"This Is Your October 7"

"Exporting the revolution, giving birth to and exporting terrorist groups is part of the Iranian regime."

"The names [of the groups] are not important. Terror is the most important mission inside and outside Iran, outside is even more important."

"These regimes have to reflect their image, superiority and power, in order to expand. Iranians actually cooperate with Russia and China. They learned it from them."

"Western countries are kind of honest and naive, and in obeying the law and liberal and democratic values, they sometimes fall in that trap of not knowing they help these dictators."

"They use your systems of being honest and good and trying to help the poor, and they abuse it." 

Beni Sabti, terrorism expert, Institute for National Security Studies

Muslims pray outside McGill University's Roddick Gate during pro-Palestinian protest in Montreal Monday October 7, 2024 on the one year anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel. (John Mahoney / MONTREAL GAZETTE)

 

Born in Iran, Bani Sabti with the Institute for National Security Studies specializes in Iranian culture, influence and media. He knows, intimately, whereof he speaks. And he doubtless views the West and its governments as credulous fools. Anti-Israel supporters of Hamas flaunting their presence in the streets of Canada do not appear to alarm anyone in authority in the country. While they passionately espouse the glories of the religion of peace, he knows that Islam regards itself as the 'place of peace', while regarding non-Islamic countries as 'places of war'. The faithful in Islam are obligated to help transform such places of war into places of peace.

 

Massing to enact mass prayers outside of churches, in front of an Israeli consulate or embassy, they boldly proclaim their mission, but no one appears to be interested in that mission. The open threats against Canada's Jewish population, the 'pro-Palestinian' mobs march in residential areas where Jews are known to live, unison-shouting 'go back to Poland', 'Final Solution', and 'From the river to the sea'. Jews whose residences are nearby are informed by police not to antagonize the mobs. No move is made to remove the threatening processions disturbing the peace and tranquility of residential areas.

 

This is a new Canada that appears to value a conciliatory approach to unlawful, threatening behaviour to any of its citizens, while instructing those same citizens  under fire by malignant forces to lock themselves away in their homes. The police are invested in the safety of all municipal dwellers in areas they serve, and for Jews that safety is to ignore the viral threats surrounding them while police spend their time aiding the malefactors to 'keep the peace'.

 

Beni Sabti was born and raised in the Islamic Republic. Demonstrations and mass street prayers became the norm during the 1978 Iranian Revolution. Islamic students in North America and in Europe took part in those mass street prayers along with those taking place in Iran. Their efforts aided the Islamic Revolution to succeed and the Shah of Iran to be dethroned and exiled along with his family. 

 

British-American Professor Emeritus of Persian studies at the University of California, Hamid Algar, described mosques as the principal organizers of the revolution, where "mass prayers, demonstrations and martyrdom were -- until the very last stage -- its principal weapons".  

 

According to a recent Global News report, some 450 individuals involved with Hamas have ties to Canada, either through temporary visas, landed immigration status or studying at Canadian universities. This, in the last decade during the governance of the Liberal party when security clearances were lax, and the government policy was one of open doors, declared so by then-prime minister Justin Trudeau. Thus, immigrants, refugee-class and migrants streamed into Canada to enrich its culture and social life through an Islamist lens.

 

The Palestine Youth Movement held a downtown rally from Yonge and Dundas Sts. to the Israeli Consulate on Tuesday, March 18, 2025, before shutting down the intersection to traffic. Photo by Caryma Sa'd /Special to the Toronto Sun

 

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Canada ensures that freedom of speech and the right to peaceful gatherings are enabled, rights reflected in any democratic country. It is doubtful that those Charter Rights took into account mass demonstrations against an identifiable minority demographic, where threats against Jews, and support of terrorist groups proscribed by Canada's own laws, and destruction of both public and private property takes place, would be regarded as a civil right. 

 

A mass prayer session that took place directly in front of Montreal's Notre-Dame Basilica, many more in the streets, and at times deliberately blocking traffic, all point to the reality that while these demonstrations initially attacked Jews in Canada, the intended and eventual targets are broader and encompass all of society guilty of not having submitted to the religion of peace. 

 

Beni Sabti points out that the passion of faith requires from its adherents more than religious fervor and a commitment to get out in public and loudly and fervently declare its intentions which only they alone are able to adequately interpret as a general threat. Money, he explains, funds terror, and its function complements the sympathy of oblivion that takes place in countries of the West. Where in the past western intellectuals have been sympathetic to Islamic political movements, their numbers have swelled.

 

As willing contributors to the Islamist totalitarian agenda, academics and unions, presumably in support of the 'underdog', have gone out of their way to assist the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic Republic of Iran, monied and influential Qatar, and all their dedicated terrorist groups in a jihad comprised of persuasion on the one hand, violence on the other, achieve the goal of Islamist conquest.  

 

Palestinian supporters pray at the encampment on McGill University campus Monday, May 6, 2024 in Montreal.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz

 

A mere two weeks following the October 7, 2023 terror attack in southern Israel -- by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, fortified by enthusiastic Palestinian civilians from Gaza, estimated as four thousand-strong in number that launched a deadly rampage of mass murder, torture, rape and hostage-taking -- Montreal imam Adil Charkaoui declaimed before a large anti-Israel gathering for Allah to "kill the enemies of the people of Gaza and to spare none of them". 

"This is your October 7. Closing the door and being safe inside the houses and not knowing what is going on outside and not filming, it's your kibbutz, it's your village."

"Closing the door, and saying, OK, we are safe ... but they come. This is the problem. When you retreat, they come after you. When you give them more space physically, they will come, and they will burn offices, and they will burn churches."

"The masses in the streets, it's not just about praying. It's about conquering your city. It's about conquering the streets. This is something very, very dangerous..."

"Canadians don't know about this culture. That this is what is going on in the Middle East. Those who are in the streets are the winners, they take the regime. This is what happened in Iran, in Syria, in Iraq. Walking is a conquering thing, so Canada has to deal with that."

"It's their state, you are the enemy now. This is what they are telling you. You can't do anything against masses..."

"If Canada does not want to be a victim of the next October 7, it needs to neutralize these mass gatherings."

Beni Sabti 

Imam Adil Charkaoui, speaking Arabic, denounced "Zionist aggressors" and called on Allah to "kill the enemies of the people of Gaza and to spare none of them." Photo X

 

Hate Crimes in Toronto Courtesy of 'Pro-Hamas' Protests

"There is no logic as to the choice of this location other than the large local Jewish population."

"This appears to me to be a refusal by the city of Toronto to enforce existing laws."

Member of Parliament, Liberal Anthony Housefather

"The targeting of the Avenue Road overpass in north Toronto by the anti-Israel mob is far from random."

"[It is an attempt] to intimidate the local Jewish community."

Michael Levitt, head, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center

Graffiti reading 'Free Palestine' was left on the rear doors of a Jewish grocer in North York after an early morning fire there on Wednesday. Toronto police says its hate crime unit is investigating the incident. (CBC)

Anti-Israel, Jew-hating demonstrators masquerading as 'pro-Palestinian' demonstrators in Toronto have hit upon a scheme to make it quite clear that the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza is a mere distraction for them; their demonstrative target is not Israel, defending itself from the savagery of the terrorist group Hamas for whom the demonstrators have the greatest admiration, but the Jewish population that has called Canada home for centuries. 

 

The relatively newly-arrived Palestinians and other Arab Muslims who now call Canada their home have failed to integrate into the social culture of a country celebrating itself as a multicultural haven that incorporates equality and human rights into its foundational values, but has chosen instead to nurture the enmities of tribal and religious disparities focusing on a single target: Jews whom they despise as usurpers of 'Palestinian' land. Land which as the original Palestinians, Jews inherited as ancestral rights.

 

The focus of these 'demonstrators' has been an overpass over Highway 401, that dissects the city of Toronto. Muslim prayer services have been led by men wearing keffiyehs, in the roads approaching the bridge. Palestinian flag-carrying crowds armed with placards comparing Zionism to fascism blockade streets and intersections around the overpass. Red and green smoke bombs are set off by the demonstrators, along with a steady noise of honking and chants of 'Free, free Palestine!'

 

Obligingly, Toronto Police Services dispatch officers to assist in the daily closures of the bridge for the purpose, the public is informed, to preserve the safety of 'demonstrators' and 'counter-demonstrators'. "Due to public safety concerns, the Avenue Road Bridge will be closed", the Toronto Police update read. The overpass is one of over a dozen such bridges over the 401 highway.The anti-Israel protest was set up in the midst of the Canadian Jewish community.

 

The only action taken by police was to temporarily apprehend a 58-year-old woman with an Israeli flag, reportedly seen on camera to be making a gesture of throat-slitting. Summarily arrested and charged with "Uttering Threats/Death or Bodily Harm". Needless to say, none of the anti-Israel crowd shouting the slogan "From the river to the sea", "gas the Jews!", or any other such tender expressions of regard have been arrested and charged with spreading hate. 

A five-minute drive from the shuttered Avenue Road Bridge is the location of over a dozen synagogues in Canada's centre of the Jewish community. It's where a dense concentration of Jewish bakeries are located, along with restaurants and shops catering to traditional Jewish cultural tastes. Elie Wiesel Park, named after famed author and Holocaust survivor, is located a kilometre from the bridge. The pro-Hamas demonstrators are not situating themselves in the heart of Toronto's Jewish community because they so admire Jews, but to mercilessly harass them.

Shouldn't all this be illegal? Hate-mongering, so to speak. Threatening, taunting, slandering. Coordination of the demonstrations have been arranged by a group called Palesign, working together with another group, Toronto4Palestine, a regular organizer of the anti-Israel blockades and street demonstrations that have dominated the news and people's aggravated tensions, since the October 7 attacks in Israel when Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Palestinian civilians signalled they were protesting their 'oppression' by rape, torture, mutilation and mass slaughter of Israeli infants, girls and entire families.

"Seems like the target is a Jewish neighbourhood, because it is."

"Gutless politicians say the words to your boss — not to Twitter."

"If you break the law, you should be punished."

"Apply the law to everyone who breaks it equally. Stop emboldening the anti-Semitism you’ve ignored for 3 months."

Melissa Lantsman, Conservative Member of Parliament

A photo by the group Palesign documenting a blockade of the Avenue Road Bridge in north Toronto. Photo by Veronika Sykoro

"I’ve directly engaged my provincial and municipal counterparts, as well as the @TorontoPolice Chief. Those who commit hate crimes need to be held accountable. Everyone in our cities, our communities and our neighbourhoods has the right to be safe."

"Antisemitism no longer merely lurks in the shadows. It is now increasingly in plain sight. This is a telltale sign of the erosion of respect that we owe to each other, as Canadians. And it needs to stop."

"Police are investigating arson at a Jewish owned business after it was firebombed. Antisemitism in plain sight demands everyone step up their fight. Everyone should stand together to condemn this heinous act and stop the scourge of antisemitism and hate."

MP Marco Mendcino, Liberal Member of Parliament

Love, Not Hate

"It's the reflex. Go. Go to the fire. Stop the action. Stop the activity. Don't let no one get hurt."

"I'm not a hero. I'm just some dude."

"I wish I could have saved everybody in there."

"I wish I could have done more."

Rich Fierro, former U.S. military

 

"He had just gotten a new job at a Colorado Springs FedEx distribution centre, and was thrilled to have received his first paycheque.:"

He couldn't wait to save enough money to get his own apartment."

Family of 22-year-old Raymond Green Vance

Richard Fierro, right, talks with his brother Ed Fierro about his efforts to subdue the gunman in Saturday's fatal shooting at Club Q, during a news conference Monday, Nov. 21, 2022, outside his home in in Colorado Springs, Colo. (AP Photo/Jack Dempsey)

Richard Fierro served fourteen years in the U.S. military, was awarded the Bronze Star twice, serving as a field artillery officer in three tours of Iraq and one of Afghanistan. He just happened to be at a Colorado LGBTQ club in support of a drag show performer who was a friend of his daughter. When gunfire broke out, his army training took over.

 

He grasped the armour-wearing gunman, pulling him to the floor, then took possession of a pistol the man was wielding and beat him with it. This followed the gunman's shooting to death of five people and wounding at least 17 others. Among the dead was Fierro's daughter's boyfriend, Raymond Vance.

Colorado Springs' mayor, John Suhers -- where the assault on the gay bar took place -- had earlier identified Mr. Fierro as one of two 'heroes' who had sprung into action. Thomas James was the other, who "saved a lot of lives" by taking the gunman out of commission, at the Colorado Springs Club Q.

Mr. Fierro described a young man who had been dancing with his daughter, pulling her away to safety when the shooting began. And he described a drag performer who kicked the gunman with high heels while Fierro held down the 22-year-old shooter. He praised James for removing the rifle from the gunman's grasp, an AR, and kicking him.

When police arrived on the scene, they saw Fierro holding the gun he had taken from the shooter, detaining Fierro for an hour, questioning him. He spoke of the shock of his daughter's boyfriend's death. A young man he had known since his daughter was in high school. "He's a good kid. And I loved him", said Fierro.

 

The young man was there, at the club as a first-time visitor, as a supporter of the LGBTQ community. The families of all five shooting victims spoke of their loss, of their love and admiration for their lost children, sister, wife. Kurt Paugh spoke of his wife Ashley who he described as an "amazing mother", who worked at a non-profit helping to find homes for foster children. "This included working with the LGBTQ community to find welcoming foster placements for children", he added.

Two transgender club bartenders were murdered in the assault, both young, with their lives ahead of them, cut tragically short.

In this image from El Paso County District Court video, Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22, center, could be seen slumped over in a chair in a brief video appearance from jail in Colorado Springs, Colo., Wednesday, Nov. 23, 2022. | El Paso County District Court via AP

Hate Crimes in Canada

"It's obviously disturbing and alarming [increase in racist attacks]. But we have to remember the vast majority of Canadians are exceptionally tolerant and welcoming and accepting to minorities of all kinds."
"It's tricky [establishing a national strategy on hate crimes, particularly online]." But when people are engaged in really vociferous rhetoric online, that can also fuel and foreshadow violence off line, so we have to curb it."
Andrea Freedman, president of the Jewish Federation of Ottawa

"We were obviously surprised by the data, and not really surprised."
"It [the Muslim society's own tracking mechanism for racist attacks] doesn't track crimes based on their perceived identities."
"Islamophobia doesn't just target Muslims. It targets people perceived to be Muslim, like Sikhs, Christian Arabs and those from Southeast Asian communities."
Ihsaan Gardee, executive director, National Council of Canadian Muslims 

People hold up a signs during a demonstration to oppose motion M103 in Montreal, Saturday, March 4, 2017.
THE CANADIAN PRESS IMAGES/Graham Hughes

The latest report out by Statistics Canada on hate crimes taking place throughout the country in 2017 contained few surprises. That there would be a jump, although it is even so well known that up to 2/3 of total hate crimes that occur are not even reported, was expected. Casual narratives of ongoing incidents attest to the constant presence of prejudice, hostility and hatred directed against certain groups in society. Blacks in Canada have experienced incidents of prejudice since forever and continue to, accounting for 16 percent of all hate crimes reported in 2017. They characterize the most common race-, or ethnicity-related hate crime.

A doubling of incidents directed at Muslims was seen between 2016 and 2017. There were 139 incidents of hate crimes in 2015 and that number had soared to 349 the following year after an initial decline for that population group. The overall percentage of such crimes directed against Muslims in Canada represent 17 percent of the total, as opposed to 16 percent for Blacks. And then there is the perennial, most-favoured-by-racists target, the Jewish population accounting for 18 percent of all nationwide hate crimes; the second consecutive year of increases identifying Jews as the most targeted victims of hate crimes.

Jews, and undoubtedly Muslims and Blacks as well, must take steps to ensure security in high-profile gathering places such as synagogues and community centres where attacks are most common by employing electronic security measures along with hiring security guards. In a country like Canada, one which was built on immigration and where a general consensus exists that people of various backgrounds have traditionally integrated and accepted one another it is all the more shocking that the pernicious persistence of such incidents occur, grow in numbers and continue to threaten.

Police forces across the country dealt with a record number of hate crimes in 2017, Statistics Canada data found. Here, anti-Semitic graffiti that was spray painted on the door of The Glebe Minyan in Ottawa in 2016 is cleaned up. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press)

Yet a more comprehensive Statistics Canada victimization survey dating from 2014 found respondents to be victims of over 330,00 incidents believed by those suffering them to have been motivated by hate; and two-thirds of such incidents failed to be reported to police. Even so Statistics Canada feels that their records showing substantial increases year over year may be the result of a growing tendency to report, and perhaps not indicate an increase in incidents.

Nowhere in the report is there the merest hint of a suggestion that while Muslims speak constantly of "Islamophobia", inclusive of any kind of criticism of Islam, or reference to terrorism and Islam in one breath, many among them have indulged in slanderous campaigns against the state of Israel, bringing Middle East politics to Canada, and by extension impacting deleteriously on the lives of Jews in Canada through their all-inclusive campaigns. And if those campaigns don't qualify as hate campaigns, what would?

From establishing "Palestinian" friendship clubs on university campuses, to staging anti-Israel protests and campaigning against Jewish students who are Zionists as enabling a purported "Apartheid" regime, the vicious slanders fomenting hatred sweep Jewish students and their families into the wide-ranging anti-Semitism launched by Muslim-Canadian groups influencing non-Muslim leftists to swell the numbers of "anti-Zionist" anti-Semites clamouring against Zionism and isolating Canadian Jews.

One of the most active chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine, at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, organizing anti-Israel campaigns and events throughout the year (SJP at UOIT/DC Facebook page)

The incidents of Islamofascist terrorist attacks whenever and wherever opportunities arise more than adequately demonstrates a seriously dysfunctional Islam that threatens security and stability wherever Muslims have migrated, fail to integrate and agitate for Sharia law, threatening to Islamicize whichever European, North American or Asian country they infiltrate in astonishing numbers fulfilling their obligation to Islam's injunction to its faithful to jihad.

It's hardly surprising under those conditions that fear and resentment at the presence of Muslims who ghettoize themselves in Islamic communities, inspire in the surrounding population. A search of any daily newspaper where Muslims have congregated rewards by the appearance of Arab or Muslims names attached to crime reports of gangs and violence, disproportionate to their numbers in society. Little wonder that distrust and fear is the result, among the general population.

As for Jews, law-abiding, proud of their Canadian citizenship, leaders of industry, valuing  higher education, reaching out to the wider population base to build bridges, nothing seems enough to convince some bigots that their suspicion, fear and hatred has no rational basis. The result of which is that despite making an effort to be model citizens, reflecting a cultural, social proclivity to just that, there seems to be no successful way to convince detractors that in detesting the presence of Jews they expose their innate racist malice.