Restaurant staff losing their jobs for cheering on a pro-Palestinian protest. A Palestinian Canadian journalist fired for her social media posts calling for a #freepalestine. Medical residents flagged to potential hiring committees for their support of Palestinians.

These are just some of the many instances across Canada in which employees and students have faced firings, suspensions or calls for them to not be hired based on their publicly stated political stance on the Israel-Hamas war. It’s a trend that has been reported not just in Canada but also in the U.S. and Europe, and across various industries, including media, law, health care and the service sector.

According to three Ontario-based lawyers who spoke to CBC News, some employers and institutions have been quick to take action against employees or students, creating an environment in which many are afraid they will lose their jobs or face consequences to their education if they express a political stance in favour of one side — Palestinians — during this war.

“I can tell you personally, in the last month and a half, I’ve probably spoken with someone at least once a day [about this],” said Jackie Esmonde, a labour lawyer at Toronto-based firm Cavalluzzo Law. "They’re not always cases that we take on, but we do have in the range of eight to 10 cases that we’re actively working on at the moment.

“I’m not seeing people making what I would consider hate speech or discriminatory speech.”

  • YoBuckStopsHere@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Siding with terrorists who rape women and children is not a popular stance. Hamas needs to be destroyed and they are embedded within the civilians.

    That doesn’t mean the Israeli government is allowed to wipe out all of Gaza. A long military occupation is warranted but Israel should have to pay for the damages it caused.

    • LotrOrc@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      A long military operation is obviously not warranted

      Did you geniuses see what happened after the US launched it’s long military operation?

      They definitely destroyed terrorism in that war. Taliban and al quaeda no longer exist, and Isis never came to power right? Oh shit wait…

      It’s like trying to kill an ideology by bombing innocent people has never ever worked

    • null@slrpnk.net
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      11 months ago

      Conflating #freepalestine with “siding with terrorist who rape women and children” is a bad look.

    • Skates@feddit.nl
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      11 months ago

      Siding with terrorists who rape women and children is not a popular stance.

      That’s odd, since siding with terrorists is literally what Israel did when funding Hamas in order to destabilize Gaza.

      At this point, considering all the atrocities inflicted by the Israeli army throughout this year alone - “siding with terrorists who rape women and children” means siding with Israel.