We are at a crossroads in Montreal. On Tuesday, November 5, 2024, masked people stood near the entrance of the Congregation Shaar Hashomayim synagogue in the City of Westmount shouting insults at people entering. As recounted by Senator Leo Housakos, these insults included including “Death to Jews!” and in one case referred to a person by name and stated to them, “Tonight, Jew, you are going to die!”
Congregation Shaar Hashomayim synagogue is on a quiet residential street. The Montreal police officers on hand did not intervene and did not make arrests. The police did not enforce a court injunction that protestors must remain 50 meters from the entrance of Jewish community buildings. The police allowed the mob to disturb the peace in a quiet residential neighbourhood and intimidate those attending the events, including families. We have sent an e-mail to SPVM Director Vincent Richer requesting a full investigation and follow up with all individuals who were directly targeted and subjected to hateful and violent comments and behaviour.
For more than a year, Police Chief Dagher has repeatedly told Montrealers that he does not want the Jewish community to be prevented from—or feel prevented from—going about its community activities. After the events of November 5, 2024, those words are hard to reconcile with the inaction of the SPVM, which allowed the mob to intimidate people attending an event.
For more than a year, radicals under the guise the pro-Palestinian cause have violently attacked synagogues and community centres, targeted businesses owned by Jewish Quebecers, harassed citizens attempting to gather for community events, and disrupted university life. Perhaps no incident got more media attention in Quebec—and condemnation—than Imam Adil Charkaouia’s call for violence and murder to a gathering downtown. Prosecutors opted not to charge him for a crime.
This atmosphere of hate is testing whether Montreal and Quebec are a place where one can raise one’s children in safety. Too many political leaders are viewing these incidents as isolated, whereas the Jewish community of Quebecer is rightly viewing it as a pattern of violence designed to disrupt community life and to intimidate the Jewish community. This isn’t unique to Montreal as the atmosphere of hate is also present in the United States, France, Britain, and most recently on display on the streets of the City of Amsterdam.
If our society would rightly find it intolerable to have masked members of the Ku Klux Klan shouting insults at Black people (or Jewish people) entering a place of worship, then it must have the same reaction when the same act is done by people with a different but equally dangerous ideology.
The intimidation tactics and violence now directed against the Jewish community will not end there. Across universities, speakers with different points of views from the university orthodoxy are prevented from speaking. Governments at all levels must finds ways to combat the hate and stop the intimidation of citizens by malevolent actors.