Community in Montreal and Ottawa respond to attacks

CTV News screenshot

Although the Oct. 22 shooting on Parliament Hill in Ottawa and the hit-and-run in Quebec a couple days earlier were not attacks against Jews, the community is taking extra precautions.

When phoned by The CJN, shortly after  the Ottawa shooting, Martin Sampson, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs’ (CIJA) communications director, was in lockdown inside the organization’s head office in downtown Ottawa.

At the time, around noon, the alleged gunman, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, 32, who fatally shot Cpl. Nathan Cirillo outside the National War Memorial, had been killed by the sergeant-at-arms inside Parliament’s Centre Block, where he had fled and went on a shooting rampage.

The attack came just two days after Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent was killed in an apparently targeted hit and run in St. Jean-sur-Richelieu.

“I can see five members of the SWAT team moving down Queen Street,” Sampson said.

“At this time we are waiting for all the facts. The situation is fluid and evolving rapidly,” he added.

Sampson said CIJA does not know if the two attempts on members of the Canadian military are related.

“We are very concerned about the rise of extremism and continue to monitor this very closely, and see what the implications are for our community.”

A 22-year-old CIJA intern, Daniel Ganz, said he was in the building when the shooter stormed Centre Block.

“The shooting happened 20 minutes after I usually walk by [the war memorial]. He went through the same doors that I go through, so it was a scary thought to think that had I been 20 minutes late to work, I would have been right there when it happened,” Ganz said.

“There was the first initial shot, but your first thought is never that there is a shooting. Once there was a rapid burst of gunfire and seeing the guard on our floor running down the hallway, you knew it was real.”

He said he and his colleagues were advised to lock the door to their office and turn off the lights. He said they weren’t permitted to leave the building until 9:30 p.m.

B’nai Brith Canada urged the government, police and security officials to step up their efforts to contain “homegrown radicalization,” which it calls a “very real and very dangerous threat.”

“The attacks this week have demonstrated that Canada is no longer immune to the danger of individuals harbouring and propagating radical ideologies,” said CEO Michael Mostyn.

The attacks were also condemned by the Canadian Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, which similarly expressed concern about “homegrown terror.”

“I hope this incident helps Canadians realize the depth of the very real threat posed to all citizens, and that both government officials and private individuals are shaken out of their complacency, and proper measures are taken to ensure no more Canadians lose their lives to terror,” said Friends president and CEO Avi Benlolo. 

Cantor Daniel Benlolo (no relation) of Ottawa’s Congregation Beth Shalom, which is a 10-minute walk from Parliament Hill, said the synagogue decided to close and all staff left around 1:30 p.m. He said the next day, the synagogue had reopened and everyone was back, but remain on “heightened alert.”

Located at Chapel and Rideau Streets, the synagogue was outside the lockdown imposed within the perimeter set up by police, he said.

Benlolo said he was not immediately aware of what was happening until he started getting calls from congregants and relatives. Although no direct threat to Jews was known, he said he followed instructions from the Jewish Federation of Ottawa, which was in contact with police, to take such precautions as locking doors and staying away from windows.

In the aftermath, he said the congregation, which has about 400 member families and serves many out-of-town visitors, is concerned about what security it should be taking, especially for a concert planned for Canadian Magen David Adom on Oct. 27. “We will have to have extra security. It’s a very delicate situation.”

Benlolo is active in interfaith dialogue and has good personal relations with imams and other Muslims, some of whom s called to ask whether everything was all right at the synagogue.

“I never imagined anything like this would happen here,” he said. “It makes you think how easy it is to create such a calamity. It’s very scary.”

At the same time, he cautioned, “We can’t generalize about [Muslims], it’s not right. There are lone wolves.”

Michael Regenstreif, editor of the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin, speaking from his office on the Jewish community campus in the city’s west end early in the afternoon of Oct. 22, said the campus was in a state of “heightened security,” not lockdown.

A security guard was posted at the front entrance of the Jewish community centre, which houses the Jewish Federation of Ottawa and other community organizations.

People were only being allowed into the building if they could show proper identification, but were allowed to leave, said Regenstreif, who himself left and returned to the building during the crisis.

The Jewish campus, which also houses a Jewish day school and an old-age home, is about a 15-minute drive from Parliament Hill, he said.

The campus always has guards on patrol and the school always has one at its entrance, Regenstreif said. “It’s my understanding all of the schools in the Ottawa region are in lockdown [Jewish and non-Jewish.]”

Regenstreif said the general mood on the campus was less one of concern for personal security, than worry over what is going on in the “very tense” city.

“We are not particularly scared – CIJA put out an alert that there is no threat as such to the Jewish community, but everyone knows someone who works around Parliament Hill. My layout person’s brother works at the Department of National Defence.”

In Montreal, Rabbi Reuben Poupko, chair of the Jewish community’s security co-ordinating committee, said police have stepped up patrols around synagogues and Jewish schools at the request of the community.

“We are very satisfied with the response of the police,” he said. “All our buildings are open and functioning normally.” He is spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Israel Beth Aaron in Côte St. Luc.

The day before, commenting on what happened in St. Jean, Rabbi Poupko said, “There is no reason to believe that Montreal or Canada are immune to the ongoing phenomenon of radicalized Muslims seeking to harm innocents in the West.

“This is not the first incident in Quebec [tied to those who espouse Islamic extremism], and the Jewish community was the target of terrorism 10 years ago with the firebombing [of a Jewish school in St. Laurent.]”

The perpetrators of the firebombing of an Outremont yeshiva and attempted firebombing outside the Snowdon YM-YWHA a few years later were also found to have been influenced by Islamic radicalism, he said.

The attack on Canadian soldiers should be a reminder that not only Israelis or Jews are the targets of Islamists, but all Westerners, he said

Rabbi Poupko thinks Canadian authorities must enhance its security measures and monitoring of potential threats by extremists. “They have to do more than take their passports away.”

In Toronto, both Associated Hebrew Schools and Bialik Hebrew Day School issued statments saying that while there was no change in their security protocols, police would be adding extra patrols around the campuses.

On Oct. 22, the Air Canada Centre added extra security for the exhibition basketball game between the Toronto Raptors and the visiting Israeli side, Maccabi Haifa.