'Vile antisemitic attack:' Police investigating graffiti targeting Indigo CEO outside downtown Toronto store

Toronto police are investigating after an Indigo store and the company’s Jewish CEO were targeted with what one group is calling “a vile antisemitic attack.”

Footage from CP24’s cameras show dozens of posters bearing the image of Heather Reisman alongside the words “Funding Genocide” outside an Indigo store near Bay and Bloor streets.

The posters appeared on the exterior of the store sometime Friday morning. Red paint had also been splattered on the store’s front windows.

“It is absolutely appalling to see this targeting of an Indigo store and its Jewish founder and CEO in a vile antisemitic attack,” Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (FSWC) President and CEO Michael Levitt said in a statement. “Sadly, this is the tragic, new reality for Jews today in Canada and around the world which requires more than just condemnations from government leaders.”

Indigo has been the subject of boycott campaigns for years over its founder’s HESEG Foundation for Lone Soldiers. While it is unclear what prompted the incident, police have told CP24 that they are aware and that members of their Hate Crime Unit are investigating.

The incident is the latest in a series of hate-motivated incidents which have occurred in Toronto since the onset of the Israel-Hamas war last month.

On Wednesday, Toronto police confirmed that they have increased the size of the force’s hate crime unit from six officers to 20 investigators and eight district special constables in response to the incidents.

Police have also launched an online tool where the public is being encouraged to report hate-motivated graffiti.

Toronto Police Chief Myron Demkiw said earlier this week that there has been a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents in the city since the start of the war.

Posters targeting Indigo CEO Heather Reisman are shown outside a Bloor Street location on Friday morning. (Matt Reid)