A Dutch-born associate of Canadian neo-Nazi leader John Beattie was fined $50 by a provincial court judge for using taped hate messages over telephone circuits between December, 1968 and June, 1969. The fine imposed on Jacob Prins was the maximum penalty permitted under the Telephone Act.
Prins was tried last June on a complaint by the Joint Community Relations Committee but Judge Carl Waisberg reserved judgment until last week. He found that the messages, which were used on behalf of Beattie, were “grossly insulting” to Jews and offensive to society in general in that they used falsehood to disseminate hatred and bring a group of people into disrepute.
In another Toronto development, the bitterness of the Arab-Israeli conflict was brought to the city’s downtown area last weekend when Jewish students and pro-Arab youths demonstrated in the streets though on separate days.
On Friday, about 300 Jewish students and others gathered in front of Rochdale College to protest a conference being held by the pro-Arab Canadian Organization for the Liberation of Palestine. They carried placards reading “Israel means Jewish survival” and were addressed by Dr. David Demsen, professor of Christian theology at Emmanuel College, who told them that appeals to liberate Palestine meant “genocide of the Jews.” On Saturday, about 100 Arab and New Left students gathered in Nathan Phillips Square, named for the city’s late Jewish mayor, to demonstrate on behalf of El Fatah. Later the group marched down the main thoroughfare with placards proclaiming “long live El Fatah” and “A Zionist is a Fascist.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.