July 16, 2021
TORONTO — B’nai Brith Canada is outraged by the apparent reinstatement without discipline of a Toronto school employee who sent materials to teachers justifying the murder of Israeli civilians.
Javier Dávila, a Student Equity Program Advisor with the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), sent two emails to a listserv comprised of TDSB educators in May, as fighting between the Hamas terrorist group and Israel raged. The emails are filled with virulently anti-Israel teaching material, repeatedly describing Israelis as a whole as “colonizers” in their indigenous homeland.
Dávila announced that he has been reinstated without discipline online Friday morning.
Some of the materials go even further. Dávila’s emails contain writings by Laila Khaled and Ghassan Kanafani, prominent members of the Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), another designated terrorist entity in Canada. One flyer promoted by Dávila, prepared by the “New England Committee to Defend Palestine,” even justifies Palestinian suicide bombings and accuses “Zionists” of plotting genocide against Palestinians.
“If the TDSB has really imposed no discipline in this matter, then it is sending a clear signal that it regards Jewish students, Jewish teachers and the Jewish community as second-class constituents,” said Michael Mostyn, Chief Executive Officer of B’nai Brith Canada. “There is no way the TDSB would tolerate the glorification of violence against any other minority group.
“It is clear that the TDSB has a serious antisemitism problem, and it is questionable whether the institution can fix it alone.”
According to the TDSB’s own figures, Jews were the most targeted religious group for hate incidents within its schools in both the 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 school years. Meanwhile, B’nai Brith recorded an explosion of antisemitism across Canada during the May 2021 Hamas-Israeli clashes, with far more violent incidents that month than in all of 2020 combined.
In June, B’nai Brith wrote to Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce to urge him to ensure adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism throughout Ontario’s publicly-funded school boards, and to put aside funding to combat Jew-hatred within schools.
