Certainly sounds like a hate crime to me -- and a terrorist attack to boot.

Surveillance video recovered by Montreal police shows a masked man throwing a firebomb at the door of an orthodox Jewish school in an attack early Saturday.

The bomb started a fire but the damage was described as minimal.

Police said a neighbour heard what sounded like a window breaking just after midnight and looked out to see the main entrance of the Taldos Yakov Yosef school in Outremont in flames.

In the video, the man takes a few steps toward the entrance, then steps back to throw a lighted Molotov cocktail. He removes his mask as he steps out of the video frame, but his face is not visible.

Although officials of Jewish groups disagree, police have been unwilling to declare the attack a hate crime. In the absence of graffiti or other other evidence, it is being treated as an unexplained case of arson.

I wonder -- in the absence of a note or grafitti, would a similar attack on a Muslim institution be treated as "an unexplained case of arson"? Or would it be presumed to be a bias-related attack?

I think we can all answer that without too much trouble.

Posted by: Greg at 05:20 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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