The Canadian leadership of Laborers’ International Union of North America (LiUNA) supports an apartheid state committing a holocaust in Gaza. LiUNA Canada’s communications director has become a leading Israel advocate.
On September, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (FSWC) announced it will honour the LiUNA Director of Public Relations, Marketing and Strategic Partnerships, Victoria Mancinelli at its upcoming Spirit of Hope celebration of genocide and apartheid. To announce the prize Mancinelli was photographed alongside FSWC head Michael Levitt at the genocide lobby group’s office in Toronto.
The Mancinelli family’s support for Israel
In June the Hamilton Jewish Federation gave Mancinelli its President’s Award for her activism serving Israel’s holocaust in Gaza. In their statement the genocide lobby organization boasted that Mancinelli “describes herself as ‘an unapologetic Zionist.’”
Mancinelli has been highly active on social and corporate media promoting the interests of a country that has killed hundreds of thousands (directly and indirectly). Over the past 11 months Israel has killed more than 700 Palestinian infants in Gaza. The rate of killing of those under the age of two is unprecedented in modern warfare.
In March, Victoria and her father Joseph Mancinelli, who is head of LiUNA Canada, signed a “Joint Statement Condemning NDP Motion on Israel”, which opposed a ceasefire (and quoted former Prime Minister Stephen Harper of all people). “It is unreasonable and immoral to demand an ‘immediate ceasefire’ without having given Israel the opportunity to rectify the legitimate threats to the safety and security of its population,” it read. “Providing Israel with the ability to vanquish all the terror factions presently jeopardizing its national security is the only logical way to ensure the future peaceful coexistence.”
In her zeal to promote Israel’s interests Victoria Mancinelli even launched a lawsuit to silence a critic. The LiUNA executive sued Hamilton’s Mohamad Bsat for $250,000 for (correctly) implying she supported the “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians.
Last week Mancinelli published a Hill Times column criticizing the Canada Revenue Agency for revoking the racist Jewish National Fund’s charitable status. In May Mancinelli interviewed official Israeli propagandist Noa Tishby at a JNF gala in Hamilton. In recent years, JNF fundraisers have taken place at the LiUNA Station banquet hall in Hamilton and in 2000 JNF Hamilton dedicated its Negev Dinner to Enrico and Joe Mancinelli. The union’s pension fund began investing in Israel Bonds in the early 1980s and in 1999 Joe Mancinelli visited Israel to see the construction and infrastructure projects financed by Israel Bonds. “They have a longstanding relationship with and support for the state of Israel,” said JNF Hamilton chairperson Tom Weisz to the Hamilton Spectator.
On August 10 the CRA formally revoked the racist organization’s charitable status. The revocation is the culmination of decades of activism that began when Ismail Zayid discovered that Canada Park was built on the village he and his family were expelled from. JNF Canada raised $15 million ($120 million in today’s money) to build Canada Park on three peaceful West Bank villages (Beit Nuba, Imwas and Yalu) demolished by Israel after the 1967 war. Despite repeatedly attempting to return home, the 5,000 expelled Palestinians were not allowed back.
In its letter explaining the revocation, the CRA highlights a slew of issues with JNF’s operations. Alongside a multitude of accounting issues, the revenue agency criticizes JNF Canada’s assistance to its explicitly racist parent organization in Israel and the CRA letter notes, “Our review identified that the Organization’s resources appear to have been applied to JNF’s non-charitable projects in the Occupied Territories, and to supporting the Israeli armed forces.”
LiUNA members should hold leaders accountable
While most Canadian labour unions have criticized Israel’s genocide, LiUNA maintains its ignoble relationship to a state Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and many other human rights groups found years ago to be committing the international crime of apartheid.
Every human rights supporting LiUNA member must work to distance their union from these supposed leaders. Their union must break with the racist JNF, divest all State of Israel bonds and reject the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center award. The union should then officially apologize to Palestinians.
In order to be proud members of LiUNA, they must be able to be proud of their union. How is that possible with “leaders” who support genocide?
Please take a minute to tell LiUNA representatives to stop promoting an apartheid state committing genocide and to divest of any State of Israel Bonds.
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