Anti-israel movement growing more brazen
Demonstrations targeting Jewish sites
From the beginning, Canada's anti-israel movement has been shot through with extremist elements. Organizers such as Palestinian Youth Movement, Toronto4palestine and Samidoun all openly endorsed the Oct. 7 massacre and called for the violent destruction of Israel, but they initially kept their public actions to street demonstrations and rallies.
But after nearly six months of meeting little to no police pushback, the activities have grown demonstrably more brazen, with illegal blockades, intimidation and open antisemitism now a regular feature of the movement.
This reached a new plateau Saturday when an event at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto featuring Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Italian counterpart Giorgia Meloni was derailed due to a deliberate blockade of the entrances by demonstrators wearing kaffiyehs and waving Palestinian flags.
“Tonight was a victory!” declared an Instagram post by protest organizer Palestinian Youth Movement Toronto. The blockade had been publicly advertised as an “Emergency Action,” with materials referring to Trudeau as “Genocide Justin.”
Palestinian Youth Movement is the same group who, on Oct. 7, praised Hamas's indiscriminate massacres in Israel as the “active decolonization of Palestinian land.” They were instrumental in the first wave of celebratory “All Out for Palestine” rallies held in the immediate aftermath of the attacks.
Emboldened by the cancellation of the Trudeau/meloni event, on Sunday PYM Toronto warned of more blockades to come. “We will continue to come out and SHUT IT DOWN until our demands are met,” they wrote.
The post also accused the Art Gallery of Ontario of being “complicit in genocide” by continuing to accept Jewish donations, which they branded as “Zionist funding.”
Trudeau and his cabinet have long had their itineraries deliberately targeted by anti-israel protests, but Saturday is the first time that law enforcement effectively lost control of the situation.
“The location was not secure, and that was their objective. They don't want their fellow Canadians to feel safe,” said Toronto-area Liberal MP Marco Mendicino in a series of social media posts reacting to the cancellation. He referred to the demonstrators as “thugs” and “disgusting antisemitic protesters” who were “screaming, shoving and spitting at seniors.”
Previous incidents targeting Trudeau include one Feb. 15 where demonstrators aligned with the Palestinian Youth Movement were able get past parliamentary security and briefly disrupt a sitting of the House of Commons — an action applauded by several NDP members.
In mid-november, 100 Vancouver police officers had to be dispatched to rescue Trudeau from a steak house that had its entrances barred by up to 250 anti-israel demonstrators. In December, a similar-sized crowd attempted to force the cancellation of a Trudeau fundraiser at Vancouver's Westin Bayshore hotel.
Anti-demonstrations have also taken a noticeable turn toward targeting Jewish sites with no apparent connection to Israel or the war in Gaza.
Just hours after the cancelled Trudeau/meloni event, anti-israel protesters massed outside a Thornhill, Ont., synagogue.
Video posted by protest-watcher Caryma Sa'd shows an anti-israel demonstrator appear to attempt to strike a police officer. When officers attempt to take the woman into custody, however, they are surrounded by demonstrators shouting, “Let her go!” The officers are overwhelmed and the woman is carried away.
Last month, leaders from all major federal parties denounced the “antisemitism” of anti-israel demonstrators who massed outside Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital — a facility founded by Jewish doctors that still carries a Star of David in its logo.
At the beginning of this year, Toronto's Avenue Road overpass became subject to a weeks-long blockade by Palesign, a registered non-profit whose actions have included an illegal stoppage of traffic on the Gardiner Expressway, and masked mobs blocking the entrances to a Toronto Zara location owned by a Canadian-israeli.
The only apparent significance of the Avenue Road overpass was that it is the primary conduit into Canada's densest Jewish neighbourhood. “Zionism once again fails to break the spirit of Palestinians,” said a post by Palesign after the blockade spurred counter-demonstrations from locals carrying Israeli flags. In a video, one blockader would refer to the overpass as lying within a “Zionist infested area.”
And just last week, anti-israel demonstrators on the campus of Montreal's Mcgill University organized a blockade of the Bronfman Building. The building is materially no different than any of the others on campus, save for the fact that it bears the name of Jewish philanthropist Samuel Bronfman.
Organizers included Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights Mcgill, another group whose reaction to the Oct. 7 massacres was open jubilation.
Mcgill — like most universities in Canada — has featured no shortage of demonstrations calling for “intifada” or employing slogans calling for Israel's complete destruction. But the Bronfman blockade would prompt a special reaction from administrators, who asserted that this action was “different.”
“Our university cannot successfully operate with unpredicted interruptions that disrupt our activities,” university president Deep Saini would write in a letter to Mcgill students.
Although Saini's letter did not call out the protesters' targeting of a Jewish-named building, he did reject their demand that Mcgill “unilaterally sever its research and academic ties with Israeli institutions.”