Seriously, what is happening in Montreal?
Quebec's largest city is becoming Canada's antisemitism capital.
Following up on yesterday’s post about Concordia being Concordia, a few more news items from the past few days…
Someone shot at two Jewish schools:
Montreal police (SPVM) confirmed Thursday they are investigating after two Jewish schools were hit by bullets overnight.
The first incident was reported to police at 8:20 a.m. when a member of the United Talmud Torahs of Montreal Inc. found a bullet hole in a door of the school. The institution on Saint-Kevin and Victoria avenues includes an elementary and high school.
About 30 minutes later on Thursday morning, someone called 911 about a bullet hole found in the door of Yeshiva Gedola, a Jewish school that also includes a daycare. The school is near the intersection of Vimy Avenue and Deacon Road, about a 10-minute drive from the first school.
The schools were empty and no injuries were reported.
Jewish community leaders in Montreal on Tuesday called for widespread condemnation of the overnight firebombings of two local Jewish institutions, saying the incidents are the latest evidence of antisemitism in the city.
“If you’re asking how the Jewish community is feeling, they’re not feeling so safe,” Yair Szlak, president and CEO of Montreal Jewish organization Federation CJA, told a news conference. “And I think there is a lot to be done by our politicians, by our leaders, by leaders of every community to say that this is not acceptable behaviour.”
The two firebombings in the night between Monday and Tuesday caused minor damage to the front door of the Congregation Beth Tikvah synagogue and the back door of the nearby Federation CJA office in the Montreal suburb of Dollard-des-Ormeaux. No one was injured since the two buildings were empty at the time of the incidents, Szlak said.
A Montreal-based Imam, inexplicably still in Canada despite his enthusiasm for the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, insists his “kill them all” comments at a pro-Palestine rally weren’t at all antisemitic and how dare you insist such a thing, you meddling Jew:
A man on a balcony in a Canadian downtown takes a microphone and leads a public prayer for the violent eradication of the “Zionist aggressors.” “Allah, count every one of them, and kill them all, and do not exempt even one of them,” he says in Arabic. Below him, a crowd of hundreds respond with cheers.
The speaker was Montreal Imam Adil Charkaoui, and the venue was the city’s Oct. 28 “Stop the Genocide in Gaza” rally — one of dozens of Canadian events organized over the last 30 days by the Palestinian Youth Movement, a group that has openly praised the Oct. 7 massacres and called for continued violence against Israel.
Charkaoui’s speech may very well have been overlooked entirely if he hadn’t posted it online himself. He posted it (from multiple angles) to his Twitter, Instagram and Facebook profiles — along with lengthy screeds calling for the violent destruction of Israel, and denouncing Western media and politicians as Zionist collaborators.
[…]
Charkaoui, in turn, has alleged he is the victim of a campaign of Zionist defamation.
“The Zionist entity has lost the battle of public opinion … it is therefore normal that the Zionist narrative would change,” he wrote in French on Nov. 7, against a screenshot of headlines from Quebec media denouncing his Oct. 28 speech.
In a 10-minute YouTube video posted on Wednesday, he accused [Quebec premier] Legault of levelling “false accusations.”
“It contains no hates or calls to violence; on the contrary, it was a clear condemnation of the violence, war crimes and crimes against humanity executed by the Zionist army of occupation,” he said in French.
Charkaoui does not say that his “kill them all” prayer was mistranslated or misinterpreted, only that it was directed at “Zionist aggressors committing what I consider to be a genocide.”
“The word Jew was never used in my speech, nor in my prayer,” he said, asserting that it thus doesn’t fit the Criminal Code definition for inciting hatred because he didn’t target an “identifiable group.” He also added that it wasn’t a call for violence because he was calling on God to do the killing. “It was a prayer for judgement,” he said.
In 2003, it emerged that Canadian intelligence agencies had identified Charkaoui as a potential al-Qaeda sleeper agent, before withdrawing a security certificate against him in 2009 on the basis that it would reveal their intelligence sources.
Well, at least we know he’s definitely not a sleeper agent.
Activists at McGill, trying desperately to keep up with their comrades at Montreal’s other English-language university, commemorated the anniversary of Kristallnacht in their own unique way:
Not to be outdone, a professor from French-language Universite de Montreal jumped into the ring with a steel chair:
Footage of University of Montreal Professor Yanise Arab telling Jewish Concordia students to “go back to Poland, sharmuta" (wh*re in Arabic) has circulated online after the November 8 incident drew wide outrage.
The identity of Arab was confirmed by X users and later reconfirmed by multiple media sources.
Arab, a humanities professor, specialized in “dominance and resistance in the Arab world.” However, Arab’s staff page at the university has been removed and it is unclear if he is still employed.
Sadly, this kind of thing isn’t just happening in Montreal. Frankly, since October 7, it seems to be everywhere - and in some cases, possibly astroturfed by one of the players in a war pushed off the front page by Israel-Palestine.
Wherever it’s happening, the message couldn’t be any more clear: the existence of Israel as a refuge and a homeland for the Jewish people is completely unacceptable, and Jews living outside of Israel will be targeted until they accept they cannot have anywhere to run.