Colonialism is not Charity

Bianca Majani: All right, panelists, we are now live on both Facebook and Zoom, and you can switch your cameras on. Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome, Benna. Welcome, Katherine, Khaled, Miles, and Shane. Welcome to everyone at home. People are still kind of coming in. I'm gonna try and let things settle a little bit. Good evening to everybody, and a big welcome to you at home. Thank you so much for joining us. This is Colonialism Is Not Charity, and we are joined by Bana Abu-Zuluf, Catherine Ravi, Miles Howe, Shane Martinez, and Khaled Mouammar. And today our event on Canadian charities and Palestinian dispossession. Is really about the need to defund racism. So my name is Bianca Majani, and I'm with the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute, which is an organization that challenges unjust foreign policy measures. And we are the host and co-organizer of today's event alongside Just Peace Advocates. And I want to thank our co-sponsors as well, the Good Shepherd Collective, and defunding racism. So the institute is based in Montreal, or Tiohti:ke, on the territory of the Kanien'kehá:ka people and the keepers of the Eastern Door of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. And you can find out more about our work at foreignpolicy.ca, where you can also donate to help us continue this work. And you can find out about Just Peace Advocates at justpeaceadvocates.ca. So thank you, thank you so much for joining us today. Again, to our audience, it's great to see so many of you on the call at the event. So for today's event, speakers are going to give their opening remarks, and then we're going to take questions from you, our audience, for about half an hour following that. So please do put your questions in the Q&A box. It's much easier for us to find them there.

Bana Abuzuluf: Thank you.

Bianca Majani: The chat is open. And as always, please do keep your remarks civil, cordial, and free from harmful commentary. Karen Rodman from Just Peace Advocates is going to be putting useful links and actions, resources in the chat. And we'll also be emailing all of these to all those who registered for the event. Also, just want to give a hearty thanks to Karen Rodman for bringing together our speakers, For this important discussion. So today's event is called Colonialism Is Not Charity. In some terrible but related news today in Israel, today Israel massacred 9 more people in Jenin. And tonight's event is about, you know, what may be Canada's most important contribution to Palestinian dispossession. Thank you. It's on the need to expose and stop Canadian charities from contributing to the subjugation and the displacement of Palestinians. So just a little bit of background information. The Canada Revenue Agency, or CRA, grants charitable status to organizations that raise between somewhere between a quarter and half a billion dollars annually for projects in Israel, and they subsidize donations to a number of groups within these that support West Bank settlements, explicitly racist. Institutions, or the Israeli military, as well as those set up by folks close to ministers in the new extremist government. Another quick technical context for discussion: registered charities receive benefits from the CRA. So they're exempt from paying certain taxes, can provide tax receipts for donations. When individuals donate, they can write that off. in their taxes, and depending on their bracket, this can reach up to 40% of a donation effectively subsidized by taxpayers. So if a very wealthy individual, for instance, donates $10 million, they can get upwards of $4 million off their tax bill. If $300 million, for instance, was raised by Canadian charities for Israel each year, that could work out to something like $100 million of Canadian taxpayer support. So— Thank you. Just Peace Advocates and others, CFPI, Just Peace Advocates, and others have been working to pressure the CRA to apply its own rules to stop registered charities from funding West Bank settlements, racist organizations, and the Israeli military. Excuse me. A formal complaint was also recently submitted to the CRA calling for an audit of the charitable status of the— I think it's Naaman Foundation. Khaled, you'll help me with the pronunciation of that. The Neiman Foundation, which funds organizations promoting West Bank settlements, racist policies, and the IDF. So another formal complaint was recently submitted regarding registered charities funding racist extremist groups in Israel, Regevim and Ir David, which I think we may also hear about tonight. It's also worth noting that organizations like Neiman receive large percentages of their donations from other charity organizations and foundations. So those donating organizations actually also need to be investigated. So with that background out of the way, it's now my great, great pleasure to introduce our first speaker of the evening, Bana Abuzuluf. Welcome, Bana.

Bana Abuzuluf: Thank you so much for having me. As you said, today is quite a very harsh day on Palestinians, specifically those that are away from home and feel a bit helpless, not able to do much, and then not able to grieve. But of course, this makes it more, you know, of an urgent need to act.

Katherine Ravi: Hmm.

Bana Abuzuluf: For my presentation, in fact, today, hopefully I will be able to finish in 10 minutes that I'm given to present today. But I will be presenting in 3 parts. The first part I will be talking about active settler frontiers, beginning from the case of the Nakhab Bedouin communities, and then Masafriyotan, and the current case of Khan al-Ahmar in the Jerusalem periphery. The second part, I will be talking about specifically Regavim settler organization, and then I will be discussing the threat of displacement against Khan al-Ahmar, the recent case. And then the last thing, I will be talking about the Defund Racism campaign, which is led by the Good Shepherd Collective and many other organizations in the US and Canada, and a larger coalition of Palestinian NGOs as well. Before I start, I would just like to mention that a bit of a background on how Israel maintains these discriminate policies, building permit policies, and how Yeah. The first way that they— that Israel enacts policies to control Palestinian land in Area C specifically is by declaring land nature reserves, military zones, state land, firing zones, seam zones, and so on. As you know, of course, after the Oslo Agreement, Palestinian land in the West Bank was divided to Area A, B, and C, and Area C is is heavily targeted for demolitions and for forced displacement of Palestinian communities. And due to discriminate zoning and planning policies enacted by the state of Israel and by the civil administration, Palestinians in fact became stuck in a catch-22 situation. So as you know, Palestinians are required to have building permits, but Palestinians also apply for these building permits, and only 6% of these building permits yearly are approved. We're talking about larger permits being sent into the civil administration and only 6%. That means a lot of them are prevented from having building permits. And essentially this greenlights the displacement because civil administration will come up and send a demolition order to the Palestinian house or to the community at large. Essentially, these systems of laws are what I call, what I'd like to call pseudo-legalties, allow for the emboldening of settler groups, including the settler organization Regavim, who targets the presence and calls for displacement of Palestinian people. Now, from 1948 until today, the Nakba, the Nakab, sorry, has been the biggest settler frontier. Because of a large presence of Palestinian Bedouins in the area, and because Palestinian Bedouins have been always targeted and their communities continuously called unrecognizable. This has called, of course, for a wave of demolition, including, you know, Tel Arad, where many of the communities currently have moved to live in the West Bank, and then Al-Araqib, the Bedouin community, which was demolished more than 200 times, and then Umm al-Khiraj, Bedouin community, which among others is currently the closest to the so-called Green Line and the closest and continuously under threat of displacement and demolition. Masaaf al-Yatta, again, nowadays we've been hearing about the case of Masaaf al-Yatta, has become the newest settler frontier and it's in close proximity to the so-called Green Line. In fact, it's Eastern to the Green Line, and various settlement blocks in South Hebron Hills in fact sandwich these Bedouin communities in Masafriyata, and those who live currently in Masafriyata are under threat of displacement because of these settlement blocks. This of course made it an easy target for Palestinians, and currently Palestinians are under threat. Currently Palestinians are experiencing another Nakba, and of course the silence is deafening. What's happening again in Khan al-Ahmar is no short of this construct, but it's slightly more complicated. The reason why Khan al-Ahmar case is a bit more complicated, because of an Israeli plan in the area called the E1 plan. Khan al-Ahmar falls in the Jerusalem periphery, sandwiched between the Ma'ali Adumim settlement complex and block, And between Jerusalem. That makes it, of course, again, an easy target for displacement. Specifically, that these Bedouin communities, you know, are precarious and could not support themselves and continuously feel the need to remain present in those lands despite not having access to building permits and being denied those building permits. Continuously. And this so-called E1 area in fact constitutes the newest settler frontier. And these settler communities— these, sorry, these communities have been the target because in fact they constitute whole communities. There has been the constant targeting of individual houses in Jerusalem and in many areas around the West Bank, but it is in fact The newest case after Misafiriyyat, where whole Bedouin communities are targeted. This is very alarming because this reminds us again of the Nakba because people, they're not targeting individual houses, they're targeting whole communities. They're looking to relocate whole communities. They're looking to forcibly displace whole communities. Again, because of the fact that it's close proximity to settlement block, it is targeted. But again, there's a reason why Khan al-Ushmar is targeted. Targeted more than other communities, which are again 18 communities in the A1 zone, E1 zone. The reason why is because it is in close proximity to a highway that links Ma'ali Adumim to Jericho. This is of course very important because the moment that Ma'ali Adumim becomes connected to Jerusalem and then they have access to Jericho as well, this bisects the West Bank into 2. And then that means the people who live in northern area of the West Bank will not be able to reach the southern area of the West Bank. Of course, again, the people who believe in a 2-state solution can understand how this completely, you know, kills the 2-state solution. Not that it was alive before. Recently, however, the Khan al-Ahmar case rose up to the surface. The reason why this case rose up to the surface is Because the Israeli High Court decision, which responding to Ragavim's petition in 2018, decided that to greenlight the eviction of Khan Ahmad community. However, because of pressure, international pressure, it helped put a stop to this displacement at that time. Recently, however, the right-wing fascist government, in fact, and its finance minister, as you all know, Bezalel Smotrich. and his political right-hand, Itamar Ben-Gvir, decided to push the government to adhere to the court's decision requiring them to demolish the community immediately. This is not only alarming, an alarming expression, sorry, of the goals and aims of this new government, but it also is a compass directing us to the biggest perpetrator. The biggest perpetrator in this is The settler organization Regavim. Regavim settler organization, in fact, was created by Bezalel Smotrich himself. So again, we can see why Bezalel Smotrich is eager to push for the displacement of Khan al-Ahmar. Now, if Khan al-Ahmar is demolished and its residents displaced, this could constitute a war crime, as it obviously falls under the category of forced displacement. Again, Regavim in Israel are gearing towards committing a war crime, and there's little to no action being done at the moment to stop this, even though previously it has been, you know, the case. Nowadays, you can tell that it's not getting enough attention in the media. We can understand that there's a gravity to the situation right now because of this lack of action. Regavim is a settler organization. Despite its heinous work assisting the Israeli government to ethnically cleanse Palestinians, is in fact receiving millions of tax-deducted money yearly. This money is given from charities, so-called charities, in the US and Canada. And of course, many of the speakers today will be speaking specifically about foundations, so I will leave that to them to speak about. But for these organizations, for these organizations to send in money to these settler groups who commit war crimes, we can say this is also in violation of international law, but also in violation of state policies. Charitable organizations in fact should not be financing dispossession of Palestinians. It's very simple. The Defund Racism campaign in fact was born out of the need to stop this flow of money to these organizations, including Regavim, including Dear David, David, you can find more information about that on defundracism.org. I'm sure Karen kindly put the link in the chat. These, these Defund Racism campaign, in fact, is also eager to and keen to expose these organizations for what they are, Zionist fascist organizations which are waiting to greenlight another Nakba. This is evident, of course, in the rise of harassment by settlers towards Palestinians currently in Masafer Yatta, but also in Khan al-Ahmar. Again, we're looking into finding ways to stop this flow of money to these organizations. You can find more information again in the Defund Racism website and details about how we intend to to act against these organizations. In fact, also it's crucial to strategically tackle the system. And in order to do so, we need to look at these organizations and try to find how much they send money to these organizations and also in which ways we can revoke their charitable status. In some ways, of course, our speakers have spoken, will speak, my apologies, will speak about how Several Freedom of Inquiry, Freedom of Information has been sent and complaints have been sent to the Revenue Agency to look into these, the tax audits of these organizations and supposed charities. And it's important to expose their criminal links again. But eventually the goal here is to revoke the charitable status of these organizations. And this is one thing that the Defund Racism campaign is looking onto, specifically in the state of New York. And then you can, of course, again, see more about the campaign on the Defund Racism website, and then you can also sign the petition. I would also like to conclude by mentioning that it is incomprehensible that despite the ICC prosecutor committing to visit the occupied Palestinian territory this year, which is considered again a very important step towards accountability for Palestinian civil society, that Israel continues to feel emboldened to carry out their policies of displacement and various annexationist and apartheid policies. In fact, we can easily say that the international community is responsible for maintaining Israel's impunity and greenlighting Palestinian displacement. Again, for the title of this, of today's webinar, indeed colonialism is not a charity. And we in the Defund Racism campaign, in the Good Shepherd Collective, we urge institutions to take it seriously to defund these settler entities and now immediately so that we can stop the imminent displacement of Palestinians from their land and currently from Khan al-Ahmar community, from Masaaf al-Yatta, and from Maka'a. Thank you.

Bianca Majani: Thank you. Thank you so much, Banna, for that brilliant presentation, for all those critical details, the activities of settler communities, displacement, the plight of the Bedouins, and your very important work with Defund Racism, the campaign. It's really great to hear all those strategies for action around these organizations that are funding all this injustice. And I forgot to mention earlier that Bana is a Palestinian researcher and a PhD student in international law at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. She's the research and communication officer at the Good Shepherd Collective organization, and her research spans the topics of Bedouin communities, epistemic oppression, intersectional solidarity, decolonization, and international law vulnerabilities. So you can find out more about her work and about this Palestinian-led campaign to end the use of charitable funds in countries including Canada to fund settler violence and extremism at defundracism.org. The link is in the chat, and you can also find out more about Good Shepherd Collective on Facebook. So yeah, we don't have to look beyond our own borders to challenge apartheid. We can actually do this here at home by looking at some of these organizations and the work that they're funding. So I'm looking forward to hearing more from you, Bana, in the Q&A. Our next speaker of the evening is Katherine Ravi. Katherine joined Al-Haq as a business and human rights legal researcher in 2021 after working at a law firm litigating civil rights violations such as police brutality, wrongful conviction, and racial discrimination. She holds a master's in human rights law from University College London and has worked for the Tahirih Justice Center, where she advocated for immigrant survivors of gender-based violence. She was a Werner Fornos Fellow at the Population Institute, where she conducted qualitative data analysis to measure the effectiveness of reproductive health education in rural Haiti, and a Maim Riley Fellow, where she worked with the Democratic National Women's Caucus to expand women's political efficacy. She's worked with nonprofit organizations in India advocating for women's access to secondary education, and in Northern Ireland promoting peaceful reconciliation within Divided Communities. Welcome, Katherine.

Katherine Ravi: Thank you so much. Thank you for that far too kind introduction. It is an honor to be here, and especially I'm very happy that we can spend this day together after the massacre in Jenin. Truly horrific thing to wake up to today. So I hope we can all find some solidarity and some peace in discussing really this important topic. And Banna, thank you so much for everything you said. Actually, a lot of what I have to say is very much— I'm going to really build off of that because you've done a fantastic job of laying the foundations for exactly what is happening in Israel's plan to disenfranchise the Palestinian people and really divide and remove the Palestinian presence in their historic land. And I think one of the ways I'm going to highlight is on businesses and sharing Because one thing I think that's important to remember in all of this is that this is a— this is an international multimillion-dollar scheme that involves a lot of different industries. I mean, as Banna mentioned, there's a huge legal framework that Israel implements to absorb land, take resources, natural resources, water, mobility. It really is trying to basically minimize and disenfranchise and displace Palestinians all over Palestine. And another way that they are able to do that is through international financing and profits, and not just in terms of money, but also in terms of tools and machines. For example, I mean, I won't go into this, but there's too much I could say on this. But a lot of Israel's appropriation of Palestinian water resources rely on foreign technologies to, like, what I'm trying to say, like bulldozers to diminish water infrastructures, as well as products for desalination plants, which, again, I'm not going to go into. But the point is, is that there is— none of this would be possible without foreign investments. And this goes beyond just foreign policies and foreign law and international law, because we're talking about the engagement of a private sector in really all aspects of this displacement. And charities play a huge role in that. And I think it's important to also remember and keep in mind that for many Israelis and for the Israeli state, they don't see the West Bank as a place for Palestinians. They see it as a— I mean, they name that area Judea and Samaria. It's— they, as kind of a tool to, I guess, show that all that land is meant to be Israel and is awaiting Judaization, as it should be. And so this is a common tool that is used to displace and to really erase Palestinian heritage and history and really rewrite this entire idea that Palestinians have a right to be there and have always been there. And it really erases this very problematic history. So I just want to step back from all of that and use an example of this. And I know Banna was talking about the E1 zone, which is definitely at the frontier of new settlements and settler colonial framework. And one of the ways they're doing that is by using Canadian tax dollars to basically implement this fictional illegal settlement called the City of David, which can be found in Eastern Jerusalem in the Palestinian village of Silwan. And what the City of David is, if none of you have been to Jerusalem, is it's an archaeological site that Israel has decided to claim as an exclusively Jewish archaeological site that is meant to bolster the claim that the area once hosted this biblical City of David. Now, archaeologists at the site have found many prehistoric and historic periods in this tourist site that holds a very rich fabric of the Byzantine and Islamic periods that are basically pretty much erased from the narrative. So when tourists come in and are seeing structures that existed from those periods in the 14th centuries, and, you know, bathhouses and hammams and all these things, they're told that these are just remnants of the— or findings of the Jewish First Temple. And it basically really turns a lot of Palestinian heritage into an exhibit on Jewish ancestry. And of course, anyone who knows about the history of this place knows that there's a lot of interconnection between all these groups. But what this illegal Israeli settlement is trying to tell, basically tell tourists, is that Palestinians never were here, and they try to erase this narrative. And in fact, so much so that an 11th-century Muslim cemetery was actually found at the site and was dismantled. And several dozen skeletons and skulls and bone fragments from the early Islamic period were removed without inspection, filling hundreds of boxes and stored somewhere else and eventually buried away from the site. So this is an obvious destruction and misappropriation of Palestinian cultural property, and it's really a hallmark of Israel's settler colonial enterprise. And this obviously doesn't just have an attack on the historical narrative of Palestinians' presence in the region, but also has a lot to do with present-day Palestinians. For example, this site is built on Palestinian land in East Jerusalem, and many Palestinian families were forcibly displaced to make way for this tourist site. And the Palestinian neighborhoods that still exist around the site have had structural damage due to the excavations that are happening under their homes. And of course, they never had any say in how this was, you know, if they were okay with their homes having excavation underneath. And you have, you know, families whose homes are now structurally unsound and are having to, of course, move and be forcibly displaced, again, to make way for this fake City of David. And it's important to remember that this These sites draw in thousands and thousands of tourists each year. In fact, on TripAdvisor, it was the number one site to see in Jerusalem. And it's, you know, when you're a tourist and you don't know anything about this, you're coming in and you're getting all these tours, and you're getting, you're being told a very specific narrative and a very washed-down version of history to support the Judaization of of Jerusalem, and also to kind of expand into, you know, I guess, enlarge Jerusalem, the Jewish sector of Jerusalem, and to basically erase Palestinians' existence there. And a lot of companies that support this, including those by Eilat, which is supported by Canadian tax dollars, and of course TripAdvisor and all these other things, really contribute to the profitability of these illegal settlements. And again, this is just one example, but you can understand how really Israel's using a lot of different frameworks to displace and erase Palestinians. They're taking land, they're using international profits to profit off of a kind of a bastardization of history, they're forcibly removing Palestinians and illegally transferring in Israeli populations into what is a Palestinian neighborhood. And there are so many violations of international law, and I'm trying to be more surface level with all of this to kind of give you an idea of what— how this all happens. But it's— so, I mean, as you can see, it's a well-oiled machine, and all of this is very, very intentional, and resources and land and even Palestinian presence in areas that that even according to the Oslo Accords they have ownership of are being displaced and removed and shrunk to really erase Palestinians' existence in this land altogether. So I think it's, as it was mentioned, it's very important to recognize that your own government has a lot of— has a huge hand in this and also has a lot of ability to prevent this. And also, Even within yourselves. I know I have a lot of friends that tour to Israel, and they get absorbed into these tourist schemes. So it's important to be aware of all the ways that we can combat this through even just our daily actions and through knowledge sharing. So I thank you all for coming to this, because it's really important to have this conversation. And I look forward to hearing from the other speakers.

Bianca Majani: Thank you. Thank you so much, Katherine, for all those important details. Yeah, just so much that I learned there around the third-party funding, as well as some historical context, the destruction of Palestinian cultural property, violations of international law, you know, for highlighting the shrinking space of, you know, civil society in Palestine and the implications that this has. Just a lot that you were able to fit into 10 minutes. And also, thank you so much for your amazing activism. And just such a long history of promoting justice and human rights. So I do invite you to follow Katherine's work at alhaq.org and to check out The City of David, which is a report that Al Haq put out, which Katherine edited. So there are there are nearly 200 of us participating live in today's event, which is wonderful. It's amazing to see such interest. in such an important topic and some— and a place where we really can take action, as Katherine mentioned. Also, for those of you who are asking, yes, we will be rebroadcasting this discussion to both YouTube and Facebook. So yeah, subscribe to our YouTube channel and you'll get immediate notifications. Also, a reminder to put your questions in the Q&A box so that we can get to them. Thank you. So our next speaker of the evening is Dr. Miles Howe. Miles is an assistant professor of critical criminology at Brock University. His interests include policing tactics, protest movements, and surveillance. His PhD research centered on tracking the importation of Anglo-American neoliberal obedient epistemologies into Canada, specifically within Canadian academia. This work is ongoing and focuses particularly on mapping the extent of the permeations of this network, as well as outlining the impacts that such importations have had upon Canadian securitization priorities and policies. In November 2022, Dr. Howe was an author of International Cash Conduits and Real Estate Empires: A Case Study in Canadian Philanthropic Crime, which was published in Journal of White Collar and Corporate Crimes. Got to get a subscription to that, where he analyzed 20 years of tax data to identify a pattern of regulatory violation that they call the Burner Charity Phenomenon. Welcome, Miles.

Miles Howe: Thanks a lot. The article's open access, so you don't need a subscription. I'm going to do a little PowerPoint presentation here. Just bear with me while we get this set up. Thanks. Can you—

Bianca Majani: Yeah, we can see it.

Miles Howe: I got to get this out of the way here. One sec. OK, so, yeah, thanks very much for the introduction. Myself and my colleague, Dr. Paul Sylvester, had a look into— Charitable tax files from the CRA, and yeah, we we coined a term called burner and anchor charities, which I'd like to describe right now. Oops, sec. Okay, so I had been working on developing methodology related to developing access to information wording that would allow us to access unredacted charity gifting patterns across Canada. And so, when I say that, what I mean is inter-charity donations. As we know, there's a black box when it comes to individual charitable donations. That information is not, you know, allowed for the public. But when money moves between charitable organizations, that's something that you can get at. And so, while it's not the whole picture of how these organizations operate, it is a significant portion of their financing. Specifically, what I was interested here was to view gifting patterns between private foundations, which are not something generally like you or I or people at a working-class level are able to organize, but are more linked to family fortunes, the elite or the ultra-rich, and their donation patterns to more frontline charitable organizations. Who are the ultra-rich giving to and why was the general question. A charity that had been revoked due to a failed audit called Bayth Olath was the first charity on our radar, and this we sort of stumbled across. I won't really bore you with how that happened. All that to say, in developing this wording, we were able to acquire a 20-year dataset related to Bayth Olath in particular, firstly, in terms of who—

Bianca Majani: Who—

Miles Howe: from a charitable standpoint, what kind of foundations had given to them. And so we were able to see not only, you know, the revenue that Bayt Olaf was operating with, not only the fact that it was sending much of the money overseas to Israel and the United States specifically, but who was actually giving them that money. And so that became a piece that we, we then sort of ran with and became quite interested with to Given that we had a two-decade period of time to sort of tease out more data, and I'll show you how we did that. Specifically related to Beth Olaf, firstly, as I said, using a specific wording, we were able to acquire unredacted data Olaf had received in multi-decade spreadsheets, and Beth Olaf was. A key piece of this because the CRA had revoked its charitable status due to a variety of factors, one of them being that it had been funding operations within the occupied West Bank, as well as providing support services to the IDF. And so it represented something that we knew was a transgressor of the Income Tax Act, right? So it was a good starting point. What we found and what was sort of replicable across a bunch of synchronously linked charities that we were to discover was that Bayt Olath specifically, as with the rest of these that we found, were typified by a period of dormancy. And so Bayt Olath was organized as a charity in around 2000. It's in the paper that we wrote. The specific date escapes me, but between 2000 and 2011 did very little to no actual charitable activity. Right. And so we don't actually know why this happened, but we suspect it's a matter of building credibility with whatever risk matrixes the CRA uses in order to sort of begin to red flag charities if they operate out of proportion to the level of finance they're receiving or the level of employment structures that they're disclosing to the CRA. Whatever the reason, following, you know, over a decade of lack of action, there's a massive upswing in inter-charity donations. And so it begins to receive in 2012 into 2018 from literally tens of thousands of dollars a year into the millions, into the tens of millions per year. And as we know from that revoked audit, that money, and from its own tax returns, that money is moving overseas. And it's also linked into, in this case, thousands of agents. Mostly in Israel, also in the United States. And as we know, in common law, the actions of your agents are your responsibility. And so you can name an agent under the Income Tax Act. That agent does not need to be a charity in and of itself. The logic being that someone on the ground in a country where you wish to do charitable work might have more knowledge of where to put resources than you would. And so that's an understood You know, that's a that's okay under the Income Tax Act. But you do need to have some kind of contractual paper trail that if the CRA comes knocking with an audit, you need to demonstrate to them that your organization and that those agents are working in some kind of contractual arrangement where they're performing the charitable work that you claim that they're doing. Beth Olaf and the rest of these. Charities, we're calling them, arrangements in place. And that was one of the key factors that led to their revocation. And so it's literally a matter of naming several thousand agents. Poof, the money's gone. No idea where this is going. And when the CRA eventually comes knocking at your door to ask where that is, there's no track record of where that has gone. And that's a common phenomenon across what we're calling these burner charities. The paper trail that we received was very, very statistically interesting in terms of watching that dormancy period into this massive escalation, and then watching it come from a variety of private foundations. Certainly became interested in what actually was going on. I had never— my knowledge of tax law, my dealing with CRA access to information requests, sort of limited at this point. This wasn't, you know, my first trip to the tax law rodeo, but I had never seen anything like what this was. And so what we then did is rephrase the question to— we felt that these private foundations would be some kind of queryable piece of interest to this puzzle. If we could see where they were giving their money to with BAE Olaf, What we then did is rephrased our initial question. And so rather than asking intercharitable receipts that Baith Olaf had received, we asked for intercharity donations that these private foundations that had suddenly become of interest to us, who they had been giving to over a period of 2 decades. And so we were able to not only see from this sort of frontline operation where that money is going to, i.e., we don't know, and so this is a transgressor of the Income Tax Act. A burner charity, if you will, but behind them, who was actually giving the money to them, we had a good snapshot of what that looked like. And so from there, what we felt was for, you know, specifically for activist campaigns, that this might be of interest, right? Rather than the importance of finding the next burner in line, the next sort of like playing that whack-a-mole game in terms of who is actually funding activity in the occupied West Bank, who is funding support for the IDF, who is transgressing the charitable, you know, charitable organizations and the Income Tax Act, certainly important. But what we found might be also of interest and also important is who is actually giving that money to them to do that, and what kinds of pressures can be put on these established, you know, ultra-rich private foundation owners back here in And so this might be a clear step that could be taken. And so that was our driving factor there. Who is actually giving this money? And perhaps where else are they giving it to? What might we uncover? What we found when we started querying in this reverse-generated questioning, it became— became apparent. And so it was not just there doing a job and then poof, it's gone when it gets audited. And redacted, and rather that this money seemed to have waves to it, and that Bayt Olath was merely one in a chain of synchronous burners, and that when one got, you know, pressure, regulatory requirements placed upon it by the CRA, it would simply dissolve to be that, and the private foundation money would shift as the next one in line became activated, as it were.

Katherine Ravi: Right.

Miles Howe: And so, in tracking these private foundation monies, we identified a precursor burner, Gates of Mercy, which had had regulatory pressure put on it in 2012, and then watching that foundation money shift over to Bait Olath in 2012, and then watching Bait Olath get audited and its charitable status revoked in 2018, 2019, and then watching that exact same money move downswinging into Beit Olam, and then a new wave into the Jewish Heritage Foundation. And so tracing the movement of private foundation-derived money became very— what, it was very interesting, to say the least, to see how these burners were actually operating in a series. And the Jewish Heritage Foundation, despite ourselves reminding or alerting the CRA that this may be a new burner in this succession, remains active. We developed a typology for what we call these burner charities, right? Number 1, over 75% of the funds that they receive leave Canada. Number 2, there's a rapid increase in charitable activity from virtually nothing to millions to tens of millions of dollars within 2 fiscal years. Number 3, their administrative costs are less than 1% of their yearly fiscal activity. And number four, there's a very limited financial liability and related to their expenditures. So what we found is these things are literally running out of people's homes, right? Some of the top earning charities in Canada in terms of dollar donations are literally essentially fly-by-night organizations running out of private homes. There's no infrastructure. They're not looking actively for your donations, and so they don't really resonate as something that you know as the you. You know, quote-unquote average Canadian would even understand as being, yeah, this, this fits the, the understanding for me of a charitable organization. Instead, it's something else entirely, right? The 5th criteria, with the question mark by it, is again viewing this multi-period, multi-year period of dormancy, which appears to establish a credit scoring under unknown Canada Revenue Agency risk matrixes, potentially. Like, why are they doing this?

Bana Abuzuluf: Right.

Miles Howe: Not sure yet. And number 6, with a question mark, but probably you could put that with an explanation mark, is there appears to be absolutely zero interest in regulatory compliance here in charity. And when they're alerted to the fact, you know, not that they didn't know necessarily, that they're out of compliance with the Income Tax Act, it becomes sort of a stalling game where lawyers get involved.

Shane Martinez: Right.

Miles Howe: challenges to stop, etc. And so they are able to operate for a period of, uh, out of compliance for between, you know, 5 and 10 years from being first identified, from being first audited for sort of legal wrangling. They're able to keep moving in this, get as much money out of the country as possible until that audit is triggered and enforced. And so that's what it looked like from our capacity. And what that sort of suggests, at At least from— if the CRA, if we consider them a good bureaucratic actor that's simply sort of understaffed at this point and interested in, you know, reinvigorating, you know, quality to what we perceive in Canada as, you know, the concept of charity as being, you know, arguably a good one, but at least something that we can reputably assume is acting within compliance of the letter of the law, this might be criteria that they could then look at. You know, if they need outside help, we're here, obviously. Yeah. To preemptively perceive of what might be a transgressor charity before this type of, you know, action takes place. Beyond that, what was also interesting to us was that while these burner charities do appear to represent an ongoing phenomenon, right, they're not going away anytime soon. There is the potential of working with the CRA towards preemptively identifying where and how they exist, and ideally, you know, getting some help for them for algorithms, etc., where they can stop this before it starts. But we also suggested that family fortunes associated with private foundations that financially underwrite these burners, as I was saying earlier, may be more salient objectives for activists on the ground, right? In each case where we're talking about Gates of Mercy, Bait Olaf, and the JHF, donations from these private foundations represented approximately 50% of a burner's totally yearly revenue. And so the next step for us was to see if a core network of private foundations were actually anchoring the operations of Gates of Mercy, Beit Olaf, and the JHF, or whether this was merely just a phenomenon that was taking place. Of the hundreds of foundations that were donating to Gates of Mercy, Beit Olaf, and the JHF, We developed a list for inclusion for CRA query for that first piece of that second piece that I was talking about, where we were going to find out who they were giving to. And so towards identifying long-term and financially significant donors, people that were involved knowingly and on a long-term basis with keeping these burners operating and moving tens of millions of dollars. Could go out of a very large list of several hundred. We excluded foundations initially that had donated less than $5,000 to Bathe Olaf or had donated for less than 3 years to Bathe Olaf. Let's say they just made a mistake. They had been solicited. They didn't really know where the money was going, etc., right? Who knows? But we identified 114 potential anchors out of that from a list of 301.

Bianca Majani: Wow.

Miles Howe: Within this pool, at that point we were merely focusing on Bait Olaf. Within this pool, we identified, we winnowed it down to a further 40 private foundations that had consistent donating patterns across the 3 burners. So there, what we did is we obtained donation pattern records, T1236 qualified donation worksheets, for those interested, for these 40 represented. And we've sent out requests for them. We found 15 more private foundations that had significant overlaps of personnel at the board of director levels, bringing our total to 55 charities, private foundations linked to family fortunes in Canada that we believed were anchoring the operations of these burner charities. So what we found was year by year, the anchor foundations represented less than 50% of the total number of foundations. donating, but accounted for a disproportionate amount of foundation funding. For example, in 2017, 48 of these anchors donated $16.7 million to Bayt Olaf, accounting for 60% of all private donation funding, while comprising just 33% of the total foundation donors. So we thought we were onto something here. Most of these private and public foundations gave only intermittently to one or more of these burner charities, but the anchor foundations displayed consistent patterns of giving, which pivoted nearly simultaneously to whenever one of these subsequent burner charities was cracked down by the CRA. In 2012, they shifted from Gates of Mercy to Beit Olaf, as I said, and in 2018, 2019, they shifted their money, appear— apparently in synchronicity, out of Beit Olaf and into the JHF. And so, in the possibilities for action, right, while 55 anchors were identified, It's actually even a smaller number than that, right? Because 30 of these anchors appeared to operate within 7 distinct assemblages. By this we mean they had a near or total overlap of board of directors. And so you've got family fortunes creating numerous and multiple private foundations to spread the money around. These were networked organizations tied to root family fortunes, in this case of wealthy Toronto-based real estate corporations. Right. And this inner linkage may help explain that synchronous movement that we're seeing. These are several fortunes that are moving tens of millions of dollars out of the country per year using these synchronously organized burner charities, appearing to move their money in unison. It also contained the potential, our research, of identifying a limited number of donors with community ties, right? With financial relationship to these burner charities. The burners, for their part, you know, while we need to be actively pursuing them, once they become subject finally to regulatory pressure through, you know, public comment, through complaints to the CRA, or through the CRA finally being able to red flag these things, action does appear to take place. But they also appear to be fairly easily replaceable under the current regulatory regime. Machine, right? The next one is coming. Uh, anchors, however, tied to communities, concrete assets, uh, etc., may be, uh, novel and susceptible, uh, to activist pressure, right, towards altering their exposed donation patterns. And so that was one of the hopes for this research, was that you could— we could identify, uh, new places for activism to take place rather than shutting down the latest, the latest, the latest, With, sadly, no doubt, will, you know, create a new one. These anchors here are more foundational, right? They have, you know, family fortunes. They have, you know, buildings all over the country located specifically in the GTA. And we also envisioned, you know, at best, perhaps some solidarity, because a lot of these anchors, a lot of these real estate fortunes are tied to some of the, you know, the lowest-income neighborhoods in the GTA.

Bana Abuzuluf: Right.

Miles Howe: And so affordable housing activists on the ground in those campaigns, we saw the potential for solidarity with anti- or decolonial actions in Palestine. And so there's a— the article itself again is open access. I won't bother with trying to sort of share the screen at this point and fumbling through something here. But there's a supplementary material table that I urge you to check out at the very bottom of that article, which again hopefully is in a link somewhere. And you can see literally the, the, the, the names of the real estate corporations that are involved and the dollar-by-dollar amount that they've put into these burner charities since the days of Gates of Mercy, and since— which is actively going on in the JHF. So the objectives, potentially, if this is of interest to solidarity campaigns, is right there. And so I thank you for your time, and that's where I'll leave you.

Bana Abuzuluf: Wow.

Bianca Majani: Thank you, Shane. Thank you. Thank you so much, Miles. Okay, great. Perfect. Goodness. Thank you, Miles, for doing that terrific, rigorous research. So impressive, so valuable, but also so startling. I think we've all been taking copious notes. And yeah, it's really critical to begin to understand this phenomenon and the way that these charities, these burner charities as you call them, allow these foundations to move money to these foreign agents and the weak penalties too, you know, the ways that they remain shielded from Canadian law. So I think we're all learning. Please do find out more by following Maal's work. And you can start by reading his publication, International Cash Conduits and Real Estate Empires: A Case in Canadian Philanthropic Crime, which he co-authored with Paul Silvestre in the Journal of White Collar and Corporate Crimes. And this, this can be accessed online. Thank you so much, Myles. Looking forward to hearing more from you in the Q&A. Our next speaker of the evening is Shane Martinez. Shane is a barrister and solicitor, criminal lawyer with a passion for social justice and human rights. Shane regularly writes and lectures about police brutality, racial profiling, the police, the prison industrial complex, and transnational labor. Shane is going to be highlighting how law and campaigns come together in regards to advocacy work in support of justice for Palestine. And he's also an adjunct professor of prison law, policy, and reform at York University's Osgoode Hall Law School. Welcome, Shane.

Shane Martinez: Thanks very much, Bianca.

Miles Howe: Thank you, Jessica.

Shane Martinez: And good evening, everyone. I really appreciate the opportunity to join such an esteemed panel, and much gratitude to the organizers as well for putting together such a great event. This evening, I'm going to be addressing the continuing problem of organizations in Canada obtaining charitable status and then using funds to supplement services that are provided by Israel's Ministry of Defense. In other words, directly or indirectly financing Israel's armed forces. Now, to provide a bit of a roadmap for my remarks, first I'm going to address what Canadian law and policy says about using charitable donations to fund foreign armies. Second, I'm going to speak to a few examples of organizations with charitable status which allegedly use donations in a manner that benefits the Israeli armed forces. And third, I'll comment on what this means for the integrity of our legal system here if we allow it to continue. Now, I apologize in advance also for any mispronunciation of Hebrew or Arabic words. So, what can I say about this issue? Well, the Canada Revenue Agency is responsible for enforcing the law as it relates to charities in Canada. And it should be noted that Canadian law and CRA policy require that charitable organizations maintain control over how their funds are used, because this helps to ensure that charitable donations are being used in a manner that complies with the law and are being used for a charitable purpose. Simply put, the law says that charities cannot be used as conduits for other non-charitable organizations or causes. Canadian registered charities which carry on activities abroad are provided with direction from the CRA through a document that's called Guidance Document CG002. And part of it states, under Canadian law, most activities that are charitable in Canada are also charitable abroad. However, the courts have stated that some activities that are charitable in Canada may not be charitable when carried on in a different country. For example, it is charitable to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of Canada's armed forces, but it is not charitable to support the armed forces of another country. We also know that, although it's quite rare, charities have lost their status in the past for using money in a manner that supports the Israeli armed forces. One example of that is the 2002 case of Canadian Magen David Adom for Israel versus the Minister of National Revenue. And in that matter, the organization appealed the decision of the Minister of National Revenue, which sought to revoke its registration as a charitable organization. It had been alleged that there were ambulances that had been donated by the organization that had been used by the IDF in the occupied territories to transport armed personnel and ammunition, among other things. The appeal by the former charity was denied. The court held that it was well established that an organization will not be charitable in law If its activities are illegal or contrary to public policy. And although the court did not agree that the activity was contrary to public policy due to Canada's preferential treatment of Israel and the strategic partnership with Israel as well, it nevertheless concluded that the minister had legitimate grounds to revoke charitable status, given that the ambulances that were being sent over for IDF use.

Miles Howe: Right.

Shane Martinez: The charity here had no, no longer had any control or say over how those ambulances were being used. So effectively, they were collecting money, and then, or they were collecting resources in this instance, and sending it abroad, and having no control over over how it was being used, and allowing the IDF to use it for their purposes. Now, despite this precedent, in quite clear language from the CRA since that decision. Which I mentioned earlier, we still see that Canada is a major hub for the solicitation of supposedly charitable donations that are used in a manner that directly or indirectly supports the Israeli armed forces. Now, I'm going to move on to a few examples of groups which allegedly collect charitable donations and then apply them in a manner that benefits the IDF. The first is Beit Elohim, which claims that it is committed to rehabilitating, rebuilding, and enhancing the lives of over 50,000 Israelis disabled in the line of duty or through acts of terror. Now, this mandate that it has practically mirrors the mandate upon which the Rehabilitation Department of Israel's Ministry of Defense operates on. Now, their mandate states that they exist for the purpose of providing efficient professional services to assist in reintegrating our injured veterans into Israeli society and civilian life. In other words, money is being raised in a way that appears to be subsidizing services that are already provided by Israel's Ministry of Defense, the ministry which oversees its armed forces. Beit Halechem's activities also seem to extend beyond rehabilitation services, though. Documentation that's published by the Israeli government suggests that Beit Halechem provides housing to active-duty lone soldiers who are enlisted in the IDF. The organization also hosts conferences, although those appear to be about much more than just injured soldiers, and they seem to serve as promotional and networking events for the IDF. And in addition to this, Beit Elohem appears to provide scholarships for IDF veterans as well. And that's a very commonplace activity that I'm going to talk a bit more about That's provided by a number of groups. Another group that provides this kind of subsidization of education is Heseg, and this is one of the more widely known registered charities that funnels money to supplement another service provided by Israel's Ministry of Defense. And what is that service? Well, it's education. Heseg sends millions of dollars to Israel every year for scholarships for IDF veterans. One of the problems with this is that post-secondary education for individuals transitioning from military service to civilian life is already a need that's contemplated and addressed by the Israeli government. Their Ministry of Defense operates what's called the Foundation and Unit for Discharged Soldiers, which is, quote, the national authority responsible for providing assistance, benefits, and services to soldiers released from their services in the IDF. Now, the services and benefits provided by the Foundation and Unit for Discharged Soldiers—they facilitate a smooth transition back into civilian life, and they're available for up to five years after one has completed their services. What we see here is that the Foundation and Unit for Discharged Soldiers—it takes a very proactive role in the lives of IDF veterans, and it says that it is "quote committed to reaching as many of the country's discharged soldiers." and service members as possible, informing them of their rights and benefits and helping them reintegrate into civilian life. So the question then arises, why is the Canadian government allowing a registered charity to subsidize the operations of Israel's Ministry of Defense and cover the costs of services that it is responsible for providing to soldiers discharged from its armed forces? Now, that takes us third and finally to the last example, which is the Canadian Zionist Cultural Association, or CZCA. Now, this is a much more complex operation, and it's also the subject of a complaint, an ongoing complaint to the CRA, which is actually filed by one of my co-panelists this evening, Khaled Momar. So he was one of the co-complainants on that complaint to the CRA. And an entire presentation has been done about that complaint in the past, and there's a great deal to unpack about it. But I'm going to try and focus on some of the more recent findings which were submitted to the The CRA, because there was an addendum to the original complaint that went in. The CZCA is an organization based here in Canada. It describes its activities as running a family camp in Israel, operating kindergartens and synagogues, and providing scholarships for high school students, food packages, and running a ski program. What it has apparently been less open about in our respectful position in the complaint to the CRA is about the fact that it was sending millions of dollars to a non-charitable organization called Yahad for projects that benefited or supported the IDF by absorbing costs that Israel's armed forces would otherwise be responsible for. Now, Yahad is led by a retired high-ranking Israeli military official, a number of them actually, It has all of its overhead costs financed by the Ministry of Defense. And it advertises, Yahad advertises that 100% of all donations are utilized for their objectives, the IDF's objectives, without any overhead. So it is very clearly, in our respectful submission, a fundraising hub for IDF soldiers and the IDF itself. Money goes towards building and infrastructure projects on military bases, Renovating soldiers' bunkhouses and gyms, sports fields, so on and so forth. And if the nature of the relationship between the CZCA and Yahad and the IDF was in any doubt, the IDF dispelled that when you looked at its website previously, where it stated in no uncertain terms that the Canadian Zionist Cultural Association was authorized to raise donations for the IDF. It actually said that on its website. Now, as soon as word of the complaint to the CRA became public, what happened? Well, word got back to the IDF very quickly, and it actually removed that reference from its website. Somewhat transparent there. So, the CZCA also reports funneling money to a Duvdevan scholarship and mentorship program. Now, this program serves to benefit individuals who served within something known as Unit 217 of the IDF. IDF, which I'm sure many of you are familiar with. It's also known as Duvdiven. That's the undercover commando unit within the Israeli military that's known for disguising itself and blending in with Palestinian populations in the occupied territories when they carry out operations, presumably like the operations that we recently saw in Jenin. Scholarships are based on financial need and excellence during military service. The Israel-based Duvedevin Foundation, which gets money from the CZCA and operates the scholarship program and mentorship program, says that the CZCA is a partner organization, which recognizes it for tax benefit purposes. Again, very transparent, very clear what's going on. And the CZCA is not only one of the funders of the Duvedevin Scholarship, but it also funds a mentoring program known as the Duve Devine Networking Club, which provides alumni with an opportunity to join the Duve Devine alumni network. So it allows for soldiers to just kind of get together, network, build bonds outside of the military, as if there's a charitable purpose behind that. Now, it's our submission that neither scholarships contingent on foreign military service nor mentoring programs for alumni commandos of a foreign army have any discernible charitable purpose whatsoever. And for decades, Duvdiven has been the subject of widespread international criticism from— because of an array of human rights violations, including extrajudicial executions. Now, similarly, the CZCA scholarship at the Shamoun College of Engineering in Israel grants scholarships to combat and combat support soldiers. So what we see there is a criteria for a scholarship that is in part based on seeing combat. Again, trying to reconcile that with a charitable purpose appears to be quite difficult. Just to wrap things up, another one of the funds that the CZCA funnels donations to is known as the Uniform to University This is a project that was initiated by the IDF Chief of Staff. And according to Yihad, this scholarship is a joint project of Yihad and the Department for Discharged Soldiers within the Ministry of Defense. So there's really no question whatsoever that these scholarship programs benefit the Israeli military. In fact, you know, individuals who are at the heads of them— for example, the individual who's at the head of Yihad's U.S.-based branch, Said that, that these projects help the Israeli army by encouraging youth to enlist, and it makes sure that its soldiers are able to earn valuable degrees. And it's also been reported, as well, that it's a top priority for the IDF to make sure that soldiers have these scholarships when they leave, because it encourages them to complete their military service. Now, So to sum up, I would really commend Miles and his colleagues for doing the research that they've done, because it's no secret that kind of chasing this money around and chasing these purported charitable organizations can become like a game of whack-a-mole, because if one organization loses its status, another burner or similar organization can arise. Now, the ones that I've explained I wouldn't classify them as burners, but nevertheless, if they lose their status, it's, you know, there's no question that the money will simply go elsewhere. So it's important to be able to kind of trace the money back to its very source. And when we have the Canadian government refusing to enforce its own law and uphold the policy of the CRA to take any kind of measures to kind of proactively confront an issue that it knows is a widespread problem, That is, that's really nothing short of shameful, especially in light of the ongoing investigation by the International Criminal Court about alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the IDF. So, although this is something that I think many people find to be, you know, outrageous and angering, we have to make sure that we translate that into action and that people channel that energy to raise their voices and call for immediate investigations, and also to call for enforcement action whenever violations are found. So thank you very much.

Bianca Majani: Thank you, Shane. Um, so important to be calling for action around these issues, and we do have some actions that we're going to be sharing with you a little bit later on in the discussion. Thank you so much, Shane. That was an awesome presentation, and you've So, so much to shed light on these organizations that are associated with the Israeli military and also settlements. So I think it's really important to highlight your remarkable lawyering skills and also your role in the case that ultimately compelled SAREL Canada to attend court and respond to allegations that it violated the Foreign Enlistment Act. So congratulations on that. Karen's also put information about the CZCA case in the chat, and you can find out more about this at Just Peace Advocates' website. We also have some previous webinars, including one called Subsidizing Apartheid, that you can find on YouTube. All right, so our final speaker of the evening is Khaled Mouammar. Khaled is a Christian Palestinian Canadian who He is one of the founders of the Canadian Arab Federation and a former member of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. Khaled is one of the complainants to the CRA in regard to Canadian organizations acting as conduits for Israeli military and settler organizations. Welcome, Khaled.

Katherine Ravi: Thank you.

Bianca Majani: I think you're still muted. Hold on, let me see if I can help.

Khaled Mouammar: Can you hear me?

Bianca Majani: Yes, now we can hear you.

Khaled Mouammar: Yeah, thank you very much. And I would like to add to what Shane said, that it's really shameful that our country here is allowing charitable organizations to send money to organizations in a country which already is practicing racism against the Palestinian people. And I would like to focus on Regavim in this case, and focus on how this money that's going from the charitable organizations is affecting the Palestinian citizens of Israel. Thank you. Israel, who number about 2 million. What we should recall is that in 1948, the Palestinians who remained behind were only 150,000. And at this— as of today, they number about 2 million citizens. However, the amount of land that they have under their control remained the same, 3%, and it is actually more restricted now. For example, in the case of Nazareth, in 1948, the population of Nazareth was 10,000 people. Today it's 80,000 people, and the amount of land remained the same. So there's congestion, there's no There is no place to build. There are no parks in Nazareth. I was in Palestine in July and August for 55 days, and I could see how the streets are tight. There is no place to park. There are no parks, no children's playgrounds. The— On top of that, a part of Nazareth in 1948 was confiscated, was expropriated by the by the State of Israel to create Nazareth Elite, which now has changed its name to Nof Hagalil, which means a view of the Galilee because they did not want to be associated with the with Christian Nazareth. They said, you know, we're we're. We're not the Nazareth of Jesus, you know, we are different. So this new town of Nof HaGalil has half the population of Nazareth but twice the area, the municipal area. So you could see that Nazareth is really crowded, 4 times more than Nof HaGalil. And on top of that, The government has very restrictive permits for buildings. So they make it very hard for Palestinian citizens to build, to build, or even to add, to add a section to their house without a permit. So currently, in all of of Israel proper, there are 60,000 homes that are not connected to the Israeli power grid. So these people, the reason they're not connected is because they don't have a building permit. That affects 130,000 of the 2 million Palestinian citizens. Until now, they have been able to manage not to have these homes demolished, because as citizens they've been able to go to courts to postpone demolitions. But now we have a party, the religious Zionist party of Bezalel Smotrich, who is a founder of Regavim. And the policy of this new government has stated clearly that their role is to ensure that the land of Israel is the exclusive property of the Jewish people. And they are going to insist and follow up to ensure that all these 60,000 homes homes, which have no building permits, will be taken to court. They will put pressure on the courts, on the legislature, on the military, on the administration, to take action against these 60,000 homes with no building permits. So this is a real threat to the— To the people. To the presence of Palestinians in the Galilee, specifically, and in the Negev, because these are the 2 areas where most of the building permits have not been granted. And when we look at that situation, it's really very shameful that we have our country supporting Now, the possibility that these 60,000 homes could be demolished, because money is going in the millions of dollars from many charitable organizations in Canada to organizations like Regabim, who could ultimately bring about the dispossession of 130,000 people. And I would like to also go back in history and say Nazareth itself survived dispossession and destruction in 1948. But that was by accident, actually, because at that time— The commander of the 7th Brigade, who was sent to destroy the city, refused to follow the orders. And he was a wise Canadian Jew, actually, who realized that if such an action is taking place, it would damage the reputation of this new racist state. And his name was Ben Denkelman. His father was the founder of the Tip Top Tailors empire And so the city of Nazareth survived, you know, internal displacement and destruction. But this same commander, by the way, treated, you know, he did not follow the orders in the case of Nazareth because it was a predominantly Christian town, but he did not hesitate to destroy Safuria, which was 6 kilometers away. Wow. Which had a population of 5,000, half the number of the population of Nazareth, or the town of Maaloul, which is another 600— 6 kilometers away, which had a population of 1,000, because both of these towns had a majority of Muslim citizens. So again, it shows you the racism and the systemic discrimination that is practiced by Israel and by groups like Regavim and others against Palestinian citizens of Israel, and specifically those who belong to the Muslim, to Islam. As long as you do not belong to the privileged religious ethnic group, You face dispossession and humiliation and mistreatment in all of Palestine. And therefore, any money that comes from Canada through charitable organizations to organizations like Rigovim and others make complicit— make Canada complicit in the crimes and discriminations being committed against my people in Palestine. And I saw the demolition in Maaloul. Maaloul, everything was demolished in Maaloul. The only things that survived was 2 churches, and that's because the churches' property are owned by the local church. But the mosque in Maaloul was completely demolished and misused for cattle and other animals, because it was a Muslim— it's a mosque, and under Islam, the properties of the mosques in Israel proper were under the administration of the Waqf in Jerusalem, which at that time was under Jordanian control. So, so, so Muslim, all Muslim properties which were, which belonged to the Waqf in the villages which were destroyed were completely lost, and people could not come back and touch them. The churches in Maaloula, at least, people were able to go and pray during Christmas and even have weddings and events in them, but they were not allowed to build anything on the grounds of the village, and they were not even allowed to visit the cemeteries. So in a final statement, the dangers faced by the Palestinian citizens of Israel is now— has intensified. They are going to be facing pressure to squeeze them even more into to smaller places in the Negev. They want to move people from more than 40 villages into congregated ghettoized towns so that they can prevent them from using any state land. And currently, 93% of the country is actually land that is administered by the Israeli Israel Land Authority. And this will not change with what we have now. And the only kind of thing that will send a message to Israel and to any organizations there is for our government to apply its own laws regarding charitable organizations. And not to be silent, and not to take time, and require people to pressure them and work all the time, because this is a violation of Canadian laws. And yet our government that is not taking action, at the same time, it makes our country complicit in the mistreatment and the suffering of 2 million Palestinian citizens of Israel. Israel, who are second-class citizens, and on top of that now are facing dispossession and demolitions of their homes, about 130,000 of them. Thank you very much.

Bianca Majani: Thank you. Thank you so much, Khaled. Thank you for that. Thank you for giving us the details, as well, from your recent about the conditions in Palestine right now, and also about what we should expect in the near future, the, you know, highlighting the case of Regavim. And of course, thank you so much for your long and important role in the work of Palestinian liberation. So as you've heard today, Khaled and Rabbi David Minviser submitted a detailed complaint to the CRA, the Canada Revenue Agency, concerning the Neiman Foundation Canada. So we've— we do have an action that we would like to encourage you to take. It just takes about a minute to email the CRA to demand that they audit the charitable status of this foundation, which funds organizations promoting West Bank settlements, racist policies, and the Israeli military. So please do take action. The link for that is in the chat. Karen has put it in there. I also want to let the audience know that if you are part of a group You can also sign on to the Colonialism Is Not Charity campaign, which now has over 35 groups on board thus far. And you can also endorse Defund Racism. So we are now in the Q&A period of the evening. Thank you very much to those of you who placed your questions in the Q&A box. I can see a number here. And we had a couple of questions as well which were submitted in advance. So the first question that we have here is, how do we find out about which Canadian charities are supporting Palestinian dispossession? And maybe I'll start with you, Banna, given your involvement in the campaign.

Bana Abuzuluf: Thank you very much. Also to everybody, I was taking notes diligently, so I just want to say that your work Yes. Is marvelous. According to this, to the, in fact, the conversations we've had, and according to the speakers, it's very simple really. There are various foundations and you can easily look at their tax audits after, of course, you ask the, you know, CRA or the Canadian Revenue Agency for that information. And some of this stuff, again, It's also public. So you can look into that easily and find this information yourself. If you are curious to know whether a foundation is in support of any organization in Israel, I think it might be helpful to search for that foundation. You might just find it in our website, in fact, listed at one of the foundations that is sending money to Israeli government and settler organizations and foundations, IDF and whatnot. Or you may find information in articles that a lot of the speakers have, you know, mentioned. So, and if you are also interested to look into any of this information, you can also send us an email at the, you know, Good Shepherd Collective, or send us even a DM at Twitter if you'd like. And then we'd look into that information ourselves and and give you that information if you'd like.

Bianca Majani: Thank you. That's so helpful, Bana. I also just want to thank Bana, who's up way past bedtime. It's past midnight where you are. So thank you so much. Thank you so much for that. Does anyone else have anything to contribute to that question? If not, I'm going to go to the next one, which is, I think, for Myles. It's from Eileen, who wants to Was Beth Olaf fined, or did they have to repay anything? asks Eileen.

Miles Howe: It's my understanding the way it works is that— I have, you know, some experience reviewing Canadian tax law, you know, challenges in court. When it comes to situations like Beth Olaf, no, you have your license revoked. There's certain individuals that we found were also linked by a board of directorships, trustees, secretaries, etc., from all 3 actually burner charities that we identified. And so having your license revoked doesn't even necessarily mean under Canadian law that you can't just go ahead and open the next charity in line. I believe the other penalty is that you have to give back 110% of your assets in your final year of operation. And so that's quickly circumvented by just liquidating your assets. And so, no, it's been my sort of understanding of how the tax law works is when there's instances where a charity is set up specifically for some kind of money-making scheme whereby you can't simply justify that this money went somewhere And oh, you don't know where it went, sorry. Then nothing happens. But when there's money, when there's a charity set up for a specific scam where donors are solicited, where you can give in kind, and then, you know, pharmaceuticals will be overvalued, or, you know, all these different types of scam, which Ballas was not— this was not actually a situation— then the CRA will go after you to recover costs because they were not given with the intention of giving a gift.

Shane Martinez: Right.

Miles Howe: But when it came to Bayt Olaf, no, it's my understanding no money was— there's no money at all was attempted to be recovered, no.

Bianca Majani: My apologies. Another question, I think sort of technical question for Shane. Asma would like to know, are IDF charity-funded services for veterans included Do they include Israelis who participated in their mandatory military service for the IDF? Do you know the answer to that, Jake?

Shane Martinez: Yeah, I do. So IDF-funded services are both for those who completed compulsory services, but also for lone soldiers who contemplate remaining in Israel, in the occupied territories, following the completion of their service. And in fact, back in 2016, the Israeli military had announced that it would be fully funding the academic studies of both combat and non-combat soldiers upon discharge from the IDF through their university— excuse me, Uniform to University Scholarship Program. And that is a scholarship program that Canadian charities contribute to. And the program pays for 2/3 of soldiers' education. The remaining portion is paid by post-military grants from the Ministry of Defense. And this fund, actually, the funding from the Ministry of Defense, it's not a new initiative. And these kinds of grants have been provided, actually, to IDF veterans since 1949. And it helps them not only pay for college education, but it has also been used in the past to cover wedding expenses, opening and buying businesses, or buying a home in Israel, as well, or occupied territories. So, you know, it's something that is used to both benefit individuals who are completing their service compulsory or those who volunteer to go over as lone soldiers.

Bianca Majani: Thank you, Shane. The next question that I have here is from Catherine, Who wants to know whether all the links appearing throughout the chat will be provided. Yes, they will be. They'll be in an email that will be sent to all of you who have registered via Zoom. So check your emails. You'll get that either tomorrow or the day after that. The next question that we have, which was submitted by anonymous, is a question about a new federal government body that's been launched to fight Islamophobia. With the appointee being Amira El-Gawabi, and this person wants to know whether such a body can raise the voices of Palestinians. Will there be self-censorship? Would speaking up for Palestine result in sacking? I think I'll I'll ask Khalid what what he thinks about this. You need to unmute. It's still it's still on mute. Oh, it's still— it's back on mute. I'm so sorry, Khaled.

Shane Martinez: I don't know what—

Katherine Ravi: Can you hear me?

Khaled Mouammar: Yeah. Perfect. But actually, this brings up a more— another important issue, which is the fact that apartheid Israel to be able to cover up its crimes against the Palestinian people is doing 2 things which are harming both Jews and Muslims. The first one is by equating Israel with world Jewry, and saying that if you criticize Israel, it means you hate Jews. So by that, But by that, by doing that, they are actually implying that Jews are responsible for the crimes of Israel, and are promoting, are encouraging racists to say, you know, all Jews are bad, like apartheid Israel. That's the first thing. The second thing that they're doing, because we live in a Christian society, and Western Europe Europe is Christian too, is to promote hatred of Muslims by trying to project this cause, the Palestinian cause, as a religious cause. You know, it's Muslims who are threatening Jews, and these same Muslims are threatening Christianity in Europe and North And so I suspect it's going to be— it will require a courageous person or a courageous organization, Muslim organization, to stand up and speak in defense of Palestinian rights. Because we do have ministers in the cabinet who are Muslim, But they don't really speak that much in reality about what is happening. And they haven't been able even to pressure the government, in which they sit as ministers, to come up and say what Israel is doing is apartheid. You know, a state which says that you have to belong to a certain religious ethnic group, you will have privileges. If you don't belong to that religious ethnic group, you don't count. So I do hope that Amira will have the courage and determination and the commitment to speak out and tackle, you know, apartheid and systemic discrimination. Which is being inflicted on indigenous Palestinian Semites. After all, Palestinians are really Semites, and we can prove that. We are indigenous and we are Semites. And we just happen not to belong to the correct, between brackets, religious ethnic group that Zionism determines to be, to have supremacy between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. So let us be optimistic and hope that this, this special envoy on Islamophobia would also deal with, with the promotion that Israel is fostering. By accusing Muslims of being terrorists and haters of Jews, and at the same time accusing the Palestinians, because 90% or 95% of Palestinians are actually Muslims.

Bianca Majani: Thank you, Khaled. The next question that we have is from Ella who wants to know, who says settler colonialism threatens Indigenous peoples and ecosystems in so many territories around the world. What strategies do you see as important to share and collaborate around? How can UN declarations and covenants be better leveraged? So for this question, maybe I'll start with the lawyers. Katherine and Shane, what do you think? How can UN declarations and covenants be better leveraged? Is that relevant?

Katherine Ravi: I think it's something— I'll take a stab at this. I mean, it's a huge question. Of course they're important, but I think what this is getting at is a larger culture in international law and international policy involving political will and a lot of Sorry, it's just such a huge question. I'm trying to think how to best approach it. I mean, Israel's in a unique place because it's allied with the United States, which is obviously part of the Security Council. So the General Assembly and many UN resolutions and many different treaty bodies have passed, you know, plenty of opinions and declarations and international, you know, statements and laws. But unfortunately, because all international law is isn't directly enforced through any sort of global mechanism. It all has to be supported through a variety of means, such as soft law and international collaboration. So UN declarations are important because they do establish a crystallized norm and different international standards. That we're going to hold ourselves and other states accountable to. However, we live in a very unequal world, especially when it comes to international law. Certain states are going to be held to a higher standard than others, and our enforcement mechanisms that are in place are going to be used in some states more than others. I mean, Israel has gotten a pass for a lot of its international crimes for years because of its international connections to the United States, for example. So I'm not saying they're not important. They are important. I do think they allow people and advocates and lawyers to leverage international law and highlight that there is a set standard of international law, legal norm, that has been violated, which continues to breed a greater, I guess, dossier of evidence against these against international crimes and human rights laws. And I find that people tend to be very disheartened about this news because it's never an answer that it's not helpful because it is, but it's going to take so much more. And as I highlighted earlier, there's a whole private industry, the private sector and businesses that really play a huge role in this, and they're pretty much exempt from international law. I mean, Of course, there are guiding principles and there's budding treaties that are being drafted to deal with transnational corporations, but it's messy, it's not clear, it's very frustrating, and it's really going to take efforts on all sides to bring about any sort of international action on this. And I know that's a very frustrating answer, but Shane, maybe you want to build off of that.

Shane Martinez: I'll try my best. I actually agree with a lot of what Katherine's saying. I think she hit the nail on the head. I mean, I don't know if UN declarations and covenants can really be leveraged in terms of the Canadian government, in terms of direct engagement with the government, right? Like, what we've seen, you know, we look at this government's track record at the UN, and its voting record on issues relating to Palestine makes it pretty clear that the Canadian government doesn't care a whole lot about international law and even agreements that it's signatory to. One example of that is the Arms Trade Treaty, right, which says that state parties, of which Canada is one, are not to provide arms to countries if they know that those arms would be used in the commission of crimes against humanity or war crimes. Who's under investigation right now for exactly those types of crimes? Well, Israel is, right? And what do we see? Well, we see that Canada is at a 30-year high right now in terms of trading weapons to Israel and selling weapons to Israel. So, you know, clearly they don't take that commitment seriously. You know, however, I think that these kinds of declarations and covenants, you know, even though they're not determinative of legal proceedings here in Canada, if we try to raise them, they can occasionally have what we call persuasive value with the courts, right, with some jurists. So, you know, there are cases, including some that I'm involved with at the moment, where we are referencing international treaties and agreements. And, you know, I'm remaining cautiously optimistic that the court will give those sufficient consideration when deciding the issues before it. But it is— it can be a tricky area to maneuver for the reasons that Katherine set out.

Bianca Majani: Thank you, Shane. Thank you, Katherine. So we're nearing the end of our time together. So I think I'm going to focus on the last 2, just 2 more questions that are sort of action-oriented. The first is, how can peace— on the subject of weapons, how can peace organizers across Canada meaningfully contribute to solidarity and resistance with Palestinians? Are there any networks where peace movements can connect and work together in solidarity?

Khaled Mouammar: I think all Actually, in Canada, there are various Arab organizations and others like Just Peace Advocates, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East. And then there's the Palestinian Canadian Congress, Canadian Arab Federation. But I think that the Arab and Palestinian groups do not have yet the mechanism and the methods to reach out to the community and to their supporters to mobilize them. Sufficiently, while groups like the CGPME and Justice Advocates have been more successful. Because these are tools which should be used through social media, also through Facebook and Twitter, and actually to be engaged all the time. Because I find And I find on Twitter, like Bob Bray is always putting out, you know, things on Twitter, feeling sorry for Ukraine, for the Rohingyas, for the Uyghurs in China, but he always ignores completely Palestine. And he's always at the United Nations. You know, representing Canada by voting against most of the resolutions in support of Palestine. And so these are things where, you know, there is enough now, there are enough, there's public support in Canada, but there is no, there's not enough organization power to really impact the members of parliament, because in the end, the politicians at the top will not listen unless they lose seats in elections. And I was looking at statistics showing that, you know, minorities in Canada, and that includes religious and racial and ethnic minorities made up of immigrants, who now comprise— who by 2025 will comprise 30% of population, can influence nearly 150 seats in Canada because they would have a voting power between 20% and 50%. So they can make a difference of which party will win, and they will start to MPs who are voted into power by a population. Until that happens, unfortunately, we've seen the Liberal Party has gone backward in its support for Palestine. It was better in the time of the father, Pierre Trudeau, and Chrétien. Canada now follows the American policies.

Bianca Majani: Vana, do you have any thoughts?

Bana Abuzuluf: Yes, I would like to add maybe like 3 things. First thing is, of course, education is very important. I would urge everybody to read the very articles that have been shared and talked about today, because specifically that we all need to be aware of these cases and specific, you know, organizations and their links to Israeli colonial system. And I would also think that the second thing is that I do believe, like, legal precedents are very important. So if we can establish more legal precedents where more organizations' status, like charitable statuses, being revoked for X and Y reasons, then we can say that perhaps writing a letter to the CRA could actually be quite helpful. So if people can do that, Justice Advocates are doing a great job with this campaign. You can write a letter and then hopefully a complaint, and then that's— this will, you know, the CRA to actually act and hopefully revoke the charitable status of these organizations, which is the end goal. And that sets a precedent again, if it's for various reasons for different organizations again. And the third thing, of course, being part of the Good Shepherd Collective, I do invite you all to join the Defund Racism campaign. If you are an organization, you can endorse the campaign. If you are an individual and want to support the campaign, you can find our petition on our website and look for our long-term strategy fighting these organizations, including, you know, Regavim and Air David, which were mentioned today. Thank you.

Bianca Majani: Thank you so much, Vanna. And I see that Karen put in the chat also that there are 20 Palestinian solidarity groups in the Canadian BDS Coalition. So you can check that out as well at BDScoalition.ca and see if there's a group in your area as well that you can reach out to. So the last question that we have here, which has been partially answered, but I think it's a good one to end on, is what can we do to expose these and other charities supporting Israeli colonialism? What should we be doing? And I'm going to put this out to everyone. We haven't heard from you, Myles, in a while, so I'd love to hear your thoughts on that and anyone else's.

Miles Howe: Yeah, sure. I still am hopeful. Can you hear me? Yeah? Okay. Beyond that, yeah, I know it takes person power, willpower, et cetera, but within the specific context of, I guess the findings that I was, you know, fortunate enough to bring to the table, again, like bringing it back to those big heavy donors who have those, you know, concrete assets in the community, who are going to, you know, call the GTA home in this case, who are not going anywhere soon, beyond writing to the CRA, beyond You know, all these all these positive campaigns that are going on to shut down the next charity that is transgressing, that is you know acting in such unsavory and horrific manners. I really believe that if the appetite is there, putting that kind of pressure on those donors, on those big time you know multimillionaire billionaire donors, taking it to their places of work, you know. Getting active and making it unpalatable to be moving your money in these directions is like a huge piece. Again, I'm not in the GTA. I'm not on the ground, unfortunately, on these campaigns. And so I'm not going to, you know, recommend for other people to put themselves into positions of danger that I'm not capable of putting myself into. But if I were putting on my activist hat, And thinking about that, yeah, I would I would go get that um that supplementary materials table at the bottom of the article clearly identifies like you know seven big time family fortunes who are like you know associated with concrete assets in the GTA. Make it make it unsavory. Make it known that we know what you're doing with your money. is morally unjust and is, you know, when we're talking about natural law, is totally runs against, you know, the concept of charity. And so, is there the people power to do that? Can that be a rallying cry? I certainly hope so. But that's where I would take it. And I think that's— yeah, I'm certainly prepared to discuss that further. But But that'll be my recommendation.

Bianca Majani: Thank you, Myles. Any other thoughts before we close out for tonight?

Miles Howe: What can people do?

Khaled Mouammar: Another thing was— has been done in the past is, you know, to find some MPs, a couple of MPs who could bring those up in Parliament and mention Maybe a specific organization which has one of those big donors and bring it up, you know, publicly in Parliament and follow it up with, you know, with support and, you know, public support.

Bianca Majani: Thank you. Thank you, Khaled. That's a great suggestion. Any other thoughts? Catherine, Shane, Banna, what should people do? Anything else?

Shane Martinez: I would say don't be shy about trying to get lawyers to back up whatever's happening on the ground, right? I mean, I think that is one of the most important things we can do as legal counsel is to not lead the struggle, but to back up those who are organizing in our communities, and are kind of leading this at the forefront and mobilizing people. Don't be frightened, you know, if you know somebody that you think is going to be sympathetic and have an open ear, you know, don't be shy to try and bring them into the fold and to say, hey, we're working on these campaigns, can you assist us? You know, what kind of law do you practice? Is this something you might be able to help out with? To try and kind of bring in those skill sets and put them to use. You know, we saw that similar tactics and networking and leveraging, you know, those kinds of professions was of great assistance in making apartheid fall in South Africa, right? So there's no reason why we shouldn't be doing that again here. So that would be my 2 cents. Hold the lawyers accountable. Get them involved.

Bianca Majani: That's an excellent suggestion. Also, speaking of pressure, please do take the action that we're suggesting and email the CRA, Canadian Revenue Agency, to demand that they audit the charitable status of the Nieman Foundation Canada, which funds organizations that promote settlements, racist policies, and the Israeli military. This is not charity. So I want to thank you all so, so, so much. We've come to the end of Colonialism Is Not Charity. That was a very important discussion. Hopefully many more will follow. We've covered quite a bit of critical ground today. Lots of notes taken. As I mentioned earlier, we are rebroadcasting this discussion to both YouTube and Facebook. So subscribe to our YouTube channel, you'll get notifications. Subscribe to our Twitter and our Facebook for news and updates. Thank you so much for taking the time to educate yourself on this topic. Please do share the recording with others. As Khaled said, stay engaged, keep informed. This is a great form of solidarity. And if you like discussions like these, please do consider donating to the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute. We are completely dependent on people like you to keep going and educating around these critical topics. So it's been a great event. Thanks again to our panelists. You're brilliant, Bana, Catherine, Khaled, Miles, and Shane. Please find out more about their work, their activism. And again, remember to take that action. If you're part of a group, you can also sign on to Colonialism is not charity campaign, and you can endorse Defund Racism. I also want to thank once more Karen Rodman from Just Peace Advocates for her excellent organizing, for pulling this panel together. Thanks to the Good Shepherd Collective. Thanks to Defund Racism for co-sponsoring Just Peace Advocates, and thanks to the wonderful engaged audience for your comments and your questions. Let's keep working for peace and opposing war. and occupation. Freedom for Palestine and peace, everybody. Good night.

Khaled Mouammar: Thank you, Ameed.

Katherine Ravi: Thank you.