Bullets Are Flying in Toronto Because Canada's Leaders Are Looking Away

A shooting at a boxing gym in Richmond Hill, Ontario, rocked the Greater Toronto area. The gym's owner, Salar Gholami, is an Iranian-Canadian dissident who spent years organizing pro-freedom rallies against the mullahs in Tehran. Seventeen bullets shattered his windows and walls just hours after reports emerged of the February 28 death of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Then came March 2, when gunmen opened fire on Temple Emanu-El in North York. Members of the congregation had just finished celebrating Purim. Most were barely out the door when the shots rang out. Some were still inside.

Days later, two more synagogues were hit. Late Friday night, a shooter fired through the glass doors of Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto, a large synagogue in Thornhill, while two maintenance workers were still inside cleaning up after a Shabbat dinner. Thirty minutes later and six miles south, a shooter opened fire at the entrance of Shaarei Shomayim in North York. Buildings were damaged in both attacks. No one was physically hurt. Three synagogues in one week.

"This threat is real," said Sara Lefton, chief development officer of UJA Federation of Greater Toronto. "If three synagogue attacks in one week don't prove that this is a very, very real and live threat, I'm not sure what everyone is waiting for."

Canadian Jews and others who oppose radical Islam have watched their city and national leaders fail to prevent radicalization for years.

Sadly, these are the predictable consequences of a political culture that has spent years signaling to extremists that the lives of those who oppose radical Islamist regimes are acceptable targets, especially Jewish lives.

Canadian Jews and others who oppose radical Islam have watched their city and national leaders fail to prevent radicalization for years. Toronto's mayor positioned herself as a champion of progressive causes, going as far as to support Palestinian causes and calling the war in Gaza a genocide. Yet in her own city, she looked the other way as antisemitic hate crimes soared.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has gone even further, adopting language that demonizes Israel and echoes the talking points of those who would celebrate its destruction. He declared his support for a Palestinian state before the last Israeli hostage even left Gaza. When leaders at the highest levels of government treat the Jewish community as a political inconvenience rather than a community worthy of protection, they send a signal. That signal travels fast. Now it has arrived, in the form of bullets.

Toronto police confirmed that 22 antisemitic incidents have been reported so far this year alone, accounting for 63% of all hate-crime reports in the city. Let that sink in. Yet the response from elected officials has been tepid, reactive and hollow. Mayor Olivia Chow posted a tweet condemning the synagogue shooting.

Stopping hate requires more than a tweet. It requires action and a genuine change of heart.

The attack on Gholami's gym carries a broader warning. Iranian-Canadian dissidents have been living under threat for years, yet they keep organizing, speaking out and demanding liberty for those suffering under the Islamic Republic. Canada designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist entity in June 2024. But deportations have moved at a glacial pace, bogged down in bureaucratic delays and endless appeals.

Meanwhile, men like Gholami host rallies and get rewarded with 17 bullets through their windows. The IRGC does not respect borders. It follows its enemies across continents and into their neighborhoods. Canada has allowed its open-door immigration policies to become a vehicle for those who wish to bring Tehran's terror to Canadian soil.

The Jewish community warned this would happen.

What connects these attacks is a climate of permissiveness. The Canadian government refuses to enforce consequences for hate, prioritizes political positioning over public safety, and treats the concerns of the Jewish community and Iranian dissidents as inconvenient noise rather than urgent alarm bells. Carney, Chow and others like them create the conditions in which extremists feel emboldened.

The Jewish community warned this would happen. It was said in op-eds, in meetings, in public statements. The response was indifference, and sometimes worse: open political hostility toward Israel and the communities that stand with her.

The Jewish people have survived far worse and will survive this too. But a community's resilience should never be used by governments as an excuse to under-protect it.

Canada's leaders must move beyond performative condemnation. They need to deport IRGC-linked operatives. They need to secure the borders against those who come not to build new lives but to silence dissidents and terrorize communities. They need to fully resource the Hate Crime Unit and the Integrated Gun and Gang Task Force.

Most importantly, the government needs to honestly reckon with the political rhetoric that has normalized hostility toward Israel, the Jewish community and those who protest terrorists over the past several years.

If Canada's leadership continues to look away, Canadians will see just how radical Islam can become within their own borders. That would be a terrible shame and a direct betrayal of the peace, harmony and respect for life that this government claims to champion.

A version of this op-ed originally appeared in JNS.org