https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/second-cup-takes-back-montreal-franchise-over-hateful-incident-1.7121663

  • MuinteoirSaoirse [she/her]
    ·
    edit-2
    20 hours ago

    So here's a bit of research before people jump to conclusions about this situation (journalists never do research obviously).

    Mai Abdulhadi is registered as the director of 3971309 CANADA INC. which is just a generic corporation registration that pretty much anyone who runs even a very small business will file for, for taxes or banking purposes. Registered at the same address is Studios Accento Inc., directed by Lana Abdulhadi (her I assume sister, who used to manage coffee shops before founding her dance studio, as quoted in an article on collabs.io "When I moved back to Montreal after working in Dubai for a few years, I was managing coffee shops" [https://www.collabs.io/mag/lana-hadi/]). She goes by Lana Hadi in general, and her social media has been disabled at the same time that Mai's was. However you can find now-untagged photos of her on her studios instagram, and if you go far enough back there's even one of her with Mai, as well as comments by a few other Abdulhadis.

    More interestingly, Rami Abdulhadi is registered as a director of Mai's corporation, which would lead me to believe he was either a father or a husband. To go into this even deeper, Rami is also registered as the director of HCEP DEVELOPMENT PLANNING INTERNATIONAL INC. This is important because if you check out Rami Abdulhadis in Montréal, you find adjunct professor at McGill's Rami S. Abdulhadi [https://www.mcgill.ca/socialwork/about/people/adjunct/rami-s-abdulhadi]. In his bio it shows years of experience working in Palestine, including a stint as Dean of Engineering at Birzeit University in Palestine. This is the same Rami, by the way, as confirmed at the end of his McGill bio: Founder and Director of HCEP Center for Development Planning, Montreal, Canada. Based on his age I am now fairly confident he is her father, but that is an assumption, obviously, people can marry much older men. Likely he is registered as a director on her corporation because he, as a development specialist, was probably the one who fronted the capital to secure a franchise for his daughter, but this is pure speculation.

    So while it's possible I'm wrong here, a little basic publicly accessible research by someone who isn't trying to spread weird unfounded rumours that this is a "false flag" or something would show you that Mai Abdulhadi is Palestinian, and that assuming she was Jewish or Zionist simply because she ran a Second Cup in a Jewish hospital was a massive leap that was entirely unfounded. What should be no surprise, the Jewish hospital doesn't actually require everyone on site to be Jewish, that would be ridiculous. The stress in the media on it being a "kosher" café is entirely about building up the narrative that she is a danger to Jewish people, and not because she herself keeps kosher. She is, ultimately, an incredibly upset and angry Palestinian woman who turned to Nazi rhetoric and extreme anti-semitism.

    Edit: when I say "building up the narrative that she is a danger" I am not trying to imply that she isn't possibly an actual danger, just that the media has a very specific set of goals in forming all of their current news coverage that informs which words they choose when describing a situation. Someone yelling about the final solution and doing Nazi salutes could very well be a literal danger to Jewish people, and clearly has lost sight of the difference between Judaism and Zionism.

    • Alaskaball [comrade/them]A
      ·
      20 hours ago

      Would you say you've seen enough information to say there's reasonable doubt to scrub this as unfounded speculation or as a case of accidental antisemitism

      • MuinteoirSaoirse [she/her]
        ·
        20 hours ago

        Yes I would say with near-certainty that Mai Abdulhadi is a Palestinian engaged in anti-semitism, and this particular post seems crafted around the assumption that she was secretly Jewish