Montreal, August 18, 2025
Since October 7 of 2023 the Montreal suburb of Hampstead has been flying the flag of Israel in front of its city hall. It goes without saying that in the current context of what is undoubtedly a genocide in Gaza being perpetrated by the government of Israel, flying the flag of Israel can be interpreted as a nod of approval for Israel’s genocidal campaign against Gaza’s civil population.
In fact, the mayor of Hampstead Jeremy Levi – like Anthony Housefather whose Mont Royal riding includes the borough of Hampstead – is a self-professed ‘proud Zionist’ whose political leanings regarding the situation in Gaza line up with that of the Netanyahu far-right coalition government which has been accused of genocide by the International Court of Law and a host of human-rights organizations including Israel’s eminent human rights organization B’Tselem.
A CTV news article entitled, “Hampstead town hall flying Israeli flag draws mixed reactions from residents,” points to the divergence of opinions regarding the presence of the Israeli flag in front of Hampstead’s town hall. Some residents support the presence of the flag but others object to its being in front of the Hampstead city hall. A resident of Hampstead has undertaken a door-to-door campaign with a petition to have the flag of Israel removed and has at least 40 signatures on it but admits that some residents who agree with him did not sign because they are “afraid of either being chastised by the mayor or other people in our community . . .” While the majority of Hampstead residents are of Jewish faith, “the latest census data showing about 40 per cent of Hampstead residents are not Jewish . . .”
In late July, the zealot-like Levi responded to opposition to the presence of the Israeli flag in Hampstead by posting on X the following: “I will never take down the Israeli flag, if that’s a problem for you, vote me out next election.” The next municipal election in the borough of Hampstead is on November 2, 2025. It is abundantly clear that Jeremy Levi supports Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza in principle. So, it appears, does Hampstead’s municipal council.
An article published by Yves Engler on Hampstead’s controversial mayor highlights what are decidedly racist comments posted by Mayor Levi on social media:
Hampstead mayor Jeremy Levi, top politician in the Montreal suburb of 7,500, recently bemoaned Muslims praying at McGill and posted an anti-Sikh, anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian National Post article headlined “Just ignore Sarah Jama’s keffiyeh. Next she’ll be wearing a turban”. He also posted an article about Republican senators calling Palestinian refugees a national security threat and previously made that argument in a controversial post noting, “Given the recent behavior of the pro-Palestinian group, Canada should reconsider its immigration plan for Gazans. Their values seem incompatible with ours, and I have no desire to welcome more hatred into our country.” Replace “Palestinian” with “Jew” and it echoes the language that led to the ignoble rejection of European Jewish refugees in the lead up to World War II, as La Presse columnist Rima Elkouri recently highlighted.
In her own opinion piece in the Montreal French-language newspaper La Presse, Rima Elkhouri writes the following in quoting Niall Clapham Ricardo: “As Independent Jewish Voices spokesperson Niall Clapham Ricardo rightly noted, it is distressing to see a Jewish person, when speaking about Palestinians, repeating the same rhetoric one heard in the 1920s, 1930s or 1940s about immigrants in general, and Jews in particular, who were also perceived as “incompatible” with the host society”.
In his article Engler also references the full support of Hampstead’s town council for Levi’s political line:
Hampstead’s council appears supportive of Levi. In November they unanimously backed legislation criminalizing the removal of posters of hostages in Gaza and recently banned Palestine demonstrations within 100 meters of places of worship and schools. A few weeks earlier the council unanimously passed a motion demanding “the Council of Hampstead, hereby expresses its non-confidence in the Government of Canada for its distancing from the longstanding policy of support for Israel, which has resulted in a major spike in antisemitism across Canada; THAT the Town council calls upon the Government of Canada to reaffirm its commitment to supporting Israel and to take concrete actions to combat antisemitism in all its forms within our nation.”
There is a conundrum here; Jeremy Levi, like Anthony Housefather, like all the other right-wing prominent Zionists who support Israel ‘right-or-wrong,’ or like the two-faced Irwin Cotler who pleads with Netanyahu to pursue a cease-fire to free the Israeli hostages, with the Palestinians as an ‘after-thought’, conflate Zionism with Judaism, and Israel as the embodiment of world Jewry. They substitute the State for the Jewish religion and then decry the growing ‘antisemitism everywhere’ which is the result of not making the distinction between the crimes of Israel and the Jews as a collectivity, between Zionism the ultra nationalist ideology and Judaism, the religion of the Jews.
Hence, the crimes of Israel are hoisted on to the collective shoulders of Jews everywhere. So, instead of the public saying, “Israel is at fault,” the cry becomes, “It’s because of the Jews!” That is why PAJU states unequivocally that the greatest single danger to Jews everywhere in the world is the government of Israel and the fudging of Zionism and Judaism. That is what Jeremy Levi, Anthony Housefather et al end up promoting and why they should be roundly rejected.
Rima Elkhouri asks the question which begs asking in her opinion piece on Levi: “Are such remarks really compatible with the role of an elected official, required to represent all the citizens of his municipality with fairness and respect?”
The answer to the question is an adamant ‘NO!’ There is no place for a racist such as Jeremy Levi in a position of authority in a society which deems itself to be a democratic and tolerant one. Levi has challenged the residents of Hampstead in the following way: “I will never take down the Israeli flag, if that’s a problem for you, vote me out next election.” To the residents of Hampstead, we at PAJU state the following: Take down Jeremy Levi in the next municipal elections in Hampstead on November 2, 2025! Then do the same to Anthony Housefather during the next federal election (which may come earlier than expected given that the Liberal government in Ottawa is a minority government).
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