Video: far-right Rebel News CEO arrested by Toronto police for breach of peace

Ezra Levant arrested after refusing to leave after being accused of inciting crowd

Ezra Levant, the CEO of far-right website ‘Rebel News’, was arrested on Sunday by Toronto Police for breach of the peace when he refused to leave an anti-genocide demo that police officers had accused him of trying to incite.

Levant settled a 2016 lawsuit brought against him and Rebel Media by Canadians for Peace and Justice in the Middle East (CPJME) after he described them as ‘Jew-baiters’ and compared them to nazis for their support for the ‘Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions’ (BDS) campaign against Israel for its apartheid and oppression of the Palestinian people. Rebel Media also called for CPJME to be stripped of its charitable status, despite it not ever being a charity. CPJME president Thomas Woodley said he and his colleagues were ‘satisfied with the [confidential] settlement’. A CPJME statement said it had delayed its announcement of the settlement for several months because of ‘issues regarding Rebel Media’s compliance’.

In the video of today’s incident, Levant is seen apparently accusing the police officers of silencing him ‘because I’m a Jew’ and telling them that he is their ‘boss’:

In 2012, Levant railed against Roma Gypsies that they are ‘a culture synonymous with swindlers’ and accused them of being ‘a shiftless group of hobos’ who ‘rob people blind’:

These are gypsies, a culture synonymous with swindlers. The phrase gypsy and cheater have been so interchangeable historically that the word has entered the English language as a verb: he gypped me. Gypsies are not a race. They’re a shiftless group of hobos. They rob people blind. Their chief economy is theft and begging. For centuries these roving highway gangs have mocked the law and robbed their way across Europe.

The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council upheld complaints about Levant’s comments – Levant had apologised in six months earlier – saying they were:

abusive and unduly discriminatory against an ethnic group, and violated other provisions of the [code] regarding negative portrayal, stereotyping, stigmatization and degradation.

Up to half of Europe’s Roma were murdered by the nazis during World War II.

The Canadian pro-Palestinian demonstrators were protesting against Israel’s murder of around 200,000 Palestinians in its Gaza genocide, overwhelmingly women and children.

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