Giving Haven in the U.S. to Hate-Persecuted Canadian Jews

Columbia University students maintained a protest encampment on their campus following arrest of more than 100 protesters. (Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

 

"[We appeal to you to expedite a method of entry into the United States for Jewish Canadians] who are experiencing persecution or who credibly fear for their safety because they are Jewish."

"[There exists] an alarming climate of harassment intimidation, vandalism, threats and violence [faced by Canadian families since the Hamas terrorist attacks of 7 October 2023]."

"Advocates working directly with these families report that more than 2,000 Jewish Canadians have expressed interest in relocating because of growing concerns for their safety."

"Accordingly, we respectfully ask that you direct the Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security to identify and implement lawful, secure, and appropriately expedited pathways for eligible Jewish Canadian nationals and their immediate family members who face persecution."

National Association of Christian Lawmakers (NACL)

The NACL letter urged the administration to coordinate with state and local governments, Jewish organizations, churches, nonprofits and employers willing to help families establish new lives in the United States.

 

This Christian group forwarded a proposal to the White House, attention of the President of the United States, appealing for a legal pathway to welcome Jewish Canadians fearing for their safety during a renascent flood of antisemitism whose effects have impacted the sense of security of Canadian Jews for the past three years and more. Led by Palestinian student groups, fuelled by hatred of Israel, incited and paid for from abroad through the Muslim Brotherhood and its sponsor Qatar, manifestations of that in-your-face antisemitism have taken place in the streets through mass protests, on university campuses and has seeped into public medical institutions where Jews now fear being treated in hospitals that employ Muslim medical staff where they are met with hostility.

 

There have been far too many instances of vandalism perpetrated against Jewish-owned businesses and institutions, in Canada, with Jewish parochial schools and community centers and synagogues being targeted with the violence of being shot at, vandalized, and fire-bombed. Crowds of Jew-hating Muslims and leftist allies have marched through Jewish neighbourhoods in Toronto and Montreal, shouting invective, chorusing 'Globalize the Intifada', 'Final Solution', and 'From the River to the Sea', terrorizing the residents, with insufficient response from municipal authorities and related police services.

 

Christian organizations like that of the NACL have expressed their sympathy at the plight of Jews in North America and Europe being verbally attacked and facing violent threats. Their empathetic responses, fellowship and offers of assistance have been heart-warming and serve as a balm to the wounded sentiments of Jews everywhere. However, the solution sought here, to encourage and formalize a system whereby Jews can leave Canada for haven in the United States, while a kindly gesture, would only move Jews from one threatened place to another, since American Jews are also facing very similar circumstances of exposure to racist hatred from the very same sources.

 

Trump shared a link to the report on Truth Social on Sunday evening, but did not comment on the contents.

 

The letter, sent to the attention of President Donald Trump, signed by Jason Rapert, founder and president of NACL, along with state representatives and religious leaders, with copies to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other U.S. senators and representatives, expresses a heartfelt concern with the hope of ameliorating the pain and vulnerability being felt by some Jews in Canada who have expressed a wish to leave the country for another that they believe promises them greater safety, respect and dignity. Yet, there too the harassment and hatred will assail them. Just as fundamentalist Muslims in Canada preach hatred of Jews, so too do those in the United States.

 

People set up a makeshift memorial for the hostages taken in the Oct. 7 Hamas-led militant attacks on Israel near an ongoing pro-Palestinian protest encampment on the Columbia University campus. (Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

 

As good-hearted as the move by the Christian group is, in the expression of its concern for a beleaguered community with which they feel a brotherhood, it is but a band-aid solution to a serious disease immune to band-aid responses. Calling for the Trump administration to cooperate with states, local governments, Jewish organizations, churches, non-profits and employers willing to assist arriving families does nothing to solve the larger issue. That issue is the presence of antagonistic, hostile religious exponents of fundamentalist Islam for whom obligatory jihad for the faithful begins with expunging the presence of Jews.

 

Statistics Canada's latest data reflect that 71 percent of religious hate crimes in the country targeted its Jewish population. In the United States, the Anti-Defamation League's August report highlighted that 63 percent of all reported religion-based hate crimes in 2025 targeted American Jews, according to data from the FBI, making 2025 the third-highest year on record of anti-Jewish hate crimes in America. "We believe this moment presents another opportunity for America to demonstrate those principles" of "America's historic commitment to stand against religious persecution", the letter states.

 

CHRISTIAN LEADERS HOLD EMERGENCY SUMMIT IN JERUSALEM TO CONFRONT GLOBAL RISE IN ANTISEMITISM   Fox News

 

"For generations, America has served as a refuge for people fleeing religious persecution."

"We urge you to ensure that, consistent with federal law and the security interests of the United States, that door remains open to our Jewish brothers and sisters in Canada who need it today."

National Association of Christian Lawmakers (NACL) 

Students demonstrate on the campus of Atlanta's Emory University on Thursday as campus protests across the U.S. lead to confrontational standoffs with police, mass arrests and accusations of antisemitism. (Elijah Nouvelage/AFP/Getty Images)

 

 

Canada, Threats From Within

"It is becoming increasingly clear that Canada is a  high priority target for ISIS-inspired terrorists." 

"[The Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security must be convened for an emergency session to probe] this most recent foiled terror attack."

"They [two young men in their teens] are alleged to have formed a plan last fall to violently attack Jewish persons in Ottawa, possibly through the detonation of an explosive device at a pro-Israel rally."

Conservative members of the Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security

The Parliament Hill bomb plot is only the latest in a string of arrests related to domestic terror plots with Islamist or anti-Israel motives. Photo by Jonathan Hayward/The Canadian Press

 

Look no further than the unwieldy numbers of immigrants, refugees and illegal migrants that have penetrated Canadian society at every level; Muslims emanating from Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Sudan, Yemen and Afghanistan, and most particularly from Gaza, for starters. By no means all of these people who have entered Canada, legally and illegally, but the jihad-inspired, Jew-hating contingent and their imported Mullahs whose Friday mosque sermons and prayers urge the faithful to be true to the passages in the Koran describing Jews as the enemy, along with 'crusaders' and kafirs.

A broad import of a searing antisemitism into Canadian society that sees younger generations being taught to view Jews as usurpers of Arab land in 'Palestine', occupiers of land consecrated to Islam, turning the sacred into a sacrilegious presence of enemies of the Prophet Mohammed, routed from Medina in the 17th century, the presence of whom in modern times must meet the same fate. And to Jew-haters in Canada that translates as Canadian Jews being threatened, harassed and tormented by those who abhor their presence in the Middle East, and anywhere else the diaspora has settled.

The wild celebrations in the streets of Canada led by Israel-and-Jew-haters, organized by Arabs, Muslims and Palestinians in Canada over the admired success of Palestinian terrorists in the slaughter of 1,200 mostly civilian Israelis during the October 7, 2023 invasion of southern Israel by tens of thousands of terrorists led by Hamas, and the follow-up marches and demonstrations in honour of and defense of Palestinian terrorism has roiled Canada as it has elsewhere around the world for over a year, in the face of government inaction.

 

While the Liberal government of prime minister Justin Trudeau has repeatedly declared that 'this is not who we are', in responding to the attacks on synagogues, Jewish schools, community centres and privately-owned Jewish business, it clearly is what  we are becoming under the auspices of a government that fails to care enough about the fate of Canadian Jews, oppressed, discriminated against, and threatened, to apply Canada's laws on hate-mongering. The opposition Conservative Party on the other hand, has reacted as a responsible government should.

 

Ottawa Pro-Palestinian Rally, CTV News

The latest report of  terrorist activity in Canada itself is that of the arrest of two Ottawa teens, charged with plotting a deadly attack against pro-Israel demonstrators who came out to Parliament Hill in defence of Israel and of Canadian Jews. A Department of Justice court filing declares that the boys were in possession of the constituents of explosive devices; acetone, oxidizer, metal ball bearings. The December 2023 arrest of a 15-year-old terror suspect came with a report that a Facebook account in the father's name was rife with extremist rhetoric, calls to 'get rid' of Israelis among them.

 

RCMP anti-terror investigators in July arrested a father-son duo planning a "serious, violent attack in Toronto". Ahmed Eldidi and Mostafa Eldidi saw arrest in Richmond Hill, in the "advanced stages" of planning an attack. Pakistani national Muhammad Shahzeb Khan was arrested in September as part of a US. investigation of his intention to stage a terrorist attack against a New York City Jewish site, timed to mark the one-year anniversary of the October 7 massacres attributed largely to Hamas.

"The defendant is alleged to have planned a terrorist attack in New York City around October 7th of this year with the stated goal of slaughtering, in the name of ISIS, as many Jewish people as possible."

U.S. Attorney General Merrick R. Garland

Following a wave of shooting attacks and attempted arsons of Jewish sites, Toronto police arrested Helder Antonio De Ameida in connection with a shooting attack on Bais Chaya Mushka Elementary School for girls. De Ameida was accused of firing multiple shots into the school on October 12; found at the site were 14 shell casings. A 17-year-old accomplice was arrested along with De Amida.  In Israel in July, Zacharea Adam Quraishi of Alberta was shot dead by the Israel Defense Forces as he threatened them with a knife, rushing at armed guards outside the gates of the Israeli village of Netiv Ha'asara, screaming "Free Palestine".

Jews in Canada

"Brym [Robert Brym, sociologist,University of Toronto] believes that the Israel-Hamas war plays a part -- surveys elsewhere in the world show that Muslims' negative sentiments toward Jews rise whenever war breaks out."

"But he also points to local factors; of Canada's religious groups, Jews are the highest earners and are the least impoverished, while Muslims earn the least and are impoverished the most."

"Nearly two-thirds of Muslims, but less than one-third of Jews, are immigrants. And on average, Canadian Muslims are much younger than Canadian Jews."

Jamie Sarkonak, journalist, National Post

Anti-Israel protest in Ottawa, April 20, 2024. Photo by Dacey Media

Generally, on the other hand, the vast majority of Muslims have a darkly negative view of Jews, ingrained not only in the culture, but emphasized by hadiths and the Koran, addressing relations with Jews; on the one hand, Islam counts Jews and Christians with a modicum of regard since they are part of the Abrahamic triangle; people of 'the book'. On the other they must be subservient to Islam with the understanding that Islam according to its reckoning, represents God's final presentation to humanity. They are 'kuffar', undeserving of respect for not surrendering their souls to Islam and Allah.

 

Resentment and victimization represent another facet of how Muslims regard Jews; believing all Jews to be wealthy and privileged. The Jewish presence in Canada dates back hundreds of years and while Jews mostly maintained their religious devotion in Judaism, they respect the laws of Canada, consider themselves Canadian, and integrate into the political, justice, and social system, content to be another Canadian. Muslim presence in Canada is of a far more recent vintage. Assimilation into the general culture, adapting the prevailing values, is not favoured by most practising Muslims for whom Sharia, not the law of the land is the final arbiter of justice for them.

 

Muslims typically have large numbers of progeny since Islam promotes childbearing as a moral religious duty, as does Catholicism to a lesser degree and Orthodox Judaism as well. In Canada it can be costly raising a large family, certain to be an economic challenge to many for whom large families is part of their religious devotion. The very fact that there are many more Muslims that are recent immigrants than Jews with lower economic standing, relates to the fact that it takes time to establish a presence in the country, including employment with high remunerative qualities.

Sociologist Robert Brym undertook a study recently, and published the results, looking into Canadian attitudes toward Jews and Israel. Surveys undertaken in early2024 list the most negative attitudes toward Jews spring from the Muslim demographic, alongside Quebecers and non-Jewish university students. The most negative sentiments expressed toward Israel, stem from Muslims and non-Jewish university students, and supporters of the New Democratic Party.

A survey sample of over 300 Muslims indicate unmistakable distrust and negativity toward Jews. Merely five percent of Canadian non-Jews reported their belief that "Jewish people are largely to blame for the negative consequences of globalization", but among Muslims the figure became 48 percent; while 83 percent of non-Jewish Canadians disagreed that Jews have too much power in Canada, 34 percent of Muslims held the same belief.

Unsurprising to a degree then, that Toronto and other Canadian cities have seen frequent well-attended protests proceeding through the streets, aggravating and accusing Canadian Jews of 'genocide' against Palestinians for their support of Israel, shouting 'intifada' in unison, and 'from the river to the sea', common shorthand for the destruction of Israel; Arabic speakers and signs, the Qu'ran in proud prominence and university campuses taken over by the 'pro-Palestinian' protests, targeting Jewish students.

The statement on the survey that "There is no justification for Palestinian suicide bombers targeting Israeli civilians", brought 30 percent disagreement from Muslims in comparison to 11 percent of non-Jewish Canadians. And while 54 percent of Muslims express the belief that Israel is an apartheid state, 34 percent of the general population appears to concur, thanks to ingrained antisemitism and successful propaganda. 60 percent of Muslims equate Zionism with racism, while 38 percent of non-Jewish Canadians concur.

As far as 81 percent of Muslims are concerned, the current war in Gaza represents genocide, a belief shared by 49 percent of non-Jewish Canadians. Logically, bringing in new immigrants, refugees and migrants whose culture and religious devotion dictates their values and inculcates prejudices born of historical events and antipathies, more or less guarantees that this level of blame from a victimhood-prone group against an already-existing group would result. 

Victimhood, resentment, anger and hatred coalesce and become a threat by one to the other, and with the help of a powerful propaganda device of victimhood and occupation led by student groups of Palestinian and Arab origin, the slander of a democratic state that is anything but racist and apartheid finds a ready audience among the demographic of non-Jewish, non-Arab Canadians from various backgrounds, origins and cultures, happy to take up a cause that happens to coincide with their own prejudices.

Canada now hosts some 1.8 million Muslims, half of which immigrated from 2011 forward with increasing frequency and numbers. It is now clear that government authorities had no interest in ensuring that those comprising great numbers of an ethnic, social, cultural, religious background that tended not to accept the culture, social justice system, values of a society they gravitated to, might very well present as a future danger to social cohesion and the general social compact in a democratic society.

All of which has led to spectacles of violent demonstrations against a much smaller demographic of about 350,000 Jewish Canadians who view with dismay and disappointment the inaction of their fellow Canadians, much less Canadian governments at every level, failing to react and act to uphold the law and to protect the Canadian Jewish population threatened by increasingly volatile and violent 'protesters' who no longer bother shielding their support of Palestinian terrorists from public view.

Canadian universities for the past few decades have succumbed to leftist progressive divisiveness, promoting the ideology of 'anti-oppression, teaching that colonialism of which they claim Israel is a prime example, is morally indefensible, that people of European ancestry are born exceptionalists, superior and dominating others of 'colour', under Critical Race Theory. Privilege and intersectional 'oppressor' beliefs are reflective of university campuses in this age.

Published

2024-04-09

"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."

"Most non-Jewish Canadians do not have negative toward Jews. However, non-Jewish university students, Quebecois, and especially Muslim Canadians tend to have significantly more negative attitudes towards Jews than does the non-Jewish population as a whole."

Abstract: Jews and Israel 2024: A Survey of Canadian Attitudes and Jewish Perceptions : Robert Brym

May His Memory Be As A Blessing

"Irving Abella was a quintessential Canadian Jewish leader."

"He was wise, articulate, engaging, bold and forward-thinking. His inspirational leadership has become his legacy."

"For me, he was my mentor and teacher. May his memory always be for a blessing."

Bernie Farber, former CEO, Canadian Jewish Congress, chair, Canadian Anti-Hate Network

Irving Abella, Professor Emeritus, York University. speaks during the media preview of St. Louis – Ship of Fate at the Canadian War Museum. in March, 2018. Photo by Errol McGihon /Postmedia

 

During the Second World War and the Holocaust years, Canada, like many other free and democratic countries was no friend of the diaspora Jewish community in their worldwide dispersal, nor where Jews made their home in Canada. Undeniably, Canada was a typical European-centric racist society at the time. Canadian hostility and distrust of and unequal treatment of Blacks, Indigenous, Chinese, Japanese and Jewish communities within Canada was inhumane in denying them equality within the larger community. 

Irving Abella -- who at age 82, after a distinguished life as a scholar, historian, academic, author and activist died following a long illness -- wrote a seminal accounting of Canada's record during the most anguished period of Jewish existentialism. It was thanks to his revelations of Canada's dire shortcomings in humanitarianism and his urging of later governments in Canada to aid people fleeing the spectre of group-targeted death due to ideology, religious persecution, conflict that a turnabout occurred.

Writing an accounting of Canada's war-time response to the desperate pleas of Jews attempting to escape the genocidal schemes of Nazi German, Irving Abella co-wrote None is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe 1933 - 1948, with co-author Harold Troper. Revealing details of the forgotten episode of Canada's anti-immigrant stance at a time when Jews were viciously persecuted by a horrendous group death threat now known as the Holocaust which claimed six million European Jewish lives.

Canada -- during the years 1933 when the German Nazi party rose to power, and 1948, when the state of Israel was created -- accepted a mere five thousand Jewish refugees to enter the country, described as the "worst record of any nation in the world". In 1939, the German ship MS St.Louis with almost a thousand desperate Jewish refugees aboard hoping to find refuge from Nazi genocidal intentions was refused docking privileges in one country after another, nor were those on board given entry to Canada. 

 

Refugees aboard the St. Louis wait to hear whether Cuba will grant them entry. Off the coast of Havana, Cuba, June 3, 1939.  National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD

An official in the government of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King at the time, Frederick Blair, responsible for the government's immigration portfolio, rejected appeals by Canadian leaders to permit the ship to dock in Halifax. Blair's blatant and blistering distaste for Jews was in evidence as the architect of restrictive immigration policies, and had the imprimatur of the Liberal government of William Lyon Mackenzie King. 

'Refugees aboard the St.Louis as they arrive in Belgium in 1939.  Courtesy American Joint Distribution Committee

 

The book detailing events of Canada's response to the dire situation facing European Jews and the government's refusal to admit entry to any attempting to escape their fate became "an ethical yardstick against which contemporaneous government policies are gauged". Former immigration minister Ron Atkey in the late 1970s was sent an advance copy of some of the book's chapters at a time when the country was debating how it might react to the crisis of Vietnamese refugees, known as Boat People.

Reading details of the former government of Canada's lack of humanitarian decision-making to give aid to the Jews of Europe, Immigration Minister Atkey decades later saw to it that Canada welcomed tens of thousands of new citizens, the very Boat People whose plight faintly echoed that of Jews during World War Two, desperate to find haven. At the opposite side of the ledger, Irving Abella found it contemptible that postwar Canada accepted thousands of Nazi collaborators and war criminals.

 

Waffen-SS Division "Galicia" was formed by the Nazis in order to support the falling regime. The Ukrainian Central Committee supported this idea with enthusiasm despite the cost of collaboration with the totalitarian regime and its criminal nature.

 

Members of the Waffen-SS Galicia Division, Ukrainian fascists who found common cause with the Third Reich's aspirations -- as nationalists and fascists themselves. Ukrainian fascists who shared the Third Reich's contempt for Jewish lives and lent themselves to rounding up and murdering Jews as an assigned duty they found quite acceptable to their own core racist values.

In stark contrast to the locked gates-of-entry Jews found looking for a home in Canada, Irving Abella pointed out that entry to Canada was relatively straightforward for SS members. Their trademark tattoo indicating their anti-communist sentiments worked in their favour. As a professor at York University, Irving Abella spent his career teaching history, holding the position of Shiff Professor of Canadian Jewish History at the conclusion of his teaching career.

He was married to Rosalie Silberman Abella, former Supreme Court of Canada justice, the first Jewish woman and first refugee to sit on the Supreme Court of Canada. Irving Abella held honours making him a member of the Order of Canada and a member of the Order of Ontario as well as being a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada; awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal in 2002.