"[Police allege that on May 25 and September 7, 2024, Ahmad Hassan Hajahmad, 33, attended anti-Israel demonstrations in the area of Bay Street and Front Street West], where he used amplification devices to make public statements that advocated for the detestation and harm against members of the Israeli and Jewish communities [allegedly acting] for the benefit of, and in association with, Hamas."

Toronto Police Service 

 

"It is chilling that a Toronto man has been charged with acting for the benefit of and in association with Hamas, a banned terrorist organization.

"Governments and authorities across Canada must do more to confront those who are radicalizing people in our streets to support violence and promote terrorist organizations, and ensure police and national security agencies have the counter-terrorism resources they need to enforce the law and keep Canadians safe."

Noah Shack, CEO, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs 

 

"He faces a single charge arising from speaking at public demonstrations. No violence, no weapon, no one harmed. Speaking out at a protest about the killing of civilians is protected expression, not terrorism."

"The police told the media he 'advocated for detestation and harm' but he is not charged with that. We'll be looking closely at how and why this case came to be, and we're confident it won't hold up when measured against the law."

Mohamed El Rashidy, defence lawyer for the accused 

Demonstrators at pro-Palestinian rally before the U.S. Consulate in Toronto   Chris Young, CP

 

The Attorney General of Ontario and the Government of Canada provided consent to the Toronto Police to proceed with the charge against Ahmad Hassan Hajahmad, resident of Toronto. Following which this man was arrested and charged with participation in or contributing to the activities of a terrorist group. One of the very such groups on Canada's terrorist list. Following his appearance before the Ontario court of justice the Toronto Police Service issued a statement. 

"Due to a court-imposed publication ban, the Toronto Police Service is unable to provide further details related to this investigation."

"The Toronto Police Service thanks the RCMP's INSET for their support with this investigation."

"A joint investigation by the Toronto Police Service Hate Crime Unit and INSET subsequently gathered evidence supporting the allegation that the accused acted for the benefit of, and in association with, Hamas, a designated terrorist group."

Toronto Police Service

Tensions ran high on Montreal’s downtown campuses as student activists led more than 500 protesters in support of Palestine. The rally began outside of Concordia University’s Hall building and snaked through downtown towards the McGill University campus. University Affairs

 

The Integrated National Security Enforcement Teams (INSET), is led by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, comprised of especially trained members of that group along with other law enforcement and national security partners at the federal, provincial and municipal levels. The proliferation of street demonstrations led by Palestinian student groups in Canada, incited and funded by foreign actors from abroad were initiated in the wake of the 7 October 2023 Palestinian terrorist incursion into southern Israel, led by Hamas. 

 

The protesters, labelling themselves 'pro-Palestinians' cited and repeated Hamas/Palestinian claims of Israeli genocide against Palestinians even before the Israel Defense Force had entered Gaza for the distinct purpose of routing out all Hamas agents and the terrorist leaders who had planned and executed the bloody barbarism that saw Jewish girls and women gang-raped and tortured, entire families put to the torch in their homes, farming communities torn asunder, their residents butchered, and children, the elderly and infirm and other Israeli civilians in their hundreds taken hostage into Gaza.

 

The Palestine Youth Movement held a downtown rally from Yonge and Dundas Sts. to the Israeli Consulate on Tuesday, March 18, 2025, before shutting down the intersection to traffic. Photo by Caryma Sa'd /Special to the Toronto Sun

 

Marching through Canadian streets and chanting 'Globalize the Intifada', 'Final Solution!', and 'Palestine will be free from the river to the sea', the protesters engaged in wildly uncivil and unlawful actions while threatening Canadian Jews in their neighbourhoods. On college and university campuses encampments were set up to harass Jewish students and to publicize Palestinian/Hamas propaganda, slandering both Israel and the Canadian Jewish population. While the targets of these wholesale discriminatory, racial events awaited police reaction and law action, it was in vain.

 

Jewish-owned businesses were vandalized, Jewish parochial schools shot at, synagogues fired-bombed, Jews were ostracized and abandoned, while police organized themselves to keep public order translated as separating the Palestinian supporters from smaller groups of Jews that came out to counter-protest and in so doing informed those small groups that their presence comprised a threat to public safety by inciting violence from the Palestinian-support groups lionizing Hamas's bloodbath as an understandable 'reaction' to 'occupation'.

 

Investigators had executed a search warrant at a Toronto residence on March 7, 2025, and there seized multiple electronic devices, we now are informed. "Investigations into criminal offences committed at demonstrations do not end when the event is over", stated Toronto Police Chief Myron Demkiw. 

"As this investigation progressed, we worked closely with our INSET partners to pursue the terrorism charge warranted by the investigation."

These complex investigations underscore the importance of continuing to strengthen our Counter Terrorism Security Unit so we can identify and investigate evolving threats to public safety."

"We will continue to hold those who break the law accountable, no matter how long it takes."

Toronto Police Chief Myron Demkiw 

Hamas terrorists in Rafah, Gaza   (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Disciplining Harvard University

"The consequences of the government's overreach will be severe and long-lasting."

"In recent weeks, the federal Government has launched a broad attack on the critical funding partnerships that make this invaluable research [studies on pediatric cancer, Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease] possible."

"This case involves the Government's efforts to use the withholding of federal funding as leverage to gain control of academic decision making at Harvard."

"Today, we stand for the values that have made American higher education a beacon for the world."

"We stand for the truth that colleges and universities across the country can embrace and honour their legal obligations and best fulfill their essential role in society without improper government intrusion."

President Alan M. Garber, Harvard University 

"The gravy train of federal assistance to institutions like Harvard, which enrich their grossly overpaid bureaucrats with tax dollars from struggling American families is coming to an end."

"Taxpayer funds are a privilege, and Harvard fails to meet the basic conditions required to access that privilege."

White House spokesman Harrison Fields

Harvard University, Reuters

"[Many international students at Harvard are] scared of speaking up [because they feel merely attending the school has put a target on their back]."

"It's incredibly scary for people. All student visas right now at Harvard are at risk, and what the Trump administration is trying to do is divide us."

Leo Gerden, senior Harvard student from Sweden 

"The Government has not — and cannot — identify any rational connection between antisemitism concerns and the medical, scientific, technological, and other research it has frozen that aims to save American lives, foster American success, preserve American security, and maintain America's position as a global leader in innovation."

"Nor has the Government acknowledged the significant consequences that the indefinite freeze of billions of dollars in federal research funding will have on Harvard's research programs, the beneficiaries of that research, and the national interest in furthering American innovation and progress."

"[The freeze was also] arbitrary and capricious and in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act."

Harvard lawsuit 

Students, faculty and members of the Harvard University community rally on campus in Cambridge, Mass., on April 17. (Charles Krupa/The Associated Press)

Ivy league universities across the United States have hosted scores of vehement, organized 'protests' against Israel as an 'occupying power', claiming it is committing 'genocide' against Palestinians in the months following the terrorist attacks by Palestinian groups Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, followed by ordinary Palestinian citizens who breached the separation wall between Gaza and Israel to flood southern Israel with thousands of operatives intent on creating a savage barbarity of mass rape, torture, and slaughter of entire families whose homes were burned around them. 

 

The protests on U.S. university campuses began almost immediately after the October 7, 2023 attack. Palestinian student groups organized, advertised and instructed their followers to get out and demand of university administrations full and complete academic and investment divestiture in anything pertaining to Israel, while shouting their slogans of Israel disappearing into the sea so Palestinians could be free. Jewish university students were hounded, threatened, their security and sense of place fully disrupted. University staff members became involved in support of the Palestinian protests.

 

A graduate displays a Palestinian flag during the 373rd Commencement at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 23, 2024.

(photo credit: Craig F. Walker/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

Harvard, the premier institute of higher learning in the U.S., was among others of its kind to host these disruptive, violent campaigns in a spirit of toleration and free speech rights taking precedence over the rights of Jewish students to be able to access classes, to be free of intimidation and threats. With the  ascent of U.S. President Donald Trump to his second term in the White House, his administration, as promised during the election campaign, has sought to close down the protests, and it has resorted to the threat of withholding federal funding for the oldest and most prestigious university in the States.

 

Harvard has responded by defying the orders, insisting it has itself launched a number of investigations into the protests that had turned virulently antisemitic. Harvard's defiance against orders to defuse the situation by refusing to host any further campus activism, and crack down on antisemitism and 'diversity' programs, has signalled its defiance by launching a lawsuit against the Trump Administration. 

 

Harvard refused the demand by the Department of Homeland Security to turn over 'detailed records' of its foreign student visa holders' "illegal and violent activities" by April 30. Two grants to the school totalling US$27 million were cancelled. At Harvard, international students comprise 27 percent of the campus with the majority of its student body in graduate school, engaged most often in conducting nationally prominent research. The university's distinction as a premier study destination is linked to its ability to attract top global intellectual talent. It also distinguishes itself as attracting large tax-deductible donations from wealthy American philanthropists, most of whom were former alumni.

 

Harvard faculty and staff hold signs inside Harvard Yard during a press conference by faculty supporters of the Harvard Out of Palestine coalition.  (John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

All of which makes it that much more disturbing that riotous protests damning Israel and discomfiting Jewish students with anger directed at their presence, to the extent that many students felt compelled to miss their classes as a result of having been corralled and trapped by enraged Palestinian/Hamas-supporting groups committing criminal acts of occupation of university grounds and buildings, while demanding that faculty have no academic intercourse with their Israeli counterparts and the university commit to complete divestment.

 

Over US$2 billion in federal grants and contracts has been frozen to the Ivy League institution. Harvard is reeling from the threat to its hosting of international students even as the Trump administration has gone about deleting records to terminate the legal status of international students at schools country-wide. There is no recourse for the students on  how they may regain legal status in the United States. It seems a just enough solution to the problem of international students feeling free to abuse the hospitality of a country they find fault with, even as they advantage themselves of the superior education opportunities it offers.

 

Some 1,024 students to date attending 160 colleges, universities and university systems have seen their visas revoked or had their legal status removed since late March. An administration insider with familiarity in the contentious matter revealed that the Treasury Department had directed the IRS acting chief counsel to begin the process of revoking Harvard's tax-exempt status, while speaking on the condition of anonymity.

 

Anti-Israel students at Harvard's law school reportedly conspired to smear law firms that bucked campus antisemitism after Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attacks against Israeli civilians. (Getty Images; Fox News )

The Psychopathic Antisemitism Serpents in Canada

"Back then, you simply did not see people running through the streets saying, I'm an al-Qaeda supporter, I love bin Laden."

"When I look at what's going on now, that's the important thing, in my mind [open expressions of support for terrorist groups]."

"It's very different now. With the Toronto 18 [homegrown terror group], we had a small group of people, some of whom had known each other for a while, and they built their little group and they did it in secret."

"They didn't have these massive demonstrations where like-minded people can easily identify one another."

Former RCMP counterterrorism investigator John Mecher

 

"We are very concerned."

Samidoun is known to be directly linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which is already a listed terrorist organization [in Canada and elsewhere]."

"They have been inciting and glorifying terrorist attacks and massacres since October 7. They were already hanging signs from bridges in Vancouver."

"This is a serious source of concern."

Israeli Ambassador to Canada Ido Moed

 

"These are resistance fighters. These are our heroes."

"These are those who are sacrificing so that we can live and speak and struggle and fight."

"These are the people whose blood is being shed to defend humanity and to defend the world."

"We stand with the Palestinian resistance and their heroic and brave action on October 7."

"Long live October 7!"

Charlotte Kates, international co-ordinator for the Samidoun Prisoners Solidarity Network

Charlotte Kates spoke at a demonstration on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery last Friday. Her comments have led to a hate crime investigation by the Vancouver Police Department. (B'nai Brith Canada)

Samidoun is one of the major groups responsible for dozens of 'pro-Palestine' rallies and demonstrations that have appeared in Canada since the October 7 Hamas atrocities perpetrated on civilians in southern Israel. It was those savage acts of terror that included mass rapes, torching family homes with parents and children inside, mutilation of female victims, mass murders and hostage-taking of children, women and the elderly that led to Israel launching its military against Hamas to destroy its infrastructure and eliminate its terrorist operatives. 

Openly and with a sense of profound entitlement "Long live October 7" was the slogan chanted at the Vancouver Art Gallery last Friday and in Ottawa at yet another April 21 rally on Parliament Hill. Where Kates gushed about the "beautiful, brave and heroic resistance of the Palestinian people". She has no hesitation in addressing her concerns directly to Parliament. Little wonder -- at one time her husband was on contract with Heritage Canada to teach public servants how to deal with racism.

"It is long past time to delist Palestinian and Lebanese resistance organizations [Hamas and Hezbollah] from Canada's so-called list of terrorist entities."

"Hamas is not a terrorist organization. Islamic Jihad is not a terrorist organization. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is not a terrorist organization."

Hezbollah is not a terrorist organization."

Charlotte Kates, Samidoun

Banned in Germany for its links to terrorism and its blatant antisemitism along with its illegal activities, Samidoun, based now in Vancouver while terror-listed in Israel, has been intimately associated with the PFLP, once notorious for its suicide bombings and airline hijacking exploits. An internal dispute among 'pro-Palestine' activists at Rutgers University in New Jersey, saw this woman arrive in Canada some dozen years ago.

 

She is also the coordinator of the U.S. National Lawyers' Guild's International Committee whose member-lawyers expend enormous time and energy acting pro bono for 'pro-Palestine' protests and encampments at universities across the United States. Her husband, Khaled Barakat, born in Dahiyat al-Barid, a village near Jerusalem in 1971 was deported from the U.S. after an expired residency permit leading him to Vancouver as a student activist at the University of British Columbia in 2004.

 

Barakat has been identified by the Israeli Shin Bet security service as a senior figure in the PFLP, the primary leader of Samidoun, the PFLP's overseas recruitment propaganda proxy. His tendency to violent, antisemitic rhetoric led to his being deported from Europe; both  husband and wife are now barred from reentering Europe. Shockingly, Samidoun has been given federally registered not-for-profit status in Canada.

 

Former RCMP counterterrorism investigator John Mecher is of the opinion that Ottawa should be taking Samidoun seriously, that it may be only a matter of time before Hamas and its Canadian supporters spawn a new generation of homegrown extremists. The current phenomenon of 'pro-Palestine' activism represents, he feels, a far greater risk of recruitment to violent extremism and terrorism than was present in the radical activist situation that prevailed in the wake of 9/11.

 

Charlotte Kates (top left) and Khaled Barakat (top right) spoke at an online forum organized by Columbia university students which later led to a series of suspensions by the university. (@thestustustudio/X)