Blaming Israel for Belleville synagogue shooting is blaming the victim
A Belleville resident told Ezra Levant that the synagogue shooting happened because of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's action, something Ezra says isn't an explanation; it's an excuse and assigns collective guilt to Canadian Jews who may or may not support a foreign country.
Article by Rebel News staff.
While reporting from Belleville on the Yom Kippur synagogue attack, Ezra Levant spoke with a local resident who was visibly shaken by what had happened in her city. She was friendly, she was decent, and she was clearly distressed. She also said something Ezra felt had to be challenged directly.
Netanyahu, she said, has whipped this up. If Netanyahu were gone, things would improve. The attack on the Sons of Jacob synagogue was, in her telling, connected to what Israel is doing in Gaza.
Ezra's response on Monday's Ezra Levant Show was unambiguous: "That's not true." The synagogue in Belleville is not an Israeli consulate. It is not the Israeli military. It is not even remotely a symbol of Israeli government policy. It is Canadian Jews, or simply Canadians, gathering to pray on the holiest day of their calendar.
To suggest that attacking them is somehow a counterweight to Benjamin Netanyahu is to hold every Jewish person in Canada collectively responsible for the decisions of a foreign government they do not control and may not even support.
But the deeper problem with that framing, Ezra argued, is what it implies about the nature of antisemitism itself. If Netanyahu is the cause, then removing Netanyahu is the cure. Elect a different Israeli prime minister and the Jew hatred dissipates.
Except it doesn't — and it never has. Antisemitism predates the modern state of Israel. It predates Netanyahu by thousands of years. There were pogroms before Israel existed. There were massacres before Israel existed. The supply of reasons to hate Jews has always been elastic; if one reason is removed, another appears.
If it wasn't Netanyahu, it would be something else. There is always something else.
What Ezra thinks that woman was actually doing, and he said this charitably, not critically, is processing. Belleville is not a city that has been primed to absorb this kind of evil. When evil this deliberate arrives in a place that has no framework for it, the mind reaches for a manageable explanation.
It wasn't random. It wasn't ideological. It was Netanyahu. It was provocation. It was something we did that can therefore be undone.
That is psychologically easier than the alternative: that there are people who hate Jews, have always hated Jews, will always find a reason to hate Jews, and that no diplomatic adjustment or change of government will alter that.
The same pattern appeared after September 11th, Ezra noted.
The men who hijacked those planes were not shy about their motives. Radical Islam, as Ezra put it, despises the West because Western democracy is a standing challenge to the idea of a single global Islamic order governed by Sharia law.
America is the great obstacle. Israel is the smaller one. They say so and they have always said so. And yet after every attack, a portion of the Western commentariat goes looking for the provocation — the colonial history, the micro-incident on Twitter last week, the foreign policy decision that finally pushed them over the edge.
"You can furnish your own excuses for terrorism," Ezra said. "But you don't need to. The terrorists tell you why they're doing it."
The man who opened fire on the Sons of Jacob synagogue in Belleville on Yom Kippur has already provided his explanation, whether he stated it explicitly or not.
Providing him with a better one, one that roots the cause in Israeli politics rather than in his own choices, does not make the explanation more accurate. It makes the victims responsible for what was done to them.
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Ezra Levant
Rebel Commander
Ezra Levant is the founder and owner of Rebel News and the host of The Ezra Levant Show. He is the author of multiple best-selling books, including Ethical Oil, The Libranos, China Virus, and most recently, Trudeau's Secret Plan.
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COMMENTS
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Bruce Atchison commented 2026-09-22 20:02:14 -0400You nailed it, Ezra. That woman’s world view is that it must be Israel causing the problem. She can’t imagine that there are people in her city who would deliberately shoot up a synagogue.
