Toronto police investigating music video played at Al-Quds Day rally

People participate in the Al-Quds Day rally in 2016. B’NAI BRITH CANADA PHOTO

Toronto police are investigating a complaint alleging that a music video played at last summer’s Al-Quds Day rally glorified violence against Jews.

According to published reports, the video featured the song Declare it a Popular Revolution.

The whole incident was monitored by the American Center for Democracy (ACD), a New York-based group “dedicated to exposing and monitoring the enemies of freedom and democracy.”

READ: CITY OF TORONTO TO STUDY HOW TO STOP HATE RALLIES

The Toronto Sun reported that the lyrics to Declare it a Popular Revolution, as translated by the ACD, include lines such as: “With a Palestinian woman (armed with a knife) we defeated them”; “Fill (the bottle) to the top with gasoline, and snatch from him the M-16”; “Stab whoever you see”; “Make us happy with bombing the bus”; and “Cut off (their heads), stab (them), run over (them), launch an attack on them.”

The complaint was launched by Charles McVety, president of the Canada Christian College, and Frank Dimant, chair of the college’s Israel studies department and a former executive director of B’nai Brith Canada.

McVety told The CJN that he went to the police because “we now have 60 ISIS fighters back in the country with another 100 to come, so the stakes are rising. The fear of hardcore terrorism in Canada is becoming more and more acute.

People participate in the Al-Quds Day rally in 2016. B’NAI BRITH CANADA PHOTO

“To ‘make us happy and blow up buses’ – that’s not what we want in Toronto.”

He said he believes it’s important for law enforcement “to get ahead of this, rather than in other jurisdictions, where they have gotten behind it and allowed it to snowball.”

Following last summer’s Al-Quds Day rally in Toronto, the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (FSWC) filed a hate speech complaint with police, alleging that a speaker said, in English and Arabic, that, “Israel, Zionism, should and must know … it is the law that whoever oppresses, he has to be eliminated. One day or the other.”

The FSWC is “continuing to address our concerns with police, with the hopes that charges will be laid,” spokesperson Avital Borisovsky said.

Asked who from her organization recorded the Al-Quds rally in Toronto, Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, founder and president of the ACD, told The CJN, “we don’t reveal our sources and it’s none of your business.”

The CJN revealed last summer that a good part of June’s rally took place on the north lawn of Queen’s Park, which is city property. Demonstrators then traversed the south lawn, which belongs to the provincial government, en route to the U.S. consulate on University Avenue.

Last month, Toronto’s executive committee referred Ward 10 Councillor James Pasternak’s request for a strategy to deal with protests by extremist groups to the city manager.

Pasternak said the city needs a “legal framework” to determine its options, should groups hold a rally without signing the required pledge to obey Toronto’s anti-discrimination policies, or if they sign it and violate it.

People participate in the Al-Quds Day rally in 2016. B’NAI BRITH CANADA PHOTO

Last year, the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board suspended one of its teachers for glorifying terrorists and calling for violence against Israelis in a speech at the Al-Quds protest.

At the 2013 rally, Elias Hazineh, a former head of Palestine House, delivered an “ultimatum” to Israelis: “You have to leave Jerusalem. You have to leave Palestine. We say get out or you’re dead! We give them two minutes and then we start shooting.”

Jewish advocacy groups asked police to investigate Hazineh for possible hate crimes, but no charges were laid.

Al-Quds Day was started by Iran in 1979 to “liberate” Jerusalem.