Toronto Jewish girls’ school targeted by gunfire for 3rd time this year
No one was injured in the incident, which occurred overnight.
Bais Chaya Mushka, a Jewish girls’ school in Toronto, was hit with gunfire on Shabbat. (Screenshot)
(JTA) — For the third time since May, Toronto Police are investigating evidence of gunshots fired overnight at Bais Chaya, a Jewish girls’ school.
As in the previous shootings, no one was injured in the incident.
Police said they were notified of the shooting at around 2:30 a.m. on Friday. The department’s Integrated Gun and Gang Task Force is investigating, with support from the Hate Crime Unit.
The building sustained property damage, according to the Toronto Jewish federation’s Jewish Security Network, but students were ultimately able to attend school Friday.
Bais Chaya Mushka is part of a network of Chabad-Lubavitch schools. All three shootings at the school took place overnight, when the building was closed.
The first shooting occurred on a Shabbat in May at around 4 a.m. Then, in October, on Yom Kippur, gunshots were fired at the school from a vehicle. About a week later, two suspects — a 20-year-old man and 17-year-old boy — were arrested on firearm charges for that shooting.
“Enough is enough. Antisemitism and antisemitic attacks have no place in Toronto,” Mayor Olivia Chow said in a statement on Friday. “The latest shooting at the Bais Chaya Mushka Elementary School is unacceptable. Once again students, families, and neighbours are waking up to safety concerns.”
She added, “Toronto Police acted swiftly and arrested two individuals connected to the October 12 firearm discharge incident. I trust the police will do everything they can again.”
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted, “I’m sickened by reports of shots fired at a Jewish elementary school in North York. This is a hateful, antisemitic attack on Toronto’s Jewish community.”
The shooting comes just days after a Montreal-area synagogue was firebombed, and is the latest in a series of attacks on Canadian Jewish institutions since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of Israel, which launched the war in Gaza and has sparked a global spike in antisemitism.
In November 2023, assailants tossed a firebomb at the same synagogue, Congregation Beth Tikvah. The same month, shots were fired at two Orthodox Jewish schools in Montreal. In March, a venue postponed a Jewish film festival in Hamilton, Ontario due to “security and safety concerns,” despite objections from the local Jewish federation, which said that the concerns centered on opposition to Israeli films. In August, bomb threats were sent to dozens of Jewish institutions across Canada.
“When houses of worship are being firebombed and schools are being shot at simply because they’re Jewish,” said Noah Shack, interim president of Canada’s Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, an advocacy group. “That is unacceptable anywhere in Canada, whether it’s here or anywhere else. And the time for action is now.”
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