On Sunday, January 19 2025, Hamiltonian progressive and leftist communities organized outside of the Hamilton Jewish Federation’s (HJF) building in anticipation of Melissa Lantsman, a Thornhill MP and the Co-Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, arriving to the city to speak at an event organized by the HJF about how, “the federal government can work to combat Antisemitism and anti-Zionism in Canada.”
Lantsman has identified herself as a “hardcore zionist” throughout her career, and is notably active on Twitter — where she called the condemnation of a hospital bombing “appalling,” tweeted the claim that a significant Ontario Palestinian organizer was wearing a “mock suicide vest,” and when she was provided with the information that the protester was wearing a smoke canister belt, did not correct herself. The Conservative MP has also publicly associated herself with the vigilante group Shomrim Toronto.
Community organizations protest against Lantsman
Included in the organizing of the action against Lantsman were members of Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) Hamilton, Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War, McMaster Apartheid Divest, Labour for Palestine Hamilton, Mamas for Palestine, Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas for Palestine, Hamilton East-Stoney Creek for Palestine and Burlington for Palestine.
“This protest was organized for a few reasons, I initiated it,” said IJV Hamilton leader Rabbi David Mivasair. “My main motivation was to directly point to the Hamilton Jewish Federation as a very problematic presence in our city. I wanted to make it very public and clear that the HJF promotes the Israeli genocide of Palestinians and Canadian complicity in it. In fact, that is the highest priority raison d’etre of the HJF. The HJF postures as a Jewish community social and culture organization and has succeeded in cultivating an image of itself as a very decent, wholesome organization when, in fact, its main purpose is to enforce Canadian complicity with Israel.”
Hamilton East-Stoney Creek for Palestine are a locally-focused group who say that they were “honoured” to have been invited to participate, Nageeb Twal is a member.
“We organized this action to call attention to the normalization of anti-Arab and anti-Islamic rhetoric coming from our elected officials,” said Twal. “Although MP Lantsman is one of many racists in elected office, after the upcoming elections, there’s a good possibility that she’ll be part of a Tory government and free to pursue the policies she’s been pushing since arriving in office. Since October 7, 2023, Lantsman has vilified anti-war and Palestinian human rights activists, voted in opposition to Canada’s demand for a ceasefire in Gaza, and publicly peddled Israeli talking-points to justify the genocide in Palestine. Our action was to tell Melissa Lantsman that her hateful rhetoric is not welcome in Hamilton.”
Silence from the mass media
Despite a social media campaign, posters pasted across the city, and media alerts sent well in advance to Hamilton media outlets, no major media coverage was offered to the demonstrating organizations.
“A disappointment is that no mainstream media covered the protest, despite ample time and notifications about it,” said Mivasair. “That is not a surprise, but it is a disappointment.”
Regardless of the limited media attention, the organizers consider the action to be an “overwhelming success.” Lantsman and her team kept the address of the venue she was performing at from the general public, and for a week leading up to the action, the protest posters were being torn down, which would quickly be replaced with fresh copies.
“Our message was heard by those who needed to hear it the most: Melissa Lantsman and the racists who invited her to speak in Hamilton,” said Twal. “Our goal was to remind the racists that, although municipal leaders are generally quiescent to their brand of hate, citizens of Hamilton will not let them off so easily.”
Rabbi Mivasair’s main objective was to label the HJF as a “very problematic presence in the city,” and to bring together a wider coalescence of various Palestine solidarity groups- which the Independent Jewish Voices leader says they were successful in doing.
“We succeeded in interrupting their presumption of impunity and immunity from criticism,” said Mivasair. “We also succeeded in bringing the attention of the media and local elected officials to this issue, even though none of them responded in a publicly visible way, we are certain that they got our message. We succeeded in problematizing the presence and the function of the Zionist organization in Hamilton.”
Follow the organizations mentioned above to keep up with any future actions.
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