this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2024
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Police In Canada Warn Lawyer Over Her Social Media Posts On Israel (youtu.be)
submitted 1 month ago by ininewcrow@lemmy.ca to c/ontario@lemmy.ca
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/30385203

BACKGROUND

Joanna Berry is a Canadian immigration and refugee lawyer in Ontario, Canada. On October 2, two Niagara Police Officers, one of them a sergeant detective, paid her a visit to her home. They told her they were there on behalf of the Ottawa Police Department because of her "personal social media." They begin to tell her that "10 lawyers who are of the Jewish faith" have filed a complaint with the police about her social media. As you can tell from the video, Joanna Berry, is outraged by the visit and clearly distraught. I reached out to the Niagara Regional Police for comment but they did not respond to my inquiry. I spoke with Joanna Berry also and she gave OTL Media permission to publish the video. She told us that she wants Canadians to see it and for the video to be a warning.

"This is very Orwellian"

On The Line Media is run by Samira Mohyeddin, a multi-award-winning journalist, documentary maker, and producer at CBC Radio One’s The Current.

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[–] DarkCloud@lemmy.world 24 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Israel and Zionists are really doing a number on people who spent a long time saying "Jews don't pull the strings in multiple industries - that's just antisemitic conspiracy mongering".

Where I'm from we had a literal Nazi problem cropping up. Eventually after a year or two we nipped it in the bud with very little fanfare... A year later some pro-palestinian university students held some protests and now the media are decrying rampant antisemitism is everywhere and we should all be concerned.

....they weren't so vocal when it was actual Nazi groups cropping up, but pro-palestinian protestors and all of a sudden Zionists and the Israeli lobby are getting stories written.

Very sus. Funny how when it's a high-investment geopolitical issue the wallet comes out, when it's against Zionism.... But when it's against Jewish people, as a racial category, far less noise and fanfare was made.

[–] Natanael 14 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Because the far right Israeli politicians are buddies with far right Christian nationalists (who in turn make up many of the Nazi groups)

https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1197956512

https://www.juancole.com/2022/03/preferring-democratic-nationalism.html

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/right-wing-extremist-group-targets-pro-palestine-figures-in-france/3069385

https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/10/college-campus-protests-far-right

They (in particular groups like AIPAC) prefer to reject the opinions of actual Jewish people outside Israel in favor of working with local extremist groups. Israeli far right jews frequently call other jews "antijewish" just for calling for peace. And Nazi types love to help them out. Groups like jews for peace gets ignored because nobody supports them publicly, and Nazi types gets protected by right wing politicians like Republicans.

The only thing they have in common is that all those groups are totalitarian authoritarians, with similar obsessions about Israel's borders. You'd think those extremists would have a bit more survival instinct - but who am I kidding, if you have brains and common sense you don't become that kind of extremist...

And as usual it's a problem because conservatives funnel money to hate groups like this, in all countries

[–] DarkCloud@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

That makes sense. Israeli has been a predominantly right wing country since the assassin of Sharone and subsequent spread of conspiracy theories around that event.

What I don't get is center leftwing governments of western nations blindly supporting them. I'm guessing that's because of how far right the center left actually is?

But I mean, if you look at the history of how Israel has treated US authority/sovereignty:

The Lavon Affair having been an Israeli plot to blow up US and British buildings in Egypt, in order to frame islamic terrorists.

The Israeli Nuclear program as having been started with 100 kg of refined Uranium they illegally stole from US stockpiles.

The attack on the USS Liberty, attacked by Israel with the unsuccessful aim to sink it (34 dead, 117 injured).

...and that's not even getting to the child sex trafficking Mossad agent Robert Maxwell's daughter, Ghislain Maxwell...

The US seems quite mad to trust such a country, providing them with more financial and military aid than most other countries combined (with the exception of Ukraine, which is a far more just and stabilizing war)...

...it's just a real bad alliance for the US, eho I assume are thoroughly infiltrated by Israeli influence when it comes to the military industrial complex.

[–] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 17 points 1 month ago

Holy shit!

Yeah... No. Zionism is a big fucking problem now. What the fuck kind of Gestapo shit is this???

[–] ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

According to the video, she tells the officers that she can guess who must have filed the complaint, and that "No one has said 'Stop messaging me.'" The police respond that they're there to tell her to stop messaging these people, but she says that if people don't want to hear her, they should tell her themselves or they should block her.

Frankly she sounds a bit unhinged and I would have to see the content of her messages before I could judge whether or not the visit from the police was appropriate. Is she just posting controversial things on her own page (in which case the police shouldn't be there) or is she repeatedly sending other people messages that they can reasonably perceive as harassment?

[–] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

If it is just a bunch of unhinged messages or even spamming ... then people can just block her messages. They can also contact the media company where the posts were shared to report her behaviour and have something done about it. If it is a private service in the public sphere (like twitter or facebook), then there are ways to inform her, reprimand her, block her account or even delete her account.

Even she had said something illegal ... like threaten death or violence then the police would have stated that is what they were there for. Instead all they basically say is to ask her to stop saying bad things online. If the police were always like that, they'd be visiting people on a daily ... hourly basis to ask millions of people to stop saying bad things online.

This woman wasn't charged with anything nor told in detail why these police were even at her house ... they just make vague statements that there were complaints against her online about some things she said and asked her to stop.

This is a clear overstep by police to intimidate someone because of something they said about a foreign country. This is Canada, not 1933 Germany.

[–] ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

the police would have stated that is what they were there for

She didn't exactly give them a chance to talk.

[–] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

If it were a serious criminal matter ... they would not have allowed her to interrupt them

They couldn't speak over her because they knew full well that they had no right to be there. These are probably two of the dumbest cops in Ontario to have allowed themselves to be filmed like this.

[–] ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

They had a right to be there since she invited them in, and then they no longer had a right to be there after she told them to leave so they did. The events in the video could well be an attempt to illegally intimidate a person for expressing political views, but they could also be an attempt to resolve a case of harassment without having to involve the courts, in which case the fact that they left doesn't necessarily mean that she won't get a summons later.

[–] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 month ago

Whatever reason why they went in or whether or not they had a right to or not .... they basically spent an hour out of their workday of investigating more serious crimes in their area to go over to a woman's house to tell her to stop saying bad or disagreeable things online to unknown (or unidentified) people. Sure the video is only 7 minutes long but it takes time to drive to someone's house, then drive back and then spend whatever amount of time at the office to get informed about the visit and get organized for it .... all that work, just to tell a woman to stop saying things online.

Murders, car thefts, robberies, assaults and actual threats and they had to ignore all that for an hour just to tell a woman to stop saying things online.

[–] jerkface@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 month ago

they could also be an attempt to resolve a case of harassment without having to involve the courts

as police detectives famously do

[–] Kaboom@reddthat.com 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Does anyone know what she was saying? Was it something like "let's send less military aid to Israel" or was it like "Death to the Jews"?

[–] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

If it was something like 'Death to Jews' ... the police would have stated that they were charging her with some sort of hate crime or online criminal behaviour

If it was something like 'let's send less military aid to Israel' ... they would have just asked her to stop saying these things ... now the police have to file a hundred documents and attend court to justify their behaviour and actions.

This woman is a hero and one we should look up to and defend because if we allow things like this to happen, we won't be able to defend ourselves if it gets worse.

[–] Kaboom@reddthat.com -5 points 1 month ago

Yeah, maybe. I want to know so I can make my own judgement, and not rely on cops