Muslim leaders say anti-Palestinian racism is casting a chill on free speech

Director of the York University Islamophobia Research Hub Nadia Hasan, centre, addresses a press conference following the release of a report in Ottawa on Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Spencer Colby

Schools and employers are linking Palestinian culture with terrorism and retaliating against people who are speaking out about the war in Gaza, a new report suggests.

“Many Canadians have paid an unfair price,” York University professor Nadia Hasan told a Wednesday news conference on Parliament Hill.

Hasan leads the university’s Islamophobia Research Hub, which released a report that says public and private institutions are violating the speech rights of those speaking out against Israel’s war in Gaza.

The report urges all levels of government to officially recognize anti-Palestinian racism and to pursue training on how to detect and prevent discrimination against this community.

The report cites cases of law students, teachers and medical professionals facing occupational investigations or reprimands for speaking out about the war in Gaza. The report says many of those people were later cleared of wrongdoing.

It cites the University of Ottawa’s decision to suspend Dr. Yipeng Ge for posts a Jewish colleague said were meant to undermine the existence of Israel; the school later reinstated him.

“The silence of many of our institutional leaders was really harmful,” Hasan said.

“It set a tone. A lot of people interpreted it as a threshold for what’s tolerable in their workplaces, in their educational spaces.”

Jesse Robichaud, a spokesperson for the University of Ottawa, said in an email that no suspension was instituted but that a resident was “temporarily removed” from the clinical and academic settings while professionalism complaints were considered.

“These types of interim measures are not disciplinary actions,” said Robichaud. “Every effort was undertaken to ensure a timely treatment of the case. Notably, while waiting for the case to be considered and for the decision of the subcommittee, the resident continued to receive the full salary and benefits of the position.”

The report says that students have been being bullied or officially punished for wearing a traditional kaffiyeh scarf or for posting a Palestinian flag on social media.

“Students are being denied the ability to mourn their family, to mourn the death of their family members, just because they are Palestinian,” said Nihad Jasser of the Association of Palestinian Arab Canadians.

“We want our children to grow up proud of who they are. We want them to celebrate their Palestinian heritage with dignity and pride.”

She said there appears to be a “Palestine exception” in place for policies on diversity and inclusion.

“Institutions in our society will support all human rights -- except Palestinian rights all cultures except Palestinian culture,” Jasser said.

Amira Elghawaby, Ottawa’s special representative on combating Islamophobia, said governments’ weak pushback against incidents of anti-Muslim hate risks emboldening those bent on violence.

“Many of these are shocking in and of themselves. Taken altogether, they point to a system of oppression,” she said. “These dangerous trends must be interrupted before doing further harm.”

The report also calls on Ottawa to crack down on foreign interference targeting Muslims in Canada.

They noted a March 2024 analysis by Meta, the parent company of Facebook, that found evidence of “anti-Muslim and Islamophobic narratives directed at Canadian audiences” originating from Israel.

The Israeli government has denied any involvement in the campaign, which used AI-generated profile pictures and sought to garner Canadian media coverage that could link antisemitism with on-campus protests.

Wednesday’s report also argues that corporate leaders have failed to call out Israeli policies causing mass death and hunger in Gaza.

The report notes that the Royal Bank of Canada issued a statement of support for Jewish Canadians after the Hamas attack on Israel in 2023 but “did not go further to include the rising civilian casualties and displacement of Palestinians from Gaza.” A bank spokeswoman said it “won’t be providing further comment.”

The report also notes that Scotiabank donated to both the United Jewish Appeal and the Red Cross response in the Middle East, but did not take note of the situation facing Palestinians. Scotiabank has been asked to comment.

Conservative MPs have pushed back on the idea of officially recognizing anti-Palestinian racism. The House of Commons justice committee called for such a move last December.

The Conservatives said that recommendation would introduce “new and complex categories that risk complicating the conversation and fostering division rather than unity.”

The Conservatives cited the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, which argued that anti-Palestinian racism could be used as a shield for groups calling for the destruction of the State of Israel.

“The endorsement of APR is an attack on Jewish identity (and) undermines the important work of combating antisemitism,” CIJA said.

Hasan said that Canada should be able to tackle both anti-Jewish and anti-Palestinian hate “through a good-faith engagement with impacted communities.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 6, 2025.