MONTREAL — It was no accident that the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) chose the Tifereth Beth David Jerusalem Synagogue (TBDJ) last week to present a preview of its report on Canadian Digital Terrorism and Hate.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper
It was a logical decision, as SWC associate dean Rabbi Abraham Cooper told The CJN, since the TBDJ and several other local synagogues, a daycare and a school were recently attacked by a vandal who shattered windows at each location all in one night.
“That’s why we chose here,” he said.
At the press conference – also attended by retired Jean Brébeuf Parish priest Father John Walsh, TBDJ spiritual leader Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz, Beth Israel Beth Aaron’s Rabbi Reuben Poupko, Cote St. Luc (CSL) mayor Anthony Housefather, Hampstead mayor William Steinberg, and police Cmdr. Sylvain Bissonnette of Station 9 in CSL – Rabbi Cooper displayed several dozen web pages that pointed to a burgeoning use of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to spread hate and pro-terrorist messages.
They included:
• A Facebook page called Kill-a-Jew;
• Numerous pages all over the world targeting not only Jews, but also, increasingly, Christians and Muslims;
• A Twitter feed depicting Adolf Hitler as a “Noble Wolf.”
For Rabbi Cooper and the SWC, the situation in Canada is better, since freedom of speech here doesn’t extend to disseminating hate, or as he put it, “crossing the line.”
Still, he said, there have been noteworthy problems in Canada, such as a server based in Toronto that has carried a how-to site on making explosives.
“It’s highly unusual to find this type of information on a Canadian server,” Rabbi Cooper said. “We give Canada a high grade, but not a perfect one.”
Other Canada-relevant pages and “chatter” have included praising (in Arabic) the recent Montreal vandalism as retribution against Israel, as well as praising the campaign to boycott the purchase of Israeli shoes at a local store.
Rabbi Cooper cited the notorious case of former University of Toronto student Salman Hossein, whose site Filthy Jewish Terrorists advocated the murder of Jews. Hossein is now believed to be living outside Canada, but he had no trouble finding a server in another country to host his site after his original one was shut down.
Rabbi Cooper, who also met with officials in Montreal and Ottawa to present advance copies of SWC’s 13th interactive report on Digital Terrorism and Hate for 2011, noted that it’s mostly young people, not adults, who are aware what’s taking place on social networking sites.
“It is not more hate,” Rabbi Cooper stressed, but “more exposure in the mainstream and social media. It’s an incubator of hate, a multiplier, and provides empowerment.”
Other participants referred to the recent Montreal vandalism as a sign that while antisemitism is not as prevalent as it was decades ago, it remains a problem.
“It still hurts,” said Rabbi Steinmetz about the recent attacks. “It is critical to the health of a democracy that every member condemn every [antisemitic] event.”
Rabbi Poupko said that while the attacks were disturbing to the community, historically the most serious attacks have been followed by “arrests and convictions.”However, there have been no arrests made in connection with the Dec. 16 attacks.
