New antisemitic flyers in Belleville raise alarm: 'This is where these ideas begin”

When Belleville resident Debbie Hoskin’s husband discovered an antisemitic black and white, two-sided flyer on their front lawn on Oct. 1, she knew right away it was Jew hatred, as she calls it: the text blames Jews for everything from profiting off COVID-19 to being the promoters of abortion. Although Hoskin is of Jewish heritage, her home wasn’t the only one on her street to wake up to these posters on their lawns. Other homes had them, too. This street is just a few blocks from the Sons of Jacob synagogue, which two weeks ago was the target of a horrific shooting by a now-dead antisemitic gunman.

The synagogue president also found four of these posters on the building. Hoskin called Belleville police, who are now investigating and looking for security camera video in the area to check for a suspect or suspects.

Hoskin is upset, but not surprised at the latest manifestation of antisemitism in the Canadian city. She believes there is uncensored Jew-hatred being given free reign on some social media accounts, although she doesn’t know whether the Goyim Defense League-linked flyer she got was sourced in Belleville.

On today’s episode of The CJN’s North Star podcast, host Ellin Bessner speaks with eyewitness Debbie Hoskin and with Prof. Karen Blair, an expert in Holocaust studies and the psychology of the Holocaust, at Trent University in Peterborough, who warns that hate begets hate.

Blair cautions anyone who encounters this specific kind of right-wing hate propaganda not to click on it. She had eerily similar flyers placed on her house in 2023, for which police in Peterborough eventually arrested a man and charged him with a hate crime.

Related links

Read more about Belleville police’s investigation into the new antisemitic flyers found on the synagogue and in the neighbourhood, in The CJN.

Graffiti linked to the same neo-Nazi hate group was found in four Toronto schools in 2022, in The CJN.

Watch the full interview about the new flyers, with Belleville resident Deborah Hoskin, and also with Prof. Karen Blair, a Holocaust studies expert from Trent University, on The CJN’s YouTube channel.

Credits

Host and writer: Ellin Bessner ( @ebessner )

Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Izzie Helenchilde (producer and video editor), Michael Fraiman (executive producer), Alicia Richler (editorial director)