Jon Liedtke joins 610 CKTB’s Gene Valaitis for his regular weekly segment, Liedtke’s Got a Take!
Three years after the October 7 attacks, advocate Jon Liedtke discusses how the date shifted Canadian Jewish sentiment from distant tragedy to local vulnerability. He criticizes Canadian law enforcement and government bodies for inaction, leaving Jewish institutions to cover costly security measures amid rising domestic anti-Zionism and antisemitism.
Transcript (Gemini Generated):
Gene Valaitis: Now it’s time for a special Wednesday edition of Liedtke’s Got a Take. Good morning, Jon.
Jon Liedtke: Good morning, Gene.
Gene Valaitis: So Jon, it’s October 7th and, uh, three years ago today at 6:29 AM, Hamas and other armed groups attacked southern Israel by land, sea, and air. More than 1,200 people were murdered, most civilians. Uh, babies were murdered in front of their parents, women were raped and murdered. 251 hostages, uh, were taken, and it’s just, uh, one of the worst days, uh, ever in history. Now, you’re an advocate for, uh, Jewish Canadians. You have been for quite some time. So as we mark three years since the 7th of October, um, I would imagine this anniversary carries heavy emotional weight for many Canadian Jews, if not all Canadian Jews. So from your perspective, has the meaning of today shifted over these past three years?
Jon Liedtke: You know, over the last three years, Gene, October the 7th has transformed for Canadian Jews from a distant tragedy far away on the other side of the world into a horrifying domestic wake-up call. Prior to that day, there was this foundational belief that Canadian civic guardrails would hold. That law enforcement, the courts, school boards even, would draw yielding lines against raw, open hate. But today, that belief is dead for Canadian Jews. October the 7th became the moment Canadian Jews realized that we were fundamentally on our own, forced to watch pro-tests celebrate a massacre on Canadian streets before a single Israeli soldier had even entered Gaza, while our own political establishment defaulted to polite denial. Um, you know, I think about Alexander Look, born 1990 in Montreal. He’s just—was just two years younger than me. He was attending the Nova Music Festival, um, just on a whim. He was living in Mexico at the time, and he ended up sheltering in place with 30 others in a bomb shelter that day. And he stood in the doorway as Hamas threw grenades into the shelter. And he grabbed a grenade and threw it out. They threw another one in, he grabbed it, he threw it out. And unfortunately, on the third grenade, it exploded, taking his life. But because he used his body as a shield, he ended up directly saving eight lives. You know, when someone your own age dies taking grenades for strangers, that sort of leaves an indelible mark on your soul. So October the 7th began as an unimaginable, staggering grief, um, for, you know, Israeli and Jewish and people. And, uh, unfortunately, it’s evolved, as I said, into a domestic horror show.
Gene Valaitis: Yeah, I still haven’t figured out how the victims have become the villains. So if you look at what’s happening domestically, from street rallies, campus events, to drive-bys at girls’ schools, and that gunfight outside a synagogue in Belleville on Yom Kippur, where did Canadian institutions and law enforcement lose control of the boundaries?
Jon Liedtke: You know, I think many cities have a similar experience to what happened in Windsor, so I’ll use this as the case study. In Windsor, the surrender of the rule of law happened five days after October the 7th. On October the 12th, the first anti-Israel protest that took place at the Windsor Riverfront, and there was a sole Israeli flag bearer there who was assaulted by some of the protesters. But the police didn’t arrest the assailants. They handcuffed and led away the victim for breach of the peace under the excuse of de-escalation. And we saw that across the country, and it’s still going on today. That established a cowardly operational doctrine that infected our services, and it was about appeasement of the crowd, targeting of the victim, and the prioritization, quite frankly, of public relations management over enforcement of the Criminal Code.
Gene Valaitis: Mm. You know, we hear about government security grants, but what’s a daily financial and institutional reality for Jewish organizations, uh, you know, who are just trying to do things like keep schools open, maintaining a community center, or run religious services at synagogues?
Jon Liedtke: The daily reality is a privatized, mandatory Jew tax, quite frankly. While politicians posture with photo ops, security grants, Canadian Jewish institutions are spending tens of millions of dollars annually out of our own pockets for private security, physical infrastructure upgrades, and even off-duty police officers just to keep daycares, community centers, and synagogues open. In Windsor today, there’s an October the 7th event, and it’s going to have a police officer there as well as security. And you had to pre-register to attend, and that’s what Jewish events are like all across the country. You can’t simply walk in to events; you have to pre-register, upload photo ID or show it at the door, undergo bag checks, and then wait to be told where the venue is 24 hours in advance just to attend. In my case, I was finding out 5 hours in advance. So this institutional betrayal, though, it goes further. While Canadian Jews are paying out of pocket for this basic physical safety at home, Ottawa unfroze tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds for UNRWA, which is the UN’s refugee agency for Palestine, and this was after a UN internal investigation admitted that agency employees very likely took part in the October 7th massacres, and they fired a number—dozens of employees immediately after that. So Canadian taxpayers are being forced to subsidize terror-linked infrastructure abroad, while Jewish Canadians are paying a private tax to protect our own toddlers at home.
Gene Valaitis: Yeah, and piggyback on that, politicians regularly launch task forces and issue press statements, like Mark Carney’s Ministerial Advisory Council on Rights, Equality, and Inclusion, which today marks 100 days since its first meeting. Nothing’s happening. Why haven’t government promises translated into actual safety on the ground for Canadian Jews?
Jon Liedtke: Task forces are public relations theater designed to substitute administrative process for actual courage. They’ve delivered, excuse me, zero public updates, zero policy changes, and zero measurable results. Uh, yeah, look at how politicians responded following the violence in Belleville. When that hero police officer, Constable Smith, took that shotgun blast to protect the synagogue on Yom Kippur, the NDP leader Jagmeet Singh jumped online and didn’t even name Constable Jeff Smith or explicitly acknowledge anti-Jewish terror. He defaulted to an “all lives matter” pivot, diluting targeted antisemitic violence into a generic lecture about safety for all. But politicians of all stripes love to recite the standard script, and we’ve talked about this. They say, “This isn’t who we are.” That’s a falsehood. This is who we are right now. When 1% of the population, Jews, are suffering 70% of religiously motivated hate crimes reported to police, that is the reality of what modern Canada is. So government can launch their panels and their task forces, because taking real operational action—you know, prosecuting the organizers, enforcing our hate laws, cutting off radical funding—that requires drawing hard lines against vocal political bases, and they’re choosing political self-preservation over the potential for domestic human lives. And that’s—it’s horrific.
Gene Valaitis: Yeah, well, you know what’s also horrific? You got a lot of universities today who are saying that October 7th is the “day of the martyrs.” My goodness. Now, we often hear the defense that anti-Zionism isn’t antisemitism. So how do you respond to that when local delis, community daycares, schools, and synagogues are the targets of being attacked, sometimes people like shooting at a deli in downtown Toronto?
Jon Liedtke: You know, for your listeners who may not know or may be confused, I’ll be clear. Zionism is the belief that Jews get to live in our ancestral homeland with self-determination, full stop. Anti-Zionism, not believing that Jews have that right, is antisemitism, because it’s holding Jews to a double standard that other groups wouldn’t be held to, and saying otherwise is gaslighting. In Canada, every marginalized group is granted the authority to define our own oppression, except for Jews, it seems. So the problem, though, is that when anti-Zionism translates into shooting at Jewish girls’ schools, firebombing synagogues, blockading kosher businesses, demanding registries of Jewish addresses, the academic distinction, Gene, that so many rely on really doesn’t matter that much, or vanishes entirely. So while people love to say “never again,” and everyone loves to imagine how they would have acted in historical moments of crisis—I know what I would have done in the Holocaust during Nazi Germany—this is the test. History shows us time and again that when lawlessness and targeted hatred are tolerated, they spread indiscriminately. The stability of our democratic institutions is not guaranteed, and when society stays silent while Jews are forced to live under regular physical and human security, we are not remaining neutral as a society, we are acquiescing to the erosion of Canadian society itself. And as I said last time that we talked about this, first they come for the Saturday people, then they come for the Sunday people. What starts with the Jews never ends with the Jews.
Gene Valaitis: One of the worst days in history and a brilliant take this morning, I thank you.
Jon Liedtke: Thank you, Gene.
Gene Valaitis: There he goes, Jon Liedtke, Liedtke’s Got a Take, on this the third anniversary of October 7th. And, uh, just a horrific day for the State of Israel.
This aired on 610 CKTB
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