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February 4, 2011
Secrecy in Montreal
Acts of vandalism are not always made public there.
RHONDA SPIVAK
Not all acts of vandalism against the Montreal Jewish community have been made public, the head of the Montreal Jewish Federation Combined Jewish Appeal’s security coordinating committee has disclosed.
Recent media reports have focused on antisemitic incidents directed at several synagogues and a school on Jan. 16. However, the head of the security coordinating committee, Rabbi Reuven Poupko, has admitted that there have been other acts of vandalism over the last 18 months that were reported on a timely basis to the police, but deliberately kept from the media.
Poupko told the Canadian Jewish News on Jan. 17 that “incidents of vandalism have been occurring on a more regular basis, perhaps once a month, but they have gone unreported for fear of triggering ‘copycats’ or creating an unreasonable degree of fear.”
Asked whether police investigators were the ones requesting that certain incidents of vandalism not be reported, for fear of jeopardizing an ongoing investigation, Poupko said, “No.” He clarified that it was the committee he chaired that made the decisions.
Poupko said it was a judgment call as to which incidents his committee – which he described as a partnership between Montreal Jewish Federation and Canadian Jewish Congress Quebec Region – released to the media and which ones it didn’t, and this was decided on a case-by-case basis.
Asked specifically how many incidents of vandalism had been reported to the police but not to the public, Poupko said he couldn’t give a specific number. He said that administrators of an institution were told of a given event, such that the institutions themselves knew and, therefore, could take precautionary measures.
Explaining why his committee would decide to keep knowledge of certain incidents quiet, he said, “We don’t want to grant them [the perpetrators] victory” and “we don’t want to give them the satisfaction” of reading about their act in the newspaper.
Earlier this month, the Canadian Jewish News reported that a source had told the paper that vandals had hit a major community institution in Montreal’s Jewish community, but that the news had gone unreported. Poupko confirmed that the incident, although reported to the police, had not been made public. He explained that the management of that major institution didn’t want it to be reported to the media, so his committee honored that request. Asked whether he could now disclose the name of this institution, especially in light of the recent string of vandalism, Poupko responded, “No, I can’t. They have asked me not to tell.”
Veteran Liberal MP Irwin Cotler – in whose constituency these acts of vandalism have taken place – said that he had not been told about the vandalism against the major community institution in question. As well, when asked whether the committee had notified B’nai Brith Canada – which issues regular reports on the number of antisemitic acts committed – about the incidents being kept from the media, Poupko said it had not, and that it had no intention of doing so.
Rhonda Spivak is editor of the e-paper winnipegjewishreview.com.
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