Montrealer says she was victim of verbal assault for wearing Palestinian scarf, police arrest alleged perpetrator

Montrealer Razan El-Ramahi says she was on her way to the Children’s Hospital Wednesday morning when she was accosted by another woman.

The woman allegedly verbally assaulted her because she was wearing a Palestinian scarf, a kufiya.

“It was extremely scary,” she recalled. “The nature of her remarks were very violent, essentially accusing me of being a murderer, being with Hamas.”

El-Ramahi said she called police and soon after they spotted the alleged suspect and arrested her.

“The reason why we live in Canada is because we have this right to have the freedom of expression, to express ourselves in any manner we want,” she said.

Montreal police say a 39-year-old woman was arrested near the hospital Wednesday. She was questioned and released conditionally pending further investigation. Police say it’s too early to know whether this will be handled by the force’s hate crimes and hate incidents unit.

“The kufiya is something that I’ve worn my whole life, I think from the time I was a teenager,” she said. “It’s not a symbol of terror or hatred or the atrocities that I was linked to yesterday’s incident. It’s really a symbol of our solidarity with the people in Gaza.”

“I think we have to look at the system that we’re in and why is it enabling things like this to happen,” said her husband, Mohammed Shaheen. “For us Palestinians, this been going on for 40 days and it’s been okay for the government, for the cities for that this war continues, it’s been dehumanizing for Palestinians.”

CityNews met the family just days after Israel-Hamas war began, were worried about loved ones in Gaza, particularly a friend.

“I haven’t heard from her in a few days you can imagine, what I think that means,” El-Ramahi said.

The same day of El-Ramahi’s incident, a photo was taken on Montreal bus, showing the words ‘Death to all Arabs’ written in graffiti, something the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM) says has become more common.

“We deal with this on a day in a relatively regular basis,” says Steven Zhou, NCCM. “Generally this kind of thing has in the past six weeks or so increased exponentially across the country.”

Montreal police are seeing a rise in reported hate crimes and hate incidents between October 7 to November 14th inclusively, there were 30 reported against the Arab-Muslim community and 104 against the Jewish community. A Muslim leader previously told CityNews he believes the actual numbers are much higher as community members don’t always report them.

“I feel an immense duty or pressure to speak up because there are a lot of Palestinian Montreal is Muslim Montrealers for just too scared to say anything,” said El-Ramahi.

The Montreal Children’s Hospital confirmed the incident happened and tells CityNews in a written statement that “since then, security guards have been instructed to pay particular attention to such situations, and vigilance in this respect has been increased.”

“The Montreal Children’s Hospital and the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) would like to reiterate that messages inciting hatred, intolerance or violence of any kind will not be tolerated on their premises,” a spokesperson wrote.

Now El-Ramahi is speaking out, calling on Montrealers to report incidents like this.

“Let’s all be kind to each other and treat each other with respect and not jump to conclusions,” she said. “Look for the truth, and when we don’t have answers, to ask questions rather than attack people.”