Michael Mostyn, CEO of B’nai Brith Canada, on Tuesday called on the Canadian government to ban Al-Quds Day rallies in the country following a similar rally last week in which one of the speakers incited to violence and shooting attacks aimed at Israeli citizens.
“Al-Quds organizers in Toronto have called for Israelis to be shot. Authorities must take this threat seriously, before it happens in Canada,” he said.
Mostyn referred to a comment by Ali Mallah, a prominent member of the Canadian-Arab community who served as the Ontario Vice-President of the Canadian Arab Federation (CAF), and who called implicitly for Israelis to be shot en masse at the rally in Toronto.
“Mallah's latest outburst of hate speech proves that al-Quds organizers have not learned their lesson from the 2013 police investigation,” Mostyn said. “Al-Quds Day must be shut down permanently in Canada, and B’nai Brith will be launching a campaign to end this display of hate speech and incitement.”
Al-Quds Day is an Iranian initiative which is marked on the final day of Ramadan and is generally used to incite against Israelis and Jews.
During the 2013 rally in Toronto, one of the speakers called for Israelis to be killed. Video footage uploaded to YouTube showed the speaker, Elias Hazineh, saying at the rally, "We have to give them an ultimatum. You have to leave Jerusalem. You have to leave Palestine.”
Another speaker at the same rally attacked the Ontario Parliament’s decision not to allow the rally outside the parliament building, saying that the area had “become a Zionist occupied territory.”