An article published today in the Guardian, written by Leyland Cecco, reported on a recent row inolving revelations that Laith Marouf, an adviser to the Canadian government on anti-racism initiatives in the country’s media, had a history of vile antisemitic tweets. The Canadian Housing, Diversity and Inclusion Ministry announced on Monday that it suspended the program and cut funding to Marouf’s firm, called the Community Media Advocacy Center, whose stated mission is “To disrupt settler colonialism and oppression in the media”.
Here are some of Marouf’s tweets:
“I have a motto: Life is too short for shoes with laces, or for entertaining Jewish White Supremacists with anything but a bullet to the head,” Marouf said in reference to Israeli Jews.
In another tweet, he 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 b*****s of their Christian/secular white supremacist masters.”
Targeting Irwin Cotler, who was appointed by Canada’s Prime Minister as an envoy against antisemitism, he tweeted: “The Jewish White Supremacist Summit hosted by Apartheid Canada PM @JustinTrudeau, was the brain-child of @IrwinCotler the Grand Wizard of Zionism in this Colony,”
He also referred to Zionists as “white Jews who adopted Nazism and created Zionism.”.
The Guardian article, (“Canada cuts anti-racism program after lead consultant’s ‘vile’ tweets surface”, Aug. 23), while largely unproblematic, uncritically quoted Marouf’s laywer thusly:
Last week, Marouf’s lawyer Stephen Ellis attempted to distinguish between Marouf’s tweets about people he calls “Jewish white supremacists” and Jewish people in general, saying Marouf held no animus towards the Jewish people.
“While not the most artfully expressed, the tweets reflect a frustration with the reality of Israeli apartheid and a Canadian government which collaborates with it,” Ellis told the Canadian Press on Monday. “Apartheid is a crime against humanity under international law and no amount of Zionist hand-wringing can obscure that fundamental fact. Canada ought to be ashamed.”
As blogger Elder of Ziyon tweeted, Ellis’s defence of Marouf’s Jew hatred is akin to a lawyer for an anti-Black racist saying something like: ‘My client has nothing against Black people. He makes a clear distinction between them and (N-word)s.’
Of couse, Marouf’s ‘unartfully expressed’ charge that “Zionists” (that is, Israeli Jews and the overwhelming majority of diaspora Jews, who, added together, make up likely 90+% of the world’s Jewish population) are “white supremacists”, “Nazis” and “human feces” who “deserve a bullet in their head” is morally indistinguishable from saying that “Jews” are “white supremacists”, “Nazis” and “human feces” who “deserve a bullet in their head”. The most generous interpretation is that he ‘only’ believes that 90% of the world’s Jews “deserve a bullet in their head” – not 100%.
The claim by Ellis that Marouf has “no animus towards the Jewish people” is just as certifiably insane as the idea that his client is an expert on “anti-racism”.
Search for the motive for the most antisemitic rag on the planet printing this article. Surely not that Marouf is over the top even for The Grauniad ?