Jewish Montreal No More

"As in France itself, these immigrants have brought a deep, historically rooted contempt for European cosmopolitanism and heavy doses of antisemitism."

"Those apprehended by the Montreal police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for involvement in the dozen or so attacks on Jewish institutions in the city during the past five years -- which included the firebombings of a synagogue and a Jewish day school -- were all Quebecers of North African descent."

Drew University professor of Jewish Studies, Allan Nadler

People take part in a pro-Palestinian rally in Montreal on Sunday, Nov. 12, 2023. Photo by Graham Hughes /The Canadian Press

Quebec, uniquely among Canadian provinces, is permitted to control its own immigration levels and their countries of origin. Its focus is on increasing the prominence of the French language in French-Canadian majority Quebec. As such it strongly favours welcoming immigrants and refugees whose mother tongue is French or who are fully conversant with the French language, spoken, read and written. Authorities in Quebec, and certainly successive governments express a fear of English overwhelming French.

 

Provincial legislation ensures that English is kept to an absolute minimum. To the extent that there are significant fines for signage reading in English, and attendance at public schools must be predominantly French public schools, specific 'qualifications' must be demonstrated for the freedom to send children in Quebec to English schools. That being said, the province is eager to bring in all the fluent French-speakers as it can.

 

Which meant that former French colonies such as Haiti and Vietnam have been favoured.  But so have immigrants from volatile Middle East and North African countries where the culture includes suspicion and strong dislike of Jews and where enmity expressed by antisemitism is prevalent. The largest Lebanese community outside of Beirut lives in Montreal. The second-largest Moroccan and Algerian diaspora after Paris and Marseille also resides in Montreal.

 

Gunfire hit the school for the second time early on Sunday, November 12.

 

In the last few decades a handful of Montreal Muslims have been implicated in terrorist plots. Among them Algerian Ahmed Ressam, the "Millennium Bomber" who had al-Qaeda terrorist training in Afghanistan. Morocco-born Montrealer Abdeliah Ouzghar was convicted in absentia of abetting terrorism in France and was finally extradited in 2009 to face justice in France, before ultimately returning to Canada.

At the present time, Moroccan-Canadian imam Adil Charkouai called for the eradication of all "Zionist aggressors" in a public address at an October 28 Montreal Free Palestine rally. Years ago he had been arrested on a security certificate, said to be a sleeping al-Qaeda agent by Canada's intelligence network; representing a danger to Canadian society.

In 2007 Fabrice de Pierrebourg, a leading Quebec journalist focusing on terrorism, published Montrealistan where he wrote of the route to Islamist extremism in creating young Muslim radicals in Montreal. According to the journalist's studies and investigation following hardline jihadists, along with trips to Lebanon and North Africa, sermons in mosques attended by recruits was one of the major sources of radicalization.

Internet chat rooms another, where young Muslim men endlessly surf to immerse themselves in seductive Islamist thought. They are sought by and swiftly radicalized by Islamists, interested now in participating in the vocal and violent rallies and marches that have materialized in the wake of the Hamas terrorist incursion into southern Israel on October 7. International Islamist groups organize and call for harassment and violence meted out to Jews.

The response has been harassment and threats, young Montreal Jews attending universities singled out by Arab and Muslim students for loud shouting matches and physical encounters. A synagogue and a Jewish community centre were firebombed since the Hamas slaughter of Israeli civilians and the abduction of 240 Israeli children, women and elderly, along with a group of soldiers. Two Jewish day schools had bullets discovered fired overnight at their front doors. 

 

The marches and protests that have taken place by 'pro-Palestinians', call for 'Palestine to be free from the river to the sea'; a genocidal call. The Montreal that was once a comfortable home for generation after generation of Jewish Canadians has changed -- radically.

 

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)