Dear Mayor-elect Chow:
I am writing on behalf of the Canadian Anrtisemitism Education Foundation (CAEF).
CAEF is a registered Canadian charitable organization founded in 2004. Our purpose is to provide information to the Canadian public, governments, media, professionals, community groups, students, and others on issues of antisemitism and ethnic or faith-based discrimination - how to recognize it, prevent it, and confront it.
It has come to our attention that a group called Toronto4Palestine is planning a march and car rally at the Roncessvalles Pedestrian bridge tonight at 6:00 PM, focused on demonizing Israel memorializing terrorists.
While anyone is free to protest, this group in its social media promotion is calling for support of armed resistance against the Jewish state. This endangers Jews everywhere.
This is a call to violence and is unacceptable in our city. It is of grave concern to the Jewish community and all Toronto citizens.
A called for armed resistance is simply unacceptable in Toronto and must be stopped.
It will set a dangerous precedent.
It is the promotion or glorification of terrorism. In fact, two major groups that were routed in Jenin this past week and found to have huge sticks of arms, were Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which are both listed as terrorist entities in Canada.
Such activity has led to hate on our streets and the targeting of members of the Jewish community. When a prominent rabbi is harassed we have clearly reached an Urgent situation.
In addition, a meeting on a public bridge, no doubt, to drop banners over the bridge will create a road safety issue and will distract drivers and potentially create situations of danger.
As the new Mayor-elect of this fair city, we call upon you to investigate this matter and to issue a public statement opposing any call to violence, and the creation of public and road safety issues.
We ask that as mayor you stand against hatefests on our streets.
As our new Mayor, we urge that you use your good office, to counter such hatred and protect all communities.
We thank you in advance for your attention to this matter, and look forward to seeing your public statement on this grave issue of concern to all citizens of Toronto.
Yours very truly,
Charles Cooke,
Government Relations liaison, CAEF
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