Screenshot of an antisemitic image promoting a workshop of the World Social Forum, which is being sponsored by the Canadian government.

A major Jewish group called the Canadian government to task this week for sponsoring an event “promoting antisemitism and the anti-Israel boycott movement.”

B’nai B’rith Canada was referring to the annual World Social Forum (WSF), slated to take place next week in Montreal. The conference is set to include dozens of anti-Israel workshops, including many promoting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. According to B’nai B’rith Canada, the gathering aims to “unit[e] various far-left and anti-globalization civil society groups.”

In addition, the group said, an image promoting the event “is a blatantly antisemitic caricature that depicts a Wahhabi terrorist emerging from the mouth of American mascot Uncle Sam, who in turn emerges from the mouth of a stereotypical ultra-Orthodox Jew with a Star of David emblazoned on his hat.”

One workshop — entitled “Terrorizm [sic], Wahabbism, Zionism” — will seek to explore what it says is how Wahhabis are “mercenaries of Saudi in the service of world Zionism-capitalism…They cooperate for misrepresentation, by accus[ing] Palestinian freedom fighters by terrorism and legitimization crimes of fundamentalist regime in Israel.”

Another workshop, on “the Israel Lobby’s war on Palestine solidarity and how best to resist,” features Diana Ralph, whom B’nai B’rith Canada called “a leading Canadian conspiracy theorist who has blamed Israel for staging the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.”

However, the most “egregious” of such displays, according to B’nai B’rith Canada, appears on the commitments page of the WSF website — in a section called “Non Apartheid”:

…we have already taken a stand to exclude all people, organizations and or activities that promote any kind of oppression, supporting the Palestinians and all the people struggling for emancipation and freedom.

A list of partners on the WSF conference website includes the Government of Canada, the Province of Quebec and the City of Montreal, along with McGill University, Université de Québec à Montréal and Cégep du Vieux Montréal.