Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is a “war criminal” and should be banned from Canadian soil, attorneys acting on behalf of a number of left-wing groups wrote in a letter to the Canadian government.

The legal brief, which is aimed at blocking Bennett from visiting Canada, comes two weeks ahead of a scheduled speaking engagement featuring the one-time premier at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Toronto.

Bennett should be banned from Canadian soil because a central tenet of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act states that people who “perpetrated atrocities” or who “committed or are complicit in crimes against humanity, war crimes, or genocide” should be denied entry to the country, the brief charged.

The letter accused Bennett of being “deeply involved in the development of illegal Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank.”

“Bennett is also alleged to have a history of violence and racism. He is accused of being involved in events leading to the massacre of 102 Lebanese citizens at Qana in 1996, and has openly called for the extrajudicial killing of Palestinians involved in confrontations with Israeli forces.” the letter read, without providing evidence for either of those claims.

The document also repeated a dubious claim that Bennett reportedly remarked a decade ago that “I have killed lots of Arabs in my life – and there is no problem with that.”

The veracity of that alleged quote from Bennett, which has often been repeated by left-wing media, has never been confirmed or proven.

“Persons who have committed or been complicit in the commission of a war crime, a crime against humanity, genocide or any other reprehensible act, regardless of when or where these crimes occurred, are not welcome in Canada,” the letter continued.

“On that basis…[we] have called upon the government of Canada to uphold the rule of law and bar Naftali Bennett from entering Canada.”

Just Peace Advocates, the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute, Palestinian and Jewish Unity and Canada Palestine Association (Vancouver) were the groups that endorsed the letter and retained the attorneys that drafted the document.

Photo/Flash 90