Last week, CBC journalist Neil Herland was reportedly pulled from the air and brought before a disciplinary hearing after posting a tweet thread about being taunted on his way to the Song Shul’s Yom Kippur services at the Meridian Arts Centre in Toronto. The thread included video of the protesters shouting “Zionist alert,” “you’re going to hell” and “baby killer” at people walking in to pray as well as context on the rise in antisemitism, the terror attack at the Sons of Jacob synagogue in Belleville the night before, and the presence of a guest speaker at the service. Herland’s tweet thread sparked opposition, with some defending the protesters on the grounds that the location is a public facility and not a full-time synagogue and that the speaker was Mark Regev, who once served as a spokesperson for the Israeli government. I tweeted about the response last week, noting that the thread was accurate and that I did not understand the concern. That tweet has been viewed over 280,000 times, leading to plenty of angry responses. This post unpacks the arguments and explains why I still don’t see the issue with the tweet thread. If anything, the focus should be protesters who may have violated the Criminal Code.

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