‘Can’t afford to have people silenced during genocide’

In the shadow of Israel’s war on Gaza, the Palestinian diaspora fights to be heard

Montreal, Canada – Israa Alsaafin’s grief was piling up.

She was already grappling with the loss of her brother, Ahmed, who was killed in an Israeli attack as he fled his home in northern Gaza in October 2023, just days into Israel’s war on the Palestinian territory.

And she had spent months trying to get her parents and relatives from Gaza to Canada, a process stymied by strict visa requirements. Ultimately, she was forced to spend thousands of dollars just to get them to relative safety in neighbouring Egypt.

But then an incident about two months ago brought the fear of anti-Palestinian violence right to her door in Ottawa, the Canadian capital.

Alsaafin stepped outside to discover that a sign she had placed on her front lawn, with the phrase “We Stand with Palestine”, had been vandalised with epithets disparaging Palestinian identity.

“I was terrified. Just think about it. What if that person passed by and my kids were playing around on the front porch? I had nights with no sleep thinking about this note,” the 36-year-old mother of two told Al Jazeera.

“I had to take a leave without pay from my work because I couldn’t focus, I couldn’t function. I couldn’t take care of myself or my family or my kids.”

As Israel’s war on Gaza grinds on – hitting the one-year mark last week with no end in sight – Palestinians around the world have spent the past 12 months watching a daily stream of death and destruction.

And while they are not experiencing the same level of suffering as people in Gaza, members of the diaspora have faced their own challenges over the past year – from online threats and racism, to attempts to silence their efforts to speak out against Israel’s assault.

In Canada, this wave of hate has fuelled a push by Palestinian Canadians to name and recognise anti-Palestinian racism as a distinct form of discrimination – and take concrete action to address it.

“I know a lot of Palestinians, now they are hiding their identity. They don’t speak up. They don’t say that they are from Palestine because they are scared that they are going to be targeted,” said Alsaafin.

“It’s very important to talk about it, [to] point fingers towards the anti-Palestinian racism situation that we face.”

What is anti-Palestinian racism?

For many years, anti-Palestinian racism was something Dania Majid experienced and regularly heard about, but didn’t necessarily have a term for.

“Being in spaces where you felt like you might have to hide your identity or that your identity or your politics were being used against you — sometimes this was very overt, and sometimes it was more subtle,” she said.

But a series of high-profile cases spurred her to action, including a widely condemned decision at the University of Toronto to rescind a job offer to a scholar who had documented and spoken out against Israel’s abuse of Palestinians.

Majid began working to define the problem and chart out solutions.

The co-founder of the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association, she consulted with Palestinians and other stakeholders in Canada, the United States, Europe and Palestine, and took inspiration from Black and Indigenous struggles against racism.

The result was a 2022 report (PDF) that laid out a framework to understand and tackle anti-Palestinian racism.

“I wanted this document to be a source of healing and validation for [Palestinians] and their feelings,” Majid told Al Jazeera. “They would be able to recognise what was happening, would have a name to call it out, and have a way to express how they would like it addressed.”

The report defines anti-Palestinian racism as “a form of anti-Arab racism that silences, excludes, erases, stereotypes, defames or dehumanizes Palestinians or their narratives”. The racism can be “implicit, overt, institutional or systemic”, and it manifests in different ways, the report explains.

That includes labelling all Palestinians and their supporters as inherently anti-Semitic or violent; refusing to acknowledge Palestinian human rights; and denying the Nakba, the term used to describe the forced displacement of about 700,000 Palestinians from their homeland before and during the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.

And while anti-Palestinian racism may overlap with anti-Arab or Islamophobic hate, experts argue the category is distinct because it is specifically tied to Palestine – and to efforts to silence and exclude Palestinian perspectives.

“As soon as we talk about Palestinian human rights, we come under attack – and that’s exactly why this report was pulled together,” Majid said. “And this is why we’ve done this work, in order to create that space for us to be able to talk about Palestine and talk about our identities.”

Threats and violence

For Palestinian Canadians like Nehal Al Tarhuni, the failure to acknowledge anti-Palestinian racism can have very real consequences.

Al Tarhuni said Palestinian community members reported a daily barrage of online hate at the onset of the Gaza war, often for simply calling for a ceasefire or defending human rights.

Her organisation — the Canadian Palestinian Social Association, a non-profit in London, Ontario — was on the receiving end of the vitriol, too.

“We were getting threats in our email,” Al Tarhuni, the association’s president, told Al Jazeera. She described “nasty, hateful, racist emails being sent by individuals telling us that we’re terrorists or terrorist sympathisers, telling us to go back home”.

Then, in June, a London family’s home was set ablaze in what police said was a possible hate-motivated arson.

The targeted family was not Palestinian but had openly expressed solidarity with Palestine. The suspect had previously stolen pro-Palestinian signs from the property and had left a threatening note behind, Canadian media reported.

“Thank goodness the family wasn’t at the house when the attacker set [it] on fire,” Al Tarhuni said.

But when she tried to tell politicians in the aftermath of the incident that Palestinians and their supporters were at risk, Al Tarhuni said she was met with disbelief.

“There were some politicians that told me, ‘I don’t know what you are referring to when you say anti-Palestinian racism,’” Al Tarhuni recalled. “There is a systemic, an embedded, racism – to the point of not even recognising it exists.”

Institutional problem

That systemic racism – how governments and other institutions, such as schools and media, dehumanise and erase Palestinians – is what does the most harm to the Palestinian community, according to Majid.

“The troll on Twitter who says something … I don’t like it obviously, but they’re not the ones who are creating policies. They’re not creating laws,” she said.

Majid noted how, when Palestinians in Canada began protesting against Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip last year, Canadian politicians “set the tone” and accused participants “of attending ‘pro-terror rallies’”.

“That made our community very vulnerable – and what it did was open the door for the rest of society to adopt that line and act on it,” she explained.

Pro-Israel groups and right-wing commentators have also spent months vilifying Palestinians and their supporters in Canada, as well as condemning efforts to acknowledge anti-Palestinian racism.

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), one of Canada’s most active pro-Israel organisations, has argued that recognising anti-Palestinian racism would shut down debate, undermine efforts to fight Islamophobia, and silence victims of anti-Semitism.

And when the largest school board in Canada, the Toronto District School Board, recently included anti-Palestinian racism in its guide for addressing hate in its nearly 600 schools, CIJA attacked the move as “redefin[ing] what constitutes antisemitism”.

But Corey Balsam, the national coordinator for the social justice group Independent Jewish Voices-Canada, said recognising anti-Palestinian racism would help institutions be better equipped to distinguish between genuine anti-Semitism and valid criticism of Israel.

“We see people being tired of anti-Semitism accusations and dismissing them and saying, ‘You know what, I’m not even going to listen anymore because everything is anti-Semitic.’ So if everything is anti-Semitic, nothing is anti-Semitic. It just blurs everything,” Balsam told Al Jazeera.

For years, many pro-Israel groups have sought to paint virtually all critiques of Israel or Zionism as anti-Semitic. They also have pushed a contentious definition of anti-Semitism — from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) — that critics say aims to shut down the ability to denounce Israeli rights abuses.

“If [recognising] anti-Palestinian racism can eliminate or neutralise arguments about anti-Zionism being anti-Semitism,” Balsam said, “then hopefully we can focus on what is really a danger for Jews and address some of the conspiracy theories and genuine anti-Semitism.”

Majid also rejected the idea that recognising anti-Palestinian racism would hamper debate.

“It’s about protecting our community — whether it be our allies or Palestinians themselves — to be able to talk about Palestinian human rights without having to fear being fired from their jobs [or] having their events cancelled in schools or community centres or art spaces.”

‘Criminalising Palestinians’

Indeed, over the past year, people have lost jobs for speaking out against Israeli abuses in Gaza, and Canadian universities have threatened students with disciplinary action for erecting encampments on campus in solidarity with Palestinians.

The Ontario provincial legislature also banned Palestinian keffiyeh scarves, saying they violated a prohibition on clothing that makes an overt “political statement”.

But to many Palestinians in Canada, one of the most glaring examples of institutional racism was a special visa programme launched earlier this year that allowed Canadian citizens and permanent residents to apply to bring extended family members from Gaza to the country.

From the start, the families and immigration lawyers said the process was confusing and included invasive questions that went beyond what is typically required. They also accused Ottawa of imposing stricter requirements on Palestinians than on other people who have sought temporary visas in recent years, such as Ukrainians.

Canada approved more than 960,000 visas for Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s invasion — an 81 percent approval rate — and nearly 300,000 people arrived over a two-year span.

In contrast, the Gaza visa programme was capped at 5,000 visas. Canada’s immigration department also told Al Jazeera that, as of October 5, 733 applications from Palestinians “who exited Gaza on their own” — without help from the government — had been approved.

By that same date, only 334 Palestinians had arrived in the country, the department said, without specifying why the others had not yet landed in Canada.

“This is 100 percent racism. It’s anti-Palestinian racism,” Alsaafin, the mother of two in Ottawa, said of the visa scheme.

Her relatives are stuck in Egypt because her father is still waiting for security clearance to come to Canada via the special programme – a reality that she said highlights how Palestinians are being viewed as national security threats, rather than as people in need of refuge.

“I heard stories from families that [have] been asked to go for an interview to request more information, but the interviews were kind of an interrogation, asking: ‘What do you know about Hamas? Do you have any relatives in Hamas? Did you see injured people from Hamas?’” she told Al Jazeera.

“It’s criminalising Palestinians.”

Anti-racism strategy

As Palestinian Canadians fought to get their families out of Gaza, the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau happened to be in the process of updating its anti-racism strategy.

The federal initiative sets out policy priorities to address systemic racism and discrimination in Canada, including in the public service. And in that, Palestinian community advocates saw an opportunity.

“We pushed the government: ‘You need to recognise [anti-Palestinian racism] … We need to start by having this recognised in the anti-racism strategy,’” said Majid.

But when Ottawa unveiled its updated plan for 2024 through 2028, that call went unheeded.

The new strategy acknowledged that Canada has seen “unprecedented levels of hate towards Jewish, Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian communities” since October 2023, and that Palestinians — like “other racialized and religious minority communities” — face systemic racism.

Yet anti-Palestinian racism was not explicitly listed in the document, which defines four types of racial and religious discrimination: anti-Asian and anti-Black racism, as well as anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

“This Strategy is designed to support all at-risk communities including Palestinian Canadians,” a spokesperson for Kamal Khera, the Canadian minister who oversees the strategy, told Al Jazeera in an email when asked why anti-Palestinian racism was not formally included.

Waleed Saleem, the spokesman, said the government consulted with communities, including through a National Summit on Islamophobia and roundtable discussions “with Muslim, Arab and Palestinian Canadians”.

He added that $51m ($70m Canadian) “in direct funding to communities is available for all, including Palestinian communities”.

Salma Zahid, a Canadian MP from Trudeau’s Liberal Party who has been pushing for the inclusion of anti-Palestinian racism, told Al Jazeera she couldn’t say why the term didn’t end up in the new plan.

“What I can say is that I am pushing them to recognise this and have it included,” she said.

Zahid organised a series of roundtables over the past few months to hear from Palestinians across Canada about their experiences — and she said it is clear that anti-Palestinian racism “is systemic, it is deep, and it existed even before October 7”.

She now plans to submit a report to Khera, the minister, about what was discussed. “The purpose of this is to recognise anti-Palestinian racism, define it, and have a plan – put out recommendations – to combat it,” Zahid said.

‘No one mentioned genocide’

Despite being involved in discussions around anti-Palestinian racism, Canadian politicians continue to downplay the pain that Palestinians have experienced over the past year, community activists said.

For example, in a statement to mark the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on October 7 — which precipitated the Israeli army’s bombardment of Gaza — Trudeau described the killings in Israel as a “horrifying” act of “terror” and “cruelty”.

The prime minister, however, did not mention Gaza once in the 438-word statement. Instead, Trudeau said he mourned “all civilians killed in the year” following Hamas’s assault and that “all actors must comply with international law” — without explicitly naming Israel.

At least 1,139 people were killed in Hamas’s attack on southern Israel last year and more than 200 others were taken captive. In Gaza, more than 42,200 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s continued war on the enclave.

“It’s not like we’re seeing government language change even though we have talked about anti-Palestinian racism with them,” Majid told Al Jazeera.

The October 7 statements issued by Trudeau and other politicians made it seem as if Palestinians “didn’t exist”, she said.

“It was excluding, it was dehumanising, it was erasing,” Majid explained. “No one mentioned the genocide [in Gaza] and the toll it has taken on Palestinians.”

But despite the challenges, Majid and other Palestinian Canadians remain steadfast in their push to have anti-Palestinian racism recognised — and to ensure that they are no longer silenced.

“We can’t afford to have people silenced during genocide,” Majid said.

For her part, Alsaafin, the mother in Ottawa, said she took strength from younger generations that are speaking up for their rights and demanding to be heard. That is something she hopes to pass on to her children, aged 11 and 8, too.

“We need to teach our kids that there is nothing to be scared of, you should express yourself, you know you have the right to say your opinions,” she told Al Jazeera. “And there’s no shame to be Palestinian.”