Statement from the Canadian Friends of Standing Together on October 7, 2025
We are Canadian Palestinians, Israelis, Jews, Muslims, Christians and allies who are members of the grassroots group ‘Friends of Standing Together’, who say that 14 million people live in Israel-Palestine – and that none of them are going anywhere. We believe that every single person deserves equality, safety, security, freedom, dignity, human rights, and an end to the use of military means to solve problems.
On this second anniversary of October 7th, 2023, a dark moment in the history of Israelis, Palestinians, Jews, Muslims, and allies, we, the Canadian Friends of Standing Together, mourn all those who were murdered on October 7th and all those who have been murdered since then in Gaza and the West Bank. We also mourn all of those killed in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Israel, Yemen, and beyond.
Finally, we grieve the tragic exporting of this violence to those murdered in Manchester, Montreal, Boulder, and Washington DC, and are increasingly distressed by the extreme polarization in Canada.
As a Canadian organization, we raise our voices in solidarity to condemn these polarizing incidents of hate speech and violence, including: the leaked London, Ontario group chat that shared extreme hatred toward Jews (reported in the National Post in Sept 2025); the York University incident of a Palestinian student being beaten by a hate group (reported by a campus YouTuber); a Muslim woman in Oshawa having her hijab set on fire; the graffiti and vandalism of synagogues and Jewish businesses; the graffiti and vandalism of mosques; the beating of a Jewish man in Montreal; the threats made to blow up a Muslim family and mosque in Newmarket; and the exclusion of Jews or Arabs from social gatherings because of an assumption of their politics, instead of looking at them as human being.
All of these incidents are contradictory to our values as Palestinians and Jews and people of good conscience. This behaviour is wrong. This is not in our name.
It is wrong to use collective punishment against an entire people. Whether they are a Gazan from Khan Younis, a Jew from Tel-Aviv, or a Jew or Palestinian living in Canada, let’s remember that people are not their governments, nor are they conscripts to an army of a nation outside Canada. Every individual must be treated as innocent until proven guilty.
We understand the pain around the genocidal war in Gaza and the Nakba. We have lost family to starvation, bombing, hostage-taking, rocket fire, family separation, and murder. We are feeling pain, guilt, and helplessness. We are scared of the rise of Anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia.
We also understand the fear of rising antisemitism. We, too, descend from families who were victims of the apex of antisemitism in Hitler’s Holocaust.
As we look at polarization, we say to our fellow citizens: there is another way.
Instead of treating people as ‘the other’, remember that you could be the ‘other’ one day, or were ‘the other’ once before. Instead of assuming someone’s politics by looking at their ethnicity or birthplace, give people the benefit of the doubt that they wish to live with peace, security and equal human rights just like we do. Let’s remember that what we have in common is greater and unites us more than our differences. Sharing common emotions of pain and fear does not make us “less Palestinian” or “less Jewish.” The most noble way to honour our ancestors and faith is to treat each other with the dignity, respect, and care that we want for ourselves and our children. Treating ‘the other’ with kindness, taking time to hear and understand each other’s narratives, does not make us traitors. It makes us patriots to humanity.
Let’s build the Canada we know and love, where freedom of expression and respect of identity are maintained. Where freedom of peaceful gathering and protest is allowed. Where speech is free, but is not used to tear society apart, but to bring it together. If you have a platform, please be conscious about using it for good, spreading hope rather than importing a conflict into this precious land.
To find out more about Canadian Friends of Standing Together, join us here:
https://torontofriendsofstandingtogether.com/