Under Investigation: Anti-Palestinian racism at the Toronto District School Board
Desmond Cole
The words “Free Palestine” appear on a bus shelter in downtown Toronto
A Black student is suspended from school for saying the words “Free Palestine” during morning announcements. A book that includes journal entries of Palestinian children is banned from school libraries. An educator sharing anti-oppression resources on Palestine for colleagues on an opt-in basis is put under investigation and his mailout is cancelled. A student who comes to class wearing a keffiyeh—a traditional Palestinian scarf—is told to remove it or get out. Students who object to history lessons that erase Palestinian existence are told they are antisemitic.
Anti-Palestinian racism thrives at The Toronto District School Board through a regime of silencing. To say “Free Palestine” is to identify a form of settler colonial unfreedom our schools would rather not address. To say “Palestine” on its own is still a problem at the TDSB, because it suggests Palestinians have the right to name their homeland instead of using the definitions and borders imposed upon them. Supporters of Israel’s occupation of Palestininan lands have narrowed the conversation so dramatically that there’s no room, particularly in places of learning, to explore Palestinian freedom for its own sake.
I had some understanding of this when the TDSB recently invited me to speak to hundreds of its employees about anti-racism and equity. Specifically, I was asked to advise the board on “creating schools that are inclusive and where all students see themselves reflected, valued, have a sense of belonging”. I know this is impossible if Palestinian students, educators and families are punished for owning their heritage, and I said so.
A predictable backlash has followed, but I’ve also heard from many Palestinians, and from those who support their liberation struggle. They point out that so many of the people recently targeted in Toronto for boosting Palestine are not Palestinian. The penalties are too high, and the exclusion of Palestinians from spaces of influence and relative protection is overwhelming. Those who work to keep Palestinians quiet are also trying to disrupt alliances between Palestinians and other oppressed peoples. They know, as Fred Hampton of the Black Panther Party said, that solidarity is our best tool to defeat racism.
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Rafeef Ziadah’s first poetry gig was at a Toronto high school seventeen years ago. Ziadah, who now lives and teaches at SOAS University in London, England, had recently moved to Canada to pursue a PhD at York University. She and a group of friends had formed Pueblo Unido, a spoken word group with young people from marginalized communities.The group booked its first performance at Earl Haig Secondary School in North York in 2004.
“The event went really well, “Ziadah told me during an interview. “I had a huge number of young women, mostly from the Middle East, come up to me and say, ‘we’ve never heard anything like this in our school, we are so happy we have a voice like this.’”
Ziadah also recalled a young man of Israeli descent who introduced himself afterwards and said he didn’t appreciate a line in her poem about her grandfather’s stolen land—the poet’s Palestinian family was forced out of Haifa in 1948 and fled to Lebanon. “It was a few weeks later that I realized there was a big hullabaloo about the event,” said Ziadah, “It was being investigated. The person who invited us was having to explain why we were invited but also if there was any vetting that had taken place.”
Simon Rosenblum of the Canadian Jewish Congress released a statement saying a student had complained to his group about Ziadah’s poetry. Rosenblum wrote that “from the description, it appeared that the Palestinian rap was not about Middle East politics or Israeli government policy but about the evils of Israelis as a people.”
CJC demanded that the TDSB investigate, and Canadian Jewish News covered the incident with the headline, “Anti-Israel School Presentation in Toronto Under Investigation”. Josh Bloch, the festival director who had booked Ziadah, replied in a statement, “It is important to emphasize that neither the Canadian Jewish Congress nor the Canadian Jewish News had ever read the poem before concluding that the presentation was anti-semitic and anti-Israel.”
Ziadah said that “throughout these complaints, not a single person spoke to me personally to ask ‘what did you say? Was there a problem? How do you feel about this?’ There was never a conversation from anybody, not from the school or from the board, around what happened. But I haven’t been invited—and I know a lot of other people who would be speaking about Palestine—haven’t been invited to a school since.”
Ziadah went on to write a PhD dissertation entitled “Outside the Multicultural: Solidarity and the Silencing of Palestinian Narratives.” She argues that Canadian institutions “attempt to cast pro-Palestine advocacy as racist by claiming it is antisemitic” and that “the ability to label Palestinian solidarity activism as racist ensures the silencing and exclusion of Palestinian narratives.” Ziadah kept fighting institutional and state suppression through activism and art—she was a driving force behind Israeli Apartheid Week on university campuses and the founding of the Toronto Palestinian Film Festival.
The institutional reactions to Ziadah’s poetry tell us a lot about the desire to silence Palestinians in local schools. The young Middle Eastern women who saw themselves in a work of art, the poets experiencing their first performance, the patient sharing of perspective with someone who had concerns—this is what education can and should be. The pro-Israel activists who condemned Ziadah centred themselves in her expression, and essentially demanded that the TDSB investigate her for making them uncomfortable.
The word “investigation” is so synonymous with pro-Israel activism that the media will often report that something or someone is “under investigation”, when no formal process is taking place. Institutions and pro-Israel groups keep Palestinian people and their allies under perpetual investigation, and the power to sustain this scrutiny matters more than the outcome of any particular situation.
In recent history, Conservative pro-Israel groups like the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), B’nai Brith Canada, and the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre (FSWC) have been using blanket condemnations of antisemitism to suppress Palestinian self-expression and criticisms of Israel. In 2006, the Canadian Jewish Congress (whose operations were later taken over by CIJA) questioned the use in TDSB schools of a book entitled Three Wishes: Palestinian and Israeli Children Speak. The CJC argued that the book may not be appropriate for younger students, even though it contained journal entries of children as young as eight.
As the Globe and Mail reported, “The Toronto District School Board then withdrew the book from library shelves and restricted access to students in Grade 7 or higher.” Alan Cumyn of PEN Canada warned that the decision “sets a dangerous precedent, practically inviting special-interest groups to bombard school boards and school libraries with protests about other particular groups.”
In 2010, the TDSB banned Israeli Apartheid Week events from all its properties. School trustee James Pasternak, who pushed for the ban, also proposed that the TDSB send an official letter to the University of Toronto to condemn the school for hosting similar events. Pasternak argued in part that U of T was training teachers who ended up at the TDSB. “I don’t consider that a healthy environment,” he told the Canadian Jewish News.
In 2014, Ausma Malik campaigned for a downtown TDSB trustee seat. Malik eventually won and was hailed as the first hijab-wearing Muslim woman to hold elected office in Canada. Throughout the campaign, Toronto Sun columnist Sue-Ann Levy and other right-wing activists wrote pieces suggesting Malik was antisemitic, in part for her condemnation of Israeli airstrikes into Lebanon in 2006.
Rima Berns-McGown, who was then a lecturer at the University of Toronto, questioned the motive behind the Islamophobic attacks: “Is the real issue that the smearers are worried that Malik, as a school trustee, would insert views about Israel that they disagree with into school-related issues?” The conflation of criticism of Israel with antisemitism has definitely influenced TDSB policy, and has generally framed Arab, Muslim, and Palestinian decision-makers as threats to order.
Forest Hill Collegiate Institute was the site of a dispute in 2018 over a banner for Jewish Heritage Month that used the Israeli flag as its background. The previous day, Israel’s military had killed at least 58 Palestinians protesting the occupation of Gaza, and had wounded more than 2,700 others. As students expressed discomfort with the banner, a Black student said the phrase “Free Palestine” during morning announcements. B’nai Brith Canada tweeted about the incident, claiming the student had “yelled” the words, and added, “We have been assured that this was not approved by the school and that an investigation is underway.”
In an anonymous letter, a group of students who attended Forest Hill during this time wrote about their experiences. They described a school environment where some students wore sweaters and t-shirts of the Israel Defense Forces, while those who called out thex anti-Palestinian racism, including the school’s principal, were called antisemitic.
“The TDSB has promised for years to protect its students but we, apparently, were not included in that commitment,” the letter reads. “We graduated feeling hopeless and wounded, scared into silence on the issue of Palestine, as the guilt of what the TDSB allowed to occur with our principal still lives with us today.”
The students only published the letter earlier this year. They chose to speak out after the TDSB launched an investigation into the actions of Javier Davila, a student equity program adviser who has been sharing an opt-in resource list for educators for over a decade. The board investigated Davila after Levy, the Sun columnist who also wrote about trustee Malik, suggested Davila had shared antisemitic resources with other educators.
Levy and others cited as evidence a resource that describes the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands as racist and genocidal. The resource also says Palestinians have been resisting the violence against them, mainly through non-violent resistance but also through force—a historical fact.
Davila learned he was under investigation by reading one of Levy’s columns, and the board repeatedly provided comments to Levy about his investigation, who wrote multiple columns accusing Davila of antisemitism, hate, and promoting terrorism. Both the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) and B’nai Brith made public comments on social media and on their websites accusing Davila of antisemitism and promoting terrorism. B’nai Brith CEO Michael Mostyn went so far as to say Davila should be fired.
After thousands of people signed petitions and letters in support of Davila, including statements from national unions and organizations such as CUPE and Independent Jewish Voices, the TDSB dropped its investigation. Although Davila faced no formal discipline, the board cancelled his opt-in mailout, an essential resource that regularly highlighted community events, programs, and supports for marginalized students.
Even administrators who openly support Palestine seem to be moving with great caution. Harpreet Ghuman, a TDSB superintendent, posted a tweet in May during Eid al-Fitr, the end of fasting for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, a celebratory occasion that coincided this year with Israel’s fatal attacks in Gaza. Ghuman acknowledged the heavy hearts of many Muslims and included the hashtag #FreePalestine in the tweet. The message has since disappeared from Twitter.
In a piece written upon his reinstatement at TDSB, Davila, described “an absence of institutional protection for educators who support Palestine.” Yet he noted that something seemed to be changing at TDSB, that more people had been willing to voice support for Palestinian liberation through his ordeal.
Nevertheless, many are still afraid to share their stories, especially if they are Palestinian. In my research for this piece, I spoke with numerous TDSB teachers, officials, and community members who did not feel safe sharing their stories on the record, most of whom are Palestinian. Their stories of racist treatment within the TDSB span back to the 1980s, when Palestinians were garnering international attention with their Intifada (Arabic for “uprising”) against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
Parents told me stories of staff threatening to send students home for wearing “Free Palestine” t-shirts, or clothing with the Palestinian flag. Educators spoke of TDSB board members and communications staff surveilling their social media accounts and demanding explanations about their pro-Palestinian messages. One educator explained how the board investigated them for their pro-Palestine advocacy outside of school. Several educators said they are afraid to share resources in class about Palestine, or to even engage in conversations on Palestinian struggle.
Palestinians who talked with me anonymously also spoke of their daily anxieties for the safety of family members in Israel and Palestine; of fears that they may be denied entry to these lands for their public statements in Canada; and of concerns they can only do so much to prepare their children from anti-Palestinian racism at the TDSB. One parent told the story of a student who was reprimanded for wearing a keffiyeh to class. “The teacher told them, ‘either take that or get out,” the parent said.
In late May, 30 anonymous TDSB administrators sent a letter to interim director Karen Falconer expressing concerns about erasures of Palestinian sovereignty and right to life. “The failure to provide space and support for staff and students in the TDSB to discuss anti-Palestinianism and the impact of the occupation of Palestinian territories is an act of Islamophobia and anti-Palestinianism that is being enacted daily on our TDSB community,” the letter states. It is signed, “TDSB Administrators (anonymous for fear of reprisal).”
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Earlier this year, the TDSB published research saying it has a “serious racism problem.” The board’s own data revealed what many have been saying for decades: particular groups of students and their communities are pushed out of the system, or left behind, or treated as inferior. Given my own work as an anti-racist journalist and activist, the board invited me in late September to speak at four separate online events with hundreds of administrators, support staffers, vice-principals, principals, superintendents, executives, and trustees.
I explained before my presentations that I wanted to address specific TDSB policy failures and disciplinary actions—and that I would be extremely direct and critical. My hosts said the board had reached out to me for exactly this kind of presentation. I prepared my remarks and planned the same address for all four sessions. At the first one, last Monday morning, I spoke about the reality that for many people, the TDSB functions as an institution of surveillance and control, rather than one of education.
I cited the board’s investigation of Javier Davila, as well as its shameful treatment of other racialized educators, parents, and students. While I know this made many uncomfortable, it was my utterance, at all four learning sessions, of the words “Free Palestine” that incited panic, anger, and a racist backlash I’ve been dealing with ever since.
I received numerous messages of thanks after my first two talks, especially from Black and other racialized attendees. I then had two days off between sessions, and received a call around at 7:30 p.m. on the evening before the final two learning sessions. It was Jim Spyropoulos, the TDSB’s Executive Superintendent of Human Rights and Indigenous Education (he is not Indigenous).
Spyropoulos told me he wanted to address my “Free Palestine” comment, but also said he was calling to ask if I would voluntarily cancel my session for the following morning. When I asked why, Spyropoulos it was important that my remaining audiences heard the same messages, and that combining the last two sessions into one would help with that. “We’ll pay you the same amount,” he added.
When I asked if Spyropoulos had heard either of the two initial presentations he said no. His request sounded like an attempt to reduce my audience. I said I wanted to carry on as planned. Spyropoulos paused before saying he’d now have to go back to the board with my refusal. It sounded like a threat, but I repeated that I wanted to stick with the plan.
I also said there was nothing wrong with the term “Free Palestine”. Spyropoulos told me the remark had made some people uncomfortable. Wasn’t this the point of the presentation, I asked? To share uncomfortable truths about the way the board is treating oppressed people, including Palestinians? Spyropoulos sounded disappointed, and we ended the call with the same plan as before. I was very frustrated but not at all surprised, as institutions always want the sanitized versions of Black people to use as examples of their progress.
For the final two presentations the next day, several TDSB executive and system superintendents interrupted my online presentations by talking over me on the Zoom calls. Uton Robinson cut me off to ask for context around the words “Free Palestine”. Lorraine Linton justified her interruption by claiming there was no “common understanding” of the term. Shirley Chan objected that “some people have said ‘Free Palestine’ means the destruction of Israel.” I responded that statements such as “Free Palestine” and “Black Lives Matter” are about uplifting oppressed people, and that those invested in our oppression will often manipulate and weaponize our demands for freedom.
TDSB officials didn’t have a legitimate reason to cancel the talks, so they tried to delegitimize me in front of their membership. Despite their actions, all of these superintendents thanked me during and after my presentations for helping advance their conversations and work. I received tremendous support from TDSB members who are Black, Palestinian, Muslim, and racialized. Black folks repeatedly noted their impressions that Black and other racialized TDSB members were sent to interrupt and silence me.
Shortly after the final presentation, TDSB director Colleen Russell-Rawlins released an internal statement to staff. She claimed that “the keynote speaker introduced a number of unanticipated topics that were not discussed prior to the presentation.” I did, of course, disclose before the presentations that I’d be criticizing specific board policies, practices, and disciplinary processes. Also, Russell-Rawlins’ description of a singular and surprising “presentation” obscures the fact that I delivered four, over four days.
Russell-Rawlins apologized in her letter “for the harm that may have been caused” and reassured staff that the board was moving ahead with a prior plan to create resources about Israel and Palestine with the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (who referred to Davila’s resources as “terrorist materials”) and the National Council of Canadian Muslims. Apart from citing my statements, the letter did not refer to Palestine or Palestinians. Russell-Rawlins also did not name me in the letter, I was only described as “the keynote speaker.”
Jim Spyropoulos sent me a text message the same evening the letter was released: “Just wanted to say thank you…would love to grab a coffee with you when you can…”
Following my final presentation, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre released a statement accusing me of going off script to talk about Palestinian liberation, and falsely suggested I was only invited to the TDSB to talk about anti-Black racism (the board’s request to me never mentioned the term).
FSWC’s claim that I went “off-script” from my own presentation, and its false assumption that I was invited to the TDSB to speak only about anti-Black racism, is a familiar and racist attempt by white pro-Israel groups to conflate Jewish identity with whiteness, and to position antisemitism outside other conversations about racism and discrimination. Such positions erase the existence of Black Jews in general, and the specific subjugation of Black Palestinians and Ethiopian Israelis.
Many Afro-Palestinians speak of a “double-racism” they experience under Israeli occupation as both Palestinian and dark-skinned. The Economist reported in 2019 that “Ethiopian-Israeli minors are three times as likely to be arrested as their non-black counterparts.” The claim that anti-Palestinian racism is a diversion from conversations about anti-Blackness and racism in general is ahistorical and divisive.
Such claims are part of a pattern of pro-Israel groups singling out Black activists and thinkers, while claiming to fight anti-racism generally. Recently such groups have targeted Angela Davis, Cornell West, Mark Lamont-Hill, and Black Lives Matter organizers in the United States. In Canada, B’nai Brith has attacked the McGill Black Students Network and the Black Medical Students Association of Canada for supporting Palestine. In this way, some pro-Israel groups are willing to mobilize their whiteness to harm Black activists and suppress Black expressions of solidarity with Palestinians.
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Through its equity policy, the TDSB has defined antisemitism as “latent or overt hostility, or hatred directed towards, or discrimination against, individual Jewish people or the Jewish people for reasons connected to their religion, ethnicity, and their cultural, historical, intellectual, and religious heritage.”
In 2016, a new definition of antisemitism was created by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), a group of 34 countries who have created the language to silence legitimate criticisms of the state of Israel. The IHRA defines antisemitism as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”
In 2018, elected trustee Shelley Laskin moved a successful motion to change the TDSB’s definition of antisemitism to the IHRA definition. Despite this vote, the previous definition is still used on the TDSB’s website and equity documents.
As Independent Jewish Voices has pointed out, the “working definition” the IHRA uses is accompanied by 11 examples of antisemitism, 7 of which directly reference Israel. Members push institutions in their respective countries to adopt this new definition, which aims to paint criticisms of Israel as discriminatory and even criminal. Although it has not been widely adopted in Canada, the IHRA definition has been used to characterize pro-Palestinian expressions at university campuses and businesses as hateful.
Ziadah said in our interview that although the mere utterance of “Free Palestine” does not itself appear violate the IHRA definition, “the definition is so vague and broad that it has created this chilling atmosphere where even uttering the word ‘Palestine’ is a problem.” Citing attempts to criminalize Black Lives Matter organizing and environmental justice work in the United Kingdom, Ziadah warned that “any chilling effect on social movements does not just affect Palestine, it affects all of us, and all of the kinds of organizing and freedoms we want to have.”
Jehad Aliweiwi was born in Hebron but moved to Toronto as a student in 1987. Today he is executive director at Laidlaw Foundation and the father of three children attending school at the TDSB (for transparency: Aliweiwi was also my boss over ten years ago when we both worked at Thorncliffe Neighbourhood Office). In a recent interview he said, “we need to know as parents: is the word ‘Palestine’ illegal? Do I have to tell my kids that your culture is not legal, so be careful? If this is the message they’re sending, I have to challenge it at the highest level.”
Aliweiwi says the TDSB is giving in to sustained pressure from certain groups on this complex issue and is ignoring Palestinian voices as a result. “There is this cruise-control type response from the pro-Israel lobby in this country that is shocking, that is violent, and that is targeting Palestinians young and old, and their advocates.”
Dania Majid, a Palestinian and the president of the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association, told me that “people who fight against racism all have a desire to fight all forms of hate, including antisemitism. But the IHRA definition perpetuates another form of hate, against Palestinians.” She points out that Kenneth Stern, the lead drafter of the IHRA definition, wrote in 2019 that right-wing Jewish groups have been weaponizing the definition mainly against individuals, events, and demonstrations they disagree with, rather than specific acts of antisemitism.
Stern, who calls himself a Zionist, wrote that “historically, antisemitism thrives best when leaders stoke the human capacity to define an “us” and a “them,” and where the integrity of democratic institutions and norms (such as free speech) are under assault.” Majid, who was born in Toronto, said the city’s institutions are indeed facing this pressure, and that if the TDSB was really concerned with anti-racism, “what happened to Javier Davila, and to you, Desmond, would never have happened.”
The board is doubling down, with TDSB spokesperson Ryan Bird saying last week that board staffers had a duty to interrupt me because my remarks were potentially problematic or inappropriate. “The TDSB does not support hate of any kind and we apologize for the harm that may have been caused.” Bird didn’t specify which of my remarks the board considered hateful, but his statement suggests the TDSB views “Free Palestine” and “settler colonialism” (in specific reference to Israel) as potential hate speech.
Muna Saleh, a Palestinian educator in Edmonton, Alberta, told me bluntly in an interview that “Israel is a settler colonial creation. There’s no way to make that sound or look pretty.” Saleh’s family was attacked and displaced in the 1948 war between Israel, Palestine, and several neighbouring Arab countries. Israeli forces ethnically cleansed Palestinians, including her grandparents, from her native village of Qadha Safad in May of 1948, destroyed their homes, and occupied their lands (the Wikipedia entry for the area says it was “depopulated” during the war).
Saleh is critical of the TDSB’s tendency to frame the conversation in strictly religious terms and cites religious advocacy groups as mediators. “You are erasing Palestinians who are Christian, who are atheist, or who have different beliefs in general. It is not a Muslim vs. Jewish issue.”
Regarding TDSB’s secondment of both CIJA and National Council of Canadian Muslims to provide education, Saleh says that local Palestinian voices need to be more prominent. “NCCM has made is clear that they are standing in solidarity with Palestinians, but it cannot be the only representative for Palestinians.”
TDSB’s pairing of NCCM with CIJA to address antisemitism is troubling given that CIJA suggested earlier this summer that NCCM was fomenting violence against Jews. CIJA was referring to an NCCM demand that Canada condemn Israel’s attack of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, during which Israeli soldiers fired rubber-coated steel bullets, tear gas, and stun grenades at Palestinians. Mustafa Farooq, NCCM’s chief executive, told me in an interview that the organization “is deeply disappointed with the TDSB’s response to your talk. We will never allow our work to be used to sanitize expressions of the emancipation of Palestinian people.”
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The fight for Palestinian visibility, dignity, and expression at the TDSB continues, and is powered by Palestinian resistance to disproportionate Israeli power and aggression on occupied lands. During an eleven-day period in May of 2021, the Israeli military killed 253 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded 1,948 others. During the same time period, Palestinians killed 9 Israelis, including a soldier, and three foreign nationals.
Human Rights Watch said Israel’s destruction of high-rise buildings may amount to war crimes. On May 18th Palestinian workers in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and within Israel organized a general strike. Independent Palestinian politician Mustafa Barghouti said the show of solidarity “reflects how Palestinians now have a unified struggle against the same system of apartheid.” Groups like Human Rights Watch, Yesh Din, and B’Tselem also use the language of apartheid to describe Israel’s occupation.
Davila’s observation that more people here are speaking out rings true. Among the thousands who supported him were a multi-racial collection of local groups fighting for queer and trans rights, Black liberation, and labour rights.
There has also been tremendous organizing for the recent academic censure of University of Toronto over interference by a tax judge in a hiring process. Justice David Spiro called U of T to object to the hiring an international legal scholar critical of Israeli government policy”; he got info about the hiring process from CIJA, where he served as a director of the board before becoming a judge.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation also faced criticism in recent years for biased coverage of Israel’s occupation. Last year, after CBC radio host Duncan McCue used the word “Palestine” in an interview, the network edited out the word from subsequent broadcasts and the online recording. The following day, McCue gave a bizarre apology on air: “Yesterday in my interview with Joe Sacco, I referred to the Palestinian Territories as ‘Palestine’. We apologize. My bad.” Listeners who thought the censorship was bad filed complaints and exposed CBC, which is good, or is at least better than allowing such erasures to happen quietly.
Yet we should dwell on the observation that anti-Palestinian racism prevents its targets from speaking for themselves. Ziadah noted that “there is something to say about how anti-Palestinian racism operates when it’s a Palestinian speaking, and the stories that you don’t hear about, of people not being able to get tenure, not being able to be hired, simply because they are Palestinian.”
There’s a need to push back in solidarity against the racist and reactionary culture that makes someone else the main stakeholder in Palestinian issues. As Saleh said during our chat, “calling for freedom for yourself and others should never be viewed as hate speech.”