . .

The Crash (2026) on Netflix is a documentary about 18-year-old Mackenzie Shirilla. In July 2022, just after her high school graduation in Strongsville, Ohio she drove her car with her boyfriend and their pal into a brick wall – at 100+ miles per hour. It looked deliberate. Charged with a double homicide, Shirilla then makes a full recovery and “talks back” in her own defence. Fascinating. Watch a short video here.

Ladies First (2026) is also on Netflix and features Borat – or comedic actor Sacha Baron Cohen. I don’t like Cohen and I really don’t like his pro-Israel politics. But a summer night desperation sets in and I thought it would be good for a laugh. The plot goes like this: a wealthy, privileged company director (Cohen) believes he needs to “front” a woman in management because clients are calling his company out. He promotes one capable woman and will not even listen to her ideas. By a twist of fate, he is knocked on the head and now sees women run the corporate world and the most he can aspire to is secretarial work. The woman he promoted becomes his boss. I’d say the only part worth watching is the middle 20 minutes. Otherwise—it’s a pedantic take on an old-fashioned subject– at least the way Cohen handles it. Here’s the trailer.

BlacKkKlansman is a 2018 feature film by Spike Lee. I always have time for Lee, an innovative, angry, Black director in the US. This film tells the story of Ron Stallworth, who was the first Black officer allowed to join the Colorado Springs, Colorado police department in 1972. He links up with a white cop; they agree to infiltrate and stop the KKK in their racist firebombing attacks. The film is a must-see. It’s on Netflix– here’s the trailer.

Anatomy of a Scandal (2022) on Netflix is six episodes and well worth watching. I think I saw this British drama and even reviewed it before here – but four years later it packs a punch. This is a psychological thriller and a great courtroom drama. A British cabinet minister is friends with the Prime Minister and on the verge of having a major promotion. James Whitehead is a clever, handsome, privileged 40-something family man. He and Olivia, his parliamentary researcher, have a brief affair; when he needs to end it – for family reasons! – she accuses him of rape. The writing, the fast pace and not knowing how it will end will push you to watch the series. Here is the trailer.

Desire, a feature film from Mexico, is terrible. Billed as an erotic thriller, it’s on Netflix. Lucero a big lawyer, her rich husband and privileged kids celebrate at their 20^th wedding anniversary party. But then Lucero, falls in love with her teenage daughter’s swim coach. The coach, years younger than Lucero, is mad about her and won’t let her go. You can imagine what happens – but understand all’s well that ends well! Here is the trailer. But unless you like acting that is about as subtle as a morality play, this film does not work.

Beast – on Kanopy is a feature film from 2017. A 27-year-old woman works as a tour guide on Jersey. She wants to break free of her parents’ suffocating embrace, and have a deep love affair. However there is mystery, and several deaths that start to plague the island. A character study—not bad– here’s the trailer. It’s on Kanopy.

A series, Life, from the BBC (2020) isn’t bad. The lives of people in four flats in an old house in Manchester amounts to more than a soap opera. There’s the successful retired surgeon and his wife who had to leave him. There is a college lecturer a widower who is grieving his dead partner. There is a young woman pregnant and distrustful of her choice in men. And a woman who has changed her name, her accent and background just to pay the rent. Well-acted, and gripping. The BBC takes diversity seriously: not only are different racialized groups represented, but the actress — young mother to be –has only one arm. Amazing, good acting and well done. Here’s the trailer.

If you like Nordic Noir, Trom (2022) is for you. In the capital of the Faroe Islands, Hannis Martinsson a 60-year old investigative journalist is set to meet his long-estranged daughter, Sonja. But the day before, he finds her dead from drowning. Sonja, an activist, leads an anti-whaling group in a place where fishing and whaling are the major industry. Hannis suspects a local business tycoon is behind Sonja’s death and sets out to prove it. Six part series is on Netflix. Here’s the trailer.

A Toxic Love Story is a new true crime doc on Netflix. Fascinating –as most of the documentaries on Netflix are. A young woman, Michelle, escapes from her fiancé, a US marshal –a controlling and dangerous man. He takes his revenge on her; he masterminds a plot to have Michelle jailed for threatening and scaring his new partner. What really took place is far different than we initially understand. Worth a watch; trailer is here.

And Soon the Darkness is a 1970 film that takes place in rural France. Two young English nurses, go on a bicycling holiday in the height of the hippy days. Their knowledge of French is dismal when they encounter a man who maybe a rapist and murderer in a small village. One cyclist is found dead, and the other has to figure out what has happened. This film is a bit long and winding, but a fascinating coming of age of young women, trust and the halcyon days of the 70’s. Well done, it’s on Kanopy and here’s the trailer.

Don’t Forget Gaza

On June 14, the Atlantic Jewish Council and the Jewish Film Festival hosted a screening of UNraveling UNRWA at the Halifax Central Library. Members of Independent Jewish Voices-Halifax and other anti-Israeli genocide groups were there to protest the showing. We had signs that said No Pride in Apartheid, How do you Hide an Israeli Genocide? Blame UNRWA, and Stop Starving Gaza-Stop Arming Israel. The establishment Jewish community had privately rented the auditorium when the library was closed (on a Sunday evening) to seat about 50 guests who had paid $10 each for a ticket. The film is a smear against the 15,000 employees of UNRWA who risk their lives to work in the West Bank and in Gaza to provide shelter, food, deliver health care and education to children. The pro-Israel documentary insists that many UNRWA staff are in Hamas; there is staff involvement in terrorism that hinders peace; UNRWA staff help Palestinians cling to their right of return –which only agitates the Palestinians; UNRWA exaggerates the refugee ‘problem’ and allows them to remain as refugees forever — whining about Palestinian “victimhood”. All these lies and distortions are part of this film. The film’s baseless assertions would have been funny if Israel had not killed more than 73,000 Palestinians, mainly women and children, since Oct. 2023. The Palestinians who survive, are suffering a living death. Here’s a video I took of our demonstration at Halifax Central Library —

What to Read . . .

Storm the Ballot Box (2026) by Jo-Ann Roberts. If you’d like to read a Canadian journalist/activist’s account of putting progressive politics and democracy on the ballot, read this lively and short book by Maritimer and former interim leader of the federal Green Party. Roberts was also deputy leader of the Green Party of Nova Scotia. Nice photos and a good story.

Canadian HR Reporter has published an interesting article “Narcissistic Leaders More Likely to Resist Remote Work”. This article equates narcissistic bosses with opposition to remote work. — as it notes:

“Executives who crave control and admiration are the ones driving return-to-office mandates, according to new research that HR professionals should weigh when leadership challenges flexible work policies without a clear business rationale… The pursuit of authority and glory may be an enemy of flexibility.”

I read Luigi: The Making and the Meaning (Dec. 2025) by US journalist John H. Richardson. This recent biography is about Luigi Mangione, the young manwho allegedly shot and killed the insurance executive on a New York street in Dec. 2024. A fascinating short read, Richardson doesn’t just look at Luigi’s background (which is a mix of environmentalist, survivalist and academic) the author looks at rebellion in the US today; he looks at grievances within the American body politic. A good investigative book!

Eating Ashes by Brenda Navarro is well worth reading. Navarro, a Mexican writer who lives in Spain, is considered one of the best novelists writing in Spanish. Impoverished and terrified of abductions and gang shootings in Mexico City, a single mother moves to Madrid; she leaves her teenaged daughter and preteen son with her parents—promising to send for them later. When the kids arrive they find a hostile city and a Europe keen to sideline and keep out people who move there from the colonies. The Spaniards’ racism and xenophobia means even though the Mexicans speak the same language – they are relegated to off-the-books cleaning and care jobs. As the girl says,

“In Mexico you could say we were poor. … In Madrid, though, people still looked at us like we were poor, but also like we were scum.”

The sister tries to care for the “on the spectrum” brother, but he won’t go to school, has no friends and he falls deeper into depression. The book takes a tragic turn, and one for which the girl can’t forgive herself or her mother. The reality of immigration, of race, of European intolerance and of the disinterest by the family and Catholic church is part of this novel.

Actually, I can compare it to the soppy bestseller, The Maid (my review is here ). The Maid has an all-too familiar story with a happy ending. A young woman cleans hotel rooms and helps solve a (weak) murder mystery. Though somewhere ‘on the spectrum’, she manages to find love, acceptance and even a better job. Eating Ashes is a real life book about colonialism, resentment and the hard world of emigration and poverty. A much better book!

Looking for Alicia: The Unfinished Life of an Argentinian Rebel (2022) is excellent. Montreal writer, academic and left journalist Marc Raboy travels to Argentina to find relatives of the branch of his Jewish-Ukrainian family that emigrated there after WWI while his branch of the family moved to Canada. He finds records of his cousin, Alicia Raboy, a radical journalist whom he never met – who in 1976 was ‘disappeared’ by the military regime in Mendoza, Argentina. In her mid-20s, Alicia was never seen again. Her well-respected writer and publisher husband, Francisco Paco Urondo, was killed the same day in a police ambush. The couple left behind an 11-month-old baby, Ángela. The authorities placed her in an orphanage, but her quick-witted grandmother rescued her. At age 51, Ángela worked with Raboy to retrace her mother’s steps as a member of the Montoneros guerillas. Her execution was at the apex of Argentina’s nine year Dirty War. Fascinating, and well done.

Working at Inglis, the Life and Death of a Canadian Factory by David Ovel and Susan Meurer (Lorimer, 1994) has aged me and others. I used to work at Inglis, the appliance factory in Toronto’s west end in 1974. In the machine shop, I drilled holes in parts for dishwashers. In 1968, Whirlpool in the US owned 33% of Inglis – 20 years later, the now majority owner shut down the plant. This book is a pictorial account of Inglis’ history, and the 19 week strike in 1974. About 1,000 workers at the plant (and in the office) were represented by the Steelworkers who didn’t seem to realize that part-owner, Whirlpool, was sending washing machines and dishwashers across the border — thus undermining our strike. The workers at the sister plant in Michigan were remarkably silent; its members probably worked overtime to punch out the appliances. This book is a pictorial account of the “old working class” in Toronto. In 1986, several years before Inglis shut down, USW Local 2900’s president Mike Hersh wrote this song “I’m not alone”.

Son of Elsewhere (autobiography, 2022) by Elamin Abdelmahmoud is excellent. Many of you have heard the CBC Radio One program, Commotion, and will recognize the host, Abdelmahmoud. He came to Canada from Sudan as a grade 8 student. Knowing no English at all, he and his mother moved to perhaps the “whitest” city in the country, Kingston Ont. His experience as a Black student, a Muslim in high school, at Queen’s University and at work in Toronto’s media and entertainment scene is revealing and well-sketched. Abdelmahmoud is a lively and self-aware writer – who sees the pride and pitfalls Canadians have when it comes to ‘multiculturalism.” From the book,

“In grade 8 as a new Canadian student, an immigrant from Sudan, [my] father said, according to the teacher at their first parent teacher interview, with perfect seriousness,”If these grades don’t improve, I am sending [him] back to Sudan.”

Brilliant.

London Falling (2026) is a new book by Irish-American writer Patrick Radden Keefe. You won’t put it down. He wrote an initial article in the New Yorker which piqued my interest, but the book is dazzling. A 19-year-old Londoner, Zac Brettler, pretends to be the son of a dead Russian Oligarch. He is pushed or jumps from a luxury apartment balcony to his death in the Thames River. This is a whodunit with meaning and with substance. Who really runs London? Why are the police and the political classes so reluctant to reign in the oligarchs, and what does it mean when a mob of Putin’s enemies becomes power brokers for the British establishment? Wow. Worth reading.

Image at the top: from 5 Drive-In, Oakville, Ontario (via Instagram).

A New Way to be Jewish...

Judy Haiven — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 14:35:33 GMT

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July 28, 2026 judyhaiven

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So let’s say you are Jewish in Canada.

Let’s say you’ve already given up on Israel; let’s say you say “I have nothing to do with Israel, I’ll leave it to the Israeli Jews.” Then, “they’ll do whatever they’re going to do to Gaza, or the West Bank. I’m not in charge; I’m not responsible.”

Let’s say you hate Netanyahu and you hope there will a move to dethrone him in the October elections. Perhaps you hope that Israelis elect the faux-left Democrats Party led by former IDF Major General Yoav Golan.

But you’ve heard that this descendant of the Labor Party, the old left party of power that “founded” Israel, has dwindled from 44 seats in the Knesset 30 years ago, to four seats today. Not much to choose from.

Cartoon by Carlos Latuff, in MiddleEastMonitor.com

Let’s say you distance yourself from Netanyahu and the right wing religious settlers – sorry zealots — on the West Bank and the crazies in the IDF (cue prisoner abusers). But deep in your heart you know that most Israeli Jews support them. You’re horrified that 56% of Jewish Israelis support the expulsion of Arab citizens of Israel, and expulsion from the occupied West Bank

You’ve even lightly criticized (to close friends only) the IDF: the IDF have become too harsh; they are too nasty, too brutish. They might even torture prisoners, and brutalize children. You do not approve of the IDF, latterly “the most moral army in the world.” Israeli officials claim a new report recommends a scheme to use crocodiles could both “strengthen prison security and lower costs by reducing the number of personnel needed to guard prison perimeters”.

(credit: TravelScape)

Where does that leave you, a Canadian Jew?

It leaves you along with 53% of other Can. Jews opposed to settler expansion; it leaves you and 66% of Can. Jews supporting a ceasefire between Israel and Gaza; it leaves you one of 17-25% of Canadian Jews that have criticized Israel’s behaviour over the last while. This is according to a Nov. 2025 survey of Canadian Jews.

But why does it leave you overwhelmingly silent?

You haven’t yet said or done anything at all . All you’ve done is distanced yourself within your own mind from the establishment Jews who boost and go on the offensive for Israel day and night. All you’ve done is admit that even as a thinking Canadian Jew, you will be silent—as perhaps your parents were before you. Your grandparents were silent when they first came to this country when no one aired the community’s dirty linen. It’s been 34 months of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians – not even the Israelis or the Canadian Jewish establishment bothers to deny it.

Yet you will not engage. You have a few Jewish friends, professionals, and you trust them – but are wary about their pro-Israel boosterism. You have your doubts, but after three years of a genocide that has killed at least 73,000 Palestinians, you still won’t speak up publicly.

I know it is hard for an individual Canadian Jew to speak up – given the social terror practised by the establishment Jewish community. Your fellow Jews want to stop any discussion about Israel’s genocide. If you go to a community or family event, it is the elephant in the room that nobody talks about. Instead the establishment Jews and their leaders fight back by calling everyone critical of the genocide antisemitic. You know that’s simply not true.There is a heavy price to pay for simply speaking out.

By Carlos Latuff, in Mondoweiss 2026

That’s why you need company. You need to find other Jews you can relate to. You need to join Independent Jewish Voices Canada. It costs only $18 a year to support an organization that fights for peace and justice in Israel and Palestine. Independent Jewish Voices is a grassroots organization of Jewish Canadians committed to defending Palestinian human rights and opposing all forms of racism — anti-Semitism, anti‑Palestinian racism and Islamophobia alike. Our thousands of members live from coast to coast, and are active in 19 cities and 7 campus chapters. Among them are respected Canadians like Dr. Gabor Maté, Michele Landsberg and Avi Lewis.

We are part of a fast-growing and vibrant international movement that is affirming the proud Jewish social justice tradition and pushing back against the notion that Jewishness and Zionism are one and the same.

We identify as anti-Zionist, we stand opposed to how Zionism has been enacted through the creation and maintenance of a system of ethnic supremacism, that privileges one group — Israeli Jews — at the direct expense of another — Palestinians. It is this ideology that underpinned the Palestinian Nakba of 1948, an ongoing regime of settler colonialism and apartheid, and most recently, the genocide in Gaza. And, although the vast majority of Canadians know the difference between Israel on the one hand and Jews on the other, there is a rising tide of bigotry (e.g. anti-Muslim, anti-Black, anti-Indigenous), of which antisemitism is but one example and that antisemitism is not helped by Israel claiming it represents all of world Jewry or the Jewish establishment seconding that motion.

Cartoon at the top and below: Netanyahu Cementing Peace by British cartoonist Gerald Scarfe in the Sunday Times published in January, 2013— 10 years before the Gaza genocide . The caption reads “Will cementing the people continue?” How prescient, how awful. Read more about the controversy here.

Guest column: A tribute to Dr. Nouman Ali

Judy Haiven — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 15:06:13 GMT

July 23, 2026 judyhaiven

By Larry Haiven

Photo by Larry Haiven, at the demonstration in support of Rana Zaman in front of the Halifax YMCA, Nov. 2025. Note Citadel Hill in the background,

It’s a measure of the vitality and stature of a person that, when you attend their funeral, you fully expect them to walk in, relishing the crowd, full of life, greetings all around, and ready to participate. And you’re disappointed that they missed the occasion.

That’s how I felt at the Kearney Lake Mosque funeral of Nouman Ali, our dear departed comrade. I could see him with his reflective vest, helmet and mirror (he was an avid cyclist) holding a sign he had produced denouncing one or other Israeli depredation in Gaza. How could he not be there? How could he not be with us?

Dr. Ali succumbed to the horrible wounds inflicted when a delivery truck driver opened his door in Nouman’s bicycle’s path on Friday, July 17. Nouman leaves a wife, Naima, a daughter Eman, a son Mohammed and hundreds of students and colleagues, not to mention the Halifax activist community that he joined at every rally, demonstration, meeting and gathering.

Born in Bagdad, Nouman used to say “I am Iraqi by nationality but Palestinian by blood.” It was in his selfless devotion to that cause that many of us outside the Muslim community came to know and love him.

In the activist world, I tell people, half the job is showing up. Showing up is no trivial matter. Your presence over the long haul, indeed over years, is an invaluable contribution. Being there gives others hope and encouragement and strengthens our collective resolve. We come to depend on your presence to validate our presence. And sometimes, in the awful times we are in, in the midst of genocide and genocide denial, presence is all we have.

Although he was a busy civil engineering professor at Dalhousie University, still working there after 37 years at the age of 71, Nouman showed up. He appeared at every rally. I remember him being a regular visitor and imparting his quiet wisdom to the student encampment for Gaza over three spring/summer months in 2024 on Dal’s main campus. When we picketed the YMCA for rescinding Rana Zaman’s Peace Medal, Nouman was there with his handmade sign “Shame on the YMCA Leadership Hijacked by Zionists.” When we in Independent Jewish Voices worked to produce a comic book biography of Dr. Ismail Zayid, Nouman helped get the word out and he attended the book launch with several supporters just a few weeks ago. He was…always…there, the truest of allies.

But Nouman didn’t only show up. He was an indefatigable organizer for Gaza and other causes.

The Muslim community in Nova Scotia has grown tenfold in thirty years and its dynamism was in no small part due to Dr. Ali. If his contributions to that community alone were counted, we would understand the hundreds of mourners. His friend Tarek Ajjour says:

“Brother Nouman was actively engaged with Dartmouth mosque. His contribution in formalizing Ummah Society and building the current building is immense from planning for the building, fundraising and execution. He served in the Ummah Mosque Committee for a considerable period of time. He served as the treasurer for the mosque during a critical period of time. He led management of the events such as Eid prayers in collaboration with the Dartmouth mosque for many years. He was engaged with the Kearney Lake mosque as well. Overall, he served the Muslim Community tremendously since the late 1980s.”

Nouman was an unrelenting fundraiser. In February 2024 during Ramadan, IJV Halifax organized a meeting for Dr. Tarek Loubani, the Palestinian physician in London, Ontario who has built the charitable organization “Glia” that provides medical services and products in crisis zones around the world. Two hundred and fifty people attended at the Umma Mosque. Loubani spoke of his work as an emergency doctor in Gaza, of being shot in both legs by Israeli snipers during the 2017-18 “Great March of Return,” of losing first responder colleagues including the very paramedic who treated his wounds. After Loubani’s talk, we called for donations. When the call started for pledges in the tens of thousands, Nouman jumped up and rhymed out several that he himself had secured. In the end $80,000 was raised. Zakat during Ramadan is de rigeur, but this was extraordinary.

And that was de rigeur for Dr. Ali. Among amateur fundraisers, Nouman is a legend.

But his energies were not only with the Muslim community and with the Palestinian cause. He championed preservation of the environment and especially alternatives to the automobile, including bike lanes on increasingly dangerous streets. What an irony that this should have been the cause of his demise. We have had all too many cyclists killed and severely injured by motor vehicles in Halifax.

Nouman was truly known, respected and loved by many here in Halifax. And the pain of his loss is real. But still we “social justice warriors” lack a sense of our own importance and our role in history. We are too modest. At the end of the famous Arthur Miller play “Death of a Salesman” Willy Loman’s wife chides her sons and the audience, for trying to carry on in the face of the death of even a modest human being as she cries out “Attention, attention must be finally paid to such a person.”

So let’s all of us, even those who did not know him, pay attention to the life of Dr. Nouman Ali, a life where we see all our lives reflected, whose worth, in the words of the Book of Proverbs, was “far more than diamonds.”

Larry Haiven is a founding member of Independent Jewish Voices Canada, and our Halifax chapter. Dr Haiven is a Professor Emeritus at Saint Mary’s University, who specializes in labour relations and management. His latest articles are here and here.

Photo at the top, Pro-Palestine demonstrators picket in front of the Halifax Central Library where the Atlantic Jewish Council showed the film Unraveling UNRWA, June 14, 2026. Dr Ali is at the right with his homemade sign. (credit: Judy Haiven)

Elbows Down

Judy Haiven — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 13:25:49 GMT

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Can anyone tell me what PM Mark Carney was doing Sunday watching the final game of the World Cup with Donald Trump in his private glass box at the MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford New Jersey?? There were Carney, Trump and wives Diana Fox Carney—an environmentalist with “pleasingly edgy views” according to one newspaper, and the First Lady of the United States (or FLOTUS, which sounds like what we had in our harbour before they stopped dumping sewage in it)—the star of her very own documentary, Melania).

From left, Infantino, Trump, Sheinbaum and Trump (credit: NurPhoto via Getty Images in the NY Post)

However in the above photo, the wives were cut out only to show the important people – Gianni Infantino, Trump, then Claudia Sheinbaum and finally (sigh) Carney. Infantino, who heads FIFA, is excited by revenues of $15 billion dollars for FIFA, more than double what FIFA took in four years ago. Claudia Sheinbaum, president of Mexico, and the world’s fifth most powerful woman was there to profile her country as a team player for Trump. And our prime minister whose government spent more than $1.066 billion of taxpayers’ money (or $82 million per game) to host FIFA games in Vancouver and Toronto.

In the VIP section of the stadium Sunday, from left Mark Carney, Diana Carney, Claudia Sheinbaum (wearing the rose), Gianni Infantino, and Melania Trump, Donald Trump with two others (Cortesía)

Most Canadians took a couple of hours to watch the “beautiful game” (and cheer for Spain, of course!)– but seeing Carney in Trump’s private box perked up their spidey senses. As we all know, Trump had already put tariffs on lumber, aluminum, steel, softwood lumber and lately had announced tariffs to retaliate against Canadian companies’ that buy from countries using “forced labour.” Now we note that one day after the shindig in the New Jersey stands, Trump has imposed a whopping 50% tariff on any goods from Canada –as a Trump official said, “wine to hockey sticks to cement.” That includes alcohol, beer, dairy products, clothing, toilet paper, Christmas decorations, candles and plastic cups to name a handful. Now Big Boss Trump declares of Canada “Maybe they should pay us some damages or something, or we should do some tariffs,” for “poisoning” American air with smoke from wildfires drifting into the US.

I don’t think Carney had any idea about the new hits. At the game, when he delicately asked Trump’s minders if he could have a brief chat with the Boss about tariffs, a presidential aide noted,

“Although the president and the prime minister met and they had a one-on-one, it was not a visit to talk about trade and tariffs from our perspective.”

Trump has created a lot of heartache and damage for us with his tariff war on Canadians. In Dec. 2025, Algoma Steel let go 1000 workers – the result of an earlier Trump tariff. In Feb. and March 2026, CTVnews reported that Canada Metal, a major Canadian steel producer in Quebec laid off 140 production workers; Montreal’s Sheertex, a pantyhose manufacturer laid off 350 workers or 40% of its employees because of tariff threats; South Shore Furniture, also in Quebec, has cut 115 jobs as 70% of its products are sold in the US In March, Delta BC Prepac Manufacturing let go 170 workers; the same month Eascan Automatic Inc of Winnipeg that makes robotics laid off one third of its workforce—all due to the tariffs. The BBC reported that more than 100,000 Canadians lost their jobs in the first two months of 2026 due to the tariffs, Andrew DiCapua, principal economist at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, has warned roughly 100,000 more jobs could be vulnerable to layoffs or reduced hours because of lower demand as the new tariffs are put in place in 29 days.

Really little daylight between Canada and the US

But let’s look at what will not be subject to Trump’s 50% tariff: fish, crude oil, potash and critical minerals are on that list– all stuff we Canadians draw and hew. Before the midterm elections, Trump doesn’t want prices at US pumps to rise and he doesn’t want farmers complaining they can’t afford fertilizer. The war industries and the military in the US and Canada cannot thrive without military grade minerals.

To back that up, Canada’s defence minister, David McGuinty confirmed on Monday that there’s “really little daylight” between Canada and the United States in terms of defence. McGuinty said:

“On the security and intelligence and defence front, from our perspective, there’s really little daylight. We continue to work together continentally. We work domestically and we work internationally at the NATO level…”

With that in mind our prime minister went as little more than a supplicant to the glass box on Sunday. Carney insists that now is not the time for capitulation or retaliation; he dropped our tariffs against the US last August. And he caved to Trump’s bullying on the Gordie Howe Bridge, though everyone knows that Canada paid for building the whole thing. Now the US is imposing a 50% tariff for imports on our liquor and beer, and is demanding all the provinces re-start selling US-alcohol now collecting dust in Canadian store basements. But the premiers of BC and Ontario are emphatic they will not comply.

50% tariff on Canadian booze imports

Carney said in October 2025, “There’s time to hit back and there’s time to talk. And right now, it’s time to talk; We’re having intense negotiations.” And what now nine months later? Later Tuesday, with all the bad news about new tariffs, Carney announced he and Trump “agreed to intensify negotiations in the coming weeks.”

One member of Trump’s cabinet, Howard Lutnick the Secretary of Commerce, had a melt down when Premier Doug Ford revealed that Ontario supplies 1.5 million Americans in three US states with electricity. According to the Toronto Star’s Rob Benzie, Lutnick thought that the lights in New York City might go out, so “in a panic” he was on the phone to Ford immediately.

But what of our supplicant?

His “elbows up” threat was about as useless as two wet noodles.

He wants to talk. And agree. And sign documents. As McGuinty said,

“We trust each other. We work together. That will not stop in my view. I don’t think it can stop for Canadians.”

By the way, Argentina’s right-wing president and Trump ally Javier Milei didn’t bother to go to the game – he said he was “superstitious” and didn’t want to jinx his own team. Instead he watched from the presidential palace in Buenos Aires. I bet Carney wishes he had stayed home too.

Cartoon at the top by Pat Bagley/ Copyright 2026 Cagle Cartoons, Inc.

The Truth Will Put a Target on your Back

Judy Haiven — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 13:43:46 GMT

Last week, an Edmonton city councillor broke a cardinal rule.

No criticism of Israel is allowed, even if you speak the truth.

Michael Janz, a 5-year veteran councillor who previously served as an elected school board trustee for 11 years, thought free speech was permitted in his city, but clearly — not when it comes to speaking about Israel.

Janz found out the hard way when he recently posted this message:

“If you have a newborn baby, right now, anywhere in the world, your brand new baby is statistically more likely to be killed by Israel than dying in any other way. Israel has murdered more babies in Gaza and Lebanon than have died in ANY OTHER WAYS [Janz’ emphasis], whether natural or unnatural –across the globe.”

The CEO of Edmonton’s Jewish Federation, Stacey Leavitt-Wright, complained that Janz was creating “real harm” because he was “doubling down” on Israel. “I’d want to see him stop, first of all,” she demanded.

I’m sure she does, but when she asked Edmonton’s mayor to intercede, he said every councillor is responsible for their own words and actions. Undaunted, Leavitt-Wright did make common cause with Alberta’s minister of municipal affairs, Dan Williams. Williams said,

“This kind of fear-mongering, implying that globally our children are somehow — even in the most contorted and remote sense — threatened to be murdered by the state of Israel is deeply inappropriate public discourse.”

Thanks for that, Mr Williams. Hey, isn’t your government, the United Conservative Party (UCP), the nine year old right-wing offspring of the Alberta Progressive Conservatives? Didn’t your party once appoint Peter Savaryn, as Chancellor of Alberta’s most prestigious institution, the University of Alberta? Savaryn was also president of the Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta and vice-president of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. He even received the Order of Canada in 1987. The problem was, Savaryn was a Nazi.

Order of Canada (credit: Britannica)

You and your political friends in the party did not publicly recognize the “mistake” of having appointed a Nazi to head the major university until six years after his death! In 2023, Savaryn’s past as a fighter in the 14^th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (Galician Division) was exposed. Around the same time, 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka had received two standing ovations in the House of Commons. But he too was revealed to have been a Nazi, also a member of the 14^th Waffen of the SS . Both men (plus at least five others identified as Ukrainian nationalists and Nazi collaborators) were heavy financial contributors to U of A’s Canadian Institute for Ukrainian Studies (CIUS), according to this article and several credible scholars. What’s more, the PC government at least once matched the funds donated. So your party, covering up for a legion of Nazi donors to the university, isn’t really coming to Israel’s defence with clean hands.

Gaza, the most dangerous place in the world to be a child

So, what is the problem with what Councillor Janz wrote on social media? Is it a lie? UNICEF spokesperson James Elder, had this to say, “The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. And day after day, that brutal reality is reinforced.”

(credit:Kounas/Dreamstime.com)

First, Israel has killed more than 20,000 children since Oct 7 2023. More than 1000 were under one year of age including hundreds of newborns. Israel forces are killing at least one child per hour during this genocide.

Second: Despite warnings that “No child should be scarred by war before they have taken their first breath,” UNICEF warns that children are dying “painful, preventable deaths” from starvation caused by mothers’ malnutrition and inability to produce milk for newborns. Because of mothers’ malnutrition, babies are often born premature; those babies are 20 times more likely to die that full term children. 94% of Gaza’s hospitals have been hit by Israeli missiles and armed drones; electrical equipment, drugs, water supplies even cots have been deliberately destroyed by Israel. There are few to no places for mothers with newborns to get help.

Inside Gaza City hospital struggling to provide care to newborn babies (credit BBC News). Watch it here

It’s pretty conclusive that Israel’s genocide has murdered newborns, and thousands of children in their first year of life. So why can’t Councillor Janz say it?

It is because most Canadians are afraid to hurt Jewish feelings, or to put it more bluntly, value possible Jewish feelings more than actual Palestinian lives. Today, any negative talk about Israel is said to sow “divisive feelings” toward Jews, according to the establishment Jewish community, including Leavitt-Wright. Lately more and more Jewish feelings have been hurt—the longer the genocide continues, and frankly worsens, the more outraged the public becomes against the genocide. For example the exhibit, Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present recently opened at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) in Winnipeg. It has been denounced by many establishment Canadian Jews including Irwin Cotler, Prof Mark Berlin, and organizations such as the Centre for Israel Jewish Affairs (CIJA), B’nai Brith, and the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre. At least one pro-Israel lobby group Shurat Ha-Din based in Israel (not Canada) threatened to sue the museum for even opening the exhibit. Then there was a national petition campaign to stop the museum from opening the Nakba exhibit. The Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada opposed plans for the museum’s exhibit, stating that the centre would end its partnership with CMHR. CIJA’s CEO warned that opening the exhibit would have “serious real-world consequences.” The Jewish establishment claims it will hold the museum’s leadership “accountable for its egregious mishandling of this exhibit.”

Curfews and Closures an artwork created by Rajie Cook in 2002. Cook was born in New Jersey, but his parents were from Ramallah. Courtesy of the Arab American National Museum, 2022.14.10, (photo: Aaron Cohen, CMHR)

Still a day or two before the opening, a museum curator announced, “Nobody, none of those criticizing [the exhibit] – has even been able to see our exhibition yet.”

Now that the exhibit has opened, , likely the establishment Jews are trying to figure out ways to dismiss or curtail the Nakba exhibit as part of their general silencing campaign against criticism of Israel. One effective way is to ensure the Nakba exhibit is temporary. The museum announced this is a temporary show until Nov. 2028 – unlike Examining the Holocaust which forms part of the permanent gallery and has been in place for all 12 years the CMHR has been open.

Another fact: the Nakba exhibit is about 24 sq metres in size; Examining the Holocaust is 418 sq metres–17 times bigger. Examining the Holocaust is the single largest gallery in the museum.

Jewish feelings in Canada surpass Israel’s shameful (and criminal) genocide against Palestinians. So isn’t it a good thing when we resist and call Israel supporters on it?

That’s what Councillor Janz thinks– read his full statement,

“Like many Edmontonians, I’ve been horrified by the genocide in Palestine and the numerous well-documented war crimes committed by the state of Israel. Our compassion must not have boundaries or borders. . . . Since the 7^th of Oct 2023, this has resulted in the death of at least 20,179 and injury of 44,143 children. Every person should read these horrific findings.
“… These are not statistics. These are humans… Every human being should be outraged by these horrors and call for justice and long overdue action by the global community against the perpetrators of these crimes.”

Janz is not going to stop showing Israel’s genocide to his constituents. Thank goodness.

A new granddaughter - how would she fare in Gaza?

And one last thing. Three weeks ago, my new granddaughter was born. Mother, dad and new baby are fine. But as I rejoiced at the piece of nachas (joy) neither I nor my son O could help thinking about what if that baby had been born in Gaza – not in Vancouver. What if S, the baby’s mother, had been malnourished; what if the baby had been premature and no incubators or other technical support was available. What if the hospital offered little space but a stairwell for birthing. What if S couldn’t feed the baby, or had no clean water to mix the formula? Now this little reality check – how would I feel if my granddaughter and her parents were barely able to survive those first critical months after birth in Gaza. What if they were “vaporized in a tent” by an Israeli air strike that hit them in their tent days after the baby was born?

Perhaps Canada’s Jews, should put themselves in someone else’s place – but many of them refuse. Their sympathy goes only one way—it’s their feelings that count. And damn those children and families and other collateral damage in Gaza.

Cartoon at the Top and below: by Antonio Rodriguez (born in Mexico City 1965) @Rodriguezmonos. Rodriguez is a member of Cartooning for Peace. Read about him here.

NB: Just saw that before Oct. 2023, in Gaza the newborn deaths were at the rate of 10-16 per 1000 live births. Today they are at 100 or more per 1000 live births. Read this report.

On Kites & Drones...

Judy Haiven — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 12:58:38 GMT

Kite day in Halifax. The whole of the Garrison Grounds was taken over by giant spiders, colourful blowfish, an oversized Orca, and even a huge horse in the air just over the park that winds up a steep path to the city’s 200 year old fortress Citadel. There were booths with aging machines that spun out candy floss, and a souped-up bouncy castle with a damsel tower attached – it was the giant flags of plastic, the triangles and the flying animals that stole the show.
At least 200 people sat on Citadel hill, small dots in the brilliant sun -- some hanging on to the kite strings – others kicking a ball around.
For a few seconds I imagined a scene in Gaza’s Khan Younis. It houses 400,000 Palestinians in makeshift tents. Before Oct. 7, 2023 about 9,000 lived there; today 44 times as many people live there. By the end of 2023, Israel declared Al-Mawasi, near Khan Younis, a “safe zone” – hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing Israel’s bombing and genocide Gaza rushed to enter. Despite it being a safe zone, in the next 18 months, Israel attacked the camp in more than 25 drone and/or missile attacks that killed hundreds of Gazans, including children.
Of course in Khan Younis, no children run back and forth gleefully trying to pull the strings of the kites to keep them aloft. That never happened. Of course not.
Today, if the kites went up in Al-Mawasi, or anywhere in Gaza, Israel would launch armed drones. And the wholesale murder of Palestinians would result. Clearly the Israelis would justify the bloodbath as a need to boost security to intercept foreign and suspicious objects.
Last Tues, July 7, there was one glimmer of fun for displaced families in the Sabra area of west Gaza City. Several gigantic TV screens showed the World Cup game between Egypt and Argentina. Tens of thousands gathered to watch and cheer on Egypt -- in the midst of toppled homes, destroyed apartment buildings, and rubble strewn roads that are barely passable except on a donkey. An hour before the game, the Israelis dropped a missile on the taxi which took Mohammed al-Wahidi to the screening. Al-Wahidi, 65, is the head of communications for the Egypt Relief Committee; he organized screenings of some of the FIFA matches in the ruins of Gaza. Israel deliberately targeted and killed him, his driver and another person.
Two children aged eight and ten, brothers were also killed. Al-Wahidi was on his way to host the event. Since the nine month old ‘ceasefire’, Israel has killed at least four people in Gaza each a day—to more than 1000 today. Women and children make up 43% of all deaths in Gaza. —more than 200 of them children.
Palestinians watch the FIFA World Cup between Argentina and Egypt on a screen in Gaza City, July 7, 2026. (credit: Reuters: Dawoud Abu Alkas)
It is in everyday life that the sudden beauty of summer gets snatched away by seeing the photos and videos of Gaza. We look back to Gaza a decade ago – with cities, with mosques, with schools, with shopping centres and with apartment buildings. Now there is nothing. People live in the ruins—some on cracked concrete platforms that have perhaps crushed and pancaked thousands of women and children over the last two and a half years in Israel’s bombings. There are no pets; no toys, no roof, little food and less water.
(From the internet)
In the Public Gardens next to Citadel Hill I see some colourful kites caught in the tree canopy—too high for anyone to get them down. I think of Gaza; I have not seen one mature tree in any photo I can remember. All but lopsided bushes have been destroyed by Israeli missiles that have killed and maimed thousands, toppled buildings, buckled streets and crushed trees. I suppose trees are no hazard to flying a kite in Gaza – a missile, a bomb or an armed drone are.

Image at the top: Horse kite at the Garrison Grounds, Halifax, July 11, 2026 (credit: Larry Haiven)

A Concentration Camp by Any Other Name

Judy Haiven — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 15:44:39 GMT

The Trump Board of Peace recently announced its new initiative to save the lives of Palestinians. Spoiler alert: Even after 3 years of genocide, it is not Israel and the US that are responsible. Who knew? Read on.

The Board now feels that their ‘contractors’ have improved their skills at delivering food aid to starving people. Remember last year, over two long months, the Israelis killed more than 1400 Palestinians gathered to receive food from the Trump-backed Gaza Humanitarian Fund (GHF) The IDF killed at least 670 at the food distribution sites in Gaza and also shot 200 more on the roads near the few UN aid convoys still allowed to operate. No worries though – it’s been one year since those ‘mistakes’ – long enough for Trump to get excited about a better plan.

Trump and his Board found out that humanitarian food distribution to the Palestinians through their ‘burner’ charity GHF was not their strong suit. It is UNRWA’s. But we need to be careful about referring to UNWRA now, as the ADL and other pro-Israel agencies claim the agency is ‘full of antisemites’.

Still UNWRA’s track record shows that from Oct. 2023 until January 2025, it supplied more than 1.7 million Palestinians with food parcels to feed families for two weeks. Amazingly, not one person who received food aid was shot or killed when UNWRA delivered food.

Boy in southern Gaza carries box of food from GHF, summer 2025. (Credit: AFP)

But now the Board of Peace has a much bigger idea—one first tried in 1952, then in 1962 and now 64 years later. It’s foolproof—except it when it wasn’t.

Follow the Yellow line

The plan is to build “human corridors” of “strategic hamlets” throughout western Gaza, so the nice Palestinians can be separated from nasty pro-Hamas Palestinians. The Israelis have already placed an illegal, but very real, yellow line down Gaza; they are pushing the Palestinians further west into what are essentially concentration camps. This is to deepen and harden their control over Gaza.

For the Board of Peace’s first hamlet, Trump will “direct” Gazans to an area in Rafah in the south. The goal is to force Palestinians into smaller and smaller areas, or cantons. The ‘yellow line’ (bright yellow concrete blocks winding over 45 km through Gaza) was part of the ceasefire talks last October. That line has already forced Palestinians elsewhere in Gaza into smaller areas. This coincided with Netanyahu recently ordering the military to seize 70% of Gaza land. As the Trump administration said,

“pushing for the rapid construction of residential compounds to provide housing for Palestinians. …US officials hope Palestinians will be encouraged to move to the new compounds, [with] freedom from Hamas, job opportunities, and a chance to rebuild their lives.”

Their goal is to corral 20,000-25,000 Palestinians in each hamlet or “Alternative Safe Communities”; keep them under heavy guard, in a fenced off enclosure that will cut off supplies and resources – and recruitment to Hamas. It will mean more checkpoints for Palestinians, and more cruising armed drones for ‘security’. Frankly it will mean Israel can continue to murder more Palestinians who are in smaller enclaves.

Women and children wait for food at a community kitchen in west Gaza City, summer 2025 (Credit: UN News)

If you don’t believe me, think about the thousands of desperate, starving Palestinians who walked for kilometres, only to gather around the GHF food distribution trucks – all operated by mercenaries — just one year ago. They could choose to disperse food for as short a period as they wanted – sometimes barely eight minutes. When people were leaving often empty handed, or as others were picking up their flour sacks, Israeli snipers picked off women, men and children and shot them dead, just because they could—and to ostensibly “protect” GHF workers. The new reality was so dangerous that UNRWA’s chief, Philippe Lazzarini, said “the so-called mechanism … is a death trap costing more lives than it saves.”

The US, Israel and GHF were so widely condemned that the ‘burner’ group was all but disbanded.

Now we have Trump’s idiot proposal for “strategic hamlets”. To be fair, he didn’t invent it. The French colonizers in Indochina, notably Vietnam, first put it into practice. The year was 1952 when they developed the program as “pacification by prosperity.” The French troops established villages or agrovilles with electricity, water and other conveniences and created jobs to lure the peasants. The goal was to separate farmers from the “Viet Cong”, or the National Liberation Front (NLF), and their influence. Things didn’t work out so well – many peasants forced to move by French authorities became Communist sympathizers and even hidden fighters for the NLF.

The aim was to “clear the countryside”

Ten years later in Vietnam, the Americans tried the same thing. At one point, they forced over 4 million peasants from their villages into about 3200 hamlets.

“Villagers starved in their Viet-Cong-free encampments because they lost access to their paddy fields. The main aim, however, was not to feed them, but to clear the countryside. The result was that the villagers fled, and the Viet Cong came ever closer to the cities.”

The NLF sabotaged or infiltrated these hamlets and convinced their comrades that the Americans were little different from the French before – both were imperialists and utterly contemptible. As one US critic noted,

“U.S. policies ignored the contradiction between the promotion of freedom and the construction of forced labour camps.”

About Vietnam’s strategic hamlets, renowned journalist and editor of the Middle East Eye David Hearst wrote

“… the US “pacification” programme [was] the father of today’s counterinsurgency. This was born out of the problems US soldiers had in distinguishing civilians from combatants. The solution lay in treating any Vietnamese encountered in a declared “free-fire zone” as the enemy, and opening fire without referring up the chain of command. . . . Villagers starved in their Viet-Cong-free encampments because they lost access to their paddy fields. The main aim, however, was not to feed them, but to clear the countryside. The result was that the villagers fled, and the Viet Cong came ever closer to the cities.

The French and US colonial powers’ attempts to force farmers into “strategic hamlets” fell apart.

July 2, 1976: Socialist Republic of Vietnam declared

Marx has the last words…

Will Trump’s new plan net the results he wants – yes because the Palestinians are basically unarmed, have no standing army, and have been brutalized, starved and murdered by Israel for more than 80 years. The question should be: for how long can this go on?

As Karl Marx is reported to have said, history repeats itself, “the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”

Photo at the top: Golden Bridge, near Da Nang, Vietnam. For more information, read this.

If you had to work on Canada Day, you probably won’t get extra holiday pay

Judy Haiven — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 20:18:46 GMT

July 1, 2026 judyhaiven

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Canada Day is one of the six precious (and scarce) public holidays in Nova Scotia, which means a day off work for people. But will you get paid for the day off?

Here’s what you need to know..

All large retail stores, grocery stores and most other businesses—such as offices, malls, small shops, bakeries, dry cleaners, second-hand shops, opticians, bookstores and more must close on July 1, for Canada Day. Canada Day is designated ‘retail closing day.’

For all Nova Scotia workers, Canada Day is a general and paid holiday, called a statutory holiday in some provinces.

If you are a union member, working under a collective agreement, you will get paid for the day off. However, if you work in nearly 70% of businesses and offices in Nova Scotia which are not unionized, here are the rules:

You will get paid for the day if you worked 15 days out of the last 30 calendar days.
You also must have worked your last scheduled shift just before the holiday, and your first scheduled shift right after the holiday.
If you did not work the day before or after because you had a sick day or a vacation day, you should still get paid for Canada Day.

If you are employed at a bar, hotel, gas station, restaurant or tourist operation which was open on July 1, and you “qualify” for the holiday pay (see bullets above) and if you had to work, you are entitled to your normal pay for the day, plus time and one half for every hour you do work on July 1. So if you worked 4 hours on July 1, and normally earn $20 per hour, you would earn your normal day’s pay plus time and a half. If your normal day is 8 hours, you would receive $160 ($20×8), plus 20x4x1.5 for the hours you worked. Grand total should be $280. But only if you “qualify” for the holiday pay.

Terrapin Point with Terrapin Tower in front of the Horseshoe Falls, Niagara Falls, Ontario (1859) by William England of London, UK

Of course most bars, health clubs and restaurants that remain open, are sure to ask an employee to work on July 1, if that employee does NOT qualify for holiday pay. In other words, if the the employee did not work 15 of the last 30 days, or the shift before or after July 1 the employee does not qualify for extra pay. So the employer has to pay the person only for the day’s work, but not give them double time and a half for the hours they work on Canada Day.

Featured image at the top: To Prince Edward Island, by Canadian artist Alex Colville (1965). National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.

Photo by Nathaniel Bowman, Camping Canada Mug, Sept. 2018

It’s All About Erasure

Judy Haiven — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 16:45:37 GMT

June 30, 2026 judyhaiven

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I can’t forgive Canada’s mainstream Jewish community for their (at the very least) applauding and their more active contributions to the genocide of more than 75,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including the 20,000 children in the last 33 months. I can’t forgive them for a similar role in the killing of more than 4,000 of late in Lebanon. And the murders of more than 1100 (including 242 children) in the West Bank. Whether their contribution to the murders was silence, obtuse denial of the facts, or pure and simple hatred of Palestinians. Canadian Jews’ culpability is evident. It’s not complicity – it’s culpability on an individual and a community basis. It certainly “takes a village” to run the pro-Israel campaign that has gone on unabated and without a care about the huge impact the genocide has made on the Jewish diaspora.

The exhibit Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present, that opened last weekend at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) in Winnipeg, is a case in point.

This exhibit had been planned for more than four years—there were historians, researchers and museum experts consulted. There was an advisory council. But truth be told so eloquently by Canadian physician Yipeng Ge, who himself has worked as a medic in several primary care clinics in Gaza, has said

“The exhibit was hard-fought by the local and broader Palestinian community in Canada. It was over a decade of organising work and pressure by Palestinians to have their stories told. … They fought the museum for their stories to be included even before the museum opened in 2014. It shouldn’t have to be this hard, and yet it is, because this is the reality and world we live in. That some stories are told while others are censored and dismissed because simply telling the truth sometimes can make others feel uncomfortable confront thee forms of systemic oppression that exist in this world.”

A potted history of the CMHR goes like this: In 2000, wealthy Winnipeg lawyer and media mogul Israel Asper wanted to build a museum that centred on the Jewish experience of the Holocaust. But that original idea has altered somewhat over the years. After a feasibility study in 2003, then-prime minister Jean Chrétien committed $30 million, and $100 million more. Over the years, Asper, The Asper Foundation and the Friends of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights Foundation raised about $150 million. A more acceptable idea was that the new building could be a “museum of tolerance” to commemorate 6,000 years of Indigenous history, at the historic forks of the Red and Assiniboine rivers in Winnipeg. In 2006, subsequent PM Stephen Harper welcomed the idea of a new national museum, the first to be built outside Ottawa. He pledged more than $120 million; the province of Manitoba and city of Winnipeg pitched in another $60 million.

Palestine Uprooted exhibit takes up 2.9% of the floor space devoted to the Holocaust exhibit

In 2014, the CMHR opened with “Breaking the Silence” a gallery that profiled five genocides “currently recognised by the Canadian government: Armenia, the Holodomor, the Holocaust, Srebrenica and Rwanda”. But that exhibit was dwarfed by the permanent exhibit, “Examining the Holocaust” in a huge gallery that occupies 4,500 square feet. In contrast, the current and temporary Palestine Uprooted exhibit is only 130 square feet – the size of a king-size bed in a small room with enough space to walk around it.

Bound Together, a painting by Palestinian artist Malak Mattar (2020). The painting within the painting is a small part of Picasso’s famous 1937 painting, Guernica. It portrays civilian suffering in war.

Twelve years after the opening, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) that represents Canada’s Jewish establishment, has vigorously opposed the Nakba exhibit because they were not “consulted” in its planning and development. A CIJA media release states, “without transparency and with the involvement of activists who have described the core of Jewish identity as “a disease to be destroyed.”

What? With typical outrageous CIJA overstatement, an exhibit about the Palestinian side of the story is about Jews as a disease to be destroyed? Who says that nowadays, other than some white supremacist kooks? There are indeed “responsible” mainstream politicians who talk like this– but not about the Jews. Former Israeli cabinet minister, former Min. of Defence, Yoav Gallant, referred to Palestinians as “human animals” and readily accepted that his language “could incite genocidal actions”. Israel’s current finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has called for “erasing” entire Palestinian towns as there is no history or culture of Palestinians. “There is no such thing as a Palestinian people.” National security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir freely calls for “voluntary departure” (displacement) of Palestinians from Gaza so Israelis can resettle the area.

‘Consultation’ is fake news

Yet the mainstream Jewish community hangs on to the idea they were not sufficiently consulted and accuses the museum leadership of “egregious mishandling” of the exhibit. Noah Shack, CEO of CIJA, said that the exhibit’s opening last Saturday’s will have “serious real-world consequences.” Without irony, he cited PM Carney’s warning against “importing foreign conflicts into Canada.”

So what was last month’s Walk With Israel in Toronto –if not to raise support and praise for Israel? Key sponsors included CIJA and B’nai Brith. This was a major example of marching to strengthen Israel as the force for continued genocide of tens of thousands in Gaza and the West Bank – not to mention the US and Israel’s killing of more than 7,300 in Iran and Lebanon since Feb. 2026. All must count as “importing foreign conflicts into Canada.”

Above: Palestinians flee Khan Younis, Gaza, January 2024. (Photo: Ahmed Zaqout/Anadolu)

Palestinians flee their village during the Nakba, Nov. 4, 1948 (AP Photo/Jim Pringle (file)

It is doubtful the pro-Israel supporters would have accepted consultation from Palestinians, or Germans or Ukrainians for the museum’s Holocaust exhibit. No one would have expected the Jewish community to accept that. But the pro-Israel forces now insist that without their input, their academic expertise and lived history – they must be “consulted.”

The one CMHR trustee who is Jewish is Mark Berlin, a professor at McGill University. Just days before the exhibit opened, Berlin resigned as a trustee and accused the museum of spewing “ideology” rather than an accurate history.

“Telling the story with a one-sided perspective chosen by the museum serves to deepen division and contributes to further hostility toward Jews in Canada,” Berlin said.

He failed to acknowledge that he had been a CMHR board member for eight years. He could have tried to guide or change plans for the Nakba exhibit or, if he couldn’t, resign earlier. But he wanted to make a splash – an anti-Nakba exhibit statement – so he resigned five days before the Nakba opening.

Berlin recently wrote he thought the exhibit reflected “institutional antizionism” and implied that the exhibit failed to “tell the full truth, not to sacrifice it at the altar of politics.” His resignation was in part to impress the “fans” – the declining number of Jewish Canadians (including those on the Walk for Israel) who back Israel no matter the ongoing war on hundreds of thousands of Palestinian women, elderly and children who are systematically shot at, bombed, made homeless and starved to death by Israel.

Of course, this caterwauling by the official Jewish organizations is not about consultation at all. That’s just a convenient excuse to engage in Palestine erasure, plain and simple. It’s about trying to prohibit and prevent or shut down anything that as much as mentions that a Palestinian people exists and that it has suffered under the Israeli apartheid regime.

The erasure campaign has two objectives. One is directed at the Canadian population as a whole, to win back hearts and minds horrified by the genocide and ethnic cleansing in the past three years. (More Canadians now support Palestine than Israel.) The second objective is to buck up the spirits of Israel’s fans in the Jewish community and elsewhere, who desperately still want to support Israel but are finding it increasingly difficult and unpopular to do so.

Hasbara is now Hashtakah — to silence

This used to be called “Hasbara” (Hebrew for Israeli propaganda or trying to “explain” Israel’s actions). But Hasbara has morphed into “Hashtakah” (Hebrew for outright silencing.) The latest strategy is to engage in relentless shut-down campaigns against critics of Israel, including attempts at prohibiting protests, throwing people out of jobs, dismissal from schools, denial of awards, criminal charges, doxxing, slander and abuse.

Since when do Canada’s Jews deserve a veto about any show or exhibit? There have been several controversial exhibits across the country, and I can’t recall the pro-Israel forces demanding to intervene. In 2005, a veterans’ lobby group asked that two paintings that depicted atrocities committed by Canadian soldiers in Somalia, be removed from the Canadian War Museum, I don’t recall any Jewish groups weighing in. Likewise in1989, a blockbuster exhibit “Into the Heart of Africa” was mounted at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. It drew huge protests from Black Canadians and others who felt it was “racist and insulting”. I don’t think that the Jewish establishment organizations joined the protest.

We see the pro-Israel lobby has put their stamp or “trade mark” on Israel. No one is allowed to speak about, defend or help Palestinians. According to the lobby, Palestinians do not exist. And whoever claim to be Palestinians, are terrorists – even those as young as babies.

School children painted this Guernica mural in Palestinian colours (red, green & black). They hung it in Placa Octavia in Sant Cugat del Valles, Catalaonia, Spain (near Barcelona). February 2024. (Photo: Albert Hernandes)

So the pro-Israel lobby and indeed the Jewish establishment always seem to take their seat at the table. And they have the ear of Toronto’s police chief, many politicians, academics, journalists, bigwigs and even the PM.

But two academics, Dr Yasmeen Abu-Laban, who is of Palestinian heritage and Dr Abigail Baken, who is Jewish, served on the Palestinian Content Advisory Network for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and supported the exhibit. Last week, they attended the opening. Today, they published an op-ed in The Globe and Mail about their experience working on the exhibit. They saw

“… deeply meaningful relationships between the Palestinian and Jewish communities in Canada. Through our work on the museum’s advisory network, and informed by experiences and knowledge rooted in both Jewish and Palestinian contexts, it was a privilege to witness these relationships flourish through the significant labour and care put into this common project.”

The tables have turned; the CMHR has scored a big victory – the museum managed to open its Nakba exhibit despite the pro-Israel lobby’s attempts to stop it. As the museum’s CEO Isha Khan noted,

“We can also share these stories of Palestinian Canadians – you know, telling the story of one community’s human rights violation in no way should negate or minimize the experience of another.”

Image at the top: Canadian Museum for Human RIghts, Winnipeg on 13 June, 2026. (Credit: CMHR)

Jobs for the Boys — yet again

Judy Haiven — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 11:14:00 GMT

June 25, 2026 judyhaiven

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Thanks to Mark Carney, women are flocking to jobs that will create two highways up north. And if you believe that, I’ve got some swampland in the Arctic to sell you.

The photo above is an exclusive look at highway workers ready and able to build the 800 km Mackenzie Valley Highway from Wrigley (population 110) to Inuvik NWT. And workers, like these women, are also needed to build the 230 km extension of Highway1 that links the NWT to the port of Grays Bay Port in Nunavut. Both of these projects will bring minerals to markets to make big profits for corporations. The PM calls this the first “project of national interest” that he’s greenlighting.

The cost is at least $2.6 billion. Critics say that is money better spent on building 8,000-10,000 new homes. Or It could fund an Inuit-led university. Or It could replace and upgrade every K-12 school in the NWT, Nunavut and Yukon. Or it could ensure every family in all three territories receives what Statistics Canada calls a “Northern food basket” of 67 healthy food items to feed four people – every week of the year for years to come. Inuk advocates, such as Leah Kadlun of Kugluktuk, Nunavut (200 km west of Grays Bay Port), say the highway project “doesn’t make sense at all.” Kadlun is critical of subsidizing massive mining corridors. Instead public money should be spent on addressing the Northern housing crisis, improving local education, and fixing gaps in emergency medical services.

“All that time and effort to get it up and running and for what? You know that money could be spent on bettering housing, bettering education, bettering our medevac service.”

In fact, Kadlun has actively petitioned for a 50-year moratorium on the development, citing the fast-tracking of the developments, because anything Ottawa deem “national building” can mean less regulatory approvals, and perhaps less than complete environmental reviews.

Leah Kadlun of Kugluktuk says she doesn't think the Grays Bay project makes sense for her community. (credit: Rafael Ferraz/CBC)

For example, the federal government is also proposing to weaken key environmental standards under the Species at Risk Act and Impact Assessment Act. And just last week, Carney’s government passed an amendment to Canada’s Pest Control Products Act which allows cabinet to “authorize the use of pesticides despite unacceptable risks is a dangerous departure from science-based decision-making”.

Caribou often get displaced by road construction. That could mean less access to food for northerners. From here

Back to the northern highways, there might also be environmental disruption to the migratory routes and habitats of local caribou herds. Could be tricky, as First Nations people are concerned with the highways’ potential harm to the environment, to caribou and to disruption of the Inuk and the Dene way of life.

But our PM has other ideas. Carney insists that these highways will provide “all season” access to the critical minerals, and copper and zinc, and that the megaprojects will unlock “critical mineral sovereignty”. Local bootlicking politicians claim it will reduce the cost of living, since trucks and tractor-trailers will be able to transport food and consumer goods on the new highways to ports. There’s also the matter of national security – the current Liberal government is playing on Trump’s anxiety about northern security and about NATO.

One politician has publicly disagreed. The Dempster Highway connects Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk NWT to 25 km from Dawson City, Yukon. Built 48 years ago, only 10 of its 700 plus kilometres are paved. The remainder is gravel. But it is deteriorating rapidly, thaws driven by climate change have caused sections of the road to sink and crack. Repairs to the Dempster Hwy usually require massive quantities of gravel hauled hundreds of kilometres along the same unstable route.

MP and leader of the Green Party, Elizabeth May notes

“If this is really about Arctic defence, surely the badly degraded Dempster Highway should be repaired first. Building an entirely new 800-kilometre highway through thawing permafrost while letting the existing Arctic road crumble makes no strategic sense.”

Of course the mining industry is elated. MMG Ltd, a Chinese metals producer based in Australia, claims it spent more than $80 million exploring various possible mine sites since 2009. Now with the government’s pouring in millions, the company can focus on mining – not on building roads. While the government claims the new roads will be a bonanza for northerners seeking jobs, a study in 2017 showed that 78% of fly-in-fly-out mine workers in Nunavut are from the south of Canada—not the north. More than 51% of construction workers are also from Canada’s south.

Jobs for Women?

So where does that leave the women in the photo at the top? Well if they can operate a broad range of equipment including excavators, backhoes, wheel loaders, bulldozers, motor graders or articulated dump trucks – there is lots of opportunity. After all these roads won’t be paved, but even if only made of gravel, there is lots of heavy work according to this site. True, engineers first have to test the soil and ensure it can handle the load of a new road. Workers would then have to remove rocks, boulders and anything in the way. It’s above the treeline, so there won’t be trees in the way. Then the excavation and leveling begins with a sub-layer, then the crushed gravel for strength and drainage. Then there is the binder layer that holds everything together for the heavy traffic. The only saving is the highways won’t have a hot mix of asphalt on top.

Okay, let’s stop being sarcastic. In reality, this is all about jobs for the boys. High paying ones too.

We’re back to fly-in and fly-out road building operations. Women with families can’t or won’t take the jobs. Besides, which women have the training and experience to do those jobs? Do women want to live in men-camps? Welcome to the prime minister’s nation building plans – minus more than half the population

Image at the top: The photo of two women construction workers (or actors) are taken from John Deere’s construction website.

Who by fire, who by water?

Judy Haiven — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 12:12:12 GMT

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It has happened at least four times in the 12 months.

And it just happened a few days ago.

It’s the men’s change room at the local health club. One of the men has once again broken the sauna. He, and I mean he, poured water on the rocks in order to get steam.

There are two problems with that.

First, the sauna is an electric heater covered by a tower of stones. Dumping water on it, causes a short –or worse. There is a notice printed in large letters on the sauna door – don’t throw water on the sauna. This is not a Nordic sauna where stones are heated by burning wood. In the Halifax health club, the joy or ritual of the sauna does not include first cutting then stacking wood, watching a flame all while the snow flies outside. The men’s room here has no windows, and today is (arguably) summer.

Burger King sauna in Helsinki, Finland. Room for 15 people. Order food and relax.

But some men think they know better.

Read a sign? We know better

They think using a “sauna” necessitates throwing water on rocks to increase the temperature. Not so. At least not true at this indoor sauna. Here, the building caretaker can likely control the temperature with an app on his mobile phone. There is no wood pile.

Traditional wooden sauna.

Next door to the men’s sauna is the men’s steam room. A man who wanted steam could walk a few steps to the steam room. But no, it’s important to “do” something – to create a steam room out of a dry sauna. That’s what some man or men wanted to do. Read a sign? Why bother? We know better.

There has never been a problem of women in the women’s sauna. All the women read the sign on the sauna door. One woman may even gently stop another if she fills a swimming cap with water and heads for the sauna door.

But it seems no other man was in the change room when the men poured the water on the rocks. Maybe no one wanted to correct the man or men. Maybe the men waited til they were alone for a surreptitious toss of water, sure to short out the heater.

I wonder if the question “why” will ever be answered. The sign posted on the sauna door is always there. Surely the sauna breaking down every few months causes some men to ask why.

One reason could be that a man wants to do what he wants to do at the health club. He is the master of his use of the weightroom. He pumps a lot of iron; he overreps—even maxing out by lifting the heaviest possible weight for a single overly dramatic repetition. He goes into the change room and decides he wants steam. Why not throw water on the rocks, he’s seen it in movies. Well it will break the heating source, and could electrocute someone.

The fact that shorting out the electrics means the sauna will be down for about a week, and will inconvenience other men cuts no ice. The guy never thinks about it.

What is it with men and boys? How often have I noticed when they want something, they push – any and all obstacles away to get it. It could be small or big – they don’t even distinguish. There is cajoling, there is demanding, there is threatening – especially when it comes to women. They care little about the fallout—which tells me they have big problems with impulsivity and possibly a death wish.

Image at the top: Friends gather for a traditional sauna in Estonia (credit: Tonu Runnel)

Caring for the Carers

Judy Haiven — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 12:39:32 GMT

June 17, 2026 judyhaiven

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For nearly two months, 3600 personal care workers, clerks, nutrition staff, physios, occupational therapists at 36 (out of 84) nursing homes in Nova Scotia were on strike. Many racialized Canadians, women who had been working in care homes for years, and a smattering of young men and lots more young women starting out in a career of caregiving for seniors and the disabled were on the picket lines throughout NS.

Striking care workers at Ocean View Continuing Care Centre, Eastern Passage on Apr 13, 2026 (photo credit: Jennifer Henderson)

Tim Houston doesn’t have a soft spot for seniors

Turns out our premier, Tim Houston, doesn’t have much of a soft spot for seniors. For his predecessor, Stephen McNeil, the mere suggestion that elderly people in the residential care system weren’t treated well caused McNeil to erupt with rage. One day in the lead-up to the 2017 provincial election, McNeil was gladhanding along the Halifax waterfront. His security entourage formed a large circle around him. McNeil is a tall man of six foot five inches; he walked quickly while his minders rushed ahead to distribute leaflets. I stopped him and asked how he could square his government’s support for seniors yet allow nursing homes only $5 a meal per resident. He turned all red, and started to shout that he was proud of nursing homes in the province (more than half are privately owned) and he would be proud to have his mother – mother of 17 children — live in one – were she still alive.

After winning a majority government on Aug. 17, 2021, Tory Premier Tim Houston is seen steam rolling over Iain Rankin, then leader of incumbent NS Liberals. Cartoon by Bruce MacKinnon (Credit: Chronicle Herald)

The most poorly paid clerk or caregiver in a long-term home earns $18.77 an hour. Full time that works out to about $34,000 per year (gross pay). For Nova Scotia as a whole, the living wage is $27.60 or more than $50,200 (gross) a year. Since some NS careworkers are paid barely 70% of the living wage, many have to take jobs for additional hours or shifts in other nursing homes to make up that difference. Typically, lower paid workers cannot afford to own cars, so those careworkers spend hours on buses that drive them to second, sometimes third part time jobs.

Cost of Living has gone up nearly 20% since the pandemic

The media notes that striking workers went back to work after nearly two months – and won a minimum $5 wage increase over the next four years. When you think about it, $5 doesn’t seem so much– it will raise the lowest paid up to $23.57 per hour — which is still below the current living wage in NS. Annual cost of living has overall gone up by 3.9% in 2023, and 2.4% in 2024, and 2.1% in 2025 or nearly 20% since the pandemic. Nursing home workers’ pay was probably lagging behind since the end of the pandemic. The only silver lining is that, according to a “me-too clause” in collective agreements, now the government will have to come up with the same wage package for all the other nursing home workers who are working for less and who did not go on strike.

Throughout the strike, the government has been relatively silent yet must have received hundreds of letters and emails to end the strike. But Houston and his seniors and long-term care minister Barbara Adams, herself a physiotherapist who worked in seniors’ care, were firm that more than 28,000 other continuing care assistants (CCAs and others) who worked in hospitals and delivered home care had already accepted a lesser package. So should the 3,600 CUPE workers.

Trevor Poirier (left) and Claudia Chender, leader of NS NDP (credit: NDP)

Strange to say, what likely got the Tory government to settle the strike was Trevor Poirier, a nursing home worker in Chéticamp – some 397 km from Halifax near the northern tip of Cape Breton island. In the midst of the strike, the premier called a by-election for June 23 for a newly created riding (by splitting another) to recognize the Acadian communities in the area. The former riding of Inverness is currently represented by a Tory MLA. Houston wants a Tory MLA to win the new riding of Chéticamp-Margarees-Pleasant Bay. The race is on. But Poirier, a rehabilitation assistant at Le Foyer Père Fiset long-term care home, is the NDP candidate, an outspoken critic of the government, and the president of striking CUPE Local 2031 at Père Fiset.

With all the protests at Province House, through the marches and the popular support of the striking workers, Houston didn’t break a sweat. But the chance of a loss of a brand new seat to the NDP has made him blink. The byelection is June 23.

Image at the top: Swamped by Peter Doig (1990). More about this Canadian artist here.

March for Israel Can’t Silence Support for Palestine, for Gaza and for Humanity

Judy Haiven — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 11:45:58 GMT

June 11, 2026 judyhaiven

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Prime Minister Mark Carney has been under pressure from opposition Conservatives and establishment Jewish leaders to do something big to “stop antisemitism.” Ten days ago at a Toronto synagogue, he received a standing ovation after acknowledging the “pain” of antisemitism the Jewish community had endured of late. By antisemitism, we know that includes any criticism of Israel – that point has been absolutely driven home by now as municipalities, provinces, cities and institutions across Canada adopted the IHRA’s (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) “working definition of antisemitism”. You can read the criticism of the IHRA, in No-IHRA, including that it dishonestly conflates antisemitism with criticism of Israel, and labels as antisemitic any speech the Palestinians wish to speak about their history of displacement, murder and starvation at the hands of Israel.

But Carney’s statement at the synagogue did not win favour with Canada’s Jewish establishment organizations. Almost as Carney was speaking, their condemnations came in. Holy Blossom Temple’s senior rabbi Yael Splansky said:

“When Canadian elected leaders publicly condemn Israel, the world’s only Jewish state, Jewish Canadians pay the price … or flee Canada altogether in search of a place where we and our children can be safe, understood and accepted as Jews, and as lovers of Israel.”

In Toronto and throughout much of Canada, a dozen synagogues or schools have been vandalized since Oct 7 2023.

That is reprehensible. However, a check on Toronto’s Muslim community reveals anti-Muslim attacks and damage to mosques have also gone up significantly since 2023. In addition there are complaints of terrible physical and personal attacks on Muslim people on transit, on streets and in public buildings and at work places.

Who has the ear of the Police?

Jewish-Canadians regularly contact B’nai Brith and the police to report suspected antisemitism because they trust they will get a fair hearing and some action, and they do. No one is exactly sure of the figures for the Muslim community but overall Muslims do not complain as readily. Sometimes Muslims, often racialized, have problems trusting the police or the RCMP (read this) and they are reluctant to make demands on the authorities or attract their attention. This is likely because they have heard about or encountered prejudice by police and institutions due to Islamophobia.

But in Toronto, the police were “all over” last Sunday’s annual Walk for Israel. No worries for the 55,000 Jewish marchers and their friends because there were not only hundreds of uniformed Metro police on duty – both regular and those hired as extra security by the march organizers, but the chief of police Myron Demkiw himself was present. Despite the two and a half years of genocide perpetrated by Israel against Palestinians, resulting in perhaps 100,000 dead including tens of thousands of children, the chief wanted to support Toronto’s Jews who wholeheartedly approve of (or at least do not speak out against) the slaughter. Chief Demkiw has attended the march for three years in a row.

Unsurprisingly, Jewish Canadians on the annual Walk for Israel displayed both their belief in the righteousness of any action taken by Israel, and the total defence of Israel’s military might to crush Palestinians– overwhelmingly civilians. “Might is right” is the watchword of the Walk for Israel. The march allowed the Israel-supporters to hurl insults and slag off protesters, who gathered to call out Israel’s genocide, calling them Nazis and worse. Watch this clip of an older grey haired man walking, “I fucked your sister. Nice pussy.” Just behind him is likely his daughter and grandson.

@UJAFederation Walk With Israel in #Toronto. We are supposed to believe these people feel threatened, as they go around yelling such depravities in front of their own children.","username":"SMohyeddin","name":"Samira Mohyeddin سمیرا","profile_image_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/profile_images/1813962802052104192/j9Hot4bI_normal.jpg","date":"2026-06-07T17:38:17.000Z","photos":[{"img_url":"https://substackcdn.com/image/upload/w_1028,c_limit,q_auto:best/l_twitter_play_button_rvaygk,w_88/wenfnd1i11zzeookxnax","link_url":"https://t.co/Bhzg1RFBvj"}],"quoted_tweet":{"full_text":"It's never been more frightening for Jews to get together in public than it is right now. But today in Toronto is the year's biggest public event for Jewish families. \n\nThey're showing up despite these malicious people who come to menace children.","username":"JesseBrown","name":"Jesse Brown","profile_image_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/profile_images/1790141639387750400/MVm6VlWU_normal.jpg"},"reply_count":528,"retweet_count":5582,"like_count":17054,"impression_count":581257,"expanded_url":null,"video_url":"https://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/2063672947911323648/vid/avc1/720x720/YUNYp3j7iNgBrCEp.mp4","video_preview_media_key":null,"belowTheFold":true}" data-component-name="Twitter2ToDOM">

If the organizers of the march were happy Chief Demkiw attended, they were furious that Toronto’s mayor, Olivia Chow did not. For the politically centre-left mayor of Canada’s biggest city, marching for Israel seemed to stick in her craw. This was not the first time Chow has attracted the wrath of Toronto’s Jews.

When Toronto’s mayor did not attend events for Israel…

In Oct 2024, on the first year anniversary of Oct 7, Chow did not attend the memorial event organized by UJA Federation of Greater Toronto. The Jewish establishment did not accept her excuses, and complained she did not “consistently” support the Jews. When she finally did apologize for missing the memorial vigil, the Jewish community circulated an online petition that received more than 12,000 signatures that demanded Chow resign for “neglecting the Jewish community.”

Walk for Israel participants and Chief Demkiw

A month later, at the “Interfaith Summit on Antisemitism and Hate,” at Toronto’s city hall, when mayor Chow spoke, she was

“interrupted several times by people in attendance who said the city is failing to act to adequately protect the safety of its Jewish community.”

A man asked what Chow was doing to stop antisemitism. He yelled at Chow, “We’re here because you’re not doing anything. My kids are suffering.”

All hell broke loose when Toronto’s Mayor Chow said the word ‘genocide’

A year later in Nov. 2025, the Canadian Jewish News headlined, “Jewish groups blast Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow’s ‘genocide in Gaza’ remarks” after Mayor Chow dared to say the word genocide at an event held by the NCCM (National Council of Canadian Muslims). She said,

“The genocide in Gaza impact[s] us all. … I will speak out anywhere when children anywhere are feeling the pain and violence and hunger.”

Even though Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and B’Tselem, the well-respected Israeli human rights group, call the mass slaughter of Palestinians a “genocide”, in this twisted logic using that word is antisemitic.

CIJA (the Centre for Israel-Jewish Affairs), the establishment Jewish community’s main voice, plus B’nai Brith and right-wing Tafsik demanded an official investigation by the city’s integrity commissioner. CIJA’s CEO noted, Chow’s comments were “reckless, divisive, and dangerous” in a statement and video post.

Do Jewish people’s feelings count more than others?

But isn’t that just the way of the establishment Jewish Troika – including CIJA, B’nai Brith and Simon Wiesenthal Centre? Deep within this activity is embedded the toxic notion that the feelings of Jewish-Canadians count more than the deaths of families of other groups.

And how convenient it is to include under the rubric of “antisemitism” any condemnation of Israel’s rampages. Now in their desperation to not just conflate but cement criticism of Israel to antisemitism. The Jewish pro-Israel campaign silences and will not allow words such as Palestine, and Palestinians. Gaza and the West Bank must also be edited out of speeches, talks and even displays.

For example take the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg. At the end of June, a new exhibit, Palestine Uprooted: The Nakba Past and Present, will open. There has been a call for such a commemoration since the Museum was in its planning stages twenty-five years ago. As Ramsey Zeid, the president of the Canadian Palestinian Association of Manitoba and the descendant of Nakba survivors notes,

“This project has been in development for nearly four years and will present the story of the Nakba. It is an exhibit created for Palestinians, centring Palestinian narratives with the goal of educating the broader public.”

But CIJA and other Troika members have tried to block or at least derail the exhibition many times —though it is set to open on June 27.

This is from CIJA’s site; Isha Khan has been the CEO of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights since 2020.

A Tel Aviv-based lobbying group Shurat HaDin (meaning: the strict letter of the law) has threatened to take legal action against the exhibit; it shows the mass displacement, murders and dispossession suffered by the Palestinians during the 1948 Nakba and beyond. Shurat HaDin announced on May 15 that it had sent a legal letter to the museum’s board of trustees and senior leadership (including Khan) regarding the upcoming exhibition, calling for it to be paused in order to conduct an “independent legal and scholarly review.”

On its website, Shurat HaDin describes itself in “the forefront of fighting terrorism and safeguarding Jewish rights worldwide.”

Why is an Israeli-based lobby group trying to cancel a Canadian Museum for Human Rights exhibit?

What’s an Israeli organization doing leading the campaign against a Canadian museum’s display? Good question. Shurat HaDin’s president writes,

“In addition to supporting Israel’s war efforts, Shurat HaDin could not sit idly by in the face of rising Jew hatred and global antisemitism, which spread like a virus across US campuses. Amongst others, we have assisted with American counsel in bringing an impactful lawsuit against “Students for Justice in Palestine” and against Harvard University. … the war is still raging. Rest assured, that now more than ever, we are fighting back! We are hard at work assisting the Israeli government, on a multitude of fronts, in battling the terrorists, the antisemitic haters, and those that threaten Jews globally…”

Their website and Annual Report (albeit from 2024) is really an offshoot of the Israeli Law Centre which has been dubbed a “government organized non-governmental organization.” It has ties to Israel’s government and to its spy agency, the Mossad. The Israeli Law Centre is behind the ‘lawfare cases’ doing legal battle against universities, public institutions and the media in Israel and abroad that have dared to allow demonstration or even free speech about Palestine.

A key case was Shurat HaDin’s 2011 lawsuit against former US president Jimmy Carter and publishers Simon & Schuster for releasing Carter’s bestseller, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. The plaintiff contended that Carter’s “hatred of Israel has led him to commit this fraud on the public.” The Israeli agency demanded $5 million in damages, but after a lot of bad publicity, Shurat HaDin dropped the case.

As one Australian law professor said,

“The goal of the lawsuit isn’t to force Simon & Schuster to pay damages for publishing Carter’s book; its goal is to bully Carter and other would-be critics of Israel into not writing books like Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid in the first place.”

And on that note – the bullying into silence that critics of Israel warned us about 15 years ago has now reached epic – and absurd – levels.

To illustrate just how crazy the lawfare warfare has become, the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) – the city’s public transportation agency is under fire from several newly formed pro-Israel ‘burner groups’ including Canadian Women Against Antisemitism and Unapologetically Jewish. The TTC’s staff jerseys to celebrate FIFA’s World Cup feature an upside down red triangle emblazoned on the jerseys’ shoulders. The National Post delicately writes – sometimes,

“a triangle is just a geometric shape, a common design element in sports branding. In the current climate, however, that specific motif is politically loaded, say Jewish leaders.”

Burner groups absurdly claim an inverted red triangle is part of “Hamas propaganda videos” now used by university student protesters, and by vandals targeting Jewish homes and institutions. CITE. But the real truth here is that the Jewish establishment is warning the city and especially mayor Chow to walk on eggshells when dealing with the pro-Israel community and to silence any criticism of Israel.

Image at the top: Toronto–Palestine supporters wait for the parade of pro-Israel marchers: Barriers were set up at major intersections along the route. (credit: Saloni Bhugra/CBC)

Sex, Violence and Hockey -

Judy Haiven — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 13:45:31 GMT

Free webinar

Thursday 11 June, 2026

4:30 pm Atlantic; 3:30 Eastern

To register: https://tinyurl.com/m2x4tfbt

Sex, violence and hockey - bystanders or standing by in room 209

The 2025 Hockey Canada Trial

LAURA ROBINSON is a former member of the national cycling team, and the first Canadian journalist to write about sexual assault in sport. Crossing the Line: Violence and Sexual Assault in Canada’s National Sport was published in 1998, while Black Tights: Women, Sport and Sexuality came out in 2002.

What to Watch, What to Read in June '26

Judy Haiven — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 13:34:39 GMT

What to watch…

If you are going to watch one series right now, watch Should I Marry a Murderer? (2026) on Netflix. It’s nothing like you imagine. A 30-year old British pathologist, Dr. Caroline Muirhead plays herself. She lives in Glasgow and has a responsible medical position at a hospital. Having been hurt and ditched by a long-time boyfriend, she scours dating sites for a new man. She claims what she wants is a‘real’ man, one who loves the outdoors, is handy, likes to hunt and likes challenges of rural life. She begins to date Alexander “Sandy” McKellar. McKeller lives and manages a large sheep farm 100 kilometers from Glasgow.

The thing that is special about this series, is that it is narrated by Dr Muirhead herself. Sitting in a pale cashmere sweater in her tasteful living room, she recalls her relationship with McKellar who became her fiancé. She tries to explain how the relationship—and her life blew up. Brilliant, frank and riveting.

An unusual documentary, it shows Muirhead’s spirit and self-delusion in equal measure; it begs us to ask, what could be the dangers in spilling the most private secrets to the person closest to you?

The Investigation is a six part miniseries from Denmark based on a true story. In 2017 a seasoned Swedish journalist, Kim Wall, age 30, disappears after an interview with a midget submarine owner Peter Madsen in Køge Bay, Denmark. This is a fascinating police procedural, good acting.

As one reviewer in The Times wrote,

“Just when you think you’ve had quite enough of true-crime murder stories and Scandi noir, along comes The Investigation to show that there’s life left in both.”

The series is on Crave, and here’s the trailer.

The Unlikely Murderer is a six-part miniseries from Sweden on Netflix. How many readers remember the shock and outrage that went around the world when the popular Swedish prime minister, Olaf Palme, was gunned down outside a Stockholm movie theatre, in the winter of 1986? For years, the police claimed they had no leads. Fourteen years later the police suggested the murderer had been an initial suspect –dismissed for lack of direct evidence. In 2000, everything changed, the former suspect died; suddenly the police named him as the killer. The subplot that is not fully explored was the murderer’s connections to the pro-fascists who emerged in high places after World War II. But still, worth watching. The trailer is here.

I think I saw The Guilty (2022) before, but I accidently saw it again on Netflix. It’s really worth watching this feature film, a fictionalized account of an American cop who answers a 911 call. For reasons known to viewers only in the end, active policeman Joe Baylor has been relegated to desk duty. A woman, Emily, calls to say she’s been abducted by her ex, and her pre-school children are home alone. She’s terrified. Joe is quick to anger and hot to act. He pulls out all the stops to rescue Emily – but things are not at all as they seem. First rate suspense film and here’s the trailer.

On Crave you can watch a great documentary about unions and workers, No Contract, No Cookies: The Stella D’Oro Strike. In 138 workers struck the Stella D’Oro biscuit plant in the Bronx, New York city. The one-time family owned business dated from 1930. Many owners later, a hedge fund company bought it and sold it to Lance, a snack food empire. Management wanted to cut wages and benefits for workers, many of whom had worked there for 30 plus years. After an 11-month strike, the workers – members of the BCTGM (the International Union of Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers) won a Pyrrhic victory. On a technicality, the US Labor Relations Board effectively ended the strike and ordered they be allowed to return to work and paid backpay. But then Lance shuttered the factory and promised to move it to a non-union location in Ohio, which threw everyone in the Bronx plant out of their job. This is a 39-minute doc that will grab you – the workers are lively and committed to helping one another. But by 2010 (when the film was released) neoliberalism was in full swing and decent-paying working class jobs were vanishing. There is something very human and refreshing about No Contract, No Cookies. Here’s the trailer.

I highly recommend Pack of Lies, a “Hallmark Hall of Fame” presentation from 1987. The full feature film is on Youtube here. This is a British film about Lona and Morris Cohen – aka Helen and Peter Kroger — an American couple who worked as Russian spies. In 1954 the couple settled in Ruislip, a suburb of London, UK. This film tells the story of MI6 “discovering” the spies through their best friends across the street. For more on the Cohen spies, see my newsletters here and here.

While in London, the Cohens (Krogers) also became good friends with Frank and Nora Doel. Frank Doel was the bookseller whose correspondence with the American author Helene Hanff became the bestseller, 84 Charing Cross Road. See below in what to read!

Never Stop Talking about Palestine

Al Jazeera screens a two part series, The Palestine Laboratory (2025), a documentary film by Antony Lowenstein.. Lowenstein, who is an author, a journalist and a filmmaker in Australia is also Jewish. He is a serious critic of Israeli apartheid and Israel’s genocide of more than 100,000 Palestinians in the last two and a half years.

The film is based on his 2023 book, reviewed here

“The Palestine Laboratory—How Israel exports the technology of Occupation around the world.” This thoroughly researched report also brings forth Lowenstein’s personal reflection on Zionism – an ideology he denounces, despite being raised within it, in part due to its inherent racial supremacy sentiment against non-Jews. Against this backdrop, the book paints a grim picture of the life across occupied Palestinian territories, with particular attention to Israel’s testing of its military and surveillance technologies on Palestinians.”

This is a fascinating film – we see the major arms manufacturers, their trade shows, and the end result of dispatching armed drones, missiles, bulldozers and sharp shooters to the West Bank and in Gaza.

It is rare for us to get a glimpse of the war industry, up close. His interview subjects are well chosen, and give us a sense of how vast and lucrative the arms industry is. Here’s the trailer

What to Read…

Many readers have heard of– or even read –the very dated 1970 bestseller 84 Charing Cross Road. But author Helene Hanff’s follow-up book, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, is a real delight. Hanff was a not very successful freelance writer who had barely travelled outside of New York city, when she started ordering books by mail from a used book store in London, UK. She was an Anglophile, loved British history, places and novels. For 20 years, Hanff carried on a relationship by letter with Frank Doel, the store’s manager who tried to fill her many rare book requests. Her book, 84 Charing Cross Road, based on that epistolary relationship was published nearly 56 years ago.

Nora picked up the morning paper and discovered that Helen and Peter Kruger were Russian spies.

She earned barely enough money from the book’s sales, to visit her beloved London the following summer. Staying in an older, down-at-the-heels hotel, she wrote in 84’s sequel, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street (1973) she had to rely on fans of her first book to invite her to lunch and/or dinner as she couldn’t afford to eat and stay in the hotel. She made friends with actress Joyce Grenfell and her husband. In the car with the couple one day, the husband his wife,

“‘Why don’t you show her Fleet Street?’ I piped up from the back seat that I’d like to see London’s slums. ‘I’m afraid,’ said Joyce gently, ‘there aren’t any.’ Add that fact to Britain’s free medical care and you know all you need to know about the difference between Capitalism and Socialism.”

The people Hanff met and the hospitality they offered were incredible. She saw every tourist haunt, every library, every play she could, every parkside river with swans, and more. This is a delightful book that will take you away from this world into a place of good humour and warm feelings—and no Israeli genocide. Here’s an anecdote told to Hanff by Nora Doel, Frank’s wife. One New Year’s Eve, the Doels gave a party at which Lona Cohen (aka Helen Kroger):

“… arrived looking very exotic in a long black evening dress. ‘Helen, you look like a Russian spy!’ said Nora. And Helen laughed and Peter laughed and a few months later Nora picked up the morning paper and discovered that Helen and Peter Kruger were Russian spies.”

I read Final Verdict: What really happened in the Rosenberg Case (2010) by Walter Schneir. Schneir, an investigative journalist, compares the KGB files reprinted in Weinstein and Vassiliev’s The Haunted Wood to actual court transcripts. Schneir ‘discovered’ what really happened in the Rosenberg Case. One clue might be that Rosenberg was not the kingpin in the spy ring—his brother-in-law was. This is a fascinating look at the case that shook the 20^th century.

Version 1.0.0

Some book reviewer I came across of late, commented that the best novel he had ever read was Georges Simenon’s The Train. Through the magic of interlibrary loans, I got the slim book, first published in 1961. Simenon, is the Belgian author of hundreds of novels, many that feature fictional Paris police detective, Jules Maigret. The Train is breathtaking, and leaves us hanging. Brilliant. It has nothing to day with Maigret or the mystery genre. The Train is a story about World War II. A radio repairman, Marcel Féron his pregnant wife and four-year-old daughter leave their home in Fumay, Belgium to cram aboard a crowded train to safety in northwest France. At the train station, the family gets separated –mother and daughter on one train, Féron on another. His experiences on the train are real and deep. When he can’t find his family, he forms a fleeting but alternate family that is remarkable – if in a way, tragic. This book you won’t put down.

Ars Gratia Artis – Art for art’s sake

And, for the sake of love, you can read Love in a Fallen City: Shanghai’s Marriage Market by Becky Zhang. Maybe you know that in China, there are 115 men for 100 women from the ages 24 to 50. That means parents who don’t want their sons without families, or stigmatized as single, or never having grandchildren resort to marriage markets to post photos and information about their sons. A great read in the Paris Review! And it’s here.

Umbrella advertising eligible men at a marriage market, Shanghai (credit: JP Bowen, Wikimedia Commons)

Who can go to the World Cup? How many days would you toil to go to a game? by Eduardo Porter is excellent. His look at Mexico hosting upcoming FIFA games should give us pause. For example, 47% of all workers in Mexico earn minimum wage or less — 315 pesos a day ($25 Canadian) is minimum wage. The writer notes:

“By the government’s count, this buys almost two “basic baskets” of essential goods and services–housing, food, transportation, healthcare and so on–which measure what a person needs to meet Mexico’s poverty line.”

World Cup tickets cost $4460 a piece

Tickets to the games hosted by Mexico at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City cost $4460.43 Canadian per game. Mexicans would need to work the better part of a year (177 days) to afford to buy one ticket. Read all about it in Porter’s Substack here.

Peace: What you can See & Do online!

Noted artist and crackerjack newsletter writer Australian Caitlin Johnstone is interviewed by her husband American Tim Foley as she paints a portrait of peace activist and Code Pink leader Medea Benjamin. The time spent watching – 40 minutes- will relax and rejuvenate you – the political talk and short talk about art will wow you. Watch now here

Judy Haiven’s Newsletter

Why isn’t Torching a Car a Hate Crime?

Silencing criticism of Israel

Cartoon at the top and below: Being Anti-Zionist is the Most Jewish Thing About Me, by Montreal-based illustrator and writer Rachel Deutsch. For more about her and Cartoonists for Palestine, read this.

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Terror Trekkers

Canadian Jews are settlers at heart?

Cartoon at the top: ‘Settlers in the West Bank’ is by Emad Hajjaj who is from Jordan. He is better known in the Middle East as Abu Mahjoob. This cartoon was published August 14, 2026 by Cartoon Movement.

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Denying a Live-Streamed Genocide

You can denounce the US — but not Israel

Israel’s Jewish narrative vs Israel’s genocide of nearly 75,000 Palestinians

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When do we get to criticize Israel?

Photo at the top and below: A Palestinian woman reacts as she returns to her destroyed house, following a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip, January 19, 2025. (credit: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas)

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Is Tulsa ‘Cool Enough’ for Canadian Jews?

Canada: No Better Home?

Tulsa: You can set your watch back to it!

Sit-in at Katz Drug Store

Photo at the top: Postcard of detainees forced to march by an armed mob, likely toward McNulty Park (rather than the Tulsa Convention Hall as the card states. This is the first postcard of the Riot, published in 1921 (credit: University of Tulsa Archives).

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In NS- you may get today off work but it could be without pay!

Painting at the top and below: Nenookassi –Ruby-throated Hummingbird (2025) by Dee Barsy who is Ojibwe, from Treaty 1 territory (near Winnipeg).

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What to Watch, What to Read in August’s Dog Days of Summer. . .

What to Watch. . .

Don’t Forget Gaza

What to Read . . .

Image at the top: from 5 Drive-In, Oakville, Ontario (via Instagram).

A New Way to be Jewish...

But why does it leave you overwhelmingly silent?

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Guest column: A tribute to Dr. Nouman Ali

Larry Haiven is a founding member of Independent Jewish Voices Canada, and our Halifax chapter. Dr Haiven is a Professor Emeritus at Saint Mary’s University, who specializes in labour relations and management. His latest articles are here and here.

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Elbows Down

Really little daylight between Canada and the US

Cartoon at the top by Pat Bagley/ Copyright 2026 Cagle Cartoons, Inc.

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The Truth Will Put a Target on your Back

Gaza, the most dangerous place in the world to be a child

A new granddaughter - how would she fare in Gaza?

Cartoon at the Top and below: by Antonio Rodriguez (born in Mexico City 1965) @Rodriguezmonos. Rodriguez is a member of Cartooning for Peace. Read about him here.

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On Kites & Drones...

Image at the top: Horse kite at the Garrison Grounds, Halifax, July 11, 2026 (credit: Larry Haiven)

A Concentration Camp by Any Other Name

Follow the Yellow line

The aim was to “clear the countryside”

Marx has the last words…

Photo at the top: Golden Bridge, near Da Nang, Vietnam. For more information, read this.

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