JNS: Toronto has an anti-Semitism problem

Here.

My contribution:

Warren Kinsella, a non-Jewish columnist with Postmedia and author, is writing a book about rising antisemitism after Oct. 7.

Kinsella, a strong supporter on social media of Israel and Jews, told JNS that he is “shocked by how widespread” Jew-hatred has become “and how bold many of these people have become.”

“I haven’t slept very well. It’s really affected me as a human being a lot,” he told JNS. “We can only imagine what our Jewish friends are feeling. So at a human level, I just, it takes my breath away sometimes how awful it has been.”

“I am completely mystified,” he said. “Toronto’s got a big problem.

Kinsella recently broke a story about certain anti-Israel demonstrators being paid to protest. The smoking-gun money trail reveals a much larger web, he told JNS.

“I’ll give them some credit. They are extremely organized in a way they’ve never been before,” he said. “As a political guy, I’ve been around politics for a long time. That, to me, says money in organization and training. I believe that these people are funded and being trained because it looks like a machine.”

A former police reporter in Calgary and Ottawa, Kinsella has heard from “rank and file officers, who are placing themselves at risk,” who tell him they don’t understand why law enforcement leaders are “not being more strategic about this.” Kinsella thinks they should follow New York’s lead and crack down on hate-filled protests.

“You go after them. You don’t wait for them to hurt somebody or commit violence,” he said. “You get them on with whatever you can.”

The mayor didn’t help by sending police the message, at the skating party, that they should not act against protesters, according to Kinsella.

“These people have just blown up your event. They’re shouting curses and threats. Elderly people. People are with their kids,” he said. “She practically enabled them when she said, ‘This is the democratic way.’ It’s not democratic to get in the way of people’s enjoyment of a public space.”

The problem is larger than the mayor, he said. Just two local councilors visited the scene of the Jewish-owned grocery store that was attacked. Kinsella, who worked for former Canadian prime minister Jean Chrétien, told JNS, “There are symbolic things politicians can and should do to reassure citizens.”

“We regard this as a real manifest threat to society, and we’re calling on you to act on it,” he said. He called social-media posts by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “odd” and said it “isn’t cutting it,” and said that statements from Mélanie Joly, Canadian foreign affairs minister, “looked like they were generated by AI.”