Fan Forum - View Single Post - Jewish elementary school firebombed in Montreal

elisheva · 04-07-2004, 07:51 PM

http://www.canada.com/montreal/montr...D-BDD05C732CAE

Quote:

Jewish school firebombed hours before Passover
Note left on door. Sources link attack to assassination of Hamas leader

JAMES MENNIE
The Gazette; The Ottawa Citizen contributed to this report

Tuesday, April 06, 2004

"Why did I come here?" Zev Mestel shrugs as his kids look at the scorch mark where his youngest daughter goes to school. "This is shameful. It's an anti-Semitic act. It should never happen again.

"Unfortunately, it will."

United Talmud Torah School in St. Laurent was firebombed yesterday, and sources close to the investigation say a note left behind called the attack a response to the Israeli assassination last month of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, founder of the Islamic Hamas terrorist group.

Police are refusing to comment on that report.

Mestel showed up on de l'�glise St. when he heard about the firebombing on the news. He brought his girls with him and they picked their way through the TV cables and crime-scene tape to look at what happened, see it for themselves.

Shayna, 12, graduated last year from the school. Joni, 15, goes to the high school next door. Aviva turns 10 on April 15, the date they hope they'll have the school reopened and whatever destruction done painted away.

But listen to Mestel, hear the resignation in his voice, and it's clear the fire did more than damage whatever was on the other side of the suet-stained bricks, that there's more involved in making this right than paint and an insurance adjuster.

"It's one thing to have graffiti," he says. "It's another to have an accelerant thrown through a library window. It's like the '40s in Germany.

"Everybody feels that Canada's a safe place, and it is a safe place. But it's also a safe haven for terrorists, and in my mind this is a terrorist act.

"It's Passover tonight. It's supposed to be a happy holiday. Now we'll think about this."

- - -

"Our alarm company called our maintenance people at about 2:15, who in turn called me to say there was a fire in the school."

Sidney Benudiz, director-general of United Torah Talmud Schools, would love to leave the library to do his interviews but the TV people need background and whoever firebombed the school was happy to oblige.

The problem, however, is that the camera can't pick up all the fallout of the aftermath of the blaze - how an entire room has been melded by fire, smoke and water into a wire-tangled nightmare, how the smell of charred, then drowned paper and wood worms its way into your clothes, deep into your nostrils.

And then there's what can only be described as the ugliness of it, like an obscenity yelled from the window of a speeding car in the middle of the night.

By the time Benudiz got to the school, the fire was out but the cops were still there, investigating a case of arson and a note left taped to a door.

Benudiz hadn't seen the text, but said he gathered that the document had "political overtones, over the fact this was a Jewish school with ties to Israel."

Two and a half months ago, the 230 kids who come to this elementary school were greeted by a graffito of a swastika on the front door.

Benudiz says the other schools haven't been targeted with any specific anti-Semitic vandalism, except "the occasional stone thrown into a window, maybe twice a year. But we consider that a normal occurrence."

Whoever torched the library took the direct approach of smashing through a window, throwing some containers of flammables and then running like a thief once they'd taped their message to a doorway.

It's clear that the content of any manifesto is at this point irrelevant, that the medium is the message and the medium was the information centre of a school where students learn about their faith and heritage.

The problem is, this is a library for kids - little kids. So, yes, whoever torched the place managed to destroy Israel At War and a shelf full of books on the Holocaust, but they also managed to take out How Birds Fly, The Amazing Octopus and several sets of children's encyclopedias, as well as a teddy bear and a stuffed gorilla.

- - -

The problem with cases like this is that by publicizing them you run the risk of inspiring more incidents or copycats.

But there is no ignoring the presence in the school gym of the mayor of Montreal, the head of the city opposition, leaders of Jewish groups, a former federal cabinet minister and representatives of Premier Jean Charest and Prime Minister Paul Martin.

Martin has made Montreal-area MP Irwin Cotler his emissary.

But Cotler has a message of his own to deliver before speaking for his boss.

"I'm not here just as the MP for the adjoining district - I'm here as a graduate of this school," he tells the hedge of microphones before him.

"Yes, as students, we received anti-Semitism, but it was the anti-Semitism of ignorance, of stereotyping, of prejudice.

"What we have witnessed here today is the anti-Semitism of hate and of racism. The anti-Semitism of violence, anti-Semitism that consists of an assault on the inherent dignity of being human.

"We unequivocally condemn these acts of racist hate. ... We will not be silenced. We will not be intimidated. And we will act. We will bring the full force of the law to bear on those who would commit these cowardly acts of racist hate crimes."

And that's when you can't help but smile when you think of whatever criminal mastermind decided to send a message to the Jewish community on the eve of Passover by torching an elementary-school library.

Because as he lets the applause subside before reading Martin's message, it's clear that no matter who it was and why they did it, they just made it personal with Cotler, a school kid from de l'�glise St. who grew up to be federal justice minister.

And that's the kind of heat any arsonist could do without.

jmennie@thegazette.canwest.com

� Copyright 2004 Montreal Gazette

Scary stuff. I'm curious - has this been in newspapers in places besides Montreal? Because I'm honestly surprised no one's mentioned this around here.

(Also? I *heart* Irwin Cotler.)

I know where this school is, I used to live near there, my little sister went there for nursery or kindergarten or something like that, I have friends who went to the adjacent high school.
There's been a rise in anti-Semitic attacks, but this is the scarist one in Montreal so far.

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