Jewish charity loses status following Palestine activist pressure

A third Jewish charity has lost its charitable status in a move its director says was driven by “outside complaints” and not any wrongdoing or misconduct.

Source; Global Georgetown University

A third Jewish charity has lost its charitable status in a move its director says was driven by “outside complaints” and not any wrongdoing or misconduct.

Magen Herut Canada Charitable Foundation, a tiny volunteer-run organization, became the latest target of anti-Israel activists after sending volunteers to patrol near anti-Israel encampments at the University of Toronto last year.

For more than 60 days, protesters occupied King’s College Circle, demanding the university divest from any ties to Israel. Herut volunteers offered patrols after October 7, including patrolling the perimeter of Jewish neighbourhoods. Their presence enraged activist groups.

Just Peace Advocates, a pro-Palestinian organization, launched a public campaign labeling the volunteers a “militia” and “vigilante group,” urging the Canada Revenue Agency to revoke the charity’s status.

Herut director Aaron Hadida rejects the characterization entirely.

“We put out volunteer patrols to help the police, not replace them,” he told True North in an interview. “We’re a volunteer community security team.”

He says the CRA’s audit was not based on any compliance issue.

“There’s a website with a barcode and a script telling people how to complain about me,” he said. “I asked the CRA if that’s why I was being audited. They said, ‘We’ve had several complaints.’”

Hadida says the auditors never identified regulatory problems.

“They never pointed to a compliance issue. Nothing. There were no financial discrepancies at all.”

What they did say, he adds, was that he was “uncooperative” for not keeping a handwritten journal.

“I had every receipt and invoice,” he said. “I just didn’t keep a logbook. That was their entire reason for shutting me down.”

The CRA also refused his offer to voluntarily de-register the charity early in the process.

“I said, ‘If this is where it’s going, let’s just close it and move on.’ They refused. They wanted to go through the full audit, even though they couldn’t say I’d done anything wrong.”

Hadida says that Herut’s financial transactions are so few that when CRA asked for several years of bank statements, the accounts were empty. The charity had simply not spent any funds during those periods.

“They asked for years where I had zero activity,” he said. “When they found nothing, they expanded the audit to different years — it felt like they were trying to find something, anything.”

That pressure campaign stood in stark contrast to another recent CRA case.

The Muslim Association of Canada underwent a multi-year audit by the CRA’s Review and Analysis Division, the branch responsible for terrorism-financing investigations. Auditors recommended revocation over alleged ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, which the charity has firmly denied. After lengthy appeals, MAC kept its status, paying a fine and implementing remedial measures instead.

Herut was given no such chance.

The charity’s security patrols emerged out of genuine concern.

“After October 7th, people were terrified,” Hadida said. “Synagogues were being vandalized. We started volunteer patrols simply to be extra eyes and ears for the police — to calm people down.”

The Jewish have a reason to be fearful. According to Toronto Police, 443 hate-motivated incidents were reported in 2024, up from 372 the previous year. Anti-Jewish hate crimes accounted for 40 percent of reported cases. In 2023, incidents already spiked by 80 percent immediately following Hamas’s attack on Israel.

The majority of hate crimes were recorded in Toronto’s downtown core, the same area occupied on a weekly basis by pro-Palestinian protestors.

This also isn’t the first time Jewish charities have faced this kind of pressure. The Jewish National Fund of Canada lost its charitable status last year. In court filings, they argued that CRA officials had acted under heavy public pressure, pressure the record showed had been funnelled directly to auditors through activist campaigns and media coverage.

True North spoke with the CRA audit caseworker, who stated that a letter was sent to Hadida requesting supporting documents and that he failed to respond. Hadida maintains that he never received such a letter.

Hadida says none of this will stop his work.

“Charity status or not, I’m not stopping,” he said. “I work seven days a week for this community. That won’t change.”