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Canada’s Jewish community ‘deeply troubled’ after stabbing in kosher section of Ottawa grocery store
The ‘unprovoked attack’ is being investigated by the Ottawa Police Service’s hate and bias crime unit
August 29, 2025 10:14
The ‘unprovoked attack’ is being investigated by the Ottawa Police Service’s hate and bias crime unit
August 29, 2025 10:14Prosecutors in Canada have charged a 71-year-old man with stabbing and severely wounding a Jewish woman in the kosher section of a grocery store in Ottawa.
The suspect, identified by the Canadian arm of the international Jewish organisation B’nai Brith as Joseph Rooke, was charged yesterday with aggravated assault and possession of a dangerous weapon, police said in a statement. The victim and defendant were not known to each before the incident.
Rooke is understood to have entered the premises before allegedly stabbing the victim, who was in the shop with a friend.
The victim, who was helped by store staff, was taken to the hospital in a critical but stable condition, the Ottawa Police Service said.
The force's hate and bias crime unit is helping to investigate the "unprovoked attack," said OPS Deputy Chief Trish Ferguson.
"I can certainly appreciate that the members of the community are assuming the worst," Ferguson told Canadian broadcaster CBC.
"As soon as we have information that can be shared [as to whether] this is a matter of a targeted attack, we will do so."
Rooke’s social media posts “leave little doubt as to the motive behind the attack,” B’nai Brith Canada said in a statement.
They included passages such as: “Jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery and outright lying,” according to the rights group.”
His comments online “are those of a hateful man and a rabid antisemite,” B’nai Brith added.
The group also said that it had “for months ... warned Canadian leaders of the dangers of allowing hate to foment unchecked on our streets and online platforms. Sadly, our warnings have gone unheeded.”
It continued: “We are living in [a] Canada where strangers stab women while they are shopping for groceries, seemingly targeting them because of their religious beliefs.”
Police have confirmed they are “considering the possibility that this was a hate-motivated crime,” the Jewish Federation of Ottawa said in a statement.
The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) said it was “deeply troubled by the violent, unprovoked stabbing” at the store, which “has been the repeated target of anti-Israel protests.”
The victim, “a valued member of the Ottawa Jewish community, should have been safe to go about their day,” said Josh Landau, CIJA’s director of government relations in Ontario.
“We are grateful for the quick action of emergency responders, including the Ottawa Police Service, who quickly arrested and charged the suspect,” he added.
B’nai Brith Canada documented 6,218 antisemitic incidents in the country in 2024, a record high and an increase of seven per cent from 2023.
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