Border Services Agency Annuls Jerusalem Deputy Mayor's Visa

Palestine Rights Activists Celebrate

Last Tuesday (August 25), the Canada Border Services Agency deep-sixed live presentations by Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Arieh King at Zionist gatherings in Toronto and Montreal by annulling his entry visa, following a legal complaint by the Toronto-based Legal Centre for Palestine, and the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians.

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In an emergency filing to the CBSA at Pearson Airport, copied to the Crimes Against Humanity & War Crime Program of Canada’s federal police, the LCP/ICJP submission said that King engages in hate speech, advocates for the forcible expulsion of Palestinians from their homes — a war crime — and for genocide, a crime against humanity.

Arieh King, a resident of the illegal Jewish colony of Ma’ale HaZeitim, in the Ras al-Amud neighborhood of Palestinian East Jerusalem, makes no bones about his contempt for Palestinians.

“They are not human beings and they are not human animals,” King reportedly declared on social media, in the wake of the events of October 7, 2023, and the start of Israel-USA’s genocidal war on the people of Gaza.

“They are subhuman, and this is how they should be treated,” said King.

Following Israel’s seizure and bulldozing of the East Jerusalem headquarters of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), King reportedly called for UNRWA workers to be killed. “It’s either them or us,” King reportedly said. “With God’s help, we will destroy, we will eliminate and annihilate all Unrwa personnel.”

Arieh King (Credit: Oren Ziv)

Although the deep-sixing of Arieh King’s entrance visa elicited a volley of virtual high-fives from Palestine solidarity groups across Canada, justice advocates have no illusions. According to the Israeli government, over 1500 Canadians served in the Israeli Occupation Forces in 2025. How many of them engaged in war crimes is anyone’s guess.

Given the illegality of Israel’s occupation — confirmed by the International Court of Justice in 2024 – no small number of Canadians may be guilty of war crimes committed against Palestinians.

Prosecutions are unlikely.

The Canadian government has imposed sanctions on “facilitators of extremist settler violence against civilians in West Bank,” singling out Israeli cabinet ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, but it has yet to impose comprehensive sanctions on the settlement enterprise as a whole, encompassing virtually all Israeli state institutions and government ministries.

Settlement goods are welcome in Canada — duty free, and labeled as products of Israel.  

Most notably, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the subject of an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the course of Israel-USA’s Gaza genocide, has been allowed to fly through Canadian airspace on multiple occasions, on his way to Washington, in apparent breach of Canada’s commitment to the Rome Statute of the ICC.

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To learn more about the revocation of Arieh King’s entry visa to Canada, and what this startling event portends for future Canadian enforcement of international law, the GPM spoke with Faisal Bhabha, an attorney with the Legal Centre for Palestine.

Watch our conversation here: