RSS
Quebec man pleads guilty to 3D printing guns and promoting hatred against Jews
The 37-year-old Quebec man arrested last summer and charged with 3D printing firearms and hate speech against Jews has pled guilty in Quebec court.
Pascal Tribout of Saint-Joseph-du-Lac, a small town northwest of Montreal, was arrested and charged in June following a months-long RCMP investigation that resulted in his arrest, along with the seizure of a large quantity of 3D printers, materials and a homemade firearm.
According to Lac des Deux-Montagnes Police, Tribout’s apartment was full of equipment for building firearms, with abundant materials, weapons and machinery discovered when they raided his home in February of this year.
He pleaded guilty to two counts of possessing and distributing “computer data relating to firearms or prohibited devices that can be used with a 3D printer,” the first Canadian to plead guilty to the new provision. Tribout also pled guilty to willful promotion of hatred.
He has remained in custody since his arrest in June.
Tribout had spread conspiracy theories on the social media platform Telegram, suggesting that Jews orchestrated the COVID pandemic as a hoax to target the population through vaccines. The court heard that, on an antisemitic online forum, he told an undercover RCMP officer that he supported the idea of death squads to execute Jews and wanted to commit the “perfect crime.”
Tribout also boasted that his weapons could resemble paintball guns and were easily destroyed and reduced to just “pieces of plastic,” and shared images of the weapon, along with instructions and plans to print guns.
Investigators with the RCMP Integrated National Security Enforcement team found more than two dozen printed weapon frames for pistols and semi-automatic rifles, along with a prohibited magazine, Nazi propaganda materials and 3D-printed bladed weapons. Following ballistics tests and inspections by police, the weapon frames were discovered to be not readily functional and easily broken during handling, resulting in an agreement for a plea to the lesser charge of “attempting” to manufacture a prohibited firearm.
Quebec prosecutors sought a five-year prison sentence. Tribout returns to court in April, where he is also expected to apologize to the Jewish community, the result “a major victory against hate in Canada,” B’nai Brith Canada wrote on social media.
“This fellow’s online activities were brought to our attention,” Henry Topas, regional director for Quebec and Atlantic Canada, told The CJN. “And as we have done in other such files, we prepared our own file and brought it to the appropriate hate crimes unit based on what was being said online.” The file first went to Laval police, which then escalated the case to the RCMP, “and the next thing we knew, he had been arrested.”
“We feel we’ve done the community a great service,” said Topas, who also filed a community impact statement with the court, “and hopefully we won’t have to bring such cases again, but that’s probably wishful thinking.”
That statement included a reminder that Jews are the most targeted minority in Canada: “When B’nai Brith Canada learned of Pascal Tribout’s arrest, we were struck by the seriousness and magnitude of the charges against him. Not only is he alleged to have fomented hatred against the Jewish community, but he is also accused of acting on that hatred by setting up a laboratory to produce weapons.
“For the Jewish community of Montreal, which after the Holocaust in Europe became a haven for survivors to rebuild their lives, this dual threat of hatred and the potential for violent action raises horrific fears. Montreal is still home to some elderly survivors and their descendants who bear the scars of their parents and grandparents.
“These scars, combined with the violence we now see on our streets and campuses, make it all the more necessary for the justice system, the last bastion of hope for the community, to stand up and act in the face of these threats,” it continues. “We believe that the sentence handed down must be strictly exemplary and send a clear message to both the accused and his potential accomplices that these types of actions and behaviors will not be tolerated in our country.”
Hatred Elsewhere in Quebec
Meanwhile, an unidentified man from Rivière-du-Loup, 200 km east of Quebec City, was arrested on Dec. 11 for posting hate speech on Telegram and X (formerly Twitter).
According to the RCMP, the 19-year-old individual allegedly posted hundreds of hateful messages in recent months, targeting Jewish communities and sexual minorities in particular.
The man had been previously arrested last February for similar offences, including posting hundreds of hateful messages online since July 2023. He was not charged, but interrogated and released with police-imposed conditions. There are no Jews living in Rivière-du-Loup, whose population numbers approximately 30,000, according to the 2021 census.
The man has not been identified by police because some of the offences were alleged to have occurred when he was a minor. Despite his previous arrest, he continued his illegal activities online, according to an RCMP statement.
RCMP Corporal Martina Pillarova told The CJN, “The postings were threatening violence,” but could not provide any further details, adding this is the first time the young man has been charged.
The man is facing charges in three cases in youth and adult court for willfully inciting hate against identifiable groups—including Jews, racialized persons and the LGBTQ community—and promoting antisemitism by condoning, denying or downplaying the Holocaust. The offences occurred between June 1, 2023, and Dec. 11, 2024.
He pleaded not guilty, was released on bail with condition, and will return to court on Dec. 20 in Rivière-du-Loup.
Topas recalled B’nai Brith Canada’s 2023 annual audit of antisemitic incidents, and what he called “the exponential rise” in online hate. With almost 16 antisemitic incidents occurring every day in Canada, double from the prior year, online harassment was up 137 per cent. “One reading of this is that many people who spend time texting and emailing each other, rather than speaking, they are also feeling some sense of false liberty to sit there in their basement and spew hatred instead of physical harm—neither of which are acceptable.”
The post Quebec man pleads guilty to 3D printing guns and promoting hatred against Jews appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
RSS
New York City Jews Targeted for Most Hate Crimes in March, NYPD Stats Show
Orthodox Jewish man waiting for the train in the New York City subway. Photo: Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect.
Jews in New York City were victims of more hate crimes in March than any other group even as crime across the Five Boroughs fell to “historic” lows, according to statistics issued by the New York City Police Department (NYPD) on Thursday.
39 hate crimes targeted Jews last month, the Algemeiner reviewed data shows, outstripping the combined total of all other groups combined — 28 — and constituting 58 percent of all hate crimes reported to authorities. So far, there have born 85 antisemitic hate crimes in New York City through the first three months of 2025, with the month of February seeing a 100 percent increase in them over the previous year and March seeing no improvement at all.
The data continues a trend that has persisted for several years and concurred with a rise in antisemitic incidents across the US.
Jews represented a disproportionate share of hate crimes perpetrated in New York City in 2024 as well. Of the 641 total hate crimes tallied by the NYPD that year, Jews were victims of 345, which, in addition to being a 7 percent increase over the previous year, amounted to 54 percent of all hate crimes in the city.
As The Algemeiner has previously reported, antisemitic hate crimes have posed a major threat to the quality of life of New York City’s Orthodox Jewish community, which was the target in many of the incidents. In just eight days between the end of October and the beginning of November, three Hasidim, including children, were brutally assaulted in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. In one instance, an Orthodox man was accosted by two assailants, one masked, who “chased and beat him” after he refused to surrender his cellphone in compliance with what appeared to have been an attempted robbery.
In another incident, an African American male smacked a 13-year-old Jewish boy who was commuting to school on his bike in the heavily Jewish neighborhood. Less than a week earlier, an assailant slashed a visibly Jewish man in the face as he was walking in Brooklyn. Days after the week-long antisemitic hate crime spree, three men attempted to rob a Hasidic man after stalking him through the Crown Heights neighborhood.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post New York City Jews Targeted for Most Hate Crimes in March, NYPD Stats Show first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
NYC ‘Dyke March’ Bans Zionists From Participating in Annual Demonstration
(Source: Reuters)
NYC Dyke March, a public demonstration held by members of the lesbian community in New York City, has banned self-proclaimed “Zionists” from its annual event, citing a desire to stand against the so-called “genocide” occuring in Gaza.
The group revealed in a statement that their decision to ban Israel supporters from their ranks came after multiple members dropped out of the organization due to differences in “political beliefs and values.” After engaging in discussions with frustrated members, the NYC Dyke March committee agreed to adopt “an explicitly anti-Zionist position.” The organization claims that it will “strengthen our commitment” to fighting against Israel and advocating on behalf of Palestinians.
Last year, the NYC Dyke March previously came under scrutiny after organizers settled on “genocide” as the theme of its 2024 event. In a statement, decrying “ethnic cleansing, violence, and dehumanization,” the organization compared the ongoing war in Gaza, to the mass slaughters occurring in Ethiopia, Myanmar, and Sudan.
The organization plans on recycling the same theme for this year’s march, titling it “Dykes Against Genocide.” The group released a statement clarifying that Jews are allowed to attend and condemned the Oct. 7 slaughters as a “senseless loss of life.” After an apparent uproar from its members, the organization deleted the post and wrote that the group “unapologetically stands in support of Palestinian liberation.” In addition, the group affirmed that “anti-Zionism is not antisemitism and any language we put out which is not clearly opposed to a Zionist, imperialist agenda is harmful to us all.”
In the 17 months following the Hamas-led massacre of roughly 1200 people throughout Israel, the NYC Dyke March has produced numerous statements lambasting Israel and declaring “solidarity” with Palestinians amid their so-called “ongoing genocide.” The organization also accused Israel of engaging in supposed “pinkwashing” and “manipulative use of Jewish and queer identities,” with the aim of justifying its war efforts in Gaza.
Israel offers an expansive set of rights for members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transngender (LGBT) community, including recognition of same-sex marriages. Every year in June, Tel Aviv holds one of the largest LGBT Pride celebrations in the world. Meanwhile, members of the LGBT community are routinely imprisoned or murdered in other parts of the Middle East, including the Palestinian territories.
The NYC Dyke March’s announcement was met with widespread condemnation.
“You cannot exclude the majority of Jews and call yourself inclusive,” said the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in a post on X/Twitter, adding that the group “essentially equates Zionism with racism” in their announcement.
The post NYC ‘Dyke March’ Bans Zionists From Participating in Annual Demonstration first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Trump Administration Planning $510 Million Cut to Brown University Budget, Report Says
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with journalists onboard Air Force One en route to Miami, Florida, U.S., April 3, 2025. REUTERS/Kent Nishimura
The Trump administration reportedly plans to terminate $510 million worth of federal contracts and grants awarded to Brown University, according to media reports.
Brown University’s failure to mount a satisfactory response to the campus antisemitism crisis, as well as its embrace of the diversity, equity, and, inclusion (DEI) movement — perceived by many across the political spectrum as an assault on merit-based upward mobility and causing incidents of anti-White and anti-Asian discrimination — prompted the alleged pending action by the federal government, according to the right-leaning outlet The Daily Caller.
The announcement comes as Brown scrambles to cover a $46 million budget shortfall and other universities across the country have faced similar funding cuts.
Brown University officials, however, denied that the university had received any directives from the Trump Administration.
“We have no information to substantiate these rumors,” Brown University provost Francis Doyle issued a statement. “We are closely monitoring notifications related to grants, but have nothing more we can share as of now.”
Meanwhile, Brown’s Jewish community rushed to the university’s defense, issuing a joint statement with the Brown Corporation which said that the campus is “peaceful and supportive campus for its Jewish community.”
The letter, signed by members of the local Hillel International chapter and Chabad on College Hill, continued: “Brown University is a place where Jewish life not only exists but thrives. While there is more work to be done, Brown, through the dedicated efforts of its administration, leadership, and resilient spirit of its Jewish community, continues to uphold the principles of inclusion, tolerance, and intellectual freedom that have been central to its identity since 1764.”
Brown Divest Coalition — an anti-Zionist group which recently saw its campaign for the university to adopt the boycott, divest, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel defeated by the Brown Corporation — weighed in too, denouncing the reported cut as “a means of suppressing all forms of popular dissent to the renewed violence of the US war machine abroad.” US Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) also criticized the move, accusing the administration “of a broader pattern of behavior…that will negatively impact communities across the country and lead to layoffs, restrict research, and more.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the Trump administration is following through on its threats to inflict potentially catastrophic financial injuries on colleges and universities deemed as soft on antisemitism or excessively “woke.” The past six weeks has seen the policy imposed on elite universities including Harvard and Columbia, rattling a higher education establishment that has for better and worse operated for decades with little interference from the federal government even as it polarized the public and contributed to a growing sense that elites are contemptuous of Americans who live outside of their cultural enclaves.
In March, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon announced the cancellation of $400 million in federal contracts and grants for Columbia University, a measure that secured the school’s acceding to a slew of demands the administration put forth as preconditions for restoring the money. Later, the Trump administration disclosed its reviewing $9 billion worth of federal grants and contracts awarded to Harvard University, jeopardizing a substantial source of the school’s income over its alleged failure to quell antisemitic and pro-Hamas activity on campus following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel. Princeton University saw $210 million of its federal grants and funding suspended too, prompting its president, Christopher Eisgruber to say the institution is “committed to fighting antisemitism and all forms of discrimination.”
Additionally, 60 universities are being investigated by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights over their handling of campus antisemitism, a project that will serve as an early test of the administration’s ability to perform the essential functions of the agency after downsizing its workforce to increase its efficiency.
One of those universities, Northwestern University, on Monday touted its progress in addressing campus antisemitism, noting that it has adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, a reference tool which aids officials in determining what constitutes antisemitism, and begun holding “mandatory antisemitism training” sessions which “all students, faculty, and staff” must attend.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Trump Administration Planning $510 Million Cut to Brown University Budget, Report Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.