PC Contributor Yves Engler: How I was attacked, again, for disrupting an anti-Palestinian event (VIDEO) | Biden News

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Palestine Chronicle contributor Yves Engler was attacked again for disrupting an anti-Palestinian event. (Photo: video)

By Yves Engler

On Sunday, Canadian activist Bill Sloan and I interrupted a Technion Canada fundraiser to challenge its support of the Israeli military and the role of government-sponsored charities in promoting Israeli apartheid.

Upon entering the room, I stated “Technion Canada supports the Israeli military and the Israeli military’s war crimes. Technion Canada has projects that support the Israeli military. Free Palestine.”

In response a 65-year-old man in a suit rushed across the room to punch me in the head. Sloan and many in the audience witnessed the attack. The man’s aggression can be seen in my video of the incident. This came a week after he was stabbed in the stomach and head after interrupting a public presentation by Hillel Neuer of the anti-Palestinian UN Watch.

Technion Canada’s Water and Whiskey fundraiser was $200 per ticket. The publicity for the event highlighted “Sponsorship Opportunities: starting at $1,800. Tax receipts will be issued for the maximum amount allowed under CRA [Canada Revenue Agency] rules.”

A registered charity able to provide tax receipts that can cover approximately 40% of an individual’s donation, Technion Canada has helped raise enormous sums for the Israel Institute of Technology. According to the 2020 report Who Gives and Who Gets: The Beneficiaries of Private Foundation Philanthropy, the single top recipient of private Canadian foundations between 2014 and 2018 was Technion, which received $89 million. (University of Toronto was the second largest beneficiary at $59 million.)

More than other Israeli universities, Technion has great ties to the IDF. “Technion has almost enlisted in the Israeli armed forces,” noted a pamphlet by New Yorkers Against the Cornell-Technion Partnership. It has various research and student initiatives with the IDF. Technion, for example, has developed a remote-controlled bulldozer that the IDF uses to demolish Palestinian homes.

Some Technion Canada funds are specifically allocated to strengthen its ties to the Israeli military. In an April 2021 story titled “Helping Those Who Guard Israel,” Technion Canada reported, “Brothers Richard (Rick) and Barry Sacks and their families are longtime Technion supporters. They recently chose to help fund Technion’s Program to Support Students in the IDF , a unique program that provides special support to students whose education is interrupted by Milium. [reserve duty] service.”

Technion Canada’s support for the IDF may violate CRA rules, which state that “increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of Canada’s armed forces is charitable, but supporting the armed forces of another country is not.”

The sums collected for Israeli universities are large. Canadian Friends of Tel Aviv University, Canadian Friends of Haifa University and 10 other similar groups help raise tens of millions of dollars each year for Israeli universities.

Located in the West Bank settlement of Ariel, Canadian Friends of Ariel University appears to have recently lost its charitable status. On a page for Friends of Ariel University, the Canada Helps charity database notes, “due to information from the Canada Revenue Agency, we are unable to accept donations at this time.” It violates CRA rules to aid illegal West Bank settlements.

The subsidies provided to Israel-focused charities should be a political scandal. As I have detailed elsewhere, many registered charities assist the Israeli military, settlement projects, and racist organizations, all of which should run afoul of CRA rules. Beyond that, registered charities raise more than a quarter of a billion dollars a year for initiatives in Israel, which has a GDP per capita equal to that of Canada.

A recent article in the Journal of White Collar and Corporate Crime offers a window into the extent of resource transfer and questionable financial practices. In “International Cash Conduits and Real Estate Empires: A Case Study in Canadian Philanthropic Crime” professors Miles Howe and Paul Sylvestre document what they call the “burner charity phenomenon… Much like burners, burn charities appear disposable and easily replaced. Tracking three burner charities (Gates of Mercy, Beth Oloth, and the Jewish Heritage Foundation) across two decades, we outline a relationship of activity and dormancy, in which after an active burner charity has its charitable status revoked, a subsequent burner charity is activated in its place.”

With no website, an address listed in a home and only two active board members, Beth Oloth’s annual fundraising grew from thousands of dollars to $61 million between 2011 and 2017. In addition to serving as a conduit for donations, the CRA revoked Beth Oloth’s charity. status in 2019 for “increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of the Israeli armed forces” and financing projects in the occupied West Bank. But no one was prosecuted and Beth Oloth activities may have been replaced by another “burner charity”.

Howe and Sylvestre conclude, “by tracking the performance of the Gates of Mercy, Beth Oloth, and the Jewish Heritage Foundations between 2000 and 2020, we sought to show a pattern of regulatory violation through which more than $400 million in tax-sheltered funds were transferred from Canada to international agents, or, in the regulatory language of the CRA, “non-qualified donees,” located primarily in Israel and the United States.”

Much of the funds transferred from registered charities to Israel violate CRA rules. Canada’s revenue agency should be pressured to apply its laws more vigorously on the matter. But more generally should all Canadians be subsidizing the donations of individuals to a wealthy apartheid state?

Even if it means taking a few more punches from Israeli nationalists who have learned from the violence they support in that country, I will continue to challenge Technion Canada and other “charities” enabling Palestinian dispossession.

– Yves Engler is the author of Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid and a number of other books. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle. Visit his website: yvesengler.com.



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