Montréal-based writer and political activist Yves Engler is a long-time contributor to CD.

On February 20, long-time Canadian Dimension columnist and contributor Yves Engler was arrested by Montréal police at the behest of pro-Israel media personality Dahlia Kurtz. In today’s Canada, offending Zionist influencers is apparently enough to land you behind bars.

Canadians involved in progressive politics, from the left-wing of the NDP and Greens to the Communist Party, read Engler’s work and admire his commitment to social struggle. For decades, he has organized in support of just causes, from helping stop war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at Concordia University in 2002, to tirelessly confronting Canadian politicians about their complicity in the genocide in Gaza, to penning a vast catalogue of work that shatters complacent illusions about Canada’s benevolence and reveals the often cynical, profit-driven, anti-democratic heart of Ottawa’s foreign policy.

This activism has made him all the right enemies—but as his arrest this month shows, it has also led to political persecution.

Engler’s targeting by Zionist forces and the police has startling implications for the Palestine solidarity movement, and the future of activism and political mobilization in Canada generally. As Alex Tyrell, leader of the Green Party of Québec, puts it: “I think it’s a shocking attack on free expression and democratic rights and criticism of Israel in Canada—a country that’s supposed to be a free, democratic society. We’re supposed to speak out about a genocide.”

Tomorrow the Montreal police will arrest me for posting to social media against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Today I received a phone call from a Montreal police officer by the........

© Canadian Dimension