Belleville Police Deputy Chief Sheri Meeks speaks to media at the scene of the shooting outside the Sons of Jacob Synagogue. It looks likely that only through an officer’s heroic actions were the congregants spared unfathomable bloodshed, the editorial board writes.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
On the eve of Yom Kippur, the holiest time on the Jewish calendar, a man armed with a shotgun attacked the Sons of Jacob synagogue in Belleville, Ont., a dangerous escalation in a cycle of antisemitic violence in this country.
It looks likely that only through a police officer’s heroic actions were the two dozen congregants – and Canada as a whole – spared unfathomable bloodshed, a terrible equivalent to Australia’s Bondi Beach attack last December, where Islamic State-inspired terrorist attackers killed 15 people.
Constable Jeff Smith, who was shot and is still in critical condition in hospital, stopped the gunman in his tracks, wounding him and ultimately preventing the suspect from inflicting even greater carnage.
The motives of the gunman, who died from his wounds on Monday night, are not yet known. But all antisemitic attacks, whether from extremists on the left or the right, draw from the same well of Jew-hatred.
The Belleville synagogue is woven into the fabric of a small city, an unobtrusive bungalow-sized building in a leafy neighbourhood. Its membership is just 35 families. That a police officer had to be stationed outside during services is unutterably sad for what it says about Canada. That he proved to be desperately needed is beyond horrifying.
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The environment for Jews in Canada has grown hostile since the Hamas terror attacks that killed 1,200 people in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the war in Gaza that followed, with Israel’s military counteroffensive killing tens of thousands of Gazans.
There have been more than a dozen shootings targeting Jewish institutions, including synagogues. An elderly woman was stabbed in Ottawa. Jewish-owned businesses have burned. Extreme adherents of anti-Zionism have gone so far as to harass residents of some Jewish neighbourhoods. Some have organized to decertify Jewish summer camps, an example we have used before because it plainly shows the attempt to make Canada unliveable for Jews, including Jewish children. Others have made life miserable for Jewish postsecondary students – in one case, a professor asked them to identify themselves as Jews in class.
Belleville appears to be an escalation, the first synagogue shooting in Canada during services. A day earlier, police in Whitby, Ont., near Toronto, arrested a man and charged him with allegedly threatening to shoot a synagogue. And protesters taunted Jews on Sunday outside a Toronto building as they made their way to worship.
In this volatile moment, we seem a step closer to Bondi Beach – but our leaders, for the most part, have not faced up to the dangers.
Prime Minister Mark Carney has denounced antisemitism but declined to stand up for the principle behind Zionism – Jewish self-determination in a threatening world. Anti-Zionism has been the core of the antisemitism problem in Canada and elsewhere since Oct. 7. After the Belleville shooting, he tweeted a rote “thoughts are with you” that offered a disheartening contrast to his eloquent speech last week at the European Parliament. Mr. Carney set up a committee last February, with one of its tasks being to look at antisemitism. It took him four months to announce its members.
Toronto Metropolitan University has taken a similar slow-footed approach. It commissioned a retired judge, Mary Lou Benotto, to look at the campus climate. She found authorities turning a blind eye to antisemitism, and made recommendations for action. The university’s response: an “implementation committee” that won’t report till next March.
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And New Democratic Party Leader Avi Lewis issued a tweet imputing collective guilt to Jewish Canadians for Israeli actions in Gaza. His post came before news broke of the shooting in Belleville. “This year,” Mr. Lewis wrote of himself on Yom Kippur, a day where Jews atone, “I’m reflecting on the fact that we failed to do our part” – Mr. Lewis is Jewish – “to stop an ongoing genocide committed in our name.” He threw tinder on the fire.
It was a reckless act, and an alarming and dangerous misuse of leadership. Collective blame risks inciting collective harm, whether from the left or the right.
Let’s hope Constable Smith’s heroism is not in vain, and that he soon returns to duty. And let’s hope that political leaders can summon a fraction of the courage that he and other officers showed on Sunday.