HOME IS WHERE THE HATE IS

A TORONTO MAN THREATENED TO KILL AS MANY JEWS AS POSSIBLE. A COURT GROUNDED HIM FOR 60 DAYS. I’VE GOT A BETTER IDEA.

Threaten Jews. Get jewelry.

A Toronto man told a car salesman he was chatting with that he planned to bomb every synagogue in Toronto “to kill as many Jews as possible.” The salesguy reported the comment, Waisuddin Akbari was charged, and on Monday a judge sentenced him to 60 days’ house arrest followed by three years’ probation.

The judge defended his decision to ground Akbari for missing curfew — oh, excuse me, sorry: for threatening to kill as many Jews as possible — but the sentence was met with outrage by Jewish organizations and others.

“It is important to be clear about what Mr. Akbari is — and is not — being sentenced for,” the judge said. “He is not being sentenced for taking any material steps to act on the threats he made. There is no evidence before me of the collection of weapons, explosives, maps, planning or coordination.

“Indeed, following his arrest, police conducted extensive checks and searches on Mr. Akbari to ensure the safety of the community was not still at risk. Mr. Akbari’s guilt is based on empty threats he communicated to a stranger, mistakenly assuming (he) would be sympathetic to Akbari’s own warped and hateful worldview. There was no effort to publicize his threats beyond the conversation.”

TL;DR: He was prolly just kidding.

This got me thinking. Even if he had no capability or concrete plans to fulfill the threats he made, this does not make him harmless. Even without bombs, he is a danger to society.

Something else stood out for me in the story — a footnote, basically, in the news report.

An Ismaili community organization communicated to the court that they would support Akbari in rehabilitating himself. The news reports do not indicate whether the court took them up on this offer.

I’m not someone who tends to second-guess judicial decisions. People who are always complaining that people are getting off with lenient sentences when we should be locking them up and throwing away the key strike me as, let’s say, less reliable arbiters than most judicial appointees (in my country at least).

I’ll admit, though, I got my hackles up in this case.

I don’t think he should be locked up and the key thrown away, maybe. But certainly something a little more drastic than two months of watching Netflix seems justifiable.

Isn’t there something in between?

There is a lot of this kind of stuff going on right now. Without even doing an active search, I can barely keep up with the number of incidents I keep hearing about of random assaults, Jews chased down the streets of Europe, vandalism and attacks on Jewish institutions, kids arrested for singing Hebrew on a plane, being kicked out of a restaurant in Vienna for speaking Hebrew and on and on. Hate is rampant. And something has to be done. Something serious.

Whether the punishment is too lenient or too strict — in this case, the judge viewed the man’s rantings as “empty threats” — surely there is a better alternative than incarceration.

I know, I know. I’m a crazy liberal who wants to mollycoddle criminals.

No. I think we should get at the root of the problem.

We know that there are a ton of people walking around with heads full of terrible ideas about Jews (and other groups, but right now I’m talking about Jews). We should neither wait until they act out nor lock them up and throw away the key when they do.

When a man threatens to burn all the synagogues and kill as many Jews as possible — empty threats or not — here’s an idea. Since he’s going to be spending 60 days at home, why can’t he be assigned some kind of program in which he learns about Jewish people and maybe comes to conclude that they don’t deserve to be murdered? I mean, surely it’s not rocket science to suggest that remediation programs or some sort of rehabilitation might work. It might not. But the alternative — doing nothing — certainly isn’t going to have any positive impacts.

The court system has a great range of options available to it. Impaired drivers can be ordered into alcohol treatment programs. People who assault strangers can be redirected into anger management initiatives. Domestic violence offenders can be forced to attend intervention and counselling programs.

Why are we not dealing similarly with people who have demonstrated very specific, targeted animosity toward specific groups and guiding them into some sort of therapy that addresses the underlying hatreds? I know of a number of small and larger nonprofit organizations that have developed this sort of program. I myself helped develop an ad hoc program about 20 years ago for four students at a prestigious private school who engaged in acts of antisemitism. This isn’t quantum physics.

In the realm of human endeavors, there is no sure science in curing hatred. But one thing that will absolutely not cure hatred is not trying.

Courts have a lot of leeway in ordering remediative programs but a little research indicates that this is very rare in Canada and the United States. (It is apparently tried mostly in young people, perhaps on the assumption that you can’t teach an old bigot new tricks.)

Canada, the place I’m obviously most familiar with, has a vast range of programs at every level of government attempting to confront ideas and encourage inclusion and celebration of diversity. It’s sort of a “population health” approach, to use a medical analogy. Inculcating healthy ideas in the general population will have the trickle-down effect of encouraging healthy ideas — and discouraging unhealthy ideas — in individuals who might be prone to problems.

But could there be something a little more hands-on? People who are not involved in the justice system can generally not be forced into rehab. For people who have expressed hateful ideas that do not reach the level of criminality — and Canada and the United States, for example, have radically different guidelines around criminalized speech, as do European countries and other democracies — we are not able to force people into antiracist “therapy.” But if a friend or family member was exhibiting problematic ideas, where would you direct them, even if they were willing to work on it? People with all range of problems eventually come to realize they want help and, often with the help of loved ones, call AA or an anger management counsellor or some other source of help. Where do you go for help with hate?

In Canada and the United States, there is Life After Hate. The Canadian government has its own Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence and I’m sure other countries have similar. Why are these not the first go-to in situations like these?

It doesn’t seem the judge in the Akbari case directed the guy to any such thing.

So what do you think he is going to be doing for the next 60 days at home? Probably stewing. Blaming the Jews for not letting him go to the gelato place. Developing ever-kookier ideas about how the Jews are out to get him.

Wouldn’t almost anything seem like a better idea?

A quick bit of research (I’m not pretending to be an expert here) tells me that, in Canada, the United States, and much of Europe, it is still relatively uncommon for courts to formally order someone convicted of a hate crime to undergo anti-bias training, deradicalization, or rehabilitation programs — though it’s becoming more frequent in select cases, particularly for youth offenders, non-violent offenders, or first-time convictions.

It seems to me this should be the first step.

I get that lots of Jewish organizations and others are outraged by this slap on the wrist. But shouldn’t we be more outraged that we don’t seem to be committed to addressing the larger underlying problem that leads people to want to blow up synagogues and kill as many Jews as possible?

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