Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar met on Tuesday in Jerusalem with Melissa Lantsman, Canada’s deputy opposition leader and a Jewish Conservative Party MP.
The two discussed “the Palestinian Authority’s distorted ongoing policy of paying salaries to terrorists and their families,” wrote Sa’ar in a post on X.
They also spoke about “the alarming rise in antisemitism around the world, and in Canada, and the need to unwaveringly combat it,” according to the minister.
Jerusalem’s top diplomat thanked the Canadian lawmaker “for her friendship and support” for the Jewish state.
Lantsman, 41, entered Parliament in September 2021 and became one of the Conservative Party’s deputy opposition leaders a year later.
Her parents immigrated to Toronto in the 1970s via Israel from the former Soviet Union—now, modern-day Odessa, Ukraine. The MP told JNS in 2023 that she grew up in a “hardcore Zionist” household.
Speaking with JNS in June at a Toronto march for a free Iran, Lantsman said she attended to demonstrate she understands “that the tyrannical regime in Tehran has made its intentions clear—regional domination, terror sponsorship and genocidal threats to wipe nations off the map.”
Meanwhile, Iran’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday designated the Royal Canadian Navy a terrorist organization, saying the move was in retaliation for Ottawa’s 2024 decision to blacklist Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Lantsman said in June that Canada is “a safe haven for IRGC terrorists,” adding: “Hundreds live here, they operate here, fundraise here, they intimidate Canadians here, and they do it all without consequence.”
