Our Coalition was a signatory to this very popular leaflet, handed out tonight at Mayor Horwath’s New Year’s Levee in Ancaster.
TURN OVER A NEW LEAF, ANDREA!
YOU’RE THE MAYOR OF ALL HAMILTONIANS!
SUGGESTED NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS FOR YOU:
1) Treat anti-Palestinian racism with the same urgency and seriousness you apply to antisemitism. Reject the bogus IHRA definition of antisemitism.
2) Refuse to attend or promote the Jewish National Fund’s Negev Dinner in Hamilton. It directly funds Israel’s land theft and the eradication of entire communities throughout Palestine.
3) Invite Palestinian Hamiltonians and their allies to your office to express support for them and their concerns.
4) Raise the flag of the State of Palestinian, recognized by Canada, at Hamilton City Hall on Land Day, Mar 31, 2026.
Mayors need to represent all of their citizens, not just those who belong to powerful lobby groups. As Israel accelerates its genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, and in a city where Arabic is the second-most spoken language, you have consistently stood up for your Zionist constituents and abandoned your Palestinian ones.
Let’s look at your record:
SUPPORTING THE GENOCIDAL APARTHEID STATE OF ISRAEL
You actively support Israeli-linked causes and are quick to decry any perceived act of antisemitism, with no equivalent advocacy for Hamilton’s Palestinian community. You consistently ignore their calls for justice and equal representation. You have refused to meet with Palestinian Hamiltonians for three years and counting.
SUPPORTING DISPLACEMENT & LAND SEIZURE
You are a public supporter of the Jewish National Fund, a Zionist organization central to the ongoing displacement of Palestinians through land theft and village destruction. In 2025, the JNF charitable status was revoked by the CRA for illegal activities, including using tax-deductible donations to fund projects on Israeli military bases. Nonetheless, you attended the JNF fundraising Negev Dinner, where you praised the JNF for work “across Israel”—erasing the Palestinian reality of occupation and the brutal crimes these organizations perpetrate.
SELECTIVE ACTION ON EXTREMISM
Last year, within an hour of being publicly asked to do so by the Hamilton Jewish Federation, you issued a formal statement denouncing an obscure Islamist group’s planned event in Hamilton. When Palestinian Hamiltonians and their allies asked you to denounce the Hamilton Jewish Federation’s event with Melissa Lantsman, Deputy-Leader of the Conservative Party and avid supporter of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, you ignored them – your typical pattern.
SELECTIVE SYMPATHY = BLATANT BIAS
After October 7, you were quick to express your concern for and shared grief with Jewish Hamiltonians. As the number of Palestinians confirmed killed by Israel in Gaza since October 7 surpasses 70,000 (by all accounts a gross underestimate), you have yet to utter a single word for them, despite their many family members living here in Hamilton. You similarly issued a mayoral statement of sympathy immediately after the attack on the Hanukkah celebration in Australia, on the other side of the world, but rarely acknowledge the many acts of terror that have traumatized Palestinian-Hamiltonians and their many allies.
REWARDING PRO-ISRAEL PROPAGANDA
This week, your administration bestowed Hamilton’s highest honour on the editor of the newspaper of the Hamilton Jewish Federation, a mouthpiece for the Israeli government that actively promotes the genocide of Palestinians.
ADOPTING AN INTENTIONALLY MISLEADING DEFINITION OF ANTISEMITISM
As Ontario NDP Leader, you enabled the passage of Bill 168, which embedded the intentionally misleading IHRA definition of antisemitism into Ontario law—a move which conflates truth-telling about Israel with antisemitism and suppresses advocacy for Palestinian rights.
Signatories:
Palestinian Association of Hamilton
Hamilton Palestine Solidarity
Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War
Independent Jewish Voices Hamilton
Question? Contact hamilton@ijvcanada.org