October 7, today

Today, on October 7, any Jews gathering in public are taking a risk. Because it is dangerous.

It is sad, and disgusting, and shocking, that that is the case. But that is the reality for Jews across the West on this day, October 7, 2025.

Many Jews will still come together in public, just the same. For them, doing so is also an important act of defiance.

Why? Because, on this day – the worst days for Jews since the Holocaust – coming together, gathering, is an important symbol of unity on a solemn day of remembrance. It’s an expression of unity.

After Manchester – after Washington DC, after Minneapolis, after Boulder, Colorado, after too many lives lost in too many other places – everyone knows there is a risk, no matter how remote, in gathering in public on this day. There is a risk of bodily harm, or worse.

At Concordia University in Montreal, at the University of Toronto, hateful people – some students, some not – have put up posters to celebrate their “martyrs.” To celebrate the death cult that is Hamas.

That is why Canada in October 2025 has become not unlike Berlin in 1935: killers are being praised, and a religious minority being demonized. But standing with our Jewish brothers and sisters – supporting them on this day, of all days – is something we must do. We must.

We, Jew and non-Jew alike, must show our commitment to civilization. To decency. To humanity. To each other.

We must show our opposition to the beast of antisemitism and hate, which is now everywhere to be seen. We must fight back.

We do that, of course, by always remembering the hostages, and calling for their release. We do that by remembering those we have lost on October 7 and on the days since. We do that by pushing back against the rising black tide of antisemitism and hatred.

We do that by simply being here together, and saying: you, the haters, will not cancel us. You will not silence us. You will not replace us.

Truly: October 7 was one of the darkest days of our lifetimes. Words alone cannot describe it.

So, October 7 places an obligation on the shoulders of all of us. It requires us to remember the men, women and children who had life taken from them by monsters in the shape of men – and it requires us to ensure that it never, ever happens again.

We do that in many ways. We do that by gathering together on this day, to say:

We will defy the haters. We will defeat them. The Jewish people have been here for thousands of years – and the Jewish people will be here for thousands of years to come.

As Dr. Martin Luther King, another proud Christian Zionist, said: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that.”

We have love, and humanity and civilization on our side. We have decency and and the truth on our side.

And with those things, the forces of hate will never, ever defeat us.

[A version of these remarks were used by Kinsella at an October 7 vigil in Belleville, Ont. today.]