A wave of antisemitic attacks, intimidation and street protests targeting Jewish communities in Canada's largest city has prompted a stark warning from Toronto-based journalist Jesse Brown, who said the country is courting disaster by refusing to confront rising Jew-hatred.

In a Newsweek op-ed titled, "The Next Massacre of Jews Is Likely to Occur in Canada," Brown said that Canada has become uniquely vulnerable to mass antisemitic violence as extremist rhetoric is normalized and law enforcement repeatedly fails to intervene.

Brown is the founder and editor of the news podcast company Canadaland and the host of the investigative podcast "What Is Happening Here." He has personally been subjected to antisemitic harassment on social media.

"A disturbing pattern is emerging when it comes to violent acts of Jew-hatred around the world," Brown wrote, pointing to recent attacks in Australia and Britain before turning to events at home.

Just days after the Hanukkah massacre at Bondi Beach and months after the Yom Kippur synagogue attack in Manchester, Brown said that Canadian police disclosed that "three armed men had been hunting down and sexually assaulting Jewish women on the streets of Toronto."

"One of the men was charged with conspiring with ISIS to commit murder," Brown wrote, adding that the suspects were allegedly roaming Toronto suburbs while attempting to kidnap and kill Jewish victims.

"This incident was not an outlier," he said. "Since October 7, 2023, there have been seven extremist murder plots against Jews by Canadian residents."

Brown said the underlying cause is cultural and political. 

"In all three nations, virulent anti-Zionist rhetoric that demonizes anyone connected to Israel has not only become normal, but it has become popular," he wrote.

At the same time, he added, "concern for Jews has become decidedly unfashionable — even for the police."

Brown described what he called a shocking failure of basic public safety, noting that Toronto police "made their first arrest in the case four months before alerting the public."

"The Jewish community had no idea that armed, hate-motivated extremists were roaming the suburbs of Toronto in a luxury SUV," he wrote, accusing authorities of leaving Jews "vulnerable to hatred and harm."

That vulnerability has been underscored in recent months by a series of antisemitic incidents across Toronto, particularly in predominantly Jewish neighborhoods.

In the city's North York area, mezuzah prayer scrolls were torn from the doors of Jewish homes and seniors' residences in multiple incidents, including buildings housing Holocaust survivors.

Holocaust survivor Nate Leipciger said the attacks left residents shaken, warning that such acts were meant to send a message that Jews are "not welcome and do not belong."

Toronto police confirmed that dozens of mezuzahs were removed in separate incidents and classified the vandalism as hate-motivated crimes.

These attacks came as Jewish residents also faced repeated demonstrations — by those claiming to be "pro-Palestinian" — marching directly through heavily Jewish areas and intimidating residents.

Those protests have occurred nearly weekly in recent months, often involving masked demonstrators, aggressive chants, and signs targeting Israel and Zionism, while police allowed marches to proceed without arrests or rerouting.

Brown wrote that protesters have been "marching into Jewish neighborhoods under the watchful eye of police officers instructed to practice ‘de-escalation' rather than make arrests or redirect masked and aggressive extremists."

In some cases, demonstrators have shouted that Jewish Canadians should "go back to Europe."

Ontario Solicitor General Michael Kerzner has publicly criticized the protests, calling several demonstrations "completely unacceptable" and urging police to enforce existing laws.

Despite those warnings, the marches have continued, reinforcing Brown's argument that "the protesters are emboldened by these high-level validations."

Statistics show the scale of the crisis. "Though Jews comprise less than 1 percent of Canada's population," Brown wrote, "we are now the number one target of police-reported hate crimes targeting religion."

Comparing Canadian and U.S. data, Brown said that "a Jew in Canada is significantly more likely to be the target of a police-reported hate crime than a Jew in America."

Yet Brown said that Canadian leaders have responded with indifference or misdirected outrage.

"The weak responses from Canadian leaders to antisemitism stand in stark contrast to their forceful condemnations of Israel," he wrote, noting that Prime Minister Mark Carney has proposed new hate-speech laws while existing ones go unenforced.

Canada's federal envoy for combating antisemitism, Brown noted, resigned last year citing "daily frustration and literal 'despair,'" and the position remains vacant.

Brown rejected the notion that antisemitism has worsened despite government concessions to anti-Israel activists.

"So here's my conclusion," he wrote. "It's not worse here despite anti-Zionist protesters getting what they demanded; it's worse here because of it."