"[The] harm to Canadian Jews won't stop until we all have the courage to name the problem accurately and to identify the specific people perpetuating it: Islamist religious extremists in collaboration with progressive activists."

"[Canadians are experiencing a] polite pogrom." 

Jesse Brown, Canadaland publisher

 

"I have often thought about making aliya [moving to Israel] but for familial reasons, I was tethered to Canada."

"Whenever I go to Israel, I experience a sense of calm. It is because I don't have to explain, or justify or excuse."

"I can be who I am in a way that I cannot in Canada."

Jack Novack, retired Dalhousie University professor 

 

"It's not even drip, drip, drip anymore. It's like a freaking firehose [rampant antisemitism]."

"[The NDP has made]a crude political calculation [to win over the much larger, faster-growing Canadian Muslim community over Jewish voters, choosing to overlook  antisemitism in their ranks]."

"[People in 1940s Montreal would call her father maudit Juif ['damn Jew']. But I never experienced that in Montreal [in the '60s and '70s]. So trying to figure out:What did we miss? Were there signs? And I think that's a very Jewish experience right now."

"Along with that comes tremendous grief. The overwhelming emotion is grief. Grief at, I would suggest, a loss of innocence for Jews and for others."

"Because Canada is supposed to be, and was supposed to be, a place where we could all be all that we are with full identity."

Selina Robinson, former NDP B.C. cabinet minister

This shot of three figures hanging in effigy of Israeli leaders was part of a reel posted by the group mtl4pal on Instagram following the group's pro-Palestinian rally in Montreal on Saturday, May 24. (mtl4pal/Instagram)

 

Jews in Canada no longer have any reason to place their confidence in law enforcement and the legal system in Canada. A high rate of the criminal charges against anti-Israel protests -- according to a Toronto digital media outlet -- sees that of the 150 people criminally charged in Toronto between October 2023 and January 2026, close to two-thirds of the cases were dropped or stayed. For further lack of trust, the recently published memoir of retired Toronto police inspector Hank Idsinga accuses the Toronto Police Service of institutionalized antisemitism. 

 

Mr. Idsinga's book recounts antisemitic incidents prior to his leaving the force in late 2023 for retirement, when colleagues were prone to state "I can't believe we have to pander to this f--king Jew". When his colleagues in the force, not aware that he was Jewish, would baldly make outright antisemitic statements. Mr. Idsinga unequivocally states from his own experience that antisemitism permeates every level of the Toronto Police Service, from the very top on down.  

"Every time I wake up and I realize that the water's getting hotter [like being a frog in a pot of boiling water], somebody greases the bowl."

"The level of tolerance that this country seems to have adopted in terms of antisemitism is breathtaking." 

"[Even as European Jews see politicians abandoning smaller Jewish electoral communities for larger and fast-growing Muslim ones, so too do Canadian Jews]. [Case in point: Belgian Jews] fear that they might be abandoned by politicians who look for new voters in Belgian society, for example among the Muslim population."

"Many politicians lack the political will [to address antisemitism and recognize a] jihadi ideology [has] now come to Canada."

Talia Klein Leighton, president, Canadian Women Against Antisemitism 

More than fifty Toronto police officers receive a morning briefing Sunday April 5 at Sheppard Plaza in North York before ensuring any anti-Israel or pro-Israel protesters remain out of residential neighbourhood streets. (Photo by Ellin Bessner/The CJN)

 

"Of all the groups" sociology Professor emeritus Robert Brym at University of Toronto studied, including racialized Canadians, left-leaning Canadians, Quebecers and others, it is Canadian Muslims whose attitudes toward Jews stands out for their malevolence in regarding Jews, where 28 percent agree in polls that "Jewish people are largely to blame for the negative consequences of globalization", while 34 percent feel Jews "talk too much about the Holocaust". Four percent of non-Jewish Canadian adults on the other hand, agreed with the former, 13 percent with the latter statement.

 

"The percentage of Muslims among the most extreme antisemites is considerably higher than the corresponding percentage of non-Muslims", Professor Brym wrote in an academic paper. In Australia that same differential also is reflected in attitudes toward Jews. Surveys to gauge European Christians and Muslims on whether they view "Jews cannot be trusted" reveal huge differences, where in Australia 10.7 percent of Christians agree with the statement, and a whopping 64.1 percent of Muslims agreed. 

 

In France, similar research reveals that the Muslim community's antisemitic views are at levels higher than the far left and the far right, where French Muslims in the majority believe that "Jews have too much" economic power (67 percent) and that "Jews today use their status as victims of the Nazi genocide during the Second World War for their own interest", at 56 percent. When these issues are pointed out, that the great upheavals seen in publicly expressed antisemitism, are led by Muslims throughout Europe and North America, executive government levels invariably while denouncing antisemitism never fail to link that social sin with 'Islamophobia'.

 

And then the popular version of fault rests on a totally unaccountable source, the nationalists and far right groups. To publicly agree that Muslim extremism is responsible for the raging antisemitism seen everywhere today is a non-starter. And because it remains unrecognized officially and institutionally, there can be no amelioration of the situation if the specific people perpetrating and perpetuating Islamist religious extremism are not held responsible, much less checked. 

 

The minority antidote when government itself will not do its work in upholding the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms:

The Council of Muslims Against Antisemitism (CMAA) is a group of global
Muslim thinkers, professionals and activists, led by its founder director
Raheel Raza that is committed to fighting antisemitism in all its guises. This
group took its foundational inspiration from Canadian values of tolerance,
justice and peace among Canadian diverse communities living together
side-by-side.
We recognize antisemitism for what it is – a uniquely pervasive, enduring,
and lethal form of hatred which has insinuated itself into multiple cultural,
religious and political frameworks across the globe. We recognize the
particular threat posed by the meteoric rise of antisemitism in the 21st
century. Often genocidal or eliminationist in intent or expression, it
represents an unprecedented amalgam of the more familiar strains of
antisemitism promoted in extremist right-wing, left wing and Islamist
ideologies. The spread of contemporary antisemitism has been accelerated
by globalization and the advent of 21st century technologies.
The CMAA endorses the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance
(IHRA) definition of antisemitism. The IHRA definition constitutes the
world’s most widely accepted definition of antisemitism which has been
adopted or endorsed by 43 countries including Canada. It appropriately
recognizes that the demonization of the State of Israel as a Jewish state is
antisemitic, whereas criticism of Israel, its government, policies or actions
of a type that all countries are subject to, is not.
Despite challenges that include receiving death threats, we are committed
to working with like-minded groups to challenge antisemitism wherever it
may appear. We are working relentlessly towards the goal of attaining a
hate-free Canadian community.                                                                                          Council of Canadian Muslims Against Antisemitism

Gaza Statement Damning Israel

"The war in Gaza must end now."

"The suffering of civilians in Gaza has reached new depths. The Israeli government's aid delivery model is dangerous, fuels instability and deprives Gazans of human dignity."

"We condemn the drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food."

"[It is] horrifying that over 800 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid." 

"[Israel's aid distribution system is] dangerous." 

 Joint statement; 25 national signatories

 

"The statement fails to focus the pressure on Hamas and fails to recognize Hamas's role and responsibility for the situation. Hamas is the sole party responsible for the continuation of the war and the suffering on both sides."

"At these sensitive moments in the ongoing negotiations, it is better to avoid statements of this kind."

Oren Marmorstein, spokesman, Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry 

Palestinians gather as they carry aid supplies that entered Gaza through Israel, amid a hunger crisis, in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip July 20, 2025.   Dawoud Abu Alkas/Reuters

 

Israel is held responsible by the international community for a situation engineered by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. Nations that have historically supported Israel's legitimate existence as a homeland for the world's Jews, re-established on Judean ancestral land, recognizing its democratic nature in harmony with their own, with a diverse population given equal citizenship and a justice system equal to their own, have taken to chiding Israel in essence for responding to deadly carnage by an enemy sworn to obliterate the Jewish state.

 

What's more, while recognizing Hamas for what it is, a terrorist entity that has time and again attacked Israel with the intention of destroying the country so that in its absence the land that has been in contention since 1948 would fall to Arab Palestinians who claim it as their own heritage, those same countries view that terrorist group on an equal footing with Israel. 'Palestine' has always been historically Jewish, with a population augmented by waves of migrants primarily from Egypt, along with those of other Arab countries. Just as Judaism's precepts and prophets were pilfered to flesh out the Koran, the land consecrated to Judaism by its ancient and ongoing presence has been claimed by Arab Palestinians.  

 

Palestinian propaganda has found a home in the West, where corrupted reality alters history and miraculously changes the violent predator into a victim, the actual victim into an oppressor. Where violently lethal atrocities can be viewed as the unfortunate excesses of an 'oppressed' people struggling to be free from the oversight of a country forced to defend itself from the barbarity of those portraying themselves as victims, dedicated to the destruction of a Jewish presence in the Middle East. 

 

When a situation is as plain to recognize as the reality that abundant humanitarian aid is available for Palestinians in Gaza whose leadership has deliberately sacrificed them for the greater goal of diminishing Israel's credibility in the opinion of the civilized West, while the United Nations insists in supplying that aid through Hamas which amasses the food, fuel and medical supplies in its warehouses rather than distributing it to the population, Israel is condemned. The distribution of humanitarian aid through another source working in tandem with the U.S. and Israel is penalized by the UN refusing to work with it, while Hamas threatens Palestinians who gather that aid from a source Hamas considers in competition with its goal of controlling the aid by selling it at high prices at food markets.

 

The signatories of the statement of condemnation, insisting that Israel stop 'the war in Gaza', include France, Japan and Britain, as well as Canada, traditional allies of Israel, all of which now prefer to believe Hamas's propaganda of 'genocide'. Israel lost no time rejecting the joint statement, which included the pro forma addition of condemning Hamas for holding the remnants of the 251 hostages they kidnapped from Israel on October 7, 2023 when thousands of Palestinian terrorists swarmed into southern Israel to rape, torture and murder Israeli children and their families.

 

Those who signed the statement damned the Israeli proposal to expand settlements in the 'Palestinian territories', and any move to divide the 'West Bank' from East Jerusalem, Israel's capital. Such moves, they decry, would "critically undermine the two-state solution". That would be the Two-State Solution that Palestinian leaders have always rejected in their adamant, timeless refusal to recognize Israel's right of existence. The same Two-State Solution that Palestinians refused in 1947, and have continued to reject ever since.

 

The Two-State Solution that died completely on October 7, 2023. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation posts regular updates on social media relating to its life-saving distribution of humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza. It also posts notices of Hamas killing and injuring their GHF humanitarian workers. As well as threats and attacks against Palestinians who frequent the GHF distribution centers. Besides the U.S., Germany was the only other G7 country that failed to endorse the joint statement of condemnation against Israel.

 

An aid distribution point set up by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation near the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza on June 25. Eyad Baba / AFP - Getty Images file

 

Wokeness, Racism and Anti-Semitism : Toronto District School Board

TDSB Trustee Alexandra Lulka. Photo by TDSB

"[The materials were] virulently anti-Israel and even anti-Semetic [and justified] suicide bombings and other forms of terrorism [against Jews]."

"I was outraged to discover that some of this material justifies suicide bombings and other forms of terrorism."

"This is reprehensible. These materials were provided by an employee from the TDSB equity department, the very department that should be countering anti-Semitism and violence, not fanning the flames."

"I made the statement after hearing concerns from constituents who felt traumatized by the incident. Given the concern over this incident, it is reasonable that a public statement be issued by an elected representative."

"I believe that to be within the scope of my responsibilities as a Trustee."

Toronto School Board Trustee Alexandra Lulka

"[Links included in the material] support the use of violence and terrorism against Israeli Jews; specifically, including a link to the website of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine [a group that is currently on Canada's Listed Terrorist Entities], documentary and resources about Leila Khaled who was involved in plane hijackings, and an interview with Ghassan Kanafani, who was involved in violent actions against civilians."

Toronto District School Board Human Rights Office

A Toronto District School Board logo is seen on a sign in front of a high school in Toronto. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn

The issue of which the TDSB Trustee speaks is that of two teaching manuals focusing on the Middle East, produced with the ostensible purpose of aiding teachers in discussions relating to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians in a classroom setting. The manuals had been circulated through an opt-in mailout. When the trustee was contacted by some parents in the school system to express their consternation over the material included in the manuals, she spoke of her condemnation of the material.

The school board's human rights office was brought into the controversy that followed, to investigate the matter and they concluded that links within the material were indeed as Trustee Lulka described them; anti-Semetic and excitation to 'justifiable' violence in support of the Palestinian 'cause' against a purportedly oppressive Israel squatting on Palestinian land.

The material included a statement that Palestinians "have been legitimately resisting racism, colonization and genocide since the 1920s to the present day by any means necessary: general strikes, demonstrations, armed struggle, and martyrdom operations called 'suicide bombing' by Zionists". Slanderous incitements to anti-Semitism and violence, in other words; raw, repellent and slanderous, canted toward isolating and defaming Jews.

The Jewish students and their families who would be exposed to this alternate version of history and irreconcilable hostility, rage, victimhood storytelling, vicious contortions of reality to suit a Palestinian narrative of justification for never-ending attacks on Jews and Israelis had good reason to complain that the Toronto and District School Board was hosting anti-Semetic diatribes reflecting an agenda of deliberate delegitimization of a democratic, legal state, and placing Jews in Canada in danger.

Prior to this incident, a scheduled invitation to Nadia Murad -- a Yazidi woman who escaped sex slavery under the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and told her horrendous story across the world of the atrocities committed by the Islamist-deranged ISIL against her people in mass murder, rape, recruiting of children for military training and assaults and sex-enslavement of women and girls -- had been cancelled.. The board saw fit to cancel that speaking engagement by the Nobel Laureate in the fear that her story would arouse sentiments of Islamophobia.

For bringing the situation to the attention of the public, Trustee Lulka was placed under a probe by the board; her behaviour brought to a vote on whether to condemn and censure her. An equity adviser, Javier Davila, had prepared the manuals in question. Davila included links to information about anti-Semitism and critical dialogue on Israel and Zionism, along with Canada's role in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Resources were included directing readers to Palestinian writers and academics.

The school board has not seen fit to explain why it is in a Canadian school curriculum meant to teach reading, writing, arithmetic, history, geography, science it would be seen as critical to a child's development and reasoning skills to be exposed to an ongoing violent dispute taking place in a far-off region, featuring Palestinians and Israeli Jews. According to the board investigation by Integrity Commissioner Suzanne Craig, the manuals had not been approved by anyone at the school board.

Davila, the author of the manuals in question, now claims himself to be a victim of "harassing and hateful messages" following the publication of Trustee Lulka's statement in describing the manuals. A campaign was underway, he complained, to have his Ontario College of Teachers licence revoked. He was temporarily suspended following the distribution of the manuals, but soon after reinstated.

When, subsequently the school board's Human Rights Office looked into the manual's materials, they found links that "could be reasonably considered to contain anti-Semitic materials and seen to be contributing to anti-Semitism". The recommended resources in the manual dismissed the historical connection between Jews and the land of Israel; they lump all Israelis together, claiming "martyrdom operations" represent a legitimate means of resistance.

Even so, the investigation found that the statement made on Twitter by the trustee violated the TDSB's Board Member Code of Conduct, falling into the definition of discrimination. That's right: a complaint about blatant discrimination represented discrimination in and of itself. The finding was that the original statement by Trustee Lulka perpetuated negative stereotypes about Palestinians and Muslims "when it stated that the materials which included Palestinian voices and perspectives 'justify suicide bombings and other forms of terrorism', equating a Palestinian perspective as one that would 'justify suicide bombings and other forms of terrorism'."

This, despite that the manuals included materials themselves that did just that; justified martyrdom assaults as noble acts of 'resistance' against the 'illegal occupation' of Palestinian land, upon which Israel sits. The conclusion of the investigation stated that Ms.Lulka be censured as "a strong condemnation of an action or statement of a Trustee who has been found to have breached the Code".

 

Toronto District School Board (TDSB) sign on the headquarters building in Toronto. JHVE Photo/Shutterstock

"This outrageous process is just the latest manifestation of the institutional anti-Semitism afflicting the TDSB, Not only is the investigation and its findings unjust, but it’s ridiculous that the person who calls out a transgression is being punished, but the person responsible for the transgression was not."

:It is critical for TDSB to continue to address discrimination in all its forms, but that must include anti-Semitism, which sadly has not received the same attention as other forms of hate."

"We call for the development of a comprehensive action plan on anti-Semitism that will value the voices of Jewish staff, students and families in the TDSB community—action that is long overdue."

Jaime Kirzner-Roberts, director of policy, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center

 

 

Inflaming Hatred Against Jews : Inciting Violence Against Israel

   Gal Gadot, Israeli Actor     Getty Images

"Israel deserves to live as a free and safe nation. Our neighbours deserve the same."

"I pray for our leaders to find the solution so we can live side by side in peace."

"I pray for better days."

Gal Gadot, Israeli actor, Instagram

"Firstly, the increased reach of news social media platforms, especially apps like TikTok and Instagram, have allowed misinformation and hatred to circulate like wildfire."

Michael Mostyn, CEO, B'nai Brit Canada

 

"No one controls the narrative anymore."

"With Black Lives Matter and the increasing awareness about human-rights issues, I think people are now feeling more empowered."

Ahmed Al Rawi, professor, school of communication, Simon Fraser University 

"Palestinian national aspirations are entirely legitimate and supporters of the Palestinian cause have every right to express their support online and in public."

"However, when actions cross over to hate speech, threats, and violence, they must be condemned by both civil society and political leaders, and when they occur online, must be removed by social media providers."

"What we have observed is a troubling increase in anti-Semitic incidents on and off-line. Invocation of Nazi imagery, demonization of Jews, misinformation about Jews and Israelis, and deliberate misinformation about the conflict all represent real challenges to those who aspire for peace."

Martin Sampson, vice-president, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs

Palestinians hold flags as they stand at the compound that houses Al-Aqsa Mosque, known to Muslims as Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as Temple Mount, in Jerusalem’s Old City May 21, 2021.

Ammar Awad | Reuters

Gal Gadot's anodyne and sincere thoughts posted on her Instagram account appears to have incited a tsunami of repressed Jew-hatred, where a segment of the population on social media having assimilated propaganda launched by consummate masters of social-political influencing have succeeded in persuading huge swaths of the public -- gullible in their lack of interest much less knowledge about the history that makes up the Israel-Palestinian interface and wanting to be part of a 'social cause' have taken up the human-rights cudgel against what they are told are the 'aggressors' against a helpless, victimized people.

So much hate flooded this Israeli woman's Instagram account that she was forced to disable the replies function of her Instagram post. Gadot, tweeted Mia Khalifa, Lebanese-American former adult film actress, was a "Genocide Barbie". Again, accusations of genocide thrown at Jewish symbols of public acclaim, painting Jews who suffered the horrendous 20th Century genocide of the Holocaust as themselves genocidal against Palestinians.

Blatantly false, demeaning, demonizing, slanderous claims of 'genocide', of 'apartheid', labelling a nation that has had to defend its right to exist since its re-establishment in a small portion of historical

Judean land, identified by the Romans who occupied the area, as Palestine. Palestinian Jews. Not the latecoming Egyptian and Syrian Arabs who migrated into 'Palestine" in search of opportunities, colonizing land that many of the original occupants -- Jews -- never left. Appropriating the name Palestinian, and the land as their own.

And as the flavour of the day in 'woke' social media parlance, Gal Gadot's name began "trending" on Twitter. American journalist Ben Jacobs spoke of it as "an interesting euphemism on Twitter's part for being bombarded with vile and anti-Semitic attacks online". That, of course, is the perspective of the assaulted, not the smug satisfaction of the assaulters who were quite content to send hate messages to "Genocide Barbie".

@impact is an Instagram account set up to share "digestible & socially impactful content" with its 1.6 million followers, posting screenshots of tweets announcing: "we remain far from justice", and the fight to "save Palestine" must continue. Instagram, Tik-Tok and Tumblr have given social media the stick it values with which to bludgeon those that the woke social scene identifies as 'racist' and 'anti-human-rights' and that is the niche that Israel and Jews have been plugged into.

Claims posted cannot be verified as having any resemblance to fact or the truth, but those claims are absorbed and regurgitated with alarming regularity; dishonourable, damaging, and damned, the claims resonate with the passion of those eager to belong to groups with a social cause, and this is the season for 'Palestinian rights', damning the 'Israeli occupation' that is 'murdering' Palestinian children. The terrorist group Hamas has acquired the sweet flavour of daunting righteous champions of the defenceless.

Their terrorism along with other Palestinian 'activist' groups like Islamic Jihad and the Palestine Liberation Organization transforms them in sympathetic minds from terrorists who lob missiles and rockets into civilian enclaves for the express purpose of killing Jews, to 'fighters' for justice and liberation of the Palestinian Territories. That such 'liberation' would comprise the end of Israel is of great disinterest although the charters of those terrorist groups spell out their purpose: to destroy Israel.

Communications professor Gabriel Weimann at the University of Haifa, explains: "Since no one controls, regulates or checks these videos [portraying Israel as a state-aggressor of Palestinians out to destroy Palestinian aspirations of statehood while just for fun killing Palestinian children], you can post whatever you want. There are a lot of lies". 

Pakistani film star Veena Malik tweeted, ostensibly quoting Adolf Hitler: "I would have killed all the Jews of the world ... but I kept some to show the world why I killed them". Twitter, evidently, was oblivious to the presence on its platform of that delightful little quasi-quote. Its claims to restrict hate speech? well, awkward, isn't it?

Over 625 million views have been logged on TikTok of videos under the hashtag #SaveSheikhJarrah, the mostly Muslim/Arab neighbourhood in East Jerusalem where a long-standing dispute between Jews and Arabs -- where under illegal Jordanian rule long-time resident Jews were violently expelled -- over property rights ignored a mass protest led by Arab youth around the Al-Aqsa mosque, throwing rocks and inflammatory devices at Israeli police trying to maintain order on the disputed platform.

With 41.7 million Instagram followers, American-Palestinian Bella Hadid whose father is a Palestinian from Gaza, posted a video that announces "73 years of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine". The posts lean heavily on language emphasizing time and again the poisonous slander that Israel is responsible for "ethnic cleansing" against Palestinians. Despite that 21 percent of the Israeli citizenry is Palestinian with equal rights to any other minority group in the country, much less the Jewish majority.

"How to be an ally with the Palestinians" is a post  first seen on an Instagram account named Paliroots, informing people to use terms like "apartheid" and "colonialism" and "ethnic cleansing", instead of "eviction", "conflict" or "war", urging people to join a boycott, divestment and sanction movement against the Jewish state.

"Before you post about Israel-Palestine, take a break and ask yourself: Will this statement move us closer to peace?" offers Israeli writer Hen Mazig, who has been posting infographics to his 43,000 Instagram followers.

Gal Gadot 'Wonderwoman' Instagram