The appeal of Arthur Topham, convicted of promoting hatred against Jewish people in November 2015, was rejected last month by the B.C. Supreme Court. On his website, radicalpress.com, Topham wrote that Jews should be forcibly sterilized. He described Canada as being \u201ccontrolled by the Zionist lobby\u201d and said Jewish synagogues are \u201csynagogues of Satan.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harry Abrams, who was the representative for B\u2019nai Brith Canada\u2019s League for Human Rights in 2007, when he was first to raise the alarm about Topham\u2019s antisemitic writing, said he\u2019d like to see Topham receive the maximum sentence of two years.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was convicted in 2015 by a jury of his peers and he\u2019s dragged it out, kept everything up on his website since then and added to it over all this time,\u201d said Abrams, who now serves as chair of community relations for the Jewish Federation of Victoria and Vancouver Island. \u201cIt\u2019s all been hateful, deliberate and with the intention of causing maximum pain and fear to Jews. He\u2019s a sick guy and there has to be some kind of backstop on this.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Feb. 20 ruling is an important one, said Adam Fishman, who worked closely with Amanda Hohmann, national director of B\u2019nai Brith\u2019s League for Human Rights on this case.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe argument by Topham\u2019s lawyer, Barclay W. Johnson, that the law that criminalizes hate speech in Canada is unconstitutional, had no merit in my opinion,\u201d Fishman said. \u201cBasically, they were arguing that the presence of the internet and the fact that information is more widely available because of it, changes whether that material is constitutional or not. The judge firmly rejected that argument. He wrote in his decision that it actually makes the offence even more serious, by virtue of the fact that it\u2019s much easier to disseminate hate today.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis also means that when faced with incidents of hate, especially online, police and prosecutors should press charges because there\u2019s no evidence those charges won\u2019t succeed \u2013 so there\u2019s no excuse for not enforcing them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Abrams speculated that Topham might try to appeal this conviction again in the B.C. Court of Appeal. Johnson said he had not received any instructions from his client on this matter.<\/p>\n
Johnson had shared office space with Topham\u2019s former lawyer, Doug Christie, who died in March 2013. \u201cOn his deathbed, I told [Christie] I\u2019d look after the rest of his files, and this was one of them,\u201d Johnson explained. \u201cMy interest was piqued by going over the issues related to freedom of expression. Ninety-nine percent of the material Arthur Topham posted from other sources is available on the internet, so the question is, what do you do about all this wickedness? I don\u2019t think you use the Criminal Code. We argued that the protections afforded in Canada are of little assistance if you weigh them against what\u2019s available worldwide.\u201d<\/p>\n
Johnson said Topham does not have a criminal record and was hopeful he would not serve time in jail. But Abrams begged to differ. \u201cI really think he should spend a couple of years in jail. He\u2019s sadistic and racist, and he\u2019s worked really hard for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Johnson added Topham\u2019s sentencing is scheduled for this Friday, March 10.<\/p>\n
Lauren Kramer<\/strong>, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net<\/a>. This article was originally published by <\/em>CJN<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The appeal of Arthur Topham, convicted of promoting hatred against Jewish people in November 2015, was rejected last month by the B.C. Supreme Court. On his website, radicalpress.com, Topham wrote that Jews should be forcibly sterilized. He described Canada as being \u201ccontrolled by the Zionist lobby\u201d and said Jewish synagogues are \u201csynagogues of Satan.\u201d Harry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[801,4883,6633,6716],"class_list":["post-23334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local","tag-antisemitism","tag-arthur-topham","tag-bc","tag-hate-crimes"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23334\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}