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It's the basic tenet of polite dining: One should never discuss religion or politics.

Yet Le Select Bistro owner Frederic Geisweiller firmly plonked both on the table last month when he urged diners to think twice about visiting the Royal Ontario Museum's showing of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

In a posting on the bistro website's What's Up? page, Mr. Geisweiller said Israel had seized the scrolls during the "surprise" war of 1967, and was now involved in "ongoing military occupation of many lands, including the West Bank from where they [the scrolls] were taken."

The reaction came faster than an order of frites.

E-mails calling for a restaurant boycott flew through the city's Jewish community, Sammy Katz wrote a post on his Proud Zionist blog about "Le Select Bistro's animosity towards Israel and the Jewish people in general," and dozens of complaints were sent to the Canadian Jewish Congress and the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto.

"Because it was factually inaccurate and incorrect, it was distressing to us," said UJA spokesman David Spiro. The scrolls, he said, justly belong to Israel.

"It's consistent with an ongoing effort on the part of some to deny the continuous Jewish presence in Israel since at least the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls over 2,000 years ago," Mr. Spiro said.

But Mr. Geisweiller says the post, which has since been rewritten using less sensational terms, was an effort to put a different "narrative" in the public sphere and spark discussion.

"I wanted to draw attention to the fact there were several narratives to that story, and that they should be told as well. I think the Palestinian narrative had been completely removed," he said.