SAN DIEGO (SDJW) – On the heels of a firebombing of a synagogue in a Montreal suburb, a Jewish elementary school for girls – Bais Chana Mushka – in Toronto was the target for gunfire in the early hours of Friday. Although there was damage, students were permitted to return to school at its regular time.
Noah Shack, president of Canada’s Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, commented: “When houses of worship are being firebombed and schools are being shot at simply because they are Jewish, that is unacceptable anywhere in Canada, whether it’s here or anywhere else and the time for action is now.”
Prior to the incident in Toronto, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog spoke with Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Herzog said, “I reiterated to him my great concern over the intolerable wave of antisemitic attacks against the Canadian Jewish Community … I call on the Canadian government to act decisively and show that such hatred will not be tolerated.” Trudeau was quick to denounce the shooting attack at the girl’s school, and so was Toronto’s Mayor Olivia Chow.
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In a news conference, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin accused “ethnic Jews” of militating against the Russian Orthodox Church in Eastern Europe. “They’re tearing the church apart but they’re not even atheists,” The Jewish Telegraph Agency reported Putin as saying. Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, the former chief rabbi of Moscow, tweeted that Putin was “reviving Soviet-era tropes like ‘rootless cosmopolitans,’” and referenced the “Doctors’ Plot,” another of Stalin’s antisemitic campaigns. He called on European leaders to condemn Putin’s statements.
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Poland’s Deputy Foreign Minister Władysław Bartoszewski said if Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the upcoming ceremony marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, he will be arrested for war crimes in compliance with the warrant issued by the International Criminal Court.
Danny Danon, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN,following a UN General Assembly vote to request the International Court of Justice to spell out Israel’s obligations in Gaza, said, “The ICJ now has been weaponized; its advisory opinions are twisted to attack Israel and undermine our right to defend our people. This is injustice; it’s a political theater. It cheapens the court, emboldens terror, and undermines the principles the institution was founded to uphold.”
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Ellen Finkelstein has been named Chief Executive Officer of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America. She most recently was Yeshiva University’s chief strategy officer in the Office of Institutional Advancement.
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Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, California’s two U.S. Senators, split their votes on the National Defense Authorization Act. Padilla voted with the majority to pass the measure, while Schiff voted against it, saying he was opposed to the stripping the bill of its appropriation for transgender care for military dependents.
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Compiled by San Diego Jewish World staff