Jewish visitor to Halifax confronted with 'Heil, heil, heil' at Palestinian rally

A Montreal lawyer has filed a hate crime complaint after he and his wife, both Jewish, were confronted by a demonstrator at a Palestinian rally calling out “Heil, heil, heil” at them during their visit to Halifax.

Dan Goldstein, 51, had travelled from Montreal with his wife, Liat Lev-Ary, to visit Nova Scotia, and on Aug. 6, after touring the Halifax Public Gardens, they went for lunch. They followed their phone’s map to get to a restaurant, Goldstein said.

“It took us right through the rally,” he said in an interview.

A video taken by Lev-Ary on her phone shows protesters holding signs, waving Palestinian flags, and sidewalk chalk messages calling for immigration officials to bring Palestinian families to Canada because of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

Not shy about expressing his opinions either, Goldstein can be heard saying “Remember the Bibas family, don’t forget them with the people of Gaza. And don’t forget the hostages,” as he walked along the sidewalk passing the demonstrators. It set off a loud retort, including chants of “Free, free Palestine.”

(The Bibas are a Jewish family of four kidnapped from their home in a kibbutz in Israel during the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas and held hostage. The father was eventually released but the mother and their two young children were killed.)

The video by Lev-Ary shows energetic banter between Goldstein and numerous demonstrators. He said the debate was fine, at first.

“They started shouting things like Israel is committing genocide. I disagree, but there’s nothing illegitimate about (saying) that. That’s up for debate. There’s all kinds of comments regarding Israel that, again, are within the realm of what’s acceptable and legitimate.”

Then it changed for Goldstein. A man carrying several Palestinian flags walked up close to the couple.

“This one guy comes up to us and he looks at us and he goes: ‘Heil, heil, heil.’ Now that is very clearly — because there’s no reason for a person to start invoking a German word like that — a reference to the National Socialist ideology… It was part and parcel of that movement. It’s said while giving the Nazi salute and it’s an endorsement of Nazi ideology and (Hitler’s) ‘Final Solution’ to exterminate all Jews,” Goldstein said.

He then calls both Goldstein and Lev-Ary a “f—king piece of shit.”

Although he is a secular Jew, Goldstein said it would be obvious to assume he was Jewish because he had a baseball cap on from a Yiddish theatre festival that included Hebrew lettering.

He said he saw two Halifax police officers standing on the other side of the road and he went to them to report a hate crime over the “Heil” statements, but the officers seemed unmoved by his complaint; he said they asked him how that could be a hate crime.

“Do you not know what saying ‘Heil’ to a Jew means? And they said no,” Goldstein said. He said a third officer arrived asking what was going on. Goldstein repeated his story and pointed out the man to the officers, asking that he be arrested or at least spoken to and identified.

The video shows Goldstein across the road, standing with two officers beside three police cruisers. He is pointing towards the demonstrators but what they say cannot be heard.

Goldstein said the officers declined to act, but told him to file a complaint at a police station. The third officer who arrived was belligerent, Goldstein said.

“He’s yelling at me. He’s calling me a racist. He’s saying that I’m just doing it because the first officer I spoke to was a person of colour. And he’s not letting me talk, he’s just yelling at me,” Goldstein said.

Goldstein and Lev-Ary left, went to a police station and filed a hate crime complaint, he said. He found his follow-up discussions with other police officers better. They seemed to take his complaint seriously, he said.

Halifax Regional Police said they could not provide comment or information about this case prior to publishing deadline because of stretched resources from a wildfire approaching a Halifax business park about 10 kilometres west of downtown.

Goldstein said he is disappointed with the response of the first police officers he spoke to at the scene but appreciated the follow-up by other officers. He provided police with the video and hopes they proceed with an investigation.

He is also upset by the protester’s actions.

“I take extreme issue with a lot of the things that Israel is doing at this point in Gaza,” Goldstein said. “On the one hand I’m familiar with genocide, I don’t consider it a genocide. But on a very objective level, there are war crimes that are being committed and I am very frustrated.”

He said legitimate criticism of Israel is being quashed by rampant antisemitism.

“There’s a lot of misinformation and lies, but there are certainly things that are wrong that people have the right to — and even should be — speaking out against. That wasn’t my issue. My issue is the blatant antisemitism that has permeated these things.

“Hearing somebody come up to me and go “Heil” is very — I can’t think of other words — but it shakes me to my core because for me it’s the fact that yeah, it’s 80 years later, but I don’t have family because (several ancestors died in Europe during the Nazi Holocaust).

“They were exterminated and the two that survived, one never had kids and the other one had one child who passed away, and my family never recovered. We’re without family because of the people giving the Nazi salute and shouting ‘Heil.’”

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