On March 17, Toronto Police Services announced that they arrested and laid 29 charges against a suspect allegedly behind a spree of hate-motivated attacks on Toronto’s Jewish community in 2024—and then revealed a judge had released him on bail.
Amir Arvahi Azar, 32, was arrested on Jan. 11, 2025, in the Willowdale neighbourhood. He was kept in custody for two months until this week’s release order.
Police highlighted the fact that they brought three “very rare” hate-speech charges against the suspect, including advocating genocide against Jews, wilful promotion of genocide and public incitement of hatred. The Ontario attorney general’s office had to agree to lay these charges, but went further than that and tagged the charges as “terrorist activities” under the Criminal Code, opening the door to a life sentence if convicted.
There is a publication ban on revealing too many details about the case.
All this has led Jewish leaders to ask: why was the suspect released on bail at all? On today’s episode of The CJN Daily, we speak to Rivka Campbell, executive director of Beth Tikvah Synagogue, whose premises were hit by arson in April 2024, and also with Guidy Mamann of the Tiferet Israel congregation, where a pro-Israel sign was torched in August.
Related links
- Read more reaction in The CJN from Jewish leaders about the arrest, charging with hate crimes, and then court-ordered release on bail of a suspect alleged to be behind terrorism-related spree of attacks on Toronto Jewish community buildings and people last year.
- Read the Toronto Police Service’s news release announcing the suspect’s arrest and bail conditions, March 17.
- Hear how Toronto’s most targeted synagogue, Kehillat Shaarei Torah on Bayview Avenue, became more resilient after each of its eight attacks, in The CJN.
Transcript
Transcripts are AI-generated and may contain minor errors.
Ellin Bessner: That’s the voice of Deputy Chief Rob Johnson of the Toronto Police, in a video released on Monday this week when the force announced the arrest and charging of a Toronto man for, quote, very serious charges motivated by hate against the Jewish community. The police laid 29 charges, including three rare ones: advocating genocide on social media, willful promotion of hatred and public incitement of hatred, all against Jews. There were others connected to arson or vandalism at synagogues, possession of illegal weapons, and possession of credit card forgery tools. A motion to review the Justice of the Peace’s ruling has already been filed with the Superior Court of Justice, but that leaves Jewish leaders whose premises were the target of some arson attacks feeling uneasy. The suspect has been in custody for two months already since his arrest on January 11th. He also didn’t reveal that an Ontario Court Justice of the Peace had just ordered the suspect released on bail with conditions. When Jewish leaders in Toronto learned about the arrest and charges on Monday, they initially praised the police’s Hate Crime Unit and the results of its months-long investigation. The community’s been on edge after October 7th as the number of hate-reported crimes against Jews has soared. So when police also shared the news, the suspect was ordered released from custody on bail. That did not go over well.
Guidy Mamann: I am not happy that this guy is back on the street or house arrest. Protect the community, that’s it. And I’m not so sure that the judge’s decision is going to be very well received by our community.
Ellin Bessner: I’m Ellin Bessner, and this is what Jewish Canada sounds like for Thursday, March 20, 2025. Welcome to the CJN Daily, a podcast of the Canadian Jewish News and made possible in part thanks to the generous support of the Ira Gluskin and Maxine Granovsky Gluskin Charitable Foundation. Toronto police allege this suspect is linked to arson and vandalism at five synagogues, one Jewish cafe, which is Cafe Landwer, a Jews for Jesus Church and more. Plus a barrage of threatening phone calls made to the Forest Hill Jewish Centre. There is more, but there’s a court-ordered publication ban on some details of this case. So we have to be careful what we tell you. You should know the Crown Prosecutor has appealed the bail immediately. Joining me now are Rivka Campbell. She was the host of the CJN’s Rivkush podcast, but she’s also executive director at Beth Tikvah Congregation. And Guidy Mamann of Tiferet Israel Congregation also joins. Welcome back to the CJN Daily.
Guidy Mamann: Thank you for having us, Ellin.
Ellin Bessner: Maybe each of you would like to start by telling our audience what your specific incidents were at your synagogues.
Guidy Mamann: Sure. So it might not sound all that dramatic, but we had, of course, a Federation sign bolted to a wooden picket fence and someone came and set it on fire. Now, it didn’t cause extensive damage or any damage really to the synagogue, but you know, when you see that very, very close to a small shul, our shul is not a signature shul or anything. It’s a very, very tiny little synagogue. And of course, there were other synagogues much bigger, much more prominent than ours. But it felt like the threat is very, very close and very consistent and seems like a sinister warning of what people are capable of doing, whether it’s setting fire, assaults, shootings at a little girl’s school, you know that the threat is out there. It is increasing in intensity and frequency, and it’s getting closer and closer. And I think it’s all a real warning of maybe what is really capable of happening here in Toronto.
Ellin Bessner: Let’s go back just quickly to tell our listeners that the suspect was not connected to the Bais Chaya Mushka shooting at all. But it’s also close to where you hold a weekly, literally blocks away, a weekly pro-Israel rally on the same street.
Guidy Mamann: That’s right. And as you know, we were visited a couple of months ago by the opposition, the Palestinian and pro-Hamas crowds who’ve come now and set up against us on the east side. And so the community feels with the attacks and with people shouting terrible things, they really got to feel what is out there. And they see, and they hear, and they feel the hate that a lot of Canadians are feeling post-October 7th. And it’s making people extraordinarily uncomfortable.
Ellin Bessner: Let’s go to the bigger synagogue. You mentioned that you’re a small synagogue. The Beth Tikva is a much bigger synagogue and also was targeted early. Rivka, what happened that brought damage to your synagogue area?
Rivka Campbell: Okay, so we’re on the outskirts. And one of the things I’d always said is, like, we’re on the outskirts, eyes on us. And shortly after October 7th, we had those similar signs vandalized, you know, with inappropriate things written on them, stickers. Happened twice, three times, something like that, culminating in finally it being set on fire last April. And if it wasn’t for the good graces of somebody happening to walk by at that hour of the early, early morning, the damage would have been extensive because of the trees, the electrical, everything where that was located. How did it make me feel? This is how I felt. Just like frustrated, angry, you know, a mix of emotions to the point where I almost felt, like, hopeless. Like, just everything, everything. Because it was like, enough, enough.
Ellin Bessner: Were you informed at all by the police that they had arrested someone on January 11th? Did either of you know this?
Rivka Campbell: No, no. I heard from a colleague who’s near us and I remember asking the question because I don’t believe in coincidences. And knowing that we had the same incident on the same street, I found it really hard to believe it wasn’t the same perpetrator. In fact, I said we should worry if there’s another fire starter out there.
Ellin Bessner: But with the police telling you that they got this person on January 11th, you heard that?
Rivka Campbell: They did not tell us.
Guidy Mamann: No, I didn’t hear anything either.
Rivka Campbell: My colleague on Bayview told me at.
Ellin Bessner: Kehillat Shaarei Torah that was also hit.
Rivka Campbell: Yeah. And I was like, really? I heard. I haven’t heard a thing. You know, regardless of whether it’s our perpetrator or not, we’re in the same neighborhood. We have bad stuff happening too. I think between the two of us, we’ve had the most incidences in Toronto. So we need a head. We need to know.
Ellin Bessner: When you heard the police press release on Monday, Guidy, you didn’t know either?
Guidy Mamann: Not at all. The police, and I completely understand a lot of people in Toronto are very critical of the Toronto Police Service and our solicitor general, etc. But we don’t know what they know and we don’t know when and how arrests are going to be made. There are reasons why, you know, maybe this arrest was made when it was and for keeping information banned. I want to believe that the Toronto police is acting in good faith and trying to help us out. But, Ellin, there’s a lot of hate out there. You know, I taste it every single week. People drive by, and I keep an eye on every car, and you get the finger. You get the words, you get the anger, the vitriol; it’s out there. What this simply does, this charge sort of says, here it is. We have been working on it. Quite frankly, when I saw the list, it was much more than I anticipated because I live in a. You know, I don’t have eyes everywhere. I just worry about my own little neck of the woods, our rally, my synagogue, other synagogues in the neighbourhood. But I’m really kind of taken aback by how many synagogues and places associated with the Jewish community have been attacked. I’m going to tell you something. I can’t imagine that this fellow here, who allegedly did these things, is the only guy out there who has considerable animus towards our community. He’s not alone, and he’s clearly giving us a nice warning. But there are others out there, and we have to be vigilant. We can’t walk around like we’re terrified all the time, but we have to be vigilant. There are people out there who just simply hate us. That’s it. Bottom line.
Rivka Campbell: If I could just say something about the police. Yeah, I respect the police. I’ve worked with police even in my past career in Emergency. I get that. My issue is, you have this person out there, you have this person who’s targeted two synagogues in the area. This person happened to have been, out of courtesy, you should have notified my synagogue that we have made an arrest, period. It was five minutes from the synagogue, my synagogue. Communication is key, and communication builds trust. They put me in a position where I can’t make a choice. If you tell me something has happened, you have arrested somebody, and/or they’re on bail, whatever, I can make choices for the community I serve. But again, that would have just been a courtesy thing to do.
Guidy Mamann: If you ask me what’s really troubling to me. And again, I wasn’t in the courtroom, I don’t know all of the evidence, but I find it remarkable that this person made bail. This is a reverse onus situation. Usually, the Crown has the burden of proving that you should be held. You’re a menace to society. This person has been charged with such serious crimes that it reverses. He has to persuade the court why he should not continue to be detained and why he should be released. So it seems that maybe since January, I don’t know when he was released.
Ellin Bessner: He was released today.
Guidy Mamann: Oh, he was released today.
Ellin Bessner: March 17th. He had the hearing, apparently. How my sources tell me is they have to fit him with a bracelet, and that takes a day. So till that happens, the sources tell me he probably didn’t get out until Tuesday.
Guidy Mamann: Right. Ankle bracelet and house arrest.
Guidy Mamann: So he was charged in January, and he’s released. But I’m shocked that he is released, number one. And that’s on the judge. Now, I don’t know what the evidence was, but this fellow shouldn’t be out so easily, it seems to me.
Rivka Campbell: Like I said, to where? To Willowdale?
Ellin Bessner: I can’t say more than that.
Rivka Campbell: That’s fine. I’m just.
Guidy Mamann: In any event, yeah, it sends a pretty crazy message that you could, you know, be accused of some pretty heinous things, like 29 crimes, 29 charges here or something like that, and you’re targeting a specific community. This is Canada, and we’re not supposed to have views like that. We’re not supposed to behave like that. And, you know, apparently, he was able to meet the test, and he’s been released. Well, I guess good for him. But I have a feeling there’s going to be a lot of people now that they know he’s out there. I wouldn’t blame someone who’s not in the law business to say, you know, what is that? Why on earth would you release a person like that? That’s not a guy you should be rolling the dice with, in my opinion.
Ellin Bessner: I mean, from what we know, the Crown has immediately filed a motion to have a review of the bail granting. The person’s supposed to be back in court for April 28, but that tells you that the police and the Crown must have been losing their minds when this guy got to walk.
Rivka Campbell: I would think so.
Ellin Bessner: After nine months of investigating.
Rivka Campbell: Oh, my gosh. And to Guidy’s point, lone actor, you know, like, I’m on edge. I’m on edge for the community, I’m on edge for myself. I’m on edge, you know, because we’ve had our person try and infiltrate the synagogue.
Ellin Bessner: Tell me a bit about that. You can tell us, our listeners, about what happened. It’s not the same person, but, yeah.
Rivka Campbell: It’s not the same person, but it’s like just another thing, right? So I happen to be in the front hallway near the front doors, and this young lady walks right by me. I stop her, and I’m like, what are you doing here? She said, because, you know, your spidey sense goes off, and she says, I’m here to see where you pray. I said, I’m sorry, that’s not how it works. She goes, what do you mean? She was very agitated. I said, you have to leave now. You must leave. So we watched her leave, security, and we watched her go the wrong way. So I said, watch her. And then I watched her try. She went down these stairs that we have off the parking lot. I ran through the synagogue with security, and there she was, you know, examining with her phone out the door. I said to her, you have X amount of time, 30 seconds to leave, or I’m calling her, 10 seconds, whatever, and I’m calling the police. She turned to me and let out one of the worst swear words in Arabic, which I must say I repeated back to her. She lost her mind. Security escorted her off the property, okay? With all the vitriol. She’s filming me, I’m filming her, and she left. Then I come back and see this car sitting in the parking lot. I’m like, what is happening tonight? I go up to the car, and it’s a police officer. I said, did you not see what was happening? He said, oh, I thought you were escorting her off for her safety. Like, no. So then he asked, which way did she go? And he took off after her. Haven’t heard anything about it.
Ellin Bessner: This is very scary because this happened in October of 2024, and your sign burning was six months earlier. So there may be other people targeting.
Rivka Campbell: Another one tried to get in. I didn’t send that. Just like on what month is this? February 20th. They were stopped at the door, two young ladies, and they had a list of Jewish institutions.
Guidy Mamann: Okay, this guy is going to be an inspiration to other, like-minded people. And you know, someone is undoubtedly going to think this guy is some sort of a hero. Yeah, he represents what I’m thinking. And you know, I got to do my part, I got to do my share just the same way. The rally, you know, the rally, we were out there, we’re supporting Israel, and we inspire other people to support Israel. That’s how we’ve grown. But here, this person is manifesting what unfortunately many people feel towards the Jewish community because of what happened in the aftermath of October 7th. And I will tell you also that it’s not just October 7th, Ellin. I think that this is something that predates October 7th. I think antisemitism—and I think the statistics bear that out. I’m not an expert on antisemitism, you know, in the sort of institutional level, but I think the statistics would probably bear out the fact that antisemitism was gradually on the rise. But since October 7th, it has skyrocketed to the point now, you know, if it reaches so many synagogues, including a tiny little synagogue that nobody’s even heard of, how many members do you have on a Shabbat?
Ellin Bessner: We’ll get maybe about a dozen men and maybe five or six women. It’s such a small shul. It’s so insignificant on the map of Shabbat. It’s wonderful, it’s a wonderful shul. But if you want to express your hate against the Jewish community at large, you wouldn’t be picking my synagogue to fare to Israel. You’d be picking like the Beth Tikvah or something like that. And if you’re going down to that level, even a little, a little synagogue you’re going to target, then that, you know, that’s, that’s something, something a bit different.
Ellin Bessner: The RCMP has warned, CSIS has warned previously with the arrests of that teenager in Ottawa whose father said he was radicalized online and he was going to do a bomb. They warned, CSIS warned that the online radicals start young, it starts early. And in fact, earlier this month, the federal government, on the date of the March 6th Antisemitism Forum, announced $10 million towards these research groups, universities and police departments. It’s called the Community Resilience Fund. It’s not only Canada; they have researchers in Germany, et cetera, to get kids before they go into the dark web and get Palestinian Islamic Jihad or Al-Quds force of the IRGC or whatever, you know, to radicalize them. There’s evidence. Some of my sources tell me that online postings played a big role in this case too. So this whole other area you mentioned, Guidy, that it’s not just this one person—there’s more of them out there.
Guidy Mamann: And, just to talk to you quickly about the. The funding that we appreciate very much from the Liberals on the round table. I participated here locally in Toronto at that one, and then a smaller private one last week with Yara Saks. So I appreciate the money, don’t get me wrong, and I think it’ll help, but money cannot make you happy, and money cannot make you safe. You know, no matter how much money you throw at it, and no matter how much money you have personally, it’s not going to necessarily guarantee you the result that you think you’re going to get. We have a problem as a community, and I don’t really know what the solution is to stay in this community long term. I’m not sure because the trajectory is only in one direction—more hate, more violence. A societal sort of decay where people’s basic respect for one another—and I’m not just talking about antisemitism. I mean, political discourse is horrific. Respect between people is—it’s just gone. And it’s—it’s. For us, that’s not a good sign. We’re the canary in the coal mine, and we feel it first. And it looks like we’re feeling it at all the levels. The teeny tiny shuls like mine, and the bigger, the much bigger shuls, the more prominent shuls, the ones that you really want to get kind of in this sort of hate war.
Ellin Bessner: Were you able, either of you, to help the police with any security footage?
Guidy Mamann: We have security cameras mounted at the rally and we have shared some of the footage with police. We don’t know what they’re looking for or why they’re asking. They tell us the period of time that they’re looking and the direction, and we give it to them. They have no obligation to tell us anything about what they’re investigating. I’m just going to have to—I have no choice. I’m going to have faith in the TPS. They know what they’re doing. They’re the experts. I hope they have our best interests at heart. I believe that they do. And, you know, I’m very involved in the community, Ellin, and I’m just finding out now about this guy and this arrest and this statement, the fact that he was just released. Imagine some other person who’s going about their business thinking that they’re okay, that they’re safe, not knowing that there’s a guy like this right in our community. So that’s—that’s problematic.
Rivka Campbell: That’s how Beth Tikvah feels right now. My community of almost 900 members that I’m concerned about, and I’ve shared all the footage of all the various incidences, including shots of vehicles, everything. Interestingly enough, one of the footage, I believe it’s the one of the signs on fire, was actually used in the media—not necessarily attributed to happening at Beth Tikvah, though, but which made me smile. I was like, that’s our parking lot. What’s it doing there?
Guidy Mamann: You guys could afford cameras; our shul can’t afford. Maybe now with this grant, we’ll get a few dollars for some grant—
Rivka Campbell: use the grant
Guidy Mamann: cameras facing Sheppard, that’s for sure. It looks like our synagogues expose us to peril. It looks like even at the workplace we’re seeing, you know, we’re seeing hatred. Our kids go to schools where they have to deal with hatred and walk around it and avoid it and try to keep their heads down. It’s becoming quite the package. You know, our places of worship, our places of work, our places of study. It’s, it’s, it’s not a great situation for us right now.
Ellin Bessner: People might say, just to end, well, it’s like Montreal, they did it when no one was there, no one got hurt, there were no injuries, it was just property damage. Like, for example, Pride of Israel is $20,000 for their windows, what have you. Yeah, but that’s the very—that we were lucky, right?
Rivka Campbell: That’s the very definition of terror—to terrorize. And that’s what it’s—it does. Right.
Guidy Mamann: This is proof of the hate. This is not an attack to harm, it’s an attack to warn us that they can reach us.
Ellin Bessner: Well, the other things were the, the three hate crimes, counseling for genocide, advocating for genocide, willful promotion of hatred. That’s—that’s the big, those are the biggies. And so those go with,—together they combine. If he’s convicted, there’s a life sentence on that one, which is way longer than he would have gotten if he got convicted of just any of those ones individually, which is like five years or two years max. So that’s—that’s a very serious escalation of the charges.
Guidy Mamann: And I know, Ellin, we don’t have a full picture yet of what’s going on. But people will now learn and learn from this and figure out what they’re going to do—what, how they’re going to deal with their children, how they’re going to deal with their jobs. It’s not easy. I mean, I’ve been here since I was three years old in this country. I’m 63 years old—60 years in this country. In July, it’ll be 60 years. This is not really what we bargained for when we came to Canada. The whole thing was that, you know, they accept everybody, it’s everybody, every color, every religion, every faith. It’s not working out so good anymore.
Ellin Bessner: All right, both of you, thank you so much for sharing your synagogues’ experiences.
Guidy Mamann: Thank you so much, Ellin. Be well. Nice to see you, Rivka. Be well.
Rivka Campbell: Likewise.
Ellin Bessner: Bye.
Guidy Mamann: Bye.
Show Notes
Credits
- Host and writer: Ellin Bessner (@ebessner)
- Production team: Zachary Kauffman (producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
- Music: Dov Beck-Levine
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