Jewish Voices, Jewish Angst, Canadian Jewish Reality

"We have to be open-eyed that the [Liberal-led Canadian] government is not a reliable partner."

"Security is foundational, but insufficient. I don't want to be a hostage in my own shul the rest of my life."

"In terms of standing up for Jewish rights -- for Jews to be proudly and openly Jewish, and proud Zionists -- that's something we have to support ourselves. It's not that long ago that prime minister Trudeau stood up and proclaimed he was a Zionist. But his successor did not say the same thing, and that's telling."

Rabbi Adam Cutler, Adath Israel synagogue, Toronto

 

"[Carney] scattered crumbs of concern, and acted like it was a feast."

"[The Prime Minister was] playing a politically charged 4D chess game. He moved his knight, and now we respond, as a Jewish community by moving our queen."

"[Whereas Carney] came on our turf to lecture us, to have us listen to our own problems [community leaders as a group should meet Carney on Parliament Hill and] have him sit and listen to us, while we tell him the real roots of the problems, and offer our own recommendations. All with the cameras on, too."

Matthew Taub, director Unapologetically Jewish advocacy group

 

"The prime minister's speech at Toronto's Holy Blossom synagogue on June 1 was the latest in a] series of slaps in the face [from the prime ministers to the Jewish community.] It's all up to us now. I would like to see the community proactively mobilized, for sure."

"I think that what we're failing to do is show up in large numbers ... I think that this is partially the failure of our own leadership."

"When the encampments went up, what was the reaction? Handwringing and feeling terrible. But the number of people who actually showed up to confront the people involved in the encampment was minimal."

"It's just that our own numbers stay home. Maybe it's exhaustion, but we're not, to be honest, doing our part to defend ourselves."

"If we want to have standing the community, it's not going to be given to  us. We have to stand up and demand it."

Michael Teper, president, Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation 

A poster against antisemitism seen on International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in Markham, Ontario, Canada, on March 22, 2025. (Creative Touch Imaging Ltd/NurPhoto via Reuters)

 

The Jewish community is still reeling with abandoned hope in the wake of the prime minister of their country of birth abandoning his responsibility to serve and protect all the people of the country without fear or favour, equally and with the full powers of his executive position. They heard a speech recounting everything they already know; that their community is in grave danger; that threats have given way to dangerous violence; being visibly Jewish in the larger Canadian community has brought out the vitriolic hatred of antisemites, spurred to expression by a burgeoning Muslim population now representing 5 percent of the Canadian population; 10 percent in Toronto, according to 2021 figures.

 

That number has grown even larger in the past five years, with the total Muslim-Canadian population now approaching two million as opposed to a Jewish-Canadian population of 400,000. Where demographic voting blocs are concerned, clearly there is an advantage in catering to one that has four times the ballot box potential of the other. So, while Mr. Carney decried the shootings and fire-bombings at Jewish houses of worship and schools, the vandalism at community centres and Jewish-owned businesses, never once did he hint at the source of these -- like the campus anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian camps harassing Jewish faculty and staff -- Muslim-incited.

 

Photo Credit: Matt Gurney

 

"Canada's civic compact is failing Jewish Canadians", said the prime minister, yet from his attitude of condemnation and empathy, never did he hint at the foundational cause; the importation of cultural/religious Jew-hate courtesy of immigrants, refugees, illegal migrants and student visas emanating from the Middle East and North Africa -- emigrants bringing with them part of their heritage that rejects Canadian social norms and values. One can commiserate with the plight of Canadian Jews, but never betray the source of their affliction. 

 

"We have nothing to expect from this government. They've made it very clear they're not interested in supporting the Jewish community. They've made it very clear that they don't really even see much of a problem", stated Amir Epstein, director of pro-Israel advocacy group Tafsik, based in Toronto. It has been during the past decade, matching the latest tenure of the Liberals as government in Canada, that the Canadian-Muslim population has approached such heights of community size. And never has the federal government intervened even once to do its part to put a stop to the venomous racist campaign demonizing Israel and Jewish Canadians.

 

In May alone the prime minister admonished Israel, had a 'cordial phone call' with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to congratulate him on the PA's ripening (absent) democratic credentials, then a call to Israeli President Isaac Herzog that left much to be desired in terms of friendly relationships of mutual trust. The icing on the cake was Louise Arbour's choice as the next governor general, who as UN human rights chief, UN Watch pointed out her repeated singling out of Israel as a 'human rights abuser' reflecting her sympathies with Palestinian victimhood.

 

A large anti-Israel protest in Ottawa in August. Photo by Ashley Fraser /Postmedia

 

Her support for a regional human rights charter equating Zionism with racism helped Israel bashers feel entitled and diminished the impact of Israel's responses to terrorist violence as a self-defense reality. Rabbi Yael Splansky of the synagogue where Carney's speech took place had her own solution as an offering to remedy the situation: "Every peace-loving, democracy-loving Canadian ought to make antisemitism their concern and make their voices heard by their own elected leaders The Jewish community has been doing this work for years, but we cannot do it alone. Because antisemitism has been allowed to seep into Canadian waters, only a groundswell response can turn back the tide."

 

And there are other potential responses that could go a long way to solving these problems: Ottawa should "name the problem clearly .. antisemitism in Canada is being driven in significant part by anti-Israel and anti-Zionist hatred." The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs suggests: "ensure that terrorist organizations, their proxies, and their adherents cannot operate here. Public funds should not support organizations that initiate or promote hatred against the Jewish community. This must include addressing the weaponization of national institutions, including the Canada Revenue Agency and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights." 

 

Following his speech on antisemitism at Toronto's Holy Blossom synagogue June 1, 2026 Prime Minister Mark Carney met with Jewish leaders including (left) Noah Shack, CEO of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, and Anna Shternshis, head of the Jewish Studies department at the University of Toronto. Carney said Canadian Jews are being "brutally targeted by hatred". (Photo by Ellin Bessner/The CJN.)

 

"This isn't a time to shrink back, but to further engage elected officials. It's time for all of us to be active and make sure that they're hearing directly from us, and that we are doing our part in the equation to push them to do their part."

"Regardless of what party they're from, regardless of what part of the country you're in, their job is to listen to you, and represent you in the Parliament or the legislature or city hall."

Noah Shack, CEO, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs 

Canada Transformed Under Its Liberal Government

"I remind the Muslims: Do you ever think that the Jewish community can also retaliate? You know, have they gone and burned halal meat stores? Look at all the Muslim businesses. Have they targeted them?"

"They don't retaliate. And this is the big difference. While it's hate on one side, the other side is just so busy defending themselves and looking for ways to make peace."

"[The protesters are] not so much pro-Palestine, as much as they hate [Israel]. [If] these people were saying, let's have peace, let's have a ceasefire, it would make sense [but that's not what they're saying]."

Raheel Raza, president, Council of Muslims Against Antisemitism 

 

"Islamist extremist groups exploited [Hamas's October 7 massacre in Israel and the ensuing way in Gaza to] organize, mobilize support, take part in demonstrations [and] engage in agitation on social media."

"This was orchestrated by domestic interests -- including followers of Salafism, which is described as] the Islamist extremist movement with the largest number of adherents in Germany [and foreign terrorist groups such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and Vancouver-based Samidoon]."

"[Some of these groups began working together for the first timer after October 7, with their] antisemitic ideas [forming the] common denominator in the ideology of the entire Islamist extremist spectrum."

"[In Germany and neighbouring countries, numerous attacks were planned or carried out by] lone actors with Islamist extremist motives [proving that] Islamist terrorism continues to pose a threat."

Report on the Protection of the Constitution, German government 

 

"I suspect Canadian police forces consider such information potentially inflammatory."

"Just as crime statistics categorized by race of perpetrator have been used to identify biases in the criminal justice system, information on the religious and ethnic identity of perpetrators of hate crime can be used to provide certain categories of the population with educational support, thus helping to ameliorate the problem."

Robert Brym, professor emeritus, University of Toronto 

Prime Minister Mark Carney is flanked by members of his security detail as he delivers remarks at Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto on Monday, June 1 2026. Chris Young/The Canadian Press.

 

Under the latest iteration in a succession of Liberal governments in Canada it has become clear that a government that once never hesitated to state its friendship and support for a sister democracy recognized in Israel has taken great pains in the last decade to distance itself from the Jewish state and at the same time alienate Jewish Canadians by its deliberate oblivious attitude to the groundswell of antisemitism that has washed ashore along with the welcome of immigrants, refugees, illegal migrants and foreign students studying at Canadian academic institutions hailing from the Middle East and North Africa.

 

A Canadian government at present that has blinkered itself from its constitutional obligations to ensure the security of all sectors of its population base. The rising tide of violence against Jewish institutions that has seen synagogues and Jewish schools firebombed and shot at, Jewish-owned businesses vandalized, university campuses housing anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian camps harassing the Jewish professoriate and students, issuing threats and slurs, intimating another Holocaust, with crowds of protesters thronging the streets chanting 'final solution' and 'from the river to the sea', roiling the social order, elicits a mild condemnation of antisemitism, invariably coupled with rejection of 'Islamophobia' from government leaders.

 

A person holds a sign while marching during a pro-Palestine rally marking the anniversary of a Hamas attack on Israel, in Vancouver, on Monday, October 7, 2024. Ethan Cairns/The Canadian Press.

 

Canada has become a hotbed of Islamist extremism, with a loud and hateful (hopefully) minority of its two million Muslim citizens and  residents of the country seething with Jew-hate and openly demonstrating their contempt for Judaism in the guise of anti-Zionism, a hundred-year-old modern movement to reclaim Judean ancestral land as a reborn heritage homeland for the world's Jewish diaspora, ceaselessly threatened throughout the millennia. Zionism has become fundamental to Jewish thought for it speaks of memory and longing and a fervent wish for a geographic place that is Jewish, where the pogroms that haunted Jewish life for an eternity could be safeguarded against.

 

Even that hope  has been dashed time and again by the incandescent hate emanating from Israel's neighbours in the Middle East; now reduced to a  degree from neghbouring states, but taken up with a murderous vengeance by the fundamentalist Islamist groups that are funded, armed and protected by states such as Iran, Qatar and Turkey and their non-state terror groups whose sole function is to achieve the destruction of the Jewish state. Arabs identifying themselves as Palestinians, aided and abetted by the powerful global institution of the United Nations have endlessly attacked Israel, culminating in a bloody massacre on 7 October 2023 which led to Israel's invasion of the Gaza Strip to rout out Hamas which led that savage incursion into southern Israel.

 

Jews in Israel and worldwide, soon seeing the evidence of sadistic torture of innocent Israeli civilians, with girls and women mutilated then mass-raped and murdered, families set afire in their community homes as a mass atrocity of unthinkable brutality took place, might have felt that the world would be moved by their tragedy, but such was not the case. The viral antipathy of Israel defending itself and its people, responding to the mass atrocity with a determination to seek justice by military means of defence and counteroffensive, soon realized that even the evidence produced by the terrorists filming their own predatory obscenities made little difference.

 

Palestinians have been forgiven their descent into feral barbarism; Jews are condemned for their response in defence of their existence. The slanderous blood libels of Israeli 'genocide' against Palestinians have won the public relations gold cup. Few are prepared to outright state that the virulently threatening antisemitism now common on the streets of Canadian cities are the result of permitting people with a culture of Jew-hate and an ideological-religious inability to honour the values and laws of a democratic Western government are being perpetrated by bigoted, hate-mongering Islamists.  

 

A bullet hole is seen in a front door at Temple Emanu-El in Toronto on March 3, 2026. The temple was one of three Toronto-area Jewish sites targeted by gunfire in less than a week. Photo by Peter J. Thompson / National Post

 

Should such accusations of source emanate from Jews themselves, despite that those who are attacked clearly identify their attackers as Muslim, and when law enforcement does step in in response to egregious attacks, names of the transgressors are clearly identifiable as Muslim, charges of racism and Islamophobia ring forth. The firm reluctance of Canadian governments at all levels to admit that the presence of unregenerated racists whose first and only loyalty is to Islam and its Koranic passages of anti-Jewish denigration and loathing links directly to the politics of voter loyalty at the ballot box.  

"I call it the new antisemitism. All those Islamist organizations who don't get along with each other come together with one cause -- the hate for Israel and the Jewish community. So they justify it."
"It's quite clear that the major funders of these rallies while the head of the snake of course, is Iran, and through its proxies, through its organizations, through its mosques they channel the funding." 

"This is not something that just happened on October 8; this is something that has been in the works and been planned for years before October 7."

"As far as vandalism and shootings that target Jewish businesses and synagogues, there generally isn't enough publicly available information to draw a straight through-line between such incidents and [the] protest circuit."

"It's all happening in an atmosphere of increased animosity toward Jewish people and groups with 'Jewish' effectively being a stand-in for 'Zionist'."

Raheel Raza 

 

 

The Jewish Ghetto and Underground Bunkers of Bedzin, Poland

Polish volunteers searching through the rubble of the attic of the Ghetto House, AP

 

"This armband is a witness, it's like directly touching that evil which people created for other people."

"[Seeing it felt like a] jolt."

"Whether building bunkers or trying to hide a child or an aging parent, this is all resistance [resistance beyond shooting back at Nazis]."

"This Jewish history, for me, gave meaning to this town [Bedzin, Poland]."

Karolina Jakowenko, Cukerman's Gate Foundation

 

"The entry to the bunker was through the kitchen oven."

"We are not aware any of the people here survived ... when the Nazis discovered this place."

"Perhaps as many as 60 were hiding here."

Piotr Jakowenko, Bedzin, Poland

 

"There are only a few authentic places in Europe where Jews hid that have been preserved."

"But in those cases, the story is usually told from the perspective of he righteous -- those who saved Jews."

"[In Bedzin, the preserved hiding place was organized by Jews themselves]."

Joanna Krol-Komla, POLIN Museum of the History of the Polish Jews in Warsaw

Hebrew prayerbook, 1934, found in the attack of the Bedzin Ghetto Fighters Memorial, May 29, 2025, AP

 

Among the findings in a house in southern Poland used by Jews, including youth members of the resistance, to hide from the Nazis, a secret bunker, an underground tunnel and a star of David armband are included as remnants testifying to the desperate hope of survival during the Holocaust years of World War II. The two-story red brick house in the town of Bedzin inside the former Jewish ghetto served as a "kibbutz" organized by left-wing Zionist youth; a network relying on one another in hopes of survival. 

 

The key words; survival, resistance and occupiers describing the Jewish existential dilemma when Fascist Germany embarked on a Final Solution to rid the continent of its Jewish population, have long since been coopted by Palestinians claiming them as their original victimhood spurs. Jews never embraced the victimhood mantra in perpetuity; that is the only authentic Palestinian propaganda message skillfully utilized by Arab Palestinians to promote their 'cause' of destroying the Jewish state, claiming the geographic Judean patrimony as their own.

 

Ms. Jakowenko and her colleagues cleared the attic of the house preparing it for renovation by lifting floorboards and collecting the rubble, then carefully examining what remained. Objects they discovered included a 1935 Jewish prayerbook, and a Star of David armband. Last year the Cukerman's Gate Foundation discovered the presence of a bunker and underground tunnel on the house's grounds, working with the memoirs and oral histories of survivors with respect to their historical presence. 

 

Star of David armband, AP

 

As the hideouts were revealed, the property was carefully examined, with evidence suggesting the existence of three bunkers. One of the volunteers who assisted with the search, Wojciech Mazan, explained the work was gruelling but mirrored the massive energy it took as the Jewish youth laboured, in digging out the tunnels and bunkers. "We feel some closeness to them in this energy. The house is speaking to us", he stated. 

 

Prior to the outbreak of war, the town of Bedzin's population included 27,000 Jews, representing half its population. Nazi occupation in 1942 saw authorities creating Jewish ghettos. The house located in the ghetto area represents an episode of Jewish resistance  in Nazi-occupied Poland, not completely dissimilar to that of the Warsaw Ghetto liquidation following its uprising in 1943; there were other areas across Poland of Ghetto resistance. 

 

When the Nazis began the destruction of the Bedzin ghetto in the summer of 1943, the Jews in hiding there managed to smuggle in beforehand about 20 guns to amass an arsenal in the knowledge that the Warsaw Ghetto had already been liquidated. The Bedzin Jews were aware they would not survive, some among them choosing to die shooting back at the Nazis.

 

Poland was home to Europe's largest Jewish population prior to the Second World War. Nazi Germany, responsible for the Holocaust, occupied Poland, and Poland still struggles with the knowledge that Polish neighbours of Jews involved themselves in local pogroms targeting Jews. This local community in Bedzin, however, actively works to revive its Jewish history. 

 

Entrance of  the underground hideout of Jewish residents of the 1943 Jewish ghetto in Bedzin, AP

 

Transwomen and Correctional Service Canada's Decision-Making

"[There is recognition that the placement of gender-diverse offenders in its institutions] is a complex and evolving area of operations."

"[Correctional Service Canada] continues to adapt its practices and respond to emerging issues."

"[Each transfer request is] assessed on a case-by-case basis."

"[We consider risks to other offenders and staff] particularly in relation to a history of gender-based violence or sexual violence [and] risks to the offender's personal safety."

"CSC has the authority to transfer an offender to a more suitable institution at any point, if deemed necessary."

"[Involuntary transfer decisions] are not automatic and are not based on gender identity." 

Correctional Service Canada

 

"It's not transphobic to speak about reality and women deserve to be protected. And it's also not transphobic to say, 'Hey, this isn't working'."

"You have two groups of people who have competing rights here, and it's women that are being harmed."

"I felt very violated, and I also felt that it's the duty of the correctional system to provide safety for us, because we are locked in an institution where we cannot leave and we have no recourse to protect ourselves." 

Heather Mason, non-trans woman, in and out of prison on drug-related offences 

 

"I think this speaks to the question of the policy on paper versus the policy in reality."

"Women who are trans or Two Spirit or gender non-conforming in another way, who feel that an institution for women best aligns with their gender, are being prevented from having that placement." 

Nicole Kief, executive director, Prisoners' Legal Services, British Columbia 

The Investigative Journalism Bureau, University of Toronto

 

Amanda Joy Cooper who as a biological male threatened a girl roller-skating by issuing to her a threat that "I'll rape you". He attacked a young woman at the same parking lot a day later, and two days following that he assaulted a 19-year-old woman at a bus shelter. Even before these incidents he had been convicted of multiple sexual assaults. In federal custody in 1985, he sexually touched female prison staff and then sexually assaulted a female parole officer. Designated a dangerous offender in 2001, he now identifies as a woman.

 

While in prison, gender-affirming surgery described by the Canadian Society of Plastic Surgeons as surgery to help a person "physically actualize their internal sense of self", was carried out. Now, he wants to be transferred from Ontario's Millhaven Institution's maximum security prison for men, to the Fraser Valley Institute for Women, in British Columbia. 

 

His and other similar cases are set to be reviewed on June 15, by a Federal Court judge, part of a growing debate over handling inmates requesting prison placement based not on anatomy, but on gender identity. A debate that pits transgender women's wishes to be placed in an institution that their gender identity matches with, against, on the other hand, the security and privacy concerns of natal women housed in those institutions. In 2017 Correctional Service Canada instituted a policy change to align with federal legislation prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity. 

 

The rate of transfer approvals, according to data obtained by the Investigative Journalism Bureau and written about by journalist Courtney Greenberg, is now 23 percent. There were 57 transwomen from 2017 to 2025 making 129 requests to transfer to a women's prison, 35 of which were approved. Over 70 requests were denied during that time frame. As of October 2025, 90 transgender women were housed in federal prisons, 73 of them placed in men's prisons, 17 in women's prisons. Eight of the 17 have undergone gender-affirming surgery.

 

Fallon Aubee, a former inmate, was the first trans woman to be transferred to a women’s prison. Photo by Nick Procaylo /Postmedia

 

Of those 17 transgender women, criminal offences include murder, assault with a weapon, manslaughter, arson, forcible confinement, sexual interference of minors, and printing or publishing child pornography --according to the Correctional Service of Canada records.  Of the 17, two transwomen are documented as dangerous offenders; they were convicted of a serious violent or sexual crime, and consequently may pose a threat to others.

 

Transwomen were found to make up 80 percent of gender-diverse offenders with sexual offence histories, according to a CSC 2022 study. For the most part, such offences occurred while offenders were "living as their biological sex"; most of their victims were children and women. Whereas most female offenders stand accused of nonviolent crimes; property crimes making up the largest proportion, followed by drug offences, according to a Statistics Canada report dated 2018. 

 

The Investigative Journalism Bureau found that Michelle Autumn, a transwoman, was removed from a federal women's prison following transfer. A life sentence in 2007 was given for first-degree murder where Michelle Autumn at age 17 and living as a male, lured a 13-year-old Edmonton girl to a golf course where he and a group of others sexually assaulted and murdered the girl. In early March of 2025 Autumn was transferred to Grand Valley Institution for Women where, during a strip search, Autumn "exhibited highly inappropriate behaviour", playing with her genitalia "in a sexually suggestive manner". Four days later, she was transferred back to a men's prison.

  

Macdonald Laurier Institute

 

"There is no substantial evidence to support a prison placement policy that permits transgender prisoners to choose the prison in which they will serve their time."

"But we do have a mounting number of specific instances where women have been directly harmed as a result of such policies."

"Women prisoners who are retraumatized by the presence of male bodied individuals – especially in rehabilitation programs that may well be discussing male violence – cannot simply leave and find another group to attend."

"To ask an already marginalized demographic to bear the burden of risk, the possibility of retraumatization, and the loss of dignity and privacy in order to validate the sense of identity and subjectivity of a relatively small number of individuals is, perhaps, the wrong balance of competing rights."

Jo Phoenix, Professor of Criminology, Open University, London   

 

Antisemitism in Our 'Free and Democratic Society': A Canary's Song

Peter L. Biro, University of Toronto

"[Massey College wanted a needless [advisory committee to vet [an antisemitism conference] ."

"A good portion of Canadian society is utterly oblivious to the fact that our current age represents the next great transmutation of Jew-hatred in human history."

"That only underscores the critical importance of this conference." 

"[Everything for the conference production was developed in] full cooperation with and the full contemporaneous knowledge of the Principal, beginning in mid-January and continuing through to May 27."

"[The Massey College president's concerns are] absolutely false."

"[Massey's concern is] one of substance rather than one of process [from] undisclosed senior members of the College about whether the subject of antisemitism is being curated in an appropriate fashion, [and] about whether the salient issues are being framed in a politically and socially appropriate way." 

University of Toronto Law Professor Peter Biro 

 

"When Massey was first approached by Mr. Biro with his written draft conference proposal on antisemitism, after some conversation, I agreed to hold a programmed conference on antisemitism. I welcomed the initiative and told Mr. Biro that Massey would engage in a process of consultation about the proposed conference."

"[We -- he and Biro -- had] two meetings on the proposed conference [during which he] particularly emphasized the centrality of consultation and collaboration in defining the agenda and speakers, and my responsibility as Principal to seek appropriate advice, and that I would do this."

"Unfortunately, Mr. Biro did not check back on the process of consultation. I had begun that process of consultation with colleagues, when I was informed by email that all Mr. Biro's proposed speakers had been invited, that the Prime Minister of Canada had been invited, and that a partnership with another organization had been established."

"Much of the necessary collaborative process was ignored. In a subsequent phone call with Mr. Biro, he informed me that the agenda was fixed, that he was moving the conference to another venue, and that he was resigning from the College."

Massey College principal James Orbinski  

Peter Biro quits Massey College over conference vetting dispute  MSN

 

 A respected and highly esteemed professor at University of Toronto, in view of an unprecedented tsunami of viral antisemitism that has swept through Canadian academia, along with Canadian society at large, thought the time was right and appropriate to launch a conference on the subject to view and analyze the phenomenon that was roiling the social order in Canada and producing a hostile atmosphere for Jewish Canadians, in an attempt to make sense of what is happening. To that end, the professor invited speakers whose comprehensive insider knowledge of the subject would help in the search for a solution to the untenable situation. 

 

Yet the one-day conference titled Antisemitism in Our 'Free and Democratic Society': A Canary's Song, scheduled to take place at Massey College on September 15, as was discussed on a number of occasions between Professor Biro and the College principal, James Orbinski, must first undergo a close scrutiny to ensure that Massey College, linked with the University of Toronto, but separate from it, not be taken off guard by the conference content, its presenter, and invited speakers, intended to closely investigate all those involved, along with their purpose. Mr. Orbinski also took exception to the fact that the conference would be held in conjunction with and under the auspices of, another group.

 

Specifically taking umbrage that arrangements were made with the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights as co-host. Canada's former special envoy on Holocaust remembrance and combatting antisemitism, Deborah Lyons was to be the feature speaker In addition to which the Raoul Wallenberg Centre's founder Irwin Cotler, a renowned human rights activist, and former Justice Minister and Canadian Attorney-General, alongside American Holocaust historian and diplomat Deborah Lipstadt. Altogether a cast of accredited speakers of great international repute. 

 

That the College principal felt it a requirement that this conference, its agenda, and its roster of speakers required vetting, to ensure that the reputation of Massey College remained safely intact from criticism is beyond belief. Surely, the spectre of Critical Race Theory, DEI and wokeism are alive and well at Massey. This ideological trifecta that spurns the social, legal and historical equality of Jews, preferring to regard them as 'colonialist Imperialists' guilty of crimes against humanity past and present, must have spurred Principal Orbinski to action, in the opinion that he had the right and an obligation to verify the appropriateness of the conference, its agenda and its speakers.

 

This is what Canadian universities have descended to; declined from their purpose as institutions of higher learning no longer valid, but venues for ideological totalitarianism which celebrates the rights of Indigenous peoples everywhere to rise against their oppressors. Israel, in this context, seen as a genocidal oppressor, though it sits on ancestral Judean land and has been under attack by its neighbours from its very re-dedication in 1948 to the present, while representing the very epitome of indigeneity.  

"Our academic institutions and government are willing to address antisemitism only insofar as the discussion sanitizes the connection between Judaism and the land of Israel."

Chemistry Professor Dvira Segal, University of Toronto

 

"[This is] an important story of what appears to be an attempt by leadership at Massey College to censor a major conference on antisemitism."

Michael Geist, University of Ottawa law professor 

Life on campus at the University of Toronto has materially changed in recent years, in particular following the Hamas atrocities in southern Israel that took place on October 7, 2023, wryly observed Professor Biro. "Israel vilification has become the currency, cornerstone and language of much of what transpires in the social sciences", said Professor Biro, adjunct professor of law at University of Toronto.  

 

 

Mark Carney...Maliciously Antisemitic ... Or Just Plain Stupid

"The Dutch betrayal mirrors a broader European sickness. Mass immigration from Muslim countries has imported a virulent strain of antisemitism that now crosses all political boundaries."

"Politicians realize only the electoral ramifications: Jewish populations are dwindling and Muslim populations are exploding."

"Post-Holocaust guilt, once a brake on Jew-hatred, has been inverted: many of the descendants of the perpetrators and bystanders now project their unresolved shame onto the surviving Jews and their state."

"The "oppressed" Palestinian has replaced the oppressed Jew as the object of European moral narcissism."

"The Europeans, who never forgave the Jews for Auschwitz, are finally free of guilt."

Wim Kortenoeven, Gatestone Institute 

 

"Our government is building a country in which Jewish Canadians can be visibly, fully, and joyfully Jewish in public life."

"Canada’s fundamental insight is that unity does not require uniformity. We believe our differences are strengths to be nurtured, not risks to be managed. We believe that faith, language, heritage, and tradition are not concessions to citizenship – they are expressions of it."

"Our government will always protect the inalienable right of the Jewish people to live openly in freedom, safety, and dignity. Protection is fundamental, but not sufficient. The Jewish community must be able to flourish in every aspect of Canadian society."

Prime Minister Mark Carney

Prime Minister Mark Carney said 'Canada's civic compact is failing Jewish Canadians,' in a speech on combatting antisemitism and hate on Monday at Toronto's Holy Blossom Temple. 'If that covenant fails one of our communities, it fails us all,'  CBC News

 

"I am against the occupation of civilians. I believe in the Palestinian right of self-determination."

"I believe in a two-state solution."

"[Describing the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade as a terrorist group identifies CanWest news group as [failing its responsibility toward all Canadians, not just Arabs and Muslims."

Former Liberal MP Omar Alghabra 

Fatah's Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade in Kalandiya  Flash 90

 

 The federal Liberal party governing Canada has done nothing to diminish the flood of viral antisemitism that has swept Canada for the past three years in the wake of the devastating Palestinian terrorist incursion into southern Israel on 7 October 2023 led by Hamas which left 1,200 mostly civilian Israelis - children, elderly, women and men along with foreign farm workers dead, women mass-raped, mutilated and murdered, children, the ill and the old, women and men and a handful of IDF personnel taken hostage into Gaza for use in prisoner exchanges. On that fateful day of mass brutality the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade was among the terrorist groups -- Hamas, the PLFP and others who send their operatives in the thousands into Israel.

 

Identity Minister Marc Miller said it was important for the members of the new anti-hate council to be able to have open, frank discussions. (Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press)

 

Now a defender of Hamas and the Al Aqsa Brigade, along with Hezbollah, has been tasked by Canada's prime minister to sit on a federal committee to address the surging anti-Jewish hatred in Canada. On the Ministerial Advisory Council on Rights, Equality and Inclusion will sit Mark Miller, the former immigration minister under whose watch Canada's population swelled in one year by a million through incautious immigration, refugee intake and illegal migration, as well as the issuance of student visas among whose numbers have been radicalized Islamists bringing their cultural fundamentalism along with traditional Jew-hate as baggage. 

 

Stunningly the seven-person committee has one Jewish representative appointed, a former Liberal-appointed Senator, Marc Gold. It is the inclusion, however, of Omar Alghabra and Avnish Nanda, an Edmonton lawyer, that is most astonishingly puzzling for the purpose of the committee. And if this committee's formation was meant to be an assurance to Canadian Jews that their government is finally prepared to address the viral issue of growing antisemitism, it only goes to prove that Wim Kortenoeven's contentions in writing of the Netherlands and the greater European capture by fundamentalist Islamists has application in Canada as well.

 

Former cabinet minister Omar Alghabra is part of the new anti-hate advisory council. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press)

 

Alghabra was formerly president of the Canadian Arab Federation which lobbied to have groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas removed from the official terror entries that Canada lists. "I remember Mr. Alghabra lobbying me, before he was in politics, to keep Hezbollah legal. So I'm not sure that he's the right guy to combat antisemitism", remarked Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre in a massive understatement. Al Aqsa's entry on Canada's terror list calls it an Iran-backed militia founded during the Second Intifada; essentially Fatah's military arm of which Mahmoud Abbas as leader of Fatah, rules.

 

When Yasser Arafat died in 2004, Alghabra stated that "he has played a tremendous role in highlighting the Palestinian struggle for independence and making it visible in the international arena". And Arafat did it in the most violent ways imaginable, through plane and ship highjackings, the murder of Israelis, the Munich massacre, and incitement of Palestinians to become 'martyrs', a role that current PA leader Mahmoud Abbas wields unyieldingly, including that special 'pay for slay' program sacred to Fatah of gifting the murderers of Jews with handsome pensions as rewards for their 'resistance' to the 'occupation', an occupation occasioned by the never-ending violence meted out by Palestinians to Jews living on Judaic ancestral land.  

 

As for Edmonton lawyer Avnish Nanda who defended an anti-Israel encampment established in 2024 on the University of Alberta campus through a Charter challenge, his appointment represents a conundrum as puzzling as that of Alghabra for its elusive rationale. The University of Alberta had ordered Edmonton Police to evict the encampment the organizers called the People's University for Palestine, and two years later a Charter challenge led by two former students and a professor was filed on their behalf by Mr. Nanda. 

 

Filling out the committee's membership is former speedskater Catriona le May Doan, former chief equity officer for the City of Vancouver, Aftab Erfan, Metis right advocate Gary LaPlante and lastly Martine Roy, LFGTQ activist who advocates for 'diversity, inclusion and equity'. This crew of misplaced choices is now set to sit in judgement of a massive rise in antisemitism brought to Canada courtesy of Islamist fundamentalism. One might speculate that their eventual conclusion may be that Jewish Canadians have brought this negativity upon themselves by being Zionists, a crime against humanity. 

 

Two recent alumni and a professor from the University of Alberta have filed a Charter challenge against the university for its removal of the People's University for Palestine encampment in May 2024. The statement of claim asserts that the university violated multiple aspects of the Charter by directing Edmonton Police Service to forcibly remove protesters at the encampment. (Mrinali Anchan/CBC)

 

"Part of this committee is to talk in a way that is open and frank and to tackle issues with a group of people that have spent a good deal of their career being subject to various forms of hate or have been incredible advocates in the field." 

"[He would not parse] through the biographies of individual members [when asked about Nanda]."

"The reality is, without defending any particular point of view, that lawyers are entitled and obligated to do their jobs."

"Coming together in a way that isn't polarizing, I think, is the first step."

Identity Minister Mark Miller 

 

Canadian Jews: The Government of Canada Has Your Back -- With a Knife

"This was an opportunity for the Prime Minister to meet the moment."

"Instead, Canadians heard a speech that described the problem more than it confronted it. The Jewish community did not require another acknowledgment that antisemitism is raging across the country, we needed a plan proportional to the scale of the crisis."

"Canada is not facing an antisemitism awareness problem. Canada has an antisemitism problem. The country has been poisoned with Jew hatred and we need a remedy." 

"The reality is even more severe. For many Jewish Canadians, that civic compact has already failed. The institutions that were supposed to protect them have too often looked away."

"The systems that were supposed to respond have too often failed. The consequences are being felt by Jewish communities from coast to coast, every single day."

Simon Wolle, B’nai Brith Canada's Chief Executive Officer

 

"A country where Jewish schools need security guards, where synagogues need barriers and where Jewish children attend schools hidden behind a protective perimeter is a country that is protecting its citizens, but is failing to protect its civic compact."

"Canada's civic compact is failing Jewish Canadians. If that covenant fails for one of our communities, it fails us all."

"The crisis of antisemitism in Canad today is specific, severe, and demands a targeted response." 

"Our government is fully committed to that response."

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney

Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke at Holy Blossom Temple on June 1, 2026, to announce new efforts to combat antisemitism. (Photo: Mitchell Consky/The CJN)

 

That much-anticipated speech informed its Jewish audience at Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto what they already know. The Prime Minister's statements, however, erred in claiming that his government has committed to respond to the glut of antisemitism that has roiled Canadian society since October 7 of 2023. That day of historical infamy to join the annals of vicious Jew-hate culminating in an orgy of mass extermination of Jewish babies, elders, women and men by rampaging Palestinian terrorists, whose admiring colleagues teaching and studying in Canadian universities, immediately embarked on a mission to blame Israel for the atrocities perpetrated on its people by Arab Muslims, while condoning the sadistic savagery as the actions of a frustrated people whose noble victimhood steered them toward justifiable mass homicide.

 

In the years to follow, the aggravating social dysfunction of Palestinians in Canada and their academic, union and Jew-hating supporters marched in the streets across Canada, damning the nation that suffered a mass atrocity, actively calling for more of the same through globalizing the 'Intifada', while calling for a 'Final Solution' and jeering at Canadian Jews to 'go back to Poland', all demonstrably hatefully aggressive assaults, while waving the flag of the very perpetrators of the mass rapes and slaughter of innocent civilians, along with the flags of terrorist groups proscribed in Canada. No federal action in response ever was launched, but the previous and present prime ministers were quick to condemn this 'unCanadian' antisemitism, while in the same breath condemning 'Islamophobia'.

 

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)

 

For Mark Carney to stand before Jews in a sacred place of worship -- not to him, but to Jews -- and declare that his government is taking steps, at long last, to secure the safety of Canadian Jews is a bald-faced fiction. The conditions in which Jewish Canadians must live, to hide their identities, to ensure that physical measures are in place to protect synagogues, Jewish schools, Jewish-owned businesses, all of which have been vandalized and more, have never been addressed in any measure by authorities, local, provincial or federal. 

 

Toronto in particular has gained an unenviable reputation globally as a place where antisemitic disorder and threats go unnoticed other than by the demographic against whom it is directed. In truth there is no province, no city anywhere in Canada where Jews can feel free to be themselves without continually looking over their shoulders. In approaching medical care, Jews are faced with the prospect of trusting Canadian Muslims to honour the medical code of ethics and care when they know that  among that community there are those who have publicly stated their intention to harm Jews should the opportunity arise.

 

As Prime Minister Mark Carney is set to lay out the government's next steps to combat antisemitism and hate on Monday, Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre called on Carney to apologize 'to the Jewish community for the violence, the terror and the fear that his party and his government have allowed to happen over the last decade.'   CBCNews

 

The inaction of the federal government, its provincial and municipal counterparts to these threats against Jews in Canada has led the Jew-haters to the conclusion that they can say, act out and perform any acts of rejection, fomenting hate and encouraging violence, with no repercussions to follow. The federal government at its executive level has, by its absence, given free rein to any and all would-be abusers of Jews. And for the Liberal prime minister of Canada to present himself, his cabinet and their colleagues as committed to the security of the Jewish population in Canada is an outright fabrication.

 

In stating that his government rejects that issues from abroad in other countries not be brought to bear in Canada, he has himself set the agenda by focusing on Israel in its response to terrorism from Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Iranian regime and others by openly and flagrantly condemning Israel's response to its existential threats; appearing to condone those committing terrorist acts against Israel, he is once again leading the way. Illustrating in his lack of knowledge and concern, that official Canada considers Israel to be the aggressor, and in so doing inciting Muslims in Canada to acts of aggression in Canada against Jews.

 

The man, in his gross ignorance is despicable. He would choke himself to death before admitting that it is the work of Muslims in Canada fuelled and urged on by foreign actors like Qatar, Al Jazeera, the IRGC, the Muslim Brotherhood and their allied partners in cultural Jew-hate that have perpetrated this state of viral unwelcome to Canadian Jews, to the extent that many who love the country and have had no other self-remedy to remain as Canadians, are removing themselves and their families to tear up their Canadian roots for safety and security in other countries, including those experiencing their own imported crises of the mass hysteria of antisemitism.

 

Prime Minister Mark Carney said 'Canada's civic compact is failing Jewish Canadians,' in a speech on combatting antisemitism and hate on Monday at Toronto's Holy Blossom Temple. 'If that covenant fails one of our communities, it fails us all,' Carney said.                     CBC