After yet another terrorist attack targeting Jews on Canadian soil (which experts say has all the hallmarks of being directed by the Islamic Republic of Iran), the response across much of the Canadian political class has been an official condemnation, but often little else.

That obscene practice was mocked in an August 5 editorial in The Globe & Mail, “Thoughts and prayers, Canadian style,” which compared the knee-jerk reaction to Canadian politicians with the call for “thoughts and prayers” by U.S. politicians following mass shootings there.

Rather than offer empty platitudes, such as that such terrorism is “unacceptable” or “not who we are,” rarely have officials at any level of government asked questions such as “why did this antisemitic attack happen? What could have been done to prevent it? And what action can (the) government take to help to head off the next attack,” the editorial notes.

While those questions may have been stated rhetorically, the editorial soon states the plain truth: “antizionism is fuelling the rise in antisemitism. The rejection of Israel, of its very right to exist, has become the growth medium for the contagion of antisemitism.”

Zionism has been relentlessly demonized by extremists in recent years, seeking to portray that inalienable right as racist, colonial and oppressive. Yet it is none of those things; it is simply the view that the Jewish People have a right to self-determination in their historic and ancestral homeland.

However, the inability to properly identify the scourge of anti-Jewish (and consequently, anti-Canadian) terrorism has been widespread, with the editorial noting that even Prime Minister Mark Carney, in his June speech on antisemitism, failed to acknowledge this most obvious reality.

In recent years, antisemitism does not manifest primarily as Nazi-like racial hatred (though that imagery is often used by pro-Hamas mobs), but as a rejection of Israel’s very right to exist, and the subsequent demonization of Jews as a result.

As noted in the editorial, one only need look at the spike in hate crimes targeting Jews following the October 7, 2023 massacres by Palestinian terrorists in Israel to recognize that there is not only correlation, but causation.

Substantive inaction, as problematic as it may be, is shadowed only by those who have actively fueled the fire, such as Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow. As the editorial points out, she has refused to attend one of Toronto’s biggest events, the Walk with Israel, which attracted some 60,000 participants in 2026, though that has not stopped her – upon prompting by a participant at the recent Pride Parade – repeating the phrase “Free Palestine,” a favourite catchphrase of anti-Israel demonstrations.

While Chow’s condemnations of foreign-driven terrorist attacks in Canada are particularly empty given her apparent embrace of antizionist activism, politicians are hardly alone in their failure to call a spade a spade and acknowledge that antizionism is the key driver of antisemitism, and in turn, the spate of terrorism.

The news media has a solemn duty to not simply report on an incident, but to ask elected officials and those in power about what ideology is driving the hatred, rather than leaving it vague and ambiguous.