Too Bad, So Sad, Canadian Jews

Kiva's bakery at Steeles Avenue and Bathurst Street on Wednesday, July 29, 2026.

 

"This is utterly reprehensible."

"[Incidents such as these] deepen fear and reinforce why so many in our community feel increasingly vulnerable ..."

"Condemnations are not enough. The Jewish community needs more than expressions of concern."

"It needs results." 

Michael Levitt, president,  Friend of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Study

 

"We condemn yet more violent attacks on the Canadian Jewish community."

"These attacks are not only on Jews but on Canada's values and our democracy itself. [There has] not been a word from the advisory committee on rights, equality and inclusion, now responsible for determining the causes of antisemitism in Canada."

"As we have previously noted, this committee has members with no qualifications in issues of antisemitism and members whose prior associations should have disqualified them."

Hadassah Goldberg, CLARITY Coalition Canada 

Supporters stand in front of the pro-Palestinian protest encampment on McGill University campus, in Montreal, Monday, June 17, 2024. (Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press)

 

Canadian Jews have been left disbelieving. Never would it have occurred to them that the ancient pathology of Jew-hate that most Jewish antennae are attuned to would suddenly escape the confines of polite society to emerge as a storm of unadulterated antisemitism, boldly declared in the public arena, escalating to the point that the sewage of Jew-hate has become a threat to their very existence as Jews living in Canada. There is not one Canadian Jew unfamiliar with the syndrome, all have experienced it to at least a 'mild' degree from childhood to adulthood. 

 

Jews have had a presence in Canada since the 16th Century; they are not recent immigrants.  The number of Jews in Montreal warranted the establishment in 1768 of the Shearith Israel synagogue. 18th Century Quebec City had seen Jews settling in as proud citizens, along with other parts of Lower Canada. In Trois-Rivieres, Ezekiel Hart was elected to the legislature of Lower Canada in 1807, but on the basis of his religion was denied his seat. Early arrivals in the emerging Canada of today, rife with antisemitism but a home to Jews.

 

In this more enlightened era where Canadian Jews known to have made a reputation for themselves as scientists and academics, industrialists and medical pioneers, researchers and writers, the place that Jews made for themselves in Canada emerged as contributors to Canadian advances in all spheres of human endeavour. Diaspora Jews valued their lives in the countries they became citizens of throughout Europe, Latin America and North America among other destinations. With the advent of the State of Israel reemerging in its ancestral geography it became another point of pride, passion and security.

 

Palestine Youth Movement held a downtown rally from Yonge and Dundas Sts. to the Israeli Consulate on Tuesday, March 18, 2025, before shutting down the intersection to traffic. Photo by Caryma Sa'd /Special to the Toronto Sun

 

It took only a few decades for Canada to welcome immigrants, refugees and migrants from parts of the world where the religion, history, culture and heritage was one of inherited antipathy to Jews and that viral antipathy accompanied them to their new home, their numbers among the general population steadily increasing to the point where politicians sought them out as a voting bloc irrespective of their inability and unwillingness to accept Canadian law, values and culture. This, in a society that valued its concept of multiculturalism as a great benefit to the country.

 

The outcome of which has been foreign interference in a programmed and organized campaign to slander and threaten Canadian Jews, based on their links to Israel as Zionists in support of that ancient heritage forever under threat by fundamentalist Islamists devoted to the jihad of the sword -- or bombs, beheadings and mass slaughter. A public relations campaign that introduced the West to a new phobia that was to be taken up and deplored as an assault on human rights -- Islamophobia -- became the darling of Western politicians courting the Muslim vote. And nor were the media confined to neutral reportage.

 

Temple Emanu-El windows shot out, March 2, 2026, North York, Toronto Star/Getty Images

 

Public institutions and governments throughout the West developed an affinity for responding to Muslim invective against Jews everywhere and particularly Israel which soon became globally isolated every time its military responded to deadly attacks against the presence of the Jewish state. The slopover in Canada saw campaigns to delegitimize Israel, to boycott its products, services and academics in favour of demonstrating fealty to the plight of Palestinians 'victimized' by a country that would not allow itself to be attacked, its citizens murdered by neighbours plaintively calling themselves victims while attacking their 'occupiers' whose very presence 'oppressed' them.  

 

In Canada, Jewish-owned businesses are vandalized, synagogues fire-bombed, Jewish parochial schools shot at, hateful marches through Jewish neighbourhoods harassing and threatening its residents, all with complete impunity. University campuses shut out for Jewish students and Jewish professorial staff frozen out by their colleagues whose support of the Palestinian 'cause' is paramount in their progressive-left Marxist embrace. One prime minister after another disinterested in the plight of that segment of the population in favour of deploring any symptoms of 'Islamophobia' should Jews point out the campaign of disentitlement of Jews in Canada is led by Muslims. 

 

The accused, Mohamed Ilyess Akodad, said he accepted a $15,000 contract to set fire to Congregation Beth Tikvah on Dec. 18, 2024. (Simon-Marc Charron/Radio-Canada)

 

"[Should the attacks on the two Toronto Jewish bakeries be proven to be hate crimes, they would be] the latest in such attempts to harass the Jewish community and would represent an assault on all civilized Canadians."  

"Rather than shine a light on the real threats facing Canada, including Islamic radicalism and the Iranian regime's tentacles in Canada, much of the news media has instead fixated on regurgitating pro-Palestinian talking points."

Robert Walker, Honest Reporting Canada

 

"Toronto's Jewish community deserves more than just thoughts and prayers."

"Toronto is not going to remain a city where Jewish store owners sweep up broken glass."

"We will sweep it up together. Indifference is indictment."

Toronto City Councillor Brad Bradford, mayoral candidate 

Expediting Visas for Palestinian Students From Gaza to Canada

On Thursday, 7 August, 35-year-old Mohammed Khatib learned that his refugee status in Belgium was being revoked — allegedly over his verbal support for Palestinian armed resistance and alleged links with international terrorism. Khatib is the Europe coordinator of the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, Samidoun. A Palestinian himself, he co-founded the organisation in 2011 after fleeing to Belgium from Lebanon in 2010, where he had grown up in the Ain El Hilweh refugee camp.

The decision to revoke his refugee status follows a campaign labelling him a “hate preacher,” initiated by the Belgian far-right on social media and taken up by former State Secretary for Asylum and Migration Nicole De Moor, who announced a procedure against him in October 2024.

The case, overseen by the Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons (CGRA), is based on information collected by the Coordination Unit for Threat Analysis (CUTA), which classifies Khatib a “serious” security threat.

Ciara Carolan, The New Arab 

 

In Belgium, showing solidarity with the Palestinian cause has become a serious legal and personal risk for refugees living under strict migration policies  The New Arab

 

"Canadians have witnessed an explosive rise in extremist rhetoric, ideological radicalization, and politically motivated violence, along with an unprecedented rise of antisemitism."

"As concerns about public safety have grown ... so too have questions about how governments balance humanitarian objectives with security considerations."

"The purpose of this research is not to tell Canadians what they should think. It is to help illuminate what Canadians do think, and to contribute a more informed discussion about the complex issues affecting Canadian society. Understanding public attitudes toward security, extremism and social cohesion is an important part of understanding the environment in which antisemitism and other forms of [hate] emerge and evolve."

HR Canada Charitable Organization  

Samidoun has been outlawed in Canada -- presumably, since it has been placed on Canada's terror list along with Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and so many other terror groups. It has been outlawed elsewhere as well, notably Germany. But it is in Vancouver, Canada, that Samidoun chose to make its home where it engages in anti-Israel propaganda and promotes antisemitism generally, and despite its listing still uses its Vancouver headquarters with seeming impunity.

 

Canada's Liberal-led governments appear to have a soft spot for Palestinian 'rights' and have latterly emerged as a stern critic of Israel; its previous warm relations with the Jewish state seem to have evaporated in the last decade, even more so since the barbaric slaughter that took place in southern Israel when thousands of Palestinian terrorists and civilians led by Hamas spilled over from Gaza to commit mass murder, torture and rape of Israeli citizens on October 7, 2023.

 

Palestinians have been given favoured status through immigration, refugee intake and illegal migration. Nor has there been a shortage of arrivals in Canada of members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps where their family members live in quiet security, their presence alarming to the nth degree to the far more numerous Iranian-Canadians who loathe the Iranian regime and fear their representatives in Canada whose presence seems not to bother the government of prime minister Mark Carney one whit.

 

Adil Charkaoui watches over a pro-Palestinian march in Montreal in late 2023. (Adil Charkaoui/X)

 

Interestingly, it seems at long last that ordinary Canadians have had enough of Palestinian 'student groups' creating chaotic scenes of anti-Israel propaganda and threats against Canadian Jews. Foreign coordinated marches, demonstrations and other forms of public displays of civil disobedience and lawlessness where keffiyeh-clad and masked pro-Hamas followers demonstrate their choice of 'human rights defence' by calling for an international Intifada, for a 'Final Solution', and chanting 'From the river to the sea'. Nor have mass public prayers shutting down roadways and intersections proven enchanting to the greater Canadian public. 

"Exporting the revolution, giving birth to and exporting terrorist groups is part of the Iranian regime. The names [of the groups] are not important. Terror is the most important mission inside and outside Iran, outside is even more important.These regimes have to reflect their image, superiority and power, in order to expand. Iranians actually co-operate with Russia and China. They learned it from them."

"Western countries are kind of honest and naive, and in obeying the law and liberal and democratic values, they sometimes fall in that trap of not knowing they help these dictatorships. They use your systems of being honest and good and trying to help the poor, and they abuse it."

Iranian-born, Israeli terrorism expert Beni Sabti  

A recent poll has resulted in just under fifty percent of Canadians revealed to be opposed to the Liberal federal government's decision to expedite student visa processing for Palestinians from Gaza. Immigration Minister Lena Diab last month announced her decision to expedite visa processing for 37 students from Gaza, along with their families. Commissioned by the HR Canada Charitable Organization, the Leger poll asked respondents whether they believed the policy would help students whose education had been disrupted by war, or whether they felt "speeding up the process could make it more difficult to adequately identify potential security risks, including individuals with extremist affiliations". 

 

The decision to expedite visa processing was opposed by forty-three percent of respondents, while 38 percent supported it, and the remaining 19 percent answered "I don't know". Results that demonstrate notable public concern and uncertainty for the planned acceleration of visa processing for Gaza Palestinian students related to perceived security risks in permitting radicalized Palestinians into Canada. Indubitably because Canadians have seen more than enough of such radicalized Palestinians already in Canada and making their presence all too well known. 

 

Muslims pray outside McGill University during an anti-Israel protest in Montreal on October 7, 2024 — the one year anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel. Photo by John Mahoney/Postmedia/

  

"Our mandate is to advance education on issues relating to antisemitism and discrimination, with a particular focus on how public perceptions and media narratives shape those conversations."

"Understanding how Canadians view, and are talking about, issues that intersect with security, extremism, and humanitarian policy helps provide important context for that work."

"[Canadians have been exposed to a growing number of incidents involving Islamic extremism in recent years], and this poll suggests those concerns are reflected in public opinion."

"The results indicate that appropriate security screening for those arriving from countries where these ideologies are prevalent is an issue of significant concern for millions of Canadians."

Amanda Eskenasi, education director, HR Charitable Organization 

 

Toronto's Mayor Olivia Chow Speaking Islamist 'Truths'

"[Chow should immediately resign after having] the audacity to compare [Israel’s war against a terrorist organization in Gaza to Japan’s invasion of China, and following her] inexcusable [false claims about a genocide]."

"The only Gaza genocide was the massacre perpetrated by Hamas and its allies against Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023. Somehow, we doubt that’s what the mayor was referencing. [The mayor’s genocide claim is not only] false and defamatory [to Israel and its people but also] a calculated insult to the almost 200,000 Jews in the Greater Toronto Area who support Israel, and it exposes the Jewish community to material risk of violence."

Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation 

 

"By echoing that narrative, Mayor Chow lends support to those spreading malicious libels and undermines public confidence in your commitment to the safety, dignity, and inclusion of all Torontonians."

"The Jewish community expects the mayor to make this right by addressing the harm caused and taking immediate action to restore trust and ensure our safety." 

Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs 

 

"[Chow’s comments are] disgraceful, reckless and dangerously irresponsible. [Her] genocide in Gaza [remarks were] a slap in the face to Jews in Toronto, across Canada, and around the world — an unforgivable betrayal and a disgraceful distortion of reality."

"Effective immediately, Mayor Chow is not welcome at any Tafsik Organization events, commemorations, or meetings. Her conduct has failed Toronto, and we reject her presence and participation in our community spaces."

"We call for Mayor Olivia Chow to be formally excommunicated and permanently rejected by the Jewish community and all Jewish organizations. Providing her a stage … risks legitimizing antisemitism and anti-Zionism, and undermines community safety and integrity."

Amir Epstein, executive director, Canadian Jewish civil rights group, Tafsik Organization

 

"Making such inaccurate and misleading statements, while representing all Torontonians, sends a harmful and divisive message."

"Toronto deserves leaders who treat every community with respect and act with impartiality. At a time when the mayor should be working to mend divisions and ease tensions, she has instead chosen to inflame them …"

"When a mayor presents a legally disputed claim as fact, it crosses the line from leadership to bias."

B'nai Brith Canada 

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow appeared at the National Council Canadian Muslims gala on Nov. 1, 2025 (Screenshot image via X.com)

 

Attending a fundraising gala at the National Council of Canadian Muslims at the Pearson Convention Centre in Toronto, a brief video clip has circulated on social media which shows Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow speaking of Israel's war against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza as a genocide. In her words: "The  genocide in Gaza impacts us all. A common bond to shared humanity is tested and I will speak out when children anywhere are feeling the pain and violence and hunger". Mayor Chow evidently hungered for applause from her audience which represents a fairly large voting bloc. 

 

The mayor went further, to draw a parallel between the tragic outcomes of Palestinian families caught in a deliberate crossfire orchestrated by the terrorist group that rules Gaza, to ensure that the Israel Defense Forces -- despite every and any effort to minimize collateral civilian damages when targeting Hamas operatives, their operations and command centres, and weapons depots -- would endanger; wound and kill by default civilians among whom were launched rockets into Israel, inviting Israeli responses. Whether hiding among the civilian population by shedding their distinctive uniforms, or installing command posts and communication centres and weapons depots in and under mosques, hospitals, schools or private homes, the purpose is to directly imperil civilian lives, as fodder for the propaganda campaigns that charge Israel with 'genocide'.

 

It is the Hamas charter and pledge among its members to destroy the State of Israel and the lives of Jews everywhere that is genocidal. Israel's response to Palestinian terrorism is justifiably existential in nature; no country could survive the ill intentions of another by simply shrugging off constant violent attacks in place of the internationally recognized right of self-defense. Hamas is an elusive, sly and murderous Islamist entity fully intent on destroying Israel. Its venomous attacks on Israeli civilians from infants to the elderly are sadistically savage. Their propensity toward staging mass atrocities then portraying themselves as victims of genocide as the underdogs in an uneven war appeals to Jew-haters everywhere.

 

Suggesting as Chow did that having a handed-down memory of her mother as a child in occupied China when Japan decided to invade and install a totalitarian occupation that preyed on the Chinese as being analogous to Israel's 'occupation' of the Palestinian territories is as canted historically as it could possibly be. It is Palestinian terrorism that 'occupies' ancestral Judean land, and unsatisfied with that portion, advances the position that all the land historically Jewish is the property and inheritance of 'Palestinian' Arabs. In Imperial Japan's historical invasion of Korea and China, the ancient human curse of territorial greed was advanced; precisely what Hamas is engaged in with a religious fillip.  

 

As an aside, Japan, during World War II, though a member of the German-led Axis, sought to protect Jews from annihilation; not only did a Japanese consul issue visas to Jews frantic to escape their fate, so they could transit Europe to safety elsewhere when no other country would give them haven, the Japanese provided that escape and that haven for them in occupied China, where they remained safe from the Final Solution of the Holocaust. 

 

In effect, Mayor Chow has legitimated once again the 'right' of 'freedom of speech', galvanizing 'pro-Palestinian' groups to once again gather at Bathurst and Sheppard, an area known as home to many Jews in Toronto, to harass and malign the Canadian Jewish population. Given little protection by the Toronto Police Service that guarantees the 'safety' of the Hamas-supporting protests, while warning Jews that they must refrain from antagonizing the Palestinian-flag-waving Jew-baiters.

 

Participants in Toronto's 61st weekly Rally for Israel, at Bathurst and Sheppard, try to ignore anti-Israel protesters who have begun turning up in recent weeks to try to disrupt the long-running solidarity event. (Jonathan Rothman/The CJN photo)

"The Mayor of Canada’s largest city, stood with us and spoke the truth: that what is happening in Gaza is a genocide, [that] truth matters, [and that] Mayor’s Chow’s words tonight were not about politics — they were about acknowledging the genocide in Gaza, and the path forward."

"It is an acknowledgment that has important policy implications, as we all know, because as we also all know, there are far too many who have not made this acknowledgment."

"Speaking the truth is the only way to be decent right now."

"There is still much wrong here in Toronto. And we’ve seen terrible things happen to shut down peaceful protests to stand against the genocide in Toronto over the past few years."

National Council of Canadian Muslims 

Skilled at speaking the Western democratic language of human rights, these sanctimonious declarations describing, threatening protests as peaceful, and the truth as 'their' truth, move those like Olivia Chow who are incapable of discerning truth and reality from feigned justice and a commitment to 'decency', much less a true regard for human relations 

Bringing the Middle East to Canada

 

Bringing the Middle East to Canada

"I speak from personal experience, having observed the Al-Quds Day rally at Toronto's Queen's Park a few years ago. I was shocked that it was allowed to take place on government property."

"While I support freedom of expression for everyone, the Al-Quds Day rally was nothing but undiluted hate being spouted by speaker after speaker."

"Statistics tell us that antisemitic incidents are on the rise in Canada and around the world."

"Antisemitism thrives on hate, so if there is hate being spouted on our streets, shouldn't our government take notice and do something about it?"

Raheel Raza,  Pakistani-Canadian journalist, author, public speaker, media consultant, anti-racism activist, and interfaith discussion leader

 

Raheel Raza is puzzled that in Canada expressions of hatred against Jews find no barriers erected by the Government of Canada. Canada has an increasingly large Muslim population, Its Jewish population is small, by comparison. For Canadan politicians votes can be lost when they address issues linked to voting demographics. As for antisemitic demonstrations, and acts of intimidation or violence against Jews, their emergence corresponds with the growing Muslim population.

 

Practising Muslims who know their Islamic history and values take umbrage at their co-religionists actively sowing suspicion, hatred and acts of passive and violent Jew-hatred in their adopted country which it boasts with pride is one where a multitude of languages can be heard on the street, a rainbow of pigmentation can be seen everywhere, and refugees and immigrants live in fairly reliable harmony among one another; often in cliques and districts where their ethnic and religious cultures give them comfort.

 

Among the 1,053,945 Muslims who make Canada their home, a significant enough proportion express anti-Jewish, anti-Israel sympathies which the 392,000 Canadian Jews must live with. The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement enjoys great popularity among Muslim Canadians who view Canadian Jews and their attachment to the State of Israel as antithetical to their own values revolving around the conviction that Israel exists on land consecrated to Islam, and which Arab Palestinians claim as their own.

 

Slanderous invective, engagement in 'progressive' causes on university campuses that elevate Israel to the status of institutionalized violence against Palestinians, naming Israel as an 'apartheid' state has brought these hate groups adherence in the larger general population, convinced that sympathizing with the Palestinian 'cause', its opposition to Israel as an 'occupier' that targets Palestinian children for death, makes a mockery of reality. 

 

When, in fact, it is the Palestinian Authority that schools Palestinian children in hatred for Jews, convincing children vulnerable to suggestion that their highest calling is to become a martyr, and to anticipate a future where Jews will be slaughtered en masse, freeing up the land the Jewish state sits on, ancestral to Jews as ancient Judea, so that Arab Palestinians who identify as the authentic indigenous peoples of the land, to create their own state 'from the river to the sea'. 

 

That Israelis must live with the constant threat of violent attacks and indiscriminate murders by whatever means Palestinian Arabs find at hand, is conveniently overlooked in favour of disinterest in the fact that Palestinians constitute 20 percent of the Israeli population, with full citizenship. That Arab Palestinians, Christians, Druze, Ba'hai and other minorities live in Israel as citizens, freely voting for their own parliamentary representation. There are Arab Israelis appointed to judgeships, diplomatic posts and who join the Israeli police and military. So much for apartheid.

 

Participants wave Iranian flags and display a portrait of the Ayatollahs at the June 1, 2019 Al-Quds Day march in downtown Toronto. Photo by Jack Boland / Postmedia News

In Canada, Palestinian sympathizers and 'activists' among the population of Muslim-Canadians feel free to mount an annual Al-Quds march, decrying the existence of the State of Israel. An event that was instituted by the Islamic Republic of Iran that has sworn to erase Israel from the Middle East, and taken up by the wider Muslim public. Raheel Raza. a devout Muslim is outraged that Canadian Muslims would defile the holy month of Ramadan, a time of quiet reflection, the antithesis of hate, vengeance, anger and violence -- on the streets of Canada.

 

She has written of her disgust for the actions of the hate-mongers among her co-religionists. She has appealed to the larger Muslim population in Canada for common sense and the need to leave old antipathies behind, along with tribalism and secular violence. She has communicated with Muslim-Canadian authorities representing different sects of Islam, to find no welcoming committee for her pleas for respect and tolerance between Muslims and Jews; all to no avail.

 

People attend an Al-Quds Day rally in Toronto interspersed with pro-Israel supporters. Photo by Jack Boland/Toronto Sun