‘All eyes are on Canada,’ says Israel’s president after attacks on Toronto synagogues
Israel’s president says “all eyes are on Canada,” after a Zoom call with Canadian Jewish leaders to discuss a series of antisemitic attacks in Toronto.
“While Iranian missiles continue to target our people here in Israel, extremist forces of evil continue to attack our Jewish brothers and sisters in communities around the world,” President Isaac Herzog said on the X social media platform on Monday evening.
“We must learn the lessons of previous antisemitic attacks, including the horrific Bondi Beach terror attack. All eyes are on Canada; it’s time to halt the unprecedented wave of Jew-hatred that has erupted ever since October 7.”
He said he expressed his “deep alarm” over the Toronto-area attacks in a Zoom call with community leaders and rabbis on Monday.
Three Toronto synagogues were hit by gunfire in a week.
Shortly before 11 p.m. last Monday, Temple Emanu-El was damaged by gunfire. Afterward, around a dozen bullet holes could be seen on the front windows and bricks of the synagogue.
Two more Toronto-area synagogues , Beth Avraham Yoseph synagogue in Thornhill and Shaarei Shomayim synagogue in North York, were found to have been shot at on Saturday.
No injuries were reported in any of the shootings. However, on Friday the Jewish Security Network warned Toronto’s Jewish community to exercise extra caution amid the ongoing war on Iran.
In a Zoom call with Canadian Jewish community leaders and rabbis today, I expressed my deep alarm at the recent series of antisemitic attacks in the Toronto area.
— יצחק הרצוג Isaac Herzog (@Isaac_Herzog) March 9, 2026
While Iranian missiles continue to target our people here in Israel, extremist forces of evil continue to attack our… pic.twitter.com/3NQFCStSP5
Herzog, who was in Jerusalem, said he sent a message of strength and solidarity to the city’s Jewish community.
“The Jewish people are all one family, and we in Israel care for every Jew around the world. We stand together and will prevail over all the forces of evil seeking to harm us,” he said on X.
Casey Babb, a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, responded on X: “Canada has become so unsafe for Jews, that in the middle of a war – one of the most consequential in Israel’s history – senior Israeli officials are speaking with our community about the situation here. That’s a very very bad sign.”
Jewish community leaders in Toronto warned that the attacks come amid a broader pattern of rising hostility toward Jews in Canada since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza.
Sara Lefton of UJA Federation of Greater Toronto said that while the shootings are “beyond anything that we could have imagined… the trajectory over the last couple of years is exactly what we should have known was coming.”
Noah Shack, CEO of the Centre of Israel and Jewish Affairs said that “Canada is at a crossroads.”
“We have a clear choice to make about whether we are going to be a city, a province, and a country that buries our heads in the sand and tolerates this kind of intimidation, this kind of terror in our communities, or whether we will be united to stand against it and push back.”
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