LILLEY: Toronto Police document accuses Israel of ethnic cleansing

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The knock against the Toronto Police Service over the past 19 months is that they have engaged in two-tier policing. Specifically, when it comes to policing protests that are pro-Palestinian, in many cases outright pro-Hamas, that TPS takes a hands-off approach – that is when they aren’t delivering them coffee and donuts.

A leaked “event guide” detailing what police officers should expect at a “Nakba” protest this past weekend may show why TPS behaves the way it does.

“Nakba Day, also known as the Palestinian catastrophe, commemorates the ethnic cleansing of Palestine starting on May 15th, 1948. The date marks the destruction of Palestinian land and mass displacement of the Palestinian population,” the event guide states as fact.

These are not statements attributed to the organizers of the event police are being directed to attend, they are just put forward as unquestioned facts. The document went on to talk about how many people were killed and displaced by the 1948 Arab-Israeli war – at least how many Palestinians – and how many villages were destroyed.

“The Nakba is a central aspect for Palestinian national identity, marking the mass displacement of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israel war,” the event guide reads.

This is all within the first paragraph of the main body of the guide on how officers should police the event.

There is no mention that 1 million Jews have been forced out of Arab countries, and Iran, since this same 1948 war. There is no mention that the war was started because Arabs in the region, including what we now call Palestinians, said they would not accept a Jewish state in any form and launched a war to eradicate Israel.

That war is still going on and being cheered by those who walk the streets of Toronto chanting about globalizing the intifada and from the river to the sea.

The response from the Toronto Police Service when asked about the event guide is that they don’t take sides in protests but clearly in this document, and many would argue their actions, TPS leadership has taken sides.

“As part of our planning process, we often include publicly available descriptions of events, compiled from a range of sources. These references are for operational awareness only and do not reflect any position held by the Toronto Police Service,” spokesperson Stephanie Sayer said via email in response to questions.

When an operational guide distributed to officers states that Israel has engaged in ethnic cleansing, when the document reads like Hamas propaganda, you can be sure it makes many officers, especially Jewish officers, wonder about their place in the organization.

“Using talking points that are indistinguishable from the very terrorist organization that carried out the Oct. 7th attacks to educate their officers demonstrates that leadership is at best, indifferent to the Jewish community and at worst, active in that narrative,” one Jewish police officer told The Toronto Sun.

Another source revealed that both Muslim and Jewish officers have expressed concern at the lack of leadership by Chief Myron Demkiw on this file and a recent meeting between these officers and the chief ended with people yelling.

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TPS defends itself by pointing to the 523 demonstrations they’ve attended since Oct. 7, 2023, and the 145 charges laid, but far too often, as with the events on Saturday, the lone arrest was a Jewish counter protester.

The senior officers in charge on Saturday wouldn’t even direct officers to clear the intersection of Yonge and Bloor Sts. to allow an ambulance through to pick up a child in medical stress. As Joe Warmington reported, the ambulance was forced to detour to pick up the child and then had to do a U-turn to take the child to hospital rather than take the most direct route.

This all comes down to leadership, or the lack of leadership. In the case of the Toronto Police, officers listen to their senior officers who then take their direction from Demkiw who has utterly failed at this task.

Now that we see what kind of language and ideas are put into the planning documents at TPS, the stance and lack of leadership from Demkiw is making all the more sense.