Joel Goldenberg – The Suburban LJI Reporter

Bara Abuhamed, 26, was arrested by Laval police recently for unlawful assembly and assaulting a peace officer following a Dec. 26 Boxing Day pro-Hamas demonstration within the private property of Carrefour Laval. Abuhamed, who was arrested in the mall’s parking lot, was also allegedly involved in a physical attack against Jewish students at Concordia University in early November.

Abuhamed was disrupting Boxing Day shopping, and was seen chanting into a megaphone. Another pro-Hamas demonstration took place the same day, also on private property, in the downtown Montreal underground city where the Zara clothing store was targeted.

Days earlier, pro-Hamas demonstrators intimidated shoppers, including children seeing Santa Claus, at the Eaton Centre in Toronto. One of those demonstrators was seen on video threatening to put “six feet under.”

Abuhamed is known as a leader of the Montreal 4 Palestine group, which has organized several local demonstrations. He was released with conditions, including not stepping foot in Laval, and a prosecutor is to decide whether to lay charges.

Montreal 4 Palestine’s Instagram account claimed Abuhamed did not resist arrest and was “pinned down by the police, thrown against a truck, hit in the ribs and kicked twice in the thigh.”

During the altercation at Concordia, he was heard to say to pro-Israel students, “you have blood on your hands. You want to take part in a terrorist state.”

The Journal de Montréal discovered that an X (previously Twitter) poster named Bara Abuhamed wrote “Death to Israel…. kill them all.” As well, on Oct. 7, in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas massacre of 1,400 people, someone posted on the Montreal 4 Palestine account, “#Celebration” and “the journey has begun.” n