WARMINGTON: Waterloo Region latest community probing alleged threats against Jews

· Toronto Sun

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Three incidents of threats being made against Ontario’s Jewish community in less than two weeks would not be tolerated if any other group was being targeted. It should not be tolerated here either.

The arrest of a 33-year-old Kitchener man has allegedly prevented a third serious threat on Ontario’s Jewish community in less than two weeks. What we don’t know is if Justin Arnold-Galvez, who is charged with uttering hate-motivated threats to cause death, is being investigated for any possible connections to the other two?

Here’s what we do know: Waterloo Regional Police made an arrest on Sunday over an alleged hate-motivated incident in Kitchener.

“On (Saturday), police were notified of a livestream video posted online that contained threats and antisemitic comments directed at members of the Jewish community,” police said in a statement. “As a result of the investigation, officers completed a warrant at a residence in Kitchener and arrested the suspect.”

Accused is an artist, grocery stocker

Waterloo police told the Toronto Sun that Arnold-Galvez was remanded into custody on Saturday and they are still investigating. The charges against him have yet to be tested in court.

On a Facebook account run by a “Justin Samuel Arnold-Galvez,” a Kitchener artist and grocery store employee, there does not appear to be any antisemitic rants; instead there are Jackass -style shock videos. An associated Instagram account is private.

The arrest came a week after a 19-year-old was charged by Durham Regional Police with threats motivated by hate over an alleged plot to shoot up a synagogue. That was before the Sept. 20 Yom Kippur shooting at the Sons of Jacob Synagogue in Belleville, where the alleged perpetrator was shot and killed by police.

For Jewish Canadians and the province as a whole, we are in a state of crisis.

“Belleville was a wakeup call,” B’nai Brith Canada research and advocacy director Richard Robertson said. “There are no more excuses for inaction.”

He said the attack in Belleville and the arrests in Durham and Waterloo regions are a “sign of what B’nai Brith Canada has been warning Canadians of for years: We have allowed antisemitism to become normalized in our society and now Canada’s Jewish community is paying the price.”

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It is a dangerous time for Jewish people.

“Jewish people don’t feel safe in Canada,” said Meir Weinstein of Israel Now. “Enough is enough.”

Robertson added that the “response must be immediate. The threat is real and it must be mitigated.”

There must be transparency as well. Belleville Police Deputy Chief Sheri Meeks set a standard last week by telling the media that the alleged synagogue attacker was former soldier Sean Ward, 29, of Quinte West, while revealing the identity of the hero officer as Const. Jeff Smith .

Later in the day, Durham police announced an arrest they had made on Sept. 18 – two days before the Yom Kippur attack – saying that the “hate crime unit received information from an external law-enforcement partner regarding threats posted on an online message board to carry out a shooting at a synagogue in Durham Region.”

That external partner was the FBI, which posted about the incident on social media.

“Further investigation identified the user (allegedly) responsible for the messages and … a search warrant was executed at a residence in Whitby,” Durham police said, identifying the accused as Alexander Parfitt, of Whitby.

Did the three accused in antisemitic crimes know each other?

It’s not known if his arrest, the day before the Belleville incident, had any connection to the Yom Kippur attack or the charges in Kitchener.

The Jewish community in Belleville told the Toronto Sun they did not know of what transpired in Durham Region days before the attack. Nor, it appears, did national organizations or Belleville Police. Chief Murray Rodd told media on Thursday that the deployment of Smith at the synagogue was not related to any outside influence.

But police and Jewish leaders have said that information about other incidents across the province would be good to know. Police adapt and that was noticeable at the Am Shalom Synagogue in Barrie on Saturday, where police made regular parameter patrols, founder and chair Steve Sperling told the Toronto Sun .

“We appreciate the brave police officers protecting the Jewish community, but also make the point that for a small synagogue it’s difficult to be able to pay $700 an officer per day to protect a community from international problems not created by the Barrie congregation,” said Sperling. “That money would be better spent on sending it to the Belleville synagogue for repairs, to replace desecrated mezuzahs in Waterloo or to the Const. Smith fund – all of which we have done.

“There are many lessons learned from what happened in Belleville and lives may depend on all of us learning from it. All of these realities are threats not to just the Jewish community, but every Canadian.”

He’s right. If proven true, three incidents that allegedly targeted Ontario’s Jewish community in less than two weeks should not be treated like a coincidence, but with a meaningful national response.

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