The Toronto police hate crimes unit is investigating after a local synagogue was vandalized for the second time in four weeks, The Canadian Press reported.
Rabbi Joe Kanofsky said windows and glass doors at the Kehillat Shaarei Torah Synagogue in the city’s north end were smashed in the early hours of Friday morning.
Rabbi Kanofsky said the synagogue was a target of similar vandalism in late April, and no one was injured in either incident.
He added that police responded quickly on Friday and collected surveillance video from the scene.
Toronto police confirmed that officers responded to a call about property damage and said the hate crimes unit is investigating.
Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center condemned the attack in a post on social media.
“Last night, the windows and doors of Kehillat Shaarei Torah were smashed, one month after an individual broke the same Toronto synagogue's windows with a hammer,” the organization wrote.
“We are utterly horrified by this repeat attack. Jews deserve to feel safe at their places of worship, and not be targeted with such acts of violence,” it added.
Toronto and the area have seen an increase in anti-Israel riots and acts of antisemitism since the start of Israel’s war against Hamas on October 7.
In early November, an Indigo book store in downtown Toronto was vandalized with red paint and posters plastered on its front windows wrongfully accusing its Jewish founder and CEO, Heather Reisman, of “Funding Genocide.”
In January, a Jewish-owned grocery store in Toronto was spray-painted with the words “Free Palestine” and later set on fire.
Days later, Toronto police arrested four people on a highway overpass, located near a predominantly Jewish neighborhood, that has become the site of recurring pro-Palestinian Arab protests.
In February, an anti-Israel protest at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto turned into a display of antisemitism. At least one protester was documented scaling the hospital with a Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) flag.
Last month, posters in Toronto depicting four-year-old Ariel Bibas and one-year-old Kfir Bibas, who were kidnapped to Gaza on October 7 along with their parents Shiri and Yarden Bibas, were vandalized with swastikas.
Toronto Police Chief Myron Demkiw said in March that the number of calls reporting hate crimes in the city has surged since the start of the Israel-Hamas war and that more than half of those crimes have targeted the Jewish community.
(Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)
