Canadian Arab Federation
The Canadian Arab Federation was formed in 1967 to represent the interests of Arab Canadians with respect to the formulation of public policy in Canada. It presently consists of over 40 member organizations.
CAF's stated objectives include protecting civil liberties and human rights as well as combating racism and hate within Canada. It has been most vocal against anti-Arab and anti-Muslim activities in Canada, and has issued many position papers to the government with respect to its policies in the Southwest Asia and its domestic immigration policies. It discharges its political tasks by building media and government relations and grassroots support through various capacity-building projects within the Canadian Arab community, and promoting Muslim and Arab culture.
Khaled Mouammar led the organization in the 1970s and again 1980-1982. Omar Alghabra was president from 2004–2005. Mouammar was re-elected in 2006. Its current president is Farid Ayad.
History
Since its founding in 1967, the CAF has represented the Arab community with regard to a range of foreign and domestic issues.The CAF opposed the Camp David Accord signed by Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin on September 17, 1978, and protested Begin's visit to Canada shortly thereafter.
In 1982, the CAF commissioned a study on the depiction of Arabs in political cartoons published between 1972 and 1982 in Canadian dailies. Published in 1986, the study determined that Arabs were repeatedly portrayed in a stereotypical fashion as bloodthirsty terrorists, untrustworthy, ignorant, cruel, and backward. The researcher pointed to the danger of such pervasive negative imagery, recalling the role played by German caricaturists in their similar depictions of Jews as laying the basis for the Holocaust.
In The Holocaust, Israel, and Canadian Protestant Churches, Haim Genizi writes of the CAF's participation in a 1982–83 initiative of the Canadian Council of Churches to launch a tripartite Southwest Asian discussion group for the CCC, the Canadian Jewish Congress, and the CAF. When the CJC declined to dialogue with Arabs, meetings between the CAF and the CCC alone continued on for eight months, ending with agreement on the need to educate Canadians to dispel anti-Arab stereotyping. For the churches, there was also recognition of the need to formulate a clear policy on Southwest Asia situation.
During the Gulf War, CAF documented over 100 violent anti-Arab incidents, calling the security roundup of more than 1,000 Arab-Canadians the most encompassing security sweep in Canada's history.
On June 14, 2004, the CAF, in cooperation with the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations, presented before the Arar Commission, a Canadian special commission set up to investigate the extraordinary rendition and torture of Maher Arar. A Canadian citizen of Syrian origin, Arar was detained by American immigration officials at a New York airport on a stopover there between Geneva and Toronto. He was sent to Syria, where he was imprisoned and tortured for a year before being released. The CAF and CAIR-CAN reminded the special commission that there need, "be no contradiction between security and the fundamental values we share as Canadians". The joint submission continued:
Democratic and legal rights and liberties, pluralism, respect for human dignity and the rule of law are the principles that define us as Canadians. These are the 'basic tenets' of our legal system that find their explicit affirmation in the Charter. They are what safeguard democracy. If, in the name of fighting terrorism, we sacrifice these values for the sake of security, we lose our character, our identity, the very essence of a free and democratic society. We lose the war on terrorism if we become that kind of state that represses democratic rights and freedoms.
Alghabra was the president of the Canadian Arab Federation in 2004-5. After Alghabra left CAF, the group made controversial statements, and Alghabra condemned those statements.
Israel-Palestinian conflict activism
1970s–80s
The CAF opposed Prime Minister Joe Clark's 1979 pledge to move the Canadian embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and welcomed Clark's eventual retreat on the issue. CAF President Khaled Mouammar said that moving the embassy would have meant recognizing territory that was taken by force. In 1980, Mouammar said he would call for a boycott of stores selling Dedy Toys, which imported materials from a settlement in the occupied West Bank.In 1981, the CAF hosted a press conference for two Palestinian mayors who had been deported by Israel from the West Bank. The mayors called for Canada to put pressure on the government of Israel to permit them to return. Khaled Mouammar condemned Israel's attack on Iraq's Osirik nuclear reactor later in the year, and described Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin as an "unrepentant terrorist" who was a constant threat to the region.
In September 1982, the CAF led a non-violent demonstration in Toronto against the massacre of between 762 and 3,500 civilians, mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shiites, in Sabra and the Shatila refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon. The organization later partnered with the Arab-Palestine Association to find sponsors for children who had been orphaned in the attacks.
When Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau recognized the right of Palestinians to a homeland in 1983, his statement was supported by the Canadian Arab Federation. Rashad Saleh, Mouammar's successor as CAF president, said that Canada's Arab community would strongly support any peace efforts brought forward by the prime minister.
Prominent members of the Canadian Arab Federation criticized the Very Rev. Canon Borden Purcell in 1984, for comments that he made about anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. Purcell, who was chair of the Ontario Human Rights Commission at the time, had remarked that "public expressions of anti-Zionism have now replaced public expressions of anti-Semitism". Saleh responded that most Arabs oppose Zionism because of its pivotal role in the foundation of the State of Israel and of the "present plight of the Palestinians", adding that it was "not directed at Jews or their religion." Purcell later clarified that he did not believe "being anti-Zionist is necessarily anti-Semitic".
In March 1984, the Canadian Arab Federation reported that a Montreal company hiring aircraft technicians to work in Israel was using discriminatory practices against Muslims. According to the CAF, LPL Engineering Services Ltd. informed an applicant that he was disqualified for the position because of his religion. A spokesperson for the company subsequently said, "There's a war going on out there, so why should the Israelis employ Arabs to work on secret projects. Would the Americans employ Russians?" The CAF indicated that it would consider filing an application before the Canadian Human Rights Commission or the Quebec Provincial Human Rights Commission. In the same year, the CAF criticized the Canadian government for its refusal to allow into Canada the Most Rev. Archbishop Hilarion Capucci, titular archbishop of Caesarea for the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, who served several years in prison in Israel in the 1970s for using his diplomatic status to smuggle arms to the Palestine Liberation Army. The federation argued that his exclusion was part of "a strategy to keep articulate and informed spokesmen for the Palestinian cause... out of the public eye."
Also in 1984, the CAF undertook a fundraising campaign to build a cultural centre in the Israeli Arab community of Nazareth. Saleh asserted that the Israeli government was not providing the city with adequate infrastructure.
Support for boycott of Israeli goods
In a press release responding to the recent stepped up Israeli attacks on Gaza known as Operation Summer Rains, the CAF urged the Canadian government to "join Canadian churches and unions by boycotting Israeli goods, divesting from Israeli companies, and imposing sanctions until Israel withdraws from all the occupied Arab territories, dismantles all settlements and tears down the Apartheid Wall."CAF's president, Khaled Mouammar, has referred to Israel as "the Israeli apartheid regime". In "Impressions of Palestine – 1948 Today", he wrote of a "racist ideology that guides the Apartheid State of Israel" and of his conviction "that one day the nightmare brought about by Zionism and colonialism will come to an end."
Mouammar criticized Toronto Mayor David Miller for participating in Toronto's "Walk for Israel," stating that Israel is "a pariah state," and that Israel "systematically violates international law and practices racism".
In a letter published in The Globe and Mail, Mouammar clarified that the CAF's stance on anyone who supports Israel is that "we assert that any support for Israel is support for apartheid, occupation and war crimes.""
In his capacity as president of the Canadian Arab Federation, Mouammar has condemned Zionist organizations in Canada for their support of Israel. In January 2007, he wrote that Bnai Brith Canada and the Jewish Defence League were using "bullying and intimidation tactics to silence criticism of Israel" and had launched "a vicious campaign of intimidation" against movements that call for boycotts of Israel within the Canadian political landscape. He also wrote that as more people support boycotts of Israel, "the more difficult it becomes for pro-Israel groups such as B'nai Brith and the JDL to spew their propaganda."
Regarding an October 2007 Hamilton Declaration which stated "We further specifically caution you against any recognition of Israel as a 'Jewish state.' Such a recognition would give Israel the façade of moral and legal legitimacy". Khaled Mouammar stated that he "certainly agrees" with the declaration. However, the CAF did not sign the declaration because it "does not qualify," since the document was endorsed at a convention for Palestinians, and not for Arabs in general.
In January 2008, the CAF and the Canadian Islamic Congress stated that " Apartheid regime of the Jewish state escalated its genocidal crimes against the indigenous people of Palestine" and that "Palestinians continue to endure death, deprivation and destruction under more than 40 years of brutal Israeli occupation that has become an insidious and unremitting genocide."
In March 2008, the CAF and the Canadian Islamic Congress stated that "Israel was founded upon the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. Between 1947 and 1948, nearly 800,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes and lands and over 500 Palestinian villages and neighborhoods were destroyed, and their inhabitants prevented from ever returning to their homeland."
In May 2008, on the 60th anniversary of Israel's founding, CAF president Khaled Mouammar stated that
CAF applauds the growing isolation of Israel through the boycott and divestment campaign that has been embraced by many labour, academic and religious organizations in Canada and abroad, and the growing realization among youth and students that Israeli practices and policies mirror those of Apartheid South Africa. CAF believes that popular awareness of the plight of Palestinians will bring the day when the Israeli occupation will end and the refugees will return to Palestine.