"Canadians are Experiencing a Polite Pogrom"

"[The] harm to Canadian Jews won't stop until we all have the courage to name the problem accurately and to identify the specific people perpetuating it: Islamist religious extremists in collaboration with progressive activists."

"[Canadians are experiencing a] polite pogrom." 

Jesse Brown, Canadaland publisher

 

"I have often thought about making aliya [moving to Israel] but for familial reasons, I was tethered to Canada."

"Whenever I go to Israel, I experience a sense of calm. It is because I don't have to explain, or justify or excuse."

"I can be who I am in a way that I cannot in Canada."

Jack Novack, retired Dalhousie University professor 

 

"It's not even drip, drip, drip anymore. It's like a freaking firehose [rampant antisemitism]."

"[The NDP has made]a crude political calculation [to win over the much larger, faster-growing Canadian Muslim community over Jewish voters, choosing to overlook  antisemitism in their ranks]."

"[People in 1940s Montreal would call her father maudit Juif ['damn Jew']. But I never experienced that in Montreal [in the '60s and '70s]. So trying to figure out:What did we miss? Were there signs? And I think that's a very Jewish experience right now."

"Along with that comes tremendous grief. The overwhelming emotion is grief. Grief at, I would suggest, a loss of innocence for Jews and for others."

"Because Canada is supposed to be, and was supposed to be, a place where we could all be all that we are with full identity."

Selina Robinson, former NDP B.C. cabinet minister

This shot of three figures hanging in effigy of Israeli leaders was part of a reel posted by the group mtl4pal on Instagram following the group's pro-Palestinian rally in Montreal on Saturday, May 24. (mtl4pal/Instagram)

 

Jews in Canada no longer have any reason to place their confidence in law enforcement and the legal system in Canada. A high rate of the criminal charges against anti-Israel protests -- according to a Toronto digital media outlet -- sees that of the 150 people criminally charged in Toronto between October 2023 and January 2026, close to two-thirds of the cases were dropped or stayed. For further lack of trust, the recently published memoir of retired Toronto police inspector Hank Idsinga accuses the Toronto Police Service of institutionalized antisemitism. 

 

Mr. Idsinga's book recounts antisemitic incidents prior to his leaving the force in late 2023 for retirement, when colleagues were prone to state "I can't believe we have to pander to this f--king Jew". When his colleagues in the force, not aware that he was Jewish, would baldly make outright antisemitic statements. Mr. Idsinga unequivocally states from his own experience that antisemitism permeates every level of the Toronto Police Service, from the very top on down.  

"Every time I wake up and I realize that the water's getting hotter [like being a frog in a pot of boiling water], somebody greases the bowl."

"The level of tolerance that this country seems to have adopted in terms of antisemitism is breathtaking." 

"[Even as European Jews see politicians abandoning smaller Jewish electoral communities for larger and fast-growing Muslim ones, so too do Canadian Jews]. [Case in point: Belgian Jews] fear that they might be abandoned by politicians who look for new voters in Belgian society, for example among the Muslim population."

"Many politicians lack the political will [to address antisemitism and recognize a] jihadi ideology [has] now come to Canada."

Talia Klein Leighton, president, Canadian Women Against Antisemitism 

More than fifty Toronto police officers receive a morning briefing Sunday April 5 at Sheppard Plaza in North York before ensuring any anti-Israel or pro-Israel protesters remain out of residential neighbourhood streets. (Photo by Ellin Bessner/The CJN)

 

"Of all the groups" sociology Professor emeritus Robert Brym at University of Toronto studied, including racialized Canadians, left-leaning Canadians, Quebecers and others, it is Canadian Muslims whose attitudes toward Jews stands out for their malevolence in regarding Jews, where 28 percent agree in polls that "Jewish people are largely to blame for the negative consequences of globalization", while 34 percent feel Jews "talk too much about the Holocaust". Four percent of non-Jewish Canadian adults on the other hand, agreed with the former, 13 percent with the latter statement.

 

"The percentage of Muslims among the most extreme antisemites is considerably higher than the corresponding percentage of non-Muslims", Professor Brym wrote in an academic paper. In Australia that same differential also is reflected in attitudes toward Jews. Surveys to gauge European Christians and Muslims on whether they view "Jews cannot be trusted" reveal huge differences, where in Australia 10.7 percent of Christians agree with the statement, and a whopping 64.1 percent of Muslims agreed. 

 

In France, similar research reveals that the Muslim community's antisemitic views are at levels higher than the far left and the far right, where French Muslims in the majority believe that "Jews have too much" economic power (67 percent) and that "Jews today use their status as victims of the Nazi genocide during the Second World War for their own interest", at 56 percent. When these issues are pointed out, that the great upheavals seen in publicly expressed antisemitism, are led by Muslims throughout Europe and North America, executive government levels invariably while denouncing antisemitism never fail to link that social sin with 'Islamophobia'.

 

And then the popular version of fault rests on a totally unaccountable source, the nationalists and far right groups. To publicly agree that Muslim extremism is responsible for the raging antisemitism seen everywhere today is a non-starter. And because it remains unrecognized officially and institutionally, there can be no amelioration of the situation if the specific people perpetrating and perpetuating Islamist religious extremism are not held responsible, much less checked. 

 

The minority antidote when government itself will not do its work in upholding the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms:

The Council of Muslims Against Antisemitism (CMAA) is a group of global
Muslim thinkers, professionals and activists, led by its founder director
Raheel Raza that is committed to fighting antisemitism in all its guises. This
group took its foundational inspiration from Canadian values of tolerance,
justice and peace among Canadian diverse communities living together
side-by-side.
We recognize antisemitism for what it is – a uniquely pervasive, enduring,
and lethal form of hatred which has insinuated itself into multiple cultural,
religious and political frameworks across the globe. We recognize the
particular threat posed by the meteoric rise of antisemitism in the 21st
century. Often genocidal or eliminationist in intent or expression, it
represents an unprecedented amalgam of the more familiar strains of
antisemitism promoted in extremist right-wing, left wing and Islamist
ideologies. The spread of contemporary antisemitism has been accelerated
by globalization and the advent of 21st century technologies.
The CMAA endorses the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance
(IHRA) definition of antisemitism. The IHRA definition constitutes the
world’s most widely accepted definition of antisemitism which has been
adopted or endorsed by 43 countries including Canada. It appropriately
recognizes that the demonization of the State of Israel as a Jewish state is
antisemitic, whereas criticism of Israel, its government, policies or actions
of a type that all countries are subject to, is not.
Despite challenges that include receiving death threats, we are committed
to working with like-minded groups to challenge antisemitism wherever it
may appear. We are working relentlessly towards the goal of attaining a
hate-free Canadian community.                                                                                          Council of Canadian Muslims Against Antisemitism