To Brian Posavad,
President and CEO,
YMCA of Greater Halifax/Dartmouth

I am writing in response to your recent statement rescinding the 2025 Peace Medal that the YMCA awarded to Rana Zaman.

While I do not know her personally, I have observed Ms. Zaman’s active and positive contributions to her community. I documented some of those in a column I wrote for the Halifax Examiner after the last time she was denied an honour she’d rightly earned. 

That was in 2019, when the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission recognized her work advancing human rights in Nova Scotia with its “Individual Award.” 

What followed was a concerted and orchestrated personal campaign against her by the Atlantic Jewish Council and several local rabbis. They accused Zaman of antisemitism for social media posts she’d made comparing the Israeli government’s actions against Gazans with the genocide the Nazis inflicted on Jews in Germany. She also challenged the claim that questioning Israeli government actions in Gaza constituted evidence of antisemitism. Such claims, she wrote, were “a way to muzzle criticism of Apartheid Israel and supporters of Palestine.” 

It worked. 

The human rights commission allowed itself to be muzzled, withdrawing its award.

Now, history repeats itself at the YMCA.

You initially chose to recognize Ms. Zaman with the Y’s Peace Medal, which “recognizes individuals whose recent actions demonstrate a consistent commitment to fostering peace and strengthening community connections.” But then, after what appears to have been yet another personal vilification campaign by the same groups, you revoked her award as well. 

You write that you faced “mounting concerns” about your original decision to recognize Ms. Zaman. 

Who expressed those concerns, and what was the specific basis for them? I would appreciate an answer.

Were those concerns coupled with threats to the Y’s funding and donations? I would appreciate an answer to that question as well.

You say that, as a result of those concerns, you “initiated a review.” 

Who did you speak to? Did your review include speaking to members of the local Muslim and Pakistani communities? The Atlantic Canada Palestinian Society? How about Independent Jewish Voices? The “United for One Association,” through which Ms. Zaman helped raise $200,000 to support Syrian refugees? How about “Diverse Voices for Change Halifax,” an initiative of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities to increase the participation of women from diverse communities in local government decision-making? Ms. Zaman has also had a role there.

Were any of the 13 non-profit volunteer organizations Ms. Zaman has worked with — like the Caring Human Association, which she founded and which provided “freshly home-cooked meals to organizations like Shelter NS, Out of the Cold, and Hope Cottage, as well as collecting items for care packages for organizations like Bryony House and Adsum House” — consulted?

You claim that “the volunteer nominating and selection committees” that initially deemed Rana Zaman worthy, “did not have the full scope of relevant public information available at the time of selection.”

Did anyone even check? All you needed to do was Google her name, and you would have come across my 2020 column, where you would have seen that I quoted extensively from the catalogue of complaints against her. (I also challenged the basis for those complaints.)

Because you don’t specify what “information” led to your own change of heart, I can only assume that it came from the same groups and individuals who accused Ms. Zaman of antisemitism in 2019, and those unchallenged accusations swayed your decision to withdraw the honour.

I believe you need to reconsider those accusations—and your own response. 

Can anyone really argue — after all that has happened in the Middle East in the last two years — that “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” is, ipso facto, evidence of antisemitism?

If it is, then many of us, including many international human rights organizations and Israeli genocide scholars, are antisemites.

Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin coined the term “genocide” in 1944 specifically to describe the kind of unspeakable atrocities the Nazis committed against Jews and others during World War II. In 1948, the United Nations unanimously recognized genocide as a crime under international law. Its 1951 Convention on Genocide states that genocide occurs when “any of the following acts [are] committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group.

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group.

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

International genocide scholars, such as Omar Bartov, an Israeli American professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University and himself a former Israeli Defence Forces officer, describe Israel’s actions in Gaza as “a textbook case of genocide.” 

In January 2024, the International Court of Justice, in fact, determined in an interim ruling that it is “plausible” Israel has been — and is — committing genocide in Gaza. While a final decision isn’t expected until 2027, the court ruled that, in the meantime, “Israel must … take all measures within its power to make sure its forces … do not commit any of the above-described acts.”

Many international experts, who have examined Israel’s response to the ICJ’s interim ruling, say “Israel almost entirely ignored the [ICJ’s] provisional measures and rejected the genocide accusation as ‘outrageous and false.’”

But as recently as Nov. 27, 2025 — that’s just last week — Amnesty International issued another new report on the war in Gaza:

“More than a month after a ceasefire was announced and all living Israeli hostages were released, Israeli authorities are still committing genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip, by continuing to deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction, without signalling any change in their intent.”

Those voices are not alone. The United Nations Special Rapporteur, B’TSELEM, an Israeli human rights group, Human Rights Watch, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, Médecins Sans Frontières, Save the Children, Physicians for Human Rights–Israel, and numerous countries, including South Africa, Ireland, Bolivia, and Turkey, have all officially condemned what Israel is doing in Gaza as genocide.

All of which is simply to make the point that Rana Zaman’s criticisms of Israeli policy and actions in Gaza are not, in any way, an indication of antisemitism, and certainly not a reason to rescind the Peace Award she deserves.

In your statement, you wrote: “Maintaining the medal in light of this information would compromise the confidence that our community places in the Peace Medal and in the YMCA’s commitment to inclusion, respect, and bridge-building. Rescinding the medal is necessary to preserve the integrity of the program and uphold the values that guide our organization.”

I would suggest instead that, if the YMCA is truly committed to “inclusion, respect, and bridge-building,” you will reconsider your hasty and ill-considered decision to revoke Rana Zaman’s Peace Award and “preserve the integrity of the program and uphold the values that guide our organization” by restoring the recognition she has earned.

Sincerely,

Stephen Kimber