Feds Cut Funding for Anti-Racism Project Over ‘Vile’ Tweets

Diversity Minister Ahmed Hussen has ordered the government to cut funding to an anti-racism initiative over “reprehensible and vile” tweets by a senior consultant on the project.

Hussen announced Monday that the initiative run by the Community Media Advocacy Centre – which received more than $133,000 from the Heritage Department – has been suspended.

The move follows a Canadian Press report on tweets posted to the account of Laith Marouf, a senior consultant on the project to build an anti-racism strategy for Canadian broadcasting.

One tweet read: “You know all those loud mouthed bags of human feces, a.k.a. the Jewish White Supremacists; when we liberate Palestine and they have to go back to where they come from, they will return to being low voiced bitches of thier (sic) Christian/Secular White Supremacist Masters.”

Hussen said in a statement that “antisemitism has no place in this country.”

“We have provided notice to the Community Media Advocacy Centre (CMAC) that their funding has been cut and their project has been suspended,” he said.

“We call on CMAC, an organization claiming to fight racism and hate in Canada to answer to how they came to hire Laith Marouf, and how they plan on rectifying the situation given the nature of his antisemitic and xenophobic comments.”

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Marouf declined requests to comment. His lawyer Stephen Ellis has drawn a distinction between his client’s tweets about people he calls “Jewish white supremacists” and Jews in general, saying Marouf harbours no animus toward the Jewish faith as a collective group.

“While not the most artfully expressed, the tweets reflect a frustration with the reality of Israeli apartheid and a Canadian government which collaborates with it,” Ellis said Monday.

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Mark Goldberg, a telecommunications consultant, said he followed Marouf on Twitter and took screenshots of his tweets before complaining to the social-media network. {snip}

In one of Goldberg’s screenshots, a tweet posted to Marouf’s account commented on the death of former U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell.

“Colin Powell, the Jamaican house-slave of the Empire who extinguished the lives of millions of people with his lies, died a painful death unable to breath (sic). If there was any good that came from this pandemic, it would be his death on the birthday of the prophet of Islam,” it said.

Another screencapped tweet said: “I have a motto: Life is too short for shoes with laces, or for entertaining Jewish White Supremacists with anything but a bullet to the head.”

Yet another read: “lol, I think Frogs have much less IQ than 77, and French is an ugly language.”

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