What’s it going to take?

To charge someone with a hate crime, that is. It’s been less than a week since a mob descended on a Toronto Jewish synagogue, and the perpetrators are still walking the streets. How is that possible?

Because, make no mistake, what took place at the Beth Avraham Yoseph synagogue in Thornhill on Thursday certainly looked like hate. It looked like a hate crime, in fact.

Up till this point, Ontario’s Jew-haters have gone after Jewish symbols – bookstores, delicatessens, restaurants, and even hospitals – but not actual places of worship. In Quebec, synagogues have been firebombed. But in Ontario, the anti-Israel mob hasn’t gone after a place of worship.

On Thursday, they did. Beth Avraham Yoseph is a modern Orthodox synagogue, meaning members are supposed to engage fully with the modern, outside world. They are expected to promote love and justice in their own community, and outside their community. They’re supposed to care for people who are less fortunate, and they do.

As one of their rabbis has put it, the modern Orthodox Jew is expected “to transform the world to benefit all humanity.”

It’s hard to see how anyone could object to that. But several hundred Israel-haters did on Thursday, and showed up allegedly to protest a real estate fair taking place at the synagogue, one that has been showing up in Toronto for two decades. It’s for people who want to make aliyah – that is, move to Israel.

Lawyer Caryma Sa’d was there. Sa’d has become well-known for the gutsy eyewitness videos shot by her and her team – at everything from political protests to political events. Her videos are raw and objective and have become invaluable to the news media.

Remember the footage of Toronto police officers carrying doughnuts to anti-Israel protestors who had targeted a Jewish neighborhood? That was Caryma Sa’d’s work. She was there.

And, on Thursday, she was at the Beth Avraham Yoseph synagogue, as well.

“Objectively, I think there were individuals whose language crossed the threshold for hate,” says Sa’d, noting that many of the protestors were chanting about “Zionists,” quote unquote. Which she also sees as problematic: “The word Zionist has undergone a similar treatment to fascist or Nazi…where it has been stripped of its actual meaning, and can be used as a stand-in for something hateful.

“Which is unfortunate.”

Also unfortunate, to say the least, are some of the other statements made on Thursday. ”The whole world hates you!” one anti-Israel protestor screamed.  Another: “F**k these Jews!” And: “They are demons!” And: ”Go back to Europe!” some chanted.

They grabbed Israeli flags and spat on them and kicked them into the dirt. There was pushing and shoving. There were fights. There were arrests.

Meir Weinstein, who runs the Never Again Live Podcast, was present. Recalls Weinstein: “I witnessed pro-Hamas supporters outside the synagogue chanting that [we are all] terrorists and racists. Some had a sign that said: ‘This is not a synagogue, this is a SINagogue.'”

Most media reports – with Sun colleague Joe Warmington being the notable exception – missed the most outrageous thing of all. Namely, that the “protestors” had targeted a synagogue. A place of worship.

And that is clearly against Canada’s Criminal Code. Here’s what section 319 says:

“Every one who, by communicating statements in any public place, incites hatred against any identifiable group where such incitement is likely to lead to a breach of the peace is guilty of an indictable offence and is liable to imprisonment.”

All the elements are there: hateful statements were communicated about Jews, at a Jewish holy place, to clearly incite hatred. There wasn’t just the possibility of a breach of the peace – the peace had already been breached, necessitating the presence of dozens of armed police.

Calling a synagogue a place of “sin” eliminates any doubt. What happened on Thursday wasn’t about Israel’s government, or Israeli policy. It was explicitly an attack on a religion and the people who belong to that religion – at a “SINagogue.”

The sin, then, is committed here by the police, prosecutors and politicians who see that, and shrug.

The real sin is in doing nothing, and letting things get worse.

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GENOCIDE IS NOT KOSHER.

That is what the sign said, all-caps.  If not for who was holding it, and if not for where it was being held up, the sign would have been the sort of casual anti-Semitism that is seemingly everywhere, these days.

And this needs to be said: the sign was objectionable not because it was critical of the government of Israel. Every single Jew this writer has spoken to, in recent months, is critical of the ultra-conservative government led by Benjamin Netanyahu.

All of them, publicly or privately, blame Netanyahu for permitting Hamas to flourish, and for being unprepared for Hamas’ barbaric assault on October 7.  Every one of them looks forward to Netanyahu being gone after the war. Polling in Israel overwhelmingly shows the same thing.

No, the sign was bad because it explicitly associated genocide (the most serious crime extant) with an important religious precept (the kashrut dietary laws of the Jewish faith).

And what made the sign even worse was this: it was being held up by a child, perhaps six or seven years old, a few feet from a cenotaph in Picton, Ont., this past Saturday. A cenotaph dedicated to those Canadians who gave their lives fighting Naziism.

Who does that? Who gives a child a sign like that – knowing full well that the child does not understand what is either genocidal or kosher – and tells them to stand in a scared place, in a driving cold rain on the Jewish sabbath, to act as a propaganda tool? Who does that?

And what about the actors who showed up at the Oscars, on the very same weekend, wearing pins with the bloody red hand? For them, that question would be different.  We know who decided to wear the pins: Billie Eilish, Jessica Chastain, Richard Gere,Cate Blanchett and Mahershala Ali. Others, too.

They are (arguably) adults, and they made the decision to wear lapel pins bearing the bloody red hand.  Being big stars, being paid obscene amounts of money to pretend to be someone else, we presume they were the ones who decided to display a hand covered in blood for all the cameras to see.

But did they all know what it means?  For those of us in the Irish diaspora, we know very well what it means: it is the symbol of a warrior, covered in the blood of the warrior’s vanquished enemy.  In Ireland’s North, the Red Hand is capitalized, and has been appropriated by both sides in serial campaigns of murder, for decades.

In the Israel-Gaza context, the red hand is an explicit reference to a photo from a lynching and bloody dismemberment of Israeli soldiers by Palestinians during the intifada in 2000. It is a celebration of murder.

Was that what Billie Eilish and others were celebrating? Did they – like the little kid with the anti-Semitic sign in far-away Picton, Ontario – know what they were saying?  Maybe, maybe not.  But the corrosive effect remains the same.

It is propaganda, yes.  But it is inarguably worse than that: it is holding something up to signal that someone else – in this case, Jews – are inferior.  Are bad.  Are worthy of detestation.

The holding up of awful signs, the wearing of awful pins, is happening a lot, these days.  And that is important.  Because, through repetition, hate is made routine.

In Sander van der Linden’s remarkable 2023 book, Foolproof: How Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity, that sad truth – how evil, per Hannah Arendt, is made banal – is discussed.  Writes van den Linden, a Cambridge social psychology professor:

“Belief in the truth of a claim goes up as a function of repetition.  In others words, the more often you hear a statement, the more ‘true’ it sounds.  This has become known as the illusory truth effect.”

So, real journalism gets dismissed, over and over, as “fake news.” Crowds chant “stop the steal” about elections that were free and fair.  Jewish civilians, wherever they are, however innocent they may be, get falsely accused of “genocide.” Over and over and over.

Hate propaganda becomes effective not when it is said just once.  It becomes effective when it is repeated, endlessly.

Just ask one of the pioneers of the most notorious anti-Semitic campaigns in history, Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels.  Like he said:

Repeat a lie often enough, and it becomes the truth.

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Genocide.
 
Apartheid. Occupation. Settler-colonialism.
 
Those are words we are all hearing a lot, lately. They get thrown around like confetti.
 
After October 7, when 1,200 men, women, children and babies in Israel were tortured and slaughtered – and when more than 200 were kidnapped, to be raped or killed or both – a professional and coordinated global campaign of anti-Semitism was unleashed.  Its objective was to deny or justify the horrors of October 7 and thereafter.  
 
Protestors were paid to protest, organizers were hired, slick posters and banners were generated.  The objective was to intimidate Jews and their supporters into silence with epithets and libels.  In many places, it’s worked.
 
Because, as in any pogrom, as in any act of hate-fuelled violence, language is critical.  Every historian knows that violent hate is caused by hateful propaganda. The barbaric acts of the Holocaust always first needed the horrific words in Mein Kampf.
 
So, every skinhead this writer ever interviewed had a well-thumbed Holocaust-denying tract nearby, usually memorized.  Every Jew-hating Hitler freak I’ve ever interviewed – and I’ve interviewed plenty, over the years – was radicalized first by hateful words and images. Online, or in a book or pamphlet.
 
That’s why we need to pay attention to words.  Because hateful words always precede hateful deeds.  Always.
 
Ask Justin Trudeau.  His meeting with a G7 leader in Toronto was shut down by hate-spewing Israel-haters, principally because Toronto police did nothing to stop them.  And then, a few days later, Trudeau was confronted by a man – on an Ottawa-area ski slope.  While he was snowboarding, Trudeau was followed by the skiing Israel-hater who threw angry words at him.  
 
Trudeau snowboarded away, presumably on his way to restoring funding to the Hamas-loving UNWRA.
 
More words: last week, again, a Toronto lawyer wore a hoodie to a Raptors game with the words “FREE OUR HOSTAGES” and a little Star of David on the back.  MLSE security kicked him out.
 
This week, the lawyer and some of his supporters showed up wearing the same sort of messages on their clothing.  MLSE’s response? They handed the Jews cards containing warnings – you know, kind of like how the actual Nazis used to hand out stars for Jews to wear on their clothing.
 
And, another recent example: a group calling itself “Health Workers for Palestine” has created a secret (until now) petition aimed at words in common use.  Specifically, to stop healthcare workers – doctors, nurses – from using the International Holocaust Remembrance Association’s working definition of anti-Semitism: 
 
“Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”
 
Sounds pretty accurate, right? Well, the Canadian “Health Workers Alliance for Palestine” want to kill that definition – because it’s being used against anti-Semites.  In their secret petition, the pro-Palestine health workers say they’re being “silenced” by those who object to the foul anti-Semitic words they use.  So, their solution? Change the definition of “anti-Semitism.”  Make it okay to accuse people of “genocide,” “apartheid,” “occupation,” and  “settler-colonialism.”
 
Even though their petition is still under wraps, 142 people have signed it, most of them with what appear to be Arabic names.  None appear to be Jewish. 
 
One Jewish doctor, who fears retribution and asks that his name not be used, says: “The Health Care Workers Alliance for Palestine [have been] harassing an array of Jewish Mount Sinai physicians online. They and their collaborators are trying to tell the hospitals what counts as anti-Semitism, including by trying to bully them into denying obvious anti-Semitism.”
 
And that, as with all fights about language, is the key objective: to control the narrative.  To dominate.
 
Jews and their allies are fighting back (this writer, full disclosure, is suing a neighbor who falsely accused me of supporting genocide).  The media are looking more critically at the false claims of the Israel-haters.  So the haters are responding as propagandists always do: by trying to change the true meaning of the words we use.
 
It’s what Hitler and his propagandists did: they told big lies, over and over. And they did for the same reason: 
 
To eliminate Jews and those who would oppose them.

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NEW YORK – Bill Blair haunts us still.

He’s not dead or anything. In fact, he’s still the Minister of National Defence. He’s alive.

But his legacy as Toronto’s Chief of Police haunts us, as noted. And not in a good way.

Remember the G20? International leaders coming to Canada, to agree on things that few can can remember, and literally no one now cares about?

Bill probably wishes you wouldn’t. The G20 took place in Toronto at the back end of June 2010. More than 1,100 people were arrested, many of them illegally, just like in they do in Russia or China.

As media and others looked on, Blair’s G20 police force used excessive force, teargas, pepper spray and rubber bullets against protesters – but also people who weren’t protesting at all. They beat and brutalized people who had done nothing wrong. They turned Toronto into a mini-police state, basically.

Litigation dragged on for a decade, but the Toronto Police Service was eventually forced to pay almost $20 million in damages to citizens who had been illegally detained or beaten. And the courts forced them to acknowledge their mistakes, as well.

Here’s what they said; “We understand and acknowledge that in attempting to preserve peace and safety during those two days, there were times when matters were not addressed in the way they should have been and many hundreds of member of the public were detained or arrested when they should not have been and were held in detention in conditions that were unacceptable. We regret that mistakes were made.”

That word – “mistakes” – doesn’t quite cover it. Not even close. This writer, for example, would drive along Eastern Avenue every day before, during and after the G20, and see scores of incarcerated citizens behind chain link fences, looking out. It was like our very own Guantanamo North.

Also: a mother and veterinarian I knew woke up, mid-G20, to find men in black standing above her in the dead of night. They yelled at her to take her screaming baby, and go outside, where she saw her husband – also a professional – hogtied on the front lawn. They did not identify themselves as police.

They were, however. And they were in the wrong place. Without so much as an apology, they untied the woman’s husband and left. They had the wrong address.

And: one day I agreed to drive my teenage daughter to the MTV video awards on Queen Street West. Back then, we had a toy crow on the front dash of our family van. Another van, full of burly men in civilian clothes who were clearly police, pulled up close beside us and stared through the open windows.

They loudly demanded to know the significance of the crow. Seriously, they did that. I told them it was a toy. They glared some more, then sped away, in the direction of some sirens.

And: a lawyer friend was near a barricaded street downtown, and alongside a young woman who was blowing bubbles, like kids do. As my friend looked on, a burly cop demanded that the young woman stop blowing bubbles – or he would have her arrested.

She pointed out she wasn’t hurting anyone with soap bubbles. He arrested her.

Those are just the things I experienced myself. Across Toronto that June, many people heard and saw similar things. Bill Blair’s G20 police force essentially lost their minds, and unleashed the biggest violation of civil rights in Canada in living memory.

Which brings us to now, and why the Toronto Police Service is really doing nothing about the wave of anti-Semitic crime targeting the city’s Jews.

Jewish businesses have been firebombed. Jewish businesses have been vandalized and attacked. Jewish citizens have been assaulted and vilified and threatened. Jewish places of worship, and Jewish neighborhoods, have been targeted for intimidation campaigns.

There has even been attacks on places – like hospitals – simply because anti-Semitic thugs considered them to be too Jewish.
And, after all of that, the Toronto Police Service have been essentially invisible. They have done little or nothing to prevent Jews from being attacked in the city of Toronto.

Why? Well, there are three possibilities.

One, they don’t care. I have heard from enough rank and file police officers, however, to know this is not true. Many do.

Two, they have been told to do nothing by the city’s political leaders. But this isn’t true, either. Most uniformed Toronto police are not fans of Mayor Olivia Chow or her city councilors. And besides: politicians are not allowed to direct police, ever.

Three – and this is the likeliest possibility: it’s the ghost of Bill Blair, haunting us like some Dickensian nightmare.

More than a decade after they were humiliated for their conduct at the G20, Toronto police have gone to the opposite extreme: having once been accused of doing too much, they have now decided to do too little.

The message to Toronto’s Jewish community has been clear: you’re on your own, folks. Unlike in places like New York City, where I now am, Toronto’s police don’t seem to give a sweet damn about the fact that Toronto in 2024 sometimes resembles 1938 in Berlin.

For that, I think we can thank the ghost of Bill Blair.

Too much policing has given way to none at all.

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