Mayor Ferrada, yesterday I asked you to make Montreal a part of history. Today, I fear your administration has chosen to miss the mark. Missing the mark of history. Missing the mark of courage. Missing the mark of greatness. Missing the mark of these Palestinian children, robbed of their dignity.

Attorney Khaled Mahajna, who has followed Mohammed Arab’s case throughout his detention, previously recounted an extraordinary question the journalist asked him during one of their meetings.“I want to see what I look like,” Mohammed Arab reportedly told him. “Can you describe my face to me?”According to Mahajna, Mohammed Arab had been deprived of the ability to see himself in a mirror during his imprisonment.

The government report is a transparently dishonest attempt to shut down pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist activism on campuses by misrepresenting opposition to Israel as Jew hatred. It was sponsored by the Canadian government, which supports Israel and has adopted the discredited IHRA definition of antisemitism. Its first author is a Zionist, who once held an executive position in a pro-Israel organization.

It is this determination to live apart, rather than ideological pacifism, that explains the Haredim resistance to conscription. The few Haredim who did join the army in specially created segregated units have acted no less brutally than the average IDF soldier. In his denunciation, Rabbi Lando used the word retsah for murder, the same root as that uttered in the prohibition “Thou shalt not kill” in the Ten Commandments. This choice of language made his accusation particularly grievous.