Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow speaks to reporters in Toronto, March 8, 2025. Photo: Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press via ZUMA Press via Reuters Connect

A Canadian nonprofit organization has succeeded in persuading the city staff of Toronto to fly the Palestinian flag at city hall next week in recognition of the “State of Palestine’s Independence Day” on Saturday.

Braman Thillainathan, press secretary for Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow, explained that the city’s protocol office had made the decision requested by the International Center of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) to fly the flag this coming Monday, not the mayor or city council.

“City Council provided city staff the authority to manage the public flagpole booking process based on policy approved by council in 1999,” he said in an emailed statement to Canadian media.

“The use of the city’s courtesy flagpole neither implies nor expresses support for the politics or policies of nations and/or organizations but raises the flag in recognition of those citizens or members that have made the request,” a spokesperson for the city of Toronto told the CBC.

ICJP lawyer Shane Martinez framed the raising of the flag as a move to counter racism.

“Visibility is something that’s particularly important,” Martinez said. “Anti-Palestinian racism is carried out in large part through attempts to erase Palestinian identity, erase Palestinian voices, and ensure that they don’t have a place in society, that they’re stigmatized, that they’re tabooed, that they’re othered and sometimes that their existence is denied altogether.”

Martinez described the activist move as “really a statement as to Palestinian resilience in the face of oppression, in the face of unprecedented oppression by Israel.”

The statement came days after members of Toronto Metropolitan University’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter led a mob that spilled blood and caused the hospitalization of at least one Jewish student after forcibly breaching a venue in which an advocacy group had convened for an event featuring veterans of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Bashar Alshawwa, a Palestinian activist living in Toronto, called the raising of the flag “symbolic,” but said he believed it would “encourage other parties and institutions, individuals inside Canada, to join the journey for human rights and equality and justice regarding the issue of Palestine.”

The decision to raise the flag follows Canada recognizing a Palestinian state in September and Prime Minister Mark Carney saying he would support arresting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Earlier this month, Jewish groups also began circulating a petition calling for Chow to resign after the mayor chose to use the word “genocide” to describe Israel’s war to defeat the Hamas terrorist group in the Gaza Strip.

“The genocide in Gaza impacts us all,” Chow said on video. “A common bond to shared humanity is tested, and I will speak out when children anywhere are feeling the pain and violence and hunger.”

The Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation pushed back against Chow’s rhetoric, stating that “the only Gaza genocide was the massacre perpetrated by Hamas and its allies against Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023. Somehow, we doubt that’s what the mayor was referencing.”

The Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) called the mayor’s statement “reckless, divisive, and dangerous.” The group added that “the Jewish community expects the mayor to make this right by addressing the harm caused and taking immediate action to restore trust and ensure our safety.”

Toronto and Canada more broadly have seen antisemitism surge over the past two years, following Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities and amid the ensuing war in Gaza.

In May, the J7 Large Communities’ Task Force Against Antisemitism — a coalition of Jewish organizations in Argentina, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States — released its first J7 Annual Report on Antisemitism.

CIJA provided the data and analysis on Canada, reporting that the Jewish community “was easily the most targeted religious minority, accounting for some 70 percent of religiously motivated hate crimes (with 900 total hate crimes against Jews recorded). Hate crimes against Jews increased by 71 percent from 2022 to 2023, and 172 percent in total since 2020.”

The report also documented that Toronto police tallied 164 hate crimes against Jews as of October 2024, representing a 74.5 percent jump from the previous year.

“What is at stake is not only the safety and well-being of our community, but the future of a Canada where everyone can live free from fear and discrimination,” CIJA interim resident Noah Shack said in a statement.