This opinion piece was submitted by Ken Stone and Rabbi David Mivasair to the Hamilton Spectator
WHY WE ARE PROTESTING HAMILTON’S NEGEV DINNER
At this time of Israel’s intensified illegal blockade of food and other necessities into Gaza, certain well-to-do Hamiltonians will feast on expensive meals at one of Hamilton’s premier banquet halls while effectively supporting the starvation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
Hamilton’s annual Negev Dinner to benefit Israel’s Jewish National Fund (JNF) is not your usual charity fundraiser. In fact, it’s not even about charity: Israel has a similar GDP per capita as Canada. It’s political: the JNF, which benefits from the event, was formed in 1901 with the purpose of colonizing Palestine with Jewish settlers. An inevitable consequence of this colonial project was and still is the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, which was achieved initially through land purchases and later by expropriations. For example, following the 1967 war, the JNF funded scores of illegal, Jewish-only settlements in the Occupied West Bank and also built Canada Park over the ruins of three demolished Palestinian villages. Today, the JNF owns 13% of Israeli land outright and controls 93% in collaboration with other agencies.
Two years ago, following decades of formal complaints from Canadians, the Canada Revenue Agency revoked the JNF’s charitable status. But that did not stop the JNF from flaunting both the letter and spirit of the CRA ruling. It held the gala dinner last year at LIUNA Station using the Magen Israel Fund (one of dozens of Canadian “charities” funneling over $300 million annually to Israel) to issue tax receipts to donors. These tax receipts are, in fact, Canadian taxpayers’ subsidies to the State of Israel, because the rest of us taxpayers must cover them. Hamilton Mayor Andrea Horwath not only attended the gala but gave it political cover with a full-page ad in the Negev Dinner program booklet welcoming the JNF to Hamilton, complete with a photo of herself wearing the mayor’s chain of office. This year, her office says she is not intending to attend.
In 2026, to get around the CRA ruling, the Benzimra Foundation, another conduit in the Canada-Israel “charity” pipeline, changed its name to “Friends of JNF Canada” and is providing the tax receipts to ticket holders. The funds raised from this particular dinner will go to a new colonial settlement described in the Hamilton Jewish News as follows: “Established in 2011, Shlomit sits just kilometres from Gaza and near the Egyptian border… as part of Israel’s broader effort to strengthen and secure its southern region.” The keynote speaker is David Friedman, Donald Trump’s former ambassador to Israel. Tickets to the gala can run into tens of thousands of dollars.
The world’s highest court, the International Court of Justice, recently delivered two major legal assessments. In the first, in an initiative by the Republic of South Africa, the court declared Israel’s actions in Gaza amounted to a “plausible genocide” and ordered it to prevent genocidal acts and let aid flow unimpeded into Gaza. In its second, Israel was ordered to terminate its illegal occupation of the West Bank and pay reparations to Palestinians. Clearly, Israel, by furthering restricting aid to Gaza and bombing Gaza daily, is a lawless state. It further undermines international law and the UN by waging wars of aggression against Lebanon and Iran, with US help.
Isn’t it grotesque, then, to celebrate and fund the Israeli colonial project? And that’s the reason that six local organizations will be once again conducting a peaceful informational picket of the Negev Dinner at LIUNA Station. We urge Hamiltonians to join us; to ask their union representatives, city councillors and MPP’s not to attend the event; and to urge the CRA to revoke the charitable status of all of those Canadian conduits funding various organs of the rogue Israeli regime.
Word Document: