Canada’s leading Jewish organization called for presidency motion Tuesday, after a leaked intelligence report said the aspects behind Sunday’s antisemitic terrorist attack in Australia were also present on this country.
“It confirms what we already knew,” Noah Shack, CEO of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), said of the report in an interview with Global News. “The ingredients that were in place in Australia are present here in Canada as well.”
The intelligence report was written by Canada’s Integrated Threat Assessment Centre following the mass shooting at a Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach.
It said the present threat landscape for Jewish communities included a growing list of successful and disrupted attacks, a spike in ISIS propaganda and plots directed by the Iranian regime.
“These same conditions and drivers exist in Canada, to differing degrees, and it’s a sensible possibility that the Jewish community in Canada could possibly be targeted by a violent extremist actor or actors,” it said.
The report, obtained by Global News, said that while there was no “observed reporting” of an imminent threat targeting Jewish holiday events in Canada, an attack could still occur.
In response to the events in Australia, police in Canada have increased their presence in Jewish communities but Shack said while that was essential, governments needed to handle the basis causes.
Laws meant to carry to account those that radicalize others and incite violence have to be enforced more consistently, and gaps within the law should be filled, the CIJA CEO said.
“And we’d like to be sure that the promotion of terrorism, the promotion of terrorist organizations and terrorist actions is prohibited and is being addressed and brought seriously by our legislators and law enforcement.”
He said the organization had been meeting MPs, cabinet members and security officials “to debate what concrete steps might be taken within the short, medium and long run to fundamentally shift the situation on this country.”
“We’re coming out of two years of escalating glorification and promotion of terrorism in our streets, calls for violence against Jews, that feature the burning of Canadian flags,” Shack said.
“It is a movement of hate and extremism that doesn’t just goal my community, it targets our fundamental lifestyle as Canadians and this report should function a get up call for all of us that the time for motion is now.”
The Canadian threat assessment said the attack in Australia, which killed 15, was likely motivated by religious extremism and can have been inspired by the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack that left 1,200 dead.
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Black ISIS flags were present in vehicles linked to the alleged attackers, father and son Naveed and Sajid Akram, and the latter was investigated in 2019 over his links to ISIS supporters.
Two weeks before the attack, the Akrams travelled to the southern Philippines, which has long battled Islamist militancy, for military-style training, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported.
Although ISIS was defeated in Syria in 2019, it continues to draw adherents, with an arrest in Ontario as recently as Nov. 4, and has seized on the Israeli-Hamas conflict to recruit.
“I feel in some ways ISIS received a lift from the aftermath of the Oct. seventh Hamas attacks,” said Colin P. Clarke of the Soufan Centre, a U.S. security research group.
“The 2 years of Israeli combat against Hamas in Gaza led to high levels of civilian casualties, and regardless that ISIS considers Hamas an apostate group, since it sat for elections at one point, it has still been capable of leverage the worldwide groundswell of anger over the collateral damage in Gaza and direct it towards its own ends.”
The RCMP stopped two ISIS plots in Canada in 2024, one in Toronto that was allegedly planned by a father and son originally from Egypt. One other targeted Pride events in Calgary.
A ISIS-inspired plot to attack a pro-Israel rally on Parliament Hill was broken up in December 2023, with two teens charged with terrorism offences. A Montreal teen arrested in August was charged over an ISIS attack plan.
Despite the foiled plots, Canada’s terrorist threat level has remained unchanged for the past 11 years at “medium,” meaning an attack could occur and is a “realistic possibility.”
The Australia attack underscored “the resurgent threat of religiously motivated violent extremist attacks to the West,” in keeping with the Canadian intelligence report distributed Monday.
“It’s clear that although ISIS lost its territorial ‘caliphate’ in Iraq and Syria years ago, its core narrative of violent jihad against perceived enemies continues to encourage individuals and small networks around the globe,” said Prof. Amarnath Amarasingam.
A Queen’s University professor, Amarasingam said the Sydney attack was consistent with similar incidents and the goal fit a pattern of “jihadist groups of their hatred of Israel and particularly as retaliation for what is going on to civilians in Gaza.”
“Movements like ISIS and their ideology persist and have continued to be answerable for quite a few deaths regardless that they’ve declined to occupy the eye of the media, policy, and law enforcement circles.”
Lucas Weber, a senior threat analyst at Tech Against Terrorism, said the persistence of ISIS was fuelled by a mixture of historical grievances, sectarian narratives, and the group’s “highly developed online media apparatus.”
Despite the collapse of its territorial caliphate, ISIS has successfully shifted its centre of gravity to the digital domain, where it relentlessly frames global events through an absolutist worldview that depicts Muslims as under existential threat.”
The demonization of Jews, in addition to Christians, is central to the ISIS narrative and offers its ideology “continued resonance amongst radicalized audiences within the West and beyond.”
Stewart.Bell@globalnews.ca
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