Damaged wires, red paint: Group says it targeted Ontario facility because of ties to Israel

An anti-Israel group says it targeted an Ontario facility because of its ties to Israel. Police are now investigating the incident as a hate crime.

Over the weekend, red paint was splashed onto a Peterborough building belonging to GeoSpectrum Technologies Inc., a company that manufactures underwater acoustic systems. Its headquarters are in Nova Scotia, but it has a facility in Ontario.

The incident occurred overnight on Sunday, according to the Peterborough Police Service.

A concerned resident told officers that there was “red paint and writing” on the building. When police arrived, they saw there was damage to the outside of the building as well as to a communication box on the property. 

Police said GeoSpectrum may have been targeted because it is a subsidiary of Elbit Systems. Elbit is an Israeli defence technology company.

On Instagram, the anti-Israel group Palestine Action Canada took responsibility for the damage. A video posted to the account shows a masked person cutting wires in a dark room with a flashlight illuminating the scene.

More video footage shows a masked person standing near the entrance of a building as red paint is splashed onto it by another person, who does not appear on camera.

“Palestine Action Canada targeted GeoSpectrum Technologies in Peterborough,” says the caption of the post.

GeoSpectrum’s site is “not just a design and testing facility for ‘maritime surveillance and exploration’ systems; it is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer. There is no company that profits more off of the genocide of Palestinians,” it said.

The group also blames Canada for purportedly supporting GeoSpectrum’s parent company: “And our own settler-colonial state, so-called Canada, trades, buys, and invests in Elbit.”

“We will not stop until Palestine is free!” the post concludes.

A spokesperson for GeoSpectrum confirmed in a statement to National Post that it was aware an incident occurred. “The appropriate authorities have been notified, and we are working with them as we assess the extent of the damage,” the statement said.

“We take the safety and security of our employees and facilities seriously. As the matter is currently being addressed, we will provide more details when the assessment is complete.”

Palestine Action, a British organization, is a proscribed terrorist group in the United Kingdom.

In May, Jewish advocacy group B’nai Brith Canada urged the Canadian federal government to take action against the group after it released a map of locations to “target” because of apparent ties to Israel. The map of “targets” included sites within Canada.

The group also released a manual that described how to take “direct action” and provided advice on how “to develop small ‘cells’ to perpetrate property damage, in addition to guidance on avoiding law enforcement and destroying evidence of criminal misconduct.”

In the United States, sanctions were issued against the group, which according to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, “has supported numerous acts of terrorism since July 2020, including acts that have physically injured U.K. law enforcement personnel, as well as acts intended to intimidate lawful commercial enterprises and coerce the U.K. Government.”