Write a letter to Canada Revenue Agency: end subsidies to Israeli settler colonial organization
Take one minute to write a letter to the Canada Revenue Agency regarding Canadian charity organization supporting Regavim, a violent settler colonialist organization.
Write Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) to ask them to stop granting tax receipts for donations to the Jerusalem-based group Regavim.
Read the recent comprehensive report from Defund Racism regarding Regavim.
Update: additional information was provided to CRA in January 2023 in regard to Mizrachi Canada support of Ir David (Elad). Read more about Elad in this Al Haq report. Further information was provided in February 2023 about other charities providing money to Mizrachi, and in March 2023 about donations to the illegal settlement--Kedumim, the home of Smotrich.
In December 2022, a representative of the Jerusalem-based organization Regavim hosted a series of fundraisers in the Greater Toronto Area. The Canada Revenue Agency shouldn’t provide a single tax receipt for donations to this racist, colonialist, organization.
According to Defund Racism, Regavim “works to expand Jewish control of land across Israel and the Palestinian Occupied Territories by pushing Israeli administrative, judicial, legislative, and military bodies to dispossess Palestinian and other non-Jewish communities of their land.” To dispossess Palestinians, it spies on them with drones and employs various legal measures.
It’s important the CRA takes immediate action regarding Regavim as its influence is set to grow. The group’s openly racist and homophobic co-founder, Bezalel Smotrich, was granted control in the new Netanyahu government over Israeli military agencies in the occupied West Bank. Ha’aretz recently pointed out what this will likely mean for Palestinians, reporting that “the Regavim NGO and Bezalel Smotrich don’t want law and order, they want to use more force against the Arabs.”
Regavim’s website offers tax receipts to Canadian donors. Its fiscal sponsor in Canada is registered charity Mizrachi Canada, which channeled $6 million to Israel in 2021.
According to CRA rules, registered charities are not supposed to assist the Israeli settlement project in the occupied West Bank since Ottawa officially considers it a violation of international law.
The Canada Revenue Agency must audit Mizrachi Canada and immediately halt it from granting tax receipts to Regavim donors.
December 2023: with over 20,000 people killed including over 10,000 children by Israel over 75 days, close to 2 million people displaced, thousands still under rubble, 50,000 injured, and infrastructure destroyed including hospitals, schools, places of worship, homes and utilities, Canada is complicit in both war crimes and genocide by allowing Canadian charities to support organizations supporting the Israeli military and illegal settlements.
See recent information here.
Supporting organizations:
Canadian Foreign Policy Institute
Palestine House (Palestinian Canadian Community Centre)
