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By Jesse Brown
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A disturbing pattern is emerging when it comes to violent acts of Jew-hatred around the world. A few days after the Hanukkah massacre at Bondi Beach, and a few months after the Yom Kippur synagogue attack in Manchester, Canadian police announced that three armed men had been "targeting women and members of the Jewish community" on the streets of Toronto.
One of the men was charged with conspiring with ISIS to commit murder, as the Bondi Beach killers had done.
This incident was not an outlier. Since October 7, 2023, there have been seven extremist murder plots against Jews by Canadian residents.
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The common thread between Britain, Australia and Canada is that in all three nations, virulent anti-Zionist rhetoric that demonizes anyone connected to Israel has not only become normal, but it has become popular.
Meanwhile, concern for Jews has become decidedly unfashionable—even for the police.
The most disturbing aspect of the sexual assaults in Toronto is that authorities made their first arrest in the case four months before alerting the public. The Jewish community had no idea that armed, hate-motivated extremists were roaming the suburbs of Toronto in a luxury SUV, allegedly sexually assaulting women and attempting to kidnap and murder them.
This is but one example of how authorities have failed the Jewish community in Canada and left us vulnerable to hatred and harm.
Toronto police have apologized to the Jewish community twice, once for delivering refreshments to anti-Zionist protesters occupying an overpass in what the protesters called “a Zionist-infested area,” and again for releasing a podcast in which two Muslim police officers spoke approvingly of how October 7 inspired many “reverts” to Islam.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's sole policy initiative so far has been to propose new anti-hate legislation, despite the fact that current hate speech laws remain largely unenforced, even when violations happen in plain sight. Canada had a “Federal Envoy for Combatting Antisemitism,” but she resigned last summer, citing daily frustration and literal “despair.” Her role has yet to be filled.
Statistics confirm the extent of the crisis. Though Jews comprise less than 1 percent of Canada’s population, we are now the number one target of police-reported hate crimes targeting religion. A comparison of Statistics Canada data against FBI data shows that a Jew in Canada is significantly more likely to be the target of a police-reported hate crime than a Jew in America.
The weak responses from Canadian leaders to antisemitism stand in stark contrast to their forceful condemnations of Israel. Carney has even promised to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu should he ever set foot on Canadian soil. The protesters are emboldened by these high-level validations and have shifted their targets from elected officials to their Jewish neighbors.
Crowds of angry protesters have taken to marching into Jewish neighborhoods under the watchful eye of police officers instructed to practice “de-escalation” rather than make arrests or redirect masked and aggressive extremists as they demand that Canadian Jews “go back to Europe."
In the immediate aftermath of the Bondi massacre, an intelligence report from Canada’s Integrated Threat Assessment Centre leaked to the press, warning that Canada faces the same anti-Jewish extremism as Australia, and that “the Jewish community in Canada could be targeted by a violent extremist actor or actors.”
It was a bizarre warning, considering the threats that had already taken place:
- Two Ottawa teenagers face terrorism and explosives charges for plotting to kill a large crowd of Jews who assembled together at the nation’s capital in the fall of 2023.
- A father and son, Ahmed and Mostafa Eldidi, were arrested in 2024 in a hotel room, where they were found shooting a video while wielding a machete and an ax, and "in the advanced stages of planning a serious, violent attack," according to federal law enforcement. A member of Parliament later confirmed that the Eldidis were plotting to murder Jews.
- A 20-year-old student named Muhammad Shahzeb Khan was arrested in Quebec, also in 2024. He was driving to New York, where he planned “to use automatic weapons to kill as many members of our Jewish community as possible,” according to U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton.
In Canada, the anti-Zionist movement is not constrained to downtown marches or college encampments. It targets Jews where we live, where we worship and where we send our kids.
An Orthodox father in Montreal was beaten in front of his kids. A Jewish grandmother was stabbed at an Ottawa supermarket by a man later discovered to have a virulently antisemitic online presence.
Synagogues are routinely vandalized (one was hit 10 times), a Jewish deli was burned down, and a Jewish girls’ school was shot at three times. Recently, someone tore mezuzah prayer scrolls off every doorframe in a building housing elderly Jewish residents, including Holocaust survivors.
Canada prides itself on its diversity and tolerance. So how did this situation come to be? Theories abound.
Some blame the rise of DEI training within policing. Some blame the “woke” ideology of former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Some blame the rapid influx of Muslim immigrants; Canada’s Muslim population has almost tripled over a 20-year period.
After months of investigating this crisis for a new podcast series, What Is Happening Here, I can offer this point of understanding: nearly every demand that anti-Zionist protesters have made of the Canadian government has been met. Canada has recognized a Palestinian state, denounced the Israeli government, cut arms exports to Israel and seen Palestinian flags flown at city halls nationwide.
And the harm toward Canada’s Jews just gets worse.
So here’s my conclusion: it’s not worse here despite anti-Zionist protesters getting what they demanded; it’s worse here because of it.
Jesse Brown is the founder and editor of the news podcast company Canadaland and the host of the podcast What Is Happening Here. He won the Hillman Prize for Investigative reporting and a Canadian Screen Award for Best Factual Series for the television documentary Thunder Bay. His journalism and commentary have been published by The New York Times, The Guardian, Slate, Maclean's, and many others. He is a Globe and Mail #1 bestselling author.
The views expressed in this article are their own.
Updated 1/15/26 at 2:41 p.m. ET: This article was updated for clarity.
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