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The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) is calling on the Brampton City Council to walk back its support of the “Apartheid-Free Communities Pledge” promoted by an international network of anti-Israel activist groups.
The council endorsed the pledge with a unanimous vote last week, making it the first municipal authority in the Canadian province of Ontario to do so.
In response, CAM Chief Government Affairs Officer Lisa Katz, who leads CAM’s work with North American mayors, penned a letter of condemnation — which can be read HERE — to Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown and the ten members of the council, calling the vote a “serious and profoundly misguided mistake” that would “cause real harm to Jewish residents of Brampton.”
The full text of the letter follows:
Dear Mayor Brown and Members of the Brampton City Council,
I write in my capacity as Chief Government Affairs Officer of the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), which works closely with mayors and municipal leaders across North America to confront antisemitism and strengthen community cohesion.
Your council’s decision to adopt an “Apartheid-Free Community” resolution is a serious and profoundly misguided mistake, one that will cause real harm to Jewish residents of Brampton that we urge you to reconsider.
Municipal governments exist to serve residents, maintain public safety, and foster inclusive communities. They are not foreign policy bodies, and they are not equipped to adjudicate one of the most complex and contested geopolitical conflicts in the world. By inserting Brampton into an international political campaign explicitly targeting the world’s only Jewish state, the council has chosen symbolism over responsibility and division over leadership.
The word “apartheid” applied to Israel is not a neutral descriptor. It is an inflammatory political slogan promoted by coordinated international boycott campaigns whose explicit goal is the economic, cultural, and diplomatic isolation of Israel. Adopting that framing is not a foreign policy position. It is a statement directed at Jewish residents of your own city, many of whom have deep familial, cultural, and religious ties to Israel, telling them that their identity and connections have been singled out for condemnation by their own municipal government. That is not a message a mayor or city council should be sending.
It is a particularly reckless message to send right now. Antisemitism in Canada is not a distant concern. It is a present crisis. Jewish schools have required heightened security measures. Synagogues and community centers have faced threats and vandalism. Jewish Canadians across the country report feeling increasingly unsafe and isolated. In that environment, the role of municipal leadership is to protect vulnerable communities, not to adopt rhetoric that further marginalizes them.
The precedent your council has set demands scrutiny. If Brampton City Hall is now a venue for symbolic resolutions on foreign conflicts, the question must be asked: why this conflict, and why this country? The world is full of territorial disputes, armed conflicts, and documented human rights abuses. Your council has chosen to single out the one Jewish state. There is a word for holding one nation, and one people, to a standard applied to no one else. That word is antisemitism — and your council should reflect carefully on what it has done.
We urge the council to rescind this resolution and to engage directly with Jewish community leaders in Brampton, not as a gesture, but as a genuine act of leadership. The measure of a municipal government is not its willingness to weigh in on distant conflicts. It is its ability to protect every resident and ensure that no community feels targeted, isolated, or abandoned by the city they call home.
Brampton’s Jewish community deserves better than this. And Brampton deserves leadership that unites its residents rather than divides them.
