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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NEW YORK – This is a tale of two police forces.

One police force knows how to deal swiftly and effectively with pro-Hamas thugs breaking the law.

The other is a Police Farce.

Here in New York City on the weekend, we witnessed a police force that is competent. Toronto police – whose budget just got a big boost – should watch and learn.

But they won’t.

Every Saturday, New York City’s Washington Square Park is the weekend gathering place for musicians, dog-walkers and produce vendors. This Saturday, the park was filled with what can only be described as a mob.

They called it a “Millions March for Palestine.” There weren’t a million of them, but they certainly started to march. They headed towards Times Square.

Police watched them every step of the way, forcing them onto the sidewalk. By the time they reached Times Square, near 42nd Street and Seventh Avenue they were angry and ugly.

Right around then, my partner and I were a couple blocks away, heading to see a play at the Samuel Friedman Theater called A Prayer for French Republic. Which, ironically enough, is about generations of a Jewish family facing violence and persecution – for being Jews.

Also happening right around then: an Uber driver somehow got close enough to drop off a passenger in Times Square. Who had left a hand grenade in the back seat of the Nissan Ultima.

It wasn’t a real hand grenade, thank God. But it certainly looked real.  The Uber driver called the police. The cops immediately deployed the bomb squad – a unit of the New York Police Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau, located pretty close to Times Square.

The bomb squad couldn’t get to the Uber because the Israel-haters were actually and actively blocking them. Chaos ensued. The mob was chanting and surrounding police cars.

So, New York’s finest did what police are supposed to do: they took action. They promptly shut down access to the area, and they pushed up against the mob to create a perimeter around the Uber. And then – pay attention, Toronto “police” – they started to make arrests.

You know: using their legal authority to take persons into custody. NYPD Deputy Commissioner Kaz Daughtry tweeted what happened next: “Happy Saturday to all! Except the people who thought it was a good idea to block an NYPD ESU vehicle on the way to a bomb threat call. They will be spending their Saturday where they belong – in jail.”

Eleven of the thugs were dropped into a jail cell that night. In the meantime, the hand grenade was found to be “inert,” police said.

Now, Times Square is always a circus, jammed with people and vehicles and noise and lights. That’s certainly what my partner and I observed on Saturday, right near the spot where police were dealing with a real riot and an unreal bomb. We saw and heard the sirens and the cops, but Times Square was never, ever shut down.

But in Toronto, the meeting place of two G7 leaders was. By a similar mob of Israel-haters – and a totally ineffective police force.

On the very same day, right around the same time as the Times Square melee, there was supposed to be a meeting of the Prime Ministers of Italy and Canada at the Art Gallery of Ontario. You know, the elected leaders of two G7 countries.

As in New York, an Israel-hating mob descended on the AGO building. As in New York, they chanted calls for violent revolution and blocked access. As in New York, they screamed and attacked people.

Unlike New York, the Toronto police effectively did nothing. They essentially let the bad guys win.

One of Justin Trudeau’s caucus members, pro-Israel MP Francesco Sorbara, tweeted what happened. Wrote Francesco:

“Last night members of the Italian-Canadian community from across Canada came together in anticipation to greet PM Meloni & PM Trudeau but instead were spat on, physically assaulted, and verbally abused. It was absolutely disgusting and unacceptable.”

Now – full disclosure – Francesco is an old friend of mine. As such, I can tell you that he is a moderate and sensible guy, not given to overstatement. When he says that was what happened, you can rest assured: that is what happened.

So, in a bit of karma or kismet, Toronto was experiencing the same sort of thing the New York was experiencing, on the very same day, at the very same time: Israel-hating mob, violence, intimidation, abuse.

The difference: New York cops dealt with it. Toronto cops didn’t.

The usual dance ensued: the Prime Minister’s Office quietly suggested that the cops were to blame for shutting down the meeting. The Toronto police subtly suggested the PMO was to blame.

For once, I believe Trudeau’s PMO. I’ve worked for a Prime Minister. When it comes to matters of security, we always listened to what the police say. We did what they told us to do. Period.

Since October 7, for months, the Toronto Police Service has distinguished itself with one thing: total incompetence. In dealing with the Israel hating-thugs that have threatened Jewish neighborhoods, attacked Jews and Jewish businesses, firebombed Jewish delis, they have been an abject failure. They have been a joke.

Jews won’t say that, because they’re scared and don’t want to lose what little police protection they’ve received. But I’m a pro-police Irish Catholic, and that’s what I think: Toronto’s Police Service has become a joke.

Want proof? Take a look at what happened in New York City on Saturday. Then take a look at what happened in the city of Toronto on Saturday.

Here in New York, the cops did and do their job.

In Toronto, they don’t.

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It started on October 8.  Literally, the day after.

Think about that: a slick, global, and professional-looking propaganda campaign – one that would promote violent anti-Semitism, and deny the horrors of October 7 –  was underway the very next day.  October 7: the biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

October 8: a campaign immediately starts to deny October 7, or justify it.

This writer has been involved in politics in the Americas and the Middle East for a long time.  It is impossible – literally impossible – to develop and deploy a coordinated global propaganda campaign in a single day.  It can’t be done.

But if you have millions of dollars to pay for it, and bot farms in Egypt, Britain and America to push it out – and, most importantly, if you knew October 7 was going to happen before it did – then you could do it.  And thereby reach, and manipulate, millions upon millions of people, in multiple languages.

That, along with other disturbing revelations, comes out of our latest discussion with the brilliant Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor, Executve Director of CyberWell, an Israeli tech nonprofit that targets and combats the spread of anti-Semitism on social media.  Speaking from Amsterdam, Cohen Montemayor shared some startling, and disturbing findings from CyberWell’s latest report.

“We found evidence of October 7 denials – and support and celebration of it – as early as October 8, 10 and 11,” she says. “And we have evidence of accounts on X’s platform with only 3,000 followers tweeting out October 7 denial and misinformation – and getting three million views.  That’s highly suspicious.”

Other disturbing findings: there are specific anti-Semitic messages showing up on each of the major social media platforms.

•Facebook: “Jews control the world – or are dominating the world order.”
•Instagram: “The Rothschild conspiracy theory”  so named after the well-to-do Jewish family that has long been targeted by Jew haters
•TikTok: “Jews are the enemy.”
•X (or Twitter): “Jews are the enemy.”
•YouTube: “Jews are the synagogue of Satan.”

Anyone who has ever worked on a political campaign knows what that is: micro-targeting.  That is, pushing out messages that are targeted to specific demographics, based on age, gender, geography and education.  That just doesn’t happen organically.  It requires money and organization.

Now, more than 150,000 examples of that sort of anti-Semitic propaganda were flagged by CyberWell for removal by the main social media platforms.  And (some good news) the platforms are getting somewhat better at removing hate.

Cohen Montemayor says that the removal rate is now around 32 percent across all the social platforms – an improvement of almost ten per cent from 2022.  And Elon Musk’s X, where some of the worst stuff is found, has finally bowed to pressure, and is hiring 150 new employees at his Texas headquarters to identify and remove online hate.

But the bad stuff is still getting through, turbo-charged by algorithms that make the anti-Semitic content a little bit worse every time someone sees it.  CyberWell took the hateful postings and presented them to the social media bosses.  Their responses were not helpful, she says.

“X threw out the rulebook entirely when it came to content moderation, [when they decided] to no longer remove hate speech,” she says.  Thereby making X one of the worst places for anti-anti-Semitism on Earth.

This past week, the Trudeau Liberals rolled out a massive and controversial legislative package to curb online hate and harm.  But, to experts like Cohen Montemayor, the problem goes far beyond mere words.  Because the harmful words are resulting in violence, she says.

“We’ve seen this with the 9/11 bombers.  We’ve seen it with January 6 insurrection. YouTube was the number one platform cited by January 6 insurrection participants as their source of information. These very smart algorithms are meant to grab your attention, and get you addicted…the content is meant to stir emotions, to make people upset, to isolate them socially,” says Cohen Montemayor.

“Mainstream social media platforms are being used to radicalize people, leading to very violent results. October 7 was the largest-ever hijacking of social media platforms by terrorist groups.  It should’ve indicated to every Western democracy that these platforms will be exploited by terrorist groups.”

In conclusion, Cohen Montemayor makes one point several times – which is that the problem goes far beyond words. It’s an issue of national security, too.

And not just Jews will be the victims, Cohen Montemayor says, adding:  “After the October 7 massacre by Hamas, the following weekend, 800 Christians were massacred in Sudan. That massacre was uploaded directly, and streamed directly, onto Facebook.  Why? They’re learning.  These terrorist groups are learning from each other.”

It’s a chilling report, and one that all civilized nations should heed.

Because the haters are getting better at what they do.  And they’re winning the propaganda war.

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The biggest achievements in politics – the only achievements, really – are the ones involving risk.

As in, taking a risk. Making a decision, making a statement, making a law that entails risk to you and your career.

Brian Mulroney took risks.

I didn’t work for him. In fact, I worked for Jean Chretien, his Liberal Party opponent. And part of my job was to make the Mulroney government miserable.

Despite that – and when behind closed doors – Martin Brian Mulroney, PC, CC, GOQ, was a bit of a marvel to us. Because he took risks. Because he had guts.

Case in point: South Africa.

In the Eighties, when Mulroney was Prime Minister – and presiding over two successive super-majorities – South Africa still practiced apartheid. Apartheid was institutionalized racism, essentially. It was racial segregation and discrimination that had been forced on the black majority in South Africa by a white minority.

Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were Brian Mulroney’s closest allies internationally. They professed to oppose apartheid – but they vociferously opposed international sanctions to bring it to an end. Thatcher called them “counterproductive.”

Brian Mulroney stood up to Reagan and Thatcher – and many within his own Conservative Party. In September 1986, Mulroney imposed tough sanctions on the apartheid regime, and encouraged other nations to do likewise. Said he: “I viewed apartheid with the same degree of disgust that I attached to the Nazis — the authors of the most odious offence in modern history.”

Nelson Mandela thanked him for that, saying that Mulroney, and Canada, would be forever remembered for their support.

Mulroney’s other great and courageous achievement: free trade.

And, yes, we Liberals initially opposed it – or, at least, the John Turner-era Grits did (Chretien, as the country would soon see, not so much). But Brian Mulroney saw where the world was heading – with technology ushering in an era of lightning-fast global commerce, dominated by companies all too willing to move to where they could do more business for less.

Mulroney’s free trade stance was targeted by Turner during the 1988 federal election – and, for a while, it very nearly turned the tide against the Tory leader. He could have blinked, then, and backed away. He could have reversed himself. He didn’t. Mulroney persisted – and won another huge majority, and signed a comprehensive free trade deal with the United States.

There were other, less notable, parts to the man. On the Hill, in the pre-Twitter days – when things were more civilized – all of us heard stories about Brian Mulroney’s human side. A gift of ties to Brian Tobin, his Liberal tormentor, when the MP’s son was born.

A call to Chretien during a health scare. Quiet wishes whenever a Liberal was going through personal hardship. Not for publication, ever. But never forgotten by the recipients.

Brian Mulroney was not a great politician and Prime Minister because he won two big elections. He was one of the great ones because he took risks – because he took risks with things that mattered, the things that will be remembered by history.

My deepest condolences to his family, some of whom I now know and consider good friends.

Your Dad was a great one. He will be missed.

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It’s the next front in the war.

There’s been no ceasefire reached yet. Fighting is still going on, in and around Southern Gaza. Rockets and bullets are still being fired into Northern Israel by Hamas and Hezbollah.

Slowly but surely, however, Israel is winning the war.

As of last week, more than 12,000 Hamas terrorists have reportedly been killed. Three-quarters of Hamas’ 24 battalions – each containing more than 1,000 men – have been wiped out. Missile attacks on Israel have dropped off dramatically.

And, like Adolf Hitler in his final days, Hamas’ leadership is in hiding in subterranean bunkers, moving from one hideout to another, more preoccupied with survival than directing the fight against the IDF – who, incredibly, have lost only 300 troops since the war began in earnest on October 27.

So, Israel is winning. After the military “mop-up” is done, Israel will relinquish governance of Gaza to someone else – possibly some amalgam of the Palestinian Authority, humanitarian agencies and peacekeepers.

One thing is clear: as in the past, public opinion in Israel overwhelmingly opposes governing Gaza. They want Hamas defeated, and the remaining hostages back, but no role in governing the ungovernable.

The Middle East, however, is just one front in the war that broke out after the horrors of October 7. There is another battle raging, and it is not centred in Gaza and the West Bank.

It is the war against Jews taking place around the world.

Not even the “pro-Palestinian” protestors – some of whom are being paid to protest, as this newspaper has documented – dispute the reality anymore: they don’t just oppose Israel’s government (which isn’t anti-Semitic to do). They oppose Jews (which is).

Their Jew hatred has manifested itself, in Canada, in firebombing and shootings and acts of vandalism from coast to coast – at synagogues, Jewish schools, businesses, and even the private homes of Jews. The same sort of anti-Semitism is happening around the planet, too, every single day. It is, as noted, the next front in the war that commenced on October 7, 2023.

This writer has authored ten books, most of them about anti-Semitism, racism and their variants. Regularly, I get asked by exasperated and frightened readers: where does this anti-Semitism come from? In the year 2024, why have we not killed it off, once and for all?

It’s no longer true to say that anti-Semitism is caused by Christians. While the Holocaust was indeed conducted in European Christian nations, no one seems as preoccupied, anymore, by the notion that “Jews killed Christ.” (They didn’t: the Romans did.). And polling shows that the vast majority of Christians in the West strongly support Israel’s right to defend itself, within safe and secure borders.

No, the genesis of modern anti-Semitism is a lot harder to pin down. A lengthy essay in the new Time magazine by Noah Feldman, a professor (ironically) at Harvard’s law school, is now making the rounds. In his “New anti-Semitism” piece, Feldman writes: “Anti-Semitism is actually a shape-shifting, protean, creative force. Anti-Semitism has managed to reinvent itself multiple times throughout history, each time keeping some of the old tropes around, while simultaneously creating new ones adapted to present circumstances.” Jews, he continues, are the targets of whatever hatred is fashionable at the moment.

And Feldman is right. Whenever there is a global calamity, people cast about for a scapegoat, and Jews are always the best candidates. So, 9/11 was caused by Jews, because no Jew was killed that day. The 2008-2009 global financial crisis was caused by Jews, who disproportionally benefitted from the economic chaos. Covid was a Jewish invention, because they own the pharma companies.

Even wildfires has been the fault of Jews: in his amusing (but disturbing) new book, Jewish Space Lasers, Mike Rothschild – who ironically, bears the surname of a centuries-old anti-Semitic conspiracy theory – tells the story of MAGA Trump fanatic, congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. She promoted the notion that Jews were “beaming the sun’s energy back to Earth” with non-existent “space-based solar generators,” and missing non-existent “receiving stations.” And thereby causing wildfires in California.

Anti-Semitism, then, is indeed a shape-shifter, never dying, never completely going away. It adapts, like cockroaches adapt. It is unkillable.

So, since October 7, anti-Semitism is back with a vengeance, globally. It is the new front in the next war.

And, as in every war, the frontlines will grow. Other targets will be added.

Because what starts with Jews never ends with Jews.

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