Canada has become a breeding ground for anti-Semitism since the 2023 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, according to a newly released report from the Israeli government.
Canada has experienced a “significant surge” in anti-Semitism since October 7, 2023, says the report from the Israeli Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism.
Attacks against Jewish people and institutions have risen 670 percent, the report found, noting several shootings and arsons at synagogues, schools, and community centres.
The latest such incident occurred over the weekend when the Bais Chaya Mushka Elementary School, Jewish girls’ day school in Toronto, was hit with gunfire for a second time.
“This was the second time this year that the same school was targeted, with a similar shooting happening in May,” the report noted. “No arrests have been made.”
The number of violent attacks is disproportionate to the size of Canada’s Jewish community, the report said.
“Despite Jewish people comprising only 1.4 percent of Canada’s population, they account for 70 percent of religious hate crimes,” the report reads.
“In Toronto alone, 19 percent of all hate crimes in 2023 were directed at Jews, a figure that spiked dramatically in the final quarter of the year, aligning with escalating tensions in the Middle East.”
The report details several other incidents of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment in Canada since May 2024, highlighting the arson attacks on a synagogue in Vancouver, the Leo Baeck Jewish Day School in Toronto, and a Jewish school bus.
The report also recounted vandalism at several Toronto Jewish community sites and places of worship as well as at a kosher grocery store. The buildings were defaced with anti-Israel graffiti and slogans like “free Palestine.”
The report classified 17 anti-Semitic occurrences according to their assessed risk levels. The Israeli ministry categorized the recent school shooting and arson incidents as a red alert, because they were attacks that “could have or did harm a large number of people/community.”
A Jewish cemetery in Montreal being desecrated with Nazi swastikas was labelled a yellow level alert because the incident “could have or did damage a building or monument.”
Green alert incidents included an Israeli flag being stomped on by protesters and a poster displayed along Montreal streets calling Liberal MP Anthony Housefather a “neo-Nazi.”
The report criticized some pro-Palestinian protesters, particularly the campus activist groups that set up encampments at universities across the country. The protests, the authors said, “led to increased expressions of support for groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.”
The report from the Israeli government follows a report released by Statistics Canada in July which found the Jewish community to be the primary target of police-reported hate crimes in 2023.
Anti-Semitic incidents rose 71 percent between 2022 and 2023 for a total of 900 reported crimes last year, according to StatCan figures. Jewish-related hate crimes have risen steadily over the past four years with 331 incidents in 2020, 492 in 2021, and 527 in 2022.
