Canada ... No Longer a Secure Home for Diaspora Jews

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)

 

"The statistics on hate crimes in Canada are pretty clear on this. It's really in the early 2000s that hate crimes against Jews in Canada started to go up in a significant way."

"By this measure, then, the rate of antisemitic incidents is more than 16.5 times higher today than it was before 2000."

"I did experience quite a lot of antisemitism where I grew up [in Saint John, N.B.]. My golden age didn't start until I was 18 and got out of there. [The promise Canada offered Jews in major cities was real.] I think it's true for most Jews, who grew up in Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg from the '60s on." 

"The percentage of Muslims among the most extreme antisemites is considerably higher than the corresponding percentage of non-Muslims." 

Emeritus sociology professor Robert Brym, University of Toronto 

 

"Every time I wake up and I realize that the water's getting hotter, somebody greases the bowl. The level of tolerance that this country seems to have adopted in terms of antisemitism is breathtaking."

"It was wonderful to be a Jew at York [University in the 1990s] . There was a vibrant [Jewish student and professorial] community." 

"[By 2000], it was a completely different place to be a Jew. The anti-Zionist, left-wing academic was already starting to infuse the university."

Talia Klein Leighton, president, Canadian Women Against Antisemitism

 

"It wasn't easy as a Jewish boy walking around with my kippah [in France]."

"Moving to Canada was, for me, a breath of fresh air to be able to bring up my children in a safe and welcoming environment."

"What has happened in the last two, three years, is quite unbelievable. What I saw  happening in Paris in the '70s where you could be walking in the streets and people were screaming slurs at you or driving by and just a feeling of unwelcome and just looking behind your back."

"That, to me, is terrifying, because I was able to see the contrast of being here in Canada."

Menachem Mendel Blum, rabbi, Ottawa Torah Centre Chabad

THORNHILL, CANADA - MARCH 7 : Pro-Israel demonstrators gather outside Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto synagogue hosting 'Israeli Real Estate Event' in Thornhill, north of Toronto, Ontario on March 7, 2024. (Photo by Mert Alper Dervis/Anadolu via Getty Images)

 

According to B'nai Brith Canada's statistics, there were 6,800 antisemitic incidents that took place during 2025, an increase from 2,769 that occurred in 2022. During that time, synagogues were shot at and firebombed, 'F---k the Jews' graffiti appeared all too often, Jews have been accosted, berated, harassed, beaten, even shot at with pellets. Anti-Israel, antisemitic protesters marched en masse for months on end through Jewish residential neighbourhoods in Toronto. 

 

The years following World War II saw an enlightened public attitude toward Jews. The majority of Canadians became more accepting of a Jewish-Canadian presence. Prejudice against Jews that had previously manifested in public notices that parks were off limits to 'Jews and dogs', Jewish exclusion from clubs, from buying homes in certain neighbourhoods, Jewish doctors refused hospital affiliations, rental units not available to Jews, slowly underwent a social change.

 

Jews flourished in the new social environment; the numbers limiting Jewish acceptance at universities became history, Jewish businesses thrived, laws were passed prohibiting discrimination against minority groups for employment opportunities, medical treatment, academic admissions, and home rentals made it mandatory that all citizens were treated in equal measure under the law. Just as the Charter of Rights and Freedoms guaranteeing equality and freedom of religious expression, freedom of speech and all other civil rights. Antisemitism went underground.

Parliament Hill, Ottawa, Canada (Freepik.com)

 

Jews enjoyed that same sense of security in Canada as all others and the Jewish community thrived on its freedom to explore economic prosperity. Then, suddenly, a mass atrocity that occurred halfway across the world on October 7, 2023, when Palestinian terrorists launched a mass atrocity slaughtering Israeli civilians in southern Israel changed all that. It seemed sudden, but it was a kind of climax that had been building for some time, and October 7 was the signal that the time was right for an explosion of Jew-hate. Up to that time beginning decades earlier, a slow and steady increase of Middle Eastern immigrants bringing with them traditions of antisemitism infiltrated all walks of academia, unions, government and social institutions.

 

Expatriate 'Palestinians' studying in droves in Canadian universities provided the spark as 'victims' of Israeli oppression, which is to say Israeli defensive action against Palestinian terrorism that sought to destroy the Jewish state physically, then resorted to systematically through propaganda destroying Israel's reputation through libelous slander, promulgating lies of 'apartheid' and plans to kill Palestinians to rid themselves of counterclaims to Judean ancestral lands upon which both Israel and the 'Palestinian Territories' sit.

 

TORONTO, ON - December 20 - Shots were fired at a North York Jewish girls school early Friday morning, marking the third shooting at the school this year, Toronto police said. December 20, 2024. 

 

Governments in Canada stood by, unreactive while chaos broke out in the streets and on university campuses as thousands of anti-Israel protests, extended to include Canadian Jews in rejection of their presence as Zionists were called upon to 'go back to Poland' while Palestinians used every vicious tool at their disposal to delegitimize the Jewish state, making great inroads in alliances with the far-left and Liberal 'progressives' who found much to support in those claims, repeating with vigour 'Globalize the Intifada'. 

 

As Muslim populations proliferated through immigration, refugee intake and mass migration throughout Europe, and threats against European Jews ballooned, so too did they in North America, Australia and elsewhere. Jews who once felt secure and accepted for what they are; loyal citizens of the countries they lived in, contributors to the civilized world, outperforming other groups in their literary, scientific, academic, technological proficiency, were hounded by the baying of rousing, mind-numbing levels of expressed Jew-hate.

 

Jews now in Canada, as elsewhere in the world have been forced to resort to security measures to protect their schools, their synagogues, their community centres, vulnerable to attack and indeed experiencing attacks; gunshots, explosive devices at night, and crowds of protesting Jew-haters during the day, harassing, threatening, jeering and smearing Canadian Jews; vandalizing Jewish-owned businesses and property, boycotting and isolating Jews from mainstream society.

 

Michael A. Sachs: Some Jewish Canadians planning exit strategies to more welcoming U.S.

 

The governments whose democratic duty has always been to secure public order, to protect minority rights and guarantee equality of treatment and opportunity for all, have instead merely observed the ongoing diminution of Jewish rights in Canada. Their silence and lack of action have predictably bolstered the hateful resolve of the rioters and hate-mongers. And while all decent people decry the advent of renewed antisemitism and the moral incivility accompanying it, the majority remain silent. The Jews can look after themselves. 

 

Many are trying to do just that. And many are now contemplating wrenching their roots asunder from the soil that once guaranteed them peace of mind, planning to emigrate to the one place on Earth where their survival and that of their children is guaranteed: Israel. Politics in Canada under a succession of Liberal-led governments is such that those at the highest order of governance decry the rise of antisemitism and invariably add that of 'Islamophobia'. 

 

None among them ever contemplate speaking the reality of the situation, that it is the large and growing Muslim population from among whom this rise has resulted. They are prepared to live with the results of deliberately overlooking and bypassing the truth, rather than express it, and risk losing the votes that come with pandering to a segment of society whose values are not those of the prevailing majority, nor of democracy itself. Shame on them all.

 

Portable museum to show at schools, as an educational device, but after October 7, it was deemed too political. Photo by Courtesy of Sam Eskenasi

 

Canada: Haven for Islamic Republic Agents

"This happened exactly one hour after people had gathered here to deliberate the death of the oppressive leader of the Islamic Republic."

"Imagine, if families and children had still been here when those shots were fired. The consequences could have been catastrophic." 

"It shows that it's no longer safe here for Canadians themselves, it's not just about Iranians. They've created a place where Canadian citizens cannot live comfortably."

"According to the Supreme Leader ... they had said this themselves before, that we will punish those who organize rallies and demonstrations abroad, and this is part of the IRGC policies."

"It’s concerning because the gym was hit with 17 bullets, which means it was meant for 17 bodies. [Intimidation of Iran’s critics] could become a real problem for Canada … and they are going to have to stop that." 

Salar Gholami, business owner, anti-Iranian regime activist 

Broken glass and bullet holes in the window of Saliwan boxing gym, draped with an Iranian lion and sun flag. The flag is outlawed in Iran by the Islamic Republic. Supplied photo

"We've had to re-prioritize our operations to counter the actions of Iranian intelligence services and their proxies who have targeted individuals they perceive as threats to their regime."

"In more than one case, this involved detecting, investigating and disrupting potentially lethal threats against individuals in Canada."

Daniel Rogers, director, Canadian Security Intelligence Service

 

"The motive behind the shooting is unknown and there is no suspect information at this time."

"Investigators from our Firearms Investigations Team continue to canvass the area for any security camera footage around the time of the shooting."

"The premise shows evidence of gunfire directed at the building. The building was unoccupied at the time of the incident. There were no reported injuries. Damage is limited to property."

York Regional Police

 

"The motive behind the shooting is unknown and there is no suspect information at this time."

"Investigators from our firearms investigations team continue to canvass the area for any security camera footage around the time of the shooting."

Const. Kevin Nebrija, York Regional Police 

In fact, it is not all that difficult to put two-and-two together and come up with four. It is well known that IRGC operatives are in Canada. Some of their identities are known to Canada's intelligence services. Yet little is done to remove them, despite that the Islamic Republican Guard Corps is listed as a terrorist organization in Canada. Canadian Iranians have reported to police the presence of IRGC- and Iranian-government operatives living openly in Canada. Elite Iranian government officials have sent their families to live in Canada as a safe haven.

 

While the two disparate Iranian groups live in the country; Iranian-Canadian citizens increasingly uneasily in the known presence of agents of Iran, their lives complicated by harassment by those agents, the Liberal government does nothing to deport those living illegally in Canada, as a presence of the Islamic Republic in a country with which there are no diplomatic relations. 

 

Since the aerial invasion of Iran by the Israeli and American militaries in response to Iran's governing body's intransigence over demands it abandon its nuclear program, amidst concerns that its increasingly sophisticated ballistic missiles that are more powerful and reach intermediate distances pose a direct threat to Israel, and to U.S. military bases in the Gulf States, exacerbated by the brutality of the regime in dealing with internal dissent by Iranians attempting to free themselves from the regime's oppressive hold on their lives when the IRGC and the Basij police outright murdered thousands civilians taking to the streets, Iranians in Canada have organized massive demonstrations.

 

A bullet hole is seen in the door of Saliwan Boxing at 7027 Yonge St. in Thornhill. (Simon Sheehan/CP24)

 

The owner of the Thornhill, Ontario boxing gym targeted by gunfire on Sunday, Salar Gholami, has been key in organizing those demonstrations across the Greater Toronto area. His business was riddled with bullet holes at the gym's entrance. And while investigators are of the opinion that the shooting was targeted, no 'motive' has yet been established. Mr. Gholami has no problem identifying the motive. It is related directly to his activism. And behind the shooting up of his establishment was a warning by agents of the Islamist regime.

 

There were two massive protests organized in recent months in Toronto; on February 1st, downtown Toronto saw 150,000 protesters peacefully march in a gathering meant to highlight the plight of Iranian protesters across Iran whose protests erupted in all the country's cities only to be met with gunfire from the regime. Tens of thousands were arrested, thousands injured in the violence committed against the civilians, and the figure of those killed by regime forces range from 3,000 to 30,000 people.

 

Toronto police said the Global Day of Action Rally in Toronto saw crowds estimated at 350,000. (Sammy Kogan/The Canadian Press)

 

A follow-up February 14 solidarity for Iran protest saw over 350,000 people attending the event. The date and the immense size of the protest was not confined to Canada; this was an internationally-organized event with protesters coming out in droves in Canada, the United States, Germany and elsewhere across the globe in a well-publicized Global Day of Action. The Toronto rally, which brought out 350,000 people was the largest of all the rallies.

 

A Persian restaurant in Melbourne Australia where an Iranian flag with the lion and sun -- a symbol outlawed in the Islamic Republic -- was displayed in its window was sprayed by gunfire, quite like the situation in the boxing gym's window in Toronto. Its window too was shattered. Sunday morning two people were killed, 14 others injured when a gunman attacked at a bar in Austin, Texas, wearing a sweatshirt with the legend e. 

 

In Richmond Hill, Salar Gholami, despite the threats he and others within the Canadian-Iranian community face, is determined to continue his activism. "The police told me not to go there (his business that had just been vandalized) , but I was the first person there this morning. I'm a Kurdish-Iranian, and I would be proud to die for my country". 

 

Repairs continue after a shooting that damaged the building housing Saliwan Boxing Club in Richmond Hill, Ont., on Sunday, March 1, 2026. Photo by Supplied

 

Something's Happening Here -- What It Is is Quite Clear

"It's dangerous for Israel and it may also be dangerous for Canada [growing incidence of anti-Israel extremism in Canada]."

"It's a wake-up call for the international communities that something is happening here."

"Within the international context, it's dangerous."

"The most important and prevalent feeling you'll encounter among any Israeli is that we want to have our hostages back. Everybody is looking for this situation to end."

"Israel wants peace. Israel wants to live in peace with its neighbours."

Iddo Moed, Israeli Ambassador to Canada

 

"While we are relieved that no innocent lives were lost in this attack, we are deeply shocked that a Canadian citizen would travel to Israel and retraumatize the Neti Ha'asara community already devastated by the twenty lives stolen in Hamas' murderous rampage on October 7."

"This incident highlights the potential consequences of pervasive misinformation and disinformation surrounding Israel's conflict with Hamas -- where Israel is demonized and held solely responsible, and where Hamas has been absolved of responsibility for the impact on Palestinian civilians of the war they started."

"When demonstrations glorify terrorists as martyrs and call for global intifada without condemnation from our political leaders, it sets the stage for tragedies like today's attack in the Israeli town of Netiv Ha'asara."

David Cooper, vice-president of government relations, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs

The Canadian passport of terrorist Zachareah Adam Quraishi  IDF

 Netiv Ha'asara in southern Israel is a communal agricultural community, a Kibbutz located in the Negev desert some 6 kilometres south of Tel Aviv. It abuts the northern border of Gaza. During the October 7, 2023 incursion into Israel of thousands of Palestinian terrorists coordinated by Gaza's governing Hamas group, some twenty of its residents were killed. Communities such as this one were swarmed with terror operatives in a well-planned mass atrocity of truly savage proportions. 

On July 22, a young Arab Canadian, born in Canada, who had travelled to Israel on a student visa, arriving the day before the attack at the village, rented a vehicle and drove to the commune. He had parked his vehicle at a compound close to where Israeli guards were stationed. His suspicious behaviour had alerted the guards, and as he left the parked car and ran over to the men on guard, attempted to stab them. He was shot dead before he could consummate his intended carnage.

According to reports from eyewitnesses, he shouted "free Palestine" as he ran toward the Netiv Ha'asara security personnel with a kitchen knife. The attack had been videoed and was released by the Israel Defense forces. Armed guards are shown patrolling the fortified front gate of the community. It showed Quraishi charging the guards before he was shot dead. He had arrived at the town in a white Hyundai rental car.

Since the notorious October 7 attack by Palestinian terrorists orchestrated by Hamas, the Arab Muslim propaganda machine has gone into overdrive with a vengeance, portraying Israel as the aggressor intent on committing genocide against the Palestinians. Throughout the Western world crowds of Muslims claiming to represent the human rights interests of Palestinians, decrying their victimization and oppression by Israel, have organized anti-Israel, pro-Hamas rallies.

They have been joined by fellow travellers, sympathizers of the 'cause' of decrying Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, along with Canadian antisemites for whom any cause that vilifies Jews is a just one for them to dedicate their time and energies to. They have marched through city streets, closed down highways, set up encampments at colleges and universities to demand divestment from Israeli companies and the enforced isolation of Israeli academics, while generally threatening local Jewish populations.

 

In most European countries action has been taken, however belatedly, to shut down these hateful displays of social dysfunction, but not in Canada, where ongoing protests continue to shut down bridges and highway overpasses, carrying signs that demonize Israel and lionize Palestinian 'resistance', of which the sadistic savagery of October 7 is a symbol of righteousness over domination of an imperialist nation against a vulnerable population. The inversion of victim and victimizer while distorting reality has become a popular rallying cry against Zionism.

Chants of 'Intifada', 'From the river to the sea', 'final solution' and 'we are all Hamas', are code for the destruction of Israel, a Western democracy seated within a geography of anti-democratic tyranny. These Jew-demonizing, threatening 'protests', illegal in every sense, morally and under criminal law, are permitted to roil the streets and byways of Canadian cities. Criminal acts of bombing synagogues, defacing Jewish social centres, marching threateningly through Jewish neighbourhoods, all illegal under Canadian law, see no government opposition.

The growing radicalization of Muslim-Canadians is palpable and augers a boiling cauldron of antisemitism preparing to explode. Yet no authorities at any level, no police services, no justice system, no religious institution, no corporate interests, no legacy media appear inclined to interrupt this orgy of Jew-hate and bring order and security back to Canadian cities. Jewish institutions continue to be vandalized, rallies and demonstrations continue to be held, without government intervention.

 

A large Palestinian protest began on Parliament Hill on Saturday, Aug. 10, 2024. Participants marched from the Hill to 50 O’Connor, the building housing the Israeli Embassy, and then proceeded through downtown Ottawa. Photo by Ashley Fraser /POSTMEDIA

"Canada has a history of having foreign fighters -- Canadian citizens go off to distant lands in the Middle East and commit egregious acts of violence."

"We were a country that garnered, and rightfully so international attention during allied operations to counter ISIS, because of how many Canadians have gone off to join the caliphate."

"You have people calling for the erasure of the only Jewish state standing in front of crowds of thousands calling for the death of Zionists -- which is just a code word for Jews -- you have decapitated mannequin heads of Bibi Netanyahu being kicked around like soccer balls in Toronto -- you have synagogues being burned -- you have Jewish day schools being shot at."

"When the overwhelming majority of this goes on without any repercussions, you allow these ideas to take root and become normalized."

Casey Babb, senior fellow, Macdonald-Laurier Institute

Hate Speech Defined, Condemned, and Defended

"There's an unprecedented rise in antisemitism in Canada."

"We need to do anything we possibly can to stem this tide, and we need to appeal to all levels of government including the federal government, to take the lead."

Talia Klein Leighton, petition organizer

 

"They [Canada's political leaders] hide behind ambiguity, ignorance and definitions to avoid taking action."

"This petition forces the issue and demands that those we trust to keep us safe stop hiding and do their jobs"

"It also calls for the Trudeau government, who have shown their cowardice, to follow our democratic allies in the U.S., Germany and Austria in recognizing the chant "from the river to the sea" for what it is in Hamas terms -- a call for genocide and the elimination of the State of Israel."

Kevin Vuong, Independent Member for Parliament for Toronto

 

"From the river to the sea [is unequivocally hateful and antisemitic]."

"It only has one interpretation -- what it effectively calls for is the destruction of the Jewish state."

"And then when  you take it into the context of the companion cry for a global intifada, then it extends not just to the Jewish state, but to the Jewish people, and is consistent with what Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and Iran have been threatening that they intend to do." 

Shimon Koffler Fogel, CEO, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs

The entrance to a Pro-Palestinian encampment in an area that was fenced off at the University of Toronto campus in downtown Toronto on May 2, 2024. Ernest Doroszuk/Toronto Sun/Post

There are some who claim that the hate-and-extermination messages - chorused against Israel and global Jewry by protesters at organized public venues where a show of force and clear racism has been played in public since early October, with repeats on an ongoing basis -- are well within the law of free speech rights under the Canadian constitution. There are hate laws in Canada to protect the public and discrete groups from discrimination severe enough to be viewed as threats and intimidation. The speech in and of itself of a quality that speaks of endangering the well-being of others.

The regular protests targeting the social weal and Canadian Jews in particular are threatening in nature and are meant to send a number of messages; that Jews are unsafe in their home country, that Israel's reputation as a democratic nation for which human rights is ensured, is open to slander, statements of 'fact' outright hostile fabrications that do damage that reality and true facts struggle to correct among a force of antisemitism that has no use for truth.

The viral and ever-rising antisemitic events of intimidation and threats carried out in municipal offices, in front of and within shopping centres, hospitals, Jewish community centres, synagogues and Jewish parochial schools, have morphed more latterly into university campus occupations, leaving Jewish students, non-Jewish students, university staff and members of the faculty concerned for their security and safety, as well as for their inability to reach their classes. Authority figures, whether university administrators, provincial or federal governments have done nothing useful to uphold law and order and ensure public safety.

Now, a petition has been circulated to attempt to persuade those authorities -- city mayors, police chiefs, governments at all levels, including those of the universities involved -- to become more steadfast, reliable and active in putting an end to what amounts to racist hate-fests. The rallying cries of 'Palestine will be free', 'globalize the intefadeh', and 'long live Oct7' have no place in a civil society. What the petition asserts is that these expressions interpreted, contravene portions of Section 319 of the Criminal Code of Canada through the wilful promotion of hatred.

The phrases in question have been outlawed in recognition of their quality of hateful rhetoric that could lead to violence, in a number of other countries. The petition states that the popular slogans denigrating Israel's existence and Jews in general "implicitly raises reasonable suspicions of supporting the events of Oct. 7 and inciting hatred toward the Jewish people". It is generally agreed that the chant calling for the eradication of Israel and its citizens is meant to promote a Palestinian state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

True North

"While I hate these statements and while I happen to be of the view that 'from the river to the sea' is an antisemitic and probably genocidal chant, I don't think it's a clear cut case enough for Section 319."

"If you look at the text of Section 319, it says 'communicates a statement that is likely to lead to a breach of the peace' -- and somebody in Canada chanting 'from the river to the sea', I don't think reaches that very specific high threshold."

"[Other statements the petition mentions like "Long Live Oct 7" [are different]. It's very difficult to say that in a peaceful way."

"We take a strong free speech position because we think that if the mechanism for dealing with disagreements in society through speech breaks down, all we have left is violence."

Joanna Baron, executive director, Canadian Constitution Foundation