Montreal, January 14, 2021  — Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) is outraged by vague criticisms made by the Bloc Québécois (BQ) against new Transport Minister Omar Alghabra which amount to anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia. As reported by the Canadian Press, BQ leader Yves-François Blanchet said on Wednesday that “questions arise” from Mr. Alghabra’s former role as president of the Canadian Arab Federation (CAF). Blanchet reportedly suggested that Alghabra was associated with "the political Islamic movement," but declined to accuse Alghabra of any specific wrongdoing. The CAF is a secular organization. CJPME considers such vague aspersions to be racist and Islamophobic against Alghabra, a Syrian-Canadian and Muslim.

We are at another turning point in the history of the Palestine-Israel conflict.  Despite harsh international condemnation, Israel is still moving ahead to illegally annex huge new swaths of Palestinian territory.  A growing group of Canadian civil society organizations is asking MPs to sign a pledge which calls on Canada to stand against Israel's imminent annexations. Click-here to help us convince your MP to sign the pledge. 

On October 27, 2020, Doug Ford's Ontario Government announced that it had pulled the plug on Bill 168, a private member's bill that would have adopted the controversial IHRA working definition of antisemitism, and instead unilaterally adopted the IHRA definition through an Order-In-Council. This was announced less than 24 hours before civil society groups were preparing to testify about Bill 168 in public hearings before the Justice Policy committee. Over 100 individuals and organizations had applied to speak before the committee, including CJPME. Given this anti-democratic move to silence public opposition to IHRA, CJPME has decided to publish our written submission on IHRA as a threat to free speech on Israel and Palestine. CJPME's full submission is available here as a .PDF, or copied below.

CJPME Factsheet No. 220, published September, 2020: This factsheet provides an overview of the UAE-Israel normalization agreement. Is this really a "peace deal," and is Canada right to welcome it ?