The Liberal government has cut funding to an anti-racism group and suspended work on a project it was running after a member of the group made anti-Semitic comments in a social media post. “Anti-Semitism has no place in this country. The anti-Semitic comments made by Laith Marouf are reprehensible and abhorrent,” Housing, Diversity and Inclusion Minister Ahmed Hussen said in a statement posted on Twitter on Monday. “We have notified the Community Media Advocacy Center (CMAC) that their funding has been cut and their work has been suspended.” Marouf, a senior adviser to an anti-racism program that received $133,000 from the federal government, posted the controversial statements on his Twitter account. The account is private, but a screenshot of the post showed a series of tweets with his photo and name. One tweet said: “You know all those noisy bags of human excrement aka Jewish White Supremacists; when we liberate Palestine and they have to go back to where they came from, they’ll be back in low tones.” [their] Christian/Secular Masters of the White Supremacy’. Last year, the Community Media Advocacy Center (CMAC) received a $133,800 grant from the Department of Canadian Heritage to build an anti-racism strategy for Canadian broadcasting. Marouf is listed as a senior advisor on CMAC’s website and is quoted as saying CMAC is “thrilled to launch” the “Building an Anti-Racism Strategy for Canadian Broadcasting: Conversation & Convergence Initiative” with funding from its Anti-Racism Action Program Heritage. He expressed gratitude to “Canadian Heritage for the cooperation and trust placed in us,” saying CMAC is committed to “ensuring the successful and responsible execution of the project.”

Marouf is not anti-Semitic, lawyer says

In Hussen’s statement, he called on CMAC to explain how it hired Marouf and how it plans to repair the damage caused by his “anti-Semitic and xenophobic statements”. “We look forward to a proper response on their next steps and clear accountability on this matter,” he said. The Canadian Press reported last week that a lawyer acting for Marouf asked that his client’s tweets be quoted “verbatim” and that a distinction be made between Marouf’s “clear reference to ‘Jewish white defenders’” and Jews or Jews in general . Marouf harbors “no animosity toward the Jewish faith as a collective group,” attorney Steven Ellis said in an email.