John Ivison: Canada’s tolerance of antisemitic intolerance has gone too far

Are our values being so warped in the name of accommodation and diversity that we can no longer stand up for what is right?

Osman Azizov is out on bail, National Post has confirmed with police. Azizov is only 18 but he is one of three men charged with 79 offences, including kidnapping, conspiracy to commit sexual assault and hostage taking. The plan was to kidnap young Jewish women, according to the charges laid by the RCMP-led Integrated National Security Enforcement Team. The alleged leader, Waleed Khan, has been linked to ISIS.

Coming days after another ISIS-linked atrocity in Australia, where 15 Jewish victims were murdered while celebrating Hannukah at Bondi Beach, with another 30 gunshot victims still in hospital, it seems rash in the extreme to allow Azizov to wander the streets.

Have we learned nothing from the atrocity at Bondi? The intelligence brief provided by the Canadian government’s Integrated Threat Assessment Centre (ITAC) in the wake of the attack makes for sober reading. It states that there is no indication of “an imminent, credible threat” targeting the 2025 holiday season in Canada.

Yet, in Australia, Naveed Akram, the alleged Bondi shooter, was a known associate of an Islamic State cell and deemed not to be a threat to national security by Australia’s intelligence service.

The ITAC report hedged its bets by saying an attack by a lone actor or small group could not be discounted. An attack on the Jewish community remains a “realistic possibility,” it concluded.

ITAC said police across Canada have increased their presence in their local Jewish communities, claiming it is unlikely the Australian bloodbath in isolation will trigger a domestic attack.

But it acknowledged that the links to Islamic State suggest a resurgent threat of religiously motivated extreme violence. The intelligence services have noted an increased amount of ISIS and al-Qaida propaganda, the report said.

“This attack will inspire both celebratory and violent rhetoric from religiously motivated violent extremists,” it said. “The majority of violent rhetoric targeting the Jewish community very likely comes from those who do not intend to engage in serious physical violence. However, it remains a realistic possibility that such rhetoric could be used by individuals or transnational terrorist groups to justify violent acts.”

To sum up, we have a resurgence of ISIS-extremist hate speech at the same time as a spike in hate crimes, a hugely disproportionate amount of which are directed at the Jewish community (16 per cent of all incidents between 2017 and 2021 toward one per cent of the population). Anti-Israel activists have staged 798 demonstrations since the terrorist attacks in Israel on October 7, 2023. Inside Indigo bookstores over the weekend (whose CEO is a Jewish woman) protesters chanted “intifada, revolution” while waving Palestinian flags, in a feeble attempt to intimidate shoppers.

The ITAC report makes the link that the violent extremists and the apparently benign pretend revolutionaries are part of the same continuum, with the latter group creating the conditions for the violent fringe.

There are signs that in other jurisdictions tolerance for such intolerance is running low. In a joint statement issued last week by the Commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police Force, Sir Mark Rowley, and the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police, Sir Stephen Watson, it was made clear that many of the phrases causing fear in Jewish communities meet the prosecution threshold.

The statement promised an “enhanced approach,” using powers under the Public Order Act.

“The words and chants used matter and have real world consequences,” it said. “Those using the phrase ‘globalize the intifada’… should expect the Met and GMP to take action.”

The statement said that violent acts have taken place and the context has changed. “We will act decisively and make arrests,” it said. “It is possible to protest in support of Palestinian people without intimidating the Jewish community or breaking the law.”

Back in Canada, Noah Shack, the new chief executive of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, says politicians and police here need to follow suit. “One of the things that would be really helpful, that doesn’t require any policy or legislative change, is for leaders to be absolutely unequivocal about what’s right and wrong, not only when it manifests in a terrorist attack halfway across the world but when it’s manifesting itself in streets across Canadian cities,” he said in a interview.

Shack said Canada doesn’t necessarily need new laws to deal with people calling for violence and hate on our streets. “But we need a focus on enforcing the laws that we already have on the books and ensuring there is clear and vocal leadership from all levels of government.”

The federal Liberals have introduced Bill C-9, the Combatting Hate Act, that creates a hate-crime offence; makes it illegal to display certain symbols such as the Hezbollah flag; and, removes the requirement for provincial attorneys general to consent to hate-crimes prosecutions.

Shack said that is a positive move since the requirement to involve attorneys general creates a logjam that delays or even deep-sixes prosecutions.

The CIJA is still seeking an additional terrorism promotion charge to be added to the Criminal Code to counter the glorification of terror. “We’re creating an environment of permissiveness and of radicalization around terrorism that is feeding the outcome of these attacks,” Shack said.

The organization is also seeking what it calls a “multi-layered” approach to community safety, Shack said.

“No intelligence is 100 per cent foolproof; no law enforcement is going to be effective 100 per cent of the time. We need to make sure both of these elements are as strong as possible but at the same time, we need our governments to be investing in community security resources that are required to mitigate and block the impact of these attacks when they do get through. We saw that on display in Manchester (in the October 2025 synagogue attack), where they were able to minimize the casualties as a result.”

But the preeminent message coming from the Jewish community as the Hanukkah holiday ends, is that our leaders need to speak with clarity about what is acceptable and what is not acceptable because this is not just about the Jews, it is about the whole country and our way of life.

In that vein, what is clearly not acceptable is for a man who is alleged to have tried forcing Jewish women into a car at gunpoint to be caught and then released.

National Post

jivison@criffel.ca