Several people The Grind interviewed for this article asked that pseudonyms be used, as they feared being doxxed or facing reprisals from their employer or union. Those names are indicated with an asterisk*.
By the time York Region public school teacher Ellie Miron wore an Israel Defence Forces (IDF) jacket on the convention floor, tensions were already high — largely over disagreements and protests related to Israel-Palestine.
The Grind interviewed 10 teachers to piece together what happened leading up to and after that moment, which was first reported by journalist Samira Mohyeddin and which went viral on social media.
The annual meeting of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO), held Aug. 11 to 14 in downtown Toronto, drew more than 600 members. ETFO represents 83,000 Ontario teachers.
One motion at the conference called for annual antisemitism training for the union’s executives and encouraged union staff to participate as well; it passed with 80 per cent support. Another motion — which drew the most scrutiny — focused on supporting Palestinian students by affirming Palestinian identity and history and offering guidance on best practices for addressing anti-Palestinian racism (APR). That motion passed with 70 per cent support.
Arriving at the conference
An online post before the conference from Meir Weinstein urged pro-Israel supporters to “fight the pro-Hamas motion at ETFO’s AGM next week,” in reference to the motion about supporting Palestinian students. Weinstein leads the group Israel Now and used to be national director of the Canadian branch of the Jewish Defence League (JDL). In the U.S., the JDL was designated as a terrorist organization but Canada did not apply that designation.
On the first day, Aug. 11, union members arriving at the hotel were met by Weinstein and pro-Israel protesters holding up signs that read: “Ban friends of Hamas from the ETFO conference. Anti-Semitism at our schools is NOT okay.” Teachers who were there tell The Grind these protesters were not union members.
Several teachers also told The Grind that the protestors were especially accosting visibly Muslim teachers and an ETFO member named Sheila who was wearing a keffiyeh.
Asking that her full name be withheld, Sheila told The Grind that the protestors began shouting at her. “They were saying ‘You’re Hamas, you’re a Nazi, you’re Arab.’ I said, ‘I’m Canadian; this is my keffiyeh and I’m Palestinian.’”
Sheila tells The Grind that security guards at the scene asked her to remove her keffiyeh, but she refused. When police arrived, she expected support, but instead felt dismissed. Shaken, she left the area and went nearby to meet a friend.
Weinstein did not respond to The Grind’s request for comment.
The anti-Palestinian racism debate
On the second day of the conference, a debate was held on the motion to support Palestinian students, Motion 60.
Union member Ellie Miron used a rarely invoked procedure under Robert’s Rules, “Objecting to the Consideration of the Question,” to argue that even introducing the motion would be harmful, according to Nigel Barriffe, Vice-President of Elementary Teachers Toronto, a union local within ETFO. The maneuver delayed debate for nearly an hour, Barriffe tells The Grind.
Ramzi Abdi, a Palestinian teacher from Waterloo, was the final speaker before the vote was taken on the motion. Abdi told members that his identity as a Palestinian had resulted in “constant silencing and erasure within this union and within school boards.”
“I have had human rights complaints filed against me within ETFO for acknowledging that I identify as Palestinian. That is it,” he said.
“In this room right now, everybody can feel the harm that is taking place and nobody is addressing it. This is not a safe space. We have members crying on the floor. We have members crying in the bathroom.”
He added, “I understand a lot of people are uncomfortable talking about Palestine. I get it. It’s difficult to talk about because we are made to feel uncomfortable. And when we’re uncomfortable, we are silenced and we are erased. This is why we need the ability to have resources and have information and address this and support our students so they know that, yes, people like me exist and it is okay to exist.”
The motion passed after a vote.
No Other Land screening protested
That evening, Miron and others protested at the scheduled film screening of No Other Land, according to Barriffe. The Oscar-winning film chronicles Israel’s destruction and forced expulsion of Palestinian villages in the West Bank. About 100 teachers attended the screening.
“Miron came, along with three of his friends or colleagues from ETFO, and sat with pictures of the [Israeli] hostages [in Gaza] at the entrance of the theater that people were made to see as we were walking in,” Barriffe says.
Barriffe says he invited the group in to watch and take part in the discussion that was being facilitated at the end of the movie, but they declined.
“Eventually the movie starts, and Ellie [Miron] comes into the room and appears to start taking pictures of people. It felt very much like intimidation and spying … trying to silence us, even in our own space,” Barriffe says.
Miron, who teaches at Anne Frank Public School in Vaughan, did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Grind regarding these claims and others detailed in this article.
A media relations contact for ETFO also declined to respond to questions about the conference. “We’re not going to be speaking to those particular concerns. That’s not to say that they’re not being addressed internally, but we’re not speaking, we’re not conducting media interviews or providing a comment publicly,” Carla Pereira told The Grind.
Several colleagues who appeared to support Miron at the conference also declined to comment, suggesting instead that inquiries be directed to the Canadian Jewish Labour Committee. After being contacted by The Grind, that organization responded to ask for a list of questions to be sent, which The Grind provided. The Canadian Jewish Labour Committee did not respond to the questions.
The York Region District School Board (YRDSB), where Miron works, did not respond to requests for comment.
Miron wears IDF jacket on conference floor
The final morning of the conference, Aug. 14, saw two notable motions passed. One was in relation to ETFO’s work on anti-Black racism in recognition of the second International Decade for People of African Descent. The second motion called on members to create a workshop on human rights with a focus on educating members on their rights and responsibilities under the Ontario Human Rights Code.
That day in the convention hall, Miron was seen wearing a tan jacket of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). Witnesses say the jacket also had a Golani Brigade patch. There is also a photo of the patch. A prominent pro-Israel personality said in a social media post on X that the jacket is Miron’s father’s.
Shortly after the human rights motion was introduced, Miron was given an opportunity to speak to delegates.
Standing at the microphone in his IDF military jacket, “he accused everyone in the room of being saboteurs and provocateurs,” a teacher tells The Grind.
Since the Hamas-led attacks and hostage-takings of Oct 7, 2023, Israel has killed more than 63,000 Palestinians. Israel admits 83 per cent of those killed are civilians. More than half a million Palestinians face famine through man-made starvation and over 70 per cent of Gaza’s infrastructure has been destroyed. Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice and many groups have called it a genocide, including the International Association of Genocide Scholars on Sept. 1.
Against that backdrop, Miron’s IDF jacket and his remarks struck many as particularly jarring.
“He was very frustrated and venting about the fact that other equity-seeking groups were being heard and taking up too much time at the mic,” one teacher says. “Everybody sees him up there. Everybody’s pretty flabbergasted at what he’s saying, recognizing that he’s attacking not just our Black leaders, but basically all of our racialized members and their allies.”
Several ETFO members say that Miron’s comments were interrupted by the moderator soon after he began accusing members of sabotaging the meeting. There was visible tension and anger in the room over the eight to 10 minutes Miron stood at the microphone.
“The chair stopped him right away, because his first three or four words were quite negative and didn’t have anything to do with the debate. So it was hard because it was an awkward moment, and he kept trying to shout over the mic that was turned off,” Barriffe says.
“People were going back and forth, yelling at each other and the parliamentarians trying to sort out this gong show, because the floor was out of control,” another teacher adds.
Some members consulted with some human rights officers who were present, several witnesses say. Upon leaving the microphone, Miron also left the room and spoke to a human rights officer. Upon returning, he came back with the IDF jacket tied around his waist.
Witnesses say that Miron privately told officers that it was within his right to wear the IDF uniform if pro-Palestinian supporters wore the keffiyeh. That was a response that nearly all of the ETFO members The Grind interviewed took issue with.
The Grind was unable to speak to ETFO human rights officers to confirm what conversations were had.
Kamal* is a teacher in Ontario who grew up in southern Lebanon, a region that was under Israeli occupation until Lebanon was liberated in 2000. Kamal tells The Grind that seeing Miron wear the jacket felt deeply traumatic. The IDF Golani Brigade in particular occupied Lebanon and has been deployed in that region and in Gaza since October 2023. The Golani Brigade infamously killed 15 aid workers driving in ambulances in Gaza in March 2025.
“I’ve had family members that were killed and imprisoned by the IDF,” Kamal says. “As an educator now, I reflect on my experience as a student back then, where we had to cross three checkpoints daily to get to school. They would get on the school bus with their weapons and just parade around the bus and get off. We had to seek shelter when we were at school, because we were getting attacked.”
“They were young soldiers that sat there and dehumanized you. They would make a group of us stand in an area of the town and for hours point their weapons at us and just laugh to keep us scared.”
Kamal argues there is a significant difference between comparing a symbol of an army committing genocide and comparing it to a cultural symbol. “People can argue that the keffiyeh is a symbol of resistance, but it’s a cultural symbol as well. It is not on a uniform. We didn’t show up in the meeting wearing a military uniform.”
A Jewish teacher at the conference, Leah*, tells The Grind she also felt emotional watching Miron enter the room in uniform, knowing how upsetting it was to other people. “It was very disingenuous and uncomfortable for me, as a Jewish person, to see. I don’t believe this is something that he wears on the regular. I think the intention behind it was also unkind … [but] we don’t know his intentions.”
“I have my views that the government of Israel is committing a genocide,” she adds. “To me, that’s not an affront on my identity as a Jewish person. I don’t associate Judaism with genocide. In fact, I associate it with peace. And the fact that some people are not able to separate that is very difficult for me.”
Leah said she could understand the heightened emotions on both sides, which often left her feeling conflicted. She criticized ETFO organizers for scheduling two caucus meetings that week at the same time: one for Jewish members and allies, and another focused on anti-Palestinian racism and human rights. “The union kind of pits two identities against each other. That was how I felt, whether that’s intentional or not,” she says.
Parents react
Several parents told The Grind that they were shocked that a public school teacher felt comfortable enough to wear a military uniform to a public space.
“Pro-Israel supporters know they’re going to get away with it, because there’s never any consequences for them,” says Mary*, a parent of a child at Thornhill Woods in the YRDSB. She says she has challenged her children’s school board multiple times for anti-Palestinian racism.
Speaking about everything she has seen, she says it has been “heartbreaking to see that that level of hate exists among teachers who are supposed to be compassionate and caring.”
“They get kind of a little smack on the hand,” Mary adds. “‘Don’t do it’ — but they don’t get serious repercussions, so they repeat it again, right? This sense of entitlement is why we’re in this situation right now.”
Mary also laments how everybody seems scared to do anything to confront people who support Israel’s actions.
Maral Karimi, a social justice education scholar and politics lecturer at Toronto Metropolitan University and mother of two children in the YRDSB, wrote an email to ETFO and the YRDSB on Aug. 17. She shared the email with The Grind.
“Wearing the uniform of a foreign army, especially one engaged in an active and highly politicized conflict, has no place in a Canadian educational setting. While Canadian veterans may wear uniforms in ceremonial contexts, this situation is categorically different…. The fact that this occurred while opposing motions designed to promote equity and safety makes the act even more harmful,” Karimi wrote.
The uniform became a form of posturing, not personal expression, and signaled that inclusion was conditional, Karimi added.
“It runs counter to the stated values of our educational institutions and is inconsistent with the spirit of trauma-informed education, which our boards and unions claim to uphold. This was an act of violence and silent intimidation by a male elementary school teacher to silence ideological opponents.”
Karimi said she received a response on Aug. 19 from Dennis Rossi, superintendent of Anne Frank Public School, affirming its commitment to safe and inclusive schools where hate and discrimination are not tolerated.
“While we understand that staff have their own diverse perspectives and personal opinions, we expect all actions and decisions to be grounded in YRDSB’s core values of fostering safe, inclusive, caring and identity-affirming learning environments for all students and families. We take this incident very seriously and are reviewing the matter,” Rossi wrote.
The Grind is unable to confirm whether Miron is teaching again this year.
Passing of APR motion a ‘proud moment’
Michael*, a teacher who supported the APR motion, says he had attended ETFO’s AGMs over the last 12 years.
“I’ve often felt not great leaving the meeting, because although it’s a union, it’s still a space where things can feel very conservative.”
“This was actually the first one in several years where I didn’t leave feeling completely disappointed. As challenging as some of the things we had to get through were, it ended up a success.”
Passing the motion around creating a resource for members around anti-Palestinian racism and Palestinian identity was very motivating, he adds.
“I won’t allow this one guy [Miron] to take away what was a really proud moment for our union. I don’t think he deserves that much credit.”