Western Standard - Safer in Israel than Toronto

00:00:00.000 Good evening, Western Standard viewers, and welcome to Hannaford, a weekly politics show.

00:00:21.260 I'm Nigel Hannaford, and it is Thursday, December the 18th, and I am speaking today still trying

00:00:27.860 to get my head wrapped around what is happening to the Jewish population around the world.

00:00:33.600 Just four days ago, there was a savage massacre in Australia, Bondi Beach, the famous Bondi

00:00:42.180 Beach. It's like a massacre happening at the foot of the CN Tower in Toronto. You can't

00:00:47.140 look the other way. Fifteen people killed because they were Jews, apparently by Islamist

00:00:53.700 terrorists. And I am joined today by Vivian Berkovich, who was appointed Canadian ambassador

00:01:02.280 to Israel in 2014 by Stephen Harper. She lives these days in a kibbutz in Israel, where through

00:01:09.180 her podcast, her writings, and her television commentaries, she's a tireless advocate for

00:01:13.580 Jewish people everywhere. It is because of that that we're talking to her today to try and make

00:01:18.260 some sense of this vivian's past guest vivian welcome back to the show pleasure to be here

00:01:24.020 with you nigel thanks for having me oh you're very welcome vivian it seems a lot longer than

00:01:28.340 four days ago uh there's been so much else there seems to be a pattern of random attacks

00:01:35.080 on jewish people what is going on well i think that we are finally seeing the fruits of two plus

00:01:44.840 years of momentum the free palestine movement globalized the intifada whatever you want to

00:01:53.780 call it it's a kind of convergence of various political and other interests the so-called

00:01:59.660 progressives on the extreme left the free palestine folks the islamists the fundamentalist

00:02:08.160 Islamists, so pro-Hamas, pro-ISIS, and there are many out there, and others. And the one thing

00:02:14.820 that they seem to agree on, because they come from very different kind of, you know, philosophies,

00:02:21.940 but the one thing they seem to agree on is that Israel is the most evil state to ever have existed,

00:02:30.760 and it must be annihilated eradicated and that all jews must be killed when people

00:02:39.880 are screaming on the streets in toronto as they have been for two plus years

00:02:44.720 globalize the intifada from the river to the sea palestine shall be free our successive prime

00:02:53.620 ministers, so Mark Carney and Truda before him, premiers, mayors, law enforcement officials have

00:03:01.000 been telling us for two plus years that these are peaceful protests with individuals exercising

00:03:05.820 their constitutional rights. It was malarkey on October 7th, and it remains malarkey today.

00:03:12.140 There is nothing peaceful about calling for the annihilation of Israel and the murder of Jews

00:03:17.160 everywhere and if you're going to annihilate jews why go why do it in australia that's a

00:03:23.820 long way from uh israel the jews they're a long way away isn't there you know if if it makes sense

00:03:33.740 to attack jews in australia does it make sense to attack jews in canada how anxious are you

00:03:41.340 well i mean i used to spend a lot more time in canada than i do now and a large part of the

00:03:46.780 reason is because of what it's become since October 7th um how anxious would I be if I was

00:03:51.840 living there very um I was in Toronto my hometown where I lived over 50 years I still have a kid

00:03:58.480 there lots of family and friends I was there in April and the lead up to the election and people

00:04:04.720 were unnerved but not totally freaked out yet um I was back in September and it's just Venus and

00:04:12.020 Mars. The Jewish community in September was terrified. Canada has changed a lot since Mark

00:04:19.620 Carney took office, and it shows. And it shows in the statistics, and it shows in the fear.

00:04:26.700 I spent three days. I just couldn't even be there. It's a very hard place to be if you're Jewish.

00:04:32.840 That's an astonishing thing. I mean, many Jews emigrated to Canada over the years

00:04:39.160 because they thought it was a safe place.

00:04:42.000 And I think by and large, for most of the time that I've been in journalism,

00:04:45.720 which goes back 50 years, there was a very strong,

00:04:48.500 almost to the point where people resented it,

00:04:52.640 that there was a very strong influence on public policy

00:04:56.080 by the Canadian Jewish population.

00:04:59.380 Now, obviously, that kind of general acceptance

00:05:03.560 is not helping Jews in Canada today.

00:05:09.160 Let me ask you a very direct, blunt question.

00:05:12.320 Do you think there's going to be a nasty incident like this in Canada soon?

00:05:17.920 So I'll answer it this way.

00:05:20.000 I think that there but for the grace of God.

00:05:22.900 So we're just lucky that it hasn't happened yet.

00:05:26.960 That's right.

00:05:28.040 Well, it's happening in other places on a smaller scale.

00:05:30.700 It seems like hardly a week goes by that there isn't a report of a murder

00:05:36.500 where the obvious conclusion can only be that it was an anti-Semitic hit.

00:05:42.020 You mentioned, I think, some attacks in the United States.

00:05:45.280 There was a couple of universities.

00:05:48.340 Well, just tell us what is going on.

00:05:50.940 And then I want you to tell, is this random or is it an informal strategy

00:05:54.760 to intimidate Jews wherever they live?

00:05:57.600 It's not random.

00:05:59.340 In terms of since Bondi, as best I can recall, sort of off the top of my head,

00:06:05.800 there was a shooting on campus at Brown University it was a kind of pre-exam

00:06:11.500 tutorial I believe that the expectation of the shooter was probably that the

00:06:18.160 Jewish professor who runs that course was going to be attending and giving the

00:06:23.680 seminar or the tutorial the Jewish professor was not there a few days later

00:06:28.120 a Jewish professor at MIT a physicist originally from Portugal but

00:06:35.800 been in America for many years. 47 years old, young children, young family, someone broke into

00:06:41.220 his apartment in Brookline, Massachusetts and murdered him. Apparently he is known for being

00:06:47.120 pro-Israel and he's openly Jewish. There was a man in the last few days on the streets of Brooklyn

00:06:56.540 attacked, a visibly Jewish man sort of wearing orthodox clothing, orthodox Jewish clothing,

00:07:02.580 And he was attacked and stabbed within an inch of his life, I believe.

00:07:08.160 And those are just a few that kind of pop into my head.

00:07:11.140 But even more concerning, Nigel, is the fact that within hours at Bondi, there were people coming out and celebrating what had happened there.

00:07:24.100 Within hours of Bondi in Toronto, at the corner of Bathurst and Shepherd, a major intersection in

00:07:30.420 the north end of the city, it's got a lot of Jewish residents, there was a Hanukkah lighting,

00:07:36.420 just like there had been at Bondi. There was a lighting, a public Hanukkah menorah lighting

00:07:43.700 at an intersection in toronto and for two plus years now every week every sunday the islamists

00:07:54.180 the free palestine crowd have come to that intersection to harass jews who are not

00:08:01.780 doing anything illegal who are not threatening them they're standing there to demonstrate

00:08:08.180 their support for Israel. They have harassed them relentlessly, but they also go to the shops

00:08:15.000 where they know Jews are shopping or that are Jewish owned. And in the last six, eight months,

00:08:20.000 they've taken to parading through the residential streets, quiet residential streets,

00:08:24.240 and harassing Jewish families outside their homes, saying the most horrific things in front

00:08:30.380 of children. And do you know what the police do? Nothing. Do you know what the police did

00:08:34.760 on Sunday after Bondi? Nothing, but worse than nothing. There was a man who was standing

00:08:43.200 at the corner of Bathurst and Shepherd. He's well known. And he's an Islamist,

00:08:49.040 free Palestine activist. He had a loudspeaker and a microphone. And he was singing at length

00:08:54.920 in Arabic. I have a translation of the lyrics he was singing. And it glorifies attacking and

00:09:02.060 murdering Jews in the name of Allah. This went on and on and on. The police are standing there

00:09:08.500 protecting this. And when they later parade into the Jewish neighborhoods, the police tell the

00:09:16.260 Jews, be quiet, be nice to them, let them pass, clear the sidewalk from them. Sorry, clear the

00:09:24.600 sidewalk for them this is insanity this individual singing the kind of song that you so that sounds

00:09:34.840 like hate speech one would think and yet nothing you know vivian i don't understand the government

00:09:45.900 responses uh five minutes after the bondi shooting the australian prime minister mr albanese

00:09:52.520 starts talking about the need for stronger gun laws

00:09:56.420 and clamping down on right-wing extremists.

00:09:59.960 Well, no, the problem at Bondi wasn't the availability of guns.

00:10:05.480 It was the availability of radical Islamists.

00:10:09.720 Where they can't get guns, they just drive the car into a crowd

00:10:13.040 or you describe people with knife attacks and so forth.

00:10:16.960 Now, it seems what you have just said about the response in Toronto

00:10:21.860 that they stood by, they knew this was hate speech, they didn't intervene,

00:10:30.840 they don't actually divert these demonstrations away from the Jewish neighborhoods.

00:10:39.440 Why, in your view, is, what is it that our leaders are deliberately not joining the dots

00:10:46.760 because they'd rather not admit there's a problem?

00:10:49.420 What do you think is the bigger picture here?

00:10:51.860 so first of all i want to just point out um in addition to what you commented on with respect

00:10:55.780 to prime minister albanese um he has as have so many of us including me in my column that

00:11:01.380 i wrote that day for the national post he has lauded the heroism of ahmed al-ahmed he is a

00:11:07.300 muslim man um originally from syria i believe and um unarmed he went and tackled the one of the

00:11:15.220 gunmen took him down and grabbed his gun and he was later shot um and he's quite badly wounded

00:11:21.220 and in hospital. The man's a hero. He also had police training, which came out in the ensuing

00:11:26.820 days. Mr. Ahmed, Mr. Al Ahmed, was visited by Prime Minister Albanese in hospital. The Prime

00:11:34.180 Minister did not visit any of the Jewish victims in hospital. The Prime Minister has not gone to

00:11:41.540 any of the Jewish funerals that have been held today and yesterday, including the funeral for

00:11:46.580 10-year-old Matilda, who was gunned down. She was stalked. Her parents watched as she was stalked

00:11:55.920 by one of the gunmen. Her execution has horrified people around the world. Prime Minister Albanese

00:12:03.180 did not go to her funeral. There are two Jewish people, an elderly couple, well, elderly, a little

00:12:10.760 older than me um in uh who who tried to tackle one of the gunmen before he even got going

00:12:17.720 and this was captured on video um and they were murdered they were heroes a couple in their 60s

00:12:26.340 and albanese has not mentioned them you know what else he hasn't mentioned as you said he hasn't

00:12:33.000 mentioned islamism he hasn't mentioned islamist terror and the another thing that we know about

00:12:39.060 the two men, the father and son team, who went to shoot Jews at Bondi Beach on Sunday, is that they

00:12:44.860 were both training with an ISIS cell in the Philippines one month ago. So what do you think

00:12:51.420 explains this very selective response that the Australian Prime Minister has offered here?

00:12:57.960 Well, there are two options, Nigel. One is that he simply doesn't understand what's going on,

00:13:05.360 and the other is that he chooses not to act and why would he choose not to act um i i sort of i

00:13:14.600 have never accepted this kind of you know facile offensive oh it's about votes you know there are

00:13:23.180 more muslims um in these countries than this isn't about jews we're the first target we always are

00:13:30.920 but we're not the last this is about western civilization they hate western civilization

00:13:38.600 they hate our freedoms and our values but they can target the jews for a whole bunch of reasons

00:13:45.520 and you know nobody seems to care i don't know ask mark carney to explain his rather breezy

00:13:54.400 attitude because it's the same as albanese's in fact worse albanese has made expressions

00:14:00.280 of support for the Jewish community in Australia

00:14:02.740 over the past two years

00:14:04.340 that have never passed Mark Carney's lips.

00:14:09.200 Well, is it rank antisemitism?

00:14:11.640 Is it, you know, the brown shirts of the 20s and 30s in Germany,

00:14:15.460 but in better cut suits?

00:14:16.980 You tell me.

00:14:18.960 I don't even want to speculate about that.

00:14:21.260 The whole idea is horrifying.

00:14:23.320 If it is brown suits in better cut suits,

00:14:27.840 it's not conservative brown suits that somehow or other this always ends up and mr mr albanese

00:14:35.720 is guilty of this he was talking about the need to go after right-wing extremists this is in the

00:14:43.540 same speech that he that he didn't identify the that he identified guns as the problem

00:14:49.760 um you know if you admit there's a problem you have to deal with it do you think that's a part

00:14:57.780 of what's going on here.

00:14:59.400 They don't have the stomach

00:15:00.640 to actually take a position on Islam

00:15:03.420 as a call it out for what it is,

00:15:05.480 danger to Western democracy.

00:15:09.380 I think that our political kind of leadership

00:15:13.820 has become so dumb

00:15:16.980 and so puerile

00:15:20.660 that are they afraid to call it out?

00:15:26.160 I don't know.

00:15:27.200 don't understand the fear to call out something that is clearly such a direct and existential

00:15:32.400 threat to right now jewish citizens but tomorrow to everybody what it does is it puts many western

00:15:42.080 political leaders and leaders of institutions like the chief of police in toronto myron demke

00:15:48.160 it puts them in the position of having to look at their kind of guiding their lodestar their

00:15:54.000 guiding ideology which is dei right diversity is our strength we're so inclusive um which is kind

00:16:02.400 of all they seem to pay attention to and this clashes with that this this they can't they can't

00:16:10.320 start you know challenging islamists just because they're muslim or you know extreme progressives

00:16:17.840 just because they're whatever this is an ideological war and maybe people have difficulty

00:16:24.480 accepting that their ideology is a load of hooey well maybe yeah it is to put it i mean to put it

00:16:33.120 uh this is like cognitive dissonance you have a an idea of how your society is and ought to be

00:16:38.720 and it's inclusive you mentioned dei well there's the i part of it the inclusivity and we can do

00:16:45.560 better than we've done in the past lots of different people who different think different

00:16:49.820 things and they all get along peacefully and they get along well well then you get in

00:16:54.320 now you have the the dissonance you would accept a group of people who come in they've got a very

00:16:59.160 they don't buy into that they don't expect that so is are we on to something here in terms of

00:17:04.900 understanding maybe i mean look nigel the police in toronto they have decided from the get-go

00:17:12.380 that their approach and and myron demke has made these comments in many a closed room over the last

00:17:18.460 two plus years and he says my approach to policing is to keep the peace and it seems that his idea

00:17:25.460 of keeping the peace is to detain more jewish people um he has his force has arrested and

00:17:34.200 detained far more jewish people um who are in their neighborhoods who express some kind of

00:17:41.820 who even just stand there why they've said this repeatedly it's for your own safety it's for your

00:17:49.000 own good they have told jewish people in the in the neighborhood that is constantly being um you

00:17:55.680 know attacked they have told them don't say anything be nice to these people so i mean this

00:18:03.380 is kind of they're going out of their way if you and i have been at demonstrations in toronto

00:18:08.540 And I've had police officers come up to me.

00:18:10.520 There was one in particular in March.

00:18:12.940 And I was standing there.

00:18:14.520 I was not wearing anything visibly Jewish.

00:18:16.900 I didn't have a keffiyeh.

00:18:18.460 Like, I was just a person.

00:18:20.400 But they looked at me, and I guess they decided,

00:18:22.580 since I didn't have a keffiyeh and wasn't hearing a sign saying destroy Israel,

00:18:26.360 that I was with the Jews.

00:18:27.480 And a police officer came up to me and said, go stand over there.

00:18:30.420 You know, this little penned-off little area of a sidewalk.

00:18:33.720 And I said, why?

00:18:35.140 He said, well, you're with them.

00:18:36.060 I said, who are they?

00:18:37.820 and you know he was kind of like a little uncertain about how to answer me I said I'm

00:18:43.680 not going to stand there I can go wherever I want and I proceeded to walk right into the

00:18:48.440 demonstrators the demonstrators now what he was saying to me and what he said to me was it's for

00:18:56.240 your own protection what Jewish people have been told many many times over the last two plus years

00:19:01.600 in Toronto is don't you shouldn't be here your presence provokes them a Jewish woman standing

00:19:09.280 in her driveway in the neighborhood of Bathurst and Shepherd about a month ago was told you're

00:19:14.260 instigating them you shouldn't be like this is crazy so this is not about just about DEI

00:19:25.440 but they're trying to turn the jewish people into somehow having caused the problem and

00:19:32.340 there have been many comments made to that effect about what happened at bondi in australia

00:19:35.880 how were they how were they causing a problem in the opinion of those who think they did

00:19:43.440 by assembling on a beach by existing john nigel that's the issue that's the issue

00:19:50.800 Vivian, we don't have an awful lot of time left, but I would like you to tell me your

00:19:57.160 honest thoughts about should Canadian Jews think about finding a safer country to live

00:20:03.080 in? Has it got to that stage? What would you tell your kids?

00:20:09.500 One of my kids is in Israel with me. The other one is in Toronto. Both my kids are in the

00:20:16.540 kind of late 20s, early 30s, snap bracket.

00:20:20.000 They are proud Jewish women.

00:20:22.360 And my older daughter is going to be leaving

00:20:25.760 for a whole bunch of reasons.

00:20:28.540 She works in an environment.

00:20:29.880 It's a public sector environment.

00:20:31.260 It is very hostile, openly hostile.

00:20:34.500 It comes up everywhere all the time.

00:20:37.080 You may have heard recently that, you know,

00:20:40.660 there have been a rash of incidents over the years

00:20:42.840 with Jewish people in Ubers.

00:20:44.660 and the drivers have been either thrown them out

00:20:49.420 or said very unkind and inappropriate things

00:20:52.020 if they think the person is Jewish

00:20:53.640 or if they hear them speaking Hebrew.

00:20:55.620 When I'm in Toronto, I can't use Uber

00:20:57.460 because I have a cell phone with an Israeli area code.

00:21:01.080 So they know.

00:21:02.640 I simply, I'm not safe in Europe or in Toronto to use Uber.

00:21:06.720 So what would I tell people?

00:21:10.000 I'm not going to say stay or go.

00:21:12.200 but what I do say in my columns and on my podcast and I'll say here is open your eyes look at what's

00:21:20.580 going on it's real it's not getting better there is zero political will to actually deal with this

00:21:28.940 and address it there is zero will on the part of law enforcement to deal with this in a remotely

00:21:37.560 appropriate way. And frankly, Nigel, based on what I've seen and what we saw in Australia the other

00:21:43.320 day, I got a question whether or not our police, and I think this is way beyond municipal police

00:21:52.220 now. This is a national security crisis. I don't know that they have the capability to deal with

00:21:56.920 this. We watched the Australian police duck for cover while watching people mowed down

00:22:05.020 by these two men. They ducked for cover. For 15 minutes, these two men shot freely.

00:22:13.580 The police have not explained how and why that happened. Do the police in Toronto even have the

00:22:20.960 ability to deal with an attack of that nature? Never mind the political will or the institutional

00:22:26.740 will does the rcmp like who has the ability to deal with counter-terror and you have to be able

00:22:37.400 to mobilize within minutes to ask the question is to imply the answer are you saying that you don't

00:22:46.580 think the police have the ability never mind well i question okay i've not seen i've not seen them

00:22:55.820 demonstrate that. There have been many violent attacks on Jewish institutions and on Jewish

00:23:00.420 people. Many. And one of the things that needs to be understood here is that the similarities

00:23:09.260 between Sydney and Toronto are incredible in terms of the demographics of the Jewish community.

00:23:16.360 Sydney has about 50,000 Jews. Toronto is more like 200,000 plus. Both communities are kind of

00:23:24.840 very heavy with Holocaust survivors and their first their families. I'm the daughter of a

00:23:30.760 Holocaust survivor. They're vulnerable in different ways. They're not as voluble as

00:23:38.980 their counterparts in America. You mentioned earlier that, you know, Jews have often been

00:23:43.040 very influential and involved in public policy in Canada. I would actually take a different

00:23:48.360 perspective on that, very different perspective on that. I think we've been less involved in

00:23:52.340 Canada as a group than in most Western democracies, but if that's the perception, that's the

00:23:59.160 perception. But I think that the similarities between the two cities is astonishing. The

00:24:07.840 level of violence against Jews in Toronto, statistically, and the kinds of violence

00:24:15.880 has exceeded what the community in Sydney has experienced.

00:24:22.060 Last question, Vivian.

00:24:23.220 Do you feel safer in Israel than in Toronto?

00:24:26.340 I'm not safe in Toronto.

00:24:28.720 Yes, I feel much safer here.

00:24:30.840 Very good.

00:24:32.340 Vivian, thank you for coming on to talk about this.

00:24:35.220 It's a terrible situation.

00:24:37.060 You know, I heard somebody the other day say it's 1938 all over again.

00:24:41.320 maybe that's

00:24:43.020 maybe it's

00:24:45.460 1937, it's going in the wrong direction

00:24:47.740 but I want to thank you for

00:24:49.620 joining us today and for

00:24:51.520 the Western Standard

Western Standard - December 19, 2025

Safer in Israel than Toronto

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