Toronto restaurant Banu vandalized, police investigating: ‘My family didn’t sign up for this’

On the night of October 7, the one-year anniversary of the reignited conflict in Palestine, Toronto’s beloved Iranian restaurant Banu of nearly 20 years was vandalized. And the owner believes it was politically targeted.

Samira Mohyeddin, a Toronto-based award-winning journalist, founder of On The Line Media and former CBC producer, owns the Queen West restaurant with her siblings.

In the restaurant’s security footage, well after midnight, Mohyeddin shares that a man can be seen casing the restaurant, then smashing in the front window with a hammer and stepping inside before the glass even came down. She says he appeared to be inside for nearly 10 minutes, “ransacking” the space by flipping tables over and ripping decorations. Nothing was stolen. A police investigation is underway, but Mohyeddin confirms no fingerprints were found, as the suspect was wearing gloves at the time as seen by the cameras.

The Mohyeddin family have always been politically vocal, in their space, their kitchen and on their website, from the deeply cultural menu educating patrons on Iran’s food and history, to their sponsorship of refugees, many of whom end up working at the restaurant, to the “woman, life, freedom” painting on its outside walls.

Mohyeddin, Ontario MPP have interacted before

A tweet by Goldie Ghamari, the independent MPP for Carleton who was ousted from Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative Party’s caucus in June 2024, started a heated back-and-forth with the journalist and restauranteur over the last month.

It began on September 13, with Ghamari tweeting, “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.”

It wasn’t the first time Ghamari took aim at Mohyeddin. But the journalist believes it’s what led, as she tweeted, the politician’s “rabid followers” to vandalize Banu. For her part, Ghamari tweeted that she “condemn[s] all forms of violence.”

Upon seeing Ghamari’s tweets, Mohyeddin says she was “outraged,” as she’s had heated exchanges with the politician before over sharing Islamophobic content. For reference, Ghamari was removed from the Ontario PC caucus in June after meeting with a far-right British activist and anti-Islam campaigner. Afterward, Ontario Premier Doug Ford said in a statement referring to Ghamari, “This decision follows repeated instances of serious lapses in judgment and a failure to collaborate constructively with caucus leadership and as a team member.”

“I thought, ‘Wow, is a sitting member of the Provincial Parliament behaving like this? She doxxed me,” says Mohyeddin, referring to when private information is published online with harmful intent. “And I have been so conscious over the past year to not mention my restaurant anywhere [for this reason]. I couldn’t believe the juvenile and sadistic nature of the tweet, because our doors are open to everybody. If you go on our website, we have Hebrew and Armenian writing because we represent all of the cultures that are in Iran; we don’t discriminate. [Goldie] is trying to frame us as somehow being an anti-Jewish establishment in that tweet, it’s embedded in there. Anybody who looks at that can see that. And the moment I saw it, I thought, ‘Oh my god, something’s gonna happen to my restaurant.’”

In response, the Toronto Centre for Palestine tweeted, “If a Jewish business was attacked like this, every politician in the country would be issuing statements condemning it. Samira has consistently highlighted the presence of the JDL-affiliated gangs at pro-Israel demonstrations. Are the police looking at them?”

Toronto restauranteur: MPP ‘incited’ the action

To be clear, Mohyeddin does not believe Ghamari — who was visiting Israel at the time — was directly involved, but she does believe she “incited” the action.

“To me, Banu is my home,” she says. “My brother and sister are there more than they are at their homes. It’s the equivalent of me putting Goldie’s address online. My family didn’t sign up for this, I did. I have such a sense of guilt about it.”

Mohyeddin is referring to her history of reporting on Iran and the uprising and the war in Gaza, and always being a vocal advocate for the Muslim and LGBTQ+ community. She says, “It’s amazing to me how, when you turn that same critical lens onto Israel, people don’t like you anymore. Which allows people like Goldie and her followers to then say things to me, like ‘let’s hang her.’ All of a sudden, I became ‘a Hamas supporter,’ ‘a terrorist.’ I have received really disgusting threats, [of] death and sexual violence. I was very conscious even before. I never mentioned the restaurant, because I have seen other people lose their livelihoods, careers, everything for speaking truthfully about what Israel is doing.”

As the police investigation continues, with the involvement of the hate crime unit, though Banu was closed the day following the incident, it has since opened up as the Mohyeddin family can’t afford to keep their doors closed much longer.

All that Mohyeddin asks is, “How can an elected official be able to speak this way?” She hopes — for her, her family’s sake, and the cause — that there is or will be a code of conduct established for elected officials and online abuse scenarios like these, which have only become more common since the conflict in Palestine began.

Requests for comment to Ghamari were unsuccessful.