B'nai Brith Canada CEO "disappointed" Khalif Mitchell broke pledge, continued "deplorable" tweets

The Saskatchewan Roughriders' decision to sign defensive tackle Khalif Mitchell despite his continued tweets of anti-Semitic memes has taken plenty of criticism, and some of the strongest comes from B'nai Brith Canada CEO Michael Mostyn. The organization (which states on its website that it has advocated for Canadian Jewry and championed the cause of human rights since 1875) spoke out in condemnation of Mitchell's anti-Semitic tweets last year while he was with the Montreal Alouettes, which led to him being fined by the league and team and eventually issuing an apology and pledging "to work with the experts at B’nai Brith Canada over the course of the next year to educate myself about this and other human rights matters." Mitchell was cut soon after that, though, and Mostyn told 55-Yard Line Wednesday that he never followed through on his pledge.

"We certainly wish him well in his professional football career, but we are very disappointed that Khalif did not keep his previous pledge to B'nai Brith to allow us to teach him about the Holocaust and racism in general," Mostyn said.

Mostyn said he spoke to Mitchell after last year's incident, and had hoped to work with him.

"We had initially alerted, I guess, the public to this issue with his tweeting, and then we issued another press release after I had spent a long time talking to him personally," Mostyn said. "That's one we issued jointly, with Khalif, with the CFLPA, and B'nai Brith Canada, and we had all worked together, and Khalif had agreed and pledged to work with us to better-educate himself about the Holocaust, about racism, about social media use. We were really encouraged to do so from many sources, including his agent. And consquently, we were following up and there was no follow-up. That was all disappointing to us, because we had taken him at his word that this was very important for him to improve himself as a human being."

Mostyn called Mitchell's recent tweets "deplorable," and said he hopes the Roughriders will make it clear to Mitchell that tweets along those lines are not acceptable.

"We've been monitoring those, we haven't been commenting on them publicly because he hasn't been in the public profile recently," Mostyn said. "Once again, it's very, very disappointing that deplorable messages are promoted through social media. Listen, we know that the Roughriders are struggling this season, and we understand that they need help on the football field, but we expect that the Roughriders will ensure that Mitchell will not use the CFL platform to promote these sorts of deplorable messages in the future."

Update: The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs has also issued a statement condemning Mitchell's tweets and saying they've reached out to the league about his signing:

There have also been plenty of Saskatchewan fans and other fans from around the league who have weighed in against Mitchell's signing. It will be interesting to see where this investigation goes.