The weaponization of anti-racism strategies in order to silence opposition to anti-Israel activism is no longer on the fringes.
According to its proponents, criticizing key elements of pro-Palestinian political propaganda constitutes ‘anti-Palestinian racism’ (APR). And now, that fringe position has become part of a recently-released federal guide on Islamophobia, and is being introduced in public school systems.
The new guide, developed by The Office of the Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia and its Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia, Amira Elghawaby, received uncritical news coverage in a March 10 article in The Hill Times entitled: “Despite challenging first two years, Canada’s special rep on Islamophobia is undaunted,” by Laura Ryckewaert, which significantly sanitized the deep problems with the report.
The article interviewed Elghawaby for her thoughts on the new guide, quoting her as saying that “you can criticize the religion just like any other religion; we are talking about the deliberate discrimination and mistreatment of people who practice the faith.”
This statement flies in the face of the guide’s own defence of ‘anti-Palestinian racism,’ which seeks to demonize those who reject the most extreme elements of pro-Palestinian propaganda, a point overlooked entirely by the article.
In past media interviews, Elghawaby has sanitized hateful anti-Israel and anti-Jewish rhetoric, admittedly strange behaviour for someone tasked with educating the Canadian public on the dangers of hate.
Beyond overlooking the problematic elements of the guide itself, Ryckewaert made a number of misleading statements, including that “a July 2024 Statistics Canada report notes the number of police-reported hate crimes jumped 32 per cent between 2022 and 2023, with those targeting Muslim individuals rising by 94 per cent, and those targeting Jewish individuals increasing by 71 per cent.”
While technically true that anti-Muslim hate crimes rose faster between 2022 and 2023 compared to anti-Jewish hate crimes, the difference in raw numbers is staggering: some 900 anti-Jewish hate crimes versus 200 anti-Muslim hate crimes. Furthermore, given that Jewish population in Canada is roughly one-fifth the size of the Canadian Muslim community, the disparity becomes even more stark.
Another comment made in the article appears to be a strange editorialization, when the author wrote that, after mentioning the Hamas-Israel war, that “Israel’s offensive has been characterized as a genocide by many…”
While it is undeniable that some critics have indeed made this allegation, it deserves no more of a platform to be mentioned than experts who have lauded Israel’s counter-terrorism operations as being models of how to fight Islamist terrorists who embedded themselves within civilian areas.
While overlooking problems with the new Islamophobia guide, the Hill Times article did make important mention of other elements, namely that anti-Israel demonstrations have been noted for their anti-Jewish hate speech, an obvious point that nevertheless appears to be largely ignored by most news media outlets.
While far from egregious, the article in The Hill Times failed to hold Amira Elghawaby and The Office of the Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia accountable for its new guide on combatting Islamophobia, given that it defends the ‘anti-Palestinian racism’ strategy, an overt attempt to stifle criticism of pro-Palestinian activists. Accordingly, HonestReporting Canada has conveyed these concerns directly to the Hill Times.
