Palestinian Victimhood on Full Display

"The popular view of the Nakba presented by the Canadian Human Rights Museum falls short of the facts regarding events in Palestine following the U.N. partition vote of 1947."

"[Palestinian displacement was partly the result of] weak leadership and military unpreparedness [of the Arab nations who were at war with the newly founded nation of Israel]." 

"[Arabized Jewish refugees who fled conflict in the 1940s were welcomed in Israel and assimilated, while Arab refugees were treated by Arab countries where they lived in refugee camps as] symbols of the heartlessness and murderous intent of the Jews."

"Jewish presence [in Iraq as example] was virtually extinguished in just a few years. Those who fled to Israel were eventually absorbed, given Israeli citizenship, and began to play important parts in Israeli life."

"There was neither desire nor expectation that they would return to Iraq, unlike the desires and expectations of the Palestine Arab refugees in 1948."

David Bercuson and Logan Jaspers, Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy  

Aristotle Foundation report

 

Authors David Bercuson and Logan Jaspers produced a study for the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy, beginning with a detailed history of the causes and effects of the Israeli-Arab war of 1948 when the nascent Jewish state was attacked by the combined militaries of its Middle East neighbours, with the intention of destroying the state before it was entrenched, on the basis that land once consecrated to Islam could not host or revert to any other religious communities. Islam, on the other hand, expunged the ancient ancestral indigeneity of Jews in lands once their own long before Islam came into being.

 

With the re-creation of the State of Israel in 1948, hundreds of thousands of both Jews and Arabs were forced from their homes; in the case of Jews, living in Arab and Muslim countries in North Africa and the Middle East there was forcible exile, and expropriation of properties from lands Jews had lived in for millennia. The Arabs who called themselves Palestinians came mostly from Transjordan and Egypt in the last century seeking economic opportunities in the area that hosted Jewish, Christian and Muslim populations whose total numbers were relatively sparse. When the UN in 1947 wrestled with the concept of Partition apportioning a major share of the territory to Jordan, then dividing the 1/3 that was left for Jews and for Arabs, the Jewish Committee accepted, the Arabs did not.

 

The Aristotle Foundation report focuses on the detailed history, commissioned after the Human Rights museum based in Winnipeg had faced a storm of controversy over its decision to host and display an exhibit focused on the displacement of Arab Palestinians with the declaration of Israeli nationhood. That declaration inspired an instant response from Israel's neighbours, a military invasion meant to destroy the possibility that Jews could return to their heritage. Palestinians were promised by the leaders of the invading Arab armies they could return, once Israel's presence was demolished. 

Aristotle Foundation report

 

The Nakba exhibit, according to its critics, focuses on the plight of Palestinian refugees, totally ignoring and  failing to include a similar experience of 800,000 Jews forcibly evacuated from their homes in Muslim and Arab countries, displaced during the conflict. Arab refugees, the authors of the report, point out, were treated by the Arab countries they fled to as "symbols of the heartlessness and murderous intent of the Jews", creating a lasting disparity between how the communities of Arabs and the Jews each view their experience.

 

Years after the initial conflict which failed to dislodge Jews from their homeland, leading the Arab armies to nurse their wounded expectations by declaring their defeat a 'nakba' (catastrophe), 700,000 Palestinians fled their homes seeking refuge in various Arab nations. The reasons were various; some historians claim many fled in response to the violence Arab civilians faced. Jewish paramilitary forces were alleged to have killed some 100 villagers in the Palestinian village of Deir Hassin. There were Palestinian leaders who claimed the outflow of Arabs was an orchestrated project they had planned, as was a later return when Israel was destroyed.

 

The Nakba exhibit is a temporary one at the museum, to run for several months with the use of photos video testimonies, artworks and family heirlooms describing the plight of Palestinian refugees from the 1940s and carrying forward to the present. The fact that around 800,000 Jews were displaced from their homes in Arab and Muslim nations in the Middle East and North Africa is never mentioned. Nor is the  fact that Palestinian terrorists led by Gaza's Hamas leadership committed a sprawling atrocity against Israeli citizens in southern Israel on 7 October 2023, which led to the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

 

A coalition of civil society groups has called on Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture Marc Miller to retract his statement on viewing the exhibit that it was replete with "errors" that "must be rectified", arguing that any government interference in the museum's exhibits (paid for by the federal government) would be unacceptable. Chief executive Isha Khan of the Canadian Museum of Human Rights argues that the exhibit was designed  explicitly to feature Palestinian experiences, however controversial their personal accounts are.

  

The UN created an orderly plan for the partition of Palestine. The Jewish people accepted it, but the Palestinians refused to even consider the idea.

After 13 months of violence, 700,000 Arabs had fled or been expelled from Mandatory Palestine and Israel, while 800,000 Jews were forced to flee North Africa and the Middle East and settle in Israel between 1948 and the early 1970s.

Prior to 1947 there were major bouts of violence toward Jews in 1920 (the Nebi Musa Riots), 1921 (Jaffa Riots), 1929 (Hebron massacre plus attacks in Safed and Jerusalem), and 1936–1939 and 1945–1946 (Arab Revolts). In the period after 1930, as the Jews became more militarily active, Jews responded to attacks from Arab villages that were perceived as origins of attacks against Jews. Nevertheless, the record of violence after 1920 was overwhelmingly a record of Arab attacks against Jews.

During the civil war both sides carried out unsavoury acts, but Israelis always claimed a military reason for the removal of populations, either to bolster communication lines or stop regular attacks being launched from Arab population centres.

Jewish authorities actively encouraged Arab populations to remain in the new State of Israel but did not try to keep Arabs from fleeing if they so chose.

Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy 

 

People gathered outside the Canadian Museum for Human Rights on June 26 to protest the Nakba exhibit. (Rudi Pawlychyn/CBC)

 

"What then can we conclude from this brief history?"

"First, that the Arab refugees left for several complicated reasons, including weak leadership and military unpreparedness, but the root cause of their flight was the war itself."

"The Nakba exhibit at the Canadian Human Rights Museum] falls short of the  facts."

David Bercuson and Logan Jaspers, Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy 

The Passions Unleashed by Dominating Hatred

"[The Al Quds Day rally has] long been a venue for antisemitism, hatred, intimidation and the glorification of terrorism."

"While the judge cited Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, when we talk about rights we need to be clear that every person has the right to safety and security."

"We need to be clear that no one in Canada has the right to incite violence or free licence to intimidate and hate."

"I won't stop working to put an end to the hatred and division that runs too rampant on Canada's streets." "I won't stop working to protect the greatest province in the greatest country in the world."

Ontario Premier Doug Ford 

 

"The Attorney General has known for at least a year that the Al Quds rally would take place around this time. The Attorney General relies on statements made by protest organizers that date back to 2016. The province of Ontario did not pass any laws or regulations to deal with this event. It did not invoke the Emergency Management and Civil Protection Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. E.9."

"Even allowing for rapidly moving current events, the Attorney General should not have come to court mere hours before the rally was set to start. There was no possibility of cross-examination on any of the affidavits and the oral argument was necessarily truncated. Such a compressed timetable puts the court in a difficult position."

"There is no evidence that participants at last year’s rally incited hatred or engaged in hate speech. There is no evidence before me of any criminality arising out of this rally in the past, much less evidence that could satisfy me that there is a ‘strong case’ that there will be criminal activity this year."

Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert Centa 

Protesters and counter-protesters demonstrate by the U.S. Consulate during a rally for Al-Quds Day in Toronto, on Saturday, March 14, 2026. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sammy Kogan

 

"It was a political show by Ford. He doesn't need any court order. He's a premier and he has a duty, he has power and full authority to implement the law."

"If Ford, [Prime Minister] Mark Carney, Toronto police, [Toronto] Mayor [Olivia] Chow, they don't want to do their job, we the people ... have the duty to stand."

Salmon Sima, Iranian refugee, Canadian activist  

The Premier of Ontario tasked his attorney general to seek a court injunction against the annually ritualized Al Quds Day taking place in Toronto. The injunction application stated: "There is a serious risk of violence arising from or occurring at the rally", including mischief, intimidation and in the process ignoring Criminal Code hate laws that include public incitement of hatred, or wilful promotion of antisemitism. Rally organizers along with the Al-Quds Committee, the Palestinian Youth Movement, Lebanese4Palestine and the Canada-banned terrorist group Samidoun linked with the PFLP were sued by the Province.

Al-Quds Day is a creation of the  Islamic Republic of Iran, dating from the 1979 revolution when the Palestinian 'cause' was taken up by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Quds, the Arabic name for Jerusalem, the contested ancient city of Judean ancestral heritage claimed by the nascent state of Arabic 'Palestine' as their capital, championed by the Iranian regime, became the purpose of the annual rally, a disguised scheme to invalidate Israel's claim to the city and to portray Israel as an interloper, not the rightful claimant through ancient indigeneity. 

Wherever Islamists have settled in the West they subscribe to this historical revisionism and mount such an infamous rally in world capitals.

On Saturday, 14 March, in Toronto, an estimated 4,500 people turned out to the pro-Palestinian rally with a double purpose this year, a protest against the U.S.-Israel bombardment of the Islamic Republic, that very regime that two months earlier slaughtered tens of thousands of Iranian protesters who marched for the end of the regime in cities across Iran, only to be met with armed police action shooting protesters to death, arresting untold numbers to be tortured in Iran's hated prisons. 

 

This is the country that has the Middle East and the West on edge over their nuclear program and medium-to-long-range missiles.

 

A counter-protest also took place outside the U.S. Consulate in Toronto Saturday. (Mercedes Gaztambide/CBC)

 

A counter-rally was staged by Iranian Canadians opposed to the Islamic theocracy that has transformed their country of origin into a pariah in the Middle East and abroad for its broad range of human rights crimes, its well-known support for terrorism and its control of terrorist groups in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian Territories. Both supporters of Israel, Canadians of Jewish extraction carrying Israeli flags and Iranian Canadians carrying the original flag of Iran under its dynastic Shahs were present to wave their Canadian flags in allegiance to the country which under the Liberal government appears to be signalling that allegiance is now misplaced.

 

Mere days following shots being fired at the U.S. Consulate at University Avenue and Armour Street, the Al-Quds rally attendees made their presence known. They stood on the south side of Armoury Street, holding up Palestinian flags and calling for an end to the war in Iran. On the opposite, north side, counter-demonstrators waved Israeli, pre-Revolutionary Iranian and Trump 2028 flags, along with Canadian flags. 

 

The Al-Quds crowd held up large banners with the insignia of the Islamic Republic of Iran. On this occasion, Iranian regime flags outnumbered those of the Palestinian flags, mourners carried portraits of the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and protesters urged support of retaliatory attacks on Israel from the Islamic Republic that has always outwardly threatened to destroy the Jewish state. 

 

This display of pure, unadulterated hatred for Israel's right of existence, inflamed by the support of terror against 'colonialism' and 'unjust wars', aiming directly at Israel's right to defend itself from existential threats represents the sole purpose of such events. And Iranian Canadians will have none of it, knowing all too well that it is that state theocratic regime that has destroyed their country.

Unit: Hate Crime Unit

Case #: 2026-538606

Published: Sunday, March 15, 2026, 10:32 AM

The Toronto Police Service is making the public aware of two arrests made at the Al-Quds Day demonstration. 

On Saturday, March 14, 2026, the Al-Quds Day demonstration took place in the University Avenue and Armoury Street area. In addition to those attending the Al-Quds Day demonstration, counter-demonstrators were also present. During two unrelated incidents, two men were arrested. 

It is alleged that:

• the accused, a male participating in the counter-demonstration, engaged with the victim, a participant in the Al-Quds demonstration, who was holding a stick with an Islamic Republic of Iran flag attached
• the accused began swinging his arms and fists at the victim, breaking the stick and causing pieces of it to strike the victim in the head

Mostafa Shabanian Bashmandoost, 39, of Toronto, was arrested and charged with:

1. Assault
2. Criminal Harassment
3. Theft Under $5000
4. Possession of Property Obtained by Crime Under $5000
5. Public Incitement of Hatred

He is scheduled to appear in court at the Toronto Regional Bail Centre, 2201 Finch Avenue West, on Sunday, March 15, 2026, at 10 a.m., in room 105.

These investigations are being treated as suspected hate-motivated offences.

 

Farshid McVandifar, 56, of Toronto, was arrested and charged with:

1. Mischief – Damage Property Under $5000
2. Assault

He is scheduled to appear at the Ontario Court of Justice, 10 Armoury Street, on Wednesday, July 22, 2026, at 11 a.m., in room 203.

It is further alleged that:

• the second accused, a male participating in the counter demonstration, followed the victim, a participant of the Al-Quds demonstration, who was wearing an Islamic Republic of Iran flag on their back
• the accused spat on the victim and ripped the flag off their back
• the accused returned into the crowd and was later located among the counter demonstration group
• the accused was then observed to be lighting an Islamic Republic of Iran flag on fire and wearing Islamic Republic of Iran flags attached to the soles of his shoes.

As usual, when police attend to these events, it is those who are victimized, threatened through the intimidation of double-speak that are driven to respond with action that reflects their outrage at the malice directed against those who subscribe to liberty and the defence of  human rights, who are held accountable for disturbances, rarely those who mount such radicalized pure-hate events whose purpose is achieved through the police applied courtesy of enablement... 

Toronto police said Thursday they planned to increase their presence in the area of the rally. (Mercedes Gaztambide/CBC)