A Jewish real estate broker in Toronto was assaulted in an attack that police have classified as a hate crime.
Joseph Bitton with Real Broker Ontario Ltd. said the attack happened on Tuesday while he was at a client’s commercial property.
“I am visibly Jewish and the suspect said he was a Houthi from Yemen and was ‘going to kill me because Israel is killing babies and committing genocide,’” Britton wrote in a Facebook post. “He then threw a parking pylon at me as well as a brick, rocks, metal bars and struck me with a thick tree branch. I sustained only minor scratches and abrasions, but the greater damage was the emotional trauma.”
Police identified the attacker as Abdulkadir Al-Jelani, who was arrested and charged with three counts of assault with a weapon and one count of uttering death threats.
The assault is part of a rising level of criminal incidents aimed at Canada’s Jewish population. The Toronto Police Services Board reported that anti-Jewish incidents for 40% of all hate crimes and 81% of religiously motivated hate crimes in the city, even though Jews account for less than 4% of Toronto’s population
“This is not the Canada I grew up in and have lived in over the past 64 years,” Bitton added in his social media post.
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