Justin Trudeau’s former health minister released an attack ad attempting to tie her Conservative rival to the Nazi Swastika seen at the Freedom Convoy in 2022, however the ad has backfired with much of the Jewish community it appeared to target.
Ya’ara Saks, the Liberal candidate for York Centre, released an ad targeting Roman Baber, the Conservative candidate for the same riding. The ad shows a photo of a man photographed on the first day of the Freedom Convoy with a swastika flag.
Freedom Convoy organizers had condemned the individual responsible and denied that he was a member of the protest movement.
The ad, which was allegedly distributed by Saks’ team featured an arrow pointing from the swastika flag-wielder to a photo of Roman Baber, with the phrase “$53,326 Raised for Baber by Convoy Donors.”
According to Elections Canada, an estimated 14 per cent of Baber and Saks riding was Jewish in 2019, making it the fourth largest Jewish population among all federal ridings in Canada.
Baber, who is Jewish, responded by highlighting his personal connection to the Holocaust, noting that his great-grandparents were executed by the Nazis in 1941.
“So much family lost on all sides,” he said in a post on X. “But the Ya’ara Saks Campaign put a swastika near my picture in an attack piece. Ya’ara is disgusting and desperate.”
Saks did not respond to True North’s request for comment.
Though the flyer attempted to associate Baber with Nazi’s in a heavily Jewish riding, members of “Everything Jewish Toronto” on Facebook were outraged many demanded an apology from Saks and her team.
Some members said Saks “crossed a line” by putting a swastika “disturbingly close” to her Jewish opponent, who fled the oppressive soviet union. Others said the inclusion of the swastika in campaign material was “absolutely despicable.”
“Labeling her political opponent, who is also Jewish as Nazi is an intimidation tactic she uses on the Jewish voters to sway them into supporting her,” Katy Guakil, a membero of the group said in a comment. “Literally can’t go lower than that.”
Others noted this wasn’t the first time Saks was willing to invoke the horrors of the Holocaust to smear her political opponents.
During the Freedom Convoy in 2022, Saks notoriously stood in the House of Commons and claimed that protesters saying “honk honk” a reference to the honking of truck horns, was an “acronym for heil Hitler.”
“This wasn’t a vague ‘honk honk’ stretch this was a deliberate visual association that anyone with a conscience should know better than to allow,” one member of the group said in a post. “Using Holocaust imagery in political literature targeting a Jewwish candidate is a grotesque and deeply unethical move.”
Saks campaign team had also been accused of inappropriately placing campaign signs to hid Babers signs in the riding.
Baber recently posted that it was Saks herself who should be scrutinized for her connection with antisemites, sharing a photo of Saks meeting with Mahmoud Abbas, the ruler of the Palestinian Authority.
“Mahmoud Abbas ruled the PA for 19 years with out an election. He denied the Holocaust, denied October 7 and established a Martyrs Fund that rewards families of terrorists who kill Jews,” Babers post said. “Shame on Melanie Joly and Ya’ara Saks.”
The two candidates took part in a federal debate last week hosted by B’nai Brith Canada, a historic Jewish advocacy group. Each candidate attempted to make the case on how they would be best equipped to tackle the rise of antisemitism and other issues that matter to the Jewish community in York Centre.