Join Marty Gold, editor-in-chief of the Jewish publication The Forward, as he talks about the anti-Semitic incident at Food Bender's in Toronto, the Day of Rage in Winnipeg, and the coronavirus outbreak in Manitoba.
00:02:42.320The guy who couldn't get out a tweet fast enough when he heard that a little girl in Toronto a couple years ago had her hijab snipped at by an Asian man on the way to school.
00:02:52.420Now that story was a hoax, but Justin Trudeau was quick to renounce the so-called Asian man before all the facts were in.
00:03:00.740But Trudeau's silent now as food benders refuses to serve Zionists, which account for some 97% of the Jewish population.
00:03:08.720So joining me tonight to talk about this issue and some of the other issues facing the Jewish community is Marty Gold.
00:03:16.100He's the editor-in-chief of the Jewish publication, TheJ.ca.
00:03:37.520I wanted to have you on because there's so much happening in the Jewish community in Canada, especially with food benders and the Day of Rage and a few other things that have definitely been on the radar of TheJ.ca.
00:03:51.400But first I wanted to start closer to home because we don't always hear a lot about Winnipeg, but you're in Winnipeg and some things are happening in Winnipeg that seem to be happening all over and that's the BLM protests.
00:04:05.840So why don't you fill us in with what's been happening in Winnipeg with regard to those BLM protests?
00:04:11.920Because it seems as though the coronavirus has sort of gone away, at least in Winnipeg.
00:04:19.140The number of COVID-19 cases in Manitoba leveled off at under 350 with only seven deaths.
00:04:28.500There's been, as we tape this, no new diagnosed cases in almost a week.
00:04:34.160And so, accordingly, because the sense here is that the risk is relatively low.
00:04:41.360This is, I think, a compliment to the Pallister government and the senior health officials who, although not everybody's crazy, are in agreement with the methodology and some of the messaging per se.
00:04:54.120But it's obviously worked, and that can't be disputed that we could have had far worse situations in terms of communities where people live in very close quarters, in northern Manitoba, for instance.
00:05:05.580And so, with the reduced sense of risk and with a number of people still taking various distancing and masking measures,
00:05:21.120the Black Lives Matter movement was reflected in this community by a group organized by, it seems to me it was five young ladies, called Justice for Black Lives, J4BL.
00:05:37.420And they initially organized a march at the Manitoba legislature that went from the Manitoba legislature to, I think it went to the Forks, actually.
00:05:45.800And it was attended by what is believed to be about 15,000 people.
00:06:36.560There's, you know, various pandemic things that have come up.
00:06:39.920Not every newsroom or every media outlet is going to be able to pick and choose the skin colour of who they assign to that kind of event.
00:06:49.280And for them to, I mean, this just shows the level of indoctrination they, as university-age students have had,
00:06:57.200to a particular way of thinking that is not just foreign to the Canadian way of life,
00:07:02.700but is actually a rejection of the Canadian way of life.
00:07:05.340I don't know that any media outlets acquiesced to that request specifically,
00:07:10.960but even leading into the event, they started taking shots at major media outlets for not reporting on them,
00:07:19.140their beliefs or their activities the way that they wanted to.
00:07:22.300So they already, like, were going to boycott the free press or CBC and whatever.
00:07:26.980One of the organizers actually said that she was fine with violence, but there wouldn't be any violence at her rally.
00:07:31.540This is something the media should have hopped on, but they're also scared of having demonstrations in front of their media outlets that they didn't.
00:07:39.620It's incomprehensible that somebody could say, I'm fine with violence, again, as part of the Black Lives Movement,
00:07:48.360and this goes back now three weeks into what was going on in June,
00:07:51.320that somebody would say that they were fine with violence to accomplish those goals and then be given any credibility in the media at all.
00:07:57.020But that shows you how emasculated, so to speak, the Winnipeg media is.
00:08:02.980At the event itself, on the legislature grounds, it opened up, actually, when they started using whatever the public address system was,
00:08:14.220it opened up with a request for white, essentially for white journalists to leave the grounds.
00:08:18.500This is on public property, at the legislature, nobody from the government, the premier's office, cabinet, the Human Rights Commission,
00:08:29.060nobody spoke out against this, that obscenity.
00:08:33.260There was the usual conflagration that we've come to expect from the political left of various grievances and lobby groups.
00:08:44.140Antifa was present. They intimidated one independent journalist into leaving the legislature grounds.
00:08:49.600Again, no action taken, whether it's by Winnipeg police, human rights officials, or anybody else.
00:08:54.500There was also an incident involving a girl who is a friend of my family's,
00:09:00.440who is a free-spirited type of person, doesn't necessarily follow old-style norms.
00:09:13.020And so she was out-dressed the way she was dressed, with a sign that more or less said,
00:09:19.380lesbians support Black Lives Matter, or something like that, reflecting her own sexual preferences.
00:09:26.000And she was harangued and verbally assaulted by a number of individuals about how disgusting she is.
00:09:35.020Here she is, as they call it in their lexicon, an ally.
00:09:38.300And she was assailed by people who were dressed in the manner of people who are one of the,
00:09:50.560how do I put this, one of the groups most aggrieved in present-day cultures.
00:09:56.940That would be, they seem to be Muslim or Islamist in nature.
00:11:09.300And as you and I have seen in the last couple of weeks, more and more people are recognizing these Marxists mean they want the world to be Marxist.
00:11:15.380They aren't really interested in discussing or negotiating social policy.
00:11:23.160And the number of people in Winnipeg that believe in, you know, defund the police is small.
00:11:28.980The next weekend, the police had just a stupefying number of calls, 72 assaults, 14, going to my memory, it was like 14 gun calls, 16 stabbings.
00:11:39.880And yet the Marxists are still saying, well, when the police put that out, they're just trying to scare you and think you need police.
00:11:44.580What good are the cops if there's an assault?
00:11:47.680Well, they break up the assault if it's ongoing.
00:11:50.140Like this notion that social workers are going to attend drinking parties in Winnipeg, or as the police now put it, a group of people meant to socialize.
00:12:03.260But they live in some other universe in terms of the realities of what kind of law enforcement and law and order is needed at street level.
00:12:14.960Now, subsequent to this, the, I can't call them an organization.
00:12:21.140They, their fundraising was weird because it was going to like private email addresses.
00:12:25.340Originally, their fundraising was going through some platform.
00:12:27.740And then they said, no, don't put it through the platform.
00:12:29.760So it looked like a way to make money with no accountability off organizing a movement that may or may not be Black Lives Matter, but is certainly Black Lives Matter adjacent.
00:12:40.840They got, as I said, almost unquestioning media coverage.
00:12:46.540CBC did a photo album, a CBC reporter, pictures of the march and of the gathering.
00:12:52.600And the very last picture was of a person holding a sign of a, it was like a painting or a drawing of a police officer.
00:13:00.640And the cop had a, was portrayed as a pig, which again would be a human rights violation.
00:13:12.240Again, that would be in breach of Manitoba human rights codes.
00:13:15.480You see that there's now two kinds of rules and laws, some for the rest of us and some for the favored aggrieved parties.
00:13:22.600Um, they then went to organize flash mobs, uh, flash demonstrations of one hour duration at different locations around the city, uh, subsequent to that, to that march.
00:13:34.000Uh, and they appeared outside the police station and they, they announced it ahead of time.
00:13:38.580And so the cops shut down at one o'clock.
00:13:40.720So there's no fingerprinting or whatever the people will go to the main cop shop to apply for.
00:13:45.600They went to the Manitoba legislature.
00:13:47.060Then they showed up at city council, uh, on a, on a Friday when council was meeting and Councillor Schreier, the son of the former premier and former governor general, Ed Schreier, who in the environment of the current council is coming across like Stanley Knowles as being a wise and knowledgeable person.
00:14:03.420Uh, Jason Schreier was speaking, uh, and interrupted himself and said, well, Madam Speaker, as you can hear, like it's, there's an increasing noise level.
00:14:12.920Uh, the speaker kind of panicked and then Debbie Sharma called the five minute recess.
00:14:22.780There's a security desk, uh, not heavily armed or anything that you have to sign into to be able to then go up the stairs of the mezzanine and then enter the gallery to watch the proceedings.
00:14:33.000Uh, and, uh, what happened was it doesn't appear, uh, one counselor was unaware if they had signed in or not.
00:14:39.540I don't believe they could have because there's 75 or 80 of them.
00:14:42.600Uh, but they appeared in the mezzanine, which is separated by the council chamber, not by a wall, not by a brick wall, but by glass.
00:14:52.600So they can be seen around the stairwells and around the staircases, the railings chanting, uh, and you can be assured that there is no group of taxpayers, no demographic group in Winnipeg, uh, that I can think of that could have gotten away with interrupting a city council meeting.
00:15:12.760Now, Mayor Bowman, uh, who has never met a movement that he wouldn't try to co-op for his own political purposes, instead of going outside and saying, listen, you guys, you've got a lot of serious concerns about policing and, uh, city services.
00:15:30.380We've got to do the people's business.
00:15:32.700Uh, we're dealing with pandemic, lack of revenue due to pandemic.
00:16:38.220Well, um, in Winnipeg, as it came to the Jewish angle, the Jewish Federation supported this and encouraged the Jewish community to participate.
00:17:00.720Now, keep in mind that last year when the J.ca launched, what was the precipitating incident for launching the newspaper was Linda Sarsour's appearance in Winnipeg.
00:17:15.620Now, Linda Sarsour is an unabashed anti-Semite, indisputably a Jew hater.
00:17:19.960A, a provocateur uses inflammatory language, a historical revisionist, the Jewish Federation did not notify the community about the rally that was organized, uh, that was organized, in fact, by our publisher, Ron East.
00:17:35.940Uh, it did not, uh, they did not send an emissary.
00:17:41.640And among the excuses were, oh, but it's Friday evening at 6.30 and Shabbos starts at like 8 o'clock or whatever.
00:17:47.480But this year, for a rally involving people, at the very least, supporting a movement that is unabashedly anti-Semitic, the Jewish Federation encouraged people to go, and they themselves attended the march.
00:18:02.760So they won't go to Jewish counter-protests opposing anti-Semites, but, um, a protest march that promotes the agenda, promotes the ideology of anti-Semites, like Black Lives Matter, that they're fine with.
00:18:19.320Uh, we saw this reflected in a tweet by the Black Lives Matter UK that talked about mainstream British politics as gagged of the right to critique Zionism in Israel's settler-colonial pursuits.
00:18:28.760We loudly and clearly stand beside our Palestinian comrades.
00:18:32.840So there you see prima facie evidence of Black Lives Matter, seeing them as merging with these aboriginal causes in North America.
00:18:40.580This creates greater discord, greater momentum to undermine the societal structures and societal norms, because, uh, when they say Israel's settler-colonial pursuits, they're defining Israel as a white supremacist project.
00:18:55.900Again, in Winnipeg, I do say that there has not been, in terms of the public displays, nothing that caused any alarm for Jews or for Israelis, that I can say.
00:19:06.900However, when the days of rage, day of rages, day of rage events started across North America and in this country, as, uh, protests against the state of Israel, applying sovereignty over Judea and Samaria, otherwise known as annexation of occupied territories, uh, and we see it historically different because these are traditional, these are the Jewish homelands.
00:19:32.540Uh, Judea had, uh, Judea had, uh, the capital of Israel.
00:19:36.820So this isn't, uh, us, like, wandering into the, you know, wandering into the Sinai Desert just to snatch up, you know, tracts of land that, uh, had nothing to do with, with our history, our culture, and our self-governance.
00:19:50.540Now, the protests start across the country and it started in Vancouver with a boat.
00:19:55.080I think it was about a hundred people in Vancouver.
00:19:57.020They lined a city block around Clark and East Broadway.
00:20:00.700And the lead sign was Canada is guilty in Palestinian genocide in Nakba.
00:28:49.220Because that would serve to swamp the land of Israel and completely tip the scales on any legislation,
00:28:59.500any, any government process would then be completely taken out of the hands of the most oppressed minority in the region for centuries, the Jews.
00:29:10.520Not to diminish the suffering of Kurds, Yazidis, or anybody else who've been subject to the same Islamomanicism for centuries and centuries.
00:29:20.960Now, in Toronto on the 4th, we again saw the merger of these, the conflagration of these causes,
00:29:27.380where you had First Nation, Aboriginal speakers, people representing First Nations organizations,
00:29:31.860talking about the settler colonial policies of Canada and Israel, except Israel was settled by people with a historic claim to the land.
00:29:41.180Canada was settled by the British and the French.
00:29:47.460Well, when you're Marxists and you just want to overthrow government, you just lump, and everybody is all being the same kind of bad guy.
00:29:54.480Like, there was signage where on the one hand, you've got a black, you know, a black guy, he's wearing a wearing a mask, this picture I'm looking at, defund the RCMP and police now.
00:30:04.080And beside him is some dame holding up a sign saying defund the IDF.
00:30:12.140And among those that jumped on the bandwagon was food benders in Toronto.
00:30:17.180And they referenced a recent incident where a Palestinian fellow came up to a checkpoint, veered left, button hooked right, rammed the security gate, not a gate, I mean, it's a kiosk, rammed it, came out of the car, and before he could stab anybody, he was shot dead.
00:30:37.900Because there's like four or five Israeli guards at the checkpoint.
00:30:40.780Oh, this is how securitized is the word they've invented.
00:30:46.300Palestinians are so securitized as a threat.
00:30:49.460We can't make human mistakes like lose momentary control of our car, press the accelerator in a moment of haste, get in a car accident.
00:31:12.220Well, someone posts that, claiming that this person, this victim, was a cousin of theirs, same family name, turned out they weren't a cousin.
00:31:22.220And Foodbenders goes and says, well, this is a George Floyd moment.
00:31:25.660Refused to live in a Canada that continues to support Israeli brutality and war crimes against the Palestinians.
00:31:34.600So Foodbenders, the proprietor, Kim Hawkins, using mostly Instagram but other social media, ramped up from the Black Lives Matter issues and kept conflating.
00:31:46.400And this goes back to the Israeli Defense Force somehow trains police in America into, you know, brutalizing, brutalizing righteous protesters or innocent people.
00:31:58.880So Sue Ann Levy, who's been writing for the J.ca and is fantastic, giving us exclusive content, as part of her columns for the Toronto Sun, she went to the restaurant twice.
00:32:12.560Went once, checked it out, came back the next day and tried to engage the owner about that she had made a public statement on her Instagram that the Zionists were not welcome in her restaurant.
00:32:26.080It's a restaurant, lunch counter, catering place.
00:32:29.380She, in shooing Sue Ann out, and then there's a few goons that attended as well, she said out loud, out of her mouth, Israelis kill thousands of children every day.
00:32:40.640Now, I have not seen any media, not even in the Arab world, not even in the Islamist world, not even the house organs of Iran or any other despotic regime.
00:32:59.600Nobody has claimed Israel kills thousands of children a day.
00:33:03.280But the owner of Foodbenders told Sue Ann Levy that she didn't know what she was talking about.
00:33:09.320So, you know, you look at this signage that she had put out on her sandwich board and the things that she'd said, Jewish people are greedy and entitled, Israel are terrorists.
00:33:18.100And as our publisher, Ron East, he created a, you know, like a clapboard, in effect, for the Canadian, for the Israeli-Canadian Council.
00:33:31.460If you can't say indigenous people are greedy and entitled and blacks are terrorists, then why can you say Zionists are racist, Zionists are Nazis, and other things?
00:33:45.900Never mind what human rights codes say, the doing business Bible, I guess the business license, says that you can't discriminate against people on certain grounds.
00:33:55.000So, presumably, if you walk in, you know, plastered out of your skull and pose a danger, then they can reasonably still keep you off the premises.
00:34:02.440But if somebody's, I was going to say Indian, but literally in Toronto would count, Indian, Fijian, black, brown of any sort, sub-Saharan, Chinese, Malaysian, if you're identifiably something, you can't be reserved service on that, Arab, you can't be refused service on that basis.
00:34:26.500And here's a business that was openly advertising that that was the basis of her business.
00:34:32.040So, John Tory and the Council in Toronto, some of whom I know are far left, which is a polite way of saying communist, Paula Fletcher, Winnipeg's gift to Toronto.
00:34:43.940So, I don't know how they're going to reconcile this.
00:34:49.120And I don't think society has a goal, the most important goal for society, rather.
00:34:54.460I don't think it should be convincing society, we've got to wholesale change everything.
00:35:01.100We start with what we can fix first, which is at the societal level, okay, at the level where multiculturalism functions on a day-to-day basis, which is race relations.
00:35:13.600And I think if the politicians take the bull by the horns, stand up like leaders, and start calling race relations meetings, race relations conferences, and focus on ratcheting down those tensions, and resolving those misunderstandings, and figure out what role government has played, then we have a lot better chance of success.
00:35:40.000A lot better chance of maintaining our civil society than what we see now.
00:35:48.380Marty, I want to give you a chance to let everybody know where they can find the work that you do at the J.ca, and how they can, more importantly, I think, support you to keep it going.
00:35:59.720Because you're filling a huge void in Canadian journalism in general, but also for the Jewish community.
00:36:08.540We're thrilled that our articles have been picked up by the Jewish News Syndicate and by Israeli publications.
00:36:16.220One was written by Aviva Engel from Montreal.
00:36:19.540She wrote a story about a Hasidic bakery, and not just about the bakery, because I love, you didn't get this size by not loving bakeries.
00:36:27.480And not just about the Babka, but about the role they play in the community in creating goodwill and harmony among the different communities.
00:36:38.660Because the Hasidic are, you know, like they do keep to themselves their very insular community.
00:36:46.420But in their public pursuits, like the bakery, this article was fantastic.
00:36:53.040I didn't see it until, literally, until we published it.
00:36:56.500I was knocked out of my chair, how great it was.
00:36:59.460And that's an example of the kind of story that is picked up on, not just the political stuff or the breaking news stuff that we do.
00:37:04.860Although, again, no other publication, no other media platform in the country covered Day of Rage at all in a comprehensive manner, going over which cities it was in and what was said where.
00:37:18.460Dan Brotman has just written a story about Peruvian Jews during the pandemic, which corrected erroneous news stories about the Jews of Peru that had recently been circulated.
00:37:28.140I referenced my piece about the history of Jews in Canada.
00:37:34.680We have Rebecca Eckler puts out great columns called Kvetch vs. Kvel, which is like, yeah, a slice of life stuff.
00:38:52.040We cover the spectrum of Jewish life, not only Canada, in Canada, but internationally.
00:38:57.400I'm proud to be, you know, at the top of the masthead of this with Ron East.
00:39:02.420This is, in a lot of ways, the culmination of his father's dream, of Yarmul Mizrahi's dream,
00:39:07.440of making sure the Jewish voice is heard in this country and that it's heard loud and clear and that we are able to provide a safe harbor, as it were, for the Jewish community.
00:39:22.440That they know that if they have a story to tell, somebody will tell it.
00:39:39.220But we have run stories talking about how Jews should support Black Lives Matter movement,
00:39:44.820even though editorially we may not agree with that perspective specifically or precisely.
00:39:50.680We have run pieces about the Jewish role in that aspect of race relations and supporting the goals of ensuring that Blacks are treated fairly in institutions and, you know, in terms of processes.
00:41:02.940Sometimes when we put the editions out, that comes in the form of a bulletin where we'll have a different breaking news lead story that then leads into the rest of the newspaper.
00:41:14.460You can click on the links on the j.ca to support us.
00:41:18.320We appreciate the donations that we've gotten so far.
00:41:21.520It's helped us take care of some of the costs that have come up for some of the editors and writers, some equipment costs.
00:41:28.760We're on the verge of being able to roll out the advertising platforms for banner ads and stuff as we get closer.
00:41:35.120We're already looking towards Rosh Hashanah and the high holidays.
00:41:39.540And your support now is going to get us to that stage.
00:41:42.840I'm really hopeful that by September this will be a going concern, that the staff will be in a position to make sure the staff is taken care of, that the contributors are taken care of, and that we can continue to not only tell our stories, but to advocate for the Jewish communities in Canada, not just Toronto, not just Montreal, but the Jews of Halifax, St. John's, Victoria, Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, Saskatoon.
00:42:05.840We are here for all of you and for all those of you who support a Jewish homeland, who support the state of Israel, who support our Judeo-Christian way of life, our traditions and our ethics.
00:42:23.940And Sheila, once again, thank you for, as Gene Konisky would say, having me into your homes via TV and for being so supportive of our efforts.
00:42:33.380Since our inception a year ago, and your audience communicates with us as well.
00:42:39.540We get followers from the rebel and some donations from people that I know also donate to your efforts as well.
00:42:48.640And one last thing I forgot to mention, a shout out to David Menzies, who walks into the belly of the beast, who gets the footage.
00:42:56.860What he and Ezra have done is incomparable in terms of journalism in this country, no matter what anybody says.
00:43:03.200Because when you strap on your boots and you walk into what is really hostile territory to tell those stories, to show what's going on, to make sure people know what's being said, whether it's in the Nathan Phillips Square or whatever.
00:43:19.020Was that the courtyard in front of the city hall?
00:44:24.440What he's doing is valuable work that nobody else is willing to do.
00:44:27.760And shame on the mainstream media that does not report on these kinds of incidents that ignore it until, God forbid, one of them gets spit on or jostled or some epithet is yelled while they're doing a live hit.
00:44:42.460And then it's, you know, like Federal Court of Canada issue.
00:44:55.800Whether CBC or CTV or Global or any of these outlets, whether they agree with the style of reporting or the kinds of stories that are being followed and that they don't speak up, there should be solidarity.
00:45:12.820If anything, there should be solidarity among journalists.
00:45:15.200And instead, you've got parliamentary press galleries, and then they look down their nose at people who do reporting that doesn't follow their narrative.
00:45:22.940And, you know what, one day, one day too soon, they're going to need the support of everybody.
00:45:29.680And already we see how Canadian society is becoming increasingly skeptical, increasingly questioning, increasingly untrusting of the agenda in some of those newsrooms.
00:45:41.040And they should seriously think of what's been experienced by Menzies and other people in the course of the last couple of years in trying to cover the radicalized elements of Canadian politics, Canadian protest movements.
00:45:54.080And they should be carefully considering why they are silent and why they should not stay silent in the face of people being mistreated in that manner.
00:46:04.800Well, I don't think we ever have to worry about you being silent, Marty.
00:46:08.660Marty, thank you so much for coming on the show.
00:46:13.000Again, thank you again for your generosity with your time always, but especially today.
00:46:18.380We did have some technical difficulties earlier.
00:46:20.460We'll have you back on again real soon, and best of luck with the J.ca.
00:46:24.760Thank you so much, and the best to you and to everybody at the outlet, and to all of you viewers.
00:46:32.500Keep supporting the alternatives, because without the alternatives, you know what you're stuck with.