Embattled anti-racist group suspends events
Vows to continue in letter to its supporters
The organization embroiled in scandal after receiving a $133,000 government contract for an anti-racism project, even though one of its founders had sent a slew of bigoted tweets, has spoken out, sending an email to supporters that says “online and mainstream media are powerful tools of White Supremacy.”
In the email, the Community Media Advocacy Centre says it received a letter from the Department of Canadian Heritage suspending the contract.
“From Turtle Island to Palestine, CMAC continues to see the need for an anti-racism strategy for broadcasting that disrupts settler-colonialism and oppression in the media,” the email says.
The group also says it will be suspending events for the time being while it considers how to respond.
It marks the first time that CMAC has spoken publicly about the scandal since it broke last week with a report from The Canadian Press on a series of antisemitic tweets from Laith Marouf, a senior consultant with CMAC. At the time, Ahmed Hussen, the minister of diversity, inclusion and youth, said the government would “look closely at the situation involving disturbing comments made by the individual in question.”
In April, Hussen was quoted alongside Marouf in a news release announcing the project, titled “Building an Anti-racism Strategy for Canadian Broadcasting: Conversation & Convergence.”
The project included consultative events around Canada, some of which were due to take place later this year, including in Ottawa.
While Marouf’s tweets are private, The Canadian Press reported on screenshots. One such tweet said: “You know all those loud mouthed bags of human feces, aka the Jewish White Supremacists; when we liberate Palestine and they have to go back to where they come from, they will return to being low voiced bitches of (their) Christian/secular White Supremacist Masters.”
Marouf’s lawyer, Stephen Ellis, asked that The Canadian Press quote Marouf’s tweets “verbatim,” and said there was a difference between Marouf’s “clear reference to ‘Jewish white supremacists,’” and Jews or Jewish people in general.
Marouf does not harbour “any animus toward the Jewish faith as a collective group,” The Canadian Press reported.
The controversy set in motion a series of strange events in Ottawa. By Monday, Hussen announced the government had cut funding to the CMAC project.
“The antisemitic statements made by Laith Marouf are reprehensible and vile,” Hussen said in a statement posted to Twitter. “We call on CMAC, an organization claiming to fight racism and hate in Canada, to answer to how they came to hire Laith Marouf, and how they plan on rectifying the situation given the nature of his antisemitic and xenophobic statements.”
Then, Anthony Housefather, a Liberal MP, said he had warned Hussen about Marouf’s statements prior to the media hearing of them.
“I said the contract had to be cancelled. I alerted him and I persistently communicated with the minister in his office, from the day I learned about it, until today, and aggressively demanded that action be taken,” Housefather told National Post.
“Action could have been taken more quickly.”
Housefather also said there needs to be a “thorough review in the Department of Heritage as to how this happened” and processes need to be put in place to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Friday’s statement from CMAC does not address the questions raised by Housefather or Hussen.
Marouf has claimed Israel was the creation of “White Jews who adopted Nazism,” and said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is the head of an “Apartheid” colony.
Irwin Cotler — a Jewish-canadian and former Liberal justice minister — was called the “Grand Wizard of Zionism” and a man who “looks like a d--k without makeup.” In 2021, Marouf said “Jewish White Supremacists” deserve only a “bullet to the head.”