Toronto Police on Sunday announced an arrest in connection with a series of suspected hate-motivated threats targeting the Israeli community.
The arrest comes after multiple alarming social media posts surfaced between Wednesday, May 21, 2025, and Saturday, May 24, 2025, explicitly threatening harm.
Police allege that the accused posted numerous "hate-motivated death threats" against the Israeli community on various social media platforms. The Toronto Police Service Hate Crime Unit swiftly launched an investigation, leading to the identification and subsequent arrest of the suspect.
According to Sunday’s announcement, Basel Al-Sukhon, 26, of Toronto, was taken into custody on Saturday and has been charged with uttering threats and indecent communications.
The arrest comes as Toronto has seen an uptick in anti-Israel incidents since the start of the war against Hamas terrorists in Gaza on October 7, 2023.
In March, Toronto Police charged a local man with 29 offenses, including multiple hate crimes, in connection to a surge of antisemitic attacks and threats against the city’s Jewish community.
Data released by the Toronto Police Service earlier this month found that the city experienced a historic high in reported hate crime incidents in 2024, with the Jewish community, once again, being the leading target.
According to the TPS’s 2024 Annual Hate Crime Statistical Report, 443 hate-motivated occurrences were reported to police last year – a 19 percent increase from 2023 and a 203 percent rise from 2014.
Although the Jewish community represents less than four percent of Toronto’s population, anti-Jewish hate crimes accounted for 40 percent of all reported incidents, with 177 occurrences, the majority of which involved acts of mischief.
Sunday’s announcement of the arrest coincided with the annual “Walk for Israel” which was held in Toronto.
The walk was targeted by pro-Palestinian Arab demonstrators, who gathered at a central intersection, singing Palestinian national songs, hurling accusations at Israel as a state responsible for genocide, calling for Jews to return to Europe, and carrying signs stating that Israel would cease to exist in the coming years.
The anti-Israel protests prompted the Israeli National Security Council (NSC) to raise the travel alert level for Canada from Level 1 to Level 2, warning of a growing security threat to Israelis and Jews in the country.
