By Henry Srebrnik, Shalom, Winter 2025
Since October 7th, 2023, antisemitic incidents in Canada have risen exponentially, and today Jews are the most targeted group for hate crimes in the country. Jewish schools and synagogues have been shot at, businesses vandalized, neighbourhoods besieged, and universities barricaded. Canadian Jews have found themselves wondering if they are still safe in Canada and when, if not now, they might need to flee.
Homes, businesses, schools, places of worship, neighbourhoods and institutions have all been targeted in what community leaders are calling an unparalleled spike in hate crimes against Jews. In addition, Canadian intelligence reports warn that Jewish community centres, day schools, synagogues and grocery stores are among the “possible targets” of “increasingly likely” extremist attacks.
As University of Toronto sociologist Robert Brym observes, in his recently published “Jews and Israel 2024: A Survey of Canadian Attitudes and Jewish Perceptions,” 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.”
According to a 2024 survey by the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), the advocacy agent of the Jewish community, 82 per cent of Canadian Jews feel less safe after the October 7 pogrom in Israel. “With antisemitism at historic levels, the need for governments, school boards, university administrations, unions and civil society organizations to identify and understand the phenomenon has never been more acute,” stated Richard Marceau, vice-president of external affairs and general counsel at CIJA, last fall.
Nearly one third of Jewish medical practitioners in Ontario are considering leaving the country in response to rising antisemitism, according to a new survey that found that doctors across Canada are worried about what’s happening to their profession. The data released by the Jewish Medical Association of Ontario (JMAO) on December 4 revealed widespread concerns of antisemitism among health-care practitioners across Canada. Who could have imagined this a few years ago?
“We are living in unprecedented times,” remarked Nico Slobinsky, Pacific Region vice-president at the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. “We have seen the mainstreaming of antisemitism. We see it in public spaces, in private spaces. We see it in the workplace, in schools, on university campuses. We see it sometimes being manifested even in interpersonal relationships with people you consider your friends.”
Yet in the past year and a half, we have seen political leaders, universities, union leaders, police forces, prosecutors and immigration agents ignoring long established Canadian norms as they fail to take seriously the threat of “anti-Zionism,” a perverse antisemitic political ideology that posits anyone who believes in the Jewish right to self-determination is, somehow, evil.
Our political leaders have used hollow words with no actions to stand up for Jews in Canada. Virulent antisemitism and hate have gone unaddressed within political parties and unprosecuted in our streets. Many of our public sector labour leaders at worst espouse antisemitism and at best are silent. Our universities have let uninformed opinions go unchallenged and offensive behaviour unpunished as radical students attack Jews on campus. Dozens of Canadian university and college campuses have seen “pro-Palestinian” occupations, encampments, manifestos, disturbances, and explicit celebrations of the October 7 Hamas “resistance.”
I grew up in Montreal, which has seen some of the worst antisemitism. McGill University (where I earned two degrees) was perhaps the most dramatically disrupted among Canada’s universities over the past year. A focal point for explicitly pro-Hamas demonstrations and “teach-ins,” the encampment at McGill lasted well after the end of this year’s spring semester, right through to a “summer camp” to teach “anti-colonial struggle” and to transform McGill’s “space into one of revolutionary education.”
Also in Montreal, Dawson College (where I taught political science and Jewish Studies in the 1970s before earning my PhD) shut down classes for almost 10,000 students November 21, after students voted 447-247 in favour of a strike to demonstrate solidarity with Gaza.The closure of the public college was prompted by numerous emails and calls from members of the community expressing concerns about the safety of students and employees on the day of the boycott.
Dawson Student Union posted about the strike across Quebec in solidarity with Gaza and Palestinian students and invited people to demonstrate with flags and keffiyehs at the main entrance of the shuttered college in the heart of downtown Montreal. Things at Concordia University, also in Montreal, have been even worse.
Last November 22 in Montreal, at the 70th annual session of the NATO parliamentary assembly, rioters organized by Divest for Palestine and the Convergence of Anti-Capitalist Struggles ignited smoke bombs, threw metal barriers into the street, and smashed windows of businesses and the convention centre where the delegates were meeting. The rioters torched cars. They also burned an effigy of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Very little stopped them.
Other cities are not much better, as Toronto’s Jewish community knows all too well. Extremism is on the rise and our leaders have equivocated. We have learned that Canadians are engaged in terror plots against Jews and the west, and that our supposedly welcoming cities include movements with connections to global terrorist organizations. (Here on Prince Edward Island, we have – so far – been spared most of this, perhaps because we are such a small community and one with little visibility.)
Political leaders say “this is not who we are” after each attack on Jewish communities, but they ignore the obvious truth that this is who we have let ourselves become. While Montreal burned, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was dancing and handing out friendship bracelets at a Taylor Swift concert in Toronto. It took 24 hours for him to even comment on the havoc. Nothing exemplifies the current disaster better than this picture.
Deborah Lyons, Canada’s Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism, in October did announce the Government’s release of the Canadian Handbook on the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism. Developed with extensive input from experts on antisemitism, scholars, and legal professionals, among over a hundred others, this new handbook serves as a comprehensive resource for combatting antisemitism across Canada.
“It will be a valuable resource in the understanding and implementation of the IHRA Definition throughout Canada, and thereby the combatting of antisemitism,” contends Irwin Cotler, former Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism and International Chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights. It’s a small victory but just a start. The Jewish community must respond decisively, not with fear or retreat, but with pride, clarity, and an unwavering commitment to our values.
So, will things get better in 2025? We can only hope -- while remaining ever vigilant.
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