My latest: lots of laws. No guts.

This week, a mob attacked a hospital.

Not because they support Palestine.  They did it because they hate Jews.

Mount Sinai Hospital, on University Avenue in Toronto, isn’t “Jewish,” of course, any more than it is Protestant or Catholic or Muslim.  This writer’s sons were all born there, delivered by a former medic in the IDF who hummed along to John Cougar Mellencamp songs.

Nobody asked us about our religion while we were there. But Mount Sinai is indeed an important symbol for the 1.4 per cent of the Canadian population who are Jews.  Which is why the haters descended on the place on Monday night, to promote hatred.

Like snakes, spewing venom.

Mount Sinai was created 102 years ago, when some Jewish women started fundraising for a hospital – because, among other things, no other Toronto hospital would allow Jews to practice medicine.  Along with the lives regularly bettered or saved there, Mount Sinai delivers 7,000 babies every year.

You’ve likely heard about the attack on Mount Sinai Hospital because it woke up quite a few politicians from their extended slumber.  Many of them had been asleep, or the political equivalent, during previous attacks on Jewish symbols in this country.

But Mount Sinai woke them up.  Was it the mob screaming for “intifada” – a terror campaign? Was it the masked “pro-Palestinian” types climbing scaffolding affixed to the hospital’s front, waving flags, blocking peoples’ access? You know: people who were there to be admitted as patients.  The people there to get help in the Emergency Department.  The people there for cancer treatment.  Or to just have a baby.

Was it that? Who knows.  Whatever it was, the politicians woke up.  The Prime Minister, for once, called it “anti-Semitism,” and didn’t feel the need to tuck “islamophobia” into the subclause that followed.

Ontario’s Premier, who has been consistently more vocal than most, called the attack on the hospital “indecent,” because it was.  Toronto’s mayor, who previously advocated for a ceasefire – even when the anti-Israel mob was terrorizing her New Year’s family skate party – also said it was anti-Semitic.  Fine.

So, where were the police?  Good question.

There are no shortage of laws available to charge the thugs who attacked Mount Sinai Hospital this week.  There is, apparently, a shortage of police.

Reportedly, there were only two (2) on hand to deal with a parade of hundreds of thugs who were easily observed several blocks away, for many minutes, banging drums and chanting “initifada.”  Police headquarters is 850 metres away, a four-minute walk.  But the Toronto Police Service could only muster two (2) officers to deal with law-breaking on a mass scale.

And, rest assured: it was all illegal.  A new law, which Premier Ford emphasized on Tuesday, is seen in Bill C-3, and is specifically designed to protect hospitals and the people who work in them.  The Bill seeks to prevent precisely the sort of hatefest that took place on University Avenue on Monday night.  If indicted, those who violate the new law can face ten years in prison.

But that is not the only law available to police and prosecutors for the siege of Mt. Sinai.  Here are some others, with the relevant sections of the Criminal Code, for officers to tuck into their wallets for future reference:

•blocking or obstructing a highway (Section 423(1)(g))
•intimidation (Section 423(1))
•causing a disturbance (Section 175)
•common nuisance (Section 180)
•interfering with transportation facilities (Section 248)
•breach of the peace or imminent breach (Section 31)
•riots (Sections 32, 33, 64, 65, 67, 68, 69)
•unlawful assembly (Section 63)
•mischief (Section 430)

It goes without saying that it is crime to simply attempt or conspire to do any of those things.  And, that’s not all: if one of the thugs was wearing a mask while committing an offence – and masks were in widespread use Monday night – section 65(2) of the Criminal Code makes that an offence, as well.  And can also, if indicted, result in a decade behind bars.

So, lots of laws are available to prevent another attack on Mount Sinai Hospital, or any other hospital.  Or any place or person, really.

We have the laws.  In this country, we have many, many laws we can use.

What we don’t have, increasingly, is the guts to use them.