Last week I was dragged by police from the steps of my childhood synagogue for trying to attend an anti-hate event while wearing a shirt with the words “Jews Say No to Genocide”.
Make it make sense.
Forty-five per cent of Canadians agree that the State of Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and the plausibility of this has been confirmed by the International Court of Justice.
And yet, discussions about the dangers of hate and violence continue to be quite narrow, including discourse among politicians, in the media, and within my own community.
As a resident of Toronto, and granddaughter of Holocaust survivors on both sides of my family, I am deeply concerned with the ways antisemitism and other forms of hatred are manifesting in our city.
The event I tried to attend on July 31, promoted as “An Evening of Solidarity Against Hate”, was being held at the Pride of Israel synagogue — the temple I attended regularly growing up — which recently had its windows shattered by rocks, reportedly by someone driving by on a motorcycle.
While this incident is still under investigation and we don’t yet know with certainty who did this or why, let me be clear: I stand against antisemitism just as firmly as I stand against acts of Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism, and hate targeting any other community. This is not only the right thing to do, but essential, because all our safety is interconnected. None of us are free until we’re all free.
This is what I was hoping to discuss at the Pride of Israel’s event, which featured a number of public officials as “honourary guests”, including Mayor Olivia Chow, federal Mental Health and Addictions Minister Ya’ara Saks, and MP Anthony Housefather, the federal government’s special adviser on Jewish community relations and antisemitism.
But I was not allowed to participate in this public conversation because I was not even allowed through the synagogue door, nor were other Jews wearing similar shirts expressing our opposition to genocide.
Police guarding the entrance, along with private security guards, told us we were not welcome. When we locked arms to protest being denied entry, they dragged us from the steps and threatened us with arrest.
Shaken, we remained outside, chanting for collective liberation and demanding to know why Jews who oppose genocide weren’t being allowed to attend an event supposedly held in solidarity against hate.
We never got an answer.
But inside, speakers such as Thornhill MP Melissa Lantsman falsely characterized our chants as genocidal. (Ignoring that Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice recently confirmed what Palestinians and their allies have long known: that slogans like “From the River to the Sea” are not hate speech.)
Bewilderingly, leaders of legacy Jewish institutions went to social media to disparage fellow Jews for protesting against not being allowed inside a synagogue for a public event.
Meanwhile, the event organizers let in Meir Weinstein, the former National Director of the Jewish Defence League, which has been classified as a terrorist group by the FBI.
Make it make sense.
The only conclusion I can draw from any of this, is that this event was not truly an evening of “solidarity” nor was it “against hate”.
Over the past months, I have watched in despair as the very real and understandable fears of Toronto’s Jewish community have been weaponized in service of those working to limit the freedom of expression of Canadians who support collective liberation for all people everywhere, including in Israel/Palestine.
A house of worship cannot and must not provide cover from protest for anyone materially supporting the ongoing occupation, apartheid and genocide in Palestine, nor for those openly advocating for oppressive policies here in Canada.
If our elected officials and community leaders truly want to unite Canadians in “solidarity against hate”, that conversation must include Palestinians and their allies.
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Nick Seebruch, editor
