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Canadian Jews urged to be alert, cautious amid war on Iran
The Jewish Security Network is encouraging greater Toronto’s Jewish community to exercise extra caution as Israel and the United States wage war on Iran.
“Iran and its proxies have historically targeted Jewish and Israeli interests outside the Middle East,” the security agency launched by the United Jewish Appeal (UJA) wrote on Friday. “For this reason, it is important that communities remain alert and take sensible precautions.”
It recommended community members remain alert in public spaces, refuse entry to buildings from “unknown individuals” and to “be attentive when arriving at or leaving Jewish institutions or events.”
The message echoes concerns raised this week by Israel’s national security services to exercise “increased caution in all destinations around the world.”
“Since the start of Operation Roaring Lion, there has been an identified surge in motivation and an increase in terrorist activity and threats from Iranian security agencies against Israeli and Jewish targets worldwide,” the country’s National Security Council (NSC) wrote on Tuesday .
The NSC alert referenced recent Iranian attacks against other Middle Eastern countries, including Bahrain, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), adding that “several attempts to carry out terrorist attacks against Israelis have been thwarted and disrupted.”
The council advised nationals to avoid sharing personal information in real time, avoid flights through the UAE, to “conceal Jewish and Israeli identifiers in public spaces” and “avoid visiting sites identified as Jewish or Israeli,” such as Chabad houses or synagogues.
The Israeli alert flagged an increased threat from “lone-wolf attackers” in recent days, including a shooting in Austin , Texas, on Sunday, and another in Toronto the following night.
On Monday night, a North York synagogue, Temple Emanu-El, was shot at shortly after a Purim celebration. Although no injuries were reported, the doors of the shul were littered with bullet holes and broken glass.
The Jewish Security Network emphasized that the Temple Emanu-El shooting should “serve as a reminder that the environment we operate in requires continued vigilance.”
“For months, the warning signs have been there,” Michael Levitt, president of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre for Holocaust Studies, wrote on X following the attack. “The threats. The normalization. The excuses. When antisemitism is tolerated or minimized, it escalates. It always does.”
A UJA official pointed National Post to Friday’s statement and said that no further comment on the situation was forthcoming.
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