Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital is bolstering its security, and the Toronto Police Service has vowed to increase its presence on hospital row after a pro-Palestinian march targeted the medical facility on Feb. 12.
Toronto Police said in a social media post it is investigating several “incidents” that took place outside Mount Sinai Hospital, which was founded by Toronto’s Jewish community, and promised to provide “an increased” police presence in the area “to ensure essential hospital services and emergency routes remain accessible.”
A video of the protest outside Mount Sinai shows the crowd calling for “intifada,” an Arabic word meaning “uprising” that is used to describe Palestinian protest against what they say is Israel’s oppression.
‘Have Common Sense’
Ontario Premier Doug Ford spoke out against the incident, calling it “absolutely terrible.”Mr. Ford also had a few strong words for the protestors themselves.
“You cannot protest on hospitals, folks, get some decency. Have common sense, these hospitals are there to save lives,” he said during a Feb. 13 press conference in Mississauga.
“I don’t care what you’re protesting. That doesn’t matter. You want to protest? Go to city hall. Come down to Queen’s Park, jump up and down, do whatever you want, but don’t prohibit people from going into a hospital when they’re in there saving people’s lives.”
A number of other politicians, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, also condemned the actions of the protestors.
“The demonstration at Mount Sinai Hospital yesterday was reprehensible. Hospitals are places for treatment and care, not protests and intimidation,” Mr. Trudeau said in a Feb. 13 post to X.
“I strongly condemn this display of antisemitism. In Toronto and across Canada, we stand with Jewish communities against this hate.”
Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow called the actions of the protestors “unacceptable.”
Health Professionals Respond
Ontario Association of Radiologists president Dr. David Jacobs, who has been collecting and posting videos of the protests on X, recounted the experience of a female Jewish doctor who was attempting to leave the hospital.“There were demands by protesters that she honk her horn in support. When she asked protesters to move, they became angry, swarmed her car, and started banging on it. They linked arms to block her from moving,” he said in his post. “Police saw what had happened, but told her that they were unable to do anything because the crowd was too large and there were only two of them,” he said on Feb. 13.
“The real questions are why was this allowed to happen, and how will it be prevented from happening again?”
Emergency department physician Raghu Venugopal and a colleague went to the hospital to oppose the prottests, but arrived after the protestors had moved on, Dr. Venugopal told News Talk 1010.
Dr. Venugopal described Mount Sinai Hospital as “sacred ground” that should not be disturbed by protests of any kind.
“I believe that most protesters in our country are peaceful and are law abiding; however, protesting on or around hospital grounds is crossing the line, is breaking the law,” he said during a radio interview. “At our hospitals, people are trying to heal. We really just have to draw a line that hospitals are not eligible as sites for protest.”
The chief executive officers of 14 Greater Toronto Area teaching hospitals and a senior representative of the University of Toronto also issued a letter to denounce the actions of the protestors who they said were “trespassing on hospital property.”
“We are profoundly disturbed by this course of events as this protest ran the real risk of disrupting hospital operations and compromising the safety of staff, physicians, learners, patients and visitors—all totally unacceptable,” reads the Feb. 13 letter. “Hospitals are places for treatment and care, not protests.”
Mount Sinai was founded as the Hebrew Maternity and Convalescent Hospital in 1923 by four Jewish women who raised $12,000 to buy a building. It was the first healthcare facility to welcome Jewish doctors in Toronto.
