On April 26, 2025, a Vancouver community festival turned into a bloodbath. Eleven innocent lives were taken when a man rammed his vehicle into a crowded street celebrating Lapu-Lapu Day. It is now the deadliest vehicle attack in Canadian history.
For most Canadians, this horror was unthinkable, a monstrous aberration. For Israelis, it was heartbreakingly familiar.
Car ramming is not new. In Israel, they have long been a brutal and favored tactic of terror. Whether it’s a father walking his child to preschool in Jerusalem or families gathered at a bus stop in Ra’anana, the weapon is simple: a car, a driver filled with hate, and a target, civilians. No war, no battlefield, just day-to-day life shattered in a heartbeat.
The Vancouver attack was not politically motivated, authorities say. It was not terrorism. But does it matter to the families who have buried their loved ones? Does the driver’s mental health change the devastation left in his wake?
Israelis ask these questions every day because for them, it is politically motivated. It is terrorism. And the world often looks away.
When an Israeli child is run down by a terrorist, when an Israeli mother is struck down at a bus stop, when Jewish blood is spilled on the streets of Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, how many global headlines follow? How many vigils are organized by human rights groups?
More often than not, the silence is deafening. Or worse, the attack is “contextualized,” rationalized by those who claim Israel’s existence somehow justifies terror against its people.
Vancouver is now mourning the senseless loss of life. Israelis mourn like this every week.
This tragedy should be a moment of reckoning: a reminder that violence against civilians is never justified. That terror is terror, whether it happens in downtown Vancouver or downtown Jerusalem.
And maybe, just maybe, Canadians, and the world, can find some deeper solidarity with the Israeli people who have been enduring such horrors not for a day, but for generations.
May the memories of the eleven lives lost in Vancouver be a blessing. And may this moment awaken a new understanding that Israel’s fight against terror is the fight of every decent person who values life, freedom, and peace.