The Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto synagogue in Thornhill, Ont., Monday. There have been 22 antisemitic incidents reported this year, 63 per cent of all reported hate-motivated crimes in the city, Toronto police say.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Since March 2, bullets have been fired at three Toronto synagogues. The person or persons who fired those shots have shattered more than windows and have targeted more than just a place of worship.
They have taken aim at the peace and safety of the Jewish-Canadian community, and the idea of Canada – that we are a pluralistic society where people have a right to their differing religious backgrounds or political opinions.
According to Toronto police, there have already been 22 antisemitic incidents reported this year, a staggering 63 per cent of all reported hate-motivated crimes in the city.
Some synagogues now have bulletproof glass windows – “that’s what it is to be Jewish now in Canada,” says former MP Richard Marceau, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs’ general counsel. Is that what Canada accepts now?
The effort to make a peaceful life impossible for Jewish-Canadians is not limited to cowardly shooters in the dead of the night.
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What, for instance, were three self-described “peace groups” taking aim at when they sought to decertify Jewish children’s sleepover camps across Canada this summer, for the stated reason that the camps support Israel in various ways? At the idea that Jewish-Canadians have a right to enjoy the most ordinary of pleasures, without being compelled to denounce Israel’s right to exist.
They didn’t shoot bullets, true. But they took aim at a Canada in which people, all people, can decide on their own identity, without fearing ostracism or disenfranchisement. Cloaked in human-rights language, their demands are a deprivation of basic human rights.
Or what about the masked and chanting protesters who waded last fall onto the side streets of a Jewish neighbourhood in Toronto, what were they taking aim at? At the freedom of Jewish-Canadians to go unencumbered about their days – and at Canada as a haven from international conflict, where people live peaceably with one another.
The bullet-proof glass at some synagogues brings to mind the heartbreaking words of Sir Stephen Watson, Chief Constable of the Greater Manchester Police, after an attack on a synagogue last fall killed two people. Jewish children, he said, are the only children in the country who go to school “behind large fences.”
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His call for fresh thinking needs to be heeded in Canada, where the urgency has been missing from the fight.
It is missing from the Public Safety Minister overseeing the RCMP and CSIS, who should be bringing to bear federal resources and expertise.
It is missing from the Ontario Crown’s office, which in a letter to a Jewish group explained why it had withdrawn charges in several cases of hate-motivated offences, imposing a peace bond at times where an accused had done “upfront rehabilitative work.” At a time when hatred is being normalized, the Crown should bring the full weight of the law to bear. Antisemitic crimes cannot be treated as garden-variety criminal offences.
It is missing, at times, from police, whom we recognize have an exceedingly difficult job. Initially, when masked protesters marched through a Jewish neighbourhood, the police chief’s response was that nothing criminal happened. Eventually, a squad of bicycle cops cut off access to these streets. Consistency, urgency, and the use of under-utilized laws such as mischief, intimidation and disturbing the peace, are badly needed.
And it has been missing from political leaders, whose answer too often is to issue rote words of upset at synagogue shootings. They should be calling out hateful acts and speech at rallies that occur on their turf. Protesters have the right to say loathsome things, but leaders have a duty to denounce them.
Ottawa, which has set aside money to support security for religious institutions, should make that money more speedily and generously available, given the urgent circumstances. A much-needed strengthening of anti-hate laws, including the enhancement of penalties for hate-motivated offences, is caught up in a filibuster; the government and opposition parties need to find a resolution, fast.
And the country needs to hear from Prime Minister Mark Carney. Canadians need to hear him clearly denounce the anti-Jewish campaign of intimidation – in all of its forms – and to hear what his government will do to defeat it.