A very precise dynamic can be observed.
The United Kingdom plunges into multicultural chaos? Massacre at a synagogue in Manchester.
Australia Felix writhes in its model in crisis? Massacre of Jews in Bondi.
The capital of the Netherlands falls into the hands of migrant gangs? Jew hunt.
France experiences the harbingers of civil war? Killings of Jews.
Welcoming Scandinavia succumbs to out-of-control immigration? Jews flee.
Antisemitism is the signal: the suicide of a civilization.
Three dead in the worst attack against Jews in Canada - the country of Leonard Cohen, Saul Bellow, and Mordecai Richler - one of the most peaceful and safe places in the world until just a few years ago. Now it sees Molotov cocktails and gunfire against synagogues, attacks on Jews, Stars of David, and threatening letters on Jewish homes.
What has been happening in that country for the past two years is staggering. And this is an incomplete list:
May 2024: Shooting at Bais Chaya Mushka Girls Elementary School (Toronto). Six shots fired at night - the first of three attacks on the same school.
May 2024: Arson at the entrance of Shaarei Tzedek synagogue in Vancouver.
October 2024: Second shooting at Bais Chaya Mushka School (Toronto, during Yom Kippur).
December 2024: Third shooting at Bais Chaya Mushka School (Toronto). Damage to the building.
August 2025: Assault on an Orthodox Jewish man in Montreal, beaten in front of his children in a park.
August 2025: Stabbing of a 70-year-old Jewish woman while shopping in Ottawa. The attacker had posted antisemitic comments online.
March 2026: Three shootings against synagogues in the Toronto area in just a few days: Temple Emanu-El (North York, after Purim), Beth Avraham Yoseph (BAYT) in Thornhill, Shaarei Shomayim (North York).
May 2026: Shooting outside Chasidei Bobov synagogue in Toronto.
And now the Montreal massacre.
The Côte-des-Neiges, Montreal terrorist is named Seth Hatfield. He praised communism, demanded the abolition of private property, wanted internet censorship, and had it in for Jews and Zionism.
If it weren’t for the “TUEZ LES TOUS" (“Kill them all") at the end of his deranged manifesto, the text could have come from many journalistic pens.
Contemporary antisemitism is no longer just the old hatred; it is the toxic synthesis of residual Marxism and militant Islamism. Many terrorists with similar profiles have emerged in the last two years.
“For our heroes" and red poppies over a black-and-white photo of the architect of October 7, Yahya Sinwar. A vigil for the Hamas leader. This is not Tehran - it’s Ontario. The mayor of Mississauga, Carolyn Parrish, compared Sinwar to Nelson Mandela.
My feeling is that antisemitism is also the product of contemporary cultural anguish and loss of identity.
A civilization that has authorized the use of sharia in courts, that celebrates Hijab Solidarity Day, where muezzins shout from minarets, where universities self-censor on LGBT issues because of Muslim protests, where schools already receive requests for exemptions from music classes for Muslims (it is haram, forbidden, in Islam), where a minister calls the Taliban “our brothers," which authorizes the burning of “racist" books in schools, and where having a day off for Christmas and Easter has become proof of the country’s “colonialist" history - but you cannot display the menorah outside city hall.
Now tell me if this is not a civilization gone mad.
A distinguished son of Canada, Saul Bellow, wrote: “Western civilization is dying. The choice is ours: to tear it down or redeem it."
A society that no longer knows how to defend its Jews is a society that has already chosen to be torn down.