All charges have been withdrawn for the assistant director of a pro-Israel media watchdog organization and two other people, related to graffiti spray-painted in the Leslieville neighbourhood on Nov. 13, 2024.
Crown prosecutor Matthew Bloch withdrew the charges Tuesday for 17 counts of mischief under $5000 that had been laid against Honest Reporting Canada’s assistant director Robert Walker and the two other defendants, The Toronto Star reported March 4.
The three people charged contributed $1,000 each to SickKids Foundation to offset the costs of graffiti removal in Toronto, according to The Star‘s report.
While the original police media release merely described the graffiti as “language related to the Middle East conflict,” the graffiti messages documented on social media included “FUCK GAZA” and “Rape ≠ Resistance.” These appeared to have been spray-painted using a stencil along about four blocks of Queen Street East on the city’s southeast side, between Grant Street and Logan Avenue.
The mischief counts for the graffiti were deemed hate-motivated by Toronto Police Services’ Hate Crime Unit in a media release announcing the charges Nov. 17—although police didn’t specify the nature of the messages beyond stating they related to the conflict in the Middle East.
The CJN requested comment and confirmation of details with the Ministry of the Attorney General of Ontario, but media relations staff did not return The CJN’s request by press time.
Walker has not replied to numerous requests for comment from The CJN since the charges were laid in November, including a request made following the Toronto Star report that the charges were dropped.
Leora Shemesh, the lawyer who represented Walker and the other two defendants on the 17 counts each of mischief under $5000, appeared in court Jan. 24 and again March 4. Shemesh has declined multiple requests for comment from The CJN, including on Feb. 26, when the matter was dealt with briefly in the morning, and had been in a set date phase, the Ministry of the Attorney General told The CJN.
On Tuesday, reported the Toronto Star, Bloch said there was a public cost to removing the spray-painted messages on public property.
The Crown prosecutor told the judge the defendants’ hospital foundation donations compensated the public for that cost.
In addition, Bloch said he “has initiated a review of all spray painting and or mischief files in order to ‘ensure consistency,'” after comments by Shemesh, according to the Toronto Star.
Shemesh provided the Crown with a list of cases where charges were withdrawn, “including against people charged with assaulting pro-Israel people.”
Court hearings resume for the Honest Reporting Canada staffer charged with spray-painting graffiti in Torontohttps://t.co/ZtkLJTgulk
— The Canadian Jewish News (@TheCJN) February 27, 2025
Pro-Palestinian activists and media outlets following Walker’s court case had promoted a letter-writing campaign and petition to Canada Revenue Agency, the federal tax regulator, to investigate the pro-Israel media advocacy organization’s charitable tax status in the wake of its employee’s alleged involvement in the incident.
Walker’s name and photo remained on Honest Reporting Canada’s website, where he is identified as the assistant director, throughout the legal proceedings.
On Jan. 17, Walker had a letter published in the Waterloo Record arguing in response to earlier reports, that there was no evidence that an Israeli air strike had killed two sisters who were to have started studies at the University of Waterloo.
In Toronto and surrounding areas, reports of concerning, and in some cases violent signs, stickers, and graffiti have increased since the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel’s military response in Gaza. Toronto Police added a form to its website in November 2023 to make it easier to report hateful graffiti.
As reported by The CJN in 2024, areas of Toronto such as the west end neighbourhoods of Davenport and side streets near Ossington Avenue have also seen violent and offensive images contained in some of the street-side messages, including “Solidarity Means Attack” and “Fuck Off Zionists,” while posters pasted up near a high school feature ‘resistance’ language alongside illustrations of women bearing assault rifles.
Some of these messages—along with another, “Burn Zionism to the ground”—were found in the Cabbagetown area and images of them shared, in social media posts denouncing the messages, in September 2024.
More recently, on Queen Street west of Spadina Avenue, in late February and March, posters called for a rally outside the “Zionist consulate” to commemorate the self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell, a former US Air Force serviceman who set himself on fire one year earlier, on Feb. 25, 2024, outside of the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC, in protest of US support for Israel during its Gaza offensive following the Oct. 7 attacks.
Toronto city councillor and budget chief Shelley Carroll previously told The CJN in an email that the city’s graffiti management plan had been updated “to respond quickly to hate-related incidents,” and the city committed last November to relaunch its anti-hate public education campaign this year, including a city staff-led review of the plan, to ensure there is a rapid response to inflammatory graffiti.
Meanwhile, antisemitic graffiti found in nearby cities in recent weeks include swastikas found etched into bathrooms three times within a month at the central public library in Whitby, Ont., and a swastika was also burned with chemicals onto a popular soccer field in the area, in August. The Town of Whitby voted to ask Ottawa to ban the Nazi swastika and pledged to develop better internal protocols on how to handle hate symbols when found in the Durham Region municipality in the future.
In Markham, Ont., two kosher food businesses run by La Briut were vandalized in January, with antisemitic graffiti left behind in one of the two locations. (The owners of La Briut declined The CJN’s request for an interview.)
In Cornwall, Ont., last October, police charged two people, a 19-year-old and a 15-year-old, in connection with hateful graffiti, including a “Nazi flag spray-painted onto a business and a hateful phrase directed towards Jewish people, according to police,” CTV News reported last year.
This town had a swastika burned into a soccer field. Residents now want to ban the symbol nationwidehttps://t.co/9KoqcjRdWk
— The Canadian Jewish News (@TheCJN) February 11, 2025
