‘Not One Cent of Canadian Tax-Dollars Should be Funding Genocide’

BY YVES ENGLER

MAY 31, 2024Facebook

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Image by Bruno.

A New York state bill to strip tax-exempt status from charities assisting Israeli settlements and the Israeli military should boost a similar initiative in Canada.

Last week high profile left-Democrat Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorsed a bill called “Not on our dime!: Ending New York funding of Israeli settler violence Act.” The New York state bill would revoke the charitable status of groups assisting illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Introduced last year, the bill was recently amended to include charities “aiding and abetting activity by the Israeli armed forces” that violate International Criminal Court rulings.

The bill builds off the work of Defund Racism, which has compiled evidence of US charities’ role in dispossessing Palestinians. In a similar vein, last year over 30 Canadian groups endorsed “colonialism is not charity”, which calls on the Canada Revenue Agency to revoke the charitable status of groups assisting West Bank settlements and the Israeli military.
The campaign to challenge Israel-focused charities was given a boost recently by a parliamentary petition instigated by researcher Miles Howe. Sponsored by NDP MP Niki Ashton the petition notes:

“Taxpayer-subsidized charitable donations may well be Canada’s most important contribution to Palestinian dispossession; Over the last five years, more than a billion dollars has been sent by Canadian charities to Israeli recipients. While some of this money may find its way into charitable ventures, a portion goes toward supporting the Israeli military and/or illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory, activities which stand in contravention of Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) regulations and Canada’s public policy; Recently, evidence has been uncovered of Canadian charities providing charitable tax receipts for Israeli organizations actively supporting what the International Court of Justice deems a “plausible” genocide in Gaza; One charity, registered as the Mizrachi Organization of Canada, has, for example, transferred funds to Im Tirtzu, an organization which is overtly involved in blocking aid trucks bound for Gaza, as well as to the organization Women In Green, which runs a campaign to ‘plant an Israeli flag’ in Gaza; and The CRA has received numerous requests to investigate the activities of Mizrachi Canada and other charities which appear to be operating in violation of the Income Tax Act, official Canadian policy, and international law.”

Already signed by 10,000 Canadians — twenty times the number required to be read in Parliament — the petition concludes with a call for the Minister of National Revenue to: “1.Immediately investigate all Canadian charities providing funds to illegal Israeli settlement activity and/or the Israeli military; 2. Revoke the charitable status of all found to not be in compliance; and 3. Take concrete steps to prevent other organizations from engaging in such activities in the future.”

In a similar vein, a detailed complaint was submitted last week to the CRA asking it to investigate United Israel Appeal of Canada. It documents UIA financing groups assisting the Israeli military and illegal settlements, as well as the opaque finances of an organization that has raised over $1.5 billion since 1991.

Israel’s crass violation of the International Court of Justice’s order to “immediately halt” its military offensive in Rafah and the International Criminal Court seeking warrants for Israel’s leaders should bolster the campaign to challenge the 200+ registered charities funneling money to Israel. NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, defence critic Lindsay Mathyssen and much of the rest of the party is now openly calling Israel’s actions “genocide”. In what may be the first MP to call for sanctions on Israel, the NDP’s Don Davies recently posted, “Israel is brazenly flouting an order of a court it appeared before. It is indiscriminately killing civilians seeking refuge. This is a flagrant violation of the rule of law and a war crime. It is time the international community put sanctions on Israel as it did to South Africa.”

As much as I agree with Davies’ sentiment, it fails to grasp the depth of Canada’s complicity with Israeli criminality, which many South Africans called worse than South African apartheid (prior to Israel’s holocaust in Gaza). As a Commonwealth ally Canada had a free trade accord with the apartheid regime for half a century and had substantial economic and diplomatic relations with apartheid South Africa for decades. But there was nothing akin to the state subsidized wealth transfer Canada has granted Israel for over half a century. Every year Canadian taxpayers are on the hook for about a hundred million dollars in subsidy to a country with a GDP per capita equal to Canada’s (tens of millions of dollars more in public funds go to groups promoting anti-Palestinian policies within Canada). Prior to imposing sanctions on Israel, let’s halt this unique subsidy to a country that has long committed the crime of apartheid.

If the CRA properly enforced its rules on charities assisting foreign militaries, racist organizations and West Bank settlements, as well as its regulations on groups acting as financial conduits for other organizations, dozens of Israel-focused organizations would lose their charitable status. In addition to enforcing existing rules, legislation should be introduced to curtail charities focused on assisting countries with a GDP per capita equal to Canada.

In posting a recent letter to Revenue Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau Niki Ashton demanded that “The CRA must investigate Canadian charities funding Israeli military operations in Gaza and illegal Israeli settlements.” The NDP’s revenue critic concluded, “Not one cent of Canadian tax-dollars should be funding genocide.”

Yves Engler’s latest book is Stand on Guard for Whom?: A People’s History of the Canadian Military.

Animals Self-Medicate With Plants, Behavior People Have Observed and Emulated for Millennia

BY ADRIENNE MAYOR

 MAY 31, 2024
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A goat with an arrow wound nibbles the medicinal herb dittany.
O. Dapper, CC BY

When a wild orangutan in Sumatra recently suffered a facial wound, apparently after fighting with another male, he did something that caught the attention of the scientists observing him.

The animal chewed the leaves of a liana vine – a plant not normally eaten by apes. Over several days, the orangutan carefully applied the juice to its wound, then covered it with a paste of chewed-up liana. The wound healed with only a faint scar. The tropical plant he selected has antibacterial and antioxidant properties and is known to alleviate pain, fever, bleeding and inflammation.

The striking story was picked up by media worldwide. In interviews and in their research paper, the scientists stated that this is “the first systematically documented case of active wound treatment by a wild animal” with a biologically active plant. The discovery will “provide new insights into the origins of human wound care.”

Fibraurea tinctoria leaves and the orangutan chomping on some of the leaves.
Laumer et al, Sci Rep 14, 8932 (2024), CC BY

To me, the behavior of the orangutan sounded familiar. As a historian of ancient science who investigates what Greeks and Romans knew about plants and animals, I was reminded of similar cases reported by Aristotle, Pliny the Elder, Aelian and other naturalists from antiquity. A remarkable body of accounts from ancient to medieval times describes self-medication by many different animals. The animals used plants to treat illness, repel parasites, neutralize poisons and heal wounds.

The term zoopharmacognosy – “animal medicine knowledge” – was invented in 1987. But as the Roman natural historian Pliny pointed out 2,000 years ago, many animals have made medical discoveries useful for humans. Indeed, a large number of medicinal plants used in modern drugs were first discovered by Indigenous peoples and past cultures who observed animals employing plants and emulated them.

What you can learn by watching animals

Some of the earliest written examples of animal self-medication appear in Aristotle’s “History of Animals” from the fourth century BCE, such as the well-known habit of dogs to eat grass when ill, probably for purging and deworming.

Aristotle also noted that after hibernation, bears seek wild garlic as their first food. It is rich in vitamin C, iron and magnesium, healthful nutrients after a long winter’s nap. The Latin name reflects this folk belief: Allium ursinum translates to “bear lily,” and the common name in many other languages refers to bears.

As a hunter lands several arrows in his quarry, a wounded doe nibbles some growing dittany.
British Library, Harley MS 4751 (Harley Bestiary), folio 14v, CC BY

Pliny explained how the use of dittany, also known as wild oregano, to treat arrow wounds arose from watching wounded stags grazing on the herb. Aristotle and Dioscorides credited wild goats with the discovery. Vergil, Cicero, Plutarch, Solinus, Celsus and Galen claimed that dittany has the ability to expel an arrowhead and close the wound. Among dittany’s many known phytochemical properties are antiseptic, anti-inflammatory and coagulating effects.

According to Pliny, deer also knew an antidote for toxic plants: wild artichokes. The leaves relieve nausea and stomach cramps and protect the liver. To cure themselves of spider bites, Pliny wrote, deer ate crabs washed up on the beach, and sick goats did the same. Notably, crab shells contain chitosan, which boosts the immune system.

When elephants accidentally swallowed chameleons hidden on green foliage, they ate olive leaves, a natural antibiotic to combat salmonella harbored by lizards. Pliny said ravens eat chameleons, but then ingest bay leaves to counter the lizards’ toxicity. Antibacterial bay leaves relieve diarrhea and gastrointestinal distress. Pliny noted that blackbirds, partridges, jays and pigeons also eat bay leaves for digestive problems.

A weasel wears a belt of rue as it attacks a basilisk in an illustration from a 1600s bestiary.
Wenceslaus Hollar/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

Weasels were said to roll in the evergreen plant rue to counter wounds and snakebites. Fresh rue is toxic. Its medical value is unclear, but the dried plant is included in many traditional folk medicines. Swallows collect another toxic plant, celandine, to make a poultice for their chicks’ eyes. Snakes emerging from hibernation rub their eyes on fennel. Fennel bulbs contain compounds that promote tissue repair and immunity.

According to the naturalist Aelian, who lived in the third century BCE, the Egyptians traced much of their medical knowledge to the wisdom of animals. Aelian described elephants treating spear wounds with olive flowers and oil. He also mentioned storks, partridges and turtledoves crushing oregano leaves and applying the paste to wounds.

The study of animals’ remedies continued in the Middle Ages. An example from the 12th-century English compendium of animal lore, the Aberdeen Bestiary, tells of bears coating sores with mullein. Folk medicine prescribes this flowering plant to soothe pain and heal burns and wounds, thanks to its anti-inflammatory chemicals.

Ibn al-Durayhim’s 14th-century manuscript “The Usefulness of Animals” reported that swallows healed nestlings’ eyes with turmeric, another anti-inflammatory. He also noted that wild goats chew and apply sphagnum moss to wounds, just as the Sumatran orangutan did with liana. Sphagnum moss dressings neutralize bacteria and combat infection.

Nature’s pharmacopoeia

Of course, these premodern observations were folk knowledge, not formal science. But the stories reveal long-term observation and imitation of diverse animal species self-doctoring with bioactive plants. Just as traditional Indigenous ethnobotany is leading to lifesaving drugs today, scientific testing of the ancient and medieval claims could lead to discoveries of new therapeutic plants.

Animal self-medication has become a rapidly growing scientific discipline. Observers report observations of animals, from birds and rats to porcupines and chimpanzees, deliberately employing an impressive repertoire of medicinal substances. One surprising observation is that finches and sparrows collect cigarette butts. The nicotine kills mites in bird nests. Some veterinarians even allow ailing dogs, horses and other domestic animals to choose their own prescriptions by sniffing various botanical compounds.

Mysteries remain. No one knows how animals sense which plants cure sickness, heal wounds, repel parasites or otherwise promote health. Are they intentionally responding to particular health crises? And how is their knowledge transmitted? What we do know is that we humans have been learning healing secrets by watching animals self-medicate for millennia.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Adrienne Mayor is a Research Scholar in Classics and History and Philosophy of Science at Stanford University.