Editorial: Forget Gaza, Mr. Carney. Worry About Our Streets
Our leaders should pay more attention to the rights of Canadians trying to live their lives peacefully in this country.
It has become shockingly apparent that this country has become institutionally antisemitic. Since Oct. 7, 2023, it has become commonplace for Jewish businesses, retail stores and institutions to be attacked and shot up. Rarely is anyone held to account.
Pro-Hamas mobs routinely take over our streets. Only occasionally does any one of our cowardly leaders — our mayors, our MPs, our prime minister — raise their head above the flak to denounce it. When they do, it is lip service. Nothing changes.
This week, the group Montreal4Palestine took to the streets of that city, displaying effigies of Israeli and U.S. politicians, as well as Jews, being hanged alongside a Canadian flag. Police are reportedly investigating this as a hate crime. When masked protesters are allowed to take over our streets with impunity, with their extreme ideology on full display, it will be hard to pin a crime on one person.
While there were statements of disgust from one or two politicians, such as Conservative MP and deputy leader Melissa Lantsman and Montreal Councillor Leslie Roberts, precious little of substance has been done.
At an event at the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre in Toronto this week, former deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland was verbally assailed by a demonstrator. Among other extreme statements, he is alleged to have asked, “How many children have you orphaned? You monster, you Zionist, Nazi dog.”
Both these events occurred in Canada. In 2026. In broad daylight and in front of numerous witnesses. Yet, what are Prime Minister Mark Carney and his Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand fretting about? Not Jews living peaceable lives in Canada. No, they are irate over the treatment of Canadian activists who set out in a flotilla to insert themselves into the Gaza war.
In a phone call to Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Carney demanded an independent investigation into the treatment of the Gaza protesters who were allegedly bound, taunted and forced to kneel on the ground. We are not condoning such treatment, but demonstrators who seek to meddle in a foreign conflict should not expect a red-carpet welcome.
Carney and Anand should pay less attention to the politics of Gaza and more to the rights of Canadians trying to live their lives peacefully and without molestation in this country. And that includes Jews.
