Illustration: Chris Curtis

A billionaire with ties to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is using Montreal to bolster Israel’s image on the international stage.

Canadian businessman Sylvan Adams owns one of the teams competing in Sunday’s Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal, a race featuring professional riders on a track that snakes around Mount Royal 17 times.

His team, Israel-Premier Tech, showcases Quebec athletes who may not have had opportunities in international competition without Adams’ deep pockets and love for the sport of cycling. But these riders will also be sporting Israel’s colours at a time when two thirds of Canadians believe the country is committing genocide in Gaza.

Though Adams lives in Israel, the team is actually based in Quebec. As Adams stated in past interviews, he uses the country’s name on his riders’ jerseys as a “sports diplomacy” effort. In one of Israel-Premier Tech’s Facebook videos, for instance, Prime Minister Netanyahu rides a bike alongside team members and warmly embraces Adams.

Benjamin Netenyahu (left) appears in a promotional video alongside Israel-Premier Tech owner Sylvan Adams. (Source: Facebook)

The inclusion of an international fugitive in the team’s social media is not benign. It’s part of an effort to humanize a politician whose government refers to Palestinians as “human animals” and whose most senior members have called for Gaza to be “wiped off the face of the earth.” 

After praising the “miracles” being carried out by Israel’s army in the strip, Adams recently told the Jewish News Syndicate that Gaza is little more than a public relations problem for Israel.

Which is where Montreal comes in.

Our city has hosted the cycling Grand Prix since 2010 and the race is only made possible by millions in funding from the federal and municipal governments. Municipal workers will close streets for the race and the city’s police force is providing security. Given the role Montreal plays in hosting the Grand Prix, antiwar activists are calling on Mayor Valérie Plante to exclude Adams’ team from the race.

The activist group Palestinian Jewish Unity (PAJU) sent a lawyer’s letter to Plante Monday, imploring her not to allow Montreal to be used as a prop to salvage the image of a rogue state.

“This guy, (Adams), he’s buddy-buddy with Netanyahu, a wanted war criminal,” said Chadi Marouf, a member of PAJU. “(Adams) has one goal here: to promote the Israeli narrative. And our city is just going to go along with that?”

When we asked the mayor’s office for a comment, it took two emails and over 24 hours to get the following response: please re-direct your question for the city of Montreal. When I reached out to the city, a spokesperson replied that questions involving the mayor should be directed to the mayor’s office. You cannot make this stuff up. 

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Eventually, the city decided to wash its hands of the whole thing by sending along this statement:

“The Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal 2026 is organized by the Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec and Montreal, to whom you should address your questions.”

Some members of Projet Montréal, the Mayor’s party, are less than thrilled with Plante’s handling of the issue but also acknowledge there’s been enormous pressure from the Israel lobby and its allies.

Last year, former NDP leader Thomas Mulcair — once an ideological ally of the mayor — accused Plante of normalizing antisemitism by not taking attacks against the Jewish community seriously. This despite Plante repeatedly denouncing antisemitism and increasing police patrols around synagogues and other Jewish institutions.

They also point out that in 2020, fighting immense pressure from groups like the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, Plante refused to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism. A large voting block within the Mayor’s party said they were uncomfortable with the IHRA definition as it equates criticism of Israel with hate speech.

Regardless, Plante’s administration is widely being criticized by activists who say they will descend en masse at Sunday’s race and bring the fight to the streets of Montreal.

Who is Sylvan Adams?

The son of a Holocaust survivor, Adams inherited his father’s real estate empire —Iberville Developments — which operates over 100 commercial properties across Canada.

He’s also heavily involved in philanthropic causes, pledging to give away most of his wealth while supporting children’s hospitals, youth sports and educational initiatives. 

But not all of his charitable work is without controversy.

In an interview with i24 News last year, Adams said he’s provided $100 million of his family’s wealth to protect and rebuild parts of Israel, which includes the purchase of weaponry, ammunition and bulletproof vests for “a number of units” in the IDF. 

“Let’s mop up in Gaza,” he told the interviewer.

Even so, you’d be hard pressed to find a single Canadian politician who has a bad thing to say about Adams.

Federal records show that Adams donated $26,500 to former Liberal Party Leader Justin Trudeau, the Liberal Party of Canada, the Conservative Party of Canada and the New Democratic Party between 2012 and 2015. In fact, he donated $1,200 to Mulcair in 2012. That may not sound like much but, in Canadian politics, that amount of money buys you some serious face time with the country’s political elite.

As pro-Palestinian activists erected encampments against the genocide at McGill last year, Adams says he pressured the university’s president, Deep Saini, to crack down on the protests.

“I’m one of the largest donors ever to McGill University,” he told Canadian Jewish News. “And I have a very close relationship with the McGill principal Deep Saini.”

When asked what he could do to, with his money, to end the protests at McGill, Adams responded:

“By continuing to have these conversations so that he knows … he knows the pressure is there. If there is a new project that (needs funding), I’m going to look at it with a skeptical eye until the problem is resolved.”

“Rolling out the red carpet”

If Israel-Premier Tech is allowed to compete, one activist says it will mean Montreal is “rolling out the red carpet for a team that’s covering up a genocide.”

“Some people are trying to dismiss the protest by saying this should only be about cycling,” said Bill Van Driel, a member of Bikers for Palestine. “Well, they should tell that to Sylvan Adams, who has been direct about his goal to use the team to help Israel’s standing on the international stage.

“This race cannot happen without the cooperation of the city of Montreal, which will be using its police force as event security and closing its roads to make way for the riders. So to say, ‘Oh, well it’s up to the organizers’ is an attempt to wash their hands of this during a genocide.”

Footage of Netanyahu and Adams is circulating on social media, where activists promise they’ll make more than a bit of noise at Sunday’s race. Sources within the pro-Palestinian movement say they expect clashes with the police.

Hugo Houle, a Quebecer who races with Israel-Premier Tech, told La Presse he has no qualms about sporting Israel’s colours. 

“I’m an athlete, I don’t need to take a position (on the war in Gaza),” Houle said. “Who am I to judge who does what among these parties? Each have their share of responsibility.” However, the 34-year-old cyclist also admitted that by wearing Israel’s logo, “we are implicated in the conflict in a way because we’re not neutral.”

Sunday’s protests will be the latest in a series of actions against Israel-Premier Tech. During the Spanish Vuelta last month, its cyclists decided to remove the word “Israel” from their jerseys as they were repeatedly targeted by pro-Palestinian protesters throughout the race. Some riders were reportedly the subject of death threats. 

The team also encountered protesters in Italy this year.

This isn’t the first time Israel-Premier Tech’s presence at the Montreal race has been the subject of controversy. Pro-Palestinian activists have demonstrated at previous Grand Prix events in Montreal, but an organizer with PAJU says this year’s protest will be far bigger than previous ones.

“This year obviously is much different, we’re in a situation of genocide,” said Marouf. “With the International Court of Justice, with the International Criminal Court issuing an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, with all of the images of famine, the movement is growing.”

Sportswashing a genocide

The decision to exclude Israel-Premier Tech from Sunday’s race would largely be symbolic given that Israel doesn’t officially have a connection to the team.

And had the mayor stepped in, her administration would have likely had to defend that decision in court while being swarmed with bad faith accusations of antisemitism. But if the team does compete, there’s a chance they make it on the podium, handing Israel a much-needed distraction from images of starving children and bombed out mosques and hospitals. 

The practice of using athletic competitions to launder a government’s reputation is commonly referred to as “sportswashing.”

Following the assassination of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, the government of Saudi Arabia created Riyadh Season, a series of cultural and sporting events that culminate in some of the biggest fights in boxing’s modern era. 

Other human rights abusers — like the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Russia — have used Formula 1 racing, the FIFA World Cup and the Olympics to bolster their image on the international stage. 

Just as sportswashing is becoming increasingly common, human rights abusers have also seen their athletes excluded from international competitions. Since their invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia and Belarus’ athletes have either been barred from most major international sporting events or forced to compete under a neutral banner.

Once a controversial opinion, there’s a growing consensus among experts and the general public that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. 

Some 64 per cent of Canadians polled by Mainstreet Research last week said Canada should recognize that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. The poll, published on Sept. 4, also found that 62 per cent of Canadians want their government to support a peacekeeping mission to end the genocide.

Since the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas, the IDF has bombed over 30 hospitals in Gaza, destroyed over 90 per cent of its schools, killed 19,000 children and created a famine that’s starved 376 people to death. There are more child amputees per capita in the Palestinian territory than in any other place on earth, according to UNICEF. 

Despite this, neither Prime Minister Mark Carney nor Mayor Plante are willing to use the word “genocide.”

The Mainstreet survey was published just days after the world’s leading association of genocide scholars declared that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. The three-page declaration by the International Association of Genocide Scholars outlines crimes against humanity and other atrocities committed by the Israeli government.

“When people like Valérie Plante, like Mark Carney, refuse to just name this as what it is, one day I think that’s going to be looked on very harshly,” Van Driel said. “Nobody can claim to not know what’s going on in Gaza. We’re all livestreaming it every day.”