Irina Tsukerman is a New York-registered human rights and national security lawyer, geopolitical analyst, and journalist. She earned a B.A. in International/Intercultural Studies and Middle East Studies from Fordham University in 2006 and a J.D. from Fordham University School of Law in 2009. She is president of Scarab Rising, Inc., editor-in-chief of The Washington Outsider, and fellow of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs and the Arabian Peninsula Institute. Her work focuses on foreign policy, information warfare, security, and Middle Eastern affairs. She serves as Written Content Vice Chair of the American Bar Association’s Science and Technology Committee.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Irina Tsukerman discuss rising antisemitic attacks in Canada and the danger of treating violence against Jewish communities as isolated incidents. Tsukerman argues that weak government responses embolden extremists and may expose other minorities to future targeting. They also examine Canada’s investment in autonomous maritime systems, especially for Arctic security. Tsukerman supports modernization but stresses rigorous testing, environmental adaptation, alliance coordination, and maintaining conventional military capabilities alongside emerging technologies within a broader long-term defence strategy.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Welcome back to Maple Monitor. We are here with The Washington Outsider, Irina Tsukerman, and now we have a few items. It is July 27, 2026.
Some of today’s main stories are from The Globe and Mail. A couple are external because what Irina and I have noted in our conversational readings of some highlights from Canadian news over the last seven months, or at least the first two quarters of this year, has been sufficiently distinct, in my assessment. That is not a judgment. I want to make sure this is as objective an assessment of the news as possible.
There has been a pattern, as there is each year, of antisemitic attacks in Canada. In early March, three synagogues in the Greater Toronto Area were struck by gunfire within five days. Temple Emanu-El in North York was targeted first, followed by Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto Congregation in Thornhill and Shaarei Shomayim in North York. As far as the reports indicate, no one was injured. These were attacks against unmistakably Jewish institutions. A fucking building. A synagogue.
There is also a CNN story from this week, by Max Saltman and Alaa Elassar, reporting that Toronto police are investigating attacks at two locations of Kiva’s Bagel Bar, a Jewish-owned kosher bakery chain. One location, at Yonge Street and St. Clair Avenue West, was struck by gunfire. A window was broken at the Steeles Avenue West location, although police found no evidence that a firearm had been used there. The incidents occurred on Sunday morning, and no injuries were reported. The Toronto Police Service’s Hate Crime Unit and Gun and Gang Task Force are investigating.
The police said, “At this time, investigators are examining whether the incidents are connected and working to identify those responsible. There have been no reported injuries.”
Duty Inspector Scott Bradbury stated, “We understand that this is concerning for those that work and live in this area, especially members of the Jewish community, and we have all the resources available to investigate this matter thoroughly.”
One resident stated, “We live near the neighbourhood, and this is where we come for our food, and we feel threatened and unsafe.”
Again, a bagel shop is not an exclusively Jewish space. It is a community business where families and neighbours gather, although Kiva’s is specifically a Jewish-owned kosher bakery chain. Regardless, two locations of the same business were attacked. Police are investigating whether the incidents are connected and whether they were motivated by hate. Kiva’s operates three kosher bakery shops in Toronto.
Connecting this to a broader analysis by one of many institutions, this one being the more widely known Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, which I believe has me on its mailing list, CIJA stated on July 22, “StatsCan: Jewish Canadians Targeted 22 Times More in Hate Crimes.”
The statement concerned Statistics Canada’s police-reported crime data for 2025. There were 788 police-reported hate-crime incidents targeting Jews. Jewish Canadians represent approximately 1% of the Canadian population, yet they were the targets of 71% of police-reported hate crimes categorized as religiously motivated. CIJA calculated that a Jewish Canadian was 22 times more likely than another Canadian to be targeted in a police-reported hate crime.
Now, Statistics Canada places incidents targeting Jewish people within the religion-motivated category for this statistical breakdown. That does not mean antisemitism is exclusively religious. Jewish identity can be religious, ethnic, cultural, or some combination of these. I do not know how neatly an offender’s motives can always be divided between hostility toward Jews as a religious group and hostility toward Jews as an ethnic or cultural group, right? Often, with these people, nuance is not exactly their strongest trait.
One last point here. Noah Shack, CEO of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, stated, quote, “When criminals attack Jews, it is not because of how we pray. Much of today’s antisemitic violence, which includes gunfire and firebombing of synagogues and schools, vandalizing businesses, and assaulting community members, is perpetrated by extremists at home and foreign actors abroad, driven by conspiracy theories and anti-Israel hate. Governments and authorities must be unequivocal: nothing can justify these criminal acts targeting Canadians.” Unquote.
That is the key point.
They are targeting Canadians, but they are selecting Jewish identity as the basis for the crime. There is a lot here, but what is your take on those two major parts?
Tsukerman: Unfortunately, so far I have not seen the kind of drastic action necessary to send a very clear message to all these perpetrators. I do not know what it would take for the government to wake up and understand that simply slow-walking its response will only encourage them.
There is growing concern that more Jewish families will leave Canada, just as Jewish communities in the United Kingdom and France have increasingly discussed emigration, relocation, and aliyah in response to antisemitism. Whether this will become a massive migration remains to be seen, but the concern is no longer hypothetical.
Let us suppose that neither governments nor their populations care how many Jews remain in these countries, although it certainly would not reflect well on them. It does not end with Jews. It does not end there.
We have seen this broader danger illustrated by the Islamist attack near Berlin’s Pride celebration in July 2026. A van was driven into the crowd, and the attacker subsequently used a machete. One woman was killed, and dozens of people were injured. German prosecutors later said the suspected attacker had recorded a pledge of allegiance to the Islamic State. That was an attack on an LGBTQ+ gathering, not on a Jewish target.
There have also been attacks on migrants and refugees. In Friedland in August 2025, a 16-year-old Ukrainian refugee was killed after a 31-year-old Iraqi man pushed her in front of a freight train. A German court later ordered the man to undergo psychiatric treatment after finding that he had paranoid schizophrenia. That case was horrific, but it should not be represented as an established ideological or Islamist attack.
Germany has also experienced vehicle attacks on public gatherings and Christmas markets, although the motives have differed considerably. An Islamic State supporter carried out the 2016 Berlin Christmas-market attack. By contrast, the man convicted of driving into the Magdeburg Christmas market in December 2024 had expressed anti-Islamic and far-right views, and prosecutors attributed his actions to personal grievances rather than Islamist ideology. Six people were killed, and more than 200 were injured. These cases are not ideologically interchangeable.
The larger point is that antisemitism can be a harbinger of broader hatred, violence, and extremism directed at different segments of society. I do not believe antisemitic attacks will necessarily remain self-contained or target only Jews.
Jews are a convenient target because attacks against them function as a test, a litmus test of how society will react. If there is a signal that Jews are, first, a soft target that can be reached easily and, second, a group about which society does not particularly care, then the perpetrators learn two things. The target can be attacked with limited resistance, and the public response will be weak.
After Jews have been driven out, intimidated, or marginalized, extremists can turn against other groups. They begin with vulnerable minorities and communities that are already frequent targets of hate crimes. Then they move outward because each successful attack makes the next one more convenient.
Essentially, it is a salami-slicing tactic. You find a scapegoat. You isolate that scapegoat from the rest of society. You test society’s internal defence mechanisms. If the public does not perceive that group as sufficiently connected to the national community, not American enough, not Canadian enough, not German enough, not French enough, or not British enough, then the same method can be used to splinter the rest of society along similar lines.
That is what I believe is happening, and I am astounded that more people do not see it that way.
This is not merely an attack on Jews because they are Jews. It is an attack on society itself, intended to cause division by beginning with Jews but certainly not ending with them.
We have also long passed the point at which every attack can plausibly be described as a reaction to Israeli policy, the war in Gaza, or any other Middle Eastern conflict.
Jewish Canadians cannot be held responsible for anyone’s political disagreements with the Israeli government, whether those disagreements concern Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, or anything else. Attacking Canadian synagogues, schools, businesses, or individuals because they are Jewish is antisemitism. It is not legitimate criticism of Israel.
I believe the earlier wave of rhetoric that presented hostility toward Jews as merely anti-Israel activism helped normalize an atmosphere in which classical antisemitism could become more blatant. Once that becomes permissible, anything goes.
Jacobsen: It is ruining a perfectly good bagel shop.
All right, more seriously, and this is serious. Quebec-based shipbuilder Davie is entering the autonomous vessel sector by creating Davie Robotics, an Ontario-based subsidiary focused on manufacturing and integrating uncrewed maritime systems.
That is a very polished way of saying, “We are building autonomous maritime systems.”
I think where I am currently, in Ukraine, is shaping a lot of my thinking about human rights, international democratic norms under stress, and, more specifically in relation to this article, unmanned systems. Canada is catching on to this.
There is a large Ukrainian Canadian population, roughly 1.3 to 1.4 million people, or about 3 to 4 percent of the country’s population, so it is substantial. I do not believe that is necessarily why Canada is moving in this direction. I think it is simply in the federal government’s practical interest to embrace autonomous systems because, like Ukraine, Canada has a relatively small population spread across a vast territory.
Canada also has one of the world’s most highly educated populations, with well over half of adults having some form of post-secondary education. If you organize that talent effectively, you can leverage those skills. That is not to say Canada is organized as efficiently as it could be, but the potential is certainly there.
What are your thoughts about Davie? Not necessarily emphasizing the company itself, but rather this broader orientation toward unmanned maritime systems. In some respects, those systems are probably even more complicated than aerial drones because the maritime environment constantly faces rough seas, changing weather, currents, and other operational challenges.
Tsukerman: I think it actually makes a great deal of sense from Canada’s perspective, first of all because of the types of security challenges it is more likely to face. I do not see a major drone incursion into Canadian territory from the air as the primary concern. Maritime approaches and coastal waters are a much more plausible area of focus.
More importantly, Canada is part of broader alliances and security efforts concerned with the Arctic. That is where strategic competition involving Russia and, increasingly, China continues to intensify. The potential for accidents, coercive encounters, or deliberate confrontations in that region is growing.
The United States remains an important Arctic actor, but it is balancing commitments across multiple regions, and expanding capabilities in the Arctic takes time. Canada therefore has an opportunity to play a much larger leadership role, particularly as an Arctic nation with longstanding regional interests.
There has certainly been growing scholarly, military, and policy attention devoted to the Arctic. What is encouraging is that some of those discussions are now translating into investments in modern capabilities rather than remaining purely academic exercises.
That said, I would offer two cautions.
First, developing a technology does not automatically mean it will perform effectively under operational conditions. We still need to see how these systems perform during exercises, real-world deployments, and potentially combat situations. They will also have to be adapted to the environments in which Canada is most likely to operate. A platform designed for Arctic waters, for example, may not be equally suitable for the Baltic Sea, the Indo-Pacific, or other maritime regions with different environmental conditions.
I am not an expert on autonomous maritime systems, but we already see this with aerial drones. Not every drone performs equally well in every environment. Systems developed in Ukraine, for example, cannot simply be copied and expected to function identically in the Middle East or elsewhere without significant modification.
The second issue is the danger of overreliance on innovation alone. Autonomous systems, whether maritime or aerial, are becoming increasingly important and, in some operational contexts, dominant. However, they are only one part of the broader military equation.
Air power, integrated air defence, missiles, submarines, surface vessels, and other conventional capabilities remain highly relevant. They are not disappearing simply because autonomous platforms are becoming more capable. The same principle applies at sea. Autonomous vessels will complement existing naval capabilities rather than replace them entirely.
Still, every modernization effort has to begin somewhere.
Canada has finally begun to take more seriously the need to strengthen its own defence capabilities and reduce its excessive dependence on the United States. It is also expanding defence cooperation with Europe and other partners. Canada has, for example, expressed interest in the Global Combat Air Programme, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Japan’s sixth-generation fighter initiative, although it is not currently a full program partner.
These developments indicate that Canada is thinking more strategically about its long-term role internationally. Whether that translates into a larger defence-industrial role remains to be seen, but the trajectory is clear.
So far, this generally aligns with Prime Minister Mark Carney’s emphasis on strengthening Canadian sovereignty, strategic resilience, and international partnerships. Canada is not unique in this regard. Many democracies are reassessing defence policy and pursuing greater strategic autonomy in response to a changing geopolitical environment.
We will see how far that ultimately goes.
Jacobsen: Thank you very much for the opportunity and your time, Irina.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen is the Lifestyle and Finance Writer and Editor for A Further Inquiry with more than 400 published articles in the outlet. He is the Founder and Publisher of In-Sight Publishing (ISBN: 978–1–0692343; 978–1–0673505) and Editor-in-Chief of In-Sight: Interviews (ISSN: 2369–6885). He writes for International Policy Digest (ISSN: 2332–9416), The Humanist (Print: ISSN, 0018–7399; Online: ISSN, 2163–3576), Basic Income Earth Network (UK Registered Charity 1177066), Humanist Perspectives (ISSN: 1719–6337), Vocal, Medium, The Good Men Project, The New Enlightenment Project, The Washington Outsider, rabble.ca, and other media. His bibliography index can be found via the Jacobsen Bank at In-Sight Publishing. He has served in national and international leadership roles within humanist and media organizations, held several academic fellowships, and currently serves on several boards. He is a member in good standing in numerous media organizations, including the Canadian Association of Journalists, PEN Canada (CRA: 88916 2541 RR0001), Reporters Without Borders (SIREN: 343 684 221/SIRET: 343 684 221 00041/EIN: 20–0708028), and others.
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