They’re not antisemitic – they just don’t like Jews

Report on "pro-Palestinian" activity in Toronto

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Mar 11, 2024

Today, we have another excellent report from Brian Henry on demonstrations targeting Jews and Jewish institutions in Toronto. Canada’s largest Jewish community has been targeted frequently since Hamas invaded Israel and committed war crimes and crimes against humanity beginning on October 7. I hope you appreciate Brian’s latest contribution as much as I do.

One of the speakers at the “pro-Palestinian” protest in front of Beth Avraham and Yoseph of Toronto synagogue (known as the BAYT) screamed at us counter-protesters that (despite the awkward optics of protesting at a synagogue) they’re not against Judaism.

For the sake of argument, I’ll grant them that. It’s just Jews they’re against. Especially Zionists, meaning Jews who live in Israel. And Jews who believe it’s okay for Jews to live in Israel. And Jews who consider buying a home in Israel.

Which brings us to the “pro-Palestinian” crowd’s March 9 protest against the “Great Israeli Real Estate Event” at the BAYT. Similar events to sell homes in Israel have recently been held in other locales in Toronto and Montreal and have met similar protests.

A hundred or so protesters set up across the street from the BAYT with a mic and towers of speakers, aiming to make enough noise to disrupt the event. (Just imagine living nearby.)

On the BAYT side of the street, a much larger crowd of Jews and supporters gathered. As always, our friends from the Persian community were there

Image: Counter-demonstrators oppose targeting of Jewish institutions for anti-Israel protests — Image by Toronto Counselor James Pasternak

In between, police patrolled Clark Avenue, wisely wearing ear-defenders to preserve their hearing.

A young woman (who I believe was from the Palestinian Youth Movement, the PYM) was leading the chanting when I arrived. She set the tone on the “pro-Palestinian” side with chants such as: “Intifada until victory!” and “Viva, viva intifada. Long live the intifada!”

Image: Hostile demonstrators outside the BAYT synagogue in Toronto — Photo from anti-Israel web site

The Intifada was the Palestinian terror war against Israel that started in 2000 and which Israel finally defeated in 2005. Its signature feature was Palestinian suicide bombers blowing up as many innocent civilians as possible.

This young woman leading the chanting was wearing a mask hiding her face and a black, stylized suicide-vest outfit with padding in the shape of explosive charges around her midriff –presumably chosen to be sure we got her meaning.

She wasn’t the only speaker but there was no variation in tone. There were also chants of “Long live the resistance” – resistance being what Hamas and its supporters call the atrocities of October 7: the mass murder, the mass rape, the sexual mutilations, the burning of babies, the mass torture, and the kidnapping of 253 innocents.

And there were chants particular to the “pro-Palestinian” groups’ purpose that day: to denounce the presence of Jews in Israel. Chants such as, “Settler, settler, go back home. Palestine is ours alone.” And the ever popular, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

To be sure the meaning was clear, there were helpful protest signs such as one showing a map of Israel coloured in like a Palestinian flag with the words: “A thief never becomes an owner,” and similar signs with the words: “Palestine is not for sale.”

None of this was a surprise. The Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) was one of the groups at the protest. In their advertisement for their first “pro-Palestinian” rally following October 7, PYM called on the people of Toronto: “to uplift and honour our resistance and our martyrs. Join us this Monday, October 9 at 2 pm at Nathan Phillips Square and celebrate!”

PYM is closely aligned with the grown-up group Samidoun, recognized by Germany and Israel as a terrorist group (and which is also a principal organizer of “pro-Palestinian” demonstrations in Canada). In turn, Samidoun appears to be simply a subgroup of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which everybody recognizes as a terrorist organization. (More here.)

PYM regards every inch of Israel as occupied, every city, town and kibbutz as a settlement and every Israeli as a settler and wants them all gone, as they’ve made utterly clear well before March 9. For example, see Yara Shoufani, one of the leaders of PYM, speaking here.

Toronto4Palestine was also at the protest. They too celebrated the October 7 atrocities, and they too want Israel off the map. This is the group that was behind the protest at Mount Sinai Hospital. (More about that here.)

Media coverage of the protests against the Israeli real estate events have focused on a few of the homes for sale being in West Bank settlements. As a long-time peacenik, I’d rather there weren’t any settlements. But the homes advertised are in well-established towns close to the Green Line that have been around 40 years of more. Supposing the Palestinian leaders can ever be persuaded to accept a peace treaty, the agreement will doubtless include a land swap for such settlements – as did the peace treaties the Palestinians have rejected in the past.

As far as peace goes, the real problem is persuading the Palestinian side to accept Israel within any borders.

Reporters writing about these demonstrations ought to have asked the organizers if they’re okay with Canadian Jews buying homes anywhere in Israel. The answer would have been no. “Palestine is ours alone,” they say. Which is perhaps why most reporters didn’t ask.

One did. Writing for the National Post, Danielle Kubes interviewed Ghada Sousa, a PhD candidate at McMaster who has become a prominent voice for the “pro-Palestinian” movement since October 7. Kubes asked:

Even if no properties at the real estate seminar were being sold in the West Bank, but only in Israel proper would she still be protesting?
“Even within the Green Line in so-called Israel that land is Palestinian land,” she [Sousa] said. “That land was founded as a settler colony. The area that is so-called Israel is stolen Palestinian land and Israel is an apartheid land.”

Ghada Sasa has explicitly endorsed terrorism and in an interview, she claims that Hamas was not trying to kill any civilians – that it was the Israeli army that murdered all those kids at the music festival in southern Israel (see here).

For confirmed Jew-haters, it's not possible Jews can be the victim of evil; only perpetrators. That's how you get Holocaust denial, and it's how we've instantly gotten the kind of denial of the atrocities committed by Hamas that Sasa engages in.

Still, “pro-Palestinian” protesters like to pretend they’re not antisemitic (and some I’m sure believe it, because they’re also pretending to themselves). They need to, because throughout the West, including in Canada, almost everyone disapproves of antisemitism. And so they say it’s only Zionists they object to.

They even bring rent-a-Jews to their protests to prove they’re not antisemitic. For this, their favourite Jews are the crazies from the Neturei Karta. This a tiny sect within the ultra-Orthodox community that hates Israel. The Neturei Karta have aligned themselves with Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas – they’ll align with any group wanting to commit genocide against Israel.

The vast majority of ultra-Orthodox Jews and the vast majority of Jews in general holds this tiny sect in contempt.

But for “pro-Palestinian” demonstrators, the Neturei Karta are a convenient mask. Being ultra-Orthodox, the Neturei Karta look very Jewish, and the protester can say, see, we’re not antisemitic; we just don’t like Zionist Jews (i.e., most Jews). Hence, another of their chants they screamed at us: “Zionists go to hell!”

But in truth, the “pro-Palestinian” crowd doesn’t much like any Jews.

Ever since October 7, they’ve been targeting Jews: synagogues, schools, community centres, cafes, bookstores – if there’s a Jewish association, it’s a target. Sometimes literally. Gunshots were fired at two Montreal Jewish schools – at one of them, the haters returned to do it again a couple nights later. (Much more here.)

I take this personally.

The Starbucks at Bathurst and Eglinton was defaced with graffiti reading: “A cup of coffee ~ You mean a cup of blood” – and similar nastiness. Why that Starbucks? Because it’s in the heart of the Jewish community. I have friends and family who frequent that Starbucks.

For weeks, “pro-Palestinian” protesters blocked the Avenue Road bridge over the 401 every weekend. Why there? Because it’s in the Jewish community. I use that bridge regularly to get on the 401 or to go down Avenue Road.

From the petty stuff to the seriously nasty, we see this sort of disgusting behaviour everywhere. And as Daniel Korobkin, the rabbi at BAYT, told the Canadian Jewish News, “The vast majority of the Jewish community is fed up.”

That’s why more than 500 hundred of us showed up at the BAYT on March 9. We played music, danced, waved Israeli and Canadian flags, and shouted a chant of our own for the hostages: “Bring them home!”

Image: Counter demonstrators at the BAYT outnumbered the pro-Hamas demonstrators — Photo from the Canadian Jewish News

It was a good day. On bad days, I’ll remember it. I also always try to remember that, while most of the media coverage of the Hamas War is at best shallow and usually perverse and that consequently most Canadians don’t know what to make of the war, the vast majority of Canadians do support the Jewish community.

They’re not taken in by the notion that you can somehow not be antisemitic while at the same time being against Jews.

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