Laith Marouf Courtesy of Twitter screenshot

Canada’s diversity minister denounced antisemitic tweets from a senior consultant on Monday and withdrew a six-figure grant from a government-funded project on which the consultant had been working. 

Diversity Minister Ahmed Hussen accused the consultant, Beirut-based Laith Marouf, of “unacceptable behavior” and said the Community Media Advocacy Centre, where Marouf was helping to develop an anti-racism strategy for Canadian broadcasters, will forfeit about $103,000 (U.S).

One of Marouf’s tweets, posted to an account that is now private, read: “You know all those loud mouthed bags of human feces, aka the Jewish White Supremacists; when we liberate Palestine and they have to go back to where they come from, they will return to being low voiced bitches of [their] Christian/Secular White Supremacist Masters.”

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

Stephen Ellis, Marouf’s lawyer, told the CBC that his client’s tweet was about Jewish white supremacists as opposed to Jewish people in general.

In statement posted to Twitter about Marouf’s tweets, Hussen wrote that “antisemitism has no place in this county” and that he has asked CMAC how it came to hire Marouf for an anti-racism project, and “how they plan on rectifying the situation given his antisemitic and xenophobic comments.”

The president and CEO of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs said in a statement that the centre appreciated Hussen’s action against the group that hired Marouf.

According to Marouf’s website, he is a journalist who regularly appears on the broadcast news networks Radio Sputnik, Press TV, and Al Mayadeen.

He has a long history of antisemitic and xenophobic tweeting. Although his current Twitter account is now private, he previously had an account suspended for violating community guidelines, according to The Guardian, and once dubbed former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell “the Jamaican house-slave of the Empire” and celebrated his death from COVID-19.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

$90 → $180 $180 → $360

$360 → $720

Other amount