Article content
You’re never too young to have hate in your heart.
Advertisement 2
Story continues below
Article content
Or too old.
Article content
At first, security thought it was a teenager leaving behind a trail of vile anti-Semitic graffiti in Yorkdale mall bathrooms. Turns out, they believe, it was allegedly someone much older.
Toronto Police said the suspect who allegedly scrawled support for Hitler and the Nazis in bathrooms is a man born when Canada was still fighting Germany in the Second World War and when the swastikas allegedly left on walls was still the official flag of the Third Reich. In fact, when this suspect was born, Anne Frank was just being arrested in Amsterdam and Auschwitz was just six months away from being liberated.
You don’t see 80-year-olds before the court very often, so it garners attention when it happens. But when you see an 80-year-old charged in an alleged anti-Semitic crime spree, it grabs one’s attention. And that is what happened in Toronto on Thursday.
“The Toronto Police Service is making the public aware of an arrest made in a hate-motivated mischief investigation,” said the news release. “Rashid Kurmally, 80, of Toronto was arrested and charged with seven counts of mischief under $5,000.”
Article content
Advertisement 3
Story continues below
Article content
Police said that between Jan. 20 and Tuesday, washrooms within a retail business in the area of Dufferin St. and Yorkdale Rd. were allegedly vandalized with “anti-Semitic graffiti.”
With slogans like, “Hitler was right,” “Heil Hitler,” “Jews are the real terrorists,” and, “F— all Jews,” this alleged crime spree took place over the winter inside of seven different men’s bathroom stalls at Yorkdale mall. Needless to say, the Jewish community is stunned and deeply hurt by these latest allegations of anti-Semitism, which statistics show is on the rise.
Recommended from Editorial
Advertisement 4
Story continues below
Article content
“The normalization of anti-Semitism in Canada is leading to previously incomprehensible levels of hate crimes being committed. The situation appears to only be devolving and it is imperative that our civic leaders act now to curb the rise in anti-Jewish hate,” said Rich Robertson, director of research and advocacy for B’nai Brith Canada. “Fewer than 80 years removed from the end of the Holocaust, it is heartbreaking to think that we are again on the cusp of witnessing the routine persecution of Jews.”
The allegations have not yet been tested in court.
As Deputy Chief Lauren Pogue, staff Supt. Pauline Gray and Chief Myron Demkiw have said repeatedly, if you commit a crime and don’t get arrested at the time of the incident, don’t think you won’t get arrested later.
Advertisement 5
Story continues below
Article content
In today’s world of technology, crimes get captured digitally and police review video. Many of the arrests for alleged anti-Semitic activities have come about this way. Whether it’s other cases like the Al Waxman statue in Kensington Market or anti-Jewish slurs written on hydro poles, the police will catch up to it or at least identify a suspect.
But this case was unique in that police had to find a way to determine who was allegedly scrawling this anti-Jewish hate inside a bathroom stall. It took some time, but they have made an arrest.
When you hear police saying that an 80-year-old was allegedly involved in something like this and if the allegations turn out to be true, then you have to shake your head ask why.
Perhaps those answers will come out in court. What is known is the suspect is believed to be a retired businessperson who has never been before the courts before.
Advertisement 6
Story continues below
Article content
It’s concerning on many levels, but is an example of what I have been saying since Oct. 7. Turning a blind eye toward anti-Semitism will just lead to more of it. I have written so many columns on it that there is a fatigue factor in both writing about this and perhaps for those of you reading about these allegations. However, I feel we need to record it so that somebody down the line can’t say it never happened.
While polls show there is an increase in young people who do not believe the Holocaust happened to prominent people saying vandalizing a bookstore owned by a Jewish businessperson is not a crime, you know the narrative is shifting and that Jewish people are vulnerable. We feel there is a responsibility to educate the young to understand that the Holocaust happened and discriminating against Jews, Muslims or any other religious group is not only illegal and wrong, but abhorrent.
Society has to educate people about this while they are young. And, as this arrest might show, when they are old.
RECOMMENDED VIDEO
Article content
Comments