TORONTO —

Last week, Kenney was termed a “professional whore” by Khaled Mouammar, president of the Toronto-based, non-profit Canadian Arab Federation (CAF), both for Kenney’s personal support of Israel and his denunciations of radical pro-Palestinian supporters carrying signs supporting Hamas and Hezbollah – considered terrorist groups by Canada – at rallies across the country last month against Israel’s recent military operation in Gaza.

The CAF received nearly $450,000 from Kenney’s ministry to operate a two-year settlement program in Toronto to help provide new immigrants with language and job search skills. The CAFprogram is scheduled for renewal in 2010.

Kenney said his department is now evaluating whether certain groups – including the CAF – should continue to receive public funding, because of their alleged promotion of terror groups and anti-Semitism.

Mouammar has said that Kenney’s threat to cut funding to his organization will have a negative impact on immigrants.

In an interview last week, Kenney told The CJN he “couldn’t care less” about the disparaging comments made by Mouammar.

“They can say whatever they like about the government and ministers. It’s a free country. I’ve had much worse things said about me by much better people,” he said. “But my point [in weighing whether to continue funding the CAF], is whether an organization … that distributes videos produced by Hamas and Islamic Jihad that glorifies terrorism [and] indoctrinates children into the cult of anti-Semitic hatred… is not an organization, in my opinion, that should be receiving taxpayer subsidies.”

Pointing to his speech at the Inter-parliamentary Coalition on Anti-Semitism last week in London, Kenney said he raised the CAF issue, among others, by telling the world that Canada “takes a zero-tolerance approach to expressions of anti-Semitism in the public square.”

He said that certain organizations, such as the CAFand the Canadian Islamic Congress, “receive their share of media attention and public notoriety” and express “extreme and  hateful propaganda [and] expect to be treated as respectable interlocutors in the public discourse.”

Kenney said he is unapologetic about his decision to review the CAF’s funding.

“The more Mr. Mouammar… speaks, the more clear it is that he doesn’t speak for the vast majority of Canadians of Arab origin, who are honest, decent, thoughtful, democratic, moderate people; most of whom came to this country seeking life in a stable, liberal democracy, not this kind of shrill, cartoonish voice of extremism that he too often represents,” Kenney said.

Asked whether he thinks removing funding from the CAF will disadvantage  new immigrants, Kenney responded that those assertions are “complete baloney.”

“Our government has actually increased settlement funding five-fold over what it was under the previous government,” he said, adding that he’s not considering “for one minute” reducing language-training programs or settlement programs.

“I’m simply saying, when we make funding decisions we should take into account the character of the organization and its leadership. And if they’re promoting extremism, or [in the case of the CAF], implicitly promoting anti-Semitism, I think that should be a consideration.There are no shortage of worthy organizations out there that can help us deliver solid settlement [programming] without us having to help finance the distribution of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad videos.”