Indian envoy warns of 'big red line,' days after charges laid in Nijjar case
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
Vaccine mandate protesters’ use of Nazi imagery and comparisons to the Holocaust are angering Jewish organizations.
“The presence of these symbols either speaks to willful ignorance or hate -- one of the two,” Michael Levitt, president and CEO of Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Toronto-based Jewish human rights group, told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview.
“There are ways to be able to push back on authority and have legitimate debate,” he said. “But when you start going to these overtly racist and xenophobic symbols that are often adopted by white supremacists and other extremists, there's just no excuse.”
At several demonstrations across the country, protesters have been seen wearing yellow stars, similar to the ones Jews were forced to wear in Nazi-occupied Europe. There have also been photos of protesters’ signs directly or indirectly comparing the implementation of vaccine mandates to the Nazis' actions during the Holocaust. Levitt said that he has also been alarmed to see swastikas drawn on candidates' campaign signs.
“These are symbols of a genocidal, racist ideology,” Levitt said, saying he finds it “completely unacceptable” for people to compare their anger towards COVID-19 policies to the historical plight of European Jews during the Second World War.
Between 1941 and 1945, Nazis and collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across Germany and German-occupied Europe. The Nazis also murdered those who they perceived to have racial and biological inferiority including Roma, Germans with disabilities, some Slavic peoples and members of the LGBTQ community, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
With this history in mind, Levitt said, protesters using Nazi symbolism is “at its root … an affront to the memory of every victim of the Holocaust, and the survivors.”
B'nai Brith Canada, a national Jewish human rights organization, has long been tracking incidents involving Holocaust imagery and antisemitic statements. One recent incident they noted involved one woman at a protest selling T-shirts with a yellow Star of David and the word "Covidcaust."
“I think Canadians across the country are disgusted by these protesters that are comparing their circumstances to those who suffered at the hands of the Nazis in one of the greatest atrocities the world has ever seen,” Michael Mostyn, CEO of B'nai Brith Canada, said in a phone interview with CTVNews.ca.
His group recorded 2,610 antisemitic incidents last year, which was the fifth consecutive record-setting year for antisemitism in Canada by its calculations. B'nai Brith Canada says 44 per cent of violent antisemitic incidents in 2020 were COVID-19-related, with Jews being spat on and otherwise assaulted, driven in part by antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Last week, some photos on social media showed a protester in Calgary holding up a picture of Anne Frank, the teenager who described her family’s plight in her diary before she died in a Nazi concentration camp.
“To compare yourself to Anne Frank or compare yourself to a victim of the Nazis is outrageous,” Mostyn said, adding that it is crucial for politicians and those running for office to call out antisemism whenever it happens among their supporters.
Paired with a national summit on Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hate in July, the federal government also held a national antisemitism summit. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government announced there that it is allocating $6 million in funding for developing 150 projects under a program to support communities that face the risks of hate crimes.
Mostyn also called for social media platforms to be more proactive to stamp out antisemitic posts. “We need to treat this seriously, both in the online space where some of these rallies are being planned and where disinformation is being pushed very aggressively,” he said.
“Some political leaders are speaking up against these vile comparisons. And I think that as good, honest Canadians, we just need to stand up and say it’s not appropriate.”
With files from The Canadian Press
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
The U.S. paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that Israel was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah against the wishes of the U.S.
Footage from dozens of security cameras in the area of Drake’s Bridle Path mansion could be the key to identifying the suspect responsible for shooting and seriously injuring a security guard outside the rapper’s sprawling home early Tuesday morning, a former Toronto homicide detective says.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
Susan Buckner, best known for playing peppy Rydell High School cheerleader Patty Simcox in the 1978 classic movie musical 'Grease,' has died. She was 72.
Accused killer Jeremy Skibicki could have a challenging time convincing a judge that he is not criminally responsible for the deaths of four Indigenous women, a legal analyst says.
A Calgary bylaw requiring businesses to charge a minimum bag fee and only provide single-use items when requested has officially been tossed.
Two Nova Scotia men are dead after a boat they were travelling in sank in the Annapolis River in Granville Centre, N.S., on Monday.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.