When public figures respond to antisemitic events by isolating them as one-offs, they misread the evil that huddles in wait

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American economist and social theorist Thomas Sowell once wrote about the political compulsion to assess bad events “one day at a time” — as if events sit in a sealed jar, hermetically inert to antecedent and consequence alike.

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With recent antisemitic attacks, this one-day-at-a-time reflex has hardened into ritual.

Rare are those leaders — like Toronto Councillor James Pasternak — who refuse to look away, and who looks beyond.

On Christmas Day, in the councillor’s ward, mezuzahs were severed from the doorways of condo units in a building near Finch Avenue East and Bayview Avenue in North York, an area that is home to many Jewish residents, including Holocaust survivors. It was the second such desecration in the area in recent weeks.

“This case of mezuzahs being vandalized is another example of the hate that has infected our city, often a result of incitement from the mobs on the streets and online hate,” Pasternak said in a post on X. “The chants on the streets and the feeling of lawlessness (are) leading Toronto to the abyss.”

Over the holidays, a disturbing incident took place at a seniors’ residence in North York. On Christmas Day, mezuzahs were ripped from the doorways of multiple units at a building on Bayview Avenue, where many Jewish residents live, including Holocaust survivors. This was the… pic.twitter.com/vRyACSqf3B

Pasternak deployed pattern language. He linked vandalism to riots and to mayhem that city hall has winked at. Where others see an episode, blind to a noose drawing tighter, he decries a sequence.

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We witnessed the opposite mechanism grind into tedious gear after the Bondi Beach massacre. Leaders scrambled to the stage. The public received a moment of collective grief, then silence.

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