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Canada’s Largest Union Asks Vice President to Resign Following Antisemitic Facebook Post
A Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer stands guard outside the Senate of Canada prior to the Speech from the Throne in Ottawa, Canada on September 23, 2020. Photo: AFP photo/DAVE CHAN
The national executive board of Canada’s largest union has asked one of its senior officials to resign this week after he shared an antisemitic video on social media earlier this month.
The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), which has 750,000 members across the country, said in a statement on Thursday that its national board made “the difficult decision” to ask Fred Hahn to step down from his position as general vice president “because he reposted a deeply problematic video that was a clear violation of our union’s equality statement.”
CUPE’s national executive board passed a motion on Tuesday that said it “lost confidence” in Hahn’s ability to represent the union as general vice president, according to a letter CUPE send to related organizations. The board cited a video Hahn posted on Facebook on Aug. 11 and “the impact it has had on CUPE members and the national union.”
The controversial video reportedly showed a diver at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris with a Star of David on their arm, jumping off a diving board before turning into a bomb that fell on civilians. The video’s narrator called the diver an “Olympic champion.”
Hahn, who is also the president of CUPE’s branch in Ontario, deleted the video and in an Aug. 18 Facebook post apologized for sharing a clip that “caused pain for some who viewed it.” He said he wanted to draw attention to what he described as “clearly a double standard” at the 2024 Olympics since Russian athletes were banned from competing in the Summer Games under their own flag, because of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, while athletes from Israel were able to represent their country amid the Israel-Hamas war raging in the Gaza Strip.
“My intent was never to associate Jewish people with the violence enacted by the state of Israel,” Hahn wrote in the Facebook post. “It remains my strongly held view that it is a terrible mistake, and antisemitic, to conflate abhorrent actions by the state of Israel with Jewish humanity or identity … Our collective focus should be on the unfolding genocide, on the continued contravention of international law by the state of Israel — not on me or my social media posts.”
He added, “There is so much pain and suffering in our world and the last thing anyone with a conscience, me included, would want to do is cause more of it. I believe other people of conscience would agree that any public discussion now should not take away from organizing for a ceasefire, for justice and peace for all.”
Hahn was elected president of CUPE Ontario in May. He also faced calls to resign last year after he praised the “power of resistance” following the Oct. 7 deadly Hamas terrorist attacks in southern Israel.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford said Wednesday in a post on X/Twitter that he supports CUPE’s decision to have Hahn resign. “I applaud CUPE National for asking Fred Hahn to step down,” he wrote. “Now it’s time for Fred to put his members first and do the right thing by resigning from all his positions of leadership.”
During an unrelated news conference that same day, Ford called Hahn “a bully for 20 years.” The president said he was getting messages on his phone from CUPE members who called Hahn’s comments disgusting. “In my opinion, he’s a disgusting human being anyways, but that’s here nor there,” he added. “His bigoted comments — it’s unacceptable here in Ontario … someone has to discipline this guy and I encourage the [CUPE] workers next time, next time a vote comes, vote this character out, because, in my opinion, he’s just a terrible, terrible human being.”
Ford also applauded Ontario’s Labor Minister David Piccini for confronting Hahn in-person about his actions. During their exchange, which Piccini shared in a video on Tuesday, the minister called Hahn an “antisemite” and told him “you have to stop hating Jews … you’re a labor leader and your members deserve better than you.”
The Canadian branch of the human rights and social advocacy organization Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center voiced support for CUPE’s request that Hahn resign, and called on him to also step down as president of the union’s branch in Ontario. Earlier this week, the Jewish group called Hahn’s apology for his antisemitic Facebook video “insincere and insufficient.”
“Given the repeated harm his words and actions have caused to the Jewish community, Hahn must be replaced by someone who can represent all CUPE member,” the organization added.
In its statement on Thursday, CUPE criticized Piccini and Ford for their decision “to attack Fred Hahn, in a way that is completely revolting and unacceptable.” The union also explained that while it does not support Hahn’s antisemitic social media post, CUPE does condemn Israel for its actions during the ongoing war targeting Hamas terrorists in Gaza.
“Nothing about this decision changes CUPE’s clear, consistent position on the bombardment of Gaza by Israel,” the union noted. “CUPE continues to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire; a release of all hostages from Gaza; and an end to the blockade of Gaza and the restoration of humanitarian aid. CUPE also calls on the Government of Canada to suspend the sale of arms and military equipment to Israel as it committed to doing in March 2024.”
“To suggest that asking for Fred’s resignation as a GVP is to throw in with those who support the genocide in Gaza, or is in response to a conservative premier’s bullying, is frankly ludicrous,” the union said.
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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
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