‘This Is the Tipping Point’ — Canadian Jewish Business Firebombed, Defaced with ‘Free Palestine’ Graffiti
A Jewish-owned grocery store in Toronto was firebombed and defaced with “Free Palestine” graffiti early Wednesday morning.
“I’ve been a criminal investigator the vast majority of my career, and in most of those criminal investigations, there was a tipping point. This is this tipping point,” Toronto Police Service spokeswoman Pauline Gray said outside the vandalized International Delicatessen Foods building, which is located in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood.
“This is not graffiti on a bus shelter. This is not lawful protest protected by constitutional right. This is a criminal act. It is violent, it is targeted, it is organized, and it will receive the weight of the Toronto Police Service to exactly what it deserves,” Gray continued. “We will leave no stone unturned. We will use all the resources available to us to investigate, arrest and prosecute who is responsible for this.”
Ya’ara Saks, the Liberal Party parliamentary representative for the district, condemned the apparent hate crime in a public note. “I have just learned the shocking news of the attack in #YorkCentre at the Jewish-owned local business International Delicatessen Foods. With each brazen act of incitement and of violence, the cycle of antisemitism and hateful acts increases. This must stop,” Saks, a minister in Justin Trudeau’s cabinet, wrote Wednesday afternoon.
“We are all witness to the frequency of these acts of intolerance targeting Jewish-owned businesses and Jewish neighbourhoods. This moment requires leaders and allies, to bravely work together to restore our community, back to a place where hate has no home in Canada.”
The attack drew the condemnation of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), a prominent Canadian Jewish lobbying group. “This is another sickening example of the escalation in #Antisemitism we’re seeing in cities across #Canada. Political & community leaders need to speak out loudly & decisively — this violence cannot be tolerated any longer,” CIJA wrote in an official statement on X.
Local law enforcement vowed to treat the firebombing as a hate-based crime. “We’re very early on in the investigation, and I must highlight when I say it’s organized, they didn’t just happen upon this business. Let’s be not silly here. These people have targeted this business, and so that means they’ve been here before,” spokeswoman Gray said.
Despite the apparent antisemitic nature of the attack, the publicly funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) sporadically edited coverage of the incident throughout the day, taking until the afternoon to mention that the store was “Jewish-owned.”
“The firebombing of a Jewish-owned business in Toronto amid a historic spike in local antisemitism might warrant a more descriptive and concerned headline than the CBC sees fit to provide here,” media watcher and Canadian journalist Jesse Brown wrote before noting that the outlet had seemingly obscured the perpetrator’s antisemitic thrust for hours.
Toronto has witnessed a spike in antisemitism since the Hamas invasion of Israel on October 7, with Jews representing the majority of hate-crime cases in the city despite being less than 10 percent of the population.
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