Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other party leaders condemned the vandalism of election signs for two Jewish candidates in Montreal.
Just a couple of days into the campaign, posters of Anthony Housefather and Rachel Bendayan, the Liberal incumbents in Mount Royal and Outremont ridings, respectively, had antisemitic graffiti and swastikas scrawled across their names and faces.
“I am disgusted and I am angry that Rachel Bendayan and Anthony Housefather had signs vandalized with antisemitic graffiti,” Trudeau posted on Twitter. “It is completely unacceptable. I stand in solidarity with Rachel and Anthony and the entire Jewish community against this type of hatred.”
Conservative leader Erin O’Toole and New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh also expressed their outrage via social media.
O’Toole tweeted: “What happened to Mr. Housefather and Ms. Bendayan today is completely unacceptable. Antisemitism and racism have no place in Canada, and I condemn these heinous acts.”
“This is not okay,” Singh commented. “Acts of antisemitism glorify one of the most hateful ideologies in human history. We must confront it, prevent it, and give it no space to grow. We stand with you.”
Soon after Housefather and Bendayan posted photos of the defaced signs, another Liberal seeking re-election reported swastikas on his posters. Fayçal El-Khoury, who is not Jewish, is running in the suburban riding of Laval-Les Iles.
The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs-Quebec (CIJA-Q) said the use of Nazi imagery is “completely unacceptable. Each candidate, whatever their party, has the right to run without having to face hateful symbols or messages.”
The candidates also weighed in. Bendayan stated, “Whatever your political views, spreading hateful and violent messages is not the way to go. We’ve seen the road that the politics of the far right leads us to in the U.S. and around the world. That is not us. That is not our Canada.”
Housefather said, “I can assure whoever did this that no swastika is going to scare me or stop me from speaking up for Jewish Canadians.”
Disturbing as well to the Jewish community is the increasing prominence of six-pointed yellow stars at recent anti-vaccination demonstrations. These badges were first seen at a small protest on Aug. 12 outside a restaurant in Quebec City where the provincial government was testing a mobile application that reads the QR codes proving COVID vaccination.
More were displayed among the thousands who took part in a demonstration in downtown Montreal on the weekend, and they appeared again on Aug. 17 among about 250 people assembled in front of a gym in Laval where the app was being piloted again.
A leader of the opposition to the province’s forthcoming vaccine passports defended the use of the symbol. François Amelega Bitonlo at the Laval protest is quoted in Le Journal de Montréal as saying, “We are experiencing what the Jews went through in the 1940s; we are undergoing something similar.”
Rabbi Reuben Poupko, co-chair of CIJA-Q, said, “It is highly offensive to misappropriate the symbols of the worst chapter in human history to demonstrate against public health regulations. While we defend freedom of assembly and speech, we urge avoidance of any reference to the Holocaust, which only serves to trivialize the memory of its victims.”
As for Bitonlo’s statement, Poupko said it speaks of “breathtaking ignorance of history.”
Sarah Fogg, spokesperson for the Montreal Holocaust Museum, said, “It’s offensive, it’s almost hateful. I think if these people heard a Holocaust survivor explain why this symbol was traumatizing for them, they would stop using it.”
After speaking to Montreal Holocaust Museum executive director Daniel Amar, Bitondo retreated from his insistence two days earlier that the demonstrators would not stop wearing the stars.
Bitondo posted on his Facebook page: “I have personally decided not to wear the yellow star during demonstrations and encourage everyone to not wear the yellow star.”
He added, “We are not antisemites. We love Jews like we love all people.”
Bitondo also wrote that he was calling off a demonstration he had planned for next week outside the museum, after it said any comparison to the province’s vaccination passport plan to what Jews suffered during the Holocaust was inaccurate and offensive.
Amar said he explained to Bitondo why the use of the stars is so inappropriate and hurtful, especially to Holocaust survivors and their descendants.
The Quebec minister for combating racism, Benoit Charette, had harsh words for protesters who wear the stars, saying he was “disgusted” and “outraged” by what he termed a poor knowledge of history and “a direct affront to Jewish Quebecers.”
Meanwhile, the origin of anti-vaccination leaflets in English, Yiddish and Hebrew that were distributed to hundreds of homes in Côte St. Luc last week remains unknown.
Rabbi Poupko, spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Israel Beth Aaron in that suburb, does not believe this is an antisemitic incident as it is “obviously” the work of a Jewish person. The eight-page leaflets urge Jews not to get vaccinated and refer to medical experiments in the camps by Josef Mengele during the Holocaust, as well as cite conspiracy theories about the vaccination campaign.
“I think it is one idiot who did this,” Rabbi Poupko said. “I urge all leaders of the ultra-Orthodox community to clearly and persistently advocate for vaccination, which, to their credit, many have.”
Côte St. Luc Mayor Mitchell Brownstein denounced the material as harmful disinformation and recommended anyone with questions about the vaccines to speak to a doctor or pharmacist.
He urged anyone who witnessed the delivery of the material or who has video surveillance footage to share the evidence with police.
