Connect with us

RSS

Toronto council to reconsider ‘bubble zones’ and millions in security grants to address anti-Israel demonstrations

Toronto’s city council will re-examine how it responds to demonstrations—including incorporating “bubble zones”—as part of a new bylaw that would keep protests away from schools, community centres and places of worship. Council is also looking at adding $2.5 million for security grants to protect such buildings from car attacks. The issue will be discussed in council on Dec. 17.

If approved, the city manager would develop a bylaw “that supports the City’s commitment to keeping Toronto safe from hate and respects Charter jurisprudence that addresses impacts of demonstrations on the public and on access to publicly accessible spaces,” the report states.

City staff will consult the Toronto Police Service and the community. The bylaw would be presented to council’s executive committee by the first quarter of 2025. 

A one-time operating grant of $2.5 million for items such as security bollards would be earmarked in the 2025 budget.

Council had considered enacting bubble zone legislation in May, but the item was narrowly defeated in a vote, and referred to the city manager to develop an action plan.

City staff will also review relevant municipal bylaws in nearby Vaughan, Ont., and in Calgary, which “address impacts of demonstrations on the public and on access to publicly accessible spaces.”

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow confirmed in a statement to The CJN that she supports the item.

“Toronto has seen a distressing rise in reported hate crimes including an acute rise in antisemitism. Hateful acts have no place in Toronto. The Toronto Police Service, as the primary responder, is working to maintain public safety and uphold the right to demonstrate lawfully,” wrote Chow.

“I welcome this staff report and the upcoming discussion at City Council to determine what more we can do as a city to foster safety and belonging across communities. I look forward to supporting the very immediate recommendation of a $2.5 million grant program to protect our most vulnerable people and community spaces from hate-motivated attacks.”

The report also calls for a review of permitting policies related to “demonstrations on publicly accessible City property,” which currently do not require a permit.

Protest at Mount Sinai Hospital
Protesters supporting Intifada against the State of Israel waved Palestinian flags at the entrance to the Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto Monday, Feb. 12, 2024. (Credit: Anna Lippman photo/Twitter – Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Canada)

Toronto city councillor James Pasternak, of York Centre, was one of the early proponents of the previous bylaw that was defeated in May. He says the current item for action took “many months” to develop since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel. Just days after the attack, there were protests at Nathan Phillips Square, outside City Hall, by those who outwardly supported Hamas, which has been designated as a terrorist entity by the federal government.

Pasternak has been critical of the city’s response so far, and says that it’s been a “battle” to get to this point.

“The city needs to take a principled stand, to uphold our current laws, to enforce the city of Toronto hate rallies policy… to respond to the hate rallies that are on our streets that were destabilized in the city, that clearly had many elements that went way over the line,” he said.

“I’ve observed some of them: swastikas, Hitler salutes… calling for intifada and the genocide of Jews. They were illegal, they were despicable, and the response by the city of Toronto has been inadequate.”

He says that police have been extremely responsive when it comes to protecting Jewish events, but that “they’re working under very difficult circumstances with a lack of political support and very thin resources,” and have requested increased support from the Ontario Provincial Police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in certain cases.

He calls it deeply frustrating that Toronto appeared to lag behind other municipalities in advancing no-protest zone bylaws.

The motion defeated in council in May would have asked the provincial government to look at creating a law in Ontario to protect vulnerable buildings that would include synagogues, schools and Jewish community centres.

“That [was] probably the nastiest fight floor fight I have seen in the 14 years I’ve been at City Hall. The mayor vigorously fought that, and then we were left with a vacuum.

“We really were one vote away, and all it was, was a benign request for the province to consider passing legislation that would protect places of worship, faith-based schools and faith-based cultural institutions, such as the Holocaust Museum or the Aga Khan [Museum]. So it was for all faiths, and it met enormous opposition, with a bizarre argument that this would affect Charter rights, and that this would affect labour picketing… [that was] both misleading [and] incorrect.

He says the new bylaw proposal, which won’t come to council until 2025, still amounts to “baby steps” when the situation calls for greater urgency.

“To wait another three months is deeply frustrating,” he says. “There’s no guarantee we’re going to get the bubble zones.”

“We don’t know whether we’re going to get the desperately needed collaboration with the other levels of government,” including the RCMP and OPP, he said.

He pointed to an incident where protesters interrupted and managed to cancel a dinner with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and visiting Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, in 2023, at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

RCMP had jurisdiction for security in that case, because it involved heads of state, he said.

“It was a total fiasco, with a small number of hooligans blocking the entranceway, and no real attempt to create a security corridor, either for the prime minister of Italy or our own prime minister. So you had hundreds of people in there for a state dinner which was cancelled, and it made international headlines, and it was very embarrassing for the city of Toronto.

“We need the provincial and federal governments to help backstop Toronto Police Service. We cannot manage the situation with the thin resources we have,” he said.

He also called for the enforcement of current laws, and for the ministry of the attorney general “to stop dropping charges that police are laying.”

“Unless there’s that collaboration among the three levels of government, this is just going to be endless.  The approach of, ‘This will pass,’ and de-escalation will not work when it comes to the groups involved in this chaos across our city. The time for waiting it out and keeping everybody apart and sending everyone home… Clearly, you know, after 14 months, that has not worked.”

Councillor Josh Matlow, of St. Paul’s, voted against the bylaw motion in May, but instead moved the motion for the city manager to develop an action plan.

Matlow said he’ll support the item for consideration at council Dec. 17, and emphasizes that the reason he voted against the previous bylaw had to do, in large part, with not referring the matter to Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s government to create a law.

He has previously told The CJN that the motion at council in May wouldn’t have stopped, for example, the two separate incidents of gunfire at Bais Chaya Mushka, a Jewish girl’s school, when attackers shot at the school overnight.

“It’s already against the law to shoot at a school,” said Matlow.

The safety zone legislation for vulnerable buildings doesn’t address some of the most concerning kinds of incidents, like demonstrations harassing Jewish-owned businesses, or vandalism and antisemitic graffiti, including on posters for the hostages in Israel, which he says has been a reported concern in his district.

Signs were set on fire outside Kehillat Shaarei Torah, July 31, 2024.

“Our problem as a Jewish community is not having protesters standing in front of synagogues on a Saturday morning asking us not to pray,” he said. “It’s about anywhere [members of the] Jewish community are being harassed, and intimidated. It comes in lots of forms.”

The bylaw will need to address, in particular, one specific element of demonstrations.

“It’s about behaviour at these protests more than about protesting… [we have to] protect people’s Charter rights, but also address hateful intimidating behaviour at protests.”

He supports the infrastructure grant and mentioned that street furniture such as bicycle racks could be part of planning discussions depending on the needs and physical locations of individual buildings.

Matlow commended the increased communication and collaboration between city staff and Toronto police in responding to protests so far, including what he says has been an increase in “intelligence sharing,” cooperation and collaboration between city departments and agencies includes TPS, its Hate Crimes Unit and city staff tasked with emergency management.  

Councillor Brad Bradford, who moved the original council motion for the safety zone bylaw, says that since Oct. 7, 2023, the Jewish community has been calling on city administrators to do more to address the uptick in hateful incidents.

“The community… has been subjected to harassment, violent intimidation, and significant rise of antisemitism,” he said.

Bradford mentioned the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre in downtown Toronto, which several councillors and Chow have also cited, as an example of a Jewish building they want to ensure is protected.

“It’s unfortunate that we need more hardened infrastructure to protect these [vulnerable] facilities, and it’s been promised for many months, and we haven’t yet seen it. So I’m glad to see that that’s moving forward, but it’s nowhere near the urgency that is deserved and required.” 

In his own Beaches-area constituency in the city’s east end, an Israeli restaurant, Limon, was targeted with threatening, harassing phone messages and a protest. The Chabad of Danforth-Beaches has seen hostage signs regularly vandalized, he said.

“They continually have the Bring ‘Them Home’ sign taken down, ripped down, stolen, thrown out. We’ve seen that numerous times over the past [15, 16] months. They’re a resilient community, but it doesn’t send a very positive message,” said Bradford.

Michelle Stock, vice-president in Ontario for the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, wrote in a statement that some of the demonstrations “filled with hateful chants, signs and antisemitic rhetoric” have left Jewish residents “fearful of attending places of worship, schools and community centres.”

Stock, who met with Mayor Chow in late October, says it’s about time that council acted.

“Although our community has waited far too long to see this, we are pleased to see that the city has finally decided to tackle this serious issue and will be discussing a policy framework regarding the city’s response to demonstrations at next Tuesday’s council meeting,” she wrote.

“Our Toronto community supports the bylaw option similar to those employed in the City of Vaughan. However, we caution that it should also be adjusted to reflect some of the limitations that we saw this past week at a protest outside the Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto synagogue. Regardless, protecting places of worship and schools from protests within a 100-metre buffer zone is 100 percent necessary.”

She added that it will be key to see how the final bylaw addresses the “obvious limitations to how other bylaws have been implemented.”

At a protest at the BAYT synagogue on Dec. 9, the 100-metre buffer zone bylaw was not enforced. Vaughan Mayor Steven Del Duca has said he will consult with police and others as to what occurred.

The bylaw may be a hint of things to come at other levels of government, according to a town hall earlier in the week in Montreal featuring Deborah Lyons, Canada’s envoy on Holocaust remembrance and combatting antisemitism.

At the event, Liberal MP Anthony Housefather, the special government advisor on antisemitism, said that Lyons and CIJA supported a federal version of bubble zone laws, making it a criminal infraction to block access to a school, place of worship or community centre.

“Even though provinces and municipalities could do it better, because they could pass zoning bylaws creating a set distance between the buildings,” Housefather said at the town hall in Montreal, “they’re not doing it as of yet. We need to do that, because you can’t take away someone else’s freedom of speech by using your freedom of speech—and that is exactly what’s happening.”

The post Toronto council to reconsider ‘bubble zones’ and millions in security grants to address anti-Israel demonstrations appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.

Continue Reading

RSS

Syria’s Sharaa Says Talks With Israel Could Yield Results ‘In Coming Days’

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa speaks at the opening ceremony of the 62nd Damascus International Fair, the first edition held since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, in Damascus, Syria, Aug. 27, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi

Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa said on Wednesday that ongoing negotiations with Israel to reach a security pact could lead to results “in the coming days.”

He told reporters in Damascus the security pact was a “necessity” and that it would need to respect Syria’s airspace and territorial unity and be monitored by the United Nations.

Syria and Israel are in talks to reach an agreement that Damascus hopes will secure a halt to Israeli airstrikes and the withdrawal of Israeli troops who have pushed into southern Syria.

Reuters reported this week that Washington was pressuring Syria to reach a deal before world leaders gather next week for the UN General Assembly in New York.

But Sharaa, in a briefing with journalists including Reuters ahead of his expected trip to New York to attend the meeting, denied the US was putting any pressure on Syria and said instead that it was playing a mediating role.

He said Israel had carried out more than 1,000 strikes on Syria and conducted more than 400 ground incursions since Dec. 8, when the rebel offensive he led toppled former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.

Sharaa said Israel’s actions were contradicting the stated American policy of a stable and unified Syria, which he said was “very dangerous.”

He said Damascus was seeking a deal similar to a 1974 disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria that created a demilitarized zone between the two countries.

He said Syria sought the withdrawal of Israeli troops but that Israel wanted to remain at strategic locations it seized after Dec. 8, including Mount Hermon. Israeli ministers have publicly said Israel intends to keep control of the sites.

He said if the security pact succeeds, other agreements could be reached. He did not provide details, but said a peace agreement or normalization deal like the US-mediated Abraham Accords, under which several Muslim-majority countries agreed to normalize diplomatic ties with Israel, was not currently on the table.

He also said it was too early to discuss the fate of the Golan Heights because it was “a big deal.”

Reuters reported this week that Israel had ruled out handing back the zone, which Donald Trump unilaterally recognized as Israeli during his first term as US president.

“It’s a difficult case – you have negotiations between a Damascene and a Jew,” Sharaa told reporters, smiling.

SECURITY PACT DERAILED IN JULY

Sharaa also said Syria and Israel had been just “four to five days” away from reaching the basis of a security pact in July, but that developments in the southern province of Sweida had derailed those discussions.

Syrian troops were deployed to Sweida in July to quell fighting between Druze armed factions and Bedouin fighters. But the violence worsened, with Syrian forces accused of execution-style killings and Israel striking southern Syria, the defense ministry in Damascus and near the presidential palace.

Sharaa on Wednesday described the strikes near the presidential palace as “not a message, but a declaration of war,” and said Syria had still refrained from responding militarily to preserve the negotiations.

Continue Reading

RSS

Anti-Israel Activists Gear Up to ‘Flood’ UN General Assembly

US Capitol Police and NYPD officers clash with anti-Israel demonstrators, on the day Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint meeting of Congress, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, DC, July 24, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Umit Bektas

Anti-Israel groups are planning a wave of raucous protests in New York City during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) over the next several days, prompting concerns that the demonstrations could descend into antisemitic rhetoric and intimidation.

A coalition of anti-Israel activists is organizing the protests in and around UN headquarters to coincide with speeches from Middle Eastern leaders and appearances by US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The demonstrations are expected to draw large crowds and feature prominent pro-Palestinian voices, some of whom have been criticized for trafficking in antisemitic tropes, in addition to calling for the destruction of Israe.

Organizers of the demonstrations have promoted the coordinated events on social media as an opportunity to pressure world leaders to hold Israel accountable for its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, with some messaging framed in sharply hostile terms.

On Sunday, for example, activists shouted at Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon.

“Zionism is terrorism. All you guys are terrorists committing ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza and Palestine. Shame on you, Zionist animals,” they shouted.

The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), warned on its website that the scale and tone of the planned demonstrations risk crossing the line from political protest into hate speech, arguing that anti-Israel activists are attempting to hijack the UN gathering to spread antisemitism and delegitimize the Jewish state’s right to exist.

Outside the UN last week, masked protesters belonging to the activist group INDECLINE kicked a realistic replica of Netanyahu’s decapitated head as though it were a soccer ball.

Within Our Lifetime (WOL), a radical anti-Israel activist group, has vowed to “flood” the UNGA on behalf of the pro-Palestine movement.

WOL, one of the most prolific anti-Israel activist groups, came under immense fire after it organized a protest against an exhibition to honor the victims of the Oct. 7 massacre at the Nova Music Festival in southern Israel. During the event, the group chanted “resistance is justified when people are occupied!” and “Israel, go to hell!”

“We will be there to confront them with the truth: Their silence and inaction enable genocide. The world cannot continue as if Gaza does not exist,” WOL said of its planned demonstrations in New York. “This is the time to make our voices impossible to ignore. Come to New York by any means necessary, to stand, to march, to demand the UN act and end the siege.”

Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), two other anti-Israel organizations that have helped organize widespread demonstrations against the Jewish state during the war in Gaza, also announced they are planning a march from Times Square to the UN headquarters on Friday.

“The time is now for each and every UN member state to uphold their duty under international law: sanction Israel and end the genocide,” the groups said in a statement.

JVP, an organization that purports to fight for “Palestinian liberation,” has positioned itself as a staunch adversary of the Jewish state. The group argued in a 2021 booklet that Jews should not write Hebrew liturgy because hearing the language would be “deeply traumatizing” to Palestinians. JVP has repeatedly defended the Oct. 7 massacre of roughly 1,200 people in southern Israel by Hamas as a justified “resistance.” Chapters of the organization have urged other self-described “progressives” to throw their support behind Hamas and other terrorist groups against Israel

Similarly, PYM, another radical anti-Israel group, has repeatedly defended terrorism and violence against the Jewish state. PYM has organized many anti-Israel protests in the two years following the Oct. 7 attacks in the Jewish state. Recently, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) called for a federal investigation into the organization after Aisha Nizar, one of the group’s leaders, urged supporters to sabotage the US supply chain for the F-35 fighter jet, one of the most advanced US military assets and a critical component of Israel’s defense.

The UN General Assembly has historically been a flashpoint for heated debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Previous gatherings have seen dueling demonstrations outside the Manhattan venue, with pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups both seeking to influence the international spotlight.

While warning about the demonstrations, CAM noted it recently launched a new mobile app, Report It, that allows users worldwide to quickly and securely report antisemitic incidents in real time.

Continue Reading

RSS

Nina Davidson Presses Universities to Back Words With Action as Jewish Students Return to Campus Amid Antisemitism Crisis

Nina Davidson on The Algemeiner’s ‘J100’ podcast. Photo: Screenshot

Philanthropist Nina Davidson, who served on the board of Barnard College, has called on universities to pair tough rhetoric on combatting antisemitism with enforcement as Jewish students returned to campuses for the new academic year.

“Years ago, The Algemeiner had published a list ranking the most antisemitic colleges in the country. And number one was Columbia,” Davidson recalled on a recent episode of The Algemeiner‘s “J100” podcast. “As a board member and as someone who was representing the institution, it really upset me … At the board meeting, I brought it up and I said, ‘What are we going to do about this?’”

Host David Cohen, chief executive officer of The Algemeiner, explained he had revisited Davidson’s remarks while she was being honored for her work at The Algemeiner‘s 8th annual J100 gala, held in October 2021, noting their continued relevance.

“It could have been the same speech in 2025,” he said, underscoring how longstanding concerns about campus antisemitism, while having intensified in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, are not new.

Davidson argued that universities already possess the tools to protect students – codes of conduct, time-place-manner rules, and consequences for threats or targeted harassment – but too often fail to apply them evenly. “Statements are not enough,” she said, arguing that institutions need to enforce their rules and set a precedent that there will be consequences for individuals who refuse to follow them.

She also said that stakeholders – alumni, parents, and donors – are reassessing their relationships with schools that, in their view, have not safeguarded Jewish students. While supportive of open debate, Davidson distinguished between protest and intimidation, calling for leadership that protects expression while ensuring campus safety.

The episode surveyed specific pressure points that administrators will face this fall: repeat anti-Israel encampments, disruptions of Jewish programming, and the challenge of distinguishing political speech from conduct that violates university rules. “Unless schools draw those lines now,” Davidson warned, “they’ll be scrambling once the next crisis hits.”

Cohen closed by framing the discussion as a test of institutional credibility, asking whether universities will “turn policy into protection” in real time. Davidson agreed, pointing to students who “need to know the rules aren’t just on paper.”

The full conversation is available on The Algemeiner’s “J100” podcast.

Continue Reading

Copyright © 2017 - 2023 Jewish Post & News