A group of pro-Palestinian organizations has filed a complaint with the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) accusing 11 Jewish schools of “promoting the Israeli military and potentially aiding and abetting illegal military recruiting.”
The complaint was submitted on April 22, 2026, by Palestinian and Jewish Unity, Ontario Palestinian Rights Association, Canadian Foreign Policy Institute, and Just Peace Advocates.
The organizations are essentially formally asking the tax regulator to investigate whether a registered charity or nonprofit has broken Canadian charity/tax rules.
Given that many private schools are registered charities, the complaint is asking the CRA to examine whether those schools’ activities are consistent with the rules required to keep charitable status.
It comes just months after The Maple’s Davide Mastracci, who formerly released the Find IDF Soldiers project, unveiled his new project called GTA to IDF, which doxes institutions that Canadian-Israeli soldiers attended and their involvement with them.
Complaint alleges schools’ support for Israel violates CRA’s rules
The aim of GTA to IDF is to highlight what role Canadian institutions may play in promoting Israel and the IDF.
The complaint also comes two months after the influential French-language Canadian paper La Presse published an article about publicly subsidized Jewish private schools in Montreal hosting active or former Israeli soldiers as speakers.
Parents at the time told The Jerusalem Post that they were “appalled” at the newspaper for allowing a “so-called journalist to publish an article which puts students attending the school at risk.”
The pro-Palestine groups alleged that the 11 schools’ support for Israel is in contravention of the CRA’s rules for registered charities, which state, “increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of Canada’s armed forces is charitable, but supporting the armed forces of another country is not.”
They also cited the Foreign Enlistment Act, which says that recruiting or inducing any person or body of persons to enlist or accept any commission in a foreign military is illegal.
The 11 schools are Associated Hebrew Schools of Toronto (AHS), Bnei Akiva Schools of Toronto (BAS Toronto), Toronto Heschel School, Netivot HaTorah Day School, TanenbaumCHAT, Bialik Hebrew Day School, Leo Baeck Day School, Bialik High School, Herzliah High School, and Hebrew Academy.
The complaint also targets any donors who gave more than $5 million to one or more of the associated schools. Unsurprisingly, the complaint leans heavily on information provided on The Maple’s GTA to IDF database.
GTA to IDF, for example, wrote that AHS twins with Israeli schools, enabling peer-to-peer relationships and joint projects like bridge-building competitions and visits from Israeli delegations.
The school’s online accounts also praise IDF soldiers, and the school brings soldiers in to speak to students.
The groups then revealed the top donors to the schools and how much they gave.
This process was repeated for all the other schools, listing the alleged promotion of Israel’s military and then the top 10 donors. “Religious Zionist” culture is portrayed negatively, as are any fundraisers for Israel in any way.
The groups then said that, according to both domestic and international law, the CRA has the responsibility to ensure Canadian taxpayers are not subsidizing war crimes or assisting the aiding and abetting of recruiting for a foreign military.
“With the report that 1,500 Canadians are serving in the Israeli military and given the age of joining the military in most cases is shortly after the end of high school, this is indeed a serious concern.
“It is even more serious if Canadian taxpayers are subsidizing the illegal recruiting of these individuals through charity tax breaks. This taxpayer contribution is supporting individuals who serve in a military committing war crimes and genocide, making the individuals plausibly guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
Earlier this year, some of these same groups took aim at Jewish summer camps for their “explicit support for the Israeli military” and “genocide.”
“When children’s camps support a genocidal state, it’s time for gigantic change,” the groups [including Canada BDS] wrote in a joint statement in February.
The groups claim to have “identified” at least 17 summer camps throughout Canada that “support the State of Israel in some way.” Of the 17, 10 are in Ontario, three in Quebec, and one each in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, and Nova Scotia.
It is worth noting that one of the individuals on the Just Peace Advocates’ Board of Directors is Jonathan Kuttab, the co-founder of Al-Haq.
Al-Haq is a designated terror organization in Israel and is sanctioned by the US for “directly engag[ing] in efforts by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute Israeli nationals, without Israel’s consent.”
On Tuesday, B’nai Brith Canada said it is demanding that the CRA dismiss the “unfounded, bigoted complaint raised against Jewish schools in Toronto and Montreal.”
“This is not an isolated issue or campaign,” said Simon Wolle, B’nai Brith Canada’s Chief Executive Officer. “It is a coordinated and malicious attack on Jewish life extending from sector to sector and charity to charity.”
Wolle added that thousands of Jewish families rely on these schools and camps, and thus the “deceitful movement” has already caused considerable alarm and concern in the Jewish community.
Richard Robertson, B’nai Brith Canada’s Director of Research and Advocacy, said the campaign is attempting to weaponize Canadian charity law as part of a concerted effort to “villainize” Jewish institutions.
The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, the UJA Federation and Federation CJA then released a joint statement condemning what they referred to as a “coordinated campaign to erase Jewish life in Canada.”
“For months, a veritable witch hunt across various channels has targeted all Jewish community institutions with the goal of erasing Jewish life in this country. Today, this campaign, orchestrated by radical anti-Jewish and anti-Israel groups, has crossed a new threshold by attacking our community’s schools, with a clear and blatant intent to weaponize the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA).”
“The goal is not transparency, but a blatant desire to paralyze and destroy Jewish community life in Canada. Targeting our schools means targeting our children, and that is unacceptable.”
