Al Quds Committee wants an apology and retraction after the premier said the rally was a ‘breeding ground for hate and antisemitism’
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared on The Trillium, a Village Media website devoted exclusively to covering provincial politics at Queen’s Park.
A group that helped organize the Toronto Al-Quds Day rally is threatening to sue the premier if he does not retract and apologize for statements it argues are defamatory.
The Al Quds Committee is accusing Doug Ford of defaming the group through statements posted online in the lead up to last Saturday’s Al-Quds Day rally in Toronto and is calling in a March 18 letter addressed to the premier for him to “formally retract all the posts and publicly apologize” within a week.
Ford released a video on Friday, March 13, announcing that he was directing Attorney General Doug Downey to file an injunction to stop a planned Al-Quds Day rally the following day.
In the video, the premier alleged that the Al-Quds Day rally in Toronto was “nothing more than a breeding ground for hate and antisemitism.”
“It glorifies violence. It celebrates terrorism. It has no place in Ontario. It has no place in Canada.”
After the province’s injunction was dismissed hours before the rally, the premier said he was “extremely disappointed that the court has refused to put a stop to Al-Quds Day, which has long been a venue for antisemitism, hatred, intimidation and the glorification of terrorism.”
A letter from the group’s lawyer, Stephen Ellis, who has also been a member of the group, alleges that those online posts were “defamatory publications” that imply that the Al Quds Committee is “racist in its outlook, particularly towards Jewish people; and… is a clear and present danger to the Jewish and/or Canadian public.”
“Please note that these published statements have done and continue to do serious harm to the Al Quds Committee’s reputation,” the letter says.
A spokesperson for Ford said in a statement that the premier “stands by calling out the Al-Quds Day rally,” and repeated his previous criticism of the event.
“We will continue to work to put an end to the hatred and division that runs rampant on Canada’s streets and will not remove the social posts referenced nor retract comments.”
Al-Quds Day is an annual, international day held around the end of Ramadan to express support for Palestine. The day was started in 1979 by Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Promotional materials for this year’s rally in Toronto said it’s a “protest of the U.S.-Israeli expansion of the genocide in Gaza into an all-out regional war.”
This year’s rally took place days after shootings at three Toronto and GTA synagogues.
Much of the rally took place outside the U.S. Consulate in Toronto and was met with a heavy police presence.
Toronto police say that two men, who were protesting against the Al-Quds Day rally, were arrested Saturday at the demonstration and are facing charges including mischief and assault.
One of the men arrested is also facing criminal harassment and public incitement of hate charges.