When the need is great and lives are at stake, the only reasonable response is listen, learn and adapt.
This is the response that I am hoping the federal government has following an urgent plea yesterday by Vice-President of Belleville’s Sons of Jacob Synagogue Shima Vigodda, who told a news conference yesterday that a federal program to help secure places of worship is inadequate for the upgrades they need following the shooting attack on September 20th.
Vigodda says the program is able to cover expenses like repair and simple enhancements, but it isn’t nearly enough to pay for things like bullet-resistant glass, a safe room, sturdier doors or fencing.
For context, the Belleville attack was shocking, violent and laced with hatred, but it’s also far from unique in Canada.
There have been multiple attacks on synagogues across the country, including three involving bullets being fired at Jewish places of worship in the Greater Toronto area in the spring in the course of a single week.
There were also follow-up acts of hatred in Belleville after the local shooting including distribution of flyers in the neighbourhood with anti-Semitic language and people shouting slurs at people outside the synagogue less than two weeks after the original hate-crime.
The danger is real and the need has also been demonstrated multiple times, so the next steps would seem to be obvious.
We need that fund to be dramatically increased to enable real security measures to be put in place, because Jewish people deserve more protection and not just words of support.
I’m Paul Martin and that’s what I see looking Beyond the Headlines.
