TORONTO—While people assembled around the globe to commemorate the Israeli lives lost and hostages taken in the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, Canadian communities turned out in large numbers that displayed Jewish unity at events across the country.
An estimated 20,000 people packed the Prosserman JCC’s Sherman Campus to hear from survivors of the attacks visiting from Israel, as well as family members of hostages, and the uncle of one of the Canadians killed in the attack on the Nova music festival. As attendees filed in past security checkpoints, volunteers held up placards with names, faces, and statuses of those either murdered or kidnapped.
The attacks that left 1,200 dead in Israel and saw 250 people taken hostage on Oct. 7, 2023, triggered Israel’s ongoing war on Hamas in Gaza. The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says more than 41,000 people have now been killed in Israel’s offensive.
The war has since expanded, with Iran firing 180 ballistic missiles into Israel Oct. 1, 2024. Communities in northern Israel have been under evacuation orders for the past year, as Hezbollah, based in southern Lebanon has fired missiles across the border. Israeli troops have launched missiles at Lebanon and some special command forces have engaged in battles in the country.
At the outdoor ceremony, powerful video tributes played on two huge screens, including one commemorating the eight Canadian and Israeli citizens who were killed in the attacks, while a photo installation showed what the kibbutzim that had been attacked looked like post-Oct. 7.
With a row of candles across the stage, and handheld lights distributed to attendees, many of whom held Israeli and some Canadian flags, the mood of the evening was both sombre and at times uplifting, including during prayers and songs that comprised parts of the program. One elaborate sign in the crowd included the name and photo of Kfir Bibas, the youngest hostage, whose first birthday passed in captivity.
Around 101 hostages are still being held in Gaza—although it is not clear how many remain alive.
The twinkling yellow lights dotted the crowded plaza during a candle-lighting ceremony led on stage by hostage family members, including Maayan Shavit, whose aunt was killed in the attack and whose cousin, Carmel Gat, was one of the six hostages executed by Hamas in late August.
Two other family members managed to escape during the attack, and another cousin, Yarden Roman-Gat, was one of the hostages released in November.
Shavit, who has been a constant advocate for the hostages at public events throughout the year, said even a year later she’s “still on automatic,” speaking to reporters before the program.
“It just doesn’t make sense that they’re there, doesn’t make sense that something like this, so horrific, so gruesome will happen in our time,” she said.
The end of the war needs to include releasing the remaining hostages, she said during responses to reporters’ questions.
“You want to end this war… when it ends, the Palestinians will be free. And then so our people, our hostages, 101 of them, also need to be free and will be free but the world and the Palestinians will not be free until Hamas, will be gone, until all this evil will be gone out of the world.
Harel Lapidot, the Canadian-Israeli uncle of Tiferet Lapidot, who was murdered in the Nova festival attack, joined Shavit and Maureen Leshem in the candle-lighting ceremony.
The glow from the stage matched a quiet, reflective one in the crowd.
“We cannot forget,” Lapidot told reporters before the program. “Tiferet was murdered just because she was a Jew… for no other reason.
“There’s no reason in the world to kill, to torture youngsters, that went [to a festival] to dance.
“We are asking the world, and especially the Canadian government, to stand for us as Canadians, with the shared values that we have.”
Attendees, many of whom also wore yellow lapel ribbons for the hostages, saw a phalanx of security measures and personnel— fenced off areas, security gates, checkpoints, a variety of security teams and uniforms, and a large Toronto police presence—keeping the event safe and physically separate from any potential demonstrations.
No arrests were reported in relation to protests over the event, although in other corners of the city, pro-Palestinian activists held rallies, marches and other events in the days leading up to Oct. 7. Protest organizers say other actions are planned throughout the week.
Several elected officials were present during the event, including Premier Doug Ford and a number of federal MPs, Ontario MPPs, and Toronto city councillors. Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow did not attend, though Vaughan Mayor Stephen Del Duca did. Idit Shamir, the Consul-General for Israel in Toronto, also attended and spoke briefly.
Israel’s Special Envoy for Combatting Antisemitism, Michal Cotler-Wunsh, spoke about the day everything changed for the Jewish world, alluding to the shock of the attacks and subsequent war and rising Diaspora antisemitism, which left many feeling that time has stood still.
“Tonight, on October 365, we are marking one year,” said Cotler-Wunsh.
“One year to the worst attack of Jews since the Holocaust. One year to the Shabbat morning that was, in which the book that we have read for thousands of years as a people was desecrated… in which thousands of rockets [were] targeting millions of Israelis, sounding sirens all over Israel.”
Cotler-Wunsh recognized the struggles around advocating for Israel and Israeli lives in Canada, including in Toronto:
“Antisemitism has been raging here, in the responses to the atrocities, to the war crimes to the crimes against humanity. Responses of denial, even as those thousands of barbaric, savages livestreamed the atrocities they perpetrated. Responses of justification. Rape as armed resistance and responses of attacks of Jews, on campuses, on the streets, online… right here in my second home, my beloved Canada.”
Antisemitism continued to be the single highest category of reported hate crimes in Toronto, accounting for more hate crimes than any other category, according to Toronto Police. This year, 350 hate crimes have been reported to the Hate Crime Unit, an increase of 40 percent over the same period last year. Crimes against the Jewish community have grown by 69 percent.
According to B’nai Brith’s 2023 report, antisemitism was “off the chart” across Canada, with 5,791 incidents logged nationally representing a 109.1 percent jump in numbers of incidents compared to the previous year.
“It is not just an existential moment for Jews and their allies across the western world that recognize that this new strain of antisemitism, of [a] virulent, ever-mutating virus that mutates by latching onto the guiding social construct of the time… that presents now as the strain of antizionism that has been normalized and mainstreamed right here in Canada,” Cotler-Wunsh told the thousands of people gathered in Toronto.
“What it is, [is] an existential moment for the places and spaces in which antisemitism is allowed to infect, to permeate, to spread an existential moment for all those that recognize that 10/7, like 9/11, was the attack of barbarism on our shared humanity… on the foundational principles of Canada on its commitment to the dignity of difference to human rights, to diversity, to multiculturalism. And when we stand here, I implore you to hear the sirens of this eighth front of what is an existential war. Because in this war, each one of you is the boots on the ground.”
Pamela Chasen volunteered to hold up signs featuring the hostages for attendees to look at as they came in. She’s helped with war efforts from home, leading a group of women who crocheted hats and yarmulkes for soldiers and sent blankets for orphaned children.
“It was very important to me to volunteer here tonight. Standing in the cold with my daughter for two hours is just a fraction… for me it was so real, to try and experience a little bit of discomfort,” including what hostages and families in Israel have gone through, she said.
Chasen told The CJN it was emotional to witness people’s responses as they walked past the hostage placards while they entered the campus.
“Watching people walking down, and as they were approaching us, stopping, and crying, and to watch people crying for two hours made me profoundly moved. It was an honour to be involved,” she said.
Elsewhere in Toronto, Canadian supporters of Standing Together, a grassroots Israeli/Palestinian peace and shared society movement, held an early evening vigil outside the Israeli consulate on Bloor Street. Around 100 attendees held placards (in purple, denoting the Israeli Standing Together movement) that mourned each of the lives lost on Oct. 7, and the entire year since.
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MONTREAL—“It was evil that came calling on Oct. 7,” Israel’s Consul-General Paul Hirschson told some 3,200 people under a tent in a chilly Hampstead park Monday night, another 2,000 watching online, as Federation CJA and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) marked one year since the Oct. 7 massacre in Israel.
Lamenting “101 family members remaining hostage in Gaza,” Hirschson recalled driving his son to his army base on Oct. 8, “barely hours before Hezbollah opened the second front against us.” He returned to Montreal days later, dismayed to soon find synagogues and community centers shot at, Jewish businesses targeted and boycotted.
Hirschson criticized Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante, perceived by many Montreal Jews as indifferent to surging antisemitism for not reaching out to parents “of one of the city’s own,” 33-year-old Alexandre Look.
Alexandre’s mother Raquel recalled the pain of her son who was murdered while protecting others at the Nova music festival by terrorists who slaughtered more than 360 festival-goers that day.
“One year ago today, I lost my beautiful hero of Israel in an act of unspeakable violence. As a mother I stand before you not just in grief, but also with resilience, determined to honour his memory and the memory of all those we lost.”
Alexandre’s death left an unfillable void said his mother, “but it has inspired a profound commitment to eradicating hate and antisemitism.” She pledged to reclaim her family’s life-long joy of Simchat Torah in memory of Alexandre with a new Torah project.
Plante posted on social media on Monday: “Let us commemorate the events of Oct. 7, 2023, peacefully, and continue to fight antisemitism and Islamophobia.” Her text denounced the attacks and civilian deaths, urged release of hostages, an end to hostilities, and added her thoughts were “equally with the Palestinian and Lebanese people.”
Hirschson also questioned if the Canadian government “retreated to complacent neutrality, which helps the killers rather than victims? Is Canada indirectly rewarding acts of terror through abstention on international votes?”
In contrast, Hirschson praised Quebec Premier François Legault’s government for opening an Israel bureau despite opposition and delays due to the terrorist attack, “and publicly rejected Canadian support for a premature ceasefire at the United Nations. Their support has been superb and appreciated,” he said to robust applause.
The program included recorded remarks from Israeli President Isaac Herzog. Also present were Mount-Royal MP Anthony Housefather, MNAs, mayors of Hampstead and Côte Saint-Luc, former Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre, leaders of Montreal’s Italian, Greek, and Filipino communities, as well as the English Montreal School Board. The event in the small residential neighborhood was heavily protected, with dozens of Montreal and Sureté du Québec officers, and community security agents present.
There were no disturbances. CIJA Quebec vice-president Eta Yudin told The CJN “the level of security needed to protect us from rioters is alarming.”
Federation CJA Chair Steve Sebag said that those truly upset about defeats of Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis and other terror proxies “are Humanities and Liberal Arts students and professors, and their Islamo-fascist puppet-masters.” Sebag said Israel’s victories against terror groups are celebrated by many Muslims across the Middle East. “That is true intersectionality.”
Terror victims and fallen soldiers paid the heaviest price to restore “moral clarity to this twisted world and unified our people at a time when we were not; they died so fewer may fall tomorrow.” That’s a debt that can never be fully repaid he said.
Yudin insisted incitement to hate and violence in Montreal streets is not importation of a conflict, but rather, “leveraging of the importation of the conflict” to target Jews. She said CIJA works hard to support students, “but we cannot allow everything that’s happening to impact our ability to stand as proud Jews. We’re not going to cower or creep into the shadows. We’re going to continue to contribute to society and stand proudly for who we are and to repeat that message.”
Jews are fighting “consequences of decades of foreign investment creating a cesspool of hatred and antisemitism disguised as anti-Zionism” on campuses, streets and in unions, Federation president Yair Szlak told The CJN.
“We may never bounce back to Oct. 6, but we will bounce forward. The Jewish people have endured tremendous grief this year but also witnessed and supported extraordinary acts of courage, heroism and humanity. Last month we saw over 20,000 community members March for Jerusalem, and on Rosh Hashanah our synagogues were overflowing.
“We see a renewed thirst for Jewish engagement and Jewish pride.”
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WINNIPEG—Several thousand people gathered outside the Asper Community Campus for an evening program that began with a one-hour Walk for Israel, followed by a roster of politician speakers—among them Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew, MPs Ben Carr and Marty Morantz, and Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham—as well as local rabbis and representatives from the Jewish Federation of Winnipeg.
Kinew began his remarks by commenting on the challenging year that was and the hope for a better year to come. He acknowledged the anxiety and concerns about safety gripping the community in these troubled times.
“Manitoba is an exceptional place where we support each other and all work together,” he said. “My government is committed to making sure it stays that way.”
Carr focused on the resilience of the Jewish people from ancient times to the present. The Jewish people have weathered many struggles over the centuries, he noted, from slavery in Egypt to the Holocaust and, he pointed out, “we are still here and, in a thousand years, we will still be here.”
Morantz spoke of his own visit to Israel a few months ago and described the destruction he witnessed at Kibbutz Kfar Aza —one of the communities that was hardest hit.
“Nonetheless, I say to Hamas, despite all that has happened, Israel is winning. Your plan to destroy Israel has failed. I say, from the river to the sea, Israel shall be free.”
Since 1996, the Jewish community of Winnipeg has had a partnership arrangement with the communities of the Galilee panhandle and, in particular, the border city of Kiryat Shmona. One of the principal fruits of that relationship have been yearly exchanges visits between students and teachers from the local Gray Academy and Danciger High School in Kiryat Shmona.
Last October, a group of students and teachers from Danciger were visiting in Winnipeg when the Hamas terrorists struck. They were forced to delay their return home.
One year later, several Gray Academy students gave an update on where their friends from Danciger are now. The class in Kiryat Shmona managed to arrange a graduation ceremony in June even though they have been scattered throughout the country as the town has been under evacuation order since last October.
The students also highlighted the two Danciger students and alumni of the exchange programs who have died in battle.
In his closing remarks, Federation CEO Jeff Lieberman lamented those who were killed on Oct. 7. “We are not the same people we were a year ago,” he noted. “The horrors of Oct. 7 have brought us closer together and strengthened our commitment to Judaism.”
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VANCOUVER—Hundreds of people gathered at Congregation Schara Tzedeck—and hundreds more viewed an online broadcast—for a memorial dedicated to the victims of the Hamas attacks on Israel last year.
According to organizers, their aim was to preserve the names and stories of the victims, and to remind some that acts of violence should never be celebrated. In attendance were members and clergy from several local synagogues. They were joined by federal and provincial politicians of all political stripes, in addition to candidates in the Oct. 19 provincial election.
Connections to the those impacted by the attacks are found throughout Vancouver’s Jewish community, and the shock of what happened that Saturday morning still reverberates.
“After Oct. 7, many in our community were asked by their non-Jewish neighbours and colleagues, do you have family in Israel? To which one wise person said, ‘Yes, several million. All those who lost their lives were family, our family,’” said Lana Marks Pulver, chair of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver.
Ben Mizrachi, 22, who was raised in Vancouver, was among those killed at the Nova Music Festival. A plaque for Mizrachi was unveiled Oct. 7 at King David High School where he graduated in 2018. Schara Tzedeck is also honouring Mizrachi with a refurbished Torah and Torah cover.
Ezra Shanken, CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, said Mizrachi “had a deep and positive impact on the lives of those who knew him. He was always taking care of others.”
Rabbis and community members, too, stood up and told the stories of those who lost their lives on Oct. 7. Rabbi Dan Moskovitz of Temple Sholom recounted the final hours in the life of Canadian-Israeli peace and women’s rights activist Vivian Silver, as she exchanged text messages with her son, Yonatan. The Winnipeg native, who committed her life to peace, worked within the Be’eri kibbutz, where she lived to organize programs to help Gazans.
Jason Rivers shared memories of his cousin, Adi Vital-Kaploun, a 33-year-old Canadian-Israeli citizen who lived on Kibbutz Holit, along the border with Gaza. She died protecting her family from the attackers who took and later released her two young children.
Rivers described Vital-Kaploun as a brilliant young woman who “always had a smile, loved family and Eretz Israel.”
Rabbi Philip Gibbs of Congregation Har El in West Vancouver reminded those assembled that it was not just Jews who lost their lives in the attacks.
“As we look back, we need to remember that Oct. 7 was an attack on all of Israel’s citizens. Bedouins living in the Negev were particularly vulnerable. They are an important part of Israeli society, serving in the IDF, and more and more attaining educational and professional achievement,” Rabbi Gibbs said.
He went on to present the moving story of a young, heavily pregnant Bedouin woman who was going into labour on the morning of Oct. 7. Hamas attackers shot her twice in the stomach on the way to the hospital. The mother survived to give birth, but the baby died later in the day.
As the memorial neared its close, the lights at Schara Tzedeck were dimmed and candles were raised by those in attendance in memory of the victims of Oct. 7.
In one set of concluding remarks before a prayer for peace, Rabbi Arik Labowitz of Or Shalom Synagogue said, “True peace is not exclusive to any one people, but requires us all to unite. May we never give up hope and may we work toward that peace in the name of those we have lost and for the sake of those who are yet to be born.”
In the year since the Hamas attacks, the Vancouver Jewish community has experienced a marked increase in antisemitism. Schara Tzedeck itself was the target of an arson attack on May 30 when someone tried to set a fire at the doorway of the modern Orthodox synagogue, while worshippers were inside.
A Jewish woman was attacked at a protest organized by Samidoun, an advocacy group for Palestinian prisoners, on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery on Sept. 29. The woman was subjected to antisemitic slurs and required medical attention after being assaulted and knocked to the ground, Vancouver police reported. A suspect fled into the crowd following the assault, and a youth was later arrested by police, who are investigating the incident as a hate crime.
With files from Jonathan Rothman, Toronto; Joel Ceausu, Montreal; Myron Love, Winnipeg; Sam Margolis, Vancouver.
