Israel is the safest place for all Jewish people
Calgary, Alberta, Canada Jewish community was marking the third anniversary of October 7 Hamas’s barbaric attack on Israel by Community Commemoration Event. At the end of the occasion the audience was rewarded with the viewing of the documentary “Safe Room”, directed by Haley Geffen.
During her trip to Israel in 2024, director Geffen had met Dr. Gedalya Fendel who told her the amazing story of the group of survivors of brutal attacks of Hamas on October 7. He sent the victims of the traumatic incidents to his home safe room where they were able to transform their horrific experiences into family-like friendship, unity, and togetherness. The director of the film stated:” The truth is, the world has no idea that Israel, in and of itself, is a safe room. The whole country has lived under missile attacks since its existence. So, I thought, maybe I should explain that. Maybe I should start the whole movie by explaining that”, and she did in her documentary “Safe Room.”
The documentary took me and, I infer, many others in the audience watching the film “Safe Room” through the feelings of sadness and depression of witnessing ones again the horror inflicted on the residents of kibbutzim, moshavim, and Nova Music festival attendees. Yet, while we were leaving the screening of the film, still carrying the shadow of sorrows in our minds, it was coexisting with the belief in the bright future of the Jewish state, preserved and guarded by people like Dr. Gedalya Fendel and his family and the group in his safe room.
The explosion of antisemitism in the Western world after October 7 Hamas incursion into southern Israel, proves Haley Geffen’s standpoint that Israel is the safest place for all Jewish people.
The Islamists diaspora and radical left, the moment Hamas attacked Jewish state, were ready financially, organizationally, and systematically to initiate the anti-Israeli protests. Here an illustrative example: While the Hamas barbarians were still murdering innocent Israelis, raping, torturing, mutilating, and desecrating residents of kibbutzim, moshavim and Nova Music festival goers, the United Kingdom pro-Palestinian organization, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, around the midday on October 7, 2023, applied and received police approval for a mass protest to be conducted a week later. The organization justified its action to protest Israeli response which not yet happened, by false premise that Israel will start “indiscriminate violence.” This was a prelude to the tsunami of pro-Palestinian Gaza war protests in the United States and the rest of the Western world.
On October 8, 2023, only one day after Hamas’s incursion, the Islamists and their partners on the left, were rallying and demonstrating in New York City (Times Square), Chicago, Ottawa, Montreal, and Vancouver. Even before Israel’s large-scale military air and ground operation on October 27, 2023, the pro-Palestinian activists and international commentators immediately started to use terms like “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing,” and “massacre” on the platforms like X, TikTok, and Instagram. We cannot omit the contribution of the Israeli historian and scholar, Raz Segal, who propagated the false belief of Jewish state committing mass-murder, presenting it as a “textbook case of genocide.” The leftist academic had provided ammunition to advance the deceptive claims of the pro-Palestinian groups and to continue their campaign of delegalizing the rightful response of Israel. Before Israeli ground offensive into Gaza by IDF on October 27, 2023, the international watchdogs and human rights networks were issuing official statements characterizing the response of the Jewish state as a genocide, following the example of the traditionally anti-Israeli and antisemitic commissions of United Nations. The pro-Palestinian agitators were at the apogee of human indecency by celebrating the first and second anniversaries of Hamas’s October 7 attack and elevating the leaders of the invasion to the status of heroes and freedom fighters.
The universities and colleges campuses had become breeding grounds of anti-Israeli and antisemitic propaganda creating intolerable condition for Jewish student and faculty. The anti-Israel encampment crusade had spread to 160 campuses , by the protesters using escalatory methods such as tent encampments, buildings occupations and vandalism.
The rhetoric used during the anti-Israel demonstrations had moved from criticizing of the action of Israel government to open antisemitism, a phenomenon which continues to this day. The agitators, while claiming that the aim of their critic applies only to Israeli government, were violently blocking the speeches of Jewish presenters and Jewish organizations such as Hillel International, Chabad, Jewish Federations and Jewish Community Centers. Many protests happened outside of U.S. synagogues where the agitators were chanting openly antisemitic slogans: “go back to Auschwitz,” “go back to Europe,” and “long live October 7th.”
Let’s consider the status of antisemitism in Canada, a country of typical Western type liberal democracy, where the government initiate actions to combat Jew-hate not worth the paper it is written on.
Despite the useless activities and initiatives undertaken by Canadian Parliament and government, the antisemitic incidents continue to grow in the country to unprecedented level. B’nai Brith Canada, the country’s oldest independent Jewish human rights organization and advocacy group, is issuing an Annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents. The Annual Audit of Incidents for 2024 recorded 6,219 cases of hatred targeting Jews in Canada. The Annual Audit of Antisemitic incidents for the year 2025, further displays Canada as a country in the paroxysms of national epidemic of antisemitism. For 2025, B’nai Brith recorded 6,800 cases of hatred toward Jews, the highest count group has recorded since 1982. As of July 2026, B’nai Brith Canada recorded 27 violent antisemitic incidents; by September 2026, advance data by the advocacy group shows that violent incidents had more than tripled compared to the entire previous year.
On September 20, 2026, during the holiest event in Judaism, the Yom Kippur, the former member of the Canadian Armed Forces, Sean Ward, opened fire with a shotgun on a police officer who was posted outside the Sons of Jacob Synagogue in Belleville, Ontario, Canada to protect the sanctuary. The policeman was critically wounded but intruder also sustained serious injuries and thus, was prevented from entering the House of prayer. Yet, Sean Ward intention was to kill as many Jewish people as possible and spread the sense of terror and hopelessness among the Jewish community. We should comment and praise Jeff Smith, the policeman critically injured protecting Jews, and wish him speedy recovery.
The core obstacle to the fight antisemitism in Canada is the indifference of government and public to the fate of Jewish people. The case of Deborah Lyons is an illustrative example of shameful attitude of Canadian officials and significant number of ordinary citizens toward country’s Jewish community. Describing her challenges as Canada’s Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance Deborah Lyons was “waking up every day to a fight”, to battle the indifference and hostility of the Canadian politicians, business and religious leaders. They were refusing to listen to her appeals to support the Jewish community.
What makes the reaction of most Western democracies to the rise of antisemitism and anti-Israeli bigotry bluntly hypocritical and reprehensible, is the fact that Jews and Israeli hatred, after October 7 Hamas’ attack, rose to record-high levels compare to other religious and ethnic groups. In Canada, data revealed by Statistic Canada and by World Jewish Congress, while Jews counting 1% of total population, they suffered 68% to 71% of all reported religion-motivated hate crimes. In United Kingdom, the UK Home Office reported an unprecedented 25% increase in religious hate incidents against Jewish people. Yet, it affected UK Muslims on significantly smaller scale, after the start of October 7, 2023, conflict. In United States, as per FBI Hate Crime statistics, Jews constituting around 2% of total U.S. population, yet they are experiencing 63% to 64% of all religion motivated hate crimes.
The major liberal democracies of the West, instead of protecting its unjustifiably discriminated Jewish countrymen and women who suffer treatment of unparalleled ferocity, are producing platitudes of treating equally all their citizens.
The explosion of antisemitism in the Western world, after October 7 Hamas incursion into southern Israel, proves Haley Geffen’s standpoint-Israel is the safe room for all Jewish people.
