Last year, an outfit in Canada known as the Community Media Advocacy Center received $133,000 from the federal government to build an anti-racism strategy for Canadian broadcasting.
The grant, approved by the Housing, Diversity and Inclusion ministry, was channelled to the Department of Canadian Heritage. The funds enabled the center to hire a senior consultant named Laith Marouf, who promised to implement the project in a “successful and responsible” manner.
Famous last words.
It has come to light that Marouf, a Syrian Arab by birth, is a vile and disgusting antisemite. A screenshot of his private Twitter account, posted online the other day, is incontrovertible proof of his deep-seated racism.
In one tweet, he wrote, “You know all those loud mouthed bags of human faces, 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.”
In another tweet, he said that “Jewish White Supremacists” deserve “a bullet to the head.”
Very strange and extremely unsettling words from a person who is supposed to be fighting the scourge of racism.
Marouf, one of these dubious consultants whose mouth is never far from the taxpayers’ trough, declined media requests for a comment. But his lawyer, Stephen Ellis, made a distinction between Marouf’s “clear reference to ‘Jewish White Supremacists'” and Jews in general. According to Ellis, his client does not harbor “any animus toward the Jewish faith as a collective group.”
This is incredibly laughable. If you buy this rationalization, you may as well believe that the earth is flat or that the Holocaust is a hoax. Ellis’ claim that Marouf is not hostile to Jews is so far-fetched and utterly devoid of reality and honesty.
Marouf’s tweets are profoundly anti-Israel and antisemitic, summoning up tropes that neo-Nazis would be thrilled to embrace and promote.
Ahmed Hussen, the minister of housing, diversity and inclusion, blasted Marouf’s “unacceptable behavior,” saying it “clearly goes against our government’s values.” Hussen condemned “antisemitism and any other form of hate” and asked the Department of Canadian Heritage to “look closely at the situation.”
This is an open and shut case.
Marouf’s remarks are “beyond the pale,” as Irwin Cotler, the former federal justice minister and Canada’s current special envoy on antisemitism, correctly said on August 20.
Marouf’s contract should be cancelled immediately. The Canadian government cannot and should not employ a person who combats racism in public but who fosters it in private.
As Hussen himself said, antisemitism has no place in Canada.