Mississauga mayor doubles down, refusing to condemn Remembrance Day-style vigil for terrorist leader

Mississauga Mayor Carolyn Parrish has doubled down against calls for her to condemn and prevent a Remembrance Day-style vigil for Hamas Leader Yahya Sinwar, the orchestrator of the Oct. 7 Hamas-led terrorist attack on Israel.

Parrish continued her battle with concerned Canadians and Jewish rights groups over a planned Nov. 26 vigil billed as a “Lest we forget our heroes” event for the recently eliminated terror leader Sinwar. 

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs shared a recording from a recent city councillor meeting, in which Parrish repeated talking points from the event organizer, Firas al Najim, and compared Sinwar to Nelson Mandela – an anti-apartheid activist who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993. 

“I just want to point out, and I’m not being facetious, Nelson Mandela was declared a terrorist by the United States of America ‘til the year 2008,” Parrish said. “Your terrorist and somebody else’s terrorist may be two different things.”

“By comparing mass murderer Yayha Sinwar and human rights hero Nelson Mandela, the Mayor of Mississauga Carolyn Parrish has – again – crossed a line,” CIJA said in a statement on X. “Yayha Sinwar was a terrorist, the main architect of the October 7 attacks and the leader of Hamas in Gaza, responsible for the deaths of thousands of Israelis and Palestinians.”

Sinwar was the leader of Hamas, a listed terrorist entity by Public Safety Canada. Hamas’ charter has the “vanquishing” of its enemy, the Jewish people, written into its constitution.

CIJA noted that it was the Liberal Party who labelled Hamas a terror entity in 2002 when Parrish was a Liberal MP.

Najim, a man highlighted by the antisemitism watchdog, the Canary Mission, as a propagator of anti-Jewish hate, said the same thing to Iran’s state broadcaster when promoting the vigil for the “resistance leaders” killed by Israel to the Islamic regime in Iran.

“For somebody, (Sinwar) is a terrorist; for other people, he’s a hero just like Nelson Mandela,” Najim said. “Nelson Mandela was a terrorist one time labelled as well, and we know now he’s a hero.”

The Canary Mission noted several instances of Najim calling for the destruction of Israel, allegedly harassing Jewish businesses, and glorifying terrorists. Najim was also arrested in 2022 for allegedly driving the car toward a crowd who were protesting the presence of IRGC members in Canada. The IRGC has since been listed as a terrorist group in Canada.

CIJA has demanded an apology from Parish, saying making the comparison between Sinwar and Mandela was “despicable.” 

“It is an insult to the too-many families who have lost loved ones because of Sinwar, including Canadians. Mayor Parrish’s moral compass is obviously broken,” the statement said. “With this odious comparison, she sullied the reputation of the city she leads. Mississaugans, and frankly Ontarians and Canadians, deserve better.”

Parrish did not respond to True North’s repeated requests to comment this week.

Parrish was kicked out of the Liberal Caucus by Prime Minister Paul Martin in 2004 after she stomped on a doll of former US President George W. Bush during an episode of CBC’s This Hour has 22 Minutes. She also called Americans “bastards” and referred to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq as “the coalition of idiots.”