The Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto synagogue in Thornhill, Ont., on Monday. This synagogue and another nearby synagogue, Shaarei Shomayim, were hit with gunfire over the weekend.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Three Toronto-area synagogues were hit by gunfire in the span of one week last week. No one was obtuse enough to express “shock.”
These acts are not shocking when one Toronto synagogue has been vandalized 10 times in 18 months. When swastikas were spray-painted on three Jewish-owned businesses in Montreal – and on a synagogue in Winnipeg, and two in Halifax, and another in Montreal. It’s not shocking when a Jewish student in Halifax was bullied out of his school, where classmates taunted him with labels of “Jewboy” and “Jewseph.” When a Jewish girls’ school in Toronto has been shot at multiple times. When a Jewish woman was stabbed in an Ottawa grocery store known for its large kosher section. When Toronto protests about the war in Gaza somehow, repeatedly, end up marching through Jewish residential areas.
Indeed, the only shocking thing is that no one has been killed yet. But when such bigotry is allowed to proliferate unchecked, that feels like the inevitable outcome.
It has become customary in the wake of these incidents to call on the government and police to take action; to insist, with good reason, that words are not enough. Many have called for stronger hate laws and greater police enforcement, and some are now petitioning for the establishment of a Royal Commission on antisemitism. After all, when bullets are breaking windows, words seem painfully hollow.
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But words – framed correctly, emphasized appropriately, and delivered from the right people – are an invaluable component of tackling the scourge of antisemitism that has been tacitly permitted in Canada over the past couple of years. That’s because these acts have been normalized: by police standing idly by as protesters march outside Jewish homes; by politicians putting out flaccid statements on social media about how “this is not who we are” whenever an act of antisemitism disgraces our streets, and by the collective failure of our leadership to call out what is becoming an existential crisis for Jews contemplating their future in Canada.
These actions reverberate beyond the Jewish community, eating away at the social norms that allow pluralistic societies to function. We are reaching a tipping point, and Canada’s leaders must treat it as such.
Prime Minister Mark Carney has given one, prescheduled special televised address to the nation since he took office. That was back in October, to set the stage for the budget. I would gently suggest to the Prime Minister that antisemitism is perhaps equally worthy of a national televised address.
It is well beyond time for Canada’s leaders to say, plainly, that this stops now. Mr. Carney – ideally, flanked by the Leader of the Official Opposition, and police chiefs, and religious leaders – should end that tacit permission that has emboldened protesters to take their demonstrations directly outside Jewish homes and institutions.
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He should name the specific offending actions – not just the bullets, but the chants telling Jews to “go back to Europe,” for instance – as unacceptable, bigoted, and incongruent with Canadian society. And he should tell Canadians that every person responsible for breaking the law, where applicable, will be brought to justice, because it makes no sense to enhance enforcement tools without also reinforcing that those who commit antisemitic acts should be shunned and ostracized, despite the kid-glove treatment many have received over the last two years.
The time to do this would have been about two dozen violent incidents and acts of intimidation ago. The next best time is today.
A special address to the country on antisemitism won’t prevent the next violent incident. But it will tell Canadian Jews that their leaders appreciate the gravity of the current situation, and that the implicit tolerance for the open bigotry we’ve seen in schools, at universities, and on the streets is over.
And just as importantly, it will tell everyone else that we do not hold certain groups in Canada responsible for the actions of another government: that those who seek to intimidate others based on political or religious differences are, in fact, committing an injustice, and not standing up against one. These would just be words, obviously. But words matter when members of a group feel as though, for years, no one has been listening.
Three synagogue shootings over the span of one week is a pretty good indication that things have gone awry. And the fact that these incidents have been happening all across the country suggests that Canada is in need of a national response – and not one flaccidly posted on X. A situation devolving into a full-blown crisis deserves a crisis-like response. Canadians will be waiting, and listening.