New footage recorded by anti-Israel protesters shows them stomping on an Israeli flag defaced with Nazi swastikas during the Walk with Israel rally, which took place during the weekend.
A Jewish rights advocate posted the video to X, showing anti-Israel protesters at the rally recording themselves stomping on the desecrated Israeli flag while shouting the common Islamic refrain “Allahu Akbar” at Sheppard Avenue and Bathurst Street, a predominantly Jewish neighbourhood.
“Painting swastikas on an Israeli flag at a Jewish community event is a blatant hate crime,” David Jacobs said on X. “By not prosecuting these crimes, we are sending the wrong message.”
Toronto Police Services said it arrested 27-year-old, Syed Raza who allegedly had an Israeli flag, threw the flag on the ground and stomped on it before getting into an altercation with march participants and police.
Raza was charged with public incitement of hatred and resisting a police officer.
TPS was unable to confirm with True North whether the two incidents were connected.
“Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism to characterize Israel or Israelis,” is one of the defining characteristics of antisemitism according to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.
IHRA’s non-legally binding definition of antisemitism is accepted by the governments of Canada.
“Canadians need to stop pretending this isn’t about antisemitism. Bringing swastikas to the Walk for Israel in the Toronto Jewish Community is a clear message,” one user said in a post which documented various swastikas being used by the protesters.
The signs equate National Socialist Germany to the Jewish state of Israel.
IHRA also defines “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” as antisemitism.
Anti-Israel protesters went into Toronto suburbs in the same Jewish neighbourhood and hurled insults at residents.
“You’re a baby killer, that’s all you f*cking are is a baby killer,” protesters can be heard shouting in the video. “That’s what you do. Thank you for coming and taking our homes! Thank you for coming into our homes and taking our homes!”
One might ask what Jewish people living in Toronto have to do with Israelis “taking their homes” in Palestine.
But holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of the state of Israel isn’t new and it is another indicator of antisemitism according to IHRA.
World-renowned Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson called the ideas displayed in the video “1933 Nazi Germany level pathology.”
At the end of last month, the Canadian Press reported that almost half of Toronto’s alleged hate crimes reported in the first five months of May have been antisemitic in nature.
Also in the final days of May, there was a shooting which targeted a Jewish school in Toronto, one of three attacks against Jewish educational or religious community centres in Canada in the same week.