Volunteers from two Jewish protection organizations have deployed to the campus of University of Toronto, where last semester Jewish students were attacked by masked pro-terror jihadis. Now the Jewish students have “back.”
Last Friday, the pro-terror protesters returned to the university’s downtown campus, chanting their outrage at the university’s president: “Meric Gertler, you can’t hide. We charge you with genocide.”
This time, Jews were protected. JForce Security Inc., a registered security agency for provides neighborhood patrols, security at events and private investigations, deployed volunteers to the rally, according to Canadian Jewish News (CJN).
A second Jewish safety patrol, Magen Herut Canada, likewise deployed muscled volunteers to help protect the Jewish students on campus.
The police don't keep Jewish kids safe. So our community launched another volunteer security team: Magen Herut Canada.
These students had zero safety issues at their University of Toronto event yesterday.
This is how it's done.
But it's appalling we have to do it ourselves. pic.twitter.com/tLuPZQt6ml
— dahlia kurtz ✡︎ דליה קורץ (@DahliaKurtz) August 31, 2024
During Friday’s protest by a mob of some 150 shouting pro-terror demonstrators, the volunteers stood by to protect Jewish counter protesters and others.
“We’re just here to maintain as much order as we can and make sure the Jewish community is safe,” Aaron Hadida, founder of Magen Herut Canada, told CJN. Hadida and several other volunteers wearing black shirts that read “Surveillance Team” on the back, stood outside the campus alongside a team of Toronto police officers.
Tochi Osuji, a non-Jewish volunteer with Magen Herut Canada, told CJN, “It doesn’t require you to be Jewish to see what’s going on … We’re not here to fight people. We’re here to protect. If we see kids attacked, that might play out a little different,” he said. “But I feel like its just our physical presence that changes the dynamic.”
Osuji added that he is trained in martial arts.
The Jewish protection volunteers were available to accompanied Jewish students and staff through the campus, according to the report.
But antisemitism in Toronto — and for that matter across Canada — has not been confined to the university. Within the past month alone there have been at least two incidents of violent attacks on Jews in Toronto.
This week a Jewish mother and her son were attacked and beaten in broad daylight in Toronto.
A couple weeks earlier an 88-year-old man was bodyslammed under a bus — just for being Jewish.
Eleven months of beatings, attacks, and threats from masked mobs calling for our… pic.twitter.com/ahcxrn2lQX
— dahlia kurtz ✡︎ דליה קורץ (@DahliaKurtz) September 7, 2024
After two months of pro-terror encampment on the campus that began in July, an Ontario judge finally called an end to the hate and ordered the camp disbanded.
Now, the antisemitic anarchists have discovered to their dismay that the university has finally decided to enforce the policies intended to protect all the students, rather than a select few.
A “user guide” on the university’s website published in August reminded students that “affixing signs, posters, or flyers (including the use of chalk, marker, paint and projections) outside designated areas” is designated as a form of vandalism.
In a statement released last Friday, the university said, “All members of the U of T community continue to be free to exercise their free speech rights and advocate for causes without erecting structures, blocking building access or occupying property overnight.”
Following the October 7, 2023 invasion of Israel and massacre of 1,200 people by thousands of Hamas-led terrorists from Gaza, the University of Toronto played host to encampments of so-called “pro-Palestine” demonstrators demanding U o T divest from Israel and sever ties with Israeli academic institutions.
Some of the pro-terror demonstrators violently prevented Jewish students and staff from entering the campus or various buildings, others attacked students for holding Israeli flags.
Faculty member Dr. Brian Schwartz said he witnessed a person being punched in the face. “I heard chants of globalizing the intifada and was told that Jews should go back to Europe,” he wrote in a May 2024 op-ed for The National Post.
Masked protesters who controlled access to university property successfully avoided accountability for their actions with their wannabe terrorist face coverings.
“Signs glorifying the “resistance,” clearly referring to acts of October 7, and “Free Palestine from the River to the Sea”, referring to ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Middle East, were prominent. Peaceful co-existence was absent from the rhetoric,” Schwartz wrote.
“The message is clear: people on campus — not only Jews — have learned that hate speech, intimidation and bullying prevails over constructive debate in Canada’s largest academic institution. The University of Toronto, a bastion of high academic ideals for which I have been proud to serve, is currently not a safe space physically, intellectually or emotionally, for a specific and targeted population.”
Unsurprisingly, Jewish students at University of Toronto — as with those at other top universities across North America — felt unsafe and were deeply apprehensive about starting the new semester.
Perhaps they don’t feel that way now.
