From the London Jewish Chronicle, March 2026 (updated)
Three synagogue shootings in the days following Purim have left Toronto-area Jews feeling vulnerable and fearful, with community leaders, politicians, police and members of the community expressing various levels of resolve, anger, frustration and fear.
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,” said Steven Del Duca, Mayor of Vaughan, where the Beth Abraham Yoseph of Toronto (BAYT) synagogue was shot up close to midnight on Friday March 6.
York Regional Police Deputy Kevin McCloskey, speaking outside the BAYT shul the morning after it was hit, promised increased police patrols throughout the Jewish neighbourhood. Shortly after the BAYT attack, the Shaarei Shomayim Synagogue in midtown Toronto was also indiscriminately sprayed with multiple gunshot rounds. Several days earlier, just hours after the conclusion of Purim festivities, a vicious scattering of bullets smashed windows at the large midtown synagogue, Temple Emanu-El.
As of early April, no suspects have been identified or apprehended, and police aren’t saying much about the results of their forensic investigations into the synagogue shootings, as well as the targeting of the Old Avenue Restaurant (twice) and the U.S. Consulate on University Avenue in drive-by shootings in the wee hours of the morning.
My questions to the Toronto Police, submitted on April 7, were as follows: What conclusions have (or have not) been drawn from the forensic investigations? Any evidence the synagogue and Old Avenue shootings are linked? Any connection to the US Embassy shooting? Any evidence of IRGG/ Iranian regime loyalist involvement?
A month after the shootings, the police evidently has nothing to report. “These are active and ongoing investigations being led by our Integrated Gun and Gang Task Force, with support from our Intelligence Section,” a corporate communications officer told me. “Updates on the investigations will be shared with the public through official news releases.”
Shortly after the shootings, Rabbis Sam Taylor of Shaarei Shomayim and Daniel Korobkin of the BAYT put out a joint statement with their respective synagogue presidents to calm fears and encourage synagogue attendance.
The best way to respond to evil is to stand tall and united. Despite the scary times we live in, we also know that God is with us. Just as our people in Israel are actively battling the enemy in Iran and experiencing Divine victory, we, too, must strengthen our resolve that God is fighting for us.”
The synagogue shootings and other antisemitic activities have led City Councillor and Deputy Mayor Mike Colle, who represents the strongly Jewish Eglinton-Lawrence riding, to conclude that the attacks were planned and orchestrated by subversive elements here supporting the Iranian regime.
The shootings came just days after the start of the US-Israel war with the Iranian regime, and hundreds of ex-IRGC agents are known to be living in Canada, including many within Toronto’s large Iranian community.
This is not local, it’s internationally orchestrated, directed and financed,” Colle told The JC. “The shooting of three synagogues doesn’t feel random. Police won’t say it’s coordinated because they say they don’t have evidence, but I’ve been at this for quite a while. It’s so obvious. When are people going to wake up and realize we’re dealing an orchestrated attempt to terrorize 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 RCMP, the Ontario Provincial Police, Canadian security officials and city police to confront what he considers to be “acts of domestic terrorism.”
According to one estimate, antisemitic incidents across Canada have increased 670% since the beginning of the October 7 war. 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 vandalized with windows broken at least ten times in the last two years.
Community leaders have long complained that politicians have been far too lax about hateful rhetoric demonizing Israel and pro-jihadi chants to “globalize the intifada,” which, certainly after the attack at Bondi Beach in Australia, can only be interpreted as an incitement of violence against Jews.
Some politicians have taken little care to disguise their anti-Israel bias. Prime Minister Mark Carney has preemptively recognized a nebulous state of Palestine and admitted that he would arrest Benjamin Netanyahu as a war criminal if he came here, while Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow, speaking to a Muslim group last year, had no problem asserting that Israel was committing “genocide.”
Furthermore, the 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 and reprehensible antisemitic statements such as referring to “Jewish white supremacists”; other examples are no less shocking.
While Pro-Palestinian activists in this city routinely occupy campuses, wave terrorist banners, disrupt shopping malls, harass Jewish businesses, and loudly parade through Jewish neighbourhoods, few charges have ever been laid.
Police have been criticized for standing by as pro-Palestinian groups have occupied campus spaces and traffic intersections, but even when they conduct vigilant investigations and make arrests, charges have been later dropped. After the Jewish-owned Indigo bookstore was daubed with fake blood and vandalized in November 2023, arrests were made, but all proceedings against the so-called “Indigo 11” were later quietly dropped with only a few receiving wrist-slaps and no criminal records.
Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli, acting out of a sense of “profound urgency and deep alarm,” recently renewed his warning that Canada is no longer safe for Jews, and that the government of Prime Minister Carney was following in the footsteps of Australian PM Anthony Albanese, who ignored similar messages before the Bondi Beach attack.
Antisemitism in Canada has reached a critical point,” Chikli told Gary Anandasangaree, Canada’s Minister of Public Safety, by letter. “What is unfolding is no longer a matter of isolated hate incidents; it is the foreseeable result of unchecked antisemitic incitement and a sustained failure, often driven by political expediency, to confront the ideological sources of that hatred. This failure now poses a sustained and escalating threat to the safety of Jewish Canadians and to Canada’s broader public security.”
Jews in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) account for roughly half of the 400,000-strong Jewish population across Canada; other major Jewish centres are in Montreal, Winnipeg and Vancouver. Some community members lament that the “golden era” for Jews in Canada has sadly come to an end.
Canada was a wonderful place to grow up Jewish – it was easy and tolerant,” said Ezra Levant, CEO and broadcaster on Rebel News, a Canadian conservative-leaning media outlet. “But Canada has been changed by Trudeau and Carney, and now it’s a place where synagogues are getting shot up and it’s not even going to make the front-page news – because why would it? It happens every day. It’s not even news any more.”
Political leaders came out with the requisite statements condemning the shootings, echoing sentiments that, sadly, have become routine. Some 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.”
To her credit, Chow condemned the Hamas atrocities in social media posts soon after the Oct 7 attack, and denounced an unpermitted pro-Hamas rally that materialized immediately at City Hall. But then she added another post condemning Palestinian suffering, and later deleted both posts, claiming they were being misunderstood. Several days later, she was booed at the Jewish community’s large pro-Israel rally.
In a post on X, Prime Minister Carney promised that federal agencies, including the RCMP, “will use every resource to support law enforcement to identify the perpetrators of these crimes and bring them to the full weight of justice.”
Ontario Premier Doug Ford also issued a statement about the shootings. “Antisemitism has no place in our province,” he said. “We will not tolerate hate, intimidation or violence against any community. We stand firmly with our Jewish neighbours and will always defend their right to gather, worship and live openly and safely in Ontario.”
But critics say that such ritualistic utterances by elected officials, no matter how sincerely expressed or felt, have become boilerplate and do little to protect a community that feels itself under increasing threat.
No more ‘thoughts and prayers,’ we need to see urgent action,” said the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) and the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto in a joint statement.
Unapologetically Jewish is a Toronto-based advocacy group focused on combating antisemitism and urging political leaders, police chiefs and others to respond with stronger measures. Its founder, Matthew Taub, recently commented in the National Post that the phrase “antisemitism has no place here” is clearly detached from reality because antisemitism has become entrenched in the fabric of our culture.
The language sounds strong. It is meant to reassure,” he wrote. “But if antisemitism truly had no place in Ontario, synagogues would not require concrete barriers. Jewish schools would not need armed security. Community institutions would not conduct threat assessments before hosting events.
“To say antisemitism has no place here . . . is not a reflection of reality. It is a denial of it.” ♦
