Lisa MacLeod targeted a school principal. Then his school experienced racist vandalism.
There is nothing "distressing" for us Jews about Arabic language or culture.
As Canada has grown over the past century since our involvement in the First World War, our identity has changed. We are no longer merely one Dominion in the Imperial War Cabinet; we are a fully independent country, and our soldiers march under our own flag.
But what inspires more pride in me is not the use of our military to wage wars, but rather our participation as UN Peacekeepers in the quest to end wars. And even more boldly, we claim to have embraced the pursuit of a multicultural and pluralistic society.
This does not just mean that we should greet both refugees and immigrants with an outstretched hand. It also means we must actively pursue reconcilliation with the First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples that Canada continues to wrong this very day.
And yet, despite all our protestations that we have advanced beyond the old bigotries, Canadian regressives continue to be embolded, attracting large followings of supporters across every province and territory.
Whole swaths of Canadian society have exposed themselves as bigots, and are abandoning the false pretenses they hid behind. They express hate in the public sphere, and they do so without rebuke from their neighbours.
The mere presence of languages that are not English or French is treated like an assault on their personhood; they despise the reminder that many of us are not the same as them. Because we do not look the same, because we bring new traditions to the cultural mosaic, we remind them that Canada is changing.
Truth be told, Canada is changing, and much of the backlash against progressive ideals stems from fear of that change. But I am not afraid of what our country is becoming.
I believe the words Pierre Elliott Trudeau said over fifty years ago, when he dispelled the notion of any kind of template for a ‘Model Canadian’: “A society which emphasizes uniformity is one which creates intolerance and hate.”
With every new Canadian that arrives in Canada, our society gains something new, something unique. We gain new perspectives, new ideas, and we gain someone passionate, someone ready and willing to build the future.
The New Canada is being born out of the old one with every new addition we receive, and I am proud to embrace this future, without hesitation. We are becoming greater than we were before, because we are embracing diversity; I have no desire to turn back now.
In the wake of this year’s Remembrance Day ceremonies, Canada’s Conservatives have deigned to lash out at any ceremony which attempted to adapt itself to the New Canada. And yet in attacking these sincere efforts to make Remembrance Day relevant for future generations in Canada, the Tories are only guaranteeing that the tradition will fade in prominence.
For her part, Lisa MacLeod went after Sir Robert Borden High School, located within her own riding of Nepean. Formerly an independent municipality, it has now been gobbled up by Ottawa and turned into a neighbourhood, thanks to the ever-lasting influence of Mike Harris.
Robert Borden, quite famously, was the Canadian Prime Minister from 1911 to 1920, during the entirety of the First World War. Less famously, he stayed in power using the Military Voters Act, with which he allowed the 400,000 Canadians serving abroad to vote, but ludicrously empowered his government to decide which riding the votes for the government would be assigned to, thieving as many as fourteen seats from the anti-conscription Liberals.
A man who sabotaged democracy so that he could enact mandatory conscription against the will of Québec; the First World War leaves us with some truly putrid legacies, men sent to the slaughter for pointless reasons over a war that should never have been fought.
And yet, that is the value I see in Remembrance Day, which we created to commemorate the Armistice of November 11th, 1918; it is the war which was so terrifying in the horrors it produced, that it made the concept of a second war of that nature incomprehensible, at least for a time. Indeed, fear of that second war is likely why Neville Chamberlain made the mistake of appeasing Adolf Hitler.
Remembrance Day should never be a veneration of war, or the people who sought to fight it. The pursuit of peace, of mutual respect and understanding, of the coexistence of all peoples, these are the messages of Remembrance Day. This is the lesson we were supposed to learn from “The War That Did Not End All Wars”, and it is a shame that the occasion is used to glorify militarism instead.
It is perhaps on this note that Aaron Hobbs, the principal at Robert Borden High, attempted to make Remembrance Day more meaningful to his current cohort of students in Nepean. He himself noted that ceremonies over-emphasize the role of white veterans, as reported by the National Post.
The federal riding of Nepean, where Robert Borden High School is located, had 132,769 people as of the 2021 Census. 6,695 of those people, about 5% of the population, speak Arabic as their mother tongue; 9,885, which accounts for 7.5% of the population, are of Arab descent. Finally, 16,430 of the residents of Nepean identify as Muslims.
This is a significant amount of Nepean’s local population who are Arab Canadians, who speak Arabic as their mother tongue, or who have a connection to the Arabic language through their religion. In the wider context of Ottawa, the Lebanese community in the National Capital Region is so large that Ottawa City Council quite literally declared Ottawa to be the “Shawarma Capital of Canada.”
The song Haza Salam, which translates to “This is Peace”, makes no mention of the armed conflict in the Middle East; it is merely a song in the Arabic language, which espouses the same principles of peace and understanding that Remembrance Day should embody.
Furthermore, the First World War directly involved the British Empire, and their activities in the Middle East. Many people have watched the film Lawrence of Arabia, and yet fail to recognize that Thomas Edward Lawrence was a real person, and the film a dramatized rendition of the true story of the Arab Revolt.
Tens of thousands of Arab troops fought on the British side during the Sinai and Palestine campaign of the First World War. They fought willingly for the British Empire because they were promised a single, independent Arab state; instead, Britain betrayed them and worked with France to carve up the territory into colonial mandates.
So, considering that Remembrance Day was originally called Armistice Day, and that scores of Arabs fought in the First World War for the same Empire we did, an Empire that quickly turned on them, and that Nepean today includes a large Arab population from the regions carved up by that Empire, the inclusion of a song like Haza Salam feels remarkably suitable and appropriate.
It was a culturally astute and empathetic decision made by Principal Hobbs, and in a just world, he would have been commended for doing so. But we do not live in a just world, and the MPP for Nepean is a spiteful and vindictive person.
Lisa MacLeod is fast approaching retirement this coming February, after her feud with the parents of autistic children saw her bounced out of Doug Ford’s Cabinet and demoted to the backbench.
But always eager to make a headline, Ms. MacLeod took immediate umbrage with Principal Hobbs after the Remembrance Day ceremony, demanding he be subjected to disciplinary measures by the school board.
What was the offence she claimed? Merely that “the Remembrance Service included a song in Arabic which did not follow the [Legion] protocol and also distressed all of the Jewish students.” For this, she demanded Principal Hobbs be fired from his job at Robert Borden High.
The National Council of Canadian Muslims expressed outrage and offence at Lisa MacLeod’s words, and quite frankly, so do I. The idea that I or any other Jew would feel distressed or threatened by my Arab or Muslim cousins is not just absurd, it is racist and vile.
And yet, when confronted by the NCCM about the offence of her words, she outrageously and falsely claimed Haza Salam was “a Palestinian war song”, and then cast aspersions on whether Muslims “respected our military history and the sacrifices for freedom”. She then reshared a post by the Jewish Federation of Ottawa, calling out NCCM by name and stating that “this is how you do it.”
When Executive Chair of Paramount Fine Foods and Order of Canada recipient Mohamad Fakih called her out for this, Lisa MacLeod said that his Order of Canada should be “revoked.” By the evening of November 12th, Principal Hobbs had been forced to apologize by the board, and the CBC had reported on the manufactured controversy.
By the following afternoon, Pierre Poilievre had picked up the cause, and demanded Principal Hobbs be fired from his job. Lisa MacLeod moved on with her week, having double- and triple- and quadruple-downed on her actions.
Instead, she spent the day preparing to attend that evening’s Negev Gala hosted by JNF Canada, where she would be introduced by Warren Kinsella and presented by the JNF with the Negev Award for her staunch and unyielding support of Zionism.
JNF Canada, notably, had its charitable status revoked by the CRA this year, after a decade of non-compliance with CRA requirements for both recordkeeping and fulfillment of charitable purpose.
On November 8th, JNF Canada lost their application for a judicial review, as well as their request for an injunction against the revocation of charitable status. A rather curious organization for an elected official to support, and perhaps why the donations for the Negev Gala went to the Magen Fund instead.
Meanwhile, the students and faculty at Robert Borden High did not get to move on with their lives, not after the frenzy Lisa MacLeod whipped up around them. The same day she attended her gala, the school was the site of a hate crime, vandalized with graffiti calling it “Hamas High”.
This is brazen, unabashed anti-Arab racism, and despite the photos of the graffiti being confirmed as real by Principal Hobbs in an email to parents, mainstream media has refused to report on it. Even worse, Ottawa politicians have failed to condemn it, or even recognize that it happened.
On February 28th, Lisa MacLeod will leave public office, and cease to be the Member of Provincial Parliament for Nepean. But to think that would be the end of her political ambition, or the end of her influence in public affairs, would be foolhardy.
A target was placed on Sir Robert Borden High School, and on Principal Hobbs, for no reason other than bigoted spite at the presence of an Arabic song. And because of this targeting, their school community has been subjected to vitriol from around the country.
Lisa MacLeod does not need to continue to be a politician for her to continue to be influential. There is likely a welcome place for her in the ranks of Canada’s right-wing columnists, and her social media audience is a platform unto itself.
She has used that influence to divide Nepean against itself. She will use that influence to keep sowing division across Ontario. I think this is, quite frankly, an influence our society can do without.
I am a Jew, and I have no need for a white Christian Zionist with the audacity to try and stir conflict between me and my Palestinian cousins. I have no patience for Christians who try to talk over Jews, and tell us what Judaism is and how we should be.
I have had enough of Lisa MacLeod. And truthfully?
Haven’t we all had enough of her?
I hadn't even heard about the vandalism. This pattern happens too much. Politician says something racially or religiously motivated, racist civilians respond to it by being assholes. It's like all the bullshit Asians went through after Trump called Covid the "Chinese virus." Amazing how all those same racists probably don't even care about Covid now, haha.
There is a disappointing, but unsurprising, hypocrisy when it comes to how Arabs generally, and Palestinians specifically, are embraced and handled by the media and some of our politicians vis-à-vis our other recent fellow refugees, the Ukrainians. They have my full sympathy and support but I believe in a prior year a Ukrainian song was played at a school in a similar fashion, yet no pearls were clutched then. Frankly, it's embarrassing to be weirded out by hearing non-English/French.