#5 Why Here?

What's going on in this country is scary and it disgrace.

This is a society that is falling apart. In Canada, anti-Semitism is not a fringe saying anymore. It's become institutional and it's become extremely mainstream. Canada has unraveled since October 7. It's been maybe one of the worst places in the West to be a Jew.

Canadian Jews feel there's no political will actually to defend Canada. On our last two episodes, I sat down with anti-Zionists to try to understand what they believe and why they behave as they do. Like the wider anti-Zionist movement, both of the people I spoke to, contended that they stand against racism and have no desire to harm Jews

and their struggle for Palestinians. And both of them acknowledged, eventually, that to some extent, the harm done to Jews by some in their movement is real.

“I think there is language used that crosses the lines sometimes”

that could increase anti-Semitism. The unintended consequences of our demonstrations fuel the flame of that insecurity.

But both of them ultimately decided that is not enough of a reason for them to change what they are doing.

As a Jew, I feel like an obligation to be organizing protests. I would like to see more protests outside of Jewish institutions. That's not enough of a reason to stop doing what I'm doing. That has nothing to do with me. At a certain point, it's time to stop debating the obvious.

I'm done arguing if it's happening here. It is. And today, I'm going to try to understand why.

“Why is post-October 7th Jew hatred from anti-Zionists so extreme here in Canada?”

What you'll hear today are three theories and one conclusion. I'm Jesse Brown and this is what is happening here. Theory number one, it's because of Canada's government. Here is Conservative politician Melissa Lansman talking to podcaster and author of Eva Klampus. Western Democratic values, the ones that Canada holds dear, are under threat from radical ideology.

And a weak leadership right across the board in every single government and in every single institution. If you don't have a leadership in this country that can go to a podium and say that this is just wildly unacceptable. It stops here, then you've got no starting point. It's things like universities that have allowed the anti-Semitism to flourish. As a result, have allowed the cesspool of anti-Semitism to happen on campuses.

I think over the course of a decade of Justin Trudeau being empowered. That vision coincides directly with the normalization of anti-Semitism. I don't see it from any level of government, not federal, not provincial, not municipal. Is there something that I'm missing? Let's focus on the municipal.

I hear their point about ideology from the top. The unwillingness of our former Prime Minister to defend solid Western values. Canadian values. I've been hearing that kind of talk for years, often in arguments against immigration.

It's always struck me as a dog whistle.

Whatever the subtext, it's a difficult argument to test.

“Does the guy who smashes the windows of a synagogue actually take his cues from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau?”

Might he have been persuaded to do otherwise if Trudeau had given a strong speech in defense of Western values? The influence of the Prime Minister's ideology on Canadian activists, vandals, and criminals is a hard thing to gauge. But what I might be able to find out is why the Jewish neighborhood up the street has been unable to get any kind of protection from angry, disruptive protests that repeatedly crossed the line into hate speech. And so I asked the City Councilor who represents that neighborhood.

James Pasternak. Turns out he's just as frustrated by the situation as his constituents. Look, I've spoken to police, I've spoken to the Attorney General's Office, I've spoken with the Mayor's Office, I've spoken to community leaders, and the backroom finger pointing is unbelievable. Everybody's blaming everybody at one else, or for this to continue on now over 18 months. And everybody I speak to knows it's wrong.

But they're blaming everybody else for not dealing with it.

The Mayor says this is a police matter.

“The police say we need the political backing to deal with this.”

Councillor Pasternak agrees that what's been happening in his writing is connected to the things the Justin Trudeau has said. I mean, our former Prime Minister who said he was going to arrest the Prime Minister of Israel, if he comes to Canada, that is not helpful. A Prime Minister who said we're going to launch an arms armbar go against Israel is not helpful. And a country that continually votes against Israel and joins some of the most heinous regimes in the world and demonizing Israel.

That is all a part of a piece that incites and encourages much of what we see on the streets.

There has not been the political backing necessary to bring this under control from the Mayor. I've gone to a lot of conferences in the Mayor's sent me to these conferences, these summits of mayors who are fighting anti-Semitism. Those mayors who say no to this, they get it done, they back their police, they use their state attorneys to prosecute, they use the rule of law to protect society. And at the same time, they're able to balance the right to assembly.

“So why don't our politicians do this here in Canada? Are they afraid of the optics?”

Yeah, so that is the sum of all fears, that to be with a Jew, that to support a Jew, that to support a synagogue, to speak out for Israel, to go to Israel is toxic. Because it will be ostracized or demonized or lose their job, they're afraid. Elected officials are afraid and I would say that a city that is gripped by fear has no future. Dr. Asha Sharazi is a former principal of a Muslim day school, and she is a community volunteer in Ottawa. She visits school groups with a rabbi, posting interfaith conversations in the hopes of promoting tolerance and acceptance.

She agrees that politicians might be reluctant to show too much support for Jewish Canadians. I think politicians are in a really tight spot. And I'll tell you why I think they're in a tight spot. This is a tricky situation for them to navigate. There's a diverse number of people who are really concerned about Israeli policy. And so they're accountable to those people as well, right? They're accountable to families who are desperately trying to get their loved ones here, because their loved ones are caught up in a war, in a conflict, that they're worried about their loved ones. They're accountable to those people too.

Here again is City Counselor James Pasternak. It will blow over as not worked. Constructive engagement has not worked. Strategic ambivalence has not worked. Passive engagement has not worked. These things have not worked. And police feel they're not getting the political support they need. Municipal licensing. Why aren't you enforcing our bylaws? That's the police job.

Theory number two, the problem is with the police.

We don't have a law problem in this country. Once again, member of Parliament, Melissa Lansman. We have lots of laws on the books that say what's okay and what is against the law. And the criminal code is very, very clear on it. But we have an enforcement problem in this country. This is journalists Terry Glavin. And what we have seen, a 670% increase in anti-Semitic incidents.

A lot of Jews don't even bother to call the cops anymore.

“So we have like very, very specific laws within the Canadian criminal code. If you want to look them up, sections 318 and 319.”

I'm going to talk about exactly what are the penalties where the criminal sanctions against anyone who would use hate speech. We virtually have no one getting in trouble for us. In December of 2023, a video taken during a raucous protest at the Eaton Center Mall in downtown Toronto showed masked anti-signist protestors, brazenly threatening to kill a man who had somehow offended them in front of at least five police officers who are seen standing by, passively, taking no action. That video was one of many that have circulated, seeming to depict Canadian police refusing to enforce laws broken right under their noses.

Then came the videos that suggested police may not be merely ignoring lawlessness from protesters, but perhaps supporting it.

“In January of 2024, Toronto's chief of police apologized after a video posted by the lawyer Karima Saad when viral.”

It showed Toronto police officers delivering a box of Tim Horton's coffee along with a snack in a paper bag, possibly a donut, to anti-signist protesters, who are occupying an overpass in a Jewish neighborhood. "How did you get coffee from the police?" "We're not the police. Someone has bought it for us, but the police will let them in."

If you didn't quite catch that, that was one of the protesters saying that now the police have become our little messengers.

One of the cops has seen smiling at the protesters as he hands over the refreshments. Then, in March of 2025, Toronto police again apologized to the Jewish community.

“This apology was about an episode of an official Toronto police podcast, called Project Olive Branch.”

The episode in question was a conversation between two Muslim police officers, who spoke approvingly about how the October 7th Hamas massacre has brought young people in Toronto back to Islam. A lot of people, after October 7, started learning about Islam. There have been a lot of reverts just keeps coming, but the amount of people that are reverting to Islam is unbelievable. I guess through education, they're actually educating themselves and saying, "Let me learn about this religion." What are these accusations that they're saying about Islam and let me learn about it myself and figure out, "Hey, is it actually true or not?"

According to Warren Concella, a commentator and columnist, that podcast revealed what many had long suspected about Toronto police and their failure to protect Jews.

“It explains an awful lot of what we've seen since our October 7th.”

Businesses, Jewish businesses being fire bombed, nobody caught. To me, it explains why we haven't seen arrests in these absent terrorism. It explains why the Paul Hamas people have been able to literally barricade Jewish neighborhoods and terrify the people who lived there. What it tells me is there is a culture within the Toronto Police Service.

So I am grateful that this podcast was broadcast because it finally confirms to me that there's something really rotten going on in the Toronto Police Service.

Police bias against Jews is not a reason that city councillor James Pasternak sights as to why enforcement has been so weak. He has other thoughts. This is my take on it. So the first thing when we meet with police, and we show them videos. And clearly there's criminal code violation, statutory code violations by law infractions. They're not enforcing criminal code. They're not enforcing very statutory provisions under the Highway Traffic Act. Why wasn't this person arrested? We can't arrest in a mob. Okay? We can't send our officers in when there's 3,000 people there and try to arrest an individual.

So I say, okay, that's fair enough, you're outnumbered. But you know, when you look at the January 6th riots at the Capitol Building, and most of the vast majority of the rest occurred weeks or months afterwards. They shall recognition software, investigative work. They didn't arrest in a mob. They arrested months after. To be fair to the police, this has sometimes happened. Those masked men who yelled death threats in the Incentar Mall in front of police officers. They were both later identified, arrested, and charged.

Police have since dropped charges against one of them. But such arrests are rare. This is because police around the country have been under orders to prioritize keeping the peace during protests over enforcing laws that get broken during protests. So many of these officers, the goal is not to arrest people calling for the genocide of Jews. The goal for that day is de-escalation. Keep the two sides apart and send everyone home at the end of the day. That is to find a success. I've got to keep the peace. That's my job. I'm trying to do that. I'm trying to do that. I'm just trying to keep you guys separate. In order to keep public.

Absolutely, this situation. Our whole job is to ensure that peace. The problem with that approaches. It'll occur a day after day, month after month, and year after year. The other thing is, when there's suspicious arson, such as a burning of a school bus that was used for a Jewish school, or some arson, other arson activity, where there's a gray area, whether it was connected to the Jewish community, police officer, well, we don't think it was hate motivated.

It sounds like there's frustration in your voice that they're not pursuing it that way. Why do you have any thoughts on why they're not pursuing it?

“I do have thoughts on that. First of all, they're haunted by the G20, in which there was an over-police reaction to protesters, and damaged the reputation of the force, and ended up in tens of millions of dollars of lawsuits.”

And then there was the George Floyd murder, which occurred in a different country thousands of kilometers away. It was an aggressive arrest that it resulted in a death, and it was all filmed. When you try and arrest, they don't come nicely. They want a good fight on their hands. So you need four or five officers to arrest someone. You see them trying to pin them to the ground, and then there's ten people around filming it.

And then the next day, their groups are issuing statements about police brutality.

“So how do you overcome that anti-police element as part of these riots? That's part of it. You've got a situation also in which you're graduating young officers, maybe three hundred a year that we're trying to fill vacancies.”

You're putting some of them out on the front lines of people wearing masks, letting off smoke bombs, screaming in blow horns, and looking for a fight. I mean, really looking for a fight. They're provoking the officers, and these young officers are not ready for that. Finally, I would say, they lay these charges and then they're dropped by the Ministry of the Attorney General. Well, if you take all those factors, then that's why you're not seeing a tougher law enforcement response to this. In some cases, de-escalation is arguably a reasonable approach for police to take, like when a man wearing the logo of the militant Jewish defense league tried to confront an angry crowd of anti-zionists.

Police identified him as someone who was there trying to incite, and they gave him options. They told him that he could remove his shirt, leave, or be arrested.

All of you guys are fucking coward. My shirt is a threat. My shirt is a threat. But here's another example of deescalation in practice. This is Montreal Rabbi Adam Sheer, talking to CBC News in December of 2024.

“Rabbi really appreciate you giving us your time today. Can you walk us through what exactly unfolded on Saturday?”

We were downtown not for a protest, but just to have a Sunday afternoon with a family in downtown Montreal. We saw the protests coming up the street. We heard it. We heard the banging. We heard the slogans being yelled. And then we just saw the whole group coming up and we went out to the street to see what was happening. Police came up to me and said move on. They pointed away from the direction of where the protesters were. I was a little bit confused at first because I looked around and I saw there there were dozens hundreds of people standing there just like I was.

And I was trying to understand why he asked me and it occurred to me was like a weight of bricks that just fell on me. There's not a moment that realization that I'm the only one there wearing a keep up. And I said, why are you asking me to leave? What am I doing? I haven't spoken one word to a protest or I haven't shouted one slogan. I'm standing there silently with my phone and he said, "Well, we don't want to fire to start on both sides." To that cop practicing deescalation, the mere presence of a Jew was an escalation, provocation, an enceitment.

Many other examples of this have been documented, a visibly Jewish people being asked by the police to simply walk around the encampment, to not insist on walking right through the demonstration. Perhaps this is an expected and natural outcome of deescalation policing. If the protests are deemed acceptable, there are many violations of the law deemed unenforceable. And the likelihood of violence deemed manageable, so long as no incitements are present. Well then the only thing that can't be tolerated by police is a Jew.

Theory #3. It's Canada's Muslims.

Growing up in Canada, the #1 adjective to describe Canada is multiculturalism, and this is a country that prides itself on tolerance and being multicultural.

“So then if that is the core value, how do you explain this massive surge in anti-Semitism?”

Once again, a Viva Clampus speaking with conservative politician Melissa Lansman. Yeah, look, I think that part of it is the demographic pressures. There are many newcomers in this country who are not integrated, where from countries where anti-Semitism is culturally and religiously in great. By demographic pressures and newcomers, she means Muslims. According to statistics Canada, the number of Muslims in Canada tripled in a 20 year period, beginning in 2001.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau famously welcomed over 40,000 Syrian refugees into Canada during that country Civil War. Islam is now the second most common religion in Canada after Christianity. Canada's Muslim population is also quite young. The median age is 30, compared to the median national age of 41. Conservatives have long argued that Muslims are not being properly integrated into Canada. That they come with non-Western values, and that liberal governments fail to screen for extremists and fail to educate newcomers in our pluralistic ways.

Terry Glevin, perhaps because he's a journalist and not a politician, is more direct when he talks about this.

There's also the fact that there's now 1.8 million Muslims in the country. We have to be very, very careful about what we talk about this.

But the reality of it is that there are certain organizations and institutions in this country that are very well financed and resourced by the federal government. And are intended to speak on behalf of Canadian Muslims. One of them is the Muslim Association of Canada, which is explicitly devoted to the theology of Hassan Al-Bana. The founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, the fountainhead of Islamism. So this is a bit of a problem. The problem according to Melissa Lansman is the Muslim Canadians come here with non-Western values. The problem according to Terry Glevin is the group's representing Canadian Muslims are devoted to the violent ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Both of these arguments feed into a characterization of Muslim Canadians themselves as a problem. And both arguments rely on a fair amount of conjecture, perhaps a reckless level of conjecture. If I agree with Terry Glevin about anything, it's that we need to be very, very careful in discussing this, not because of the optics, but because the last time it became acceptable in the mainstream discourse to describe Muslim Canadians as a threat after 9/11. Every day Muslim Canadians faced routine suspicion and persecution in a country that at the time had not suffered a single Islam-related extremist attack.

Here again is Dr. Isha Sharazi. After 9/11, Muslims were really required constant me to just denounce terrorism to denounce what had happened.

“We were constantly told, you know, you should be denouncing mess, you should be denouncing this.”

I think I had any say in any decisions that a random individual decided to commit in my name. Do Muslim Canadians have non-Western values? Do mainstream Muslim associations in Canada spread radical Islam to everyday people? These all strike me as somewhat fuzzy notions about a concrete problem. I don't know exactly what a non-Western value is, but I do know what anti-Semitism is.

So if we are going to consider the theory that the surge in anti-Semitism in Canada has something to do with the surge in Muslim immigration, can we at least get some data? Let me talk a little bit about what the actual evidence shows. This is Professor Robert Brem, a now retired sociology professor at the University of Toronto. He wanted answers to straightforward questions.

“Question one, what percentage of Canadians have anti-Semitic attitudes about Jews?”

Question two, which Canadians?

First of all, I wanted to distinguish between anti-Semitic sentiment and anti-Semitic behavior.

Anti-Semitic sentiment hasn't changed much in Canada since 2014. We have among the lowest level of anti-Semitic sentiment of any country in the world. So in the level of sentiment, we have a lot to be proud of, I think, in this country.

The Canadian population as a whole has one of the lowest levels of anti-Jewish sentiment in the world.

Only Sweden had a lower level of anti-Semitism. Depending on which study you look at, only 8 to 13% of Canadians express some level of anti-Semitic sentiment. And those numbers have not gone up since 2014, but that is where the good news ends. Anti-Semitic behavior is different. These are actually actions that people take against Jews. And I found, and there are many sources of data that support this claim, that the level of anti-Semitic behavior in this country has skyrocketed in recent years.

“Why would a country with globally low levels of animosity towards Jews suddenly experience skyrocketing rates of anti-Semitic behavior?”

Once again, I had to ask, were the statistics counting anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism? How do you measure anti-Semitic sentiment and distinguish it from anti-Israel sentiment?

By asking questions and surveys that pertain exclusively to Jews or exclusively to Israel, basically people were asked to react to stereotypes concerning Jews, positive or negative stereotypes.

The Jews have succeeded despite adversity. That's a positive stereotype saying that Jews control the media that Jews have too much political power, the Jews are responsible for the ill effects of globalization. That's a negative stereotype. And people were asked to react to a set of 10 different stereotypes, positive or negative concerning Jews. And they were placed on a scale and all 10 items were added together so that we have a summary index of sentiment towards Jews. And similarly with Israel, 10 statements, some positive, some negative, some the scores until we had a scale.

And then statistical tests were performed to make sure that the various items were highly correlated, that they actually formed a cohesive scale. 13% of Canadians, non-Jews, have at least slightly negative attitudes towards Jews. It isn't great to learn that 13% of my fellow Canadians are at least a little bit racist towards me. But as mentioned, when you compare that number to other countries, it's actually very low. But that number is an average of the entire non-Jewish population. When Professor Brim drilled down and looked at specific groups, things changed.

I found that the percentage of people with negative attitudes towards Jews was four times higher among Canadian Muslims than it was in the general non-Jewish population.

“What percentage of Muslim Canadians expressed anti-Semitic sentiments?”

So the answer is about half of Canadian Muslims expressed at least slightly negative attitudes towards Jews.

That's a very challenging and difficult finding to process. 48%. That is how many Canadian Muslims surveyed think the Jews are responsible for the evils of globalization, or the Jews control the media, or the Jews have too much political power. And if those sentiments are not anti-Semitic, I don't know what is. And it gets worse. As you heard Professor Brim also studied the relationship between anti-Israel sentiment and anti-Jewish sentiment. And being against Zionism, as we have heard again and again, doesn't mean that you're against Jews.

For some groups, the research does support that distinction. A lot of people think that the left wingers who are anti-Israel are necessarily anti-Semitic. And the data don't bear that out. The correlation was low on the left wing of the political spectrum. The data suggests that, in general, most people on the left can distinguish and do distinguish between Jews and Israel, and do not have negative attitudes towards Jews, but do have negative attitudes toward Israel. But not everyone makes that distinction.

The correlation between negative attitudes toward Israel and negative attitudes towards Jews was highest among Muslims. No group surveyed in Canada expressed higher rates of both anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiment than Muslims.

“That is a hard fact to absorb for Canadians like me who believe that co-existing peacefully in a diverse and pluralistic society is the best thing about this country.”

But please listen because this is important. Dr. Brim's research is a record of people's feelings and their opinions, not their behavior, and his statistics were collected at a time of especially heightened emotion in the Muslim community, during Israel's bombardment of Gaza.

I'd like to think that that number would not be the same if Canadian Jews were surveyed today. Post ceasefire. Just as I'd like to hope that anti-Jewish sentiment among Muslims might have calmed down as well. But once again, these attitudes and will surveys only look at sentiments.

“More importantly, how many of the people who hold these feelings actually act on them?”

Frankly, I'm more interested in behavior than sentiment. I would like it if everybody liked me, but it's not imperative. I just don't want them to beat me up. I don't want them to call my kids names.

You know, things like that, that's much more important to me. Our best indications for behavioral, at this point, at the extreme end of behavior is criminal behavior, and then the police reported hate crimes, I guess, have us some indication. And those numbers are of skyrocketing. Yes, and I think the figures are quite reliable.

One person I spoke to said, "Well, they're not reliable because Jews are much more likely to report it to the cops than other groups."

So know that. What we do know, I mean, the head of the homicide squad said that some groups may be more inclined than Jews to report. And he pointed out that Asians might be reluctant, but he didn't claim that any other groups are reluctant to report. Also, a report is not necessarily recorded as a hate crime. The motivation has to be proven before it's recorded as such.

“That's an important distinction. It's not simply a matter of a Jew called up the cops and said, there's a Palestinian flag being waived outside my house. It's a hate crime. That doesn't make the cut.”

Oh, it doesn't. If somebody calls me a dirty Jew, that's also not a hate crime. I might report it.

When I published the first set of findings of this 2024 survey, I received an email saying that all you people should be herded together and put in concentration camps and gas to death.

I reported it to the police. It wasn't recorded as a hate crime. I mean, the police came interviewed me and saw on and they sympathized with me and I thought that was very responsible of them, but hate crime. No. I don't want to dismiss the relevance of Professor Brem's findings. It is just reasonable to suspect that the same people who hold negative attitudes about Jews might be the same people who are striking out against Jews, but those people, those who hold negative attitudes towards Jews, they are not all Muslim.

I can tell you that in the population as a whole, age is related to negative attitudes towards Jews. Younger people tend to have more negative attitudes than older people do. Younger people are more racist. And what about education? We talk a lot about how hatred is born in ignorance. Universities tend to be progressive spaces and anti-racist spaces.

“When people in Canada go to university, are they more or less likely to be racist against Jews?”

People and people in universities in particular tend to have more negative attitudes towards Jews than do members of the general population. Certainly, more negative attitudes than older members of the population. I mean, that does track with one conception, which is that the one thing you hear a lot is that the universities are hotbeds of both anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic indoctrination. That is an argument that one hears. There's a considerable truth to that. Some news coverage of Professor Brim's research focused on the alarming statistic about Muslim Canadian sentiment towards Jews.

But there's a later study that he conducted, one that was not so widely discussed, and it revealed a different truth. Maybe a more hopeful one. I'll tell you something really interesting. I did a 2,025 survey of Canadians, including Jews and Muslims. It was a large sample of about 3,000 people in the general population. I found that the most important factor leading to the disappearance of anti-Semitic attitudes among all groups, including Muslims, was having a Jewish acquaintance or even more so having a positive experience with a Jew.

There was no longer a higher level of anti-Jewish sentiment among Muslims than others. This might be the most surprising data that Professor Brim has collected. Just having a Jewish acquaintance or one positive experience with a Jew was enough to change the opinions of Muslim Canadians to the point where their level of anti-Semitic sentiment was no greater than anyone else's.

We need to listen with empathy to them and they need to be encouraged to listen empathically to us. And in that way, I'm certain that anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim attitudes would decline.

“One of my research shows very conclusively it was the number one, if I looked at 16 different social characteristics of people and how they influenced attitudes towards Jews and Muslims.”

And these interpersonal relation factors were number one in determining how people felt about Muslims and about Jews. Asia-Sharazi has dedicated herself for years to building those interpersonal interfaith relationships. It all began in 2005 when she was the principal of the Ibrahim Islamic Children's School in Ottawa. She suspended two teachers after learning that they had encouraged a student to hate Jews. And to me the soul of the mining in that incident that happened at the school that I was at was that there was some ability to reflect.

There was some ability to say, "Well, you know what? Maybe we should be connecting with Christian and Jewish neighbors." You know, maybe we shouldn't be so insious and we were looking for ways. We were actually desperate for ways to connect with other communities, even kids to connect with other kids. So I think that that was kind of a blessing because I know for me personally, I developed a really good friendship with Rabbi Balka out of that. Ever since October 7, her workshops with a different Rabbi, Rabbi Bloom, have been in high demand.

I think it gives people hope and I think it reminds people that you know what?

“We are all neighbors and we are all one fundamentally, so I have just received so much support for that work because I think it is important to remember that we're all neighbors and that we are together in this.”

Those were three theories for why it is happening here in Canada to Jews to such an extreme extent.

We looked at Canada's government, Canada's police, and finally Canada's Muslims.

But I promised you that in addition to theories, you'd hear a conclusion. It's not a conclusion that negates or refutes the three theories that you've heard so far. I suspect that there is some truth to each of them. But it is a different way of looking at this issue completely. Let's take a step back.

Consider for a moment the demands that anti-zionists have made here in Canada and how many of them have been met. Now in related news, Canada is to hold all arm shipments to Israel amid the war in Gaza.

“The first major west in our life is to do so.”

We reiterate our call for an immediate ceasefire. We will not have any form of arms or parts of arms. These sent to Gaza. Period. Prime Minister Mark Carney condemning Israel's newly announced plan to take over the Gaza strip.

Canada recognizes the state of Palestine.

The Palestinian flag is being flown over Toronto City Hall today for the first time.

Passing in flag is flying a Calgary City Hall. We as Canadian citizens are being recognized, finally being recognized. Here is how anti-zionists have responded to these victories. A ceasefire does not mean an end to this ongoing aggression. A ceasefire means that this Zionist occupation has failed.

And forever has no will be the graveyard of every single of its invaders. We know very well that Zionism runs in the streets of Toronto. And we will continue to take to these streets until Zionism is written from the entire world. This isn't just Palestine, this is the entire world. The Zionist terrorist organization is destroying human rights worldwide.

This is a taste, a small taste of what is coming on a global scale. And we will go to the facts, most of these people who own all of these corporations at the top. The one percent they go by a Jewish background. You know what? Comianty Sematic, anti-ceptic, I don't give a shit. If we do not hold the people who are responsible for world crimes accountable, then we have no humanity.

In the U.S., anti-zionist protesters have politicians to target.

“Politicians who support the U.S. sending billions of dollars in aid to Israel.”

They can target politicians who accept funding from APAC. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee. No targets like that exist in Canada. And so, different targets have been found. This was the scene outside Cafe Land where over the weekend, supporters from a Palestinian rally focusing their attention on the restaurant whose Jewish founders fled Nazi Germany. It is really tightest cascades in!

Walker, Walker!

The Toronto Police Hate Crembs unit is investigating a Wednesday morning fire at this Jewish owned Delhi.

Windows were smashed and free Palestine sprayed on the doors.

“We begin today in a prominent Jewish neighborhood in Toronto.”

This was the scene on the Avenue Road Bridge over Highway 401 on Saturday. We will show the Palestinian flag on this overpass. This one specifically, because it's in a Zionist-adfested area. The reason why anti-zionism in Canada is constantly targeting everyday Jewish people is not in spite of the fact that Canada has met demands of anti-zionists. It's because of it.

The Canadian government has never had much influence over Israel.

Once Canada essentially conceded to the protest movements demands, new targets were needed. When politicians and police appeased the protesters, the protesters redirected their anger towards Jewish institutions and Jewish neighborhoods. The hunt for complicit parties to boycott and blame has proven endless.

“The grounds for complicity have grown more and more tenuous.”

So where does that leave us? On the next and final episode of what is happening here. What now? This series was made possible by the generous support of the Bissal Family Foundation, George Berger, Dan Dubo, Gideon Hayden, Daniel Klass, Norman Levine, Nanette Okin, Leslie Scanlin, Marjorie Skolnik, and Lee Zentner.

But now they need to be heard by many more people. We think that the stories and voices that you heard on this podcast have the power to make people reconsider their words and their actions. To think about how their neighbors are being harmed and to change the course that we are all currently on. We want what is happening here to reach an audience of younger listeners and not just Jewish ones. We want to take its message to platforms like TikTok and YouTube, where many people are otherwise being served a constant stream of divisive and hateful content about Jews.

Lastly, we want to take this series to universities and colleges across the country for town hall discussions about how to make campuses safe again for Jews. To do any of that, we need financial support. Those who donate to this project will receive a tax deductible donation receipt through our project partner, the Canadian Jewish News, a registered journalism organization with the CRA. Contributing is easy, just email me personally at [email protected]. I spell my name, [email protected].

I will take you through it. What is happening here is a co-production of Canada Land Podcasts and the Canadian Jewish News. This episode was written and reported by me, Jesse Brown. Research and story editing by Kate Minsky, original music by so-called. Sound design, mixing and mastering by Caleb Thompson, editorial input from Michael Freeman.

This episode relied on video documentation of the protests at Bathurst and Shepherd, filmed by many sources, but none more than Korean massade and her videographer Lee. Special thanks to them and to Jonathan Rothman of the CJN. We've put links to statistics and sources cited in today's episode in the show notes.

and the entire team here at Canada Land for their input and their support. To become a Canada Land supporter, go to Canadaland.com/join. Thank you for listening.