By Howie Silbiger
A 14-year-old Jewish girl is missing in Toronto.
That should have been enough.
It should have been enough for the city to stop, look at her face, remember her name and help bring her home. It should have been enough for people to leave the posters alone. It should have been enough for every decent person in Toronto, Jewish or not, political or not, pro-Israel or not, pro-Palestinian or not, to understand that a missing child is not a battleground.
But this is Canada in 2026, and apparently even a missing Jewish child can become a problem for some people.
Esther, also known as Esti, has been missing since May 15, when she was last seen in the Earl Bales Park area near Bathurst Street and Sheppard Avenue West in North York. Toronto Police later confirmed she was seen shortly after midnight on May 16 near Bathurst Street and Hotspur Road. She is 14 years old, 5-foot-2, medium build, with brown hair. She was last seen wearing a turquoise sweater, grey sweatpants and no shoes. Police have said she has been diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum, a detail her family shared publicly only because they are desperate to find her. Toronto Police have opened a dedicated tip line at 647-355-4148.
For more than a week, police, family, friends, Shomrim volunteers and community members have searched for her. Posters went up across the city. Volunteers replaced them when they were damaged. A $25,000 reward was offered for information leading to her return. People searched parks, streets, ravines, shelters, transit areas and neighbourhoods across Toronto and beyond. The whole purpose was simple. Keep her face visible, keep her name alive, get her home.
Then came the posters being ripped down.
Pieces of torn missing posters were reportedly found near Earl Bales Park, where Esther was last seen. Videos and photos circulating online showed posters for the missing Jewish teenager destroyed or removed. This was not a campaign sign. It was not a protest placard. It was not a debate about the Middle East. It was a missing child poster.
That is where we are now.
A Jewish girl disappears in Toronto, and some people apparently cannot even bring themselves to leave her picture on a pole.
There is no political explanation that makes this better. There is no context that softens it. There is no “both sides” paragraph that belongs here. If someone sees the face of a missing 14-year-old girl and their first reaction is to tear it down because she is Jewish, or because the poster came from the Jewish community, or because her disappearance does not fit their politics, then the problem is not the poster.
This comes at the same time that video circulated online appearing to show a Jewish effigy, wearing a kippah, hanging at a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Montreal. The image was not subtle. It was not sophisticated. It was not a policy critique. It was a Jewish-looking figure hanging in public while people claimed to be protesting Israel. Jewish groups and commentators described it for what it looked like: another grotesque moment in the normalization of anti-Jewish imagery on Canadian streets.
And again, Canadians are expected to pretend not to understand what they are seeing.
A kippah on a hanged figure is not a clever metaphor. A missing Jewish girl’s poster being torn down is not activism. Protests outside Jewish neighbourhoods, Jewish institutions and Jewish community spaces are not happening by accident. The target keeps changing on paper, but the people being made to feel unsafe are the same…Jews.
Not “Zionists” in the abstract, not “institutions,” not “lobbies,” but Jews.
Jewish schools. Jewish synagogues. Jewish businesses. Jewish students. Jewish children. Jewish families trying to find their missing daughter.
And while all of this is happening in Canada, Prime Minister Mark Carney spent today speaking with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and telling him, again, about Israel’s obligations.
According to the official readout from the Prime Minister’s Office, Carney told Herzog that the treatment of civilians, including Canadians, aboard a Gaza-bound flotilla was “appalling” and “unacceptable.” He called for an independent investigation, condemned comments made by Israeli Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, repeated Canada’s support for a negotiated two-state solution, and raised the humanitarian situation in Gaza, which he called catastrophic.
But here is the problem.
Canadian Jews are watching their own country become more hostile by the day, and Ottawa still seems most comfortable when it is lecturing Jerusalem.
The federal government can find sharp words for Israel, it can summon diplomats and issue statements. It can call things appalling and unacceptable and demand investigations. It can speak with urgency when the subject is Israeli conduct. But when Jews in Canada are facing the Jew hatred that is now settling over this country, the language becomes softer, broader and safer. Hate has no place. We stand against antisemitism. Canada is diverse. Everyone deserves to feel safe. The usual patter, polished and rehearsed, but really meaning nothing.
A missing Jewish girl’s posters are ripped down in Toronto.
A hanged Jewish-looking effigy appears at a protest in Montreal.
Jewish institutions remain under guard.
Jewish parents wonder what their children should wear in public.
Jewish students measure how Jewish they can look on campus.
And Ottawa’s political energy is spent lecturing Israel on how they continue to defend themselves from a terrorist state next door.
That is what Canadian Jews are seeing.
They are not imagining it. They are not being dramatic. They are not confusing criticism of Israel with antisemitism every time they notice what is happening in front of their eyes. They are witnessing their country become very fluent in the language of defending Palestinians and very awkward in the language of Jewish fear.
The poster of Esther should have been simple; A child is missing, help find her. How?Share her face, call police if you know anything. That is it. Instead, it became another marker of where Canada is and another display of Jew hatred tolerated by our various levels of government.
Canada has become a country where some people can no longer separate a Jewish child from their hatred of Israel. A country where anti-Jewish imagery can show up at demonstrations and still be treated as part of the political noise.
A country where leaders can pick up the phone to tell Israel what human dignity requires while Jews at home are left asking whether their own dignity still matters.
Esther is still missing.
That remains the most urgent fact in this story.
Anyone with information should call Toronto Police at 647-355-4148. Anyone who has seen her, spoken to her, captured dashcam or doorbell footage, or noticed anything unusual around Earl Bales Park, Bathurst and Sheppard, Bathurst and Hotspur, or anywhere else she may have travelled, should contact police immediately.
And anyone tearing down her posters should stop pretending they are making a political statement.
All they are doing is making a moral confession.
Howie Silbiger is the host of The Howie Silbiger Show on truetalkradio.com and Political Hitman on Israelnewstalkradio.com. He is the Editor in Chief of The Montreal Jewish News.
