OTTAWA-
Former Liberal MP Michael Levitt criticizes his former caucus colleagues for not having denounced the statements of Laith Marouf, a senior consultant for an agency which received government funding for an anti-racism project.
“Looking back on the events of the past week (with) the Marouf case, I’m completely disheartened,” Levitt said on Twitter Monday.
“Taking a stand against anti-Semitism should be a given (and) yet so few of my former Liberal colleagues have done so. It really hurts. Jewish MPs shouldn’t be left alone to speak out against this.”
Levitt represented the Toronto riding of York Center for the Liberals for five years before stepping down in 2020 to become the CEO of the Canadian Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies.
The center released a statement last week expressing relief that the federal government had cut funding to the Community Media Advocacy Center, but questioned why the contract was awarded in the first place.
The CMAC received $133,000 in funding through the Federal Department of Heritage’s Anti-Racism Action Program to develop an anti-racism strategy for media and broadcast decision-makers across the country.
Diversity Minister Ahmed Hussen expressed concern and launched an investigation into the contract after The Canadian Press demanded an explanation from his office. It cut funding and suspended the project on August 22, three days after The Canadian Press published an article about tweets posted by Marouf, a senior consultant at CMAC.
Hussen said the CMAC must explain “how they came to hire Laith Marouf and how they plan to rectify the situation given the nature of his anti-Semitic and xenophobic comments.”
Marouf’s Twitter account is private but a screenshot posted online showed a number of tweets with his photo and name.
One tweet read: “You know, all those big bags of human feces aka Jewish white supremacists; when we liberate Palestine and they have to go back to where they came from, they will be whispered bitches again (sic). ) Christian/secular white supremacist masters.
A lawyer acting for Marouf requested that his client’s tweets be quoted “verbatim” and distinguished between Marouf’s “clear reference to ‘Jewish white supremacists'” and Jews or Jewish people in general.
Marouf harbors “no animosity toward the Jewish faith as a collective group,” attorney Stephen Ellis said in an email to The Canadian Press.
“While not the most astutely worded, the tweets reflect a frustration with the reality of Israeli apartheid and a Canadian government collaborating with it,” Ellis added.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressed disgust at the comments when asked about them by reporters at press conferences last week and again on Tuesday.
Last Friday, Trudeau called the comments “absolutely unacceptable and reprehensible.” On Tuesday, he said the government was ensuring such a contract would no longer be issued to organizations that display xenophobia, racism or anti-Semitism.
“We have spoken out and will continue to do so and I am happy to do so again today,” he said.
Conservative MPs criticized Trudeau for not issuing an official statement condemning Marouf’s comments, and the Liberal caucus in general for being silent about them.
“Today is another day the @PMCCan account may issue an official statement denouncing #LaithMarouf and condemning hate-filled anti-Semitic comments that have no place in Canada,” the Colombian MP said on Twitter on Monday. -Briton, Dan Albas.
“The continued silence of Prime Minister Trudeau and much of his Liberal caucus is unacceptable.”
Two Liberal MPs, Montreal’s Anthony Housefather and Ya’ara Saks, who replaced Levitt as MP for York Center in a 2020 by-election, both expressed horror and demanded an explanation as soon as they learned of Marouf’s situation. Both are Jews.
Toronto Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith retweeted Hussen’s statement on Aug. 21. That same day, Taleeb Noormohamed, the Liberal MP for Vancouver-Granville, responded to a question on Twitter about his thoughts on Marouf and called the comments “despicable, racist and anti-Semitic.”
Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller denounced Marouf’s comments on Monday, after learning that the CMAC had received about $800 through a grant approved by his constituency office under the Canada Summer Jobs program. in 2018.
The organization was approved to receive nearly $3,000 but only received that amount, according to the office of Minister for Women, Gender Equality and Youth Marci Ien, the minister who publicly launched the program this year.
“I want to be clear, I’ve never met Laith Marouf and didn’t know she existed until three weeks ago,” Miller said. “His anti-Semitic views are despicable and any organization associated with him should not receive funding.”
It was only after Levitt’s tweet, and another from Housefather asking all 338 MPs to condemn anti-Semitism, that a significant number of Liberal MPs spoke up.
This report from The Canadian Press was first published on August 30, 2022.
With files from Marie Woolf.