Who are you going to call?

It’s not a Ghostbusters reference – although, the mission is similar: to defeat evil.

If you’re Jewish – or if you’re a supporter of Israel and the Jewish community – and you’re being harassed or attacked or vilified or threatened? Then you should call the Lawfare Project.

The Lawfare Project is based in New York City, but is led by a brilliant Canadian woman from Toronto.  It’s a team of more than 600 lawyers based in different countries, and created in 2010 to protect the civil and human rights of Jews everywhere.  It’s a pro bono effort – meaning, literally, “for the public good,” and at no cost, too.  Lawyers donate their time to fight for Jews facing anti-Semitism and hate.

And they’re very busy, these days.

Western democracies are presently in the midst of the worst surge in anti-Semitism since the Holocaust.  October 7 was the worst of it, of course, with 1,200 men, women, children and babies tortured and slaughtered in Israel by Hamas – and 200 taken hostage in Gaza, where more than 100 remain.

But since that terrible day, Jews around the globe have been targeted for the supposed sins of the Israeli government.  And, for some, “it’s become perfectly acceptable to project their hatred of a foreign government on Jews,” says Brooke Goldstein, the founder and executive director of the Lawfare Project.

Born and raised in Toronto, Goldstein went to McGill University in Montreal, then the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law in New York City.  She’s an extraordinary person, and is the granddaughter of a commander of a unit of Polish partisans who fought the Nazis in World War Two.  And she started the Lawfare Project after working as a film producer and an advocate for children’s rights.

The Lawfare Project essentially got its start with her 2011 book, Lawfare: The War Against Free Speech: A First Amendment Guide for Reporting in an Age of Islamist Lawfare. In it, Goldstein offers advice to journalists about how to protect themselves from Islamic extremists who increasingly use the law as a weapon to silence, or punish, those who dare to write about militant Islamists, terrorism – and their funding sources. (Full disclosure: this writer has been targeted by multiple legal actions by opponents of the Jewish state.)

“We fight those who use the legal system as a weapon of war,” says Goldstein from New York, where she is based. “You see this happening with Israel, right now – the bias, the horrific charges of genocide and apartheid, and so on. It’s the attempt to add a legal patina to a blood libel against Jews, and abuse the international legal system, to hinder the ability of Israel and other democracies to fight and defeat terrorism.”

That fight expresses itself in myriad ways, Goldstein, says.  At any given time, the Lawfare Project promotes civil rights by providing legal help to those who have been discriminated against.  It advocates for human rights by combatting extremism.  And, most off all, it fights “lawfare” – the abuse of legal institutions to destabilize democracy everywhere.  Not just Israel.

One of Goldstein’s partners is the affable senior counsel Gerard Filitti, who was also on the line from New York.  Told about this newspaper’s efforts to document how anti-Israel protesters and organizers are getting paid to show up – and how the money for that is often coming from outlaw states like Qatar and Iran – Filitti isn’t surprised.

Says he: “We currently have a lawsuit against Carnegie Mellon University [in Pittsburgh], which over the years have received more than $800 million (U.S.) from Qatar – and it is also a university where we have seen a dramatic increase in anti-Semitism on campus during that time period. We want to see if there is a connection between the anti-Semitism and the funding.”

In that case, the Lawfare Project is representing a Jewish student.  And, they stress, they want to hear from Jewish students in Canada – and Jewish non-students – who are being demonized for supporting the just and proper war on Hamas.  Or for just being Jewish.

“We are trying to see what this money is doing…because we are seeing so much money coming in, from Qatar especially.”

They are doing God’s work at the Lawfare Project – for Jews and Jewish allies alike.

Got a human rights issue?  Give them a call.  They might be able to help.

[Kinsella is a lawyer who is establishing a war room to combat the rise in anti-Semitism in Canada.]

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Bubble zones: they work.

Bubble zones – or “buffer zones,” “safe access zones” or access zones” – first started to show up in the early 1990s.  Back then, women seeking legal abortions, or just seeking advice, were routinely being harassed and threatened at clinics and hospitals that provide those services.

Going back to 1984, doctors offices and abortion clinics in the U.S. were being bombed. One doctor was shot to death at a clinic in Florida in 1993. A clinic volunteer was murdered in 1994, again in Florida.  And, across the United States and Canada, women were being threatened and attacked for coming near places that provided safe and legal abortions.

In 2000, Dr. Henry Morgantaler told this writer that he had received “untold thousands” of death threats over the years.  And that he, his staff and his patients regularly needed protection from violence.

So, legislatures started to create what are often called bubble zones.  That is, defined areas where certain activities are against the law – initially, to protect doctors, nurses and women providing or seeking abortions.  By creating a designated buffer zone around a clinic, police were compelled to act: if an anti-abortion lunatic crossed the line, they’d get arrested.  Simple.

It’s now apparent that we need to do likewise for Canada’s 400,000 Jews – around their places of worship, in particular.  The pro-Hamas, Jew-hating mobs have targeted Jewish businesses, community centres, schools and synagogues.  Police weren’t preventing the attacks, or they weren’t doing enough to keep the haters away.

So, create bubble zones around those places where Jews are most vulnerable.  Like synagogues.

Quebec (surprisingly, given the province’s documented problems around anti-Semitism) went first.  Earlier in March, the Quebec Superior Court made history.  The Court ordered that groups associated with extremism – Montreal4Palestine, Palestinian Youth Movement Montreal, Alliance4Palestine – stay at least 50 metres away from Jewish institutions in predominantly-Jewish areas of Montreal, Notre Dame de Grace and Cote-des-Neiges.

Then, a few days later, Vaughan mayor Steven Del Duca proposed the same thing for his city.  Del Duca urged councillors in the city North of Toronto to approve a bylaw that would prevent protests near places or worship, schools and could care centres.  The objective, Del Duca said, was to stop those who “incite hatred, intolerance and violence” in such places.

Del Duca’s law would keep the Israel-haters 100 metres away from designated places.  Anyone who violated the law would face fines up to $100,000.

Now, Toronto councillor Brad Bradford is pushing for a similar law in Canada’s largest city.  Bradford wrote to Ontario’s Attorney-General to call for the creation of what he called “safety zones” around places of worship, but also important social infrastructure.  That addition is welcome, too, because the pro-Hamas mobs have shown their willingness to block major roadways and target hospitals.

“A shocking 56 per cent of incidents have been anti-Semitic and target Toronto’s Jewish community,” Bradford said in his letter.

In an interview, Bradford explained why he took action: “Over the past six months, there has been an absence of leadership at City Hall when it comes to ensuring people have the right to practice their faith in peace without fear of violence or persecution. We’ve seen businesses attacked because of who owns them, we’ve seen neighbourhoods targeted because of who lives there, and it continues to undermine the diversity, tolerance, and acceptance that used to be the hallmark of Toronto…It has to stop.”

Establishing safe zones, Bradford says, “would be a meaningful step that would provide another [way] to stamp out hate and start to restore the type of civility and tolerance we ought to expect in a city like Toronto.”

Brad Bradford is right – as are the other leaders in Quebec and Ontario who are taking action.  We need to protect people when they are at prayer – when they are most vulnerable.  We need to make neighbourhoods feel safe again.

Establishing safe zones, as Bradford calls them, would do just that.

Will Canada’s other leaders follow his lead?

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