`Solidarity' guest praised terrorist
• Yet another guest at a Palestinian “solidarity” event held on Parliament Hill allegedly made controversial comments online about the Holocaust and publicly praised a Palestinian terrorist group leader.
On Wednesday, B'nai Brith revealed that Montreal's Mahmoud Khalil was also in attendance at a reception held Nov. 29 to mark the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. The event was hosted by Toronto-area Liberal MP Salma Zahid, chair of the Canada-palestine Parliamentary Friendship Group.
This follows revelations that the event also included a publisher of a newspaper known for Holocaust denial and another figure known for praising terrorist attacks against Israelis. The event was attended by Liberal cabinet minister Omar Alghabra and Green party leader Elizabeth May, as well as NDP, Bloc and Conservative MPS.
Khalil, B'nai Brith alleges, has a history of antisemitic social media posts, including one Instagram post mocking Marvel superhero Sabra, whose fictional biography revealed her to be an Israeli woman born in a kibbutz near Jerusalem and worked as both a police officer and Mossad agent.
“Let's have a German superhero named Auschwitz, how bout that?” Khalil allegedly wrote on an undated Instagram story provided by B'nai Brith.
The story, featuring an image of Sabra gracing the cover of The Incredible Hulk issue no. 256, also included claims Marvel named her after the Sabra and Shatila massacre, the 1982 killing of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians in a refugee camp in Beirut. However, Sabra is a long-standing term for Jews born in British Mandate Palestine or Israel. It is derived from the Hebrew word for prickly pears found on cacti, known as thorny on the outside but sweet and soft on the inside.
Khalil also posted videos of himself, overlaid with dramatic music, giving a speech at a “Glory To Our Martyrs” rally in Montreal, as well as reciting a poem commemorating the late Ghassan Kanafani, a spokesperson for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP.)
The PFLP, listed as a terrorist organization by the Canadian government, was responsible for the May 1972 Lod Airport massacre in Tel Aviv that killed 26 people and injured 80, including a Canadian citizen.
This news comes just days after the Twitter account Documenting Antisemitism alleged Nabil Nassar, the head of the Fatah Movement in Canada, had also attended the reception on Parliament Hill. Nassar has also publicly praised terrorist actions that have killed Israelis.
In a statement last week to National Post, Zahid said invitations to the reception were “circulated widely” and it was attended by nearly 150 people, and said her staff didn't “research the history of every attendee that responded.”