For the third time this year, a Jewish girls’ school in Toronto has been riddled with gunfire.
Toronto police say that in the early hours of Dec. 20 they found “evidence of firearm discharge” at Bais Chaya Mushka Elementary School in North York.
Nobody was injured.
The series of incidents has led to widespread condemnation among Toronto politicians. Toronto is home to the largest concentration of Jews in Canada and has been the site of major protests over the war in Gaza.
The gunshots come just days after the Congregation Beth Tikvah synagogue in Montreal was hit with a crude firebomb.
Isaac Herzog, the Israeli president, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that he spoke on the phone with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after the synagogue fire.
“I reiterated to him my great concern over the intolerable wave of antisemitic attacks against the Canadian Jewish community. I stressed that words would not suffice, and that firm and decisive action must be taken to bring the perpetrators to justice, to stamp out antisemitism, and to educate and legislate in order to ensure the safety and well-being of the Jewish community,” Herzog wrote.
The Toronto police’s guns and gangs unit is investigating the shooting at Bais Chaya Mushka, supported by the hate crimes unit, police said.
In October, Toronto police announced two people had been arrested — one of them a 17 year old — in connection with a shooting at the school on Yom Kippur, one of the holiest days in the Jewish calendar. Police at the time said gunshots had been fired from a vehicle, smashing a window at the school, and 14 shell casings had been found.
As of mid-October, hate-crime charges had not been laid in that shooting.
Helder Antonio De Ameida, 20, was charged with 11 firearms offences. The 17-year-old male was charged with firearms offences, possession of property obtained by crime, and failing to comply with release orders, police announced.
The school was shot at for the first time back in May. Again, an overnight shooting hit the school with bullets. Police are investigating.
Conservative politicians were quick to blame Trudeau for the escalation in antisemitism under his watch. Melissa Lantsman, a Conservative who represents Thornhill, a riding in the GTA, called on Trudeau to “address the country” about antisemitism.
“Canada has become a more dangerous place for the Jewish people under the divisiveness of the weak and now wounded Justin Trudeau,” Lantsman wrote on X. “Another day brings another cowardly act of antisemitic hate, and it’s well overdue that the government do something or anything to protect Canadians.”
Toronto has seen a significant rise in hate crimes since the Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel. Between Oct. 7, 2023 and July 21, 2024, Toronto police investigated 390 suspected hate crimes, made 130 arrests and laid 314 charges related to those crimes.
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