Far-right Zionist vigilantes target youth and anti-genocide workers, with open support from Canada’s ruling class

Faced with growing revulsion and mass opposition among workers and youth to Israel’s imperialist-backed genocide in Gaza and its expanding carnage in Lebanon, Canada’s ruling class is waging a war against basic democratic rights. Using the repressive apparatus of the capitalist state – the police, courts and intelligence agencies – and increasingly far-right vigilantes, its aim is nothing less than to criminalize and suppress all opposition to Israel’s genocide and to Israel’s war drive. Canadian imperialism.

Confirming that it is now “open season” in Canada to violently attack anti-genocide activists, Crown Prosecutors dropped assault charges against Zionist Lorna Bernbaum for assaulting and removing a hijab from Hayfa Abdelkhaleq outside Ottawa City Hall on May 14, where is located. demonstrating against Israel’s genocide.

The Crown ruled that Abdelkhaleq’s song, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” disqualified her from the protection of the law because her attacker Lorna Bernbaum or a jury “could have drawn an intervention that it was a call for genocide. of the Jewish people’ and therefore ‘whoever sings this at his own peril’. This is a deeply horrifying decision that turns objective reality and justice on its head.

The completely counterfactual conflation of demands for the liberation of Palestine with “genocide” is made possible by the fraudulent IHRA definition of anti-Semitism that the Canadian state and its institutions now openly adopt and promote. Virtually any criticism of the State of Israel, exposure of the systematic dispossession of the Palestinian people, and demands for Palestinian democratic and national rights must be treated as anti-Semitism and can be prosecuted as hate crimes.

So alarmed is the Canadian ruling class by the persistence of mass opposition to it and Washington’s war plans, of which Israel’s genocide is an essential component, that such legal mechanisms alone are now considered insufficient. It therefore began to assign Zionist justice groups to violently intimidate and silence opposition to genocide and imperialist war, and to spy on and report dissidents to the police and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).

Under Canada’s newly announced community security program, which officially launched on October 1, funds will now flow to law enforcement groups, euphemistically called “temporary security personnel,” long associated with far-right Zionism and terrorism. Former Liberal public security minister Marco Mendicino led the campaign within the government to fund these organizations.

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That a former cabinet minister tasked less than three years ago with demobilizing vigilante groups associated with the fascist “Freedom Convoy” is now helping to direct millions of public funds to similar groups is politically significant. It signals that a rapid shift towards an authoritarian regime is underway within the Canadian capitalist class.

On September 5, Toronto’s leading pro-Zionist organization, the United Jewish Appeal, announced the creation of the “Jewish Security Network.” Noting the importance of confronting opponents of Israel’s genocide on college campuses, UJA said “with students across the community returning to school this week, we have reached a new critical juncture.” The plan seeks to centrally coordinate the activities of “community members” — a thinly veiled reference to various Zionist justice groups — with CSIS, the RCMP and the Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs, “based on successful models in other Diaspora Jewish communities that are advanced in taking ownership of their security.” All these models revolve around deputized justice groups.

A day later, anti-genocide students at the University of Toronto (UofT) organized as part of “U of T Occupy for Palestine” confronted organized Zionist thugs protected by Toronto police as a march crossed the College St. West towards Kings College. Circle. The confrontation had nothing to do with ensuring the “safety” of Jewish students, and nothing to do with silencing political opposition to Israel’s genocide.

The vigilantes included “Israel Now,” the Canadian branch of the Jewish Defense League, a private security firm called “J-Force,” and a newly formed group with an Orwellian-sounding name, “Magen Herut (Defenders of Freedom) Canada Community Surveillance.” . Team.”

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The workers must familiarize themselves with these gangsters.

Israel Now has its roots in the Jewish Defense League, a terrorist organization banned in the United States, which was founded by Meir Kahane, whose Kach Party was itself declared an illegal terrorist organization by the Israeli government in 1994.

Israel Now’s Canadian leader, Meir Weinstein, has no ideological differences with the JDL, making his splinter group a JDL franchise in all but name. According to the Israeli daily HaaretzIsrael Now “actively promotes physical confrontations with Palestinian supporters and encourages direct harassment of individuals online and potentially offline, as well as the wider promotion of anti-Muslim hatred.” The Canadian state refuses to list the JDL or Israel Now as terrorist groups, and when JDL members commit crimes in plain view of the police, the police shrug their shoulders.

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Canada, however, lists the Kach Party and its spin-off “Khane Chai” as terrorist groups. But this ban is not enforced. Kahane Chai’s supporters held unfurled their black-on-yellow flag at the UofT and uttered objectively genocidal statements in full view of the police, including “Let’s make Gaza a parking lot.”

Several uniformed members of the Magen Herut Canada community watch team also confronted the anti-genocide students.

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Magen Herut was founded by Aaron Hadida and is composed of those who are “ideologically aligned, love Israel and the Jewish people, and have some sort of police, security or military training.” Canadian Jewish News. Magen Herut members are trained in “Krav Maga”, a hand-to-hand combat technique. The tagline on their patch reads “Nothing says never never like an armed Jew. Jews can shoot.”

Thus, the group’s stated goal, to “de-escalate and ensure that members of the (Zionist) community are safe at all times,” is a pack of lies. The group is simply a gang of fascist thugs and ex-IDF soldiers in branded t-shirts. They exist to provoke demonstrations that were peaceful and nonviolent. If such incidents serve the interests of the Israeli state, it is because Magen Herut is organizationally linked to it.

Magen Herut is the product of Herut Canada, a Zionist group originating from the Likud Party of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It is therefore effectively an instrument of Israeli state policy that operates with a completely free hand on university campuses across Canada, including UofT, Toronto Metropolitan and York universities. It boasts of expanding across the country.

Herut emerged directly from the terrorist organization Irgun in 1948, which was condemned by Albert Einstein as “a political party closely resembling in organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal the Nazi and Fascist parties”.

Conservative Party of Canada Deputy Opposition Leader Melissa Lantsman, a right-wing Zionist zealot, has emerged alongside Mendicino as the leading advocate of Zionist vigilantism within the political establishment. She proudly posed with members of Magen Herut and a second justice group, the “Shomrim (Guards).” Not a single Canadian politician spoke a word in opposition.

Conservative Deputy Leader Melissa Lantsman poses with members of Shormrim Toronto (Photo: X/Melissa Lantsman)

The Shomrim are an international law enforcement/para-police group originating from the Hasidic community in Brooklyn. They are deputized by the police departments of New York City, Brooklyn, and London, England. In some cases, shomrim take the law into their own hands and have been accused of covering up crimes committed within the Jewish community.

The Shomrim group in Toronto wear black uniforms and police-style badges. They drive small SUVs with police car-like markings, sirens and flashing lights.

The Shomrim are drawn from the same social milieu – rabid right-wing Zionists – who have carried out violent attacks against anti-genocide demonstrations. Among these types are Meir Gerichter, a former security guard at the US Consulate in Toronto accused of hitting a female demonstrator in the pelvis, and Ilan Reuben Abramov, a former IDF reservist who shot another female protester with a nail gun while shouting that “Every f. **Palestinian king must die.” Both attacks, along with several others, occurred during Palestinian protests at the Aish Hatorah Synagogue in Thornhill, where Keller Williams Real Estate was promoting the sale of Palestinian land for illegal Zionist settlements. These are the types of “community events” that Shomrim are supposed to “protect”.

These and dozens of other incidents reveal the completely fraudulent nature of Ontario’s Liberal and Conservative government claims that the police and state’s replacement of Zionist thug gangs has anything to do with “community safety.” Rather, their goal is to create a fascist proxy force that allows the Canadian state to crack down on its political critics without suffering the exposure and outrage that would result from overt acts of state violence and intimidation.