What To Tell Your Kids About New Riot Cops At Shul
In the leadup to Passover this will be a wide ranging column of my musings in the hope of reassuring some of you and your children when they see the new deployments of Toronto Police riot police bearing rifles and ‘counterterrorism’ units at synagogues and Hebrew schools.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-police-counter-terrorism-unit-rifles-toronto-9.7140751
Like many ordinary law abiding Canadians, I get anxious when I see police cars on the street or in my neighborhood. It is usually NOT good news – it means a crime has been committed, or they are responding to a crime that has been committed. I have waved cheerfully to police cars outside my synagogue on high holidays, as have my fellow congregants, even giving a thumbs up thank you to the attending officer, while inwardly wishing this was not necessary.
And even though I drive carefully at the speed limit, I have been known to take a detour and change lanes or take alternate routes home from the supermarket when an aggressive looking black and white supercharged police car or SUV is in the next lane. Why? I have nothing to hide. Neither do many of you.
All Ontario police services are now under investigation by the Ontario Inspector General of Police following a recent corruption scandal involving Toronto Police officers linked to organized crime. Toronto Police are trying to burnish their reputation with the community and are under increased scrutiny by the Ontario government, municipal government of Toronto, federal political representatives and media, not to mention members of our Jewish community at risk.
Not to belabor the point, but from my criminology research background I am aware that police have powers of surveillance and monopolies on the use of force and even the right to lie (true!) under existing legislation governing police practices, as in undercover investigations. And we are also aware of the fact that existing criminal laws that could have been used to protect our Jewish community long before now have been underenforced.
Here is a recent report from the National Post from a Montreal community perspective:
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/to-protect-jews-canada-needs-to-enforce-existing-laws-not-create-new-ones
This perspective has also been addressed previously by Conservative MP Roman Baber of Toronto who wrote an open letter to Toronto Police urging that existing criminal laws be enforced.
https://torontosun.com/news/local-news/toronto-mp-demands-public-safety-minister-crack-down-anti-jewish-hate
https://torontosun.com/news/local-news/toronto-jews-not-safe-mp-letter-to-mayor-top-cop
The pending hate crimes bill C-9 has just passed third reading in our Canadian Parliament, awaiting Senate approval before being proclaimed into law. It adds some welcome provisions to protect our community, but it is not nearly enough. It has long been illegal in Canada to support or fund terrorist organizations, but sadly our federal bureaucracy has not yet deported or prosecuted many known to be in Canada illegally or to support these organizations, putting Canadians of all faiths at risk.
Here is the most recent statement from the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, also supported by major Jewish advocacy organizations in Canada such as B’nai Brith Canada, Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre for Holocaust Studies, the Alliance of Canadians Combatting Antisemitism, and others:
https://www.cija.ca/jewish_community_welcomes_house_passage_of_bill_c_9_urges_more_action_to_confront_canada_s_antisemitism_crisis
As much as our Jewish communities are dependent on police for their safety, and are forced to express their gratitude for the police services and deployments to which they are entitled as law abiding citizens and taxpayers at demonstrable risk, we should be more cognizant of potential risks and abuses.
We have been aware for some time that Canadian RCMP and CSIS officers have worked undercover to infiltrate militant Muslim and anti-Israel groups on campus, and I am concerned that they may be inciting them to appear more convincing. Our RCMP remains woefully understaffed and prone to scandal.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/csis-students-university-muslim-campus-1.5229670
This incitement was the case in the notorious case of CSIS agent Grant Bristow, who simultaneously incited the neo-Nazi Heritage Front while seeking to infiltrate Jewish community organizations. In light of the new deployments of police counterterrorism squads to Jewish sites at risk, our Jewish community would be wise to keep a respectful distance from overly inquisitive police who have already been documented to have underserved our communities in Toronto or who have troubling records of bias in policing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_Bristow
In the UK, police have recently apprehended Iranian nationals with a ‘hit list’ of local Jewish synagogues and sites.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwygyvrwq89o
In Canada, leftist organizations and radical anti-Israel activists developing ‘shopping lists’ of pro-Israel Jewish institutions including synagogues, Hebrew schools and summer camps (some of which have been shot at recently) have been allowed to continue their operations with impunity.
https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-889275
https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-888158
Perhaps this may explain why so many anti-semitic hate crimes and unsanctioned anti-Israel protests with associated criminality, harassment, intimidation, vandalism, incitement, watching and besetting, criminal trespassing, etc. have gone unprosecuted for so long.
We know that many western intelligence agencies hired Muslim officers and Arabic speakers after 9/11. I am not aware that they have hired many Jewish and Israeli intelligence officers, who could have assisted them significantly in contributing to safer communities for all Canadians, and law abiding Jewish Canadians particularly.
Further, we are aware that even our Canadian intelligence services are now aware that those of us who are Jewish, female and members of the LGBTQ community are at extraordinary risk:
A ‘lone actor’ attack on Jewish Canadians is ‘realistic’ risk: report
From a personal perspective, I have noted that our RCMP have already claimed to be using open source intelligence to investigate members of the Jewish community. I would not be surprised if I or others are now under scrutiny.
I have faced repeated security risks in my work, have made reports to police and RCMP in the past and have been protected by the RCMP at Parliament and at the Supreme Court of Canada. I have noticed lately that even old letters to the editor I have written to downtown community publications or old articles in Jewish community newspapers or old testimony before our Parliamentary Justice Committee Hearings on Same Sex Marriage have now resurfaced in the Google search algorithm along with my Times of Israel columns.
I really have nothing to hide and have said and written nothing unlawful and nothing for which I or anyone should be ashamed. I am cautious of my safety, as we all should be. I have been harassed before by radical anti-Israel leftist activists and faced threats to my life and safety. I have no further association with them. They are no ‘community’ to me. They and their lawless mob harassment tactics are why many like me ‘left the left’ long ago.
Sadly, there have been too many cases of individual officers harassing, threatening or assaulting or killing members of vulnerable minorities. These include examples of disproportionate policing of vulnerable minority communities, leading to increased risks for them of incarceration.
This is why many Canadian judges (who should not be harassed by media or political leaders for their decisions) have attempted to redress these imbalances. This is also why many public school boards have asked for school police officers to be removed from their communities, although Hebrew schools tend to welcome their presence.
Getting back to my Hebrew school experiences. The first time we needed security guards or paid duty police officers at our Canadian synagogue and Hebrew school was in the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when Israel was suddenly attacked during a national religious holy day of prayer and reflection.
Our Israeli Hebrew teacher Mr. Azirad was suddenly called back to Israel to serve as a medic in the Israeli army. Our vice-principal Rabbi Millen took over his classes, and some of us saw him crying after a sleepless night of worry for Israel and our Jewish community. Strong Rabbi Millen was crying! This was worrisome.
As we navigated our return to school and synagogue after the summer break as young students, and the knowledge that we could be attacked at any time, I looked at the new security guards patrolling our synagogue/school campus and playground with fear and interest. Rather than making me feel safer, they made me worry.
As the child of a Holocaust survivor and law abiding Jewish Canadian parents in support of Israel I wondered why our fellow Canadians hated us so much that they wanted to hurt us, and what they thought we were doing at synagogue and school that was so terrible that they wanted to eradicate us. I still ask these questions, and the answers and hate crime rates are never reassuring.
The short answer is, Jews exist. They resent this. We are successful. They resent this. We never accepted their attempts to missionize us or their beliefs that their cultures and faiths superseded ours. They resent this. Israel exists. They resent this. We know they’ve sold us out. They resent this. Need I go on? You get the picture.
In fact this has been going on for millenia, and is even the subject of a refrain in the Passover Haggadah, attesting to the age-old scourge of ignorant anti-semitism, from which God rescues us time after time. May the same be true today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehi_Sheamda
Some of my classmates and I looked at the Israeli and Canadian flags waving proudly outside our classroom windows and quietly asked ourselves what might happen if Canada was ever at war with Israel. I think it is now, ideologically, demographically and from a ‘deep state’ global affairs policy perspective. Who would we fight for? I know my answer. How about you?
I’m fighting lawfully for our lives. And for Canada, even if they can’t see it yet. Oh. Canaduh. Why does Canadian intelligence always seem to be a contradiction in terms? Even the quality of my lawful Canadian discontent is better than the bovine contentment of many Canadians, sorry to say.
To be honest, most of us don’t care about hockey very much, and even if the finest Canadian beer flowed freely from our kitchen water taps, most of us wouldn’t drink it. Law, sobriety and intelligence are Jewish values. I like my brain scrambled just the way it is! Just don’t take away my coffee, tea, or Diet Coke. Most of us don’t do drugs either. And we remain Canada’s most highly educated, literate, law abiding, and economically productive demographic.
We were all proud Canadians. And also proud Zionists. Just like our parents and grandparents before us, and it was all totally legal. It still is. In fact, it was the logical self-respecting thing to do. Jewish self-hatred and Israel bashing are so uncool.
If you ever want to hear me laugh loud and long, imagine me taking a call from my old university’s cheery oblivious non-Jewish alumni officer asking me for a donation. It would be like that Seinfeld episode when he gets the better of a telemarketer. Bye! Or as my Jewish mom used to say, “They should live so long!” Even my fellow LGBTQ alumni regard ourselves as ‘survivors’. Oy.
Rabbi Emil Fackenheim, a Holocaust refugee who coined the notion of the 614th Commandment, “Let Hitler Have No Posthumous Victories” was a renowned Canadian Jewish scholar and served for a time as spiritual leader of Temple Anshe Sholom in Hamilton, one of Canada’s oldest Reform synagogues.
Contrary to the regular hate programs of our adversaries, including the campus ‘Israel Apartheid Week’ hostile disinformation and indoctrination programs happening now at Canadian universities at the end of term when legitimate students are completing term work, Zionism predates the 19th century or Theodor Herzl and is NOT an oppressive neo-colonialist endeavor, no matter how many undereducated Canadians have been brainwashed into believing this.
Zionism is the movement for the self determination of the Jewish people in its historic homeland as documented for millenia in the Bible, historical data, archeological digs, etc. And it always has been. We hear a lot about the Arabic numeric system. I just wonder if some of them and their dangerous Canadian fellow travelers can count.
My name is Cohen. It’s Hebrew. It comes from the Bible, the Book of Exodus, which tells the Passover Story. It derives from the family of Aaron, brother of Moses, and his priestly descendants, in perpetuity. It means Priest. It’s over 3200 years old, just like the Book of Exodus and the Passover Story that marked the beginning of the Jewish people in its national identity and development of a legal and moral system consistent with modern western liberal democracies.
Our Christian friends often seem to forget that the Judeo-Christian system of values underlying our legal systems was based on our Jewish oral and written legal systems long predating the advent of both Christianity (circa 1st century CE) and Islam (circa 600 CE).
Sadly, both Christianity and Islam have at times laid claim to the land of Israel and Jerusalem, attempting to convert by the sword, or through the Crusades (which they regarded as noble Christian jihad), but we were there all the time and will prevail in this time and in the future. Even God says so. Read your Bible!
The history of European antisemitism and pogroms often found that our Jewish communities were often most violently victimized around the Easter season, when ignorant Christian peasants were incited to massacre the Jews, and taught that the Jews murdered Jesus. And they did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_deicide
These were also the same folks who participated willingly as Hitler’s Willing Executioners. And don’t forget that the Muslim Mufti of Jerusalem and many Arabic communities sided with Hitler and the Nazis. Such is the power of hatred. Islam means submission.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/hajj-amin-al-husayni-wartime-propagandist#:~:text=Nazi%20Germany%20was%20the%20natural,Britain%2C%20and%20the%20Soviet%20Union.
Well, I have no intention of submitting, and Israel is far more ethnically and religiously diverse and politically diverse than my Canadian neighbourhood. Our Christian and Muslim friends should be glad that Israel exists as a Jewish state. We are the ones preserving their historical religious sites and their religious freedoms to worship there freely. Remember this.
I think it’s swell that our Christian friends worship a nice Jewish boy as their God. I wish them a Happy Easter and usually bring them chocolates.
But getting back to our kids at Hebrew school and our congregants nervously navigating the presence of rifle bearing riot police at our synagogues and Jewish sites at risk.
Tell the kids that the security is there not because there is anything wrong with us, but because they are so valuable, we want to protect them as well as we can, just like our banks and government buildings have security guards in place to protect their valuables.
Say hello and be friendly to the nice cops with the long rifles on your way to shul or Hebrew school. Let them get to know you as people. Say thank you. We do appreciate them, and a few bad apples don’t ruin the bunch. Keep this in mind and keep a cool head.
In a happy development, I found a related story about one of the Toronto synagogues recently shot at. The offenders have not yet been caught. This is the story of the ‘old’ Shaarei Shomayim Congregation on St. Clair Avenue West in Toronto, where my Canadian Jewish parents were married, built in 1948 before they built the ‘new’ synagogue on Glencairn Avenue.
They had valuable stained glass windows that were preserved from the original construction, one designed by their former rabbi.
https://nationalpost.com/holy-post/historic-stained-glass-windows-preserved-as-toronto-congregation-readies-to-bid-shalom-to-old-synagogue
In the mid 1990s, when I lived in the neighborhood, it was a Hungarian Cultural Centre and ESL English language school for newcomers to Canada. I showed my sister around the place when she came to Toronto for graduate school.
I received wonderful thanks from the current Executive Director of Shaarei Shomayim and from Michelle Cooper, the provincial Member of Parliament for the district, for sharing the story. It is a bit of light in a very dark and frightening time. They still have the windows on display! I promised to visit them when I am next in Toronto and told them to keep them safe.
I know that many Toronto political leaders who have been advocating for our Jewish community and for law and order and community safety also have ties to the Shaarei Shomayim Congregation. So do I. I visited there in 5th and 6th grade as a Hebrew school student and met some very nice friends there.
Please be sure to support your local and Israeli food banks and meal programs this Passover Season. I am a proud supporter of Leket Israel and hope you will join me in supporting them as well as your local Jewish kosher food bank and meal programs. The need is especially great in Israel right now.
As the Haggadah says, “Whoever is hungry, come and eat!” And as my Jewish mother always proclaimed, “No one ever left our house hungry, and as God is my witness, no one ever will!” We are continuing her legacy in my family.
May this be a season of strength and safety and renewed faith for all of us. I like to think that the Jewish folks invented spring cleaning for Passover, and I should get back to mine. Thanks for your time and attention. Wishing everyone a Safe and Happy and Healthy Passover. Chag Pesach Kasher V’Sameach.
Am Yisrael Chai. We send our love and support from Canada.