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.
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.
“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.
RSS
Jerry Seinfeld Compares ‘Free Palestine’ Movement to KKK at Duke Event for Former Hamas Hostage
Jerry Seinfeld attends the premiere of Netflix’s “Unfrosted” at the Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles, California, US, April 30, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/David Swanson
Jewish comedian Jerry Seinfeld said during an appearance at Duke University on Tuesday that supporters of the “Free Palestine”movement are worse than the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan group.
Seinfeld, whose youngest son attends the school in Durham, North Carolina, made the remarks while introducing Omer Shem Tov, a former Hamas hostage who was kidnapped by terrorists from the Nova music festival in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. He was freed after 505 days in captivity as part of a ceasefire agreement in February. Hundreds attended the event at Duke’s Page Auditorium to hear Shem Tov speak about experiences in a discussion on stage with the event’s moderator, North Carolina State Sen. Sophia Chitlik (D-Durham). The event was organized largely by Chabad at Duke, with sponsorship from Duke’s Provost’s Initiative on the Middle East, university centers, and Jewish student groups on campus.
During Seinfeld’s opening remarks, he said, “Free Palestine is, to me, just — you’re free to say you don’t like Jews. Just say you don’t like Jews.”
“By saying ‘Free Palestine,’ you’re not admitting what you really think,” he continued. “So, it’s actually — compared to the Ku Klux Klan, I’m actually thinking the Klan is actually a little better here because they can come right out and say, ‘We don’t like Blacks, we don’t like Jews.’ OK, that’s honest.” His comments were reported by Duke’s student newspaper, The Chronicle.
Only Duke students, staff, and faculty were permitted to attend the event. Seinfeld’s appearance was a surprise and was not publicized beforehand. A university spokesperson told The Chronicle on Tuesday night that Seinfeld had “requested his appearance not be announced beforehand, given Omer Shem Tov’s experiences were the focus of the event.”
“Duke does not preview the remarks of speakers who are invited to campus, and the invitation of speakers to campus does not imply any endorsement of their remarks,” the spokesperson added.
Mason Herman, a senior at Duke and student president of the school’s Chabad, told NBC News that Chabad and the university are not responsible for remarks made by an invited speaker. “This event was highlighting the fact that there are more than 40 hostages still in Gaza,” he said. “To one, raise awareness of that fact, and two, to share their plight while in captivity. And to share Omer’s story.”
The last time Seinfeld spoke publicly at Duke was when he delivered the school’s commencement address in May 2024. His older son graduated that year from Duke. The school’s decision to have Seinfeld deliver the commencement address was criticized by some because of his pro-Israel views and dozens of students walked out of the ceremony in protest. Seinfeld’s daughter, Sascha, who is now a reporter for Bari Weiss’ news outlet The Free Press, is also an alum of Duke.
After the deadly massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Seinfeld posted a message on Instagram that said, “I Stand With Israel,” and shared that he lived and worked on a kibbutz in Israel when he was a teenager. In December of the same year, Seinfeld’s family traveled to Israel to meet with families of Israeli hostages and others impacted by the attack. During the trip, there was a missile attack, and the family had to seek shelter.
Seinfeld later said the experience gave him an understanding of what it means to live through and experience a war. He also told Weiss during an emotional interview that the trip was “the most powerful experience of my life.” He added that when he made “Seinfeld” in the 1990s, he thought that antisemitism was “seemingly a relic of history books.”
Seinfeld talked more about that trip to Israel during his remarks at Duke on Tuesday. He said his family visited Israel to “call attention to the plight of the hostages” and met with “several groups of hostage family members,” with whom they connected in a “heartbreaking moment.”
“So, to be here tonight and experiencing this is really incredible,” the comedian said before Shem Tov’s address on stage.
Shem Tov, who was 20 years old when he was kidnapped, told the crowd on Tuesday that he remembers being kicked, punched, and spit on as he was taken into captivity. “You cannot take your life for granted,” he told the audience, as reported by The Chronicle. “You have to understand that in a split second your life could change.”
Hamas-led terrorists murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Hamas is still holding captive 48 people who were abducted and 20 of those hostages are believed to be alive.
RSS
‘You’re Next’: Anti-Israel Activist, Ex-Barnard College Student Promotes Death Threat Against Netanyahu
A pro-Hamas demonstrator uses a megaphone at Columbia University. Photo: Mike Segar via Reuters Connect.
Amid concerns about rising political violence in the US following the murder of Charlie Kirk, anti-Israel campus activist and former Barnard College student Maryam Iqbal shared a social media post this week calling for the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“You’re next,” said the post by an account named EV HardSnipe, in response to Netanyahu’s writing that he was praying for Kirk, a prominent conservative activist who was shot and killed at Utah Valley University on Wednesday.
“Praying for @charliekirk11,” read the original post by Netanyahu.
EV HardSnipe’s death threat was shared by Iqbal, who along with US Rep. Ilhan Omar’s daughter was suspended from school during the 2023-2024 academic year for their role in a riotous, unauthorized anti-Israel protest at Columbia University in New York.
“Political killings are heinous acts; the reactions have been equally disturbing. Within the campus context and beyond, free speech has become limited only to some groups, especially on the progressive left, and discouraged and silenced when it concerns topics like antisemitism, Israel, and Zionism — and for that matter, any subject that is perceived to be conservative,” Asaf Romirowsky, executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), told The Algemeiner in a statement. “As we are still coming to grips with the assassination of Charlie Kirk who was a staunch advocate of discourse and free exchange of ideas no matter what opinions were shared, we are now seeing students on campus engaging in vilification of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu using Kirk’s Zionist views as an excuse to do so.”
Responding to The Algemeiner‘s request for comment on the incident, a Barnard College spokesperson said, “The person associated with the tweet did not enroll at Barnard College for the current academic year.”
She added, “Barnard is committed to maintaining a campus that is safe, welcoming, inclusive, for all members of our community. We do not tolerate discrimination, harassment, or threats of violence, which is made clear in our expectations for community conduct and policies prohibiting discrimination and harassment.”
Columbia University and Barnard College have been hubs of campus antisemitism, with particular hostility directed toward Israelis and Zionists, amid the war in Gaza. After Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Columbia produced several indelible examples of campus antisemitism, including a student who proclaimed that Zionist Jews deserve to be murdered and are lucky he is not doing so himself and administrative officials who, outraged at the notion that Jews organized to resist anti-Zionism, participated in a group chat in which each member took turns sharing antisemitic tropes that described Jews as privileged and grafting.
Amid these incidents, the university struggled to contain the anti-Zionist group Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), which in late January committed an act of infrastructural sabotage by flooding the toilets of the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) with concrete. Numerous reports indicate the attack may have been the premeditated result of planning sessions which took place many months ago at an event held by Alpha Delta Phi (ADP) — a literary society, according to the Washington Free Beacon. During the event, the Free Beacon reported, ADP distributed literature dedicated to “aspiring revolutionaries” who wish to commit seditious acts. Additionally, a presentation was given in which complete instructions for the exact kind of attack which struck Columbia were shared with students.
In July, Barnard College settled a lawsuit brought by 36 Jewish students who accused the administrations of Barnard and Columbia of failing to address a toxic outbreak of antisemitism that roiled their campuses.
Barnard administrators themselves effectively facilitated anti-Zionist activity on campus, according to the students’ complaint, citing an incident in which school officials invited anti-Israel activist Hatem Bazian, known for saying, “It’s about time we had an intifada in [the US],” to speak at a “Day of Dialogue” event in January 2024. While Jewish community advocates criticized the invitation for platforming ideologies which openly call for the destruction of Israel, the college defended Bazian as a “renowned scholar.”
Meanwhile, pro-Hamas students allegedly responded to dog whistles they heard emanating from the administration.
“Why are you here?” a pro-Hamas activist asked a Jewish student identified in court documents as John Doe, during a period of campus unrest, several days after Bazian spoke on campus. “Are you here as a Jew? … Well, we’re fighting against you.”
In a major victory for Jewish students, the college also agreed never to engage with CUAD, which emerged after the Oct. 7 attacks as one of the most militant anti-Israel groups in American higher education for its role in building takeovers and physical assaults on Jewish students.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
RSS
Netherlands, Ireland Will Not Participate in Eurovision if Israel Joins, Broadcasters Announce
A logo of the Eurovision Song Contest is seen in front of the St. Jakobshalle in Basel, Switzerland, May 1, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
The national broadcasters for both Netherlands and Ireland announced this week they will not compete in the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest if Israel also participates due to the country’s military actions in the Gaza Strip during the current Israel-Hamas war.
Dutch broadcaster AVROTROS made the announcement on Friday, a day after Irish broadcaster RTE said it will not join the Eurovision “if the participation of Israel goes ahead.”
“AVROTROS can no longer justify Israel’s participation in the current situation, given the ongoing and severe human suffering in Gaza,” the Dutch company said in a statement. The broadcaster said its participation in the 2026 Eurovision “will not be possible as long as Israel is admitted by the EBU [European Broadcasting Union].” AVROTROS explained that if the EBU bans Israel from the international competition, the Dutch broadcaster “will gladly take part” in the Eurovision next year.
The organization, which is part of the Dutch public broadcasting umbrella NPO, manages Dutch participation in the Eurovision and holds broadcasting rights for the competition. The Netherlands has participated in the contest since its first year, back in 1956, and has won five times.
RTE Director General Kevin Bakhurst said the Irish broadcaster’s participation in the Eurovision alongside Israel would be “unconscionable” because of the “ongoing and appalling loss of lives in Gaza.” Ireland’s Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers said he supports and “absolutely respect[s]” RTÉ’s decision. Ireland has participated in the song contest since 1965 and has won the competition seven times.
The national broadcasters of Spain, Slovenia, and Iceland have also threatened to boycott the 2026 Eurovision if Israel participates. Broadcasters have until mid-December to pull out of the 2026 Eurovision in Vienna, Austria, without any penalty. The EBU is expected to make a decision about Israel’s participation before the end of the year at its General Assembly.
“We understand the concerns and deeply held views around the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. We are still consulting with all EBU members to gather views on how we manage participation and geopolitical tensions around the Eurovision Song Contest,” Eurovision director Martin Green said in a statement. “It is up to each member to decide if they want to take part in the contest and we would respect any decision broadcasters make.”
The 2026 Eurovision will take place in Vienna in May. Austrian singer JJ won this year’s competition in Basel, Switzerland, with his song “Wasted Love,” and he has also called for Israel to be banned from the 2026 competition.