The Day I Lost My Peace, and What It Taught Me About Fairness

Yesterday was Yom Kippur. I spent the day reflecting, seeking forgiveness, trying to extend it outward too. I'm someone who sees the glass three-quarters full — anger isn't usually where I live.

Then came the news from Belleville, Ontario: a gunman opened fire outside a synagogue during Kol Nidrei. A police officer, Constable Jeff Smith, was critically wounded protecting the congregation inside. Had he not been there, the synagogue's president said, it would have been a massacre.  (The CJN)

It knocked me clean out of the space I was trying to hold. I've sat with that anger for a day now, and rather than let it burn, I want to turn it into something useful: an argument for fairness, because that's what I think is missing — not sympathy for one side, but the same standard applied to everyone.

Let me be clear about where I stand. I don't think Israel's government is doing everything right.

— I have real concerns about settlement expansion and settler violence in the West Bank. I say that as someone who cares about Israel's future, not despite it.

But I want to spend my energy on something bigger: the world keeps demanding a two-state solution as if it's a destination you arrive at by announcement, when it's actually a path nobody seems willing to walk. A real two-state outcome requires functioning Palestinian institutions, an armed faction like Hamas actually disarming rather than maneuvering around the question, and leadership with a genuine electoral mandate — not one governing by default because no vote has been held in twenty years. That's starting to change: Palestinians held local elections in April 2026, including in Gaza for the first time since 2006, and a full legislative election is scheduled for November 28.  (BBC) Hamas is maneuvering to join through a new coalition while objecting to the basic rule that candidates recognize the PLO's agreements with Israel — and analysts think the vote is more likely than not to be postponed.  (Al-Ahram) That's the honest state of the path: not nothing, but nowhere near a state.

And this is where I think we owe ourselves more honesty. Canada made recognition of Palestine conditional on elections without Hamas and full demilitarization — Prime Minister Carney called this essential. A year later, he pledged another $100 million to the Palestinians and, in the same breath, admitted "the prospect of a two-state solution remains distant."  (CBC) The conditions haven't been met, by his own account, yet the recognition and funding proceed regardless. That isn't building a path — it's mistaking the announcement of a destination for the work of getting there.

Our scrutiny isn't applied evenly, either. The same day I read about Belleville, I learned about Netanel Shukrun, a father of six who took his eldest son to immerse in a spring before Yom Kippur. A gunman opened fire on their car; Netanel's last act was shouting at his son to run. He died shielding him.  (VIN News) I had to go looking for that story — it didn't arrive in my feed the way other news does. That silence is part of what troubles me.

It connects to something worth naming plainly: when a Jewish person is killed, it instantly becomes a referendum on Israel and on all of us. We'd never say a shooting by one person represents an entire faith or people — except, somehow, when the victims are Jewish. The IHRA definition of antisemitism, adopted by Canada, names this directly: holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of the State of Israel is antisemitism. If we mean that, we have to apply it.

The scrutiny gap shows up elsewhere too. From 2015–2024, the UN General Assembly passed 173 resolutions condemning Israel and 80 condemning every other country combined.  (UN Watch) And the reported Gaza death toll — nearly 74,000 — comes from a health ministry that has never distinguished civilians from combatants and has no way to attribute who caused a death.  (Washington Institute) Meanwhile, John Spencer, who chairs urban warfare studies at West Point, has said no military in the history of urban combat has done more to warn civilians than the IDF did in Gaza.  (Jerusalem Post) None of this excuses everything Israel has done. But none of it is being weighed either.

And I want to say something about our own country, because charity begins at home. When Carney addressed Belleville, he pointed to Canada's new Combatting Hate Act as the answer — new criminal offences for intimidating people at synagogues, a standalone hate-crime charge, a ban on displaying terrorist and Nazi symbols.  (Justice Canada) That law is real, and it matters.

But the very Jewish organizations who fought for it — CIJA, B'nai Brith, and others — said plainly after it passed: "too often, extremists have acted with impunity, or charges have been dropped after arrests are made," and that the law "should serve as a catalyst for stronger enforcement," not a finish line.  (CIJA) They're still asking for a specific offence for glorifying terrorism, given the open displays of support for Hamas we've all seen on our own streets — and that ask hasn't been met either. A law on the books is not the same thing as a law being used. Condemning an attack after the fact isn't the same thing as preventing the next one. I don't think our own government gets to treat legislation as the end of its obligation any more than any other government does.

I don't have a tidy conclusion. I'm not asking anyone to excuse what's wrong on any side. I'm asking for the same rules to apply to everyone — the same scrutiny, the same skepticism about numbers, the same refusal to generalize a people from the actions of a few. That's what fairness looks like. It's why my Yom Kippur peace broke yesterday, and why, calmer today, I still felt I had to write this down.

Sources: The CJN · BBC · Al-Ahram · CBC · VIN News · UN Watch · Washington Institute · Jerusalem Post · Justice Canada · CIJA