Ontario MPP posts name of journalist’s family restaurant in response to critical comment
In response to a critical comment from journalist Samira Mohyeddin on social media, Goldie Ghamari, an independent Ontario MPP, posted the name of a restaurant owned by the journalist’s family and said she was “looking forward” to visiting. Speaking to CBC, Mohyeddin described the post as “threatening.”
Early in the morning of Oct. 8, 2024, the restaurant’s front windows were smashed and the interior ransacked. Surveillance footage shows a masked person, wearing a hoodie and gloves, smashing the restaurant windows with a hammer before going inside, where furniture was knocked over and damaged and vases broken, CBC reported. An iPod and iPhone were also stolen, the Toronto Star reported.
Mohyeddin, a Toronto-based journalist, is the editor and founder of media company On the Line, and a former CBC producer. She has reported extensively on the war in Gaza, and is active on social media, where she regularly shares her reporting. She has been critical of Israeli policy in the region and its conduct in Gaza. Mohyeddin and her siblings also own a Toronto restaurant.
Ghamari is an independent MPP in the Ontario legislature. On social media, she frequently shares posts in support of Israel. She was a member of the provincial Progressive Conservative party until June 2024, when she was kicked out after meeting with Tommy Robinson, a prominent far-right British political figure who founded the anti-Muslim English Defence League and has been accused of inciting racist violence, most recently during a wave of xenophobic riots in August 2024.
Ghamari did not respond to a request for comment.
On Sept. 13, 2024, Ghamari posted a photo on X (formerly Twitter) of herself wearing a hoodie featuring a map with a single border enclosing Israel, the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. In response, Mohyeddin shared the post and added a comment: “GG goes full genocide. Do these Canadian lawmakers actually do anything for the constituents of their riding? Foreign interference” and included an emoji pointing at the image of Ghamari.
Hours later, Ghamari shared Mohyeddin’s post and added a comment: “I’m looking forward to wearing my Israel sweater while I go to your restaurant @Banutoronto with my Jewish friends and order some Ghormeh Sabzi. I’m looking forward to seeing if it’s as good as my cooking. See you soon Samira 🥰 ✌️”.
“The moment I saw it, I thought, ‘Oh my god, something’s gonna happen to my restaurant,’” Mohyeddin told Yahoo News. “I thought, ‘Wow, is a sitting member of the Provincial Parliament behaving like this? She doxxed me,” she said.
Speaking with the Canada Press Freedom Project, she noted that many of the tweets responding to Ghamari’s post suggested that people should go to the restaurant. “The comments underneath it told me exactly what I needed to know,” Mohyeddin told CPFP.
Mohyeddin told CBC that she had avoided mentioning the name of her restaurant online because of concerns about safety. “I’ve been very conscious not to mention my restaurant online, not to say anything about it for at least a year now. And I do that on all my platforms because I’ve seen how other people, their businesses, their livelihoods have been attacked for speaking out on what is happening in Gaza.”
She has been receiving “an enormous amount” of death threats and other threats of violence, she told the Toronto Star.
Mohyeddin told CBC that she “cannot in any way prove that Goldie Ghamari is responsible” for inciting the Oct. 8 vandalism, and said she was not making such an accusation. “What is important to me is that a sitting member of the legislature thought it was okay to name my restaurant online to her tens of thousands of followers. We were not talking about restaurants. The nature of her tweet is highly problematic,” Mohyeddin said.
Responding to the incident, Ghamari wrote on X: “I condemn all forms of violence. I hope you release the security camera footage so we can help you identify the perpetrators.”