KINSELLA: Toronto Police need to act on hate signs at al-Quds rally
· Toronto Sun
One sign shows a stooped and feral Orthodox Jewish man, wearing a kippah atop stringy, payot sidelocks, his eyes black like an animal.
Another features the same sort of image: A weeping Orthodox Jew, his nose hooked and exaggerated, begging the United States for salvation. Behind him, another man waves around a sign bearing Israel’s flag, and the word ELIMINATED.
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A woman, her face visible, holds up a sign that reads in Arabic: “We will knock on the gates of heaven with the skulls of Zionists.” That is, Jews.
One man, masked and wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh, holds up a sign with a Jewish Star of David on it — and, in its centre, rats crawling in and out.
There are many more signs like those. They all look like they have been professionally made and mass-produced. They are large, and impossible to miss. Standing near all of the people with the signs, at different times, are uniformed officers of the Toronto Police Service.
Doing nothing.
Antisemitic imagery ‘spiritual weapon’
Joseph Goebbels was the Nazi Minister of Propaganda. He was a big fan of the sorts of signs that were being displayed at the al-Quds hate rally in downtown Toronto. He called antisemitic imagery “a sharp spiritual weapon for war.”
His boss, Chancellor Adolf Hitler, loved images depicting Jews as vermin, too. In his book Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote that “all effective propaganda must be confined to a few bare essentials and those must be expressed as far as possible in stereotyped formulas.”
So, right after his Nazi Party seized power in 1933, Hitler established the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. It churned out images of Jews that were identical to what was seen in Canada’s largest city over the weekend.
Fast-forward to 1979, when the al-Quds hate fest was conceived by Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. At the time, he called Jews “godless, bloodsucking Zionists” and Israel a “stinking wound and infected gland.” Toronto Councillors Brad Bradford and James Pasternak urged the city to seek an injunction to stop the al-Quds event, and Premier Doug Ford instructed his attorney general to do likewise .
Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert Centa refused the injunction, saying there was “insufficient evidence” al-Quds should be stopped. That was a peculiar decision, because the annual al-Quds events has annually provided no shortage of evidence of unlawful assembly, acts of intimidation, assaults, threats, vandalism, rioting, obstruction of justice, failure to disperse, mischief, wearing masks during an offence — and, of course, the wilful promotion of hatred. All of them crimes.
And, make no mistake: The professionally rendered signs displayed at the al-Quds event were obviously, inarguably, the wilful promotion of hatred against an identifiable group. Namely, Jews.
What does the law say?
Does the law apply? Well, the Criminal Code says hate propaganda includes things like those signs at al-Quds: “Any writing, sign or visible representation.” And the Supreme Court of Canada, no less, has said that “… substantial harm that can flow from hate propaganda.” It can cause pain and lead to “racial, ethnic and religious tension and perhaps even violence in Canada,” said our highest court.
So, images — not just words — can be hateful. And, willful promotion of hate has long been considered a crime in Canada, one that is not protected by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. That’s the law. It applies to the al-Quds signs.
It is time for the law to be applied. The federal government has pushed through changes to the Criminal Code to make it easier for hate charges to be laid. That’s good. But, for now, policing remains a municipal responsibility — and prosecutions for hate crimes remain the province’s duty.
What Toronto Police must do
Toronto Police need to now, right now, identify who was holding up those Nazi-inspired signs at the al-Quds hate rally. And, when (not if) charges have been laid, Ontario’s attorney general needs to swiftly approve prosecutions for the promotion of hatred by the alleged wrongdoers.
Will Toronto Police do that? Who knows. Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow, who has ultimate control over policing in the city, couldn’t even be bothered to visit any of the synagogues that were shot up by high-powered weapons last week. In the wake of a tidal wave of antisemitism in Toronto — which has led Israeli President Isaac Herzog to say “all eyes are on Canada” — Chow has been invisible. She has been an utter disgrace.
Ford’s government has been much better, but it needs to now approve hate promotion charges against those who were waving around Nazi-like signage over the weekend. It cannot, must not, delay.
The eyes of the world are upon us, as Herzog has said. The eyes of history, too. We are being judged.
If we do not act now, the judgment will not be in our favour.
— Kinsella’s book, The Hidden Hand: The Information War and the Rise of Antisemitic Propaganda, is being published by Penguin Random House next month