The Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF) filed a complaint to the RCMP and the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Section of the Department of Justice on Wednesday, calling for an arrest warrant to be issued for former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni ahead of their planned visit to Toronto, the HRF said.
The HRF joined with the Canadian Lawyers for International Human Rights (CLAIHR) and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) to lodge the complaint, claiming that Olmert and Livni were guilty of war crimes and that Canada had an obligation to prosecute.
This comes a month after the HRF filed a complaint against Olmert in Germany over alleged war crimes.
Who is behind the HRF?
The HRF was founded in Belgium in 2024 and is led by two Middle Eastern activists, Dyab Abou Jahjah and Karim Hassoun, both of whom have expressed support for terrorism, including actions taken by Hezbollah and Hamas, according to a report released by the Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism.
Jahjah has a history of public terror support. He has called the September 11 attacks “sweet revenge,” and in an interview with a Flemish paper said that he considers “every death of an American, British or Dutch soldier as a victory.”
During the Israel-Hamas war, Jahjah continuously expressed his support for Hamas and Hezbollah. On October 7th of 2023, Jahjah referred to the terrorists who participated in the massacre as “Palestinian resistance fighters…refugees whose parents were ethnically cleansed from these villages” in a post on Facebook.
In a 2024 post on X, Jahjah wrote that he knew Hezbollah’s dedication to Palestine “first hand,” as he assisted the terror group’s leadership to Europe in 2009.
Hassoun also posted in support of the October 7th massacre. On October 8th, he took to Facebook to write that “the Palestinians have not ‘invaded’ Israel. They are simply returning home and reclaiming their properties.”
In another Facebook post in December of the same year, Hassoun wrote that he “condemn[s] Hamas for not having taken 500 or 1000 hostages instead of just 200.”