Canada’s branch of the Jewish Defence
League is a small but active militant organization with a long
history of
committing violent acts and intimidating pro-Palestinian
activists. Photo from Flickr.
On Saturday evening, some 5,000 people packed Toronto’s
Nathan Phillips Square to denounce the Israeli government’s
continued violence and injustices against the Palestinian
people. Dozens, if not hundreds, within the predominantly
pro-Palestinian crowd were Jewish.
At the same time, a counter-protest was held by Canada’s most
influential and best-organized racist group, the Jewish Defence
League (JDL), a radical organization that preaches a violent
form of anti-Arab, Jewish nationalism. About 200 JDL members and
supporters rallied in the hope of provoking or instigating a
conflict. They succeeded, and by the next morning the Centre for
Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) and B’nai B’rith were claiming
a 55-year-old Jewish man was beaten by pro-Palestinian
protesters.
By Sunday evening, Toronto Mayor John Tory, Ontario Premier
Rob Ford, Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole and Prime
Minister Justin Trudeau had all tweeted about alleged acts of
anti-Semitism at the protests.
There is, of course, much more to this story. Footage has nowemergedof
the main “victim” (who actually appeared on the cover of apress
releaseput out by CIJA on May 16) wielding a
knife and swinging a bat. Another video shows a JDL member
brandishing a stick and threatening another individual.
It is altogether unsurprising that the JDL would instigate a
confrontation and then be defended by some of the most prominent
pro-Israel lobby groups in the country. Indeed, it has happenedmanytimesbefore.
What was different on this occasion is that the JDL met a great
deal more resistance and ended up fleeing the scene.
With the tacit support of Canada’s pro-Israel establishment,
the JDL have operated as a quasi-fascist street mob in Toronto
for more than half a century. In 2014, amidst Israel’s brutal
assault on Gaza that left over2,100
Palestiniansdead, also known as Operation
Protective Edge, I wasshoved,
had my bike damaged and lock stolen by members of the JDL at a
protest on the grounds of the Ontario legislature.
The following day at Queen’s Park, a JDL member who worked
with children at the Schwartz-Reisman Jewish Community Centre in
Vaughan, Isaac Ezra Nacson, knocked a pro-Palestinian counter
demonstrator to the ground andkicked
him in the face. Half an hour after Nacson’s attack, a JDL
member walked some 50 metres around a barricade to where I was
standing alone, and spat on me three times. Both incidents were
caught on tape by major media outlets, but little was done.
Members of the Jewish Defence
League at a protest outside the Ontario Supreme Court in
Toronto in 1982 before the
trial of suspected Nazi Albert Rauca. Photo courtesy theToronto
Star.
Since that time the JDL has engaged in numerous violent acts and
deepened its ties to other far-right movements. In the highest
profile incident to date, a mob organized by JDL Torontoattacked
counter-protestersat the 2017 American Israel
Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference in Washington, DC,
burning a Quran and tearing a Palestinian flag to shreds. During
a scuffle, a 55-year-old Palestinian-American teacher was
punched, kicked and hit with flagpoles. Bruised across his body,
Kamal Nayfeh needed 18 stitches around his eye. Thornhill JDL
member Yosef Steynovitz was charged with ahate
crimeas well as assault causing significant
injury.
Last summer, JDL supporter Tamara FostervandalizedFoodbenders,
a Toronto sandwich shop located on Bloor Street, whose owner had
painted “I Love Gaza” on the storefront window. Similar to what
Jewish supremacist settlers do to Palestinian homes in the
occupied West Bank, Foster painted the Star of David onto the
restaurant window. Soon after, the JDL held a rally in front of
the restaurant andscrubbed
off“Palestinian Lives Matter” and “Free
Palestine” markings while shouting racist remarks.
While preparing for a defamation lawsuit against the JDL on
behalf of Foodbenders, lawyer Stephen Ellis dug into the
organization and its long-time leader, Meir Weinstein’s history
of violence and racism. Some of his findings are listed here:
In 1976, JDL members were arrested for setting off a
bomb at the Toronto home of anti-Semitic mayoral candidate
Don Andrews.
Five years later, the JDL announced its members were
arming themselves and engaging in target practice in farms
around Toronto, reported theGlobe and Mailin
a story titled “Leader
of JDL says members arming selves.”
In 1983, 20 JDL members “shouted, kicked doors and cut a
television cable at the Willowdale home of Nicaragua’s
Consul-General,”reportedtheGlobe
and Mail. They claimed the leftist Sandinista
government was anti-Jewish.
In 1986, JDL members attempted to assault anti-Semitic
activist Terry Long.
In 2001, JDL was thought to be responsible for death
threatsleveledagainst
the pro-Palestinian Concordia Student Union.
In 2007, two JDL activists were arrested for assaulting
anti-Jewish activist Paul Fromm.
In 2011, the RCMP launched an investigation against at
least nine members of the JDL who were thought to be
plotting to bomb Palestine House in Mississauga. On July 3,
2014 the JDL sparked aviolent
confrontationat the community centre.
Three years later, a JDL member assaulted journalist
Kevin Metcalf and another made death threats against him as
he was photographing a demonstration at Nathan Phillips
Square.
In the lead up to the 2019 Walk for Israel, Weinstein
publicly threatened to “break
the legs” of anyone counter-protesting.
Later in 2019, Weinstein shoved a demonstrator at York
University and another JDL sympathizerthreateneda
student, telling them, “if you do that, I’ll fucking step on
your face.”
JDL Canada maintains direct ties to extremist Jewish
supremacists in Israel who have been attacking Palestinian
citizens of Israel and chanting “death to the Arabs” in
recent days.
On a recent trip to the country, JDL Canada’s “security
director,” Zaza Vili,took
pictureswith supporters of the outlawed
Kahane Chai party. For his part, Weinstein has repeatedlymetwith
Baruch Ben Yosef (Andy Green), who was jailed for plotting
to blow up the Dome of the Rock in 1980 and is suspected in
the 1985 murder of Palestinian American anti-discrimination
activist Alex Odeh.
During a 2015 meeting in Montréal, Weinsteinrejecteda
question about disassociating from the organization’s
violent past by comparing himself and the JDL to Menachem
Begin and the Irgun, an extremist Zionist group that
launched numerous deadly terrorist attacks in the 1940s. On
another occasion Weinstein responded to a question about
whether the JDL is a violent organization bycomparingthe
group to a martial arts club.
JDL members are openly racist. In 2009, Weinstein joined
and participated in a Facebook group called “Death
to Arabs” and four years later he wrote on Facebook that
violence is “in
the Arabs’ DNA.” In 2010 Weinsteinsaid,
“if the Arabs won’t acknowledge Israel as a Jewish state,
then they will have to go.”
During a 2017 meeting Weinstein referred to Syrian
refugees and other Arabs as “snakes”
while a participant led the crowd in a chant of “No Arabs,
No Terror” and “They Must Go, They Must Go.”
At a counter protest to the 2017 Al Quds event in
Toronto, Weinstein claimed “these people [largely Muslim
marchers] want us dead” to which someone among the JDL crowd
yelled “we
want them dead too.”
The JDL has repeatedly disparaged the Black Lives Matter
movement. In February 2020, Weinstein announced that the
group would travel to New York City to confront Black
leaders who he claimed are “anti-Semitic.”
Over the past decade the JDL has hosted numerous racist,
far-right, speakers. In 2011, the group organized a support
rally for the anti-Muslim English Defence League, featuring
known racist Tommy Robinson via Skype. JDL Canada has also
hosted high-profile anti-Muslim activist Pamela Geller, as
well as Robert Spencer and Andrew Bostom. In 2014, the JDL
alsohostedMoshe
Feiglin who previously called Arabs “a gang of bandits that
never produced anything and never wanted to produce
anything” and whom the United Kingdom Home Secretary refused
entry to Britain on the grounds he would likely “foment or
justify terrorist violence.”
In 2015, the JDL organized a meeting with a leader of
the anti-Muslim group PEGIDA UK, Paul Weston, and in 2017
they hosted the National Citizens Alliance’s Stephen Garvey
whotold
the crowdthat “[Muslims] will never be
Canadians.”
To oppose the construction of a mosque in Newmarket, the
JDL organized a town hall in the Toronto suburb in 2007. A
decade later they held a demonstration against Motion 103,
which they claimed was an effort by the Trudeau government
to introduce ‘Islamic supremacism.’ In 2018, the group
organized an anti-Muslim rally after amass
shootingon the Danforth by a mentally
unstable individual born to parents of Pakistani origin.
In recent years, the JDL has coordinated with various
racist, far-right organizations and individuals on different
initiatives. In 2012, the JDL allied with Mark Vandermas and
Gary McHale who actively opposed justice for the Mohawks of
Six Nations of the Grand River during the high-profile land
dispute in Caledonia. They’ve also worked closely with
anti-Muslim activist Sandra Solomon, andallied
withthe white supremacist Soldiers of Odin
for a 2018 rally at Nathan Phillips Square. During the 2018
Toronto mayoral election the JDL endorsed racist candidate
Faith Goldy andmade
several appearancesfor her.
JDL Canada’s sister organizations in the United States and
Israel have been responsible for even more serious violence and
hate crimes. In 2001, the FBI labeled the JDL a “right-wing
terrorist group” after its members were convicted in a
series of violent acts, including the killing of the regional
director of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and
a plot to assassinate a congressman.
Baruch Goldstein, a member of the JDL’s sister organization
in Israel,Kach,
an ultranationalist political formation that was officially
banned in 1994, killed 29 Palestinian Muslim worshipers in theCave
of the Patriarchs massacrethat same year. Kach
was established by Meir Kahane in 1984. He also co-founded the
JDL in the US.
In 1984, Weinstein tried tohelp
Kahane enter Canada illegallyafter the federal
government rejected the American’s admission to this country. At
the end of the 1980s, Weinstein sought toformally
establisha Kach party in Canada.
Meir Weinstein, national director
of the Canadian branch of the Jewish Defense League. Photo courtesy ZUMA Press.
In discussing Palestinian citizens of Israel, Kahane told a
TV interviewer in 1990: “The only answer isout.
I want themout. I want them outaliveand
if notalive,dead.
But I want them out. Better a dead Arab than a dead Jew.”
Despite its long history of racism and violence, the JDL is
tacitly or actively supported by much of Canada’s pro-Israel
establishment and other powerful institutions. The JDL has
co-sponsored demonstrations with B’nai B’rith and provided
“security” for pro-Israel rallies, and even participated in the
annual Walk for Israel organized by United Jewish Appeal of
Greater Toronto.
In a bid to get Toronto city council to block Al Quds Day in
2019, Weinstein coordinated with B’nai B’rith leader Michael
Mostyn, CIJA Vice President Noah Shack and city councillor James
Pasternak, as highlighted in aphotoof
the four together at the city’s executive committee.
JDL has been allowed torecruit
in Jewish schoolsand for many years the former
head of the Canadian Jewish Congress, Bernie Farber, gave the
grouppolitical
cover. The same can be said of former Canada-Israel
Committee board memberWarren
Kinsella, whospoke
at a JDL meetingin 2009. These prominent
liberals were fine with the JDL intimidating Palestinian
solidarity activists but oppose its alliance with other racist,
far-right, groups.
Coverage of the group byCanadian Jewish
Newshas often been sympathetic, including
publishing video of a speech by Weinstein. In 2015 Barbara Kay
penned aNational Postcolumn
titled “In
defence of the Jewish Defence League” and Honest Reporting
Canada defended the group when the CBC’s coverage became too
critical.
In 2017 theToronto Sunpublished
an article headlined “Jewish
Defence League alleges hate crime,” and after JDL members
stoked violence at York University in November 2019, B’nai
B’rith, CIJA and much of the rest of the Israel lobby accused
pro-Palestinian activists of anti-Semitism. Despite much of it
being caught on camera, JDL violence and racism was ignored.
In a similar vein, CIJA couldn’t bring itself to criticize
the JDL thugs who beat a55-year-oldPalestinian
professor and a younger Jewish activist outside AIPAC’s
conference in 2017. Despite footage of the attacks, CIJA
spokesperson Martin Sampson responded to aNational
Postinquiry by stating, “the approach adopted
by the JDL is not reflective of the mainstream Canadian Jewish
community.”
What’s more, the JDL has support at the highest levels of the
Conservative Party. During a 2015 meeting in Montréal, JDL
representative Julius Suraskiclaimedfour
Conservative MPs had recently attended a Passover dinner at his
home. In 2014, former Prime Minister Stephen Harperincluded
Suraski in his official delegationwhen he
traveled to Israel.
Considering its influence and long history of racist
violence, there’s been far too little critical scrutiny of the
JDL. While the group has been banned from Facebook and Twitter
on a number of occasions, politicians, police and other
officials have turned a blind eye to many of its criminal acts,
while major media outlets and anti-racist groups have generally
ignored its political activities and ties to the far-right.
It’s time for this to change. The JDL is a violent and racist
group that deserves to be treated like the authoritarian,
terroristic organization it really is.
Yves Engler has been dubbed “one
of the most important voices on the Canadian Left today”
(Briarpatch), “in the mould of I.F. Stone” (Globe and Mail), and
“part of that rare but growing group of social critics unafraid
to confront Canada’s self-satisfied myths” (Quill & Quire). He
has published nine books.