The campaigns of four federal election candidates are apologizing after they were called out by B'nai Brith Canada.
All four had ads published in an Arabic-language newspaper, which B'nai Brith accuses of publishing anti-Semitic editorials.
"In 2016, B'nai Brith exposed an editorial in al-Forqan that praised terrorist attacks in Israel as a 'sacred act of jihad,'" wrote B'nai Brith Canada.
According to the organization which advocates for human rights and the Canadian Jewish community, more recent issues have proclaimed, "The Hour of Judgement will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them," and "Lying is an attribute inherent to the Jews."
Campaigns for NDP candidate Brian Masse in Windsor West, and all three Liberal candidates in Windsor-Essex, Sandra Pupatello in Windsor West, Irek Kusmierczyk in Windsor-Tecumseh, and Audrey Festeryga in Essex paid for ads in the paper's September 2019 edition and online.
Masse told BlackburnNews.com as soon as his campaign was made aware of the concern, it had the ads removed online.
"We advertise in all the community-based papers that ask us, so we did the same thing here," explained Masse. "Concerns were expressed, and so, we moved the ad right away."
In a statement to BlackburnNews.com, Pupatello's campaign wrote, "We were not aware of these issues when the ads were placed, and we will not be placing ads in this publication going forward." It also said it contacted B'nai Brith to apologize.
Masse said his campaign would make a greater effort to vet publications it advertises with in the future.
"We'll probably have to look at some of the vettings, but we're always trying to encourage local advertising with the papers because it's a way of supporting local media," he said.
"There is absolutely no excuse for subsidizing Jew-hatred by placing advertisements in these anti-Semitic publications," said CEO Michael Mostyn. "Our political candidates should be the first to acknowledge this fact, and we thank them for doing so in this case."
