Earlier this month, I appeared on CBC’s The Current to discuss the escalation of antisemitic violence in Canada following my Globe op-ed and PROC committee appearance. The host asked me whether something like the Bondi Beach massacre, the December 2025 attack that killed 15 people at a Hanukkah celebration in Australia, could happen here. I replied that it was a certainty. He was taken aback and pressed me on it. I clarified that I didn’t mean a massacre was certain, but that with the relentless escalation of antisemitic violence in Canada, people would die. It was not a matter of if, but when.
That exchange has stayed with me, not because I said something provocative, but because his surprise was so revealing. What felt to me (and I believe many in the Jewish community) like an obvious, even understated observation given the inevitable endpoint of a trajectory visible to anyone who has been paying attention, registered to him as an alarming claim requiring justification. That gap between what the Jewish community experiences and what everyone else appears willing to acknowledge has been a defining feature of the post-October 7th world.
And yet, in recent days there is a hint of a shift. This weekend Toronto Police banned protests on residential streets near Bathurst and Sheppard, the intersection at the heart of Toronto’s Jewish community where weekly demonstrations have been held for more than two years. Deputy Chief Frank Barredo said protesters can still gather on the main roads but will face arrest if they enter residential streets. Soon after, Chief Myron Demkiw announced the creation of a dedicated Counter-Terrorism Security Unit and a new Task Force Guardian that will deploy officers with tactical gear and patrol rifles at places of worship, tourist hubs, and community centres across the city. The RCMP, OPP, and CSIS are all part of the coordinated response.
There is far more to be done to remedy years of inaction, but these are welcome measures. They are also measures that should provoke a deeply uncomfortable question: if this was always possible, why didn’t it happen sooner?
Alongside many others (see Jesse Brown’s polite pogrom piece), I have been writing about these issues for some time. Last November, I argued in the Globe and Mail that freedom of expression must not become a right to harass or intimidate, after watching masked protesters march through the same residential streets where my grandfather once took daily walks. The police response at the time was to trail behind on bicycles. Before that, I raised concerns about the situation on university campuses in 2024, when the alarm bells from faculty and students were met with disbelief. Last fall, I wrote about the inadequacy of political responses in the aftermath of the stabbing of an elderly Jewish lady near my home.
Throughout it all, the response followed a depressingly familiar pattern. Politicians issued carefully worded statements opposing “all forms of hate.” The Ontario Solicitor General wrote a letter urging the Toronto Police to do more. The Police Association said leadership wasn’t giving officers clear direction. Everyone pointed fingers. Week after week, the antisemitic incidents escalated, and the fears on campus, in synagogues, and in community centres grew.
The community was told the authorities were doing what they could. But were they? These announcements make clear they could have done far more. If restricting protests from residential streets is now characterized as a reasonable limitation on Charter rights, it was a reasonable limitation six months ago. If a counter-terrorism unit is appropriate today, the conditions that justify it didn’t materialize overnight. A police presence has been constant outside of Jewish community centres, schools, and synagogues for years given the unimaginably long list of institutions that have been the targets of shootings, firebombs or vandalism.
What changed is not the threat. What changed is that the threat has become impossible to ignore. Three Toronto synagogues were shot at in a single week in early March. Then the U.S. consulate in Toronto was shot at. Then came protesters parading signs with imagery out of 1930s Nazi propaganda depicting Jews as rats and gaunt monsters. And an Integrated Threat Assessment Centre report warning that a “lone actor” attack on Jewish Canadians is a “realistic possibility” in the coming months.
For two-and-a-half years, the Jewish community has been sounding the alarm. And we have been met, at best, with sympathetic nods and assurances that the authorities are doing all they can. At worst, we have been told we are overreacting, have no right to feel safe, and that we are conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism. Go on social media and you will see these messages today. But perhaps the reality is breaking through. It should not have taken bullets in synagogue doors since the warning signs were always there. The tools such as bubble zone bylaws, hate speech provisions, and the Criminal Code, were always there. What has been missing is the will to act.
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I agree with everything you have said but I feel that addressing the threat by increasing security is only a half measure. The threat to Jews is endemic throughout society and its institutions. The only way to make canada a home for Jews is to marginalize or eliminate the threat. Our governments have no appetite to do this due to voting patterns and fear of being called out for Islamophobia.
I think the problem here is worsened by the Israeli regime using Antisemitism to try and avoid criticism for their war crimes. Frankly, although I respect Michael Geist considerably within the tech realm and share his tech related articles regularly, this was the first time I’ve even heard him write sentiments that actually even vaguely separate himself or Canadian Jewish population from the Israeli government actions, who are war criminals. I’ve even had to start considering whether sharing his articles might make my linkedin less appealing when looking for work. Everyone has biases. It’s that advocation solely for Canadians Jewish population, like at the universities, but never any support for Palestinian freedoms who were also facing suppression, that make his biases appear more concerningly and less respectably narrow. I understand why he has this bias, but when we advocate for a community, but reject or ignore an ongoing similar situations, it makes it hard for people who see no difference between jewish people and islamic people to then support his words wholeheartedly. Just feels like walking into a quagmire. I don’t want to be on a specific side of these long standing horrid grievances in Israel, I want to stand up for all vulnerable, does michael?. He choses his words carefully, but what you say and what you don’t say, read equally loud.
No one deserves violence or prejudice due to the violent actions of others – even if they happen to share a religion or whatever else. But when lethal violence is being brought upon innocent people, it does tend to enrage and radicalize people whos families die and existence are threatened, the same fears expressed here unironically. Most rage comes from fear and resentment, and is applied unfairly via overgeneralization, by the fringe extreme of society. There is no difference between islamophobia or Antisemitism. The sooner bombs stop falling on civilian infrastructure the better. Maybe Michael should start advocating as loudly for that as well – be clear as day about the crimes occurring abroad, not just the concerns of his ilk domestically, but to advocate for peace and everyone the same, of a similar vulnerability, in a clear and nobly broad way, because the ambiguity is doing no one any favors, and is probably the root of Michaels frustration in public response and demeanors, rather than any actual broad resentment towards the Jewish population in Canada specifically for example, which he seems to suggest. Is he a champion for Canadas most vulnerable to prejudice violence, or does it stop at Jewish population? I’m not interested in being party to one side alone, nor is the broad Canadian public. Maybe that is why you lack support in your advocations.
Mamdani’s Victory showed that the World doesn’t revolve around Jewish “feelings” anymore.
Nobody gives a damn about Anti-Semitism not just because everyone knows it’s a deceitful manipulation by the Jewish Elites to take the focus off of Israel’s ongoing Child Mass Murdering Genocide in Gaza and now the unspeakable mass cruelties IDF goons are perpetrating against the Children Of Lebanon. Michael Geist is just another squalid beetweed Israel Genocide Propagandist.
Jews are not some marginalized oppressed group being discriminated against. They Rule America and by proxies the world. Jewish Rule has always been an unbearable misery for common people. Yet, in all of history, no Nation suffering under Jewish Domination has ever survived, not even the Jews themselves.
TLDR: Allison Palmer is a Nazi racist.
Bingo. He is just another bigot.
I don’t want to be on a specific side of these long standing horrid grievances in Israel, I want to stand up for all vulnerable, does michael?
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so nicw I think