OP-ED: Mezuzah vandalism exposes political & policing failures in fight against antisemitism

"Mayor Olivia Chow called the removal of more than 20 mezuzahs from the doors of seniors living in the north Bathurst building an 'outrageous and vile act' of antisemitism."

Source: X

It takes a whole lot of chutzpah or a total disconnect from the reality of one’s actions that have enabled anti-Semitism in Toronto to post a comment decrying the obscene vandalism directed at Jews living in a seniors building in north Toronto.

Mayor Olivia Chow called the removal of more than 20 mezuzahs from the doors of seniors living in the north Bathurst building an “outrageous and vile act” of antisemitism.

Who does she think enabled the escalating anti-Semitic acts?

Why stand up, Ms. Chow?

She also indicated that the police are “investigating.”

Indeed. Just like they’ve “investigated” the hundreds of acts of vandalism, harassment, hate speech and other abuse directed towards Toronto’s Jewish community over the past two years.

Let’s file all of those “investigations” under dead end. Few arrests have been made.

In the grand scheme of things, ripping a mezuzah off a door frame of Jewish household— as occurred at this Toronto Seniors Housing building — is so evil and intrusive, it is clear to me the perpetrator wanted to intimidate, even terrify, his or her victims.

Mezuzahs are small cases (usually decorative) containing a scroll with Torah verses intended to signify one’s Jewish identity and ironically to protect the household.

Usually it is affixed to the front door but in our house, we have mezuzahs on doors leading to nearly every room. We also have a practice of kissing the mezuzah every time we leave our home for a trip.

I suspect the motivation was to frighten those seniors into not expressing or being proud to display their Jewish identity.

But think of this for a moment.

It also takes a heckuva lot of work to remove mezuzahs. Many are nailed to doorframes or stuck on with super glue.

This was a well-planned act. The perpetrator had to have come with tools to remove them.

But small wonder considering no one seems to have our backs anymore.

Chow has done everything to enable the obscene rise in anti-Semitism, between the recent decision to raise the flag of a non-existent state (Palestine) at City Hall and publicly calling the conflict in Gaza a genocide during a speech to the National Council of Canadian Muslims.

Those two examples occurred last month.

Never mind two years of permitting Jew haters to march through Toronto’s Jewish neighbourhoods and to protest on the streets of downtown Toronto — breaking so many laws — while the police have stood by like a bunch of impotent fools or have arrested the odd Jewish person who dared speak up or waved an Israeli flag.

Speaking of impotent, the statement from our Jewish solicitor general Michael Kerzner — who is supposed to oversee Ontario’s police forces — was downright appalling.

While sitting on his hands for two years, he had the audacity to claim he was “disturbed” to learn the mezuzahs were “desecrated.”

Well Mr. Kerzner, let me say this: We are disturbed and angry that you’ve done nothing to make our police force do its job and in burying your head in the sand, you too have enabled these horrific acts.

He also said the perpetrators “should turn themselves in” to police.

What world is this man living in?

Has he not witnessed the amount of joy the haters feel with their acts to try to intimidate Toronto’s Jewish community?

If you ask me, Kerzner should turn himself in and resign.

Of course PM Mark Carney said nothing.

He’s been too busy over the past few days shmoozing in Washington, D.C. with FIFA World Cup officials and pretending he’s really doing something about affordable housing—while being on the wrong side of history about Palestine and allowing an influx of immigrants into this country who hate Jews.

From the feds on down to our municipal politicians, no one has our backs except for Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre who spoke about the Jew hatred at a Toronto synagogue on Sunday.

The others seem to want to strip us of our Jewish identity, or in the case of our provincial politicians don’t want to upset the terrorist sympathizers.

The desecration of those 20-plus mezuzahs is proof of that.

Apparently, the police are investigating what happened as a possible hate crime.

I hate to break it to them but they’re two years too late.