Canada ... No Longer a Secure Home for Diaspora Jews

Adil Charkaoui's speech has drawn broad condemnation from politicians like Premier François Legault and groups like the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. (Adil Charkaoui/X)

 

"The statistics on hate crimes in Canada are pretty clear on this. It's really in the early 2000s that hate crimes against Jews in Canada started to go up in a significant way."

"By this measure, then, the rate of antisemitic incidents is more than 16.5 times higher today than it was before 2000."

"I did experience quite a lot of antisemitism where I grew up [in Saint John, N.B.]. My golden age didn't start until I was 18 and got out of there. [The promise Canada offered Jews in major cities was real.] I think it's true for most Jews, who grew up in Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg from the '60s on." 

"The percentage of Muslims among the most extreme antisemites is considerably higher than the corresponding percentage of non-Muslims." 

Emeritus sociology professor Robert Brym, University of Toronto 

 

"Every time I wake up and I realize that the water's getting hotter, somebody greases the bowl. The level of tolerance that this country seems to have adopted in terms of antisemitism is breathtaking."

"It was wonderful to be a Jew at York [University in the 1990s] . There was a vibrant [Jewish student and professorial] community." 

"[By 2000], it was a completely different place to be a Jew. The anti-Zionist, left-wing academic was already starting to infuse the university."

Talia Klein Leighton, president, Canadian Women Against Antisemitism

 

"It wasn't easy as a Jewish boy walking around with my kippah [in France]."

"Moving to Canada was, for me, a breath of fresh air to be able to bring up my children in a safe and welcoming environment."

"What has happened in the last two, three years, is quite unbelievable. What I saw  happening in Paris in the '70s where you could be walking in the streets and people were screaming slurs at you or driving by and just a feeling of unwelcome and just looking behind your back."

"That, to me, is terrifying, because I was able to see the contrast of being here in Canada."

Menachem Mendel Blum, rabbi, Ottawa Torah Centre Chabad

THORNHILL, CANADA - MARCH 7 : Pro-Israel demonstrators gather outside Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto synagogue hosting 'Israeli Real Estate Event' in Thornhill, north of Toronto, Ontario on March 7, 2024. (Photo by Mert Alper Dervis/Anadolu via Getty Images)

 

According to B'nai Brith Canada's statistics, there were 6,800 antisemitic incidents that took place during 2025, an increase from 2,769 that occurred in 2022. During that time, synagogues were shot at and firebombed, 'F---k the Jews' graffiti appeared all too often, Jews have been accosted, berated, harassed, beaten, even shot at with pellets. Anti-Israel, antisemitic protesters marched en masse for months on end through Jewish residential neighbourhoods in Toronto. 

 

The years following World War II saw an enlightened public attitude toward Jews. The majority of Canadians became more accepting of a Jewish-Canadian presence. Prejudice against Jews that had previously manifested in public notices that parks were off limits to 'Jews and dogs', Jewish exclusion from clubs, from buying homes in certain neighbourhoods, Jewish doctors refused hospital affiliations, rental units not available to Jews, slowly underwent a social change.

 

Jews flourished in the new social environment; the numbers limiting Jewish acceptance at universities became history, Jewish businesses thrived, laws were passed prohibiting discrimination against minority groups for employment opportunities, medical treatment, academic admissions, and home rentals made it mandatory that all citizens were treated in equal measure under the law. Just as the Charter of Rights and Freedoms guaranteeing equality and freedom of religious expression, freedom of speech and all other civil rights. Antisemitism went underground.

Parliament Hill, Ottawa, Canada (Freepik.com)

 

Jews enjoyed that same sense of security in Canada as all others and the Jewish community thrived on its freedom to explore economic prosperity. Then, suddenly, a mass atrocity that occurred halfway across the world on October 7, 2023, when Palestinian terrorists launched a mass atrocity slaughtering Israeli civilians in southern Israel changed all that. It seemed sudden, but it was a kind of climax that had been building for some time, and October 7 was the signal that the time was right for an explosion of Jew-hate. Up to that time beginning decades earlier, a slow and steady increase of Middle Eastern immigrants bringing with them traditions of antisemitism infiltrated all walks of academia, unions, government and social institutions.

 

Expatriate 'Palestinians' studying in droves in Canadian universities provided the spark as 'victims' of Israeli oppression, which is to say Israeli defensive action against Palestinian terrorism that sought to destroy the Jewish state physically, then resorted to systematically through propaganda destroying Israel's reputation through libelous slander, promulgating lies of 'apartheid' and plans to kill Palestinians to rid themselves of counterclaims to Judean ancestral lands upon which both Israel and the 'Palestinian Territories' sit.

 

TORONTO, ON - December 20 - Shots were fired at a North York Jewish girls school early Friday morning, marking the third shooting at the school this year, Toronto police said. December 20, 2024. 

 

Governments in Canada stood by, unreactive while chaos broke out in the streets and on university campuses as thousands of anti-Israel protests, extended to include Canadian Jews in rejection of their presence as Zionists were called upon to 'go back to Poland' while Palestinians used every vicious tool at their disposal to delegitimize the Jewish state, making great inroads in alliances with the far-left and Liberal 'progressives' who found much to support in those claims, repeating with vigour 'Globalize the Intifada'. 

 

As Muslim populations proliferated through immigration, refugee intake and mass migration throughout Europe, and threats against European Jews ballooned, so too did they in North America, Australia and elsewhere. Jews who once felt secure and accepted for what they are; loyal citizens of the countries they lived in, contributors to the civilized world, outperforming other groups in their literary, scientific, academic, technological proficiency, were hounded by the baying of rousing, mind-numbing levels of expressed Jew-hate.

 

Jews now in Canada, as elsewhere in the world have been forced to resort to security measures to protect their schools, their synagogues, their community centres, vulnerable to attack and indeed experiencing attacks; gunshots, explosive devices at night, and crowds of protesting Jew-haters during the day, harassing, threatening, jeering and smearing Canadian Jews; vandalizing Jewish-owned businesses and property, boycotting and isolating Jews from mainstream society.

 

Michael A. Sachs: Some Jewish Canadians planning exit strategies to more welcoming U.S.

 

The governments whose democratic duty has always been to secure public order, to protect minority rights and guarantee equality of treatment and opportunity for all, have instead merely observed the ongoing diminution of Jewish rights in Canada. Their silence and lack of action have predictably bolstered the hateful resolve of the rioters and hate-mongers. And while all decent people decry the advent of renewed antisemitism and the moral incivility accompanying it, the majority remain silent. The Jews can look after themselves. 

 

Many are trying to do just that. And many are now contemplating wrenching their roots asunder from the soil that once guaranteed them peace of mind, planning to emigrate to the one place on Earth where their survival and that of their children is guaranteed: Israel. Politics in Canada under a succession of Liberal-led governments is such that those at the highest order of governance decry the rise of antisemitism and invariably add that of 'Islamophobia'. 

 

None among them ever contemplate speaking the reality of the situation, that it is the large and growing Muslim population from among whom this rise has resulted. They are prepared to live with the results of deliberately overlooking and bypassing the truth, rather than express it, and risk losing the votes that come with pandering to a segment of society whose values are not those of the prevailing majority, nor of democracy itself. Shame on them all.

 

Portable museum to show at schools, as an educational device, but after October 7, it was deemed too political. Photo by Courtesy of Sam Eskenasi

 

Honouring the Exploits of a Celebrated Terrorist

PFLP hijacker Leila Khaled. Photo: Sebastian Baryli

"Zoom is committed to supporting the open exchange of ideas and conversations, subject to certain limitations contained in our Terms of Service, including those related to user compliance with applicable US export control, sanctions, and anti-terrorism laws."

"In light of the speaker’s reported affiliation or membership in a US-designated foreign terrorist organization, and SFSU’s inability to confirm otherwise, we determined the meeting is in violation of Zoom’s Terms of Service and told SFSU they may not use Zoom for this particular event."

Zoom’s deputy general counsel, Lynn Haaland

"SFSU cannot provide support to a member of a US-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization. Full stop. To do so will expose them to liability under federal criminal law, and the very severe associated penalties, and should certainly run afoul of university leaders’ consciences."

"We urge SFSU, in the strongest possible terms, to take its cues from Zoom and prevent this event from happening. There should be no scenario where an American university has any engagement with a notorious leader of a designated terror group (the PFLP) — who also happens to be a virulent antisemite and two-time plane hijacker."

Benjamin Ryberg, chief operating officer, director of research, Lawfare Project

 

"We hope Zoom’s de-platforming sends an important message to SFSU that Professor Rabab Abdulhadi’s repeated attempts to indoctrinate students with her hatred of Israel and condoning of terrorism is a dangerous abuse of her faculty position, and it has dangerous consequences, including the inevitable targeting of Jewish students at SFSU."

"Unfortunately, though, SFSU continues to provide a daily platform for Abdulhadi to exploit in order to achieve her hateful political ends. And Zoom’s canceling of this event only addresses a symptom of a much larger problem — faculty being permitted to use their academic positions and classrooms to indoctrinate students under the guise of education — which is why we asked SFSU’s president to vigorously address this abuse, but President Mahoney hid, once again, behind a mistaken understanding of academic freedom."

"Academic freedom does not protect faculty when their clear intent is to use the classroom or other academic spaces for promoting their own political causes, and the responsibility for preventing this ongoing abuse lies with universities."

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, director, AMCHA Initiative

A San Francisco State University seminar titled “Whose Narratives? Gender, Justice and Resistance: A Conversation with Leila Khaled” organized by Professor Rabab Abdulhadi of the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas program, had invited the 76-year-old Palestinian Leila Khaled to be the featured speaker of the seminar. An event that did not go unnoticed by Jewish groups who protested the appearance at an American university of a member of the U.S.-outlawed terrorist group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. 

 

Khaled graffiti on the Israeli West Bank Barrier near Bethlehem 

Leila Khaled had been involved in two separate incidents of plane hijacking on behalf of the PFLP, an organization she remains connected to. She is a known terrorist, one glorified by the Palestinian Authority for her engagement in violent exploits against Jewish Israel. Dr.Abdulhadi of SFSU had assigned her students to produce signs and tee-shirts glorifying those exploits synonymous with murder, terrorism and violence. The Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Facebook page was posted by her with messages demonizing Israel and supporters of the Jewish state. 

As seminar organizer she had arranged with Zoom, Facebook and YouTube to broadcast the event to a wider audience. The activists and supporters of the Jewish state that the  seminar and its organizer slandered went into action, pointing out to the social media platforms that the PFLP is a terrorist organization outlawed in the U.S. by law, that Leila Khaled is a convicted terrorist. Her message and that of the seminar itself is one of victimhood, hatred and vengeance, the declaration that Israel's very existence represents a crime against Palestinian aspirations for statehood, the solution to which is the destruction of the Jewish state.

 

She was tasked by the PFLP as part of a team to hijack TWA Flight 840 from Rome to Tel Aviv, in August of 1969, diverting the Boeing 707 to Damascus in the belief that the-then Israeli ambassador to the United States, Yitzhak Rabin, would be on the flight. A photograph of Khaled (now a resident of Amman, Jordan} holding an AK-47 rifle while wearing a kaffiyeh became a popular reproduction, following the hijacking, during which no one was hurt, but the plane was blown up once everyone disembarked.

A year later, Khaled with another PFLP member, a Nicaraguan-American, went aboard El Al Flight 219 from Amsterdam to New York. Their hijacking effort failed when Israeli sky marshals went into action, overpowering Khaled and killing her partner, Patrick Arguello. She had two hand grenades in her possession at the time, and Arguello had shot a member of the flight crew during their attempt at hijacking the plane. She was arrested and imprisoned in Britain, later released in a hostage exchange.

PFPL plane hijacker Leila Khaled in South Africa

(photo credit: AFP PHOTO/GIANLUIGI GUERCIA)

The seminar was refused hosting by both Zoom and Facebook. The event was broadcast live on You Tube on Wednesday, 23 September, but twenty minutes into the seminar, the feed was cut by YouTube and the video removed on the basis that it was violating the YouTube Terms of Service. Khaled had not had the chance to speak when the event was dropped. Last week, SFSU President Mahoney published an opinion piece, to appear in The Jewish News of Northern California, citing academic freedom and diversity as justification for proceeding with the seminar and Khaled as featured speaker.