First published in State Crime Journal.
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Tracking Financial Complicity in Israeli War Crimes and Genocide: Instances of Aiding and Abetting in the Canadian Charitable Sector
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research-article

Author(s): Miles Howe
Publication date (Electronic, pub): 30 May 2025
Journal: State Crime Journal
Publisher: Pluto Journals
Keywords: philanthropic crime, war crimes, Israel, Canada, financial complicity, aiding and abetting
Abstract
Utilizing tax return data gathered through Access to Information requests, this article probes the Canadian charitable sector for evidence of financial complicity in the aiding and abetting of Israeli war criminality and genocide. The evidence suggests that of the overall charitable donations heading from Canada to Israel, a significant percentage is bankrolling Israeli intermediaries directly involved in illegal settlement and military-related activities, in contravention of Canadian and international legal frameworks. Troublingly, an exhaustive probe of the potential Canadian charitable sector complicity was not possible, due to substantial deficiencies in reporting requirements. The overall lack of regulatory enforcement surrounding donations heading to Israel—in the light of credible unresolved accusations of anti-Muslim bias levied against the Canadian charitable regulator, specifically as it pertains to over-enforcement—raises troubling questions surrounding complicity in Israeli war criminality/genocide.
Main article text
Introduction
Israel’s genocidal siege of Gaza, since 7 October 2023, has put international complicity in Zionist expansion under a heightened degree of civil-society-derived pressure and scrutiny. Notably, the 19 July 2024 ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) concerning the patent illegality of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, and Gaza (ICJ 2024) was promptly followed up by a near-unanimous General Assembly vote at the United Nations, on 18 September 2024, confirming support for the advisory opinion (UN 2024b). The General Assembly vote was then followed up on 18 October 2024 by the publication of a Position Paper of the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel. The intention of the Position Paper was to guide member states as to their responsibilities in implementing the ICJ’s ruling, towards mitigating the potential of state complicity in Israel’s illegal occupation. Notably, as it pertains to this investigation, paragraph 31 of the Position Paper made specific note of the potential for non-profit-sector-derived financial complicity, warning that:
With respect to non-profit or non-governmental organizations, States must carefully review any organization that is financially or politically supporting the unlawful occupation. States shall not give support to these organizations, for example through allowing the organization to have tax-exempt status or providing tax deductibility for donations to the organization and must ensure that financial contributions to support the unlawful occupation, including settlements and settlers, cease. (UN 2024d)
In Canada, from where I write, efforts at highlighting non-profit-sector complicity in the aiding and abetting of Israeli war crimes and genocide have gained traction within civil society. In mid-2024, a call for an immediate investigation into Canadian charities providing funds to Israeli settlements and the Israeli military gathered over 12,000 signatures and was raised in the Canadian parliament (House of Commons 2024). A National Day of Action against charitable sector complicity in Israeli war crimes and genocide, the first of its kind, targeted Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) offices across the country (BDS Movement 2024). The Canadian arts sector worked to boycott participation in competitions accepting prize money from charities and financial institutions complicit in war crimes and genocide, specifically the high-profile “Giller Prize”, Canada’s most prestigious literary award (Maimann 2024). An “Indigo Kills Kids” campaign (Indigo Kills Kids 2024)—targeting Zionist billionaires Gerald Schwartz and Heather Reisman, and the actions of their Heseg Foundation, which incentivizes “lone soldier” immigration to Israel (the colloquial name given to those who voluntarily immigrate to Israel without their biological families, then undertake mandatory military service) via offers of scholarships in exchange for service in the Israeli military (see Canadians for a Just Peace in the Middle East or CJPME 2023)—inspired actions at Indigo chain bookstores across Canada (Raveendran 2024). And, notably, the CRA revoked the charitable statuses of two Canadian charities complicit in Israeli war crimes: the Ne’eman Foundation Canada and the Jewish National Fund of Canada (CRA 2024e, 2024f)—the latter had been a focal point for decades-long activist campaigns, specifically for its greenwashing activities in occupied Palestine (see Canadian Broadcasting Corporation 1991).
Yet the degree of Canadian philanthropic complicity in the aiding and abetting of Israeli war crimes and genocide remains unknown. The recent case study of Howe (2024) concerning one such complicit Canadian charitable organization, the Mizrachi Organization of Canada, points towards an extrapolatable methodology that might be utilized towards scoping the entirety of the charitable donations moving out of Canada and into the hands of Israeli intermediaries. It is the aim of the following investigation to first create a list of all the Canadian charities that claimed to have utilized an Israeli intermediary in fiscal year 2023 (the most up-to-date financial data available), and then to investigate the operations of each of these Israeli intermediaries, in turn, for evidence of war criminality and complicity in genocide. This exercise should, theoretically, yield a comprehensive accounting of the degree of financial complicity in Israeli war crimes and genocide within the Canadian charitable sector.
This paper moves forward in four sections. Making use of pertinent international and Canadian national legal frameworks, the first section provides a working definition of Israeli war crimes and genocide. This first section also considers the legal parameters within which Canadian charities operate and argues that in providing funding to Israeli intermediaries active in war criminality and genocide, the implicated Canadian charities are committing an indictable offence under the Canadian Criminal Code. The second section considers the Mizrachi Canada case study of Howe (2024). In briefly recapping the case study’s findings, this second section considers the possibility of Canadian state complicity in Israeli war criminality and genocide, specifically in the light of accusations of anti-Muslim bias relating to the operations of the CRA, the charitable sector regulator in Canada. The third section outlines the methodology utilized in guiding the investigation and discusses its parameters, while the fourth section presents the overall findings.
1. Israeli War Criminality and Canadian Complicity in the Charitable Sector
A. Ongoing War Crimes of Occupation
In finding that Israel’s occupation and settlement of Palestinian territory are patently illegal under international law, the ICJ (2024) added its legal opinion to one of the most settled issues in modern international law. The illegality of the Israeli occupation has been affirmed in recent years by the United Nations General Assembly (UN 2023b), the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UN 2024e), the UN Human Rights Council (UN 2023a), and the UN Security Council (UN 1980a, 1980b, 2016)—and previously by the ICJ in the “Wall Advisory Opinion” (2004), the Declaration of Conference of High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention (2014), European Union External Action (2021), Amnesty International (2019), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) (Maurer 2012), Human Rights Watch (2019), Al-Haq (2021), and B’Tselem (2019).
For its part, the ICRC has stated that prohibitions against population transfers and the creation of settlements comprise aspects of customary international law—the set of internationally wrongful acts that states are internationally responsible for preventing (see Crawford 2002). In the ICRC’s comprehensive study on customary international humanitarian law (Henckaerts and Doswald-Beck 2005), Rule 130 states that “States may not deport or transfer parts of their own civilian population into the territory they occupy”. As it pertains specifically to Canadian state responsibility, war criminality relating to settlements has been directly incorporated into Canadian law under two Acts. Mirroring the exact language found in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Article 8(2)(viii) of the Canadian Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act (Government of Canada 2000) includes the following within its definition of a war crime:
the transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies, or the deportation or transfer of all or parts of the population of the occupied territory within or outside this territory…
Mirroring the exact language found in the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, the Canadian Geneva Conventions Act (Government of Canada 1985a) states, at Schedule IV, Article 49, para. 6, that “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies”. Under Schedule V, Article 85(4)(a), of the Canadian Geneva Conventions Act, Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are deemed to be a “grave breach” of the Act. Solidifying the matter, Global Affairs Canada has further confirmed, in a public policy statement, that it is the Canadian government’s opinion that the Fourth Geneva Convention applies to Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan, and “establishes Israel’s obligations as an occupying power…” (Global Affairs 2024).
Section 34(2) of the Canadian Interpretation Act notes that “all the provisions of the Criminal Code relating to indictable offences apply to indictable offences created by an enactment” (Government of Canada 1985b). As such, the establishment of settlements within the occupied territories and the dispossession and displacement of indigenous Palestinian populations—as with genocide, crimes against humanity, and other war crimes—are not only in contravention of customary law, or Canadian public policy, but also constitute indictable offences under the Canadian Criminal Code (Government of Canada 1985c).
B. Israeli War Crimes since 7 October 2023
Although such efforts will undoubtedly, tragically, be outdated by the time of this article’s publication, numerous organizations have undertaken the task of documenting Israeli war crimes and genocide in the immediate siege of Gaza since 7 October 2023.
In the international legal landscape, among the most significant efforts to date has been South Africa’s instituting of proceedings against Israel, on 29 December 2023, at the ICJ, for its failure to meet its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948 (ICJ 2024). On 26 January 2024, the ICJ ruled that while it was not yet capable of ruling on accusations of genocide taking place in Gaza, “at least” some of South Africa’s accusations against Israel might plausibly fall under the provisions of the Convention of Genocide, insofar as Palestinians had the right to be protected from genocide (ibid.). Considering the urgency of the “real and imminent risk that irreparable prejudice will be caused” to the rights of Palestinians in terms of being protected from genocide, prior to the court being able to definitively rule on South Africa’s accusations, the ICJ ordered Israel (to no avail) to comply, within a month, with numerous provisional measures towards mitigating the possibility of genocide (ibid.).
In response, numerous non-profit organizations and legal analysts decried Israel’s flaunting of the ICJ’s order (Amnesty International 2024a; Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor 2024; Kuttab 2024). In July 2024, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 presented her report Anatomy of a Genocide to the 55th session of the UN’s Human Rights Council. The report concluded that there were “reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating that Israel has committed genocide has been met” (UN 2024c). By year’s end 2024, reports prepared by the UN’s Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories (UN 2024a), the University Network for Human Rights (2024), and Amnesty International (2024b) all echoed the UN Special Rapporteur’s finding of genocide.
Further investigations delved into more wholesale Israeli war crimes violations. In a report scoping the human rights situation in Gaza between November 2023 and April 2024, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) noted an “unprecedented” level of violations of international law (UN 2024e). Emphasizing the continuation of the trends documented in a “Thematic Report” published on 19 June 2024, the OHCHR report noted that Israel had failed to impose the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precaution in its wholesale bombing campaigns of the Gaza strip (UN 2024f).
A 13 March 2025 report, prepared by The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, specifically examined the treatment of Palestinian detainees and hostages, along with attacks on medical facilities, in the period since 7 October 2023 (UN 2025). The report determined that Israel had repeatedly targeted medical facilities at which injured noncombatants, including children and pregnant women, were seeking shelter and treatment. The report found that Israel had committed the crime against humanity of extermination, defined by the Rome Statute as comprising “the intentional infliction of conditions of life, inter alia the deprivation of access to food and medicine, calculated to bring about the destruction of part of a population” (International Criminal Court or ICC 2021: para. 2(b)). The targeted killing of women and girls, further noted the report, constituted “the crime against humanity of murder and the war crime of wilful killing” (UN 2025 para. 214).
Several reports generated by the multi-party Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) specifically investigated the preponderance of instances of Israeli-imposed starvation across the Gaza Strip, specifically between February and July 2024. Their findings confirmed that the entire population of the Strip was facing “high levels of acute food insecurity”, due to Israel’s restriction of the flow of humanitarian aid and the destruction of Gazan agriculture. Northern Gaza, noted the IPC, had seen a massive escalation in the numbers of Palestinians facing a food shortage “catastrophe” (IPC 2024). In an interview, Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, noted that Israel bore significant blame for the food shortage, with “plausible” evidence of starvation being used as a war crime (Bowen 2024).
C. Aiding and Abetting Israeli War Crimes—Financial Complicity in the Canadian Charitable Sector
Section 21 of the Canadian Criminal Code defines aiding and abetting as follows: “everyone is party to an offence who (a) actually commits it, (b) does or omits to do anything for the purpose of aiding any person to commit it or (c) abets any person in committing it” (Government of Canada 1985c). From a punishment standpoint, the Criminal Code allows for secondary liability, such as financial complicity, to be prosecuted as a primary offence, with the same liability and maximum penalty being imposed on the legal person who knowingly aids or abets in the commission of an offence as on the person who commits it (Wanless 2009).
Although the Income Tax Act governs charitable activity in Canada, registered charities involved in criminality are by no means immune from the letter of the Criminal Code (see R. v. Cook 2013: ABPC 6; R. v. Kueviakoe 2015: ONCJ 681). As it pertains to aiding and abetting war criminality, although the letter of the ICC’s Rome Statute relates solely to “natural persons” (ICC 2021), the applicability to all “legal persons” is expanded under Canadian law, under the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act. Section 2 of the Canadian Criminal Code notes that personhood maintains a broader definition, including:
(a) a public body, body corporate, society, company, firm, partnership, trade union, or municipality, or, (b) an association of persons that is i) is created for a common purpose, ii) has an operational structure, and iii) holds itself out to the public as an association of persons. (Government of Canada 1985c)
Kyriakakis (2007) notes that examples of corporate complicity in the aiding and abetting of war criminality have historically been most readily prosecutable in instances of linked relationships between financiers and private security forces committing human rights violations against indigenous populations (also see Forcese 2000). Notwithstanding the lack of a direct precedent for charitable sector financial complicity, as the following sections make clear, there is ample evidence of Canadian charities providing financial support to active and ongoing war criminality in Israel.
2. The Mizrachi Canada Case Study, Foundation Philanthropy, and Accusations of Anti-Muslim Bias at the CRA
A. Mizrachi Canada—A Canadian Charitable Conduit for Israeli War Crimes
Via recourse to tax data obtained under the Canadian Access to Information Act, the Mizrachi Canada case study of Howe (2024) exposed a financial trail linking the Canadian philanthropic sector to the aiding and abetting of Israeli war criminality. Established as a charitable organization in 1979, the Mizrachi Organization of Canada, as at the time of writing, continues to operate as a Canadian tax-receipt-granting clearing house for the Israeli charitable sector. On its own website—and in its function as a conduit for the Israeli website jgive.com—Mizrachi Canada lists hundreds of Israeli charities to which Canadians can donate (Mizrachi World Movement 2024), dozens of which are actively engaged in what can, arguably, legally be considered war criminality (Howe 2024).
Between 2007 and 2022, Canadian private foundations donated millions of Canadian dollars to Mizrachi Canada (CRA 2024d) and were responsible for about a third of the overall amount of cash flowing through Mizrachi Canada to Israel. In 2022—the first year that Mizrachi Canada bothered to properly list its Israeli intermediaries—Howe was able to determine that a significant percentage of these donations, in contravention of Canadian law and customary international law, were financially underwriting the operations of Israeli charities directly complicit in the illegal occupation or were providing financial and material support to the Israeli military. In and of itself, this was highly problematic. Troublingly, and suggesting the possibility of state complicity in the aiding and abetting of Israeli war criminality, Howe’s case study also brought to light a glaring enforcement inefficiency within the Canadian charitable sector: for over a decade, the CRA had not required even the minimum of baseline reporting from Mizrachi Canada.
According to its own tax returns, between 2007 and 2021, Mizrachi Canada self-declared the moving of over CAD $46 million to Israel in taxpayer-subsidized charitable donations. Baseline reporting protocol requires that whenever a Canadian charity utilizes an international intermediary, it must disclose, by name and dollar amount received, all international intermediaries being utilized within a yearly period under lines 200 and 210 of its “Schedule 2—Overseas Activities” form (CRA 2020b). This baseline data allows the CRA—and, theoretically, public researchers—to keep track of the international operations of any Canadian charity. Yet Mizrachi Canada had simply not publicly disclosed its Israeli intermediaries within its own tax returns; over CAD $45 million of the CAD $46 million total had simply been listed with the country code for “Israel” and nothing more (CRA 2023a). It was only in 2022—and potentially as a result of a private-citizen-derived complaint—that Mizrachi Canada began to report the Israeli end points of its donations (Howe 2024).
B. Anti-Muslim Bias at the CRA
Juxtapose the apparently lackadaisical response to Mizrachi Canada’s decade and more of underreporting (along with the subsequent evidence in 2022 of financial complicity in Israeli war criminality) against allegations of CRA over-enforcement of Muslim-identified charities and the accusation that diplomatic relations (or the lack thereof) and inherently flawed anti-terror-financing frameworks—rather than a rules-based order—were guiding the Canadian charitable sector’s audit and enforcement processes (Emon and Hasan 2021; McSorley 2021). Both reports pointed to the potentially biased enforcement protocols of the Review and Analysis Division (RAD), created in 2003, in the wake of 9/11, and ostensibly tasked with addressing the potential for money laundering and terror financing within the Canadian charitable sector, as a core consequence of a charitable sector enforcement system geared against the Canadian Muslim community (ibid.).
The Minister of National Revenue, to her credit, took the findings of the reports seriously and responded with a formal request that the Office of the Taxpayer’s Ombudsperson examine the overall “fairness of the audit process for charities registered in Canada” (Office of the Taxpayer’s Ombudsperson 2023). The Ombudsperson’s investigation, however, was stonewalled by the CRA itself. Without a mandate to enforce its requests for requisition, the Ombudsperson was prevented by the CRA from accessing the vital documentation relating to procedural application and risk analysis tools surrounding the RAD’s oversight of the Canadian charitable sector.
The philanthropic sector, however, is famously vulnerable to consumer confidence in sectoral reputation (see Phillips 2019). A regulator refusing to divulge its methodological techniques, in the face of accusations of sectoral bias against a minority group, arguably does not sit well with the altruistic image that the sector—including would-be donors—prefers. Signalling the seriousness with which the Canadian state is now taking accusations of anti-Muslim bias within its charitable sector enforcement arm, a review of the CRA’s RAD is at present being undertaken by the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA) (Carter and Westerhof 2023). Unlike the Taxpayer’s Ombudsman, NSIRA—the Canadian government’s inter-governmental security watchdog—is legally entitled to “full and timely” access to all information held by an investigated department, including sensitive and classified documents (ibid.). Following its initiation in March 2023, the findings of the NSIRA report remain anticipated.
Running in sync with the NSIRA investigation, and arguably confirming residual, post-9/11, anti-Muslim bias within the Canadian charitable sector, the Minister of Finance published an updated National Inherent Risk Assessment (NIRA) of Canada’s anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism financing regime in March 2023. Among other findings, the NIRA identified potential vulnerabilities within the charitable sector (Department of Finance 2023). A three-member working group from the CRA’s Advisory Committee on the Charitable Sector (ACCS)—a “consultative forum”, consisting of professionals associated with the non-profit sector in Canada and CRA staffers (CRA 2025)—was subsequently delegated by the CRA to produce an in-house report with recommendations relating to the NIRA findings, specifically as they pertained to the risks associated with money laundering and terror financing within the Canadian charitable sector. The ACCS tabled the three-member NIRA Working Group (NIRAWG), which determined that the Department of Finance’s NIRA was working from a cross-departmental “presumptive nexus” between Muslim identification and money laundering and terror financing (ACCS 2023).
This bias, suggested NIRAWG’s report, was generated via the interplay between: (a) a NIRA “Terrorist Financing Threat Group of Actors” list, with 47 per cent comprising Muslim-identified actors; (b) a recipient of terrorism funding list, comprised exclusively of countries with either a Muslim majority or a strong Muslim minority; and (c) NIRA’s reliance upon an analysis that considered only inherent risk, rather than inherent and residual risk (ibid.). In brief, when informed by inherent risk data focusing specifically on Muslim-identified money-laundering and terror-financing actors within Canada, and with a near-exclusive focus on Muslim-identified international end points, NIRA (which by default included the NIRA-informed RAD) could not see any other source of potential risk to the Canadian finance system as a whole or, specifically, to the Canadian charitable sector. Little wonder, then, that a charity such as Mizrachi Canada, with a track record of financial complicity in war criminality but with Israeli end points, escaped regulatory enforcement.
NIRAWG identified several key faults in the NIRA report. Firstly, all non-Muslim end recipients, international and/or domestic, had been erased from NIRA’s wider analysis, even though half the terror actors identified within Canada were non-Muslim. The result was that terror-financing and money-laundering operations in Canada, from an analytical standpoint, had become a strictly Muslim-identified issue. The NIRAWG report also noted a fundamental security blind spot within NIRA. The Department of Finance had claimed that inherent risk analysis—only—had informed NIRA. If, so the logic ran, NIRA was a self-produced snapshot of the Canadian government’s approach to securitizing the financial sector, there was no reason not to believe that (only) inherent risk analysis was informing the investigative and enforcement protocols, as applied to the Canadian financial sector. But once inherent risk—which within NIRA was exclusively synonymous with so-called Islamic terror and money-laundering networks—had been identified, the possibility of residual risk—bluntly: of any other risk to the system—was not being addressed by the Department of Finance.
Guiding this current investigation is a key question obliquely raised by NIRAWG: if the investigative resources within the charitable sector are inherently limited, and if the allocation of said resources is being overly applied against Muslim-identified charities suspected of terror financing and money laundering, as claimed by Muslim-based charities themselves and as seemingly confirmed by NIRA, then what type of criminality is being granted a proverbial “free pass” within the Canadian charitable sector? While an investigation into Canadian charities with a self-claimed end point of Israel will by no means capture all criminal activity within the sector, the initial research of Howe (2024) points the way towards the possibility of wide-sweeping sectoral complicity with Israeli war criminality and genocide.
3. Methodology
Under the Income Tax Act, Canadian charities are permitted to make use of agents/intermediaries towards delivering both national and international charitable programming. Utilizing an intermediary to provide charitable programming is justified on the grounds that the intermediary has important skills and/or resources that maximize operational impact (CRA 2020b). As noted, from a reporting standpoint, charities utilizing international intermediaries are required to disclose their international intermediaries, by name and dollar amount provided, per year, under lines 200 and 210 of their “Schedule 2—Activities outside Canada” form (ibid.). The CRA is mandated to keep such data publicly available, online, for five fiscal years. Researchers interested in more linearly extensive data sets can either informally request or file an Access to Information (ATI) request for multi-year data sets.
As mentioned, the investigation of Howe (2024) exposed an unforeseen trend of reporting noncompliance. This issue bears consideration, because the data contained in the “Findings” section of this investigation is based on self-reported information—which the CRA appears to not necessarily enforce (at least in the case of non-Muslim-identified charities). So, while there is no reason to necessarily doubt the veracity of the “Schedule 2” data that underwrites this investigation, there is also no reason to believe that the CRA is capable of or interested in ensuring that the data upon which this investigation is premised is sound. That said, it certainly should be. While remaining cognizant of this issue, Schedule 2 data remains the only primary source data available concerning the utilization of international intermediaries by Canadian charities.
One further note: tracking the financing of international intermediaries does account for the majority of the money that Canadian charities move into Israel or other international destinations. But there are other, non-captured, means via which a Canadian charity might move donations overseas. Research grants and scholarships, for example, are suitable charitable endeavours (CRA 2020a). Donations earmarked for research and scholarships are listed on line 4910 of a charity’s yearly tax return. But line 4910 expenses are not earmarked with an international country code in Canadian charity annual tax returns, so their end points escape easy, cross-sectoral, agglomeration.
This is not to say that donations earmarked as research grants and scholarships are altruistic by nature, however, specifically in the context of Israeli war criminality and genocide. In this regard, consider the activities of the Canadian charity the Heseg Foundation. Long understood as a source of Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) recruitment incentivization in the form of scholarships for “lone soldiers” upon the completion of military service in Israel (CJPME 2023), the Schedule 2 form of the Heseg Foundation’s 2023 tax returns disclosed the moving of CAD $759,444 to an Israeli intermediary tasked with screening scholarship applicants. Line 4910 of the Heseg Foundation’s 2023 tax returns, however, disclosed a further CAD $4.64 million in donations for research grants and scholarships (CRA 2024b). This money, ostensibly, also went to Israel; but that is not claimed, or captured, within the Schedule 2 information.
Donations also flow from Canadian charities to international “qualified donees”, which differ from international intermediaries insofar as qualified donees can issue their own, Canadian, charitable tax receipts (CRA 2023b). Donations from Canadian charities acting as official and/or unofficial agents to international universities, which are themselves qualified donees, are arguably among the key donation movers within this sub-field; 14 Israeli universities and colleges are registered with the CRA as qualified donees (CRA 2024c). In terms of the reporting requirements, Canadian charities must list all qualified donees in receipt of donations on Form T1236 of their yearly tax returns. As with the donations earmarked on line 4910, the T1236 forms do not require a country code and do not appear within aggregates of international intermediaries, so escape attempts at agglomeration and international tallying.
In terms of Israeli qualified donees actively assisting in Israeli war criminality and genocide, however, consider the activities of the Canadian charitable organization Technion Canada, which appears to operate for the sole purpose of streamlining charitable donations to the Israeli university Technion—Israel Institute of Technology. Between 2019 and 2022, Technion Canada reported donating over CAD $32.4 million to Technion—Israel, its only listed qualified donee (CRA 2024g). According to the BDS Movement (2024), Technion—Israel is deeply implicated in the development of Israeli military hardware—and the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Technion—Israel has developed remote-control capabilities for Caterpillar D9 bulldozers, actively involved in home demolitions (constituting the war crime of collective punishment) across the West Bank and in Gaza (Technion—Israel 2010). Technion—Israel also boasts of multiple partnerships with Israeli defence contractors, specifically within the drone and automated weapons delivery system industries, including Elbit Systems and RAFAEL—Advanced Defence Systems Ltd (Technion—Israel 2024). Technion—Israel is also in the military hardware marketing business; Lee (2017) reports a “hasbara”-style course on offer from the Israeli university, specifically geared to professionals looking to profit from involvement in the Israeli arms sale business.
With these limitations in mind, the initial step of this investigation was to file an ATI request to the CRA, asking for a list of all Canadian charities that had self-disclosed having utilized at least one Israeli intermediary in the 2023 fiscal year (CRA 2024a). This list would ostensibly capture the names of all Israeli intermediaries in receipt of charitable donations flowing out of Canada to Israel in 2023, which, by the CRA’s own accounts, constituted over CAD $271 million in tax-deductible donations (ibid.). With this list in hand, a web search was subsequently conducted for all named Israeli intermediaries, of which there were hundreds. Based on this extensive web search, the named Israeli intermediaries were subsequently classified into one of two groups: “Extra-territorial” or “Military-supportive”. If neither categorization (described below) applied to an intermediary, it was excluded from further study.
The first classification, “Extra-territorial”, was applied to all Israeli intermediaries that conducted operations, maintained a home office, or functioned towards streamlining civilian immigration into, or Palestinian dispossession from, territory illegally seized and held by Israel, since 1967. Spatially, this included intermediaries operating in Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank, the illegally annexed East Jerusalem, and/or the Golan Heights. The second classification, “Military-supportive”, was applied to all Israeli intermediaries that openly acknowledged providing material and/or financial support to active individual members or entire units of the Israeli military. Intermediaries that incentivized participation in the Israeli military via, for example, scholarships and housing, etc., were also included in this second category. These findings are listed in Tables 1 and 2 of the “Findings” section.
Table 1
Extra-territorial and Extra-territorial-supportive Israeli Intermediaries Funded by CDN Charities, 2023 (Illegal Settlement—IS)
Charity No. | Canadian Charity | Israeli Intermediary | Amount | Description |
---|---|---|---|---|
119043891 RR 0001 | Mizrachi Canada | HEVRA KADISHA RISHON L’ZION | $1,710,345.00 | Hevra Kadisha claims that the Mizrachi Canada donation was earmarked for: “Purchase of equipment for settlement emergency squads and the armed forces for the ‘Iron Swords’ war” |
Mizrachi Canada | ALON SHEVUT RELIGIOUS AND COMMUNITY | $16,470.00 | IS—Alon Shvut | |
Mizrachi Canada | BAIS ISRAEL | $18,585.00 | Illegally annexed East Jerusalem | |
Mizrachi Canada | BEIT KNESSET HAZORIM B’RINA | $21,910.00 | IS—Efrat | |
Mizrachi Canada | BEIT MIDRASH “ZICHRON MOSHE” | $18,610.00 | Illegally annexed East Jerusalem | |
Mizrachi Canada | CHASDEI EFRAT | $338.00 | IS—Efrat | |
Mizrachi Canada | DOLEV HOMES FOR YOUTH AT RISK | $64,360.00 | IS—Dolev | |
Mizrachi Canada | EFRAT DEVELOPMENT FOUNDATION | $323,923.00 | IS—Efrat | |
Mizrachi Canada | HAKIBUTZ HADATI | $93,083.00 | Funds several IS kibbutzim (Migdal Oz, Kfar Etzion, and Rosh Tzurim) | |
Mizrachi Canada | JOB KATIF/LA’OFEK | $3,132.00 | IS—Alon Shvut | |
Mizrachi Canada | KEREN AHIEZER ACHISAMCH | $63,616.00 | IS—Karnei Shomron | |
Mizrachi Canada | KIRYAT HAYESHIVA BET EL | $98,055.00 | IS—Beit El | |
Mizrachi Canada | MECHINAT YEDIDYA | $44,304.00 | IS—Gush Etzion district | |
Mizrachi Canada | MICHLOL MAALE LEVONA | $46,988.00 | IS—Ma’ale Levona | |
Mizrachi Canada | MIDRESHET HAROVA | $77,645.00 | Illegally annexed East Jerusalem | |
Mizrachi Canada | MIDRESHET HAVORA | $10,621.00 | Illegally annexed East Jerusalem | |
Mizrachi Canada | NETZER ARIEL | $20,786.00 | IS—Ariel | |
Mizrachi Canada | SHIRAT HATAMAR | $1,079.00 | IS – Efrat | |
Mizrachi Canada | SYNAGOGUE IN MEMORY OF NOAM RAZ | $736.00 | IS—Keida | |
Mizrachi Canada | TALMUD TORAH HADAR YOSEF | $9,500.00 | IS—Binyamin Region | |
Mizrachi Canada | TESHIVA HAR BRACHA | $159,259.00 | IS—Har Bracha | |
Mizrachi Canada | GUSH ETZION FOUNDATION | $1,742.00 | Provides financial support for settlements | |
Mizrachi Canada | THE WOMEN’S BEIT MISRASH OF EFRAT | $9,546.00 | IS—Efrat | |
Mizrachi Canada | ULPANA L’BANOT KIRYAT ARBA | $1,440.00 | IS—Kiryat Arba | |
Mizrachi Canada | YESHIVA BNEI ROCHEL-KEVER ROCHEL | $6,189.00 | IS—Bethlehem | |
Mizrachi Canada | YESHIVAT HAKOTEL | $31,743.00 | Illegally annexed East Jerusalem | |
Mizrachi Canada | YESHIVAT HAR ETZION | $148,441.00 | IS—Har Etzion | |
Mizrachi Canada | YESHIVAT NETIV ARYEH | $32,933.00 | Illegally annexed East Jerusalem | |
Mizrachi Canada | YESHIVAT ORAYTA | $11,040.00 | Illegally annexed East Jerusalem | |
Mizrachi Canada | YESHIVAT SHAVEI HEVRON | $125,789.00 | IS—Hebron | |
Mizrachi Canada | YISHUV ELI | $8,781.00 | IS—Eli | |
Mizrachi Canada | YESHIVAT SHAVEI HEVRON | $2,173.00 | IS—Hebron | |
Mizrachi Canada | Regavim | $8,460 | Works to delegitimize Palestinian claims to sovereignty | |
Mizrachi Canada | Women in Green | $11,403 | Works towards colonization of “Greater Israel” | |
863679049 RR0001 | CANADIAN FRIENDS OF THE WESTERN WALL HERITAGE FOUNDATION INC. | WESTERN WALL HERITAGE FOUNDATION | $505,695 | Illegally annexed East Jerusalem |
107304446 RR0001 | Emunah Canada | EMUNAH ISRAEL | $933,183 | Funds numerous illegal settlements |
107373839 RR0001 | FAITH TEMPLE | CHRISTIAN FRIENDS OF ISRAEL COMMUNITIES | $38,610 | Focuses operations on the “heartland of Judea and Sameria” |
118832732 RR0001 | CANADIAN FRIENDS OF YESHIVAT HAR ETZION/LES AMIS CANADIENS YESHIVAT HAR ETZION | HAR ETZION | $193,741 | IS—Alon Shvut |
118974179 RR0001 | JEWISH COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF MONTREAL/LA FOUNDATION COMMUNAUTAIRE JUIVE DE MONTREAL | Nefesh B’Nefesh | $1,706,125 | Streamlines Zionist immigration to Israel, offers settlement services for IS |
118974294 RR0001 | JEWISH HERITAGE FOUNDATION OF CANADA | YOZEI PONIVEZ KIRYAT SEFER | $202,134 | IS—Modi’in Ilit |
JEWISH HERITAGE FOUNDATION OF CANADA | KNESET YTSCHAK KIRYAT SEFER | $73,869 | IS—Modi’in Ilit | |
JEWISH HERITAGE FOUNDATION OF CANADA | ZICHRON YOSEF MODDIN ILIT | $55,960 | IS—Modi’in Ilit | |
JEWISH HERITAGE FOUNDATION OF CANADA | KUPAT HAKAHAL KIRYAT SEFER | $50,530 | IS—Modi’in Ilit | |
124244773 RR0001 | CANADA–ISRAEL CHILDREN’S CENTRES | ISRAEL TENNIS CENTRES | $598,748 | Multiple locations, including illegal settlements and Golan |
137508370 RR0001 | CANADIAN FOUNDATION FOR THE EDUCATION AND WELFARE OF JEWS OF THE C I S | UMATZATA—MODIIN ILLIT (ISRAEL) | $87,677 | IS—Modi’in Ilit |
811512680 RR0001 | Canadian Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel | Society for the protection of nature in Israel | $940,000 | Operates field schools in Golan, Hermon, and Ofra (West Bank) |
834646341 RR0001 | INTERNATIONAL CHRISTIAN MISSION SERVICES | Shiloh | $115,254 | IS—Shiloh |
835431438 RR0001 | Shiloh Israel Children’s Fund: Association of Canada | Shiloh Israel Children’s Fund (R.A.) | $58,000 | IS—Shiloh |
891452195 RR0001 | CANADIAN FRIENDS OF ISRALIGHT | ISRALIGHT INSTITUTE | $4,523 | Illegally annexed East Jerusalem |
730740339 RR 0001 | The Ronnen Harary Foundation | Jerusalem Municipality | $991,861.00 | Illegally annexed East Jerusalem |
108085218 RR 0001 | THE JERUSALEM FOUNDATION OF CANADA INC. LA FONDATION JERUSALEM DU CANADA INC | THE JERUSALEM FOUNDATION (JERUSALEM) | $4,223,064.00 | Illegally annexed East Jerusalem |
892425166 RR0001 | The Azrieli Foundation | DARCA | $8,823,960 | Maintains schools within Golan |
810956565 RR 0001 | Ne’eman Foundation Canada* | NE’EMAN FOUNDATION FOR SOCIAL PROGRESS | $276,805.00 | IS—Shilo |
Ne’eman Foundation Canada | MERCAZ TO RANI KEHILAT R’AKIVA MODIIN ELITE | $118,434.00 | IS—Modi’in Ilit | |
Ne’eman Foundation Canada | BIRCAS HATORAH BAROVA HAYEHUDI | $107,426.00 | Illegally annexed East Jerusalem | |
Ne’eman Foundation Canada | NETZACH YISRAEL CHINUCH VEHACHSHARA | $91,828.00 | IS—Beitar Illit | |
Ne’eman Foundation Canada | BEIT KNESSET MEROMEY SADE BEMODIIN ILLITE | $7,376.00 | IS—Modi’in Ilit | |
TOTAL | $17.804,296.00 |
*
Ne’eman Foundation Canada had its charitable status revoked in August 2024.
Table 2
All Military-supportive Israeli Intermediaries Funded by CDN Charities, 2023
Charity No. | Canadian Charity | Israeli Intermediary | Amount | Description |
---|---|---|---|---|
119043891 RR 0001 | Mizrachi Canada | BNEI DAVID/YESHIVAT HESDER ELI | $44,010.00 | Hesder Yeshiva—military-adjacent educational training in lieu of active military service |
Mizrachi Canada | YESH. HES, OR VISHUA HAIFA | $1,119.00 | Hesder Yeshiva | |
Mizrachi Canada | YESH. HESDER KIRYAT SHEMONEH | $475.00 | Hesder Yeshiva | |
Mizrachi Canada | YESHIVAT HESDER ACCO | $39,042.00 | Hesder Yeshiva | |
Mizrachi Canada | YESHIVAT HESDER DIMONA | $6,000.00 | Hesder Yeshiva | |
Mizrachi Canada | YESHIVAT HESDER HAREL | $39,251.00 | Hesder Yeshiva | |
Mizrachi Canada | YESHIVAT HESDER MAALOT YAAKOV | $25,885.00 | Hesder Yeshiva | |
Mizrachi Canada | YESHIVAT HESDER NEVE DEKALIM (V) | $53,769.00 | Hesder Yeshiva | |
Mizrachi Canada | YESHIVAT HESDER NOF HAGALIL | $5,425.00 | Hesder Yeshiva | |
Mizrachi Canada | YESHIVAT HESDER OR ETZION | $11,814.00 | Hesder Yeshiva | |
Mizrachi Canada | YESHIVAT HESDER RAMAT GAN | $4,950.00 | Hesder Yeshiva | |
Mizrachi Canada | YESHIVAT HESDER SDEROT | $29,318.00 | Hesder Yeshiva | |
Mizrachi Canada | YESHIVAT HESDER SHILOH | $475.00 | Hesder Yeshiva | |
Mizrachi Canada | YESHIVAT HESDER TFAHOT | $31,315.00 | Hesder Yeshiva | |
Mizrachi Canada | YESHIVAT HESDER YAFO | $20,356.00 | Hesder Yeshiva | |
Mizrachi Canada | YESHIVAT MA’ALE GILBOA | $1,900.00 | Hesder Yeshiva hybrid | |
Mizrachi Canada | FOUNDATION OF THE VETERAN PARATROOPERS | $22,521.00 | Military-affiliated | |
Mizrachi Canada | OREV | $11,608.00 | Israeli paratrooper division | |
Mizrachi Canada | DUVDEVAN FOUNDATION | $200,000.00 | Commando Unit of IDF | |
106863061 RR0001 | Canadian Magen David Adom for Israel/Magen David Adom Canadien pour Israel | MAGEN DAVID ADOM | $5,774,575 | Provides medical support to IDF |
892425166 RR0001 | THE AZRIELI FOUNDATION | JDC ISRAEL | $664,478 | Assists IDF in recruit preparedness |
107534877 RR0001 | JEWISH NATIONAL FUND OF CANADA INC./FONDS NATIONAL JUIF DU CANADA INC.* | KEREN KAYEMETH LEISRAEL | $10,574,952 | Provides funding to projects on IDF-owned territory |
108075748 RR0001 | THE CANADIAN ZIONIST CULTURAL ASSOCIATION | AIS (FORMERLY LIBI FUND AWIS) | $1,245,672 | Offers direct funding to IDF soldiers and units |
THE CANADIAN ZIONIST CULTURAL ASSOCIATION | Friends of the Israel Defence Forces | $35,462 | Collects donations for the IDF | |
THE CANADIAN ZIONIST CULTURAL ASSOCIATION | DUV. ASSOCIATION | $291,500 | Commando Unit of IDF | |
810956565 RR0001 | Ne’eman Foundation Canada** | THE MICHAEL LEVIN BASE (THE BASE FOR LONE SOLDIERS) | $415,074 | Incentivizes “lone soldiers” |
Ne’eman Foundation Canada | GIVATI BRIGADE ASSOCIATION | $206,000 | Assists active “lone soldiers” and “low-income” soldiers | |
Ne’eman Foundation Canada | DUVDEVAN FOUNDATION | $122,515 | Commando Unit of IDF | |
Ne’eman Foundation Canada | Benji Hillman Foundation | $516,751 | Assists “lone soldiers” | |
Ne’eman Foundation Canada | YASHAR LACHAYAL | $36,802 | Equipment distribution for IDF | |
818335390 RR0001 | Canada Charity Partners | LONE SOLDIER CENTER IN MEMORY OF MICHAEL LEVIN | $29,239 | Assists active “lone soldiers” |
834998965 RR0001 | HESEG FOUNDATION | KEREN HESEG | $759,444 (intermediary) + $4,645,131 (scholarships) | Incentivizes IDF recruitment of “lone soldiers” via post-secondary scholarships |
869411587 RR0001 | International Fellowship of Christians and Jews of Canada | KEREN L’YEDIDUT | $6,463,618 | Conducts operations in conjunction with IDF |
TOTAL | $32,330,446.00*** |
*
Jewish National Fund of Canada had its charitable status revoked in August 2024.
**
Ne’eman Foundation Canada had its charitable status revoked in August 2024.
***
Includes Heseg Foundation line 4910 (funds designated for research grants and scholarships).
In reading these tables, one further caveat is important to consider: in certain cases, the Israeli intermediaries listed in Tables 1 and 2 claimed to conduct a variety of activities, not all of which fall under the above classificatory parameters. In cases where an Israeli intermediary might have only expended a percentage of its efforts/budget on Palestinian dispossession and erasure, or in support of the Israeli military, determining the exact percentage of activity/resources for such purposes—and then quantifying that percentage into Canadian dollars—was beyond the scope of this investigation. In such cases, while admittedly inexact, the entirety of the intermediary’s budget was presented under the “Amount” sub-heading.
4. Findings
A. Extra-territorial
As illustrated in Table 1, a total of 57 unique Israeli intermediaries situated in, or directly supportive of, Israel’s illegally occupied territories were identified as having received financial donations from Canadian charities in 2023, amounting to a total of over CAD $17 million. Mizrachi Canada demonstrated itself to be the Canadian charity with the largest (in numeric terms) stable of extra-territorial Israeli intermediaries, providing charitable donations to 34 unique Israeli intermediaries. Notably, one of these intermediaries, registered as Hevra Kadisha Rishon L’Zion, overtly claims to operate as a burial society in Israel. Yet in its 2023 Verbal Report, prepared for the Israeli Ministry of Justice, Hevra Kadisha noted that Mizrachi Canada’s donation of over CAD $1.7 million was specifically earmarked for the “purchase of equipment for settlement emergency squads and the armed forces for the ‘Iron Swords’ war” (Guidestar 2023).
Several of the Canadian charities listed in Table 1 provided donations to a multitude of Israeli intermediaries (such as the Jewish Heritage Foundation and Ne’eman Canada), only some of which were active in the illegally occupied territories. Others, such as Emunah Canada and the Canadian Friends of the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, operate in a similar fashion as Technion Canada—which is to say, they operate as the Canadian fundraising arms for singular Israeli intermediaries, such as the “Western Wall Heritage Foundation”.
Notably, most of the implicated Canadian charities in Table 1 are registered as charitable organizations, the categorization given by the CRA to “frontline” charities. As with Mizrachi Canada, these charities operate as tax-deductible financial pathways to Israeli intermediaries. Conversely, two registered charities in Table 1, The Ronnen Harary Foundation and The Azrieli Foundation, are registered as private foundations. The Ronnen Harary Foundation is associated with and directed by its namesake, Ronnen Harary, whose wealth derives from the popular “Paw Patrol” line of toys, while The Azrieli Foundation is attached to the vast real estate and gas fortunes of David Azrieli.
B. Military-supportive
As illustrated in Table 2, a total of 33 Israeli intermediaries with self-proclaimed financial and/or material affiliations with the IDF were determined to be in receipt of Canadian charitable donations in 2023, amounting to a total of over CAD $27 million. Mizrachi Canada again demonstrated itself to be the most active and financially complicit Canadian charity by sheer volume of recipient intermediaries. Notably, specifically as it applies to Mizrachi Canada, the decision was made to include Israeli intermediaries identified as Hesder Yeshivas under the “Military-supportive” categorization. Hesder Yeshivas operate in partnership with the IDF towards providing a quasi-alternative to mandatory military service, blending so-called religious education and Zionist indoctrination with active military service (Mizrachi World Movement 2024).
Several of the Israeli intermediaries listed in Table 2 provide financial and/or material support to so-called “lone soldiers”. Schumtz (2020) suggests that financially and materially incentivizing the immigration of foreign Jewish fighters to Israel should be viewed as a unique phenomenon, apart and aside from the pan-global phenomenon of funding foreign mercenaries as soldiers for hire. I would argue that these and other studies (see, for example, Yohanani 2024) arguably begin from the flawed stance that diasporic Jews at whom “lone soldier” narrativization is specifically targeted have some kind of “ancestral” connection (and therefore territorial claim) to the state of Israel. Undoubtedly, many diasporic Jews do feel an ancestral connection to the state of Israel, but—and here I speak directly to the “Western” diasporic context at which “lone soldier” narrativizations are largely aimed—this feeling is the product of systemic, Zionist, indoctrination, rather than any anchoring in reality (see Finkelstein 2015; Pappe 2024; Sand 2009, 2012).
C. Other
Troublingly, the trend of the non-reporting of the Israeli end points of Canadian charitable donations, exemplified by Mizrachi Canada between 2007 and 2021, resurfaced within the linear parameters of this investigation. In 2023, The David Hofstedter Family Foundation (Business No. 119229466 RR 0001) self-reported moving over CAD $17 million to “Israel”, with no intermediaries listed. This CAD $17 million+ was in addition to the CAD $26.6 million that The David Hofstedter Family Foundation listed as being earmarked for research grants and scholarships on line 4910 of its 2023 tax return (CRA 2024h). While not claimed as such, it is theoretically possible this money also went to Israel. A subsequent enquiry into publicly available tax returns (2019–2022) further confirmed that The David Hofstedter Family Foundation recently moved over CAD $90 million into the hands of international intermediaries for which no country codes were even listed.
This lack of reporting is arguably problematic within the immediacy of the over CAD $100 million that exited Canada via The David Hofstedter Family Foundation, into hands unknown, and further brings into doubt the veracity of attempts to holistically account for the actual amounts of money moving through the Canadian charitable sector into the international sphere; without even the bare enforcement minimum of requiring Canadian charities to attach a country code to their internationally bound donations, there is simply no way to ascertain the scope of international money movement, to Israel or elsewhere.
Considerations
Taken as a simple compendium to the case study by Howe (2024) on the activities of Mizrachi Canada, this investigation finds evidence of the wider-spread unregulated movement of Canadian tax-deductible donations underwriting the activities of Israeli intermediaries engaged in war crimes and genocide. As at the time of writing, Mizrachi Canada certainly appears to be the Canadian charity with the most diverse stable of war-crimes- and genocide-complicit Israeli intermediaries. But it is far from the only financially complicit charitable exit point. Within the applicable legal frameworks, such financial complicity in war crimes and genocide not only runs against customary international law but also, under the Interpretations Act, is an indictable offence under the Canadian Criminal Code.
The broader question, however, pertains to how the Canadian charitable sector has come to have been, at least partially, legally and morally perverted into an engine of financial complicity in Israeli war crimes and genocide. The answer to the question—obliquely proffered by Emon and Hasan (2021), McSorley (2021), and ACCS (2023)—is that the CRA’s enforcement protocols and risk analysis matrices, such as they might be, are so skewed towards an anti-Muslim bias that non-Muslim-identified actors within the Canadian charitable sector are quite literally able to get away with (financing) murder. Due to the CRA’s stonewalling of internal investigative processes, we do not yet know the impact of such matrices upon charitable sector enforcement prioritizations. Clearly, however, the potential fallout from such an enforcement bias reaches far beyond the detrimental effects undoubtedly experienced by the Canadian Muslim community and reaches into the realm of undiagnosed criminality.
The conspiratorial mind, however, wanders. In a taxation environment where electronic reassessments of one’s personal tax returns appear to substantiate impressions of an impregnable wall of synergy between the CRA, one’s employer, and one’s financial institution, it seems implausible that a charity might simply omit accounting for millions of dollars in donations, to Israel or elsewhere in the non-Muslim-identified philanthrosphere, and not set off proverbial alarm bells. To subscribe to Emon and Hasan (2021) and the rest, in this regard, is to give explanatory precedence to regulator ignorance within the charitable sector, due to the misallocation of scant enforcement resources along biased, anti-Muslim, lines. Entertaining the possibility of purposeful state complicity in charitable sector criminality, Israeli war-crimes- and genocide-related or otherwise, is here dismissed out of hand. Certainly, a wholesale inspection of the entirety of international-bound Canadian charitable donations—beyond Israeli end points—would provide a full accounting of the scope of criminality potentially plaguing the Canadian charitable sector. Undoubtedly, such an investigation would work to confirm evidence of racially related ineptitude or of the “special relationship” between Canada and Israel permeating the charitable sector (see Harper 2014).
Within the immediacy of ongoing, active, Israeli war crimes and genocide, however, one might argue that the root causes of Canadian state complicity (read: criminality), whether ignorance, racism, or whatever, are irrelevant. The 18 October 2024 Position Paper of the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel made clear that the activities of member states’ non-profit sectors must be fully investigated towards ending financial complicity in Israeli war criminality. In this light, one might consider the above investigation as a voluntarily offered starting point for a more fulsome enquiry, one that the CRA was undoubtedly about to undertake of its own accord.
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