IJV Condemns Police Repression Against Palestine Solidarity Movement
Across Canada and internationally, we are seeing a marked rise in violent repression of the Palestine solidarity movement. Independent Jewish Voices condemns the mounting criminalization of Palestine solidarity activism, and the use of excessive force by police to intimidate and harass activists.
On October 15, 2024, the Canadian government listed the group Samidoun, also known as the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, as a “terrorist entity” under the Criminal Code, in response to months of pressure by pro-Israel lobby groups, a few Liberal MPs and the opposition Conservatives. On November 14, 2024, a Vancouver Police Department Emergency Response Team raided the home of Charlotte Kates, international coordinator of that organization, using flash-bang grenades and armoured vehicles in a residential area. These latest actions taken by Canadian authorities constitute a gross violation of several fundamental rights guaranteed by the Charter. Regardless of differences one might have with Kates and Samidoun, this repression is clearly meant to intimidate the entire Palestine solidarity movement with threat of criminalization.
Authoritarian Overreach
We are seeing more and more of this authoritarian overreach connected with grassroots efforts to support the Palestinian cause. In November 2023, demonstrators who had sprayed washable red paint on an Indigo books storefront woke up to police violently raiding their homes, tossing their belongings and knocking doors off their hinges. In September 2024, Toronto police dragged Jewish activists out of an event and shoved and assaulted a group of peaceful protestors outside. In the same week, police in Calgary used excessive force against a group of peaceful protestors at a weekly rally against the ongoing genocide in Gaza. In Montréal, police forces tear-gassed and used excessive force against protestors, fracturing a demonstrator’s arm, and injuring four others, who had to be rushed to hospital. On November 25th, Ottawa police violently arrested peaceful protestors at a weekly rally in solidarity with Gaza. These events demonstrate an unacceptable use of violence by police departments against Canadians who are calling out for justice and peace.
This ongoing repression is not about protecting national security or public safety – it is about silencing dissent, intimidating activists, and stifling critical conversations about Canada’s complicity in Israeli genocide and apartheid.
The process for designating an organization as a terrorist entity has been widely criticized by civil liberties and human rights groups due to its low bar and discretionary nature that allows authorities to add a group to the list, the lack of transparency and basic procedural safeguards in the law, and the serious consequences faced by groups added to the list wrongfully or in error. In this light, the public should not be prepared to accept the government’s designation as fact, or as a measure that will necessarily keep the public any safer.
The recent publication of the Canadian Handbook on the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism threatens to legitimize this kind of overreaching police violence and government repression even further. The handbook is designed to inform police departments, judges, workplaces, universities and other Canadian institutions on how to implement the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, which dangerously conflates criticism of Israel with antisemitism. If heeded, this handbook could be utilized to justify increasingly militarized police raids such as we have witnessed in Toronto and Vancouver, under the premise that denouncing Israeli genocide or calling Zionism a settler colonial project is considered a hate crime.
Canada’s attacks on activists are part of a rising international trend that seriously threatens fundamental civil liberties. In the US, House Resolutions have recently passed which further empower the government to silence and repress pro-Palestine advocacy. The situation in the US is likely to only get worse should Trump pursue an initiative known as Project Esther, which weaponizes accusations of antisemitism in an attempt to undermine and eventually criminalize pro-Palestine solidarity activism. In the UK, a journalist’s home was raided and his property confiscated. Germany’s lower house of parliament passed a bill adopting IHRA amidst ongoing criticism of the government’s violent crackdown on and censorship of Palestine advocacy.
By broadly labelling the Palestine solidarity movement as antisemitic or supporting terrorism, Western governments are effectively criminalizing the moral imperative to speak out against injustice. As IJV and other members of civil society around the world demand a full arms embargo, sanctions against Israeli officials, an end to international complicity in Israel’s war crimes, and for their governments to abide by international law and its courts, Western governments have instead chosen to escalate their repression of dissent.
This is not just a matter of defending Palestinian rights – it’s a matter of defending the fundamental freedoms that protect all of us. If we allow the state to strip away these rights in the name of protecting Israel, we are all at risk. The struggle for Palestinian liberation is inseparable from the struggle for justice here in Turtle Island. It is imperative that we stand in solidarity with Palestine solidarity activists and resist the government’s criminalization of dissent, or we will all suffer the consequences of living in a society where political repression is the norm, and governments – regardless of their political colour – determine what political speech is acceptable and what political speech must be silenced. •
