JTA — An assistant director for a Canadian pro-Israel media watchdog group is facing 17 criminal charges in connection with a string of profane anti-Palestinian graffiti that included the phrase “F— Gaza.”
Robert Walker, 39, remains employed by Honest Reporting Canada months after his November arrest. The organization, which is headquartered in Toronto, has not made any statement on his arrest, the graffiti or his continued employment, and did not respond to a request for comment.
An attorney for Walker, Leora Shemesh, also did not immediately return a request for comment from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. She told the Toronto Star over the weekend that her client would be pleading not guilty. Shemesh added that the charges against Walker had been “politicized” owing to an “emotionally charged climate associated to the Middle East conflict,” adding that he had faced harassment at his home.
“This case should not be used by anyone as an excuse to target, harass and or intimidate an individual who at this time has done nothing wrong,” Shemesh added.
Shemesh herself has drawn attention for her pro-Israel advocacy. Last year, she was ejected from a Toronto Raptors NBA game for wearing a “Free Our Hostages” sweatshirt to the arena. (She argued that her sweatshirt should not be seen as a violation of the NBA’s ban on political messaging because supporting hostages should be apolitical.)
Toronto police arrested Walker alongside two others, one of whom is 71 years old, in conjunction with November’s graffiti incident. The graffiti were painted on sidewalks, planters and construction signs — considered city property — along a stretch of busy Queen Street East.
All three are charged with 17 counts of “mischief,” and are due back in court in late February. A fourth suspect is being sought by police but hasn’t yet been identified.
According to the Toronto Star, the graffiti in question includes the phrase “F— Gaza” stencilled in an English font resembling Hebrew letters. Another stencil with similar lettering, according to social media photos, read “Rape ≠ Resistance,” a reference to the reported rapes committed by Hamas on October 7, 2023.
Walker’s organization, Honest Reporting Canada, is known for issuing “Action Alerts” targeting Canadian news outlets it says are presenting an unfair or inaccurate view of Israel, in the model of the group of the same name that has offices in the United States and Israel. (The director of Honest Reporting US told JTA the two organizations are “completely separate.”) Recent pressure campaigns include accusing a Montreal magazine of “falsely” claiming there is famine in Gaza, and attacking CBC articles about Palestinian suffering in Gaza that fail to mention Hamas.
Since Walker’s arrest, he has continued writing for Honest Reporting Canada. He penned a letter to the editor of a Waterloo, Ontario, newspaper this month disputing that Israel was responsible for the deaths of two Palestinian sisters with area connections who were recently killed in Gaza. He called their family’s account of their deaths “unverified.”
Toronto has been a frequent battleground for Israel-related activism, and has also been the site of several documented attacks on Jewish schools and synagogues since the war began. A weekly pro-Israel rally in the city that began after October 7 has been the site of numerous arrests and other forms of disruption, and a right-wing pundit was arrested in November for crashing a pro-Palestinian rally where some attendees had dressed as Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.
Walker himself has specifically crusaded against antisemitic graffiti in the past, arguing on a 2021 podcast episode that it shouldn’t be overlooked in favor of more violent crimes.
“A small, only minimally irritating act of vandalism, if tolerated or overlooked, can quickly become a stepping stone to more antisemitic acts, and more dangerous ones, too,” he said at the time.
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