In a rare move, the Israeli government has released a detailed report singling out Canada as a hotbed of antisemitism since the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel.
Published by the Israeli Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism on Monday, the paper raises the alarm about a record-breaking level of Canadian antisemitism. Since the October 7 terrorist attacks, the report notes, antisemitism in Canada has increased by 670 per cent, with the targeting of Jewish places of worship, community centres and day schools. On Saturday morning, the Bais Chaya Mushka Elementary School, a Toronto Jewish girls’ day school, was shot at for the second time.
The report documents major antisemitic and anti-Israel incidents in Canada since May 2024, including fires set at a Vancouver synagogue and at Toronto’s Leo Baeck Jewish Day School over the summer. A day before the Toronto arson attack in late July, an Orthodox Jewish school bus was destroyed in a fire and a kosher grocery store was defaced with anti-Israel graffiti.
The document categorized more than a dozen notable antisemitic incidents based on a risk-level assessment.
The Israeli ministry classified the stoning of two Toronto synagogues in late June as a red alert, signifying an attack that “could have or did harm a large number of people/community.” By comparison, the daubing of a Jewish cemetery in Montreal with swastikas or the defacement of the city’s Holocaust museum was deemed a yellow alert. Posters demanding Liberal MP Anthony Housefather “get out of Canada” in July were coded green, alongside a Montreal sign proclaiming “Globalize the intifada,” meaning that they were viewed strictly as verbal or written incidents.
Antisemitic acts targeting the Toronto Jewish community were of particular concern to the Israeli government, which the report underscores comprised 19 per cent of identified hate crimes in Canada in 2023.
Jay Solomon, the chief advancement officer for Hillel Ontario, appreciated the attention given to the issue after a difficult academic year which saw Jewish students intimidated and harassed on campuses, particularly at the University of Toronto.
“This has been a very difficult year for Jewish students on campus. Across Ontario, students have reported more than 500 incidents of antisemitism, ranging from graffiti and hateful rhetoric to violent and intimidating occupations of campus. On a daily basis, we continue to hear from students who are being shamefully targeted — both on campus and online — simply for being Jewish. This is unacceptable and counter to the values Canadians hold dear,” Solomon said in a statement.
“Jewish students, like all students, deserve to live and study on campuses free from harassment and discrimination, and we are calling on university leadership and elected officials to take urgent steps to safeguard their wellbeing.”
The report comes ahead of a Tuesday evening townhall at Beth Tikvah synagogue where Don Valley West city council candidates, including Anthony Furey, an outspoken supporter of the Toronto Jewish community, on the growing concerns over antisemitism in the city.
The report also named four individuals — including independent Ontario MPP Sarah Jama and former equity consultant Laith Marouf — and one group, Samidoun, as the major prongs of antisemitism in the country. The group was listed as a terror organization by Canada and the U.S. on Tuesday.
Jama was singled out for signing an open letter arguing there was “no actual evidence” of Israeli women being sexually assaulted by Palestinian terror groups on October 7. She eventually took her name off the statement following political blowback. Jama was removed from the New Democratic Party (NDP) parliamentary caucus in late October 2023.
Marouf, a former government employee who received over half a million dollars in taxpayer funding for antiracism training, made headlines in 2022 for online statements deemed by many Canadian Jewish organizations to be antisemitic.
“You know all those loud mouthed bags of human feces, a.k.a. the Jewish White Supremacists; when we liberate Palestine and they have to go back to where they come from, they will return to being low-voiced b—hes of their Christian/Secular White Supremacist Masters,” Marouf wrote in one typical social media post spotlighted by the Israeli report.
Housefather, who was designated Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Special Advisor on antisemitism in July, applauded the government’s decision on Tuesday to classify Samidoun as a terror group.
“When I was announced as special advisor, I said it was one of my four priorities and I have been working on this long before feeding information to the public safety minister to pass on to the security services making the assessment,” Housefather told the Post in an email. “This is a very dangerous organization fostering hate in Canada and carrying on activities on behalf of an already listed entity,” he wrote.
“It makes Canada and (the) U.S. safer,” Housefather said.
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