Authorities are investigating after a video appeared on social media showing an elderly man holding an Israeli flag and being attacked and attacked by two young men as he left an Israeli independence rally on Thursday.
Montreal police have confirmed that the investigation continues with the section on hate crimes after a signal that two young men stopped Ste’s husband. Catherine St. West and allegedly attacked him before attacking a passerby trying to intervene.
The incident took place on the corner of Wood Avenue in the city of Westmouth, a suburb of Montreal.
The video shows the young men trying to pull the flag out of the man’s hands and then hit him in the head with a stick. A passer-by intervened and was also attacked before the two men fled the area on foot.
“The old man was hurt, but he’s fine now,” said SPVM spokesman Marian Aller Moren.
Liat Lev-Ari was across the street from the third floor and began recording the quarrel on her phone while her husband, Dan Goldstein, went outside to intervene.
When Goldstein shouted that he was calling the police, the two suspects fled.
SPVM officers questioned witnesses on the spot and searched for the men.
Dawson College, one block north of the intersection where the attack took place, is also investigating to determine if the attackers were students.
“This is a serious matter and we need to be absolutely sure what happened and who these people are,” said Dawson’s communications adviser Christina Parsons.
Lev-Ari was upset by the event as many people stood by while the argument continued.
“What bothers me a lot, apart from this pointless act, is that people stay away and do nothing,” she said.
Marvin Rotran, national director of the B’nai Brith League of Human Rights in Canada, said it was clear that the alleged crime was motivated by negative feelings about Israel.
“In our opinion, we have just witnessed a hate crime,” Rotran said. “This is a definite crime against someone who was returning from a rally on Israel Day.”
Rotran said the rally was peaceful and involved about 10,000 people from different ethnicities. He said he was angry to see the video darken the positive mood around the event.
“People left the rally with a very good feeling,” he said. “And here this man was attacked right on the street for no other reason than having the Israeli flag folded … This is an unacceptable incident in the middle of the day.”
The incident, Rotran said, was part of a worrying rise in anti-Semitic actions fueled by negative sentiments toward Zionism and the state of Israel. The organization audits anti-Semitic actions annually.
In 2021, the organization registered 2,799 anti-Semitic incidents in Canada, an increase of 7.2% compared to 2020. This includes 828 in Quebec, the largest number in the country.
The audit divides anti-Semitic acts into harassment, vandalism and violence. Acts of violence in Canada jumped from nine in 2020 to 75 in 2021.
Thirty-six of them were in Quebec, according to B’nai Brith.
“It needs to be broken in its infancy,” Rotran said. “Police departments need to do a better job of identifying and responding to anti-Semitism, and politicians need to do more about it.
The spike came in 2021 during the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the West Bank, when protests sparked violence against protesters.
“Quebec authorities need to be worried,” Rotran said.
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