Anver Emon

Emon has also called for Israel’s destruction and spread hatred of Israel as an anti-Israel professor and activist.

Emon is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

As of April 2024, Emon was listed online as the administrative director of the “Hearing Palestine” initiative at the University of Toronto (U of T). The group states that its mission is to “Provide an intellectual hub for the study of Palestine.”

Also as of of April 2024, Emon, who also goes by Anver M. Emon, was listed on the U of T website as professor of law and history. The site also listed him as Canada research chair in Islamic law and history, as well as the director of the Institute of Islamic Studies at U of T.

As of the same date, Emon’s LinkedIn profile said he received a doctorate in juridical sciences, Islamic law and the rule of law from Yale Law School (YLS) in 2009. His LinkedIn also said he received a PhD in “History - Medieval Islamic Law” from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), in 2005.

As of April 2024, Emon’s LinkedIn said he was located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Justifying Hamas Terrorist War Crimes

In November 2023, the month after Hamas murdered 1,200 Israeli Jews on October 7, 2023, Emon signed [no. 57] a letter titled: “Open Letter to the Legal Community on Pro-Palestine Speech.”

The letter was in solidarity with students at the Lincoln Alexander School of Law (LASL) facing backlash after they showed support for the Hamas massacre the previous month.

The letter said: “We reject the notion that it is antisemitic, hateful, or illegitimate to contextualize the October 7th, 2023 attack.”

The letter also claimed that the terror attacks represented “legitimate Charter-protected political expression,” echoing UN “resolutions affirming the right of the Palestinians to resist their demise.”

Among Palestinians and anti-Israel activists, the term “resistance” can be a euphemism for nationalistic terror. It is often used to excuse or even glorify anti-Israel and anti-Semitic violence.  

The letter that Emon signed referred to a statement published and reportedly signed by 74 LASL students on October 20, 2023. The statement expressed [photo 1] support for “all forms of Palestinian resistance and efforts towards liberation,” and called for [photo 4] the LASL administration to recognize “Palestinian resistance as fundamentally just.”

The LASL statement also claimed [photo 1]: “Israel is not a country, it is the brand of a settler colony.” The LASL statement also said [photo 3] that the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack “was a direct result of Israel’s 75-year-long campaign to eradicate Palestinians, and that Israel is therefore responsible for all loss of life.”

The modern State of Israel was founded 75 years earlier, in 1948.

On Saturday, October 7, 2023, approximately 2,900 heavily armed Hamas terrorists breached Israel’s border with Gaza. They executed numerous war crimes on civilians, including mass murder, beheadings of children, rape of men and women, torture, kidnappings and mutilation. Hamas broadcast videos of their butchery on social media, often to victims’ accounts for families to see. Israel retaliated with a war called “Swords of Iron.” As of November 10, 2023, over 1,200 Israelis, the vast majority of them civilians, were murdered during the attacks. Hamas kidnapped 242 Israelis, including at least 30 children. At least 3,500 people were wounded, many severely.

Emon “liked” an October 8, 2023 tweet that said: “still processing the significance of how palestinians managed to invert the spatial terms of the occupation this week like never before (to my knowledge).”

Emon also “liked” an October 7, 2023 tweet that said: “As Hawaiians wake up to the news of Palestinian anticolonial resistance in Gaza to Israeli settler colonialism, remember that—from Hawaiʻi to Palestine—occupation is a crime. A lāhui that stands for decolonization and deoccupation should also stand behind freedom for Palestine.”

Defending a Nonprofit Investigated for Ties to Terror Groups

On June 13, 2022, Emon served as an expert witness for the federally funded Muslim Association of Canada (MAC). The nonprofit was under investigation for breaches of tax law from 2013 to 2015, including suspected ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Muslim Brotherhood (MB) is a transnational Islamist organization founded in Egypt in 1928. It was designated as a terrorist organization by Egypt (2013), Saudi Arabia (2014), the United Arab Emirates (2014) and Bahrain (2017). Among its offshoots is Hamas, a terrorist group dedicated to Israel’s destruction.  

The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) reportedly claimed that MAC promoted and provided a fundraising platform for the International Relief Fund for the Afflicted and Needy (IRFAN) after its charity status had been revoked in 2011 due to its ties to Hamas. According to the Canadian government, IRFAN had transferred more than $14 million to organizations associated with Hamas. In 2014, the group was designated a terrorist entity by the Canadian government.

Emon accused [p. 88] the CRA of discrimination against Muslim-led charities. He also claimed [pp. 54-55] that the CRA’s giving greater weight to documentary evidence over the spoken word in its audit “raises concerns about the [CRA’s] interpretive biases,” which he said was “consistent with an Islamophobic narrative.”

The judge responded (iii.i.[46]) that the CRA’s preference for documents rather than oral evidence was “standard litigation practice” when contradictory statements are made during litigation.

Calling for Israel’s Destruction

On December 20, 2023, during Israel’s war against Hamas, Emon co-produced an anti-Israel publication for Hearing Palestine, titled: “FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA: PALESTINE WILL BE FREE /A PRIMER ON HISTORY, CONTEXT, AND LEGALITIES IN CANADA.” 

“From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free” is a chant used [00:02:47] to call for the elimination of the State of Israel. It has also been employed by Hamas leader Khaled Mashal to call for the replacement of Israel with an Islamic state. In April 2024, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning the chant as antisemitic.

The publication claimed [pp.9-10] that “all” historians “are in agreement that for Palestinian movements the slogan is not primarily a political program…but rather a Palestinian expression for liberation, freedom, and equality given the on-going context of colonization and military occupation.”

The publication further quoted [pp. 10-11] a historian who said: “The claim that the phrase ‘from the river to the sea’ carries a genocidal intent relies not on the historical record, but rather on racism and Islamophobia.”

The primer also asserted [p. 11]: “Chants and slogans are important for protests.”

The primer’s authors also wrote [p. 11]: “For many Palestinians, the slogan represents the ‘right of return’ to towns and villages where their ancestors lived before the establishment of the State of Israel.”

The “right of return” is a Palestinian demand discredited as a means to eliminate Israel. International law mandates no absolute right of return and UN Resolution 194, which defined principles for “refugees wishing to return to their homes,” was unanimously rejected by Arab nations following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

Hatred of Israel

On May 18, 2021, during Israel’s Operation Guardian of the Walls (OGW) against terrorists in Gaza, Emon co-authored a Hearing Palestine statement expressing “solidarity with the Palestinian people in this time of escalating Israeli bombardment of Gaza, of relentless assaults on Palestinian residents in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, in Haifa, Lydd [Lod] and other towns.”

In May 2021, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorists fired over 4,300 rockets from Gaza at major population centers in Israel. Israel responded by launching OGW, carrying out targeted military strikes in Gaza.

On May 11, 2021, during OGW, violent Arab riots broke out in Israel’s mixed Jewish-Arab city of Lod and in other Israeli cities with large Arab populations. The rioters in Lod reportedly raised Hamas and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) flags and attacked Israeli civilians with slabs and rocks, as well as firebombs and metal rods. Rioters also torched synagogues, cars and businesses, and vandalized hospital medical equipment, schools and government buildings.  

Emon’s May 18, 2021 statement also accused Israel of “Apartheid” and characterized the BDS movement as “anti-racist criticism of Israel.”

BDS

The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement was founded by Omar Barghouti in 2005 to challenge “international support for Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism.” BDS is an allegedly “Palestinian-led movement,” although leading BDS activists have admitted [00:01:01] this is not true. 

One of the demands of BDS includes [point 3] what is generally known as the “right of return,” a demand discredited as a way to eliminate Israel. Barghouti said the “right of return” is a means to “end Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.”  

Barghouti has said that BDS “aims to turn Israel into a pariah state, as South Africa once was.”

In his activism, Barghouti has also said [00:05:55] regarding Israel: “Definitely, most definitely, we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. No…rational Palestinian, not a sellout Palestinian, will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.”

The movement has been linked to numerous terrorist organizations and received a public endorsement from Hamas in 2017.

BDS initiatives include calling on institutions and individuals to divest from Israeli-affiliated companies, promoting academic and cultural boycotts of Israel, and organizing anti-Israel rallies, protests and campaigns.

The movement’s most notable achievement has been the infiltration of university campuses through lobbying for “BDS resolutions.” In these cases, student governments and student groups, backed by their own anti-Israel members and affiliates, have proposed resolutions on some form of boycott of, or divestment from, Israel and Israeli-affiliated entities.

Boycott resolutions, although non-binding, have been passed by student governments on numerous North American campuses.

BDS activity is often aggressive and disruptive. It has been noted that universities that pass BDS resolutions see a marked increase in anti-Semitic incidents on campus. On one campus, when the student government debated a BDS resolution, reports emerged of violent threats against those opposing it.

Social Media and Weblinks

University Website: 

https://www.history.utoronto.ca/people/directories/all-faculty/anver-emon

University Website 2:https://www.law.utoronto.ca/faculty-staff/full-time-faculty/anver-emon

Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/anver.emon

Twitter:https://twitter.com/anveremon

Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/anveremon/

LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/anver-emon-1a1b441/

Academia.edu:https://utoronto.academia.edu/AnverEmon

Personal Website:https://www.anveremon.com/ [Deleted]