Raymond J. de Souza: In France, the armed forces protect synagogues. Perhaps they should here, too

During the decades I lived in Kingston, Ont., I visited Belleville countless times. It's on the way to Toronto and was a favourite place for a road-trip milkshake. I often stopped at the imposing St. Michael's on the hill, where a good friend was the pastor. It's a friendly place.

I doubt I ever passed the Sons of Jacob Synagogue, where the Yom Kippur shooting took place. It's not far from the imposing churches nearby, but it is rather modest. It's not a prominent synagogue in a prominent place. Which made the shooting rather more ominous still.

The congregation that gathered on Sunday night was small, some 25 pious souls at prayer. This was not a grand, historic house of worship in Montreal or Toronto. There is a not a large Jewish population in Belleville. The congregation does not have a full-time rabbi. And yet, even here, antisemitic violence has arrived. And if it has arrived at a little synagogue in a quiet city, then the toxin has spread far indeed.

That spread is not only geographic. Over the past several years, as antisemitic attacks on synagogues — as well as on Jewish schools, community centres and businesses — have spread, the source has usually been radicalized elements of Arab and Muslim diaspora communities. Indeed, as news of the shooting broke, but before the shooter had been identified, some media sources immediately raised the spectre of immigration as the likely culprit.

It wasn't. The shooter was Sean Ward, who died on Monday from wounds suffered in his gunfight with Belleville police. Ward served for five years in the Canadian Armed Forces; he was discharged in 2022 over his objection to the COVID vaccine mandate. He later joined a lawsuit against the CAF in relation to that.

That is quite a long way from the cultural space of the protesters, agitators and harassers that we have become accustomed to seeing in the Jewish neighbourhoods of our big cities. It is a manifestation that antisemitism is not restricted to the extreme left, as it were, but also the extreme right. More menacing still, it is seeping in from the extremes toward the mainstream.

The Belleville shooting was also an escalation for Canada. While other Jewish buildings have been vandalized, shot at, even firebombed, this was an attempt at a mass killing. There were worshippers inside. Ward did not come to vandalize the building when it was empty. According to police reports, he had come with weapons sufficient for mass murder.

That there wasn't a mass murder was due to the police officer on guard, requested by the synagogue after a suspicious man had been spotted a few days earlier. Perhaps it had been Ward on reconnaissance.

Const. Jeff Smith's presence was the necessary barrier against Ward's lethal intent. His body was the barrier, in fact, as he took gunfire, has been hospitalized and has a long recovery ahead of him. Another officer, quickly responding, was the one who shot and disabled Ward.

Police and private security are now common at Jewish synagogues, especially on high holy days. The Belleville shooting proved the prudence of that. But if a Belleville synagogue needs protection from an ex-soldier, have we now arrived at the lamentable state that has become, for example, the norm in France, where Jewish institutions are permanently secured by the armed forces?

The armed response is because lethal violence against Jews has been a reality in France for some time. No one inside the synagogue was hurt in Belleville, but it was a near-enough thing that it may be that comparable measures are needed in Canada. If the violence has reached Belleville, Canada has reached that point.

Ward's death likely means that we will not know as much as we should about the specific motives of the attack, and whence came his hatred for Jews. Defence Minister David McGuinty suggested that he would be enquiring about Ward's experience in the CAF. During Ward's years of service, the military was rather exquisitely attentive to all manner of diversity training. It is hard to imagine that the CAF could have done more on that file. Ward's antisemitism may have been altogether unrelated to his military experience.

The depressing reality of antisemitism is that it is often unrelated to anything discernible, or is related to any passable nonsense on offer. It's a roving answer searching for any apparent questions, even if they are contradictory.

The police preparedness and response in Belleville are what Canadian Jews have been requesting for some time. There are two dozen Canadian Jews alive today because of it. Yet it seems a defeat, does it not, that it was necessary in Belleville, on Yom Kippur?

The police will be back at the Sons of Jacob Synagogue — perhaps permanently. It has come to this in Canada. Even in Belleville.

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