
Canadian Jewish organizations condemn Colorado attack, call for action against antisemitism at home
In the wake of another antisemitic attack in the U.S., organizations representing the Canadian Jewish community condemned the incident and renewed their call for governments to take concrete steps to prevent more like it.
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On Sunday in Boulder, Col., eight people were injured, some with serious burns, when 45-year-old Mohamed Sabry Soliman allegedly used Molotov cocktails and an improvised flamethrower on a small group of people assembled to raise attention for the remaining 58 Israeli hostages in Gaza.
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Abraham Global Peace Initiative CEO and founder Avi Benlolo said he was saddened by the incident, but 'not surprised.'
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It's the byproduct, he said, of demonstrators becoming 'much more hostile, much more desperate' in an effort to seek attention. And he thinks it's only going to escalate.
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'I think we're going to see more Colorados,' he told National Post Monday.
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In a post to X, B'nai Brith Canada called it 'a cowardly act of hate filled violence' and suggested this and other recent antisemitic attacks 'are emblematic of what happens when radical extremism is allowed to flourish and when hatred is incited without consequence.'
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B'nai Brith Canada stands in solidarity with the Jewish community in Boulder, Colorado. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of this horrific attack.
Targeting a group that was peacefully gathered to call for the release of the hostages is a cowardly act of hate filled…
— B'nai Brith Canada (@bnaibrithcanada) June 1, 2025
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Less than two weeks ago in Washington, D.C., two Israeli Embassy staff members — Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and Sarah Milgrim, 26 — were shot and killed by a gunman who later yelled 'Free Palestine' while being arrested.
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Hamas's infiltration of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 — during which 1,195 people were killed and 251 more were taken hostage — and the Israeli military's response have led to a wave of antisemitic attacks in Western countries, including Canada.
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And while there haven't been any hate crimes resulting in the deaths of Jewish people in Canada, there has been a marked increase in other offences in the 19 months since hostilities began with the terrorist group in Gaza.
In 2023, of the 1,284 hate crimes targeting a religion — a jump of 67 per cent from 2022 — 900 were against Jewish people, that's over 70 per cent of all hate crimes and a 71 per cent increase over the previous year, according to Statistics Canada police-reported hate crime data.
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There were more than four times as many antisemitic hate crimes as the second-most targeted religious minority, Muslims.
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In Toronto, antisemitic hate crime spiked 76 per cent in 2023 over the year prior, with almost 68 of the 146 occurring after October, per the Toronto Police public safety data portal.
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That figure climbed 20.5 per cent in 2024 with 176 reported hate crimes targeting Jewish people, which represented 81 per cent of all religion bias hate offences.
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That includes three shootings at Bais Chaya Mushka Elementary School in North York — which was unoccupied at the time — and vandalism at the Kehillat Shaarei Torah synagogue, among other unpublicized incidents.
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In response to Sunday's events, Toronto police said Monday officers would continue to maintain a heightened presence around places of worship, community centres, schools and other faith-based locations as they have since the Washington attack.
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Meanwhile, in Vancouver, police data from December 2022 to December 2023 showed a 62 per cent increase in antisemitism, while officials in Montreal accounted for 212 in the calendar year following Oct. 7, 131 of which were reported before January 2024, per The Canadian Jewish News. In March, the city's Congregation Beth Tikvah was hit with a firebomb just over a year after being damaged in a similar attack that included a fire at a nearby Federation CJA building.
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CBC
an hour ago
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6 revelations about the Titan sub disaster and its ill-fated dive
The implosion of OceanGate's Titan submersible stunned the world. On June 18, 2023, five people were lost in the deep Atlantic, more than 3,000 metres below the surface: OceanGate CEO and founder Stockton Rush, Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, British billionaire Hamish Harding, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and Dawood's 19-year-old son, Suleman. But while the incident captivated global attention and sparked a media frenzy, many key details remained obscured beneath speculation and sensational headlines. In the days that followed, questions multiplied: How could such a tragedy happen on a high-profile expedition? What safety protocols were in place? Was the design of Titan intrinsically unsafe? The real story of what happened was revealed months later in the United States Coast Guard's public hearing, part of an extensive investigation that included testimony from witnesses, former OceanGate employees and submersible experts. The hearing painted a sobering picture of the events leading up to the disaster, highlighting a series of decisions and oversights that made the tragedy seem not just possible, but predictable. Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster, a documentary from The Nature of Things, follows the investigation. Titan's carbon-fibre hull wasn't fully proven Titan flew in the face of industry convention, featuring a 6.7-metre-long carbon-fibre hull. The material isn't approved for certified deep-diving submersibles, but this didn't stop OceanGate from testing its unconventional design — and Rush from touting its strength. "Carbon fibre in subsea vehicles is really the right substance to use," he says in archival footage featured in Implosion. "It's three times better on a strength to buoyancy basis than titanium — the next best thing. So our hull is going to be positively buoyant, which is what you want in a submersible." Between 2021 and 2021, the sub reached nearly 4,000 metres below the surface multiple times. "Stockton Rush had 13 successful dives down to the Titanic depth. So, in theory, he did prove his concept," says U.S. Coast Guard investigator Kate Williams in the documentary. But while the sub's initial performance may have contributed to a sense of security both within the company and among those eager to be a part of this new frontier, not everyone was convinced. Contractor Tym Catterson, who served as a safety diver for OceanGate, is one industry expert who disagreed with Rush's choice of material over the usual titanium or steel. "Hardly anybody in the public is familiar with carbon fibre. It's stable — all the way up until this magic point that it is not," he says in the film. "When it finally pops, it will catastrophically fail." "Their sub was there. And then it was not." 3 days ago Duration 2:54 Early test dives were concerning In 2019, OceanGate chose Great Abaco island in the Bahamas as a site for early full-depth test dives. The Bahamian continental shelf plunges rapidly into deep ocean, making it one of the few places in the world where Titanic-depth waters are relatively close to shore. This strategy allowed the team to test the submersible in deep conditions without the cost and logistical burden of travelling far out to sea. However, these early dives revealed significant structural concerns. "When the first hull failed," Catterson says, "they went through and sanded it all out, and saw that there was a crack that went all the way. It went virtually the whole length of the hull." Reconstruction began in 2020, but despite the catastrophic failure, the hull was once again built out of carbon fibre. Hull warnings were ignored During a dive in July 2022, the sub's occupants heard a loud bang as Titan surfaced from the depths. The acoustic data suggested there had been a structural change happening deep inside the carbon-fibre cylinder. "I brought up the possibility of delamination," says Antonella Wilby, a remote operated vehicle–expert and former OceanGate contractor featured in Implosion. "I asked [Rush], 'Are you going to keep diving the sub?' And he said, 'Yeah, we'll do the next mission, and then we'll visually inspect it when we get back.'" "A delamination is essentially a parting of the carbon fibre," Williams explains. "When they heard this loud bang, there should have been, 'All stop, do not continue, investigate further.'" Instead, three more dives took place during the 2022 season. Titan was 'off the regulatory radar' Unlike most conventional submersibles, Titan was not registered or certified in any country to make sure it met safety standards. According to reporting from CBC News, OceanGate explained why it did not submit its vessels to a certification process in a 2019 blog post, which has since been removed. "Bringing an outside entity up to speed on every innovation before it is put into real-world testing is anathema to rapid innovation," the post read. But rapid innovation may not have been OceanGate's sole motivation. "One reason to not register is to make sure that no one, from a regulatory standpoint, is monitoring your operations," says U.S. Coast Guard chief investigator Jason Neubauer in the documentary. "How can somebody operate in a public manner yet still be off the regulatory radar? … that is definitely part of the investigation." 'Mission specialists' not passengers One of the more revealing details to emerge from the hearing was that OceanGate called its clients "mission specialists" rather than passengers. These individuals — paying $250,000 US per dive — were said to be playing a role in OceanGate's underwater exploration. But according to people involved in past operations, they were only given minor tasks to complete before and during dives. "I didn't do any of the, what I would say critical items," says past mission specialist and businessman Alfred Hagen in testimony shown in the film. "A 'mission specialist' was definitely something that was created by OceanGate to give the perception … that these were really crew members, when in fact they were paying passengers," says Neubauer. Submersible pilot and designer Karl Stanley, who went on one of Titan's first crewed deep-water dives, testified that framing customers as part of the operational team allowed OceanGate to avoid the more stringent safety requirements that would have applied if they were recognized as fare-paying passengers. Pushing boundaries became the norm The U.S. Coast Guard's public hearing not only provided insight into what happened on Titan's final dive, it also exposed a pattern of risk-taking at OceanGate that, over time, became normalized. In archival footage featured in Implosion, Rush positions himself as a fearless disruptor. "When you're trying something outside the box, people inside the box think you're nuts," he says in one clip. "Same thing when Elon Musk was doing SpaceX inside the box. Everything's scary." In some ways, OceanGate's model was a reflection of the broader tech world ethos: move fast and redefine boundaries. But in the unforgiving world of deep-sea exploration, nature doesn't compromise. Pressure at Titanic depths is absolute and the margin for error is zero. Innovation in this domain requires not just boldness, but rigorous checks, third-party accountability, and a culture of safety embedded at every level. The final report from the investigation is still pending, but the emerging picture is clear: when ambition outpaces oversight, even the most promising visions can descend into catastrophe.


CBC
2 hours ago
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What happened the last time a U.S. president overrode a state to deploy the National Guard
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CTV News
2 hours ago
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Fugitive's girlfriend charged with aiding breakout at New Orleans jail where she once worked
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