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Aviva Klompas: Olivia Chow has herself to blame for antisemitic violence

Statements don't stop bullets

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Last week, gunfire struck three synagogues in the Greater Toronto Area. We have grown accustomed to the response: hollow expressions of sympathy, feeble condemnations and the familiar promise that the city stands with the Jewish community.

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But what is unfolding in Toronto is not an abstract rise in hateful rhetoric. It is the steady normalization of violence against Jews, and the city’s leadership appears determined to ignore the reality that we are at risk of a mass-casualty attack targeting the Jewish community.

Aviva Klompas: Olivia Chow has herself to blame for antisemitic violence Back to video

One of the synagogues struck by gunfire last week was Temple Emanu-El. It sits only a few blocks from my family’s synagogue, Kehillat Shaarei Torah. When the news first broke, there was concern that our synagogue had also been targeted. The reason was depressing: its windows are still visibly damaged from the last antisemitic attack.

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Kehillat Shaarei Torah has been targeted 10 times since October 7. And yet, Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow has not found the time to visit the synagogue even once.

Toronto’s mayor and city council should have to work from the synagogues that have been attacked: Kehillat Shaarei Torah, Temple Emanu-El, Beth Avraham Yosef and Shaarei Shomayim. Let them look through windows pierced by bullets. Let them navigate the gauntlet of security fences and metal detectors.

Let them depend on the occasional police patrol car and ask themselves whether it would be enough if someone burst in with a gun. Let them watch families arrive to pray while quietly noting the nearest exits and wondering where they would hide if a gunman enters the sanctuary.

This is what it now means to be a Jew in Toronto.

For over two years, the Jewish community has warned that the climate of hatred was escalating toward violence. Synagogues vandalized. Jewish schools targeted. Jewish Torontonians doxed and harassed. Protesters chanting genocidal slogans in Jewish neighbourhoods.

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Every warning sign has been visible. Yet city leaders have tried to persuade the public that statements are an adequate response — statements of concern, statements of solidarity, statements condemning antisemitism. But statements do not stop bullets.

By now, these statements have become theatre: a performance that allows leaders to appear concerned while avoiding the difficult work of actually doing something. A statement costs nothing. It spares leaders from adopting real policies, facing uncomfortable truths or shifting priorities and funding. It requires no acknowledgement that the situation has already crossed into something far more serious.

The measure of progress is not another statement. It is whether Jews in Toronto can participate in Jewish life without wondering if they will be the next target. What is happening is shameful, and the trajectory is plain. The only remaining question is whether Toronto’s leaders will act before someone is killed.

If that day comes, they will not be able to feign shock or outrage. They will not be able to pretend the warning signs were unclear. They will simply have to live with the knowledge that they were in charge — and watched it happen.

Aviva Klompas is CEO and co-founder of Boundless, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting antisemitism, and the host of the Boundless Insights podcast.

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