judyhaiven

In the Crosshairs…

What do these three events have in common

Islamophobia.

I’m writing about it because yesterday was the second anniversary of six-year-old Hind Rajab’s cold blooded murder by Israel’s IDF in a stalled car in front of a destroyed gas station in Gaza City. All this week the taut and tragic newly released film The Voice of Hind Rajab is playing at my local Cineplex. I went to see it. Now I can recommend it highly.

Go see the taut and tragic film The Voice of Hind Rajab

Yesterday also marked the ninth anniversary since a lone gunman in Québec City killed six men at a mosque for prayers on this evening nine years ago. Five men were seriously injured among the 19 wounded. Prosecutors described the attack as a “racist, heinous, Islamophobic crime” that targeted Muslim worshippers. As far as I know, Nora Loreto a journalist and podcaster based in Québec City is the only writer in English Canada to refer to the 29th— the National Day of Remembrance of the Quebec Mosque Attack and Action Against Islamophobia.

The inside of the Quebec Islamic Cultural Centre after the massacre (credit: REUTERS/Mathieu Belanger)

In 2017, a 27-year-old white supremacist, who hated immigrants, liked Trump, detested Trudeau opening Canada to newcomers and non-Christians. In 2002 and 2004, lone gunman Alexandre Bissonnette had been in the air cadet program then in the army cadets in the Québec City area. DND spokesmen said cadets do not receive military or firearms training.

However Bissonnette frequented the Castors de Charlesbourg gun club. On 29 January, he left his parents’ Québec City home at 7 pm, after dinner. He told his mother he was going to the club and; he carried a semi-automatic Glock, in a guitar case. In the months prior to the massacre, he had checked right-wing Zionist Ben Shapiro’s Twitter account 93 times, and visited sites of British fascist Tommy Robinson, and tuned into American Alex Jones’ conspiracy-based far-right radio show. But from what I read, the crown did not prosecute the case as a hate crime.

What about the 72,000 dead people of Gaza? And the estimated 20,000 more (10,000 are children) whose bodies are under the rubble crushed to death by Israeli airstrikes and tanks? Although a few are Christians, most are Muslims. What about the 450 plus Palestinians killed just since the ceasefire in October? Almost all are Muslims.

What do these events have in common? They show that Muslims are the victims – not the perpetrators of most deadly attacks. We’ve seen the victimization and hatred of Muslims played out many times in Canada.

Remember the volunteer caretaker at a Toronto area mosque — or the family in London, Ont. All were killed because they were Muslim, brown and immigrants.

Remember the volunteer caretaker, Mohamed Aslim Zafis at the International Muslim Organization Mosque in Etobicoke (Toronto suburb) in 2020? He was sitting on a chair outside the mosque waiting for the worshippers, when a 31-year old white racist, a neo-Nazi, stabbed him to death. The head of the Toronto police homicide squad said they had no evidence that Zafis’s killing was motivated by hate, but said it was a possibility. The culprit was not charged with a hate crime: he was found not criminally responsible for killing Zafis.

Mr Zafis, age 58, was a volunteer at the mosque in Etobicoke.

Four members of a Pakistani-Canadian family were killed by a man in a truck in what police are calling a hate-motivated attack. This photo, released by the family, shows the victims (left to right): Yumna Afzaal, 15, Madiha Salman, 44, Talat Afzaal, 74, and Salman Afzaal, 46. (family photo)

In June 2021, in London, Ont a white nationalist drove his pickup truck into the Afzaals a Muslim family of five, killing four of them and leaving a young boy orphaned.

January 29…

But just looking at what Jan. 29 means – we see the mosque victims here in Canada, where authorities refused to label it a hate crime, and Hind Rajab – who managed honest and clear responses to the terrors during a three hour siege by an Israeli tank in Gaza City ended in her murder and the murders of two medics in a Red Crescent ambulance sent to save her. It was not just that the Israelis killed her. An IDF tank shelled the car she was in with 335 rounds of ammunition. Her six relatives lay dead in the car, only Hind survived– wounded. When the ambulance arrived, Israel hit it with a missile which destroyed the medics, the ambulance, Hind and Hind’s car.

Two January 29ths, seven years apart. The establishment Jews dare to claim victimhood when Canadians stand up for Palestinians. Worse than that – the Jews in the Diaspora claim little to no responsibility for the genocide in Gaza. But their overwhelming support for Israel allows the war against Muslims to continue here at home and abroad.

There is a good 45 minute Quebec documentary The Mosque: a Community’s Struggle (2019) available to rent through Cinema Politica, $3.99 to rent

Feature photo at the top: A giant portrait of 6-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab who was killed in Gaza in 2024, is unfurled on Barceloneta Beach in the second anniversary of her death and after a film about her death received an Oscar nomination, in Barcelona, Spain January 29, 2026. (photo credit: REUTERS/NACHO DOCE)

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