This Sunday in Toronto, thousands of people are scheduled to take part in a walk to demonstrate support for the people of Israel and raise money for those who have suffered from the Oct. 7 terror attack. The mayor, Olivia Chow, should walk alongside them.
Canada’s Jewish community is feeling beleaguered, isolated and fearful. A series of attacks on Jewish institutions has undermined its sense of security and shaken its faith in the ability of the authorities to keep it safe. Just in the past couple of weeks, two Jewish schools have been hit by gunfire. A Vancouver synagogue suffered an arson attack. The number of hate crimes has soared since Oct. 7. In Toronto this year, more than half of them have been antisemitic.
Ms. Chow, elected mayor about a year ago, has said all the usual and proper things about the need to stand up against bigotry. At a rally outside the girls school struck by bullets, she declared that “the city is with you to say no to hate and to protect people.”
But last month she declined to attend a flag-raising at City Hall to mark Israel’s Independence Day. “I think it’s a bit divisive because there’s a war going on,” she explained. That sent a terrible message to Toronto Jews, many of whom have deep connections to Israel.
Walking on Sunday would be a way of making amends. The Walk with Israel is an annual event intended to express backing for the Jewish state and celebrate the strength of the Jewish community. This year’s trek takes walkers five kilometres along Bathurst Street. It ends with a feel-good rally featuring rappers, DJs, food and drink. The money raised will go to help families displaced and people traumatized by the Hamas attack.
Taking part does not necessarily mean backing Israel’s leadership or its conduct of the war in Gaza. New York just held a similar walk. Among the participants was Chuck Schumer, the Senate Majority Leader. He caused a stir in March by calling for elections in Israel and labelling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu an obstacle to peace. Unless Israel changed course, he said, it risked becoming an international “pariah.”
Ms. Chow does not have to make any political declaration on Sunday. She just needs to show up. Doing so would illustrate, more powerfully than any statement or speech, that she understands what Toronto Jews are enduring.
In the past few months they have witnessed not just the worst mass killing of Jews since the Holocaust, not just the kidnapping, abuse and prolonged confinement of all those people taken from southern Israel, some with ties to Canada, not just the surge in hate crimes and all the accompanying echoes of a dark past, but a months-long string of demonstrations and occupations by protesters who often portray Israel as a brutal, colonialist, even racist, power that has only itself to blame for Oct. 7.
Those protests might not be antisemitic in themselves, but they have fuelled an atmosphere of bitter hostility that makes many Jews feel uneasy in the city they call home. Their community is truly under siege, in a way that, a year ago, they would have found it hard to imagine.
The best response is not to shut down the protests or muzzle the protesters. The best response is a peaceful and moderate display of solidarity. That is just what the Walk with Israel is meant to be.
As its organizers put it, the walkers will put on “an inspiring show of Jewish unity, pride, and support for our unbreakable bond with the land and people of Israel.” They ask walkers not to lash back if protesters show up to harry them. “The walk isn’t about changing the minds of haters.” The intent, rather, is to send “a powerful, positive message to the world that we will always stand up for what we believe in.”
Would it be so “divisive” for Ms. Chow to join them?