Canadian Union Leader Fred Hahn Won’t Resign Over Anti-Israel Posts

Fred Hahn is a vice president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE). He frequently vilifies Israel, and some have suggested that he can best be understood as an obsessive antisemite. He reposted on social media a comment praising Hamas for its “resistance” just after the atrocities on October 7 were committed. He also was impressed by, and has reposted on social media, a cartoon depicting an Israeli diver with a Star of David tattoo at the Paris Olympics diving into a pool, at which point an explosion occurs, and what follows appears to be the aftermath of a missile strike with injured children being whisked away.

That’s what Israelis do. They “explode” missiles that harm, or even kill, Palestinian kids. Fred Hahn wants you to understand that. More on Fred Hahn can be found here: “Canadian union VP rejects calls to resign over exploding Jewish athlete video,” by Michael Starr, Jerusalem Post, August 25, 2024:

The vice president of Canada’s largest union on Thursday rejected calls by the organization’s leadership to resign after he published a video on social media of a Jewish Olympic diver turning into an exploding bomb.

Canadian Union of Public Employees’ (CUPE) General Vice President and Ontario CUPE President Fred Hahn said that he was saddened and angered by the CUPE National Executive Board’s Tuesday resolution asking him for his resignation, but that he would continue to fight alongside his fellow trade unionists because it was the democratic will of CUPE members who had elected him repeatedly at the provincial and national level.

Hahn said that the union’s members should decide such actions and noted that an emergency ceasefire and pro-arms embargo Palestinian solidarity resolution at the CUPE 2023 national convention, and that the provincial branch had also agreed on a statement of Palestinian solidarity at its annual convention in May.

“As has happened to our union in the past, those who spoke up against the actions of the state of Israel last fall were quickly labeled antisemitic and vilified, especially online. I was one of those people. This smear was nothing new to those of us who advocate for the cause of Palestine,” said Hahn. “I utterly reject the charge of antisemitism; anyone who knows and works with me knows it to be a lie. It remains my strongly held view that it is a terrible mistake, and antisemitic, to conflate abhorrent actions by the state of Israel with Jewish humanity or identity.”

Ah, the sense of grievance, the self-portrayal by Fred Hahn of an intrepid soul daring to speak out against those all-powerful Jews. We are in Protocols-of-the-Elders-of-Zion territory here, with those Jews who control the banks, or the media, or everything, vilifying Fred Hahn for supporting “the cause of Palestine.” They even have the gall to call him “antisemitic.” Why, Fred Hahn doesn’t have an antisemitic bone in his body. True, he hasn’t said a single word these last ten months about the atrocities committed on October 7 by Hamas, and only spoken out against “the actions of the state of Israel last fall.” But let’s be fair, why must he always be asked to denounce both sides if only one side, the Jewish state, deserves such denunciation? And what is that “cause of Palestine” he supports? Why, it’s only this: “From the river to the sea/Palestine will be free.” And what does that mean? It means that the only Jewish state must disappear, to be supplanted by a twenty-third Arab state. What is so terrible about that?

Last Sunday, Hahn issued a retraction for his August 11 Facebook post depicting a Paris Olympics athlete with a Star of David tattoo turning into a bomb and exploding as he dove into a pool, explaining that he had intended to call to a double standard in which the Russian Federation was barred from competing but the State of Israel had been permitted….

In barring Russia, but not Israel, instead of a “double standard” the International Olympics Committee was showing that, unlike Fred Hahn, it could make the proper distinction. It recognized that there was a great difference between Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked aggression against Ukraine and the Jewish state’s attempt, after October 7, when 3,000 Hamas operatives smashed into Israel where they proceeded to rape, torture, mutilate, and murder 1,200 Israelis, to defend itself against those who would destroy the Jewish state and all of its Jewish inhabitants, by going after Hamas in Gaza.

Hahn never apologized for the viciously anti-Israel cartoon he put in a Facebook post; he took it down, in order to try to quell criticism, but that is not the same thing as an apology. He doesn’t regret the cartoon. He regrets only that a great many people found his cartoon nauseating and want to unseat him.

In his Thursday statement, Hahn denounced attacks by media and Ontario premier Doug Ford, who had called him “disgusting” and urged for his resignation.

“Disgusting” is the mot juste.

Hahn won’t be silenced by the campaign against him. He’s a fearless truth-teller, who will stand up for Hamas even when so many others, after October 7, have been vilifying the “resistance.” It takes a few brave men in every generation to confront the Zionist lobby and the all-powerful Jews, people such as Henry Ford, Father Coughlin, George Galloway, and Jeremy Corbyn. Doug Hahn is one of them.