In less than a week, we’ve seen them disrupting the Mayor’s skate party.

We’ve seen them scream curses and epithets at the regular folks there. We’ve seen them intimidating an elderly couple at the same event. We’ve seen them blocking highways and roads and getting coffee and doughnuts from the cops.

And, of course, we’ve someone – almost certainly one of their fellow travellers – firebomb a delicatessen and scrawl FREE PALESTINE on its walls.

Again: that’s in less than a week, in the City of Toronto, Canada.

Lots of questions: why aren’t the police doing more? Why isn’t Toronto – and other cities in Canada – cracking down on law-breakers, as New York City Mayor Eric Adams did this week, and haul away hundreds of “pro-Palestine” types blocking the Brooklyn Bridge?

The “they,” here, need to be defined. There are people who support Palestine, and oppose Israel’s government and the war, and are not anti-Semites. They post on social media and write letters to the editor, but that’s about it.

Then there’s a group in the ideological middle – mainly the younger Generation Z, according to multiple polls – who are actually pro-Hamas and anti-Israel. Much of this group are anti-Semitic, or on their way to embracing Jew hatred.

But they, too, tend to be keyboard warriors. They probably don’t mind picking up a brick, to quote the Clash, but they don’t ever actually toss it. They’re Slacktivists.

Then there is the third group, the hardcore. These are the ones we see on TV, and read about in the newspapers, and hear about on the radio. These masked thugs favour intimidation and violence, or the threat of violence, to make their point.

As this writer and others have argued, they are the hardcore: the blood-libelling, committed Jew-haters who meet the dictionary definition of “terrorism.” The ones who favour the use of violence, and/or intimidation, to make a political point.

Why do they do it?

More to the point: don’t they understand that they are losing support, and not gaining it? Because, make no mistake: they are.

Lots of polls have now been done across North America and Europe. Overwhelmingly, the majority – the silent majority, for now – are appalled by the behaviour of the Hamas horde. These respondents want the police to crack down on them. And, across the board, they are becoming less enamoured with the Palestinian cause because of the law-breaking, not despite it.

A sampling:

• A Leger-Postmedia poll found that “a strong majority of Canadians said they believed non-permanent residents who express hate towards minorities or support for terrorist groups such as Hamas should be deported from Canada.” And “51 per cent agreed with the statement that Canadian authorities “should do more to ensure newcomers accept Canadian values.” Up to and including deportation if they don’t.
• On the protests, the numbers are even more stark: “75 per cent also backed the notion that non-citizens should face deportation if they publicly express hatred towards a minority group or support a terrorist organization.” Hamas among them.
• In Britain, a pro-Palestine/Hamas protest on Armistice Day – their Remembrance Day – outraged a majority of Britons. Not only did they oppose the protests, polling found, but a majority wanted the protests banned entirely. And a significant number, Sky News reported, believed the protests in the U.K. “have mostly been about expressing hatred of Israel and Jewish people.”
• Meanwhile, a British YouGov poll found that respondents feel – by a factor of two to one – that police there have been “too soft” on the protestors. At least “41 per cent of respondents responded saying that the rules were ‘too relaxed, and should be tightened’.”
• Meanwhile, in the United States, the anti-Palestine-protestor view is much the same. As PBS reported: “Though larger than past Palestinian solidarity protests, they still do not necessarily reflect the views of most Americans on Israel. According to a PBS NewsHour/Marist poll conducted Nov. 6 to Nov. 9, most Americans, about six in 10, said they sympathize with Israel.” And: “The Palestinian solidarity protests have not been supported publicly by the vast majority of politicians.”

There’s more polls and surveys like those, but you get the point. The protests are turning off the majority of voters across Western democracy – including those who sympathize more with the Palestinian cause. Their tactics, in effect, are blowing up in their faces.

And, of course, the literal blowing up of things – as at a Jewish delicatessen in Toronto six days ago – sure isn’t helping their cause, either.

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It’s terrorism.

The firebombing of a Jewish business in Toronto last week, that is. The attack on International Delicatessen Foods (IDF) – and the FREE PALESTINE scrawled on its exterior wall by the firebomber(s) – literally meets every available definition of terrorism.

The Canadian Department of Justice defines terrorism in this way: “Section 83.01 of the Criminal Code defines terrorism as an act committed ‘in whole or in part for a political, religious or ideological purpose, objective or cause’ with the intention of intimidating the public ‘…with regard to its security’.”

The Federal Bureau of Investigation defines terrorism similarly: “Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups who are inspired by, or associated with, designated foreign terrorist organizations or nations.”

Police were called to IDF, located on Steeles Avenue near Keele Street, at 6 a.m. last Wednesday. The inside of the deli was ablaze. No one was inside the delicatessen at the time – thankfully.

Some media downplayed the significance of the crime. The CBC’s headline read: “North York fire being investigated, no injuries reported.” Well, no. It was a bit more than that, CBC. Ask City Councillor Mike Colle, who was the first to bring the attack to the attention of many, on social media.

Said Colle in an interview: “This crosses the threshold. This is a terrorist act.”

And it is, by any accepted definition (see above).

Toronto police – like the CBC – have had a tendency to treat these criminal attacks as mere cases of mischief. That, for example, is how police initially treated the November 10 attack on a Bloor Street Indigo bookstore owned by a Jewish businesswomen, Heather Reisman. “Mischief.”

Only later did police and prosecutors elevate the charges against the 11 accused, to criminal harassment, a more serious charge. But the minimizing – the shrugging – about actual terrorism continues, with police and some media.

On Monday morning, for example, the Toronto Star ran a dishonest three-byline front-page story about the bookstore attack, headlining that it was mere “vandalism,” and extensively quoting an academic who whinged that charging the 11 “indicates a particular hostility and intolerance for these methods when they are done in support of Palestinian human rights.”

Mike Colle, for one, is fed up with the minimizers. He’s fed up with the shrugs. What happened at IDF is terrorism, he says. Call it by its right name.

“If we don’t treat this as an act of terror,” he says, “we’re going to have more of these vile acts taking place.”

So, Colle and fellow Councillor James Pasternak are having a press conference at IDF this afternoon – to demand that police treat the attack as terrorism. And to hammer the provincial and federal governments for not doing enough to combat surging anti-Semitic crime.

“Where are the province and the feds?” Colle thunders. “They’re completely missing in action!”

And they are. So, increasingly, are the police who are paid to enforce the laws that are passed by Ottawa and Queen’s Park. They’re missing in action, too – except, perhaps, to serve coffee and doughnuts to pro-Hamas types blocking access to and from the 401. An event that caused headlines around the world, and will forever bring shame on the Toronto Police Service.

The minimizing, the shrugging, continued on the weekend: police permitted pro-Palestinian thugs to break up the mayor’s skating party, and scream curses at an elderly couple, there simply for a skate. No charges. No arrests.

We need more politicians like Mike Colle and James Pasternak, who know what is really happening, and what to call it.

Which is terrorism.

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Jean Chretien is turning 90 this week. And what a life he has had.

Let me tell you one of my favorite Chretien stories, about just one afternoon in that extraordinary life.

One sunny day a few years ago, I was in Vancouver for business. Turned out Chretien was, as well. We decided to get together for lunch, down near Water Street in Gastown.

It was a nice day, so the former Prime Minister suggested we go for a walk. Off we went, along with the one (1) RCMP guy assigned to him. We headed towards Waterfront Station. People would do a double-take when they saw him, then smile, then wave to him and say “Hey Chretien!” Things like that. Happened a lot.

We got to Waterfront Station, and there was a great big guy there. He was sitting on the sidewalk, looking pretty rough, and he might have been homeless. He got up and started walking rapidly towards us, his face stern.

Just when I was thinking that I would need to become a bodyshield for the former Prime Minister, the rough-looking guy stuck out a hand as big as a ham.

“Chretien!” He bellowed. “Thanks for keeping us out of Iraq! You did a good job! Got five bucks?”

We all laughed, of course. And Chretien, still laughing, reached into his wallet – and it wasn’t one of those fancy Italian wallets, either, it looked like he got it for a fill up at Petro Canada – and took out five bucks and gave it to the guy. And then they proceeded to talk about all manner of things, like they had known each other forever.

There are a million other stories like that about Joseph Jacques Jean Chretien, 18th of 19 children, 20th of 23 Prime Ministers.  A million.

You just need to walk along any street in Canada, and I mean anywhere, and people will stop him to shake his hand or offer best wishes or ask for a selfie. I don’t know if anybody has ever done a poll on the most-loved Prime Minister, but if they had, I’m pretty sure my former boss would top it.

He turns 90 this week. He still goes in to the office. He still talks on the phone with Presidents and Prime Ministers, Kings and Queens.

He still offers free political advice to whoever asks for it.  The recipients of the advice include unabashed fans, like one Stephen Harper, P.C. (Not so much the woke bloke, however, the one with the Chewbacca socks.  That one doesn’t like getting advice from people with experience. And it shows.)

At 90, Chretien still waterskis at his little place in Shawinigan, or plays pickleball, or goes kiteboarding – or he heads to Harvey’s for a burger, a bemused Mountie in tow. And then people stop by his table to say hello, or ask for a selfie. He always stands to greet them.

That’s an important distinction, I think. Chretien is beloved, in part, because people sense that he does not regard himself as better than them, or better than anyone. And he doesn’t.

He didn’t let the job go to his head, you see, and the statistics suggest he was pretty successful at his day job. When he offered me the job of speechwriter in the Summer of 1990 – and, believe me, if there is a Maytag repairman equivalent in Canadian politics, it’s being speechwriter to Jean Chretien – lots of friends and family told me I was crazy. He’ll never become Prime Minister, they said. You’re throwing away a promising legal career, they said.

“Well,” I’d say many times over the subsequent years, “he kind of did all right, didn’t he?”

He certainly did. Forty years in elected politics, never a defeat. Held just about every major portfolio in federal politics, never a finding of wrongdoing by him. Balanced the budget more than once, kept Canada together more than once, won three majorities in a row.  Fiscally prudent, socially progressive. Gave the Shawinigan Handshake™️ to a guy who deserved it.

And, through it all, he kept his connection to the people. One time, we were waiting for him to arrive to start an event at a restaurant somewhere. I asked one of my fellow aides where the leader was. He laughed. “He’s in the kitchen,” said the aide. “He always enters through the kitchen, so he can talk to the staff and shake their hands.”

That’s Chretien. That’s the little guy from Shawinigan.

Some of us who worked for him and who love him are gathering in Ottawa this week to sing happy birthday. Ninety years: by any standard, that’s a long life.

And Jean Chretien did some amazing things with that life.

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What does it take?

What does it take for police and prosecutors to do their job, that is.

What does it take?

Since October 7, when a modern shoah commenced, this country has shamed itself. This country has witnessed the biggest surge in Jew hatred since the years leading to the Second World War. It has led to headlines around the world.

Now, in the Trudeau era, it has become difficult for Canada to distinguish itself on the international stage. We are not known for very much, these days.

But since October 7, we have achieved international distinction for something few wanted and fewer foresaw: we have become a world leader in unsolved anti-Semitic crime. We are gold medalists in that.

A Jewish school in Montreal is shot up – not once, but twice. The police have no suspects. No one has been charged.

Synagogues and Jewish community centers are fire-bombed in Montreal, multiple times. The police have no suspects. No arrests.

A Muslim leader, before 20,000 witnesses, calls on God to exterminate Jews. He still walks the streets. No charges.

And, this week, a Jewish-owned business in the Toronto area is fire bombed. The supermarket had a sign out front, calling itself “IDF “– International Delicatessen Foods. Was the supermarket fire bombed, and its windows smashed, because of the sign?

Well, whoever was behind the attack erased any doubt: they spray-painted the words FREE PALESTINE on the walls.

So, again: what does it take?

What, specifically, have police and prosecutors done to end this wave of anti-Semitic crime? What have they done to signal to the Jew haters that they will be caught and punished?

Not much.

So, as a result, the Jew-hating, pro-Hamas thugs grow more bold. They hiss death threats at people, right in front of the police, and get away with it. They make lots of threats online, and giddily promote hatred and genocide. They deny murder, they deny rape.

And, for week after week, they have taken to blocking access to and from the 401. The busiest highway in North America.

What does it take?

It should be pointed out, perhaps, that the police haven’t been entirely silent. They’ve issued lots of stern-sounding tweets, yes. They’ve put out lots of press releases, yes.

But it’s been a lot of noise, signifying nothing, to appropriate Shakespeare. It’s been a lot of bluster and BS.

No arrests for the sorts of crimes described above.

The politicians, too, haven’t done much. Apart from issuing social media statements of the  “thoughts and prayers” variety, few of them have shown any real determination to stamp out this hateful crime wave.

Toronto City Councillor Mike Colle is one of the few. He actually was the first to draw the IDF fire-bombing to everyone’s attention. Colle has been livid, and fired off a second letter to federal and provincial attorneys-general, demanding that “they urgently take action and enact immediate legislative measures… to address the unprecedented rise in hate-related acts.”

We can only hope that Mike Colle gets a response, and gets some action.

Meanwhile, the rest of us can only hope that our police forces will awake from their slumber before it is too late – for Jews and for the rest of us, too.

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Sorry, partisans, but you can’t have it both ways.

January 2022: protestors start blocking Ottawa streets to make a political point. Police are ultimately used to clear them out. Some conservatives are very unhappy the police used force to do so, while some progressives are happy.

January 2024: protestors start blocking Toronto streets to make a political point. Police haven’t cleared them out using force (yet). But some conservatives are very unhappy police haven’t used force (yet) – while some progressives are happy they haven’t.

I know, I know: both sides are mad at me, now. Sorry. But you can’t oppose (or favour) clearing out the Ottawa road occupiers, and now take the completely opposite position with the pro-Palestine road occupiers. It’s illogical, it’s inconsistent, and it’s unfair.

Two years ago, this writer strongly favoured the police clearing out the Ottawa occupiers, with force if necessary. As I wrote in these pages at the time:

“Enough is enough. It’s time to invoke the Emergencies Act…The Act would give the government the ability to prevent more troublemakers from traveling to Ottawa to extend the siege there.  It would prevent ‘protestors’ from blocking border crossings — including, as they did in Windsor, with children.

“It would allow the authorities to remove trucks and barricades that have been used to shut down the national capital — and cripple billions of dollars in cross-border trade. And it allows government to compensate citizens and businesses who have been victimized by the lawlessness.”

And, two years later, just about every word of that also applies to the “pro-Palestine” (read: kind-of, sort-of pro-Hamas) protestors, who are now regularly blocking access to and from Toronto’s 401, the busiest highway in North America. Not only are they hurting local businesses and residents – like the Ottawa occupiers did – they are using their presence to intimidate the people (mainly Jews) who live in those areas.

What’s fair is fair, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander – and any other cliché that applies. You simply can’t be okay with one group blocking roads and intimidating locals, and then oppose it when another group does it. The law, if it is to matter at all, has to be applied without fear or favour. It has to be equitable.

At just about this point in this opinion column, or course, partisans on the Left and the Right are steaming mad, and want to argue that the two situations are completely, totally different. Right about now, they’re dreaming up distinctions they hope make a difference.

But they are distinctions which don’t amount to a difference. In international law, blockades are considered acts of war. In statute law, it is also illegal: in Alberta, for example, the Critical Infrastructure Defence Act properly makes it against the law for “blockades, protests or similar activities” to damage or harm essential infrastructure like roads.

And in Ontario, during the Ottawa occupation, Premier Doug Ford (rightly) applied the provincial equivalent of the Emergencies Act days before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did so to stop blockades of roads and border crossings. Meanwhile, Canada’s Criminal Code’s section 423 makes blocking roads a crime – punishable by five years in prison.

For centuries, the non-criminal common law has done likewise: going back to the Seventies, the Supreme Court of Canada has held that “authorities were not only entitled but duty bound, as peace officers…[to ensure] the right of free access of the public to public streets.”

In international law, in Canada’s criminal law, in our statutory laws, in Centuries of common law – it’s the the iron-clad rule: you are not allowed to block public roads and highways with impunity. And the police have always had the authority to arrest and detain you for doing so.

So, in case of the Ottawa occupation and the “pro-Palestine” occupations, the law must be applied consistently and fairly. If it was right and proper to arrest and detain the Ottawa occupiers who refused to leave that city’s streets, it’s now right and proper to arrest and detain the pro-Palestine/anti-Semitic occupiers who are refusing to do likewise on the 401’s exit ramps.

The law is the law. If you apply it in one case, you need to apply it in all similar cases.

So, why haven’t the police arrested and cleared out the anti-Israel mobs?

For that question, I do not have an answer.

[Kinsella is a lawyer and former member of the executives of the provincial and federal bar associations.]

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“We don’t need no education.”

It’s ironic, and telling, that the author of that 1979 Pink Floyd lyric was Roger Waters. Waters is a musician, but he is also one of the most notorious Jew-haters on the planet.

He dresses up in Nazi-style uniforms for shows, he refuses to eat what he calls “Jew food,” he’s been quoted going on about “dirty kikes,” and he says “the Jewish lobby” controls the music industry. Among other things.

And, as he wrote for his band, “we don’t need no education.” It was deliberately ungrammatical (perhaps) and meant to be ironic (probably). But, these days, it rings true, although not in the way the anti-Semite Roger Waters meant it.

How else to react to the presidents of some of the world’s most prestigious universities – Harvard, M.I.T. – shrugging about anti-Semitism on their campuses, and refusing to say that promoting genocide against Jews isn’t against the rules?

How else to read about the rape crisis centre at the University of Alberta denying that Israeli women and girls were the victims of sexual violence on October 7 and thereafter? Or police being needed to escort Jewish students at McGill University – or more security being secured for Jews at UBC, Simon Fraser and U Vic?

How else to regard attacks on Jewish students at Concordia University in Montreal, and a Concordia “humanities” professor screaming at a Jewish student that she was “a whore” – and telling her to “go back to Poland” (a slur that was shouted at Jews at a counter-protest in Toronto on the long weekend)?

How else to react to the case of teacher Javier Davila, who continues to be employed by Canada’s largest school board, even after promoting the work of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a listed terror group in Canada?

Says lawyer and human rights advocate Michael Teper, who has complained to Ontario’s teacher college about Davila: “Ontario’s public classrooms are for learning and building critical thinking skills, not for propaganda.  Staff members such as Javier Davila, who abuse their positions and public resources to tout their own beliefs, should be shown the door.”

And so on, and so on. Our places of higher learning, increasingly, have become seen as places of ignorance and hate. A recent poll conducted for The Economist magazine, for example, came up with some shocking results:

• Twenty per cent of American respondents age 18 to 29 think that the Holocaust is a myth
• Thirty per cent of the same age group said they “do not know” if the Holocaust is a myth
• Nearly 30 per cent of young Americans think “Jews wield too much power” – five times what those who are 65 and older believe

Those results reinforce what this writer has reported weeks ago: a Fall poll conducted by Harvard University found that more than 50 per cent of Americans between 18 and 24 believe Hamas’ pogroms were “justified.”

Holocaust denial and wide support for Jew-hating homicidal maniacs: are the universities solely to blame? Perhaps not, says The Economist: “In our poll, the proportion of respondents who believe the Holocaust its a myth is similar across all levels of education.”

The main culprit, it seems, is social media – specifically TikTok, which is the number one search engine for Generation Z.

The Pew Research Center has found that the under-thirty generation trusts social media more than mainstream media – and that a third of them actually get all their news from TikTok. Meanwhile, the data-intelligence firm Generation Lab has concluded that those who use TikTok are much more likely to hold anti-Semitic views.

It can’t be disputed that educational institutions – from a school board in Toronto, to Harvard in the U.S. – have been largely indifferent to the growth of hateful ideologies in and out of the classroom. It’s also accepted that the promoters of ancient hatreds have sought, and obtained, employment as teachers and professors.

But educational institutions, it seems, are not solely to blame. Social media generally – and China’s TikTok, in particular – have made a bad situation far, far worse.

“We don’t need no education,” sure.

But, more than that, we don’t need no TikTok, either.

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