In the story of Toronto Jewish life since October 7, it was yet another dark week. But there was something different this time around.
Just hours after Purim festivities had ended, at around 11pm on March 2, a gunman approached Temple Emanu-El and fired a round of bullets at the downtown shul, which shattered its front windows.
The same night at 2.43am, across town near Steeles Avenue, bullets slammed into the glass doors of a Jewish-owned Old Avenue restaurant.
Curiously, deputy police chief Robert Johnson said the day afterwards the force was “not prepared to identify if there is any link” between the shootings.
Fast forward four days to a foggy night on March 6. At around midnight a dark sedan pulled up outside Beth Abraham Yoseph synagogue in Thornhill, a northern suburb of Toronto. A gunman in the back seat of the car wound down his window and opened fire, punching holes in the shul’s glass entrance doors.
Just after midnight, about half an hour after the Thornhill shooting, neighbours of Shaarei Shomayim synagogue in North York reported seeing a car drive past, open fire at the front doors, then circle back and shoot again. Thankfully, as with the other shootings, nobody was hurt.
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Who did it? For a large number of Toronto’s Jews, the answer to the question may soon become academic.
The three years since October 7 have seen antisemitic violence, vandalism, graffiti, relentless anti-Israel marches and, after the latest spate of shootings, they want out.
Steven Del Duca, Mayor of Vaughan, where Beth Abraham Yoseph of Toronto is located, said after the shooting: “This morning I heard from several members of this congregation who feel they no longer have a future here in Canada. That breaks my heart.”
Deputy Mayor Mike Colle, who represents the strongly Jewish Eglinton-Lawrence electoral division, believes that the attacks were planned by operatives supporting Iran’s regime.
The shootings came days after the start of the US-Israel war with the regime, and hundreds of former high-level Iranian regime officials are known to be living in Canada, including many within Toronto’s large Iranian community.
Colle points to other recent shootings that may be linked. YEDI, a charitable educational institution with a Jewish president, was recently sprayed with bullets; as was an Iranian-owned gym whose owner has been a vocal opponent of the Khameini regime. The US Consulate was also targeted in the early hours of March 10.
“This is not local, it’s internationally orchestrated, directed and financed,” Colle told the JC. “Police won’t say it’s coordinated, but ...it’s so obvious. When are people going to wake up and realise we’re dealing an orchestrated attempt to terrorise the Jewish community that comes from these Iranian agents?”
Colle and others at City Hall are calling for a joint task force made up of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the Ontario Provincial Police, Canadian security officials and city police to confront “acts of domestic terrorism”.
At the time of going to press, police had made no arrests. And while political leaders – including Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow – came out with the requisite statements condemning the shootings, many Jews feel little faith the authorities have their backs.
Speaking in a Zoom call with Canadian Jewish leaders to discuss the incidents, President Isaac Herzog said: “All eyes are on Canada; it’s time to halt the unprecedented wave of Jew-hatred that has erupted ever since October 7”.
Some Toronto city councillors are reluctant to say anything “because they worry about political backlash, including from a large Muslim population”, said Colle. “That’s the reality. The mayor is walking a tightrope.”
Community leaders have long complained that politicians have been far too lax about hateful rhetoric demonising Israel.
According to one estimate, antisemitic incidents across Canada have increased 670 per cent since October 7, 2023. The onslaught has included graffiti and arson attacks, mezuzahs being torn from doorposts, repeated overnight shootings of an elementary school for girls, and the stabbing of an elderly Jewish woman at a supermarket in Ottawa. Kehillat Shaarei Torah, a synagogue near Temple Emanu-El, has been vandalised at least ten times in the past two years.
The political backdrop has been hard to swallow for Canada’s Jews, with some politicians taking little care to disguise their anti-Israel views.
Prime Minister Mark Carney pre-emptively recognised a nebulous state of Palestine and admitted that he would arrest Benjamin Netanyahu as a war criminal if he came here. And Chow, speaking to a Muslim group last year, had no problem asserting that Israel was committing “genocide”.
Carney’s Liberals have seemed tone-deaf to Jewish concerns when it comes to some of their appointments. Most egregiously, Laith Marouf, a senior consultant hired to develop an anti-racism strategy for Canadian broadcasting, was found to have made vile statements such as referring to “Jewish white supremacists”.
Toronto has been a crucible for unchecked anti-Israel activism. While pro-Palestinian protesters in the city routinely occupy campuses, wave terror banners, disrupt shopping malls, harass Jewish businesses, and parade through Jewish neighbourhoods, few charges have ever been laid.
Even when police conduct probes and make arrests, charges have been dropped.
After the Jewish-owned Indigo bookstore was daubed with fake blood and vandalised in November 2023, arrests were made, but all proceedings against the so-called “Indigo 11” were later quietly dropped.
Meanwhile, Toronto’s Jews quietly consider packing their bags.
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