Oh, Canada -- Our Home and Native Land!

"As a group of Canadian business and community leaders who are not Jewish, we ask our colleagues to join us in condemning any act of antisemitism in this country."

"Hate and intolerance have no place in Canada's workplaces public spaces, anywhere."

"Canada is strongest when the law is applied fairly and consistently, every citizen is equally protected and mutual respect is upheld without exception." 

"Zero tolerance for hate. Antisemitism must be named clearly, condemned unequivocally, and met with decisive action."

Canada must adopt a consistent national approach to law enforcement prosecution and sentencing. It must ensure that terrorist organizations, their proxies and adherents do not operate here and are not funded by any sources public or private."

"Words from political leaders matter. This is not about restricting free speech. No Canadian should be threatened, harassed or attacked because of their faith. In Canada, we need to treat each other equally and with respect, regardless of one's religion, ethnicity or cultural heritage."

JOIN US IN CALLING FOR A CANADA WHERE EVERYONE CAN LIVE SAFELY AND WITH DIGNITY.

Open Letter to Canadians and Government ... StoppingAntisemitism.com

Talia Ben Sasson, right, hugs Ayellet Tzur as they attend a rally in support of Israel in Montreal, Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2023. (Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press)

 

Finally. After years of Canadian governments at all levels, from federal, to provincial to municipal tolerating the spectacle of massed protests against Israel, claiming it is engaged in genocide against Palestinians, calling for a global Intifada, chanting 'From the river to the sea Palestine will be free', chorusing 'Final Solution', tormenting and threatening Canadian Jews, while insisting on their right to ventilate through 'free speech', it has taken a group of non-Jewish Canadian corporate heads and their influential companies to counter the public Jew-hate-fest in demanding a cessation to the vile and viral antisemitism that has overtaken the country since the Palestinian terrorist attacks on southern Israel on 7 October, 2023.

 

Prominent Canadian business, political and educational leaders condemning antisemitism, speaking out for enforcement of anti-hate laws. These are requests made time and again by Canadian Jewish leaders in appealing to the federal government to take action against the constant agitation and slanderous charges made in public since Israel suffered its worst mass pogrom in memory. Where it has taken a carefully constructed and orchestrated public relations mission by fundamentalist Muslims and Palestinian-student-led groups to delegitimize Israel and threaten the security of Jewish Canadians to create a split in Canadian society of 'victim' and 'oppressor'.

 

Jews who have for years on end, decade after decade, been victimized by Palestinian-led deadly violence presented by their persecutors as 'oppressors', and themselves not as the vectors of hate and sadistic savagery in mass rape and murder, but the victims of a people asserting their historic place in the Middle East as ancestrally indigenous. While migrants from Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq settling in historically Judean lands call themselves the original Palestinians, inheritors of Judea, Samaria and Gaza with a mission to slaughter Jews in pursuit of their aims of conquest of all that is not theirs.

 

demonstration outside the Israeli Consulate in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks became the first of many in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza over the next two years. (Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press)

 

Under the Liberal governments of the past decade a vast influx of Muslim immigrants, refugees and migrants have swelled the Canadian population where they now represent two million in total as opposed to the Jewish Canadian population of 400,000. Where in political terms two million become more influential at the ballot box than a group many times smaller, despite that the latter has had a much longer presence in Canada, helping to make it the country it has become, integrating within the general population while to the former the laws of the country become subservient to that of Sharia. 

 

This is the Canada that prides itself on multiculturalism and equality under the law, guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Yet although the Jewish Canadian community has been under unspeakable levels of duress and threats, existing laws, more than capable of addressing the situation fail to be invoked by any level of government, and police have acted to protect those emitting threats, while giving short shrift to the threatened, with rare exception. 

 

Following the publication of that letter in the select newspapers of the Postmedia Network, Prime Minister Mark Carney has suddenly come alive, responding to the direct action demanded by the corporate signees. This is the prime minister who equates his rejection of antisemitism equally with that of 'Islamophobia'. And while it is Islamists that have lit the explosive social disgrace of antisemitism in Canada, to name them as such represents a clear instance of nothing short of 'Islamophobia'. A cardinal sin that will not be committed by Mark Carney.  

 

Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks against antisemitism during a visit with members of the Jewish community and law enforcement leaders at Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto on Monday, June 1, 2026. Photo by Peter Power/Postmedia News

 

Unreservedly Zionist

"It's become a pejorative word in the mass media and on the street and in places of work, in the university system, in public schools and so on."

"This does not mean that Canadian Jews who refuse to say they are Zionists are unconditionally opposed to Zionism as English-language dictionaries and general encyclopedias define the term [support for Jews  having self-determination in a country of their own]."

"Even among Canadian Jews  who refuse to say they are Zionists, 88 percent agree that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state."

"I think this is a way of informing the general public that Jews are hurting. They're scared, not all -- but many, if not most -- are scared about what might transpire. Some awful things happened this year in Manchester, U.K., and in Sydney, Australia. They can happen here." 

Robert Brym, professor of sociology, S.D. Clark chair in sociology University of Toronto 

 

"[The term has been] deliberately distorted and weaponized to the point where identifying with the word now carries social, professional and even physical risk."

"In that environment, it's not surprising that people distance themselves from the label, even as they continue to support Israel and affirm its right to exist."

"That's why the finding that 88 percent of Jews who avoid calling themselves Zionists still believe Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state is so telling. This isn't a rejection of Jewish self-determination. It's a response to stigma."

Aviva Klompas, writer, pro-Israel advocate 

Toronto's 61st weekly Rally for Israel, at Bathurst and Sheppard, on Dec. 1, 2024 tried to ignore anti-Israel protesters who turn up at the long-running solidarity event. (Jonathan Rothman/The CJN photo)

 

For over two years Jews in Canada have faced a punishing environment. One that has developed as an expression of Jew-hatred brought to a fine pitch of accusation and slander with no basis in reality but which has led to a voracious type of violent condemnation and isolation from mainstream Canadian society. A society that finds it more comfortable to sit back and ignore the fact that a core element among a growing Muslim population that has settled in Canada in impressively large numbers has instituted a well organized program of aggressive persecution aimed at the much smaller Jewish population.

 

This persecution and death-wish has been imported as baggage accompanying immigrants, refugees and migrants that have entered Canada in past decades and ongoing, from Muslim-majority countries where Jew-hate and violence perpetrated against Israel is part of the social fabric, the culture, the history and the religious-inspired beliefs underlying that all-consuming hatred. The quieter antisemitism that simmers below the surface in many societies in the West has been awakened by the fervour of the imported one, where an alliance has resulted between left-progressives and supporters of 'Palestine'.

 

The very solid numbers of Muslims now part of the Canadian voting fabric has politicized the situation to the extent that when mobs of keffiyeh-clad 'protesters' roam the streets of Canadian cities spewing the bile of their Jew-hate, recommending a 'global intifada', a 'Final Solution', or chorusing 'From the river to the Sea, Palestine will be free', implicitly expressing the extinguishing of Israel and its ancestral territory claimed by 'Palestinians' as their very own, come to fruition.

 

Preying on Jewish communities through harassing marches shouting anti-Jewish, anti-Israel, pro-Hamas slogans at their Jewish targets, sees no response from policing authorities, taking their cue from governments at all levels, municipal, provincial and federal. The kind of persecution and threats targeting Jews would never be permitted to take place were they directed toward other minority groups within society. Defacing Jewish property, firebombing synagogues, firing at Jewish elementary schools and  community centers, elicits few responses in support of Jewish safety and security.

 

Now a newly published study concludes that Canadian Jews have been so demoralized and isolated, they shrink from being identified with a once-proud term: Zionism. A Jewish state for a Jewish people who have throughout history been hounded and disenfranchised, victimized by pogroms and accused of being devious, different, exclusionist and a threat to other communities through purported designs of world domination. An all-embracing program to delegitimize both Israel and the presence of Jews anywhere has been unfolding since the Palestinian terrorism atrocities in southern Israel on 7 October 2023.

 

 

Published in the academic journal Canadian Jewish Studies, the study follows on a previous one commissioned in 2024 by three Jewish  groups, Robert Brym on board as a consultant, concluding that 48 percent of Canadian Jews polled not identifying as Zionists, even as 94 percent stated their support of the existence of a Jewish state in Israel. What Professor Brym determined was a "semantic drift" having occurred with meaning altered from positive to negative for Zionism. Jews, however, understand quite well that they are vulnerable, that their security cannot depend on the care and solicitation extended to most citizens; they are a 'special' category.

 

They understand quite well, that without the existence of Israel, Jewish life anywhere in the world is susceptible to a regime's governing decision-making with respect to how well or how little a diaspora Jewish community's welfare is regarded; whether equal treatment will be their lot or whether a strained relationship will develop that sets them aside from all others. Jews, who have lived proudly as Canadian Jews for centuries now see their status demeaned and unprotected; they alone of all others treated as dispensable. 

 

Suddenly, Zionism is being linked with racism. A Jewish state, after all, implies to those who wish to interpret that condition as a state confined to the presence of Jews and Jews alone, belies the reality that Israel has given equal citizenship to Arabs, Christians, Muslims, Bedouin, Druze, Kurds, Baha'i, Circassians, Africans, and other non-Jewish groups. Israel's society, in fact, represents a kaleidoscope of humanity, as a state not only dedicated to Jews, but to democracy and equality. Arab Muslims occupy seats in the Knesset, positions in academia, law, medicine.  

"[Factors such as] mass media, social media and colleges and universities seem to have undermined the willingness of many Canadian Jews to refer to themselves as Zionists, although they remain highly likely to say they are emotionally attached to Israel and are almost certain to support the existence of a Jewish state in Israel."

Leger poll follow-up study conclusion  

 

The Vile Wave of violence, Hatred and Intimidation of Jews in Canada

"[The] fire-bombing of the synagogue is not a one-off event."

"[It is] part of a pattern of an exponential rise in hate crimes and incendiary hate speech incentivized by a culture of impunity as in the absence of accountability of the crime of willful promotion of hatred."

"What is so necessary now is strategic policy direction at the governmental and municipal level around the four Ps:

• Prevention of the crime to begin with;
• Protection of the target;
• Prosecution of the perpetrators; and
• Partnerships among federal, provincial and municipal authorities. 

Irwin Cotler, human rights lawyer, founder, Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights

"There is no question that Canada has become a more dangerous place for the Jewish people under the divisiveness of Justin Trudeau that has stoked it."

"Another day brings another brazen act of antisemitic hate, and it's well overdue that the government do something or anything to protect Canadians."

"These lawless mobs of lowlifes must be brought to justice."

Conservative Party deputy leader Melissa Lantsman

"These hate activities are overwhelmingly directed against the Jewish community, students and faculty, and ordinary citizens on our streets."

"They are also being directed against people living in quiet residential neighbourhoods in Westmount and merchants around them."

"As a result, most within the Jewish community and many other residents of the Montreal Island are feeling unsafe."

"We are asking you, as the Mayor and chief of staff to ensure, through policy direction, that there is zero tolerance for antisemitic crime activity in our city, and that as a matter of policy and strategic guidance, the police robustly use the criminal law tools and municipal bylaws available to them to protect the public."

Cote Saint-Luc Mayor Mitchell Brownstein, Westmount Mayor Christina Smith, Liberal MP Anthony Housefather

A damaged window is seen at Congregation Beth Tikvah in Montreal after its second arson attack in a little more than a year, Wednesday December 18, 2024. Photo by John Mahoney/Postmedia

For the second time since the October 7, 2023 massacre in southern Israel by Palestinian Hamas terrorists, a Montreal synagogue was firebombed. A fire had been reported at Congregation Beth Tikvah at 3:00 a.m. Wednesday morning. When police arrived they found remnants of a firebomb that had been thrown through a window of the building. In Toronto, several days later, a Jewish parochial school was shot at again, at the front doors. These events occur early in the pre-dawn hours, wreaking double damage; to the buildings themselves and to the security of mind and person of the targeted community.

 

On news of the fire-bombing, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau let loose with his usual verbal reaction, that Service de Police de la ville de Montreal is investigating the "hateful act. This vile antisemitic attack against Montreal's Jewish community is cowardly and criminal", he responded. He speaks the language of responsible government, but has never yet -- in a year-and-a-half of street mobs shouting threats at Jewish Canadians, of stalking them in their communities to hurl invective at them, of calling for the destruction of Israel -- undertaken any direct action to put a stop to the unlawful events.

Anthony Housefather, Mount Royal Liberal MP, called on authorities to "make every effort to quick[ly] arrest anyone responsible" for the firebombing. He, along with others in municipal authorities co-wrote and addressed an open letter to Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante for stricter law enforcement to provide due protection to the city's Jewish community. She, like other municipal authorities, like their provincial counterparts, like the federal government itself, have verbally deplored these unlawful, hateful events, but have done nothing within the law to put a stop to them, nor instructed police to follow the law.

The errant, unforgivable failure to pursue hate speech criminal law, along with an "over-reliance on non-enforcement as a form of de-escalation", pointed out the letter co-signers "has emboldened protesters and demonstrators to engage in intimidating, violent acts and unequivocal hate speech, and thus, ultimately, has not successfully addressed the unsafe and toxic situation in our city". Toronto's mayor too, has done nothing to address the lack of safety and security for the public in that city; a permissive aura for tolerating intolerable Jew-hating marches and volatile speeches have marked her as a failure.

"Over the last 14 months, this is the seventh instance where a Jewish institution has been targeted in Montreal and the second time these specific institutions were targeted, chilling reminders of what happens when politicians fail to call out antisemitism and prevent the escalation of violence on our streets", wrote the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, along with Federation CJA, a Montreal-based Jewish organization.

After local Montreal police responded to the synagogue call, to find a flammable projectile had broken a window and ignited within the building, scorching nearby walls before first responders arrived, law enforcement later that morning discovered two windows destroyed at a nearby Federation CJA Jewish community building.

Both properties had been attacked in similar manner with a Molotov cocktail thrown at the synagogue and a fire started at the back exit of the Federal CJA building in November of 2023, a month following the Hamas invasion of southern Israel on October 7.

"The attack on the synagogue is] appalling, yet another example of the vile wave of violence, hatred and intimidation to which Jews in Canada -- and all over the world -- have been subjected in recent weeks and months."

"The world must wake up, words are not enough: synagogues burned, Jews attacked -- NEVER AGAIN IS NOW."

"Following this terrible attack especially, I call on the Canadian government to act decisively, and show that such hatred will not be tolerated."

Israeli President Isaac Herzog

 

The Right Honourable Justin Trudeau is Wrong and Dishonourable

"There are very few Jews in the world. Not even one percent of the world's population is Jewish. Not even 0.1 percent. In fact, only about 15 million of the world's population of 8 billion people -- less than .02 percent -- are Jewish."

"Canada has the fourth largest population of world Jewry at 335,000, less than one percent of our 39-million population, dramatically smaller than the Muslim population [in Canada], approaching two million."

Howard Levitt, senior partner, Levitt Sheikh, employment and labour lawyers

Ottawa police’s hate crime unit is investigating allegations of hate speech at a pro-Palestinian rally on Parliament Hill over the weekend, where some participants were heard chanting in support of the deadly Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack in Israel.

No one but an unmitigated bigot could ever contest the fact that Jews have been proud Canadians, valuing the country of their birth as second, third, fourth-generation Canadians. There has been a Canadian presence in Canada since before Confederation. Although Canadian Jews infamously faced organized and often institutional antisemitism, nothing dissuaded them that this was their country, too. Even at times when universities were loathe to admit Jewish students, and Jews faced signage indicating that private clubs and public venues were off-limits to their presence, Jews never lost faith in Canada.

 

Jews were proud to contribute to the social weal of the country they loved in any way they could. Jewish contributions to science, medicine, law, education, business, finance and media, culture and politics has always been outsize to their actual numbers. It is and always has been in the Judaic tradition to value education, and to contribute to the society -- anywhere in the world -- where Jews lived throughout the diaspora. Jewish innovation and sheer cerebral power has earned them 22 percent of Nobel prizes.

Despite the reluctance in North America and elsewhere during World War Two, and the accompanying unspeakable Holocaust, when despite the news of Nazi Germany's persecution of Europe's Jews and its institutionalized genocide machinery on a scale unimaginable in its industrialized determination to erase a Jewish presence from the world community, post-war consciences awakened by the liberation of death camps throughout Europe opened immigration and refugee doors for surviving Jews.

Jewish philanthropy outdistances that of any other ethnic/religious group in establishing supports and installations at hospitals and universities through the generosity and sense of responsibility to the public weal through generous donations. Jews were proud of their traditions, their culture, their history, but never hesitated to meld with the public spirit of shared values enhancing the greater community with their presence, sharing satisfaction with their Canadian experiences with other Canadians.

The social compact that eventually resulted in Jews being able to relax in a more inclusive social compact with Canada as equal partners in all that has been important and vital to the future prospects of the country has been shattered. The mutual trust and dependence that took too long to build, but which contributed to a more balanced society, took little time to utterly shatter with the more recent introduction to the Canadian experience of Muslims from abroad arriving as immigrants, refugees and illegal migrants.

Suddenly antisemitism was spurred, re-awakened in the greater general population where it simmered at a low ember for generations, lit by the fire of Muslim hatred of Jews. Since the October 7 attack by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist groups, aided and abetted by Palestinian civilians who in their thousands flooded across the border from Gaza into Israel to rape and to kill, to torture and to mutilate, to take infants, the elderly, the ill and the unfortunate as hostages to Gaza, Canadian Jews have been embattled. 

Suddenly finding themselves as 'outsiders', with, according to the hordes of pro-Hamas protesters, no right to be in Canada, much less in Israel. Threats to Jewish survival can be shouted endlessly by a chorus of Jew-haters, Jewish university students harassed on campuses, children attending parochial school accosted, fire-bombs targeting synagogues, Jewish schools and community centers, graffiti plastered on Jewish-owned businesses across the country, but apart from tut-tutting, no official at any level of government has used their authority to declare these criminal acts worthy of arrest and prison.

Most of all, the prime minister of the country, purporting to be an arbiter of equality, a proponent of justice, has himself led the fray and set the tone by his -- Justin Trudeau's -- lack of commitment to law and order and the government's responsibility to ensure the safety and security of all Canada's citizens, including Jewish Canadians. Trudeau has as much as indicated that he gives equal weight to the words and actions of the Israeli government and that of Hamas. 

Verbal sympathy for the plight of Canadian Jews faced with an unending storm of antisemitism, fear and threats, has gone no further. No action of any kind to ensure that the perpetrators of unjust and criminal acts in the public arena where university campuses and buildings have been occupied and Jewish students and faculty have been threatened and detained from entering their places of study and employment have gone unchecked. 

 

Canadian Jews have been abandoned by the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau and indeed by provincial and municipal governments and police forces.

Canada ... hang your head in shame.

Signs calling for violence against Jews are seen at an encampment at McGill University in Montreal on April 29. Photo by Pierre Obendrauf/MONTREAL GAZETTE

"Our citizens, hated not because they are bombing Gaza, but because they are Jews, are frightened as never before"

"They are frightened by the venomous hatred from so many sources, manifesting in the screaming crowds in their neighbourhoods, vandalizing of businesses, death threats and calls to genocide, as our police and governments stand in silence."

General Rick Hillier, former Chief of the Defense Staff, Canada

 

 

Jews in Canada

"Brym [Robert Brym, sociologist,University of Toronto] believes that the Israel-Hamas war plays a part -- surveys elsewhere in the world show that Muslims' negative sentiments toward Jews rise whenever war breaks out."

"But he also points to local factors; of Canada's religious groups, Jews are the highest earners and are the least impoverished, while Muslims earn the least and are impoverished the most."

"Nearly two-thirds of Muslims, but less than one-third of Jews, are immigrants. And on average, Canadian Muslims are much younger than Canadian Jews."

Jamie Sarkonak, journalist, National Post

Anti-Israel protest in Ottawa, April 20, 2024. Photo by Dacey Media

Generally, on the other hand, the vast majority of Muslims have a darkly negative view of Jews, ingrained not only in the culture, but emphasized by hadiths and the Koran, addressing relations with Jews; on the one hand, Islam counts Jews and Christians with a modicum of regard since they are part of the Abrahamic triangle; people of 'the book'. On the other they must be subservient to Islam with the understanding that Islam according to its reckoning, represents God's final presentation to humanity. They are 'kuffar', undeserving of respect for not surrendering their souls to Islam and Allah.

 

Resentment and victimization represent another facet of how Muslims regard Jews; believing all Jews to be wealthy and privileged. The Jewish presence in Canada dates back hundreds of years and while Jews mostly maintained their religious devotion in Judaism, they respect the laws of Canada, consider themselves Canadian, and integrate into the political, justice, and social system, content to be another Canadian. Muslim presence in Canada is of a far more recent vintage. Assimilation into the general culture, adapting the prevailing values, is not favoured by most practising Muslims for whom Sharia, not the law of the land is the final arbiter of justice for them.

 

Muslims typically have large numbers of progeny since Islam promotes childbearing as a moral religious duty, as does Catholicism to a lesser degree and Orthodox Judaism as well. In Canada it can be costly raising a large family, certain to be an economic challenge to many for whom large families is part of their religious devotion. The very fact that there are many more Muslims that are recent immigrants than Jews with lower economic standing, relates to the fact that it takes time to establish a presence in the country, including employment with high remunerative qualities.

Sociologist Robert Brym undertook a study recently, and published the results, looking into Canadian attitudes toward Jews and Israel. Surveys undertaken in early2024 list the most negative attitudes toward Jews spring from the Muslim demographic, alongside Quebecers and non-Jewish university students. The most negative sentiments expressed toward Israel, stem from Muslims and non-Jewish university students, and supporters of the New Democratic Party.

A survey sample of over 300 Muslims indicate unmistakable distrust and negativity toward Jews. Merely five percent of Canadian non-Jews reported their belief that "Jewish people are largely to blame for the negative consequences of globalization", but among Muslims the figure became 48 percent; while 83 percent of non-Jewish Canadians disagreed that Jews have too much power in Canada, 34 percent of Muslims held the same belief.

Unsurprising to a degree then, that Toronto and other Canadian cities have seen frequent well-attended protests proceeding through the streets, aggravating and accusing Canadian Jews of 'genocide' against Palestinians for their support of Israel, shouting 'intifada' in unison, and 'from the river to the sea', common shorthand for the destruction of Israel; Arabic speakers and signs, the Qu'ran in proud prominence and university campuses taken over by the 'pro-Palestinian' protests, targeting Jewish students.

The statement on the survey that "There is no justification for Palestinian suicide bombers targeting Israeli civilians", brought 30 percent disagreement from Muslims in comparison to 11 percent of non-Jewish Canadians. And while 54 percent of Muslims express the belief that Israel is an apartheid state, 34 percent of the general population appears to concur, thanks to ingrained antisemitism and successful propaganda. 60 percent of Muslims equate Zionism with racism, while 38 percent of non-Jewish Canadians concur.

As far as 81 percent of Muslims are concerned, the current war in Gaza represents genocide, a belief shared by 49 percent of non-Jewish Canadians. Logically, bringing in new immigrants, refugees and migrants whose culture and religious devotion dictates their values and inculcates prejudices born of historical events and antipathies, more or less guarantees that this level of blame from a victimhood-prone group against an already-existing group would result. 

Victimhood, resentment, anger and hatred coalesce and become a threat by one to the other, and with the help of a powerful propaganda device of victimhood and occupation led by student groups of Palestinian and Arab origin, the slander of a democratic state that is anything but racist and apartheid finds a ready audience among the demographic of non-Jewish, non-Arab Canadians from various backgrounds, origins and cultures, happy to take up a cause that happens to coincide with their own prejudices.

Canada now hosts some 1.8 million Muslims, half of which immigrated from 2011 forward with increasing frequency and numbers. It is now clear that government authorities had no interest in ensuring that those comprising great numbers of an ethnic, social, cultural, religious background that tended not to accept the culture, social justice system, values of a society they gravitated to, might very well present as a future danger to social cohesion and the general social compact in a democratic society.

All of which has led to spectacles of violent demonstrations against a much smaller demographic of about 350,000 Jewish Canadians who view with dismay and disappointment the inaction of their fellow Canadians, much less Canadian governments at every level, failing to react and act to uphold the law and to protect the Canadian Jewish population threatened by increasingly volatile and violent 'protesters' who no longer bother shielding their support of Palestinian terrorists from public view.

Canadian universities for the past few decades have succumbed to leftist progressive divisiveness, promoting the ideology of 'anti-oppression, teaching that colonialism of which they claim Israel is a prime example, is morally indefensible, that people of European ancestry are born exceptionalists, superior and dominating others of 'colour', under Critical Race Theory. Privilege and intersectional 'oppressor' beliefs are reflective of university campuses in this age.

Published

2024-04-09

"Most Canadian Jews feel unsafe and victimized. They perceive a rise in negative attitudes toward Jews in recent months and years. Most doubt the situation will improve. The main reason they feel this way is that extreme anti-Israel statements and actions have proliferated in recent months. Because support for the existence of a Jewish state in Israel is a central component of their identity, most Jews regard extreme anti-Israel statements and actions as a threat to their existence as Jews."

"Most non-Jewish Canadians do not have negative toward Jews. However, non-Jewish university students, Quebecois, and especially Muslim Canadians tend to have significantly more negative attitudes towards Jews than does the non-Jewish population as a whole."

Abstract: Jews and Israel 2024: A Survey of Canadian Attitudes and Jewish Perceptions : Robert Brym

 

Never Put Off Until Today What You Should have Said Yesterday

"There is a difference between peaceful protest and hateful intimidation."

"It is unconscionable to glorify the antisemitic violence and murder perpetrated by Hamas on October 7th."

"This rhetoric has no place in Canada. This is not who were are."

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

Anti-Israel protest in Ottawa on April 20, 2024. Photo by Dacey Media

A message of condemnation. From the Prime Minister of Canada. After months of often more muted messages of hate, threats, viral antisemitism. At no time did this man who for too long has been the executive leader of Canada see fit to condemn antisemitism without linking it to his cautions against 'Islamophobia'. Puzzling, given that Muslims in Canada face very few obstacles to living an inclusive, normal life of acceptance and equality. While at the same time Palestinian agitators have sought every opportunity to slander Israel, deny that Hamas is a terrorist entity, and harass Jewish-Canadians.

And nor is he the sole politician in Canada to look the other way and murmur approval of Canada's laws justifying free speech, even though there are other laws that condemn and criminalize the deliberate spread of racism, hate expressed against an identifiable group as an indictable offence. The steady growth of a Muslim demographic in Canada make them an impressive voting bloc, one recognized all too readily by politicians more concerned over their re-election than representing basic security issues.

This past Saturday downtown Ottawa saw swarms of masked anti-Israel protesters marching, waving banners, and flags, chanting directly before Parliament Hill to support the terrorist attacks in southern Israel that took place on October 7, 2023, killing over a thousand innocent civilian Israelis, mass-raping girls and women, mutilating their tortured bodies and slaughtering them, then taking hundreds of children, women and the elderly as hostages back with them to Gaza where it became a celebratory event.

 

Ottawa police’s hate crime unit is investigating allegations of hate speech at a pro-Palestinian rally on Parliament Hill over the weekend, where some participants were heard chanting in support of the deadly Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack in Israel.

 

"Our resistance and attacks are proof that we are almost free. October 7 is proof that we're almost free. Long live October 7. Long live the intifada. Long live every form of resistance", shouted one of the speakers. So, after all, this is Canada. The Canada that we never realized existed. But it does. And Jews in Canada are being hounded, harassed, threatened while their places of worship are vandalized, Jewish children entering their parochial school are cursed and shouted at, Jewish university students ostracized.

There was a time, early on, long before that fateful October 7, when a strong leader would have expressed his condemnation of rising antisemitism and acknowledged its source, and taken steps to criminalize the burgeoning racism splitting Canadian society. Having done nothing of the kind, even when Palestinian 'students' in Canada began organizing 'pro-Palestinian' marches celebrating the savagery visited on Israelis by Palestinian terrorist groups starting the very day following the carnage in southern Israel, the haters took it as tacit approval.

The prime minister who cannot condemn the scourge of rising and rampant antisemitism emanating from within the Canadian-Muslim demographic, without also parenthetically mentioning 'Islamophobia' has, in very fact, supported the antisemitism he has done nothing to tame, to adequately censure, to reassure Canadian Jews that their place in Canada is assured, safe and secure because Canadians care and Canadian politicians are determined to ensure that Canada remains a nation where justice and equality are not just words but conditions applicable to all its citizens.

To them a badge of dishonour by their lack of concern, by their lack of remedial action, by their lack of assurances to Canadian Jewry that Canada is their home, a place of origin where they are appreciated, where they are safe and free from threats and violence.

Police are investigating allegations of hate speech used at a pro-Palestinian rally in downtown Ottawa on Saturday. (Radio-Canada/Maxim Saavedra-Ducharmes)

The Rise of Antisemitism in Canada

"We think the situation [rampant antisemitism] now is more critical [currently than was the case in 2021 at Canada's first antisemitism summit], and we point to police statistics to make our case."

"We feel that our demand [to convene a second national antisemitism summit] will be well-received by elected officials."

"It's critical to get stakeholders all at the same table."

"The fight against antisemitism is everyone's fight."

Marvin Rotrand, interim director-general, United Against Hate Canada

 

"We know that an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us."

"If someone hates a person for being Jewish, they're going to hate me for being Chinese, someone else for being Filipino, and so on."

"The action summit must address the alleged confusion about what that chant ["From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free"] means and remove the excuse for inaction, so that the people we trust to keep us safe and uphold our laws can do so with full clarity." 

Member of Parliament Kevin Vuong

Ottawa police officers keep watch as crews clean anti-Israel grafitti painted on the office tower housing the Israeli embassy on O'Connor Street in downtown Ottawa, Ont. on Monday, April 15, 2024. Photo by Bryan Passifiume /Postmedia Network

A call has arisen to convene a second Canadian national antisemitism summit in the wake of the wave of antisemitism that has swept through Canada following the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack in southern Israel that left 1,200 Israeli children, women, men, and the elderly dead. A sinister paroxysm of sadistic savagery unlike anything witnessed before, as Palestinian terrorists gang-raped, mutilated and murdered girls and women in Israel, and burned families alive in their homes on that unforgettable day.

An open letter signed by 200 politicians, community and spiritual leaders called for another antisemitism summit. With it came a motion set to be tabled in the Senate of Canada. A call for Canada's antisemitism envoy, Deborah Lyons via an open letter, urged that a follow-up meeting to continue the work of the initial summit held by former envoy Irwin Cotler, Canada's long-time and premier human rights campaigner, to be slated as soon as possible.

After hundreds of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, along with PLO terrorists rampaged through kibbutzim located close to the border with Gaza, a campaign of hate, threats and intimidation erupted throughout Canada, with Palestinians and other Arabs living in Canada as citizens organized 'pro-Palestinian' protests in the immediate wake of the savagery committed by Palestinians. Following which such protests became frequent episodes of anti-Israel, anti-Jewish hate-fests.

Incidents of such hate expressed against Canadian Jews more than doubled in Toronto where antisemitism has become the most reported hate crime for years, compared to last year's statistics. Across Canada other cities report as well significant increases since October 7 of anti-Jewish hate-fests. In Ottawa, the office tower where the Israeli embassy is located saw vandals spray-paint anti-Israel graffiti on the building exterior.

Simultaneously a group of anti-Israel protesters once again shut down an intersection south of the embassy, evidently a coordinated effort to create 'economic blockades' against nations considered to be supportive of Israel. Sitting and retired politicians at all levels of government, mayors, school trustees, cultural and ethnic groups and faith leaders were among the 200 individuals who signed the open letter. 

 

Among them MP Kevin Vuong who emphasized that combating antisemitism requires commitment and action, not merely words and platitudes. The call for a summit saw a motion tabled in the Senate by Senator Leo Housakos.

 

Senate of Canada

"We cannot allow antisemitism to become normalized, and we cannot allow the haters to believe they can act with impunity."

"It is totally unacceptable that the Jewish community, whose history dates to the foundation of our country and who have contributed so much to Canada's well-being and success, should feel unsafe in their own communities."

Senator Leo Housakos

May His Memory Be As A Blessing

"Irving Abella was a quintessential Canadian Jewish leader."

"He was wise, articulate, engaging, bold and forward-thinking. His inspirational leadership has become his legacy."

"For me, he was my mentor and teacher. May his memory always be for a blessing."

Bernie Farber, former CEO, Canadian Jewish Congress, chair, Canadian Anti-Hate Network

Irving Abella, Professor Emeritus, York University. speaks during the media preview of St. Louis – Ship of Fate at the Canadian War Museum. in March, 2018. Photo by Errol McGihon /Postmedia

 

During the Second World War and the Holocaust years, Canada, like many other free and democratic countries was no friend of the diaspora Jewish community in their worldwide dispersal, nor where Jews made their home in Canada. Undeniably, Canada was a typical European-centric racist society at the time. Canadian hostility and distrust of and unequal treatment of Blacks, Indigenous, Chinese, Japanese and Jewish communities within Canada was inhumane in denying them equality within the larger community. 

Irving Abella -- who at age 82, after a distinguished life as a scholar, historian, academic, author and activist died following a long illness -- wrote a seminal accounting of Canada's record during the most anguished period of Jewish existentialism. It was thanks to his revelations of Canada's dire shortcomings in humanitarianism and his urging of later governments in Canada to aid people fleeing the spectre of group-targeted death due to ideology, religious persecution, conflict that a turnabout occurred.

Writing an accounting of Canada's war-time response to the desperate pleas of Jews attempting to escape the genocidal schemes of Nazi German, Irving Abella co-wrote None is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe 1933 - 1948, with co-author Harold Troper. Revealing details of the forgotten episode of Canada's anti-immigrant stance at a time when Jews were viciously persecuted by a horrendous group death threat now known as the Holocaust which claimed six million European Jewish lives.

Canada -- during the years 1933 when the German Nazi party rose to power, and 1948, when the state of Israel was created -- accepted a mere five thousand Jewish refugees to enter the country, described as the "worst record of any nation in the world". In 1939, the German ship MS St.Louis with almost a thousand desperate Jewish refugees aboard hoping to find refuge from Nazi genocidal intentions was refused docking privileges in one country after another, nor were those on board given entry to Canada. 

 

Refugees aboard the St. Louis wait to hear whether Cuba will grant them entry. Off the coast of Havana, Cuba, June 3, 1939.  National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD

An official in the government of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King at the time, Frederick Blair, responsible for the government's immigration portfolio, rejected appeals by Canadian leaders to permit the ship to dock in Halifax. Blair's blatant and blistering distaste for Jews was in evidence as the architect of restrictive immigration policies, and had the imprimatur of the Liberal government of William Lyon Mackenzie King. 

'Refugees aboard the St.Louis as they arrive in Belgium in 1939.  Courtesy American Joint Distribution Committee

 

The book detailing events of Canada's response to the dire situation facing European Jews and the government's refusal to admit entry to any attempting to escape their fate became "an ethical yardstick against which contemporaneous government policies are gauged". Former immigration minister Ron Atkey in the late 1970s was sent an advance copy of some of the book's chapters at a time when the country was debating how it might react to the crisis of Vietnamese refugees, known as Boat People.

Reading details of the former government of Canada's lack of humanitarian decision-making to give aid to the Jews of Europe, Immigration Minister Atkey decades later saw to it that Canada welcomed tens of thousands of new citizens, the very Boat People whose plight faintly echoed that of Jews during World War Two, desperate to find haven. At the opposite side of the ledger, Irving Abella found it contemptible that postwar Canada accepted thousands of Nazi collaborators and war criminals.

 

Waffen-SS Division "Galicia" was formed by the Nazis in order to support the falling regime. The Ukrainian Central Committee supported this idea with enthusiasm despite the cost of collaboration with the totalitarian regime and its criminal nature.

 

Members of the Waffen-SS Galicia Division, Ukrainian fascists who found common cause with the Third Reich's aspirations -- as nationalists and fascists themselves. Ukrainian fascists who shared the Third Reich's contempt for Jewish lives and lent themselves to rounding up and murdering Jews as an assigned duty they found quite acceptable to their own core racist values.

In stark contrast to the locked gates-of-entry Jews found looking for a home in Canada, Irving Abella pointed out that entry to Canada was relatively straightforward for SS members. Their trademark tattoo indicating their anti-communist sentiments worked in their favour. As a professor at York University, Irving Abella spent his career teaching history, holding the position of Shiff Professor of Canadian Jewish History at the conclusion of his teaching career.

He was married to Rosalie Silberman Abella, former Supreme Court of Canada justice, the first Jewish woman and first refugee to sit on the Supreme Court of Canada. Irving Abella held honours making him a member of the Order of Canada and a member of the Order of Ontario as well as being a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada; awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal in 2002.