Children found bound and shot in the head. Young women raped and killed, their bodies driven through the streets of Gaza and spat upon. Rave participants massacred. A grandmother’s murder posted on her own Facebook page. Some of it apparently filmed and broadcast by Hamas, hoping to cow Israelis into submission. That is the very definition of “terrorism.”

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

Try refreshing your browser, or
tap here to see other videos from our team.

Howard Levitt: If your employer expresses sympathy for Hamas, here are your options Back to video

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

Try refreshing your browser, or
tap here to see other videos from our team.

Play Video

Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford announced, in response to the pro-Hamas rallies that took place here, that such “hate rallies have no place in Ontario or Canada.” Liberal Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, referring to pro-Hamas rallies as the “glorification of terror,” echoing his words.

Air Canada agreed with those sentiments, suspending a pilot who posted messages in support of Hamas on his Instagram account. And a federal civil servant is reportedly under investigation for anti-Israel postings made following the attacks.

As I have noted before, brand-damaging behaviour is cause for discharge without severance. In the well-known case of Kelly v. Linamar, downloading child porn at home was held to be cause for discharge because of its potential for hurting the company’s brand, even though the employee in question was never criminally convicted.

Any employee in a public-facing or managerial position who participated in any of Canada’s Hamas-supporting “hate fests” should similarly be fired for cause. And if any of them sue, I will personally act for their employers, pro bono.

Hamas has never been secretive about its goals or methods: “Driving the Jews into the sea” is central to its charter.

Israelis have warned of this for years, while many on the left, with its bigotry of low expectations, leapt to Hamas’ defence.

Hamas was not wrong in believing it could count on the credulous left.

Toronto’s Mayor, Olivia Chow, issued a statement expressing moral equivalence and concern for Palestinian loss of life following the attacks, but after realizing her instincts had betrayed her, she deleted the tweet.

Though the city says it was not a sanctioned event, a rally outside Toronto City Hall in Nathan Phillips Square nevertheless took place, celebrating and glorifying the Hamas murderers and drawing 1,000 attendees.

Meanwhile, despite the fact that the Canadian government and Public Safety Canada have designated Hamas as a terrorist group, George Achi, CBC’s director of journalistic standards and practices, told CBC journalists not to refer to Hamas as “terrorists” and to not state that Israel had vacated Gaza in 2005, when in fact it did.

But if Hamas’ conduct was not terrorism, the word “terrorism” has no meaning.

Notably, the U.K. Minister of Immigration, Robert Jenrick, scathingly attacked the BBC for similarly refusing to describe Hamas as terrorists and declared that “anyone who valorized Hamas” should be “hunted down, arrested and prosecuted.” German President Olaf Scholz similarly announced that those lauding Hamas or its actions would face criminal prosecution.

Yet CUPE Local 3906, representing employees at McMaster University, issued immediate support for the Palestinian “resistance” in a tweet “liked” by CUPE’s president, Fred Hahn.

What recourse do you have if you are a Jewish employee of the CBC, particularly one told to lie about what has gone on in the Middle East? Or an employee of any employer that declared sympathy for Hamas or even expressed moral equivalence? Or an employee of the many companies represented by CUPE?

If you organize a protest against your employer or union’s conduct, you may be targeted. If you are a CUPE member, you can attempt to take over the union leadership, get sufficient members on its executive to change its policies or decertify the union at your place of employment.

But that is very difficult since you must have 40 per cent of the employees sign a decertification petition within certain narrow dates and will be subject to the union’s bully boys. Rex Murphy and others can attest to the culture of the CBC and how difficult it is to take on that bastion of wokeism from the inside. None of this is practical.

I therefore suggest other legal remedies for Jewish employees of companies or unions that sympathize with Hamas.

Take the union or employer to the human rights commission. Argue that the union or employer’s conduct has created a poisoned work environment based on your religion, creed and race. There is no cost to do so and many lawyers will be delighted to assist you free of charge. Any retaliation for making such a complaint is directly prohibited by human rights legislation, even if you are ultimately unsuccessful in your primary claim. CUPE and the CBC, for example, would be aghast at the prospect that they might be called out for discrimination by the tribunal. That will provide you considerable leverage in the prescribed mediation. They also know enough to avoid being accused of retaliating against you, directly or indirectly, for filing such a complaint.

The other recourse is to sue civilly. Although unionized employees cannot sue, only grieve, against their employers, they can sue their unions. And non-union employees can sue their employers directly. For what? In both cases, intentional infliction of mental stress, intimidation, defamation or conspiracy to injure, depending on what the employer (or union) has done or stated. All potentially tenable lawsuits for Jews against anti-semitic companies and unions. If the atmosphere in the workplace impacts on your work life as a member of a specific group, you may have a human rights or constructive dismissal claim, which, in Ontario, can be combined into one civil action. A constructive dismissal claim can be launched by a non-union worker if the conduct is so toxic that a court concludes that you ought not to have reasonably put up with it. The argument would be that the employer’s public position is so offensive to your ethnic group that it rendered your continued employment untenable.

On top of those remedies, you can file a grievance, if you are in a union, or a harassment complaint if not, pursuant to the anti-harassment policy that all employers must maintain pursuant to Occupational Health and Safety Act legislation in each province.

But what if the union does not accept your grievance? Although you can file a duty of fair representation case to the Labour Relations Board, the historic prospects of those cases being successful are minuscule. Unions are entitled legally to make mistakes and, as long as they can prove that they put their mind to the issue and their decision was not riddled with arbitrariness, discrimination or bad faith, you will fail. But, although bad faith is normally hard to prove, if the union was, say, CUPE, it may not be so difficult on this issue.

The purpose of this litigation is not merely to recover damages but to make a point politically to force unions and companies that are offside to change their culture and be more sensitive.

While Israel is taking care of Hamas, seize the zeitgeist: Take on their fellow travellers in Canada.

Howard Levitt is senior partner of Levitt Sheikh, employment and labour lawyers with offices in Toronto and Hamilton. He practices employment law in eight provinces. He is the author of six books including the Law of Dismissal in Canada.