A group of Montreal residents protesting the use of school buses by the Jewish community in their neighborhood has sparked outrage by wearing yellow badges to a council meeting hearing the issue.
Accusations of anti-Semitism were leveled this week at Ginette Chartre and other residents of the Montreal borough of Outremont who are upset over what they claim to be excessive use of buses by Orthodox Jews.
The local Jewish community uses yellow school buses to transport their children to school and around the neighborhood, according to the National Post.
Chartre and other residents have complained for years, saying that the buses block the streets during the summer.
They say that the buses run at odd hours of the day and night.
‘On just one residential, one-way street, there are 14 buses in one hour!’ she said.
‘That’s not reasonable.’
A group of Montreal residents, among them Ginette Chartre (above), protesting the use of school buses by the Jewish community in their neighborhood has sparked outrage by wearing yellow badges to a council meeting hearing the issue in the borough of Outremont on Monday
On Monday, Chartre and several other Outremont residents attached yellow badges to their clothing while attending a local council meeting.
The yellow symbols are reminiscent of the yellow Stars of David that the Jews of Europe were forced to wear while under Nazi occupation.
Six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust.
Chartre was defiant in refusing to take off the yellow badge – even when she was told it reminded others of past trauma.
‘[The Jews] always bring up their painful past,’ she said. ‘They do it to muzzle us. We’re wearing the yellow square because the school buses are yellow.
‘We’ll march down the street wearing them, banging pots and pans if we have to.
‘We are living an injustice. We are being persecuted by them.’
The yellow badges outraged local Jewish residents.
‘Should we just go away? Just vanish?’ Alex Werzberger, a Hasidic resident of Outremont said.
The yellow symbols are reminiscent of the yellow Stars of David that the Jews of Europe were forced to wear during the Holocaust. The image above shows a Dutch Jewish family being deported to Poland during the Nazi occupation
‘The Jewish people for millennia have been exposed to this stuff, some worse, some better, and it’s almost part of our existence, part of our being,’ he said.
Outremont has seen an increase in the size of its Jewish population in recent years.
This has apparently led to tensions within the community.
In November 2016, Outremont residents voted to ban the establishment of additional houses of worship on one of the borough’s main streets – a move that specifically targeted synagogues.
Jewish community members slammed the vote, saying this was motivated by anti-Semitism.
Residents, however, said the ban was aimed at helping businesses that they claimed would be hurt by allowing more synagogues to be built.
Montreal’s mayor, Valerie Plante, denounced the campaign to bar the buses.
‘Living together as a community is sometimes challenging,’ the mayor said in a statement.
‘However, I find it unacceptable to launch a political action against children.
‘They should never be a target.’