‘Disturbing’: Belleville, Ont., synagogue receives antisemitic flyers after shooting

Antisemitic flyers were distributed this week to a Belleville, Ont., synagogue targeted in a shooting last month as well as the surrounding neighbourhoods, the synagogue’s president said Friday.

Norman Weddum said he woke up Thursday morning to find four different flyers blaming Jewish people “for everything under the sun” had been distributed overnight to the Sons of Jacob synagogue and throughout the city’s east end.

“The number of flyers that were distributed and posted, it couldn’t have been done by one person,” he said.

Police said they’re aware of the flyers and are “actively investigating.”

Weddum said the incident is particularly “disturbing” in the wake of the Sept. 20 attack police have described as a thwarted mass killing of Jewish worshippers at the start of Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar.

Police have said the shooter, 29-year-old Sean Ward, had multiple guns, large amounts of ammunition, gasoline and the motive to carry out an extended attack when he opened fire on an officer stationed outside the synagogue.

Const. Jeff Smith suffered multiple gunshot wounds but “stayed engaged” with the shooter and soon after, a second officer arrived and joined the shootout, they said.

No one inside the synagogue was hurt but Smith is expected to undergo multiple surgeries. Ward was fatally injured and died in hospital the next day.

The Canadian Armed Forces have since said that Ward was a former soldier who served for about five years before he was released from the military at the rank of corporal in 2022.

The shooting was widely condemned by politicians and prompted synagogues and Jewish institutions elsewhere to review their security measures.

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs and United Jewish Appeal Federation of Greater Toronto expressed gratitude Friday for the police’s quick response to the “troubling development” of the flyers.

“This is more than hateful rhetoric,” they said in a statement.

“Canada’s security services have sounded the alarm of the current situation in which acts of antisemitism become so prevalent and frequent that they create an environment that influence extremists toward more violent pathways.”

Weddum said Sons of Jacob has held some services since the attack and will hold another Friday evening.

“We’re trying to get people back into the building, and I think it’s helping,” he said in a phone interview Friday.

“They were traumatized, and it’s going to be a long healing process. But we are working on it, and we are not going to be stopped by it.”