A coalition of Canadian anti-Zionist groups have launched a campaign to shut down Jewish summer camps for children across the country.
The action is targeting 17 Jewish overnight summer camps due to their supposed support for Israel.
In a post on Action Network – an activist platform where the group behind the campaign, Just Peace Advocates, hopes to rally support – organisers wrote: “There are countless explanations for why summer camps are good for kids...But what happens when camps support a genocidal State?”
The continued: “These camps are not problematic because they encourage connection to Jewish identity. Rather, they pose a problem because they encourage support for a genocidal, settler-colonial state.”
The group has identified camps in Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, and Nova Scotia, and aims to have each stripped of the necessary accreditation through a letter-writing campaign.
In a statement posted on social media, the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto said it was “aware of a campaign by anti-Israel agitators seeking to bully and harass some of our camps” and called the effort “a deliberate act of intimidation”.
The Ontario Camps Association (OCA), a body that accredits camps, also issued a statement after its Jewish executive director was named, pictured and labelled as “a Zionist who publicly supports Israel, its military, and promotes anti-Palestinian racism” in a separate on the Just Peace Advocates website.
“The accusations, aimed at our executive director, members of the OCA team, and several member camps draw directly on stereotyped libels and tropes related to Israel, Zionism and Jewish people – including ‘genocide’ and ‘colonisers’ symbolic categories that are so often spread with specifically malicious intent.”
To get more news, click here to sign up for our free daily newsletter.