MONTREAL (JTA) — An online petition launched by B’nai Brith Canada aiming to prevent an American Holocaust denier from speaking in Toronto has garned nearly 2,000 signatures.
Kevin Barrett, who has called the 9/11 attacks an “inside job,” is due to address the city’s annual Al-Quds Day rally on Saturday. Al-Quds is the Muslim name for Jerusalem, and the annual march during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan is generally a call for the destruction of Israel.
In the petition, B’nai Brith demanded that Canada’s Border Services Agency keep out Barrett.
“Inviting a notorious Holocaust denier to this event demonstrated once and for all that Al-Quds Day is not a mere ‘anti-Israel’ event, but rather a hate rally designed to demonize and denigrate Canada’s Jewish population,” B’nai Brith Canada CEO Michael Mostyn told The Canadian Jewish News.
Barrett, a teacher at the University of Wisconsin in Madison until 2006, was barred from Canada in 2015. At the time, he reportedly referred to the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris as a “false flag” operation.
“Barrett has repeatedly questioned the murder of six million Jews by Nazi Germany,” B’nai Brith said.
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