"We want to ensure that belligerent fans aren't taking away from the other fans or players who can't help but hear these type of negative remarks."

"We have come up with ways to deal with this and we have ejected individuals who have engaged in this type of offensive language."

"In a few cases, we have had to ban these fans for a full season."

Stuart Ballantyne, president, chief operating officer, Rogers Place, Edmonton

 

"It happens a lot, everywhere. I feel  hostility from the crowds sometimes."

"Also, as I've become more recognizable around the league, I find myself having to talk more about Israel and trying to explain to people that, even though I love my country and always will, I play basketball."

"I am not involved in how the Israeli government deals with the many problems they face."

"But my heart is with Israel, of course."

"I wish that, when I'm playing basketball, I wouldn't hear any antisemitism. I don't feel I'm deserving of that."

"I wish something could be done. It's very unfair."

Deni Avdija, National Basketball Association all-star 

Jewish and Israeli athletes have come out in droves supporting Israel against Hamas terrorists. Clockwise from top left: A post by the Washington Wizards' Deni Avdija; an Instagram story from retired NBA player Omri Casspi; a post by Baltimore Orioles' Dean Kremer; Houston Astros' Alex Bregman drew a Magen David on his cap; Kremer wearing a Magen David necklace during a game; Israeli UFC fighter Natan Levy in an Instagram video; and retired NBA All Star Amar'e Stoudemire. The Canadian Jewish News

 

 Even before the global eruption of antisemitism that arose in the wake of the Palestinian terrorism attacks of 7 October 2023 in southern Israel, Jewish sport figures -- from superstars to junior leagues -- have been the victims of virulent antisemitism. In the instance of young players being taunted by their non-Jewish antagonists, that kind of racism likely erupts from domestic exposure with parents conveying to their youth their contempt for Jews and Judaism, a cultural pathology across all global borders. Those young Jew-haters will mature to become fully-fledged antisemites. And the young Jewish players who were the butt of their discriminatory jeers will come to fully understand the universal flaw in humanity's perceptions of others like themselves, but not quite.

 

The more current spike in antisemitism posing as anti-Zionism and contempt and hatred for Israel -- when the Jewish state reacted to the murder of over a thousand Israeli Jews in southern Israel, and the hostage taking of hundreds of children, youth, women, men and entire families -- by entering Gaza with the intention of confronting and punishing Hamas and its companion terrorist groups -- then veering off to northern Israel with the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah widening the conflict in support of Hamas through orders directly from the Islamic Republic of Iran -- all came as a lightning bolt out of the blue.

 

That Israel, and Jews everywhere in the diaspora would receive a tsunami of biased, racist condemnation for doing what any other state in the international community would be expected to do -- react to protect itself and its population -- seemed illogical and insane. Thanks in large part to the empathetic appeal of Palestinians portraying themselves as helpless victims of Jewish/Israeli 'occupation' of a land consecrated in antiquity to Judaism as ancestral Judean geography which Arabs pronouncing themselves as 'Palestinians' claim as their own. 

 

In the world of sports competition where Jews have spectacularly demonstrated their athleticism and professionalism, to be constantly confronted with verbal pejoratives hinged on their Jewishness, when sports has always been touted as a people-unifying peaceful, competitive activity, this kind of exposure to unremitting hatred of emotional dysfunction is completely demoralizing, confounding and illogical. Although these deep emotions of antipathy relying on unreasonably contentious accusations against Jewish 'plots' to take over world institutions is as old and as morally decrepit as a symbol of human malfunction as any medieval acts of raw, hostile brutality.

 

The Codes of Conduct messages used at sport venues fail to contain references specific to expressions of antisemitism. The executives of the sport world claim to be working on the situation to impress sport fans that their vomiting expressions of Jew-hate are unwelcome at sport arenas. Among them are those who agree that the time has finally arrived for more emphatically stringent warnings against expressions of Jew-hate at these venues, including action toward those who persist, that would amount to lifetime bans on attendance at their arenas.  

 Is football more antisemitic than other sports? Most antisemitic incidents in football won’t appear on Match of the Day. They happen during amateur sporting activities, which makes them even harder to spot and highlight. A German study found an accumulation of cases in football: more than two-thirds (68%) of Jewish amateur football players have experienced an antisemitic incident at least once, compared with 14% in other sporting activities. An Italian study showed that Jews faced discrimination when looking to join a football club.

Antisemitism at certain football clubs has received more attention from researchers than other football clubs. Case studies include Celtic FC in Glasgow, the German team RB Leipzig and certain clubs in Poland. It is not clear whether these researchers’ attention is down to greater or lesser problems with antisemitism at the clubs they have chosen to study.

Of particular interest to researchers are those fans of some well-known teams whose fans declare them 'Jewish' clubs and adopt Jewish symbols as a response to antisemitic attacks on their club. The most famous examples are London’s Tottenham and Amsterdam’s Ajax. Such clubs and their rivals have also been sites for campaigns and educational activities designed to combat antisemitism, such as the UK’s The Y Word project and The Fancoach Project at Feyenoord in the Netherlands.

Antisemitism in football isn’t confined to the stands. Recent studies have shown that online conflicts about football sometimes end up becoming online conflicts about Jews, involving antisemitic language. A Dutch study from 2022 showed how, during the Covid-19 pandemic, football-related antisemitism became more prolific online. A 2023 study of antisemitism on social media found that posts and tweets about the Qatar World Cup often involved antisemitic tropes aimed at Israel (despite the Israeli national team failing to qualify for the competition).

Violence and riots by football fans have occurred for many years in football games in many countries. Antisemitism has also become common at games, with ‘ultra’ football fan groups using antisemitic language and fascist symbols against their rivals. A pioneering Italian project has used ‘Open Source Intelligence’ methodology to assess the threat of antisemitic fan cultures. As antisemitism and football evolve, there will continue to be a need for research methods to evolve accordingly.               Dr. Keith Kahn-Harris, Senior Research Fellow, Project Director, European Jewish Research Archive

 

Most antisemitic incidents in football happen during amateur sporting activities  JPR Institute for Jewish Policy Research

 

"My dad never had a problem with telling the whole story. I think he'd be disgusted at how the telling of this story has become weaponized in the antisemitism game."

"The Palestinians were offered a state, their own state, and rejected it. Not only did they reject it, but they also attacked Israel and started a war. They lost the war. Start a war, lose a war and now I;m going to be the victim, just like October 7."

"It's putting the fox in the henhouse. They were all partisans. There are historical facts that are facts, not feelings. We've moved into the realm of feelings, not facts."

"This is a highly, highly sophisticated, organized propaganda machine that has been making the Palestinians victims for a very, very long time."

"And now they've got the Canadian Museum of Human Rights, hook, line and sinker, with no serious critical context or analysis." 

David Asper, Winnipeg lawyer, businessman

 

"As a national, publicly funded institution, the CMHR has yet to provide a meaningful resolution to the concerns raised through numerous communications and meetings aimed at upholding national standards and addressing community concerns."

"National institutions must be held accountable. At a time of rising antisemitism and extremism, the museum must not be instrumentalized in service of a dangerous political agenda."

"Its very legitimacy depends on its leadership's ability to demonstrate rigorous adhesion to the highest standards of professionalism and integrity." 

Gustavo Zentner, vice-president, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs 

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg. Photo by Richard White for Postmedia

 

Nothing, it appears, will dissuade the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) from proceeding with its monumentally controversial Nakba exhibit set to open on June 27. 'Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present' is meant to be an exploration of the 'ongoing forced displacement and dispossession of Palestinians' -- according to the CMHR advance publicity -- through artwork, photographs, video testimonies and personal stories from Palestinian-Canadians. 

 

In response to a formal legal threat from Shurat HaDin, Israeli advocacy group, and calls emanating from Jewish organizations to pause and review the exhibit, Amanda Gaudes, the museum's spokesperson, and Isha Khan, the museum's chief executive officer, remain unmoved and determined to proceed with an exhibit that is geared to demonize a legitimate state, re-established on its own authentic ancestral land, which Palestinian colonizers claim as theirs and theirs alone. Palestinian public relations present themselves as hapless, helpless victims of Israeli 'occupation'. 

 

A victimhood that has, since 1948, plotted the overthrow of the Jewish state, initially with the military assistance of neighbouring Arab states, and more latterly reduced to the assistance of Iran, Qatar and Turkey, funding, arming and supporting terrorist groups whose sole reason for existence is their ongoing efforts to disable and destroy the state, in the process murdering as many Jews in Israel and abroad as they can plot and carry out under the banner of a global intifada dedicated 'from the river to the sea Palestine will be free'.

 

Now, a museum that was the brainchild of a philanthropic Jewish family meant to educate the public primarily about the World War II Holocaust that systematically murdered six million European Jews through the deliberate planning and execution of a state mandate for a Final Solution reflecting Nazi Germany's ambition to destroy Jewish life throughout Europe, and by extension showcase egregious human rights violations worldwide, has been occupied and preempted by anti-Israel zealots whose scheme is to turn the museum's purpose on its head.

 

Late Winnipeg media magnate and Jewish philanthropist Israel (Izzy) Asper's focus on human rights and in particular the Holocaust through a dedicated public museum saw him directing a funding campaign to build that museum which opened in 2014. Private subscription and matching government funding saw its dedication to an aspiration of solemn and respectful historical rendering of actual ruinous events that contradicted the very existential human rights of entire populations, made the museum a reality. One that is now turned in on itself in a mockery of what it was meant to be.

 

Israel Asper's son decries the sacrilegious corruption that is taking place in the very institutional dream his father held dear. Instead of continuing its original purpose of memorializing the world's worst massive atrocity that brought antisemitism to the height of savage depravity the new exhibit  seeks to perpetuate more broadly and deeply for a credulous audience a classic narrative of fraud posing as a victim-oppressor tale for the ages. It is a tale of raw vengeance against a people returning to their ancestral home after millennia in exile in a world-wide diaspora that left them vulnerable to the world's most ancient curse.

 

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs has asked the museum board to commit to full transparency of the external review said by the CMHR to have commissioned; a stop to educational and resource materials associated with the exhibit until such time the review has been completed; and proper historically professional training for docents. "This exhibit risks legitimizing and normalizing these extreme narratives and those who use them to target Jews here in Canada", pointed out Gustavo Zentner.

 

Isha Khan, CEO of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, said the Palestine Uprooted exhibit is still in development and will get the same academic and curatorial rigour as all exhibits. (CBC)

 

 

"At the end of the day, it's a spineless board. The CEO supports the exhibit, and the minister and the entire government are pandering for Muslim votes, and so they stand for nothing."

"The Liberal MO is to try to make everybody happy, say everything and stand for nothing."

"You know what the recipe for failure is? That."

"The safest thing is to say and do nothing. But the safest thing isn't always the right thing. And that's what I mean about leadership: if you're going to be a leader, sometimes people will be unhappy."

"And if you're not that leader, you shouldn't be in the game."

David Asper 

"My dad never had a problem with telling the whole story. I think he'd be disgusted at how the telling of this story has become weaponized in the antisemitism game."

"The Palestinians were offered a state, their own state, and rejected it. Not only did they reject it, but they also attacked Israel and started a war. They lost the war. Start a war, lose a war and now I;m going to be the victim, just like October 7."

"It's putting the fox in the henhouse. They were all partisans. There are historical facts that are facts, not feelings. We've moved into the realm of feelings, not facts."

"This is a highly, highly sophisticated, organized propaganda machine that has been making the Palestinians victims for a very, very long time."

"And now they've got the Canadian Museum of Human Rights, hook, line and sinker, with no serious critical context or analysis." 

David Asper, Winnipeg lawyer, businessman

 

"As a national, publicly funded institution, the CMHR has yet to provide a meaningful resolution to the concerns raised through numerous communications and meetings aimed at upholding national standards and addressing community concerns."

"National institutions must be held accountable. At a time of rising antisemitism and extremism, the museum must not be instrumentalized in service of a dangerous political agenda."

"Its very legitimacy depends on its leadership's ability to demonstrate rigorous adhesion to the highest standards of professionalism and integrity." 

Gustavo Zentner, vice-president, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs 

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg. Photo by Richard White for Postmedia

 

Nothing, it appears, will dissuade the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) from proceeding with its monumentally controversial Nakba exhibit set to open on June 27. 'Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present' is meant to be an exploration of the 'ongoing forced displacement and dispossession of Palestinians' -- according to the CMHR advance publicity -- through artwork, photographs, video testimonies and personal stories from Palestinian-Canadians. 

 

In response to a formal legal threat from Shurat HaDin, Israeli advocacy group, and calls emanating from Jewish organizations to pause and review the exhibit, Amanda Gaudes, the museum's spokesperson, and Isha Khan, the museum's chief executive officer, remain unmoved and determined to proceed with an exhibit that is geared to demonize a legitimate state, re-established on its own authentic ancestral land, which Palestinian colonizers claim as theirs and theirs alone. Palestinian public relations present themselves as hapless, helpless victims of Israeli 'occupation'. 

 

A victimhood that has, since 1948, plotted the overthrow of the Jewish state, initially with the military assistance of neighbouring Arab states, and more latterly reduced to the assistance of Iran, Qatar and Turkey, funding, arming and supporting terrorist groups whose sole reason for existence is their ongoing efforts to disable and destroy the state, in the process murdering as many Jews in Israel and abroad as they can plot and carry out under the banner of a global intifada dedicated 'from the river to the sea Palestine will be free'.

 

Now, a museum that was the brainchild of a philanthropic Jewish family meant to educate the public primarily about the World War II Holocaust that systematically murdered six million European Jews through the deliberate planning and execution of a state mandate for a Final Solution reflecting Nazi Germany's ambition to destroy Jewish life throughout Europe, and by extension showcase egregious human rights violations worldwide, has been occupied and preempted by anti-Israel zealots whose scheme is to turn the museum's purpose on its head.

 

Late Winnipeg media magnate and Jewish philanthropist Israel (Izzy) Asper's focus on human rights and in particular the Holocaust through a dedicated public museum saw him directing a funding campaign to build that museum which opened in 2014. Private subscription and matching government funding saw its dedication to an aspiration of solemn and respectful historical rendering of actual ruinous events that contradicted the very existential human rights of entire populations, made the museum a reality. One that is now turned in on itself in a mockery of what it was meant to be.

 

Israel Asper's son decries the sacrilegious corruption that is taking place in the very institutional dream his father held dear. Instead of continuing its original purpose of memorializing the world's worst massive atrocity that brought antisemitism to the height of savage depravity the new exhibit  seeks to perpetuate more broadly and deeply for a credulous audience a classic narrative of fraud posing as a victim-oppressor tale for the ages. It is a tale of raw vengeance against a people returning to their ancestral home after millennia in exile in a world-wide diaspora that left them vulnerable to the world's most ancient curse.

 

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs has asked the museum board to commit to full transparency of the external review said by the CMHR to have commissioned; a stop to educational and resource materials associated with the exhibit until such time the review has been completed; and proper historically professional training for docents. "This exhibit risks legitimizing and normalizing these extreme narratives and those who use them to target Jews here in Canada", pointed out Gustavo Zentner.

 

Isha Khan, CEO of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, said the Palestine Uprooted exhibit is still in development and will get the same academic and curatorial rigour as all exhibits. (CBC)

 

 

"At the end of the day, it's a spineless board. The CEO supports the exhibit, and the minister and the entire government are pandering for Muslim votes, and so they stand for nothing."

"The Liberal MO is to try to make everybody happy, say everything and stand for nothing."

"You know what the recipe for failure is? That."

"The safest thing is to say and do nothing. But the safest thing isn't always the right thing. And that's what I mean about leadership: if you're going to be a leader, sometimes people will be unhappy."

"And if you're not that leader, you shouldn't be in the game."

David Asper 

"We have to be open-eyed that the [Liberal-led Canadian] government is not a reliable partner."

"Security is foundational, but insufficient. I don't want to be a hostage in my own shul the rest of my life."

"In terms of standing up for Jewish rights -- for Jews to be proudly and openly Jewish, and proud Zionists -- that's something we have to support ourselves. It's not that long ago that prime minister Trudeau stood up and proclaimed he was a Zionist. But his successor did not say the same thing, and that's telling."

Rabbi Adam Cutler, Adath Israel synagogue, Toronto

 

"[Carney] scattered crumbs of concern, and acted like it was a feast."

"[The Prime Minister was] playing a politically charged 4D chess game. He moved his knight, and now we respond, as a Jewish community by moving our queen."

"[Whereas Carney] came on our turf to lecture us, to have us listen to our own problems [community leaders as a group should meet Carney on Parliament Hill and] have him sit and listen to us, while we tell him the real roots of the problems, and offer our own recommendations. All with the cameras on, too."

Matthew Taub, director Unapologetically Jewish advocacy group

 

"The prime minister's speech at Toronto's Holy Blossom synagogue on June 1 was the latest in a] series of slaps in the face [from the prime ministers to the Jewish community.] It's all up to us now. I would like to see the community proactively mobilized, for sure."

"I think that what we're failing to do is show up in large numbers ... I think that this is partially the failure of our own leadership."

"When the encampments went up, what was the reaction? Handwringing and feeling terrible. But the number of people who actually showed up to confront the people involved in the encampment was minimal."

"It's just that our own numbers stay home. Maybe it's exhaustion, but we're not, to be honest, doing our part to defend ourselves."

"If we want to have standing the community, it's not going to be given to  us. We have to stand up and demand it."

Michael Teper, president, Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation 

A poster against antisemitism seen on International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in Markham, Ontario, Canada, on March 22, 2025. (Creative Touch Imaging Ltd/NurPhoto via Reuters)

 

The Jewish community is still reeling with abandoned hope in the wake of the prime minister of their country of birth abandoning his responsibility to serve and protect all the people of the country without fear or favour, equally and with the full powers of his executive position. They heard a speech recounting everything they already know; that their community is in grave danger; that threats have given way to dangerous violence; being visibly Jewish in the larger Canadian community has brought out the vitriolic hatred of antisemites, spurred to expression by a burgeoning Muslim population now representing 5 percent of the Canadian population; 10 percent in Toronto, according to 2021 figures.

 

That number has grown even larger in the past five years, with the total Muslim-Canadian population now approaching two million as opposed to a Jewish-Canadian population of 400,000. Where demographic voting blocs are concerned, clearly there is an advantage in catering to one that has four times the ballot box potential of the other. So, while Mr. Carney decried the shootings and fire-bombings at Jewish houses of worship and schools, the vandalism at community centres and Jewish-owned businesses, never once did he hint at the source of these -- like the campus anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian camps harassing Jewish faculty and staff -- Muslim-incited.

 

Photo Credit: Matt Gurney

 

"Canada's civic compact is failing Jewish Canadians", said the prime minister, yet from his attitude of condemnation and empathy, never did he hint at the foundational cause; the importation of cultural/religious Jew-hate courtesy of immigrants, refugees, illegal migrants and student visas emanating from the Middle East and North Africa -- emigrants bringing with them part of their heritage that rejects Canadian social norms and values. One can commiserate with the plight of Canadian Jews, but never betray the source of their affliction. 

 

"We have nothing to expect from this government. They've made it very clear they're not interested in supporting the Jewish community. They've made it very clear that they don't really even see much of a problem", stated Amir Epstein, director of pro-Israel advocacy group Tafsik, based in Toronto. It has been during the past decade, matching the latest tenure of the Liberals as government in Canada, that the Canadian-Muslim population has approached such heights of community size. And never has the federal government intervened even once to do its part to put a stop to the venomous racist campaign demonizing Israel and Jewish Canadians.

 

In May alone the prime minister admonished Israel, had a 'cordial phone call' with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to congratulate him on the PA's ripening (absent) democratic credentials, then a call to Israeli President Isaac Herzog that left much to be desired in terms of friendly relationships of mutual trust. The icing on the cake was Louise Arbour's choice as the next governor general, who as UN human rights chief, UN Watch pointed out her repeated singling out of Israel as a 'human rights abuser' reflecting her sympathies with Palestinian victimhood.

 

A large anti-Israel protest in Ottawa in August. Photo by Ashley Fraser /Postmedia

 

Her support for a regional human rights charter equating Zionism with racism helped Israel bashers feel entitled and diminished the impact of Israel's responses to terrorist violence as a self-defense reality. Rabbi Yael Splansky of the synagogue where Carney's speech took place had her own solution as an offering to remedy the situation: "Every peace-loving, democracy-loving Canadian ought to make antisemitism their concern and make their voices heard by their own elected leaders The Jewish community has been doing this work for years, but we cannot do it alone. Because antisemitism has been allowed to seep into Canadian waters, only a groundswell response can turn back the tide."

 

And there are other potential responses that could go a long way to solving these problems: Ottawa should "name the problem clearly .. antisemitism in Canada is being driven in significant part by anti-Israel and anti-Zionist hatred." The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs suggests: "ensure that terrorist organizations, their proxies, and their adherents cannot operate here. Public funds should not support organizations that initiate or promote hatred against the Jewish community. This must include addressing the weaponization of national institutions, including the Canada Revenue Agency and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights." 

 

Following his speech on antisemitism at Toronto's Holy Blossom synagogue June 1, 2026 Prime Minister Mark Carney met with Jewish leaders including (left) Noah Shack, CEO of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, and Anna Shternshis, head of the Jewish Studies department at the University of Toronto. Carney said Canadian Jews are being "brutally targeted by hatred". (Photo by Ellin Bessner/The CJN.)

 

"This isn't a time to shrink back, but to further engage elected officials. It's time for all of us to be active and make sure that they're hearing directly from us, and that we are doing our part in the equation to push them to do their part."

"Regardless of what party they're from, regardless of what part of the country you're in, their job is to listen to you, and represent you in the Parliament or the legislature or city hall."

Noah Shack, CEO, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs 

"I remind the Muslims: Do you ever think that the Jewish community can also retaliate? You know, have they gone and burned halal meat stores? Look at all the Muslim businesses. Have they targeted them?"

"They don't retaliate. And this is the big difference. While it's hate on one side, the other side is just so busy defending themselves and looking for ways to make peace."

"[The protesters are] not so much pro-Palestine, as much as they hate [Israel]. [If] these people were saying, let's have peace, let's have a ceasefire, it would make sense [but that's not what they're saying]."

Raheel Raza, president, Council of Muslims Against Antisemitism 

 

"Islamist extremist groups exploited [Hamas's October 7 massacre in Israel and the ensuing way in Gaza to] organize, mobilize support, take part in demonstrations [and] engage in agitation on social media."

"This was orchestrated by domestic interests -- including followers of Salafism, which is described as] the Islamist extremist movement with the largest number of adherents in Germany [and foreign terrorist groups such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and Vancouver-based Samidoon]."

"[Some of these groups began working together for the first timer after October 7, with their] antisemitic ideas [forming the] common denominator in the ideology of the entire Islamist extremist spectrum."

"[In Germany and neighbouring countries, numerous attacks were planned or carried out by] lone actors with Islamist extremist motives [proving that] Islamist terrorism continues to pose a threat."

Report on the Protection of the Constitution, German government 

 

"I suspect Canadian police forces consider such information potentially inflammatory."

"Just as crime statistics categorized by race of perpetrator have been used to identify biases in the criminal justice system, information on the religious and ethnic identity of perpetrators of hate crime can be used to provide certain categories of the population with educational support, thus helping to ameliorate the problem."

Robert Brym, professor emeritus, University of Toronto 

Prime Minister Mark Carney is flanked by members of his security detail as he delivers remarks at Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto on Monday, June 1 2026. Chris Young/The Canadian Press.

 

Under the latest iteration in a succession of Liberal governments in Canada it has become clear that a government that once never hesitated to state its friendship and support for a sister democracy recognized in Israel has taken great pains in the last decade to distance itself from the Jewish state and at the same time alienate Jewish Canadians by its deliberate oblivious attitude to the groundswell of antisemitism that has washed ashore along with the welcome of immigrants, refugees, illegal migrants and foreign students studying at Canadian academic institutions hailing from the Middle East and North Africa.

 

A Canadian government at present that has blinkered itself from its constitutional obligations to ensure the security of all sectors of its population base. The rising tide of violence against Jewish institutions that has seen synagogues and Jewish schools firebombed and shot at, Jewish-owned businesses vandalized, university campuses housing anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian camps harassing the Jewish professoriate and students, issuing threats and slurs, intimating another Holocaust, with crowds of protesters thronging the streets chanting 'final solution' and 'from the river to the sea', roiling the social order, elicits a mild condemnation of antisemitism, invariably coupled with rejection of 'Islamophobia' from government leaders.

 

A person holds a sign while marching during a pro-Palestine rally marking the anniversary of a Hamas attack on Israel, in Vancouver, on Monday, October 7, 2024. Ethan Cairns/The Canadian Press.

 

Canada has become a hotbed of Islamist extremism, with a loud and hateful (hopefully) minority of its two million Muslim citizens and  residents of the country seething with Jew-hate and openly demonstrating their contempt for Judaism in the guise of anti-Zionism, a hundred-year-old modern movement to reclaim Judean ancestral land as a reborn heritage homeland for the world's Jewish diaspora, ceaselessly threatened throughout the millennia. Zionism has become fundamental to Jewish thought for it speaks of memory and longing and a fervent wish for a geographic place that is Jewish, where the pogroms that haunted Jewish life for an eternity could be safeguarded against.

 

Even that hope  has been dashed time and again by the incandescent hate emanating from Israel's neighbours in the Middle East; now reduced to a  degree from neghbouring states, but taken up with a murderous vengeance by the fundamentalist Islamist groups that are funded, armed and protected by states such as Iran, Qatar and Turkey and their non-state terror groups whose sole function is to achieve the destruction of the Jewish state. Arabs identifying themselves as Palestinians, aided and abetted by the powerful global institution of the United Nations have endlessly attacked Israel, culminating in a bloody massacre on 7 October 2023 which led to Israel's invasion of the Gaza Strip to rout out Hamas which led that savage incursion into southern Israel.

 

Jews in Israel and worldwide, soon seeing the evidence of sadistic torture of innocent Israeli civilians, with girls and women mutilated then mass-raped and murdered, families set afire in their community homes as a mass atrocity of unthinkable brutality took place, might have felt that the world would be moved by their tragedy, but such was not the case. The viral antipathy of Israel defending itself and its people, responding to the mass atrocity with a determination to seek justice by military means of defence and counteroffensive, soon realized that even the evidence produced by the terrorists filming their own predatory obscenities made little difference.

 

Palestinians have been forgiven their descent into feral barbarism; Jews are condemned for their response in defence of their existence. The slanderous blood libels of Israeli 'genocide' against Palestinians have won the public relations gold cup. Few are prepared to outright state that the virulently threatening antisemitism now common on the streets of Canadian cities are the result of permitting people with a culture of Jew-hate and an ideological-religious inability to honour the values and laws of a democratic Western government are being perpetrated by bigoted, hate-mongering Islamists.  

 

A bullet hole is seen in a front door at Temple Emanu-El in Toronto on March 3, 2026. The temple was one of three Toronto-area Jewish sites targeted by gunfire in less than a week. Photo by Peter J. Thompson / National Post

 

Should such accusations of source emanate from Jews themselves, despite that those who are attacked clearly identify their attackers as Muslim, and when law enforcement does step in in response to egregious attacks, names of the transgressors are clearly identifiable as Muslim, charges of racism and Islamophobia ring forth. The firm reluctance of Canadian governments at all levels to admit that the presence of unregenerated racists whose first and only loyalty is to Islam and its Koranic passages of anti-Jewish denigration and loathing links directly to the politics of voter loyalty at the ballot box.  

"I call it the new antisemitism. All those Islamist organizations who don't get along with each other come together with one cause -- the hate for Israel and the Jewish community. So they justify it."
"It's quite clear that the major funders of these rallies while the head of the snake of course, is Iran, and through its proxies, through its organizations, through its mosques they channel the funding." 

"This is not something that just happened on October 8; this is something that has been in the works and been planned for years before October 7."

"As far as vandalism and shootings that target Jewish businesses and synagogues, there generally isn't enough publicly available information to draw a straight through-line between such incidents and [the] protest circuit."

"It's all happening in an atmosphere of increased animosity toward Jewish people and groups with 'Jewish' effectively being a stand-in for 'Zionist'."

Raheel Raza 

 

 

The Jewish Ghetto and Underground Bunkers of Bedzin, Poland

Polish volunteers searching through the rubble of the attic of the Ghetto House, AP

 

"This armband is a witness, it's like directly touching that evil which people created for other people."

"[Seeing it felt like a] jolt."

"Whether building bunkers or trying to hide a child or an aging parent, this is all resistance [resistance beyond shooting back at Nazis]."

"This Jewish history, for me, gave meaning to this town [Bedzin, Poland]."

Karolina Jakowenko, Cukerman's Gate Foundation

 

"The entry to the bunker was through the kitchen oven."

"We are not aware any of the people here survived ... when the Nazis discovered this place."

"Perhaps as many as 60 were hiding here."

Piotr Jakowenko, Bedzin, Poland

 

"There are only a few authentic places in Europe where Jews hid that have been preserved."

"But in those cases, the story is usually told from the perspective of he righteous -- those who saved Jews."

"[In Bedzin, the preserved hiding place was organized by Jews themselves]."

Joanna Krol-Komla, POLIN Museum of the History of the Polish Jews in Warsaw

Hebrew prayerbook, 1934, found in the attack of the Bedzin Ghetto Fighters Memorial, May 29, 2025, AP

 

Among the findings in a house in southern Poland used by Jews, including youth members of the resistance, to hide from the Nazis, a secret bunker, an underground tunnel and a star of David armband are included as remnants testifying to the desperate hope of survival during the Holocaust years of World War II. The two-story red brick house in the town of Bedzin inside the former Jewish ghetto served as a "kibbutz" organized by left-wing Zionist youth; a network relying on one another in hopes of survival. 

 

The key words; survival, resistance and occupiers describing the Jewish existential dilemma when Fascist Germany embarked on a Final Solution to rid the continent of its Jewish population, have long since been coopted by Palestinians claiming them as their original victimhood spurs. Jews never embraced the victimhood mantra in perpetuity; that is the only authentic Palestinian propaganda message skillfully utilized by Arab Palestinians to promote their 'cause' of destroying the Jewish state, claiming the geographic Judean patrimony as their own.

 

Ms. Jakowenko and her colleagues cleared the attic of the house preparing it for renovation by lifting floorboards and collecting the rubble, then carefully examining what remained. Objects they discovered included a 1935 Jewish prayerbook, and a Star of David armband. Last year the Cukerman's Gate Foundation discovered the presence of a bunker and underground tunnel on the house's grounds, working with the memoirs and oral histories of survivors with respect to their historical presence. 

 

Star of David armband, AP

 

As the hideouts were revealed, the property was carefully examined, with evidence suggesting the existence of three bunkers. One of the volunteers who assisted with the search, Wojciech Mazan, explained the work was gruelling but mirrored the massive energy it took as the Jewish youth laboured, in digging out the tunnels and bunkers. "We feel some closeness to them in this energy. The house is speaking to us", he stated. 

 

Prior to the outbreak of war, the town of Bedzin's population included 27,000 Jews, representing half its population. Nazi occupation in 1942 saw authorities creating Jewish ghettos. The house located in the ghetto area represents an episode of Jewish resistance  in Nazi-occupied Poland, not completely dissimilar to that of the Warsaw Ghetto liquidation following its uprising in 1943; there were other areas across Poland of Ghetto resistance. 

 

When the Nazis began the destruction of the Bedzin ghetto in the summer of 1943, the Jews in hiding there managed to smuggle in beforehand about 20 guns to amass an arsenal in the knowledge that the Warsaw Ghetto had already been liquidated. The Bedzin Jews were aware they would not survive, some among them choosing to die shooting back at the Nazis.

 

Poland was home to Europe's largest Jewish population prior to the Second World War. Nazi Germany, responsible for the Holocaust, occupied Poland, and Poland still struggles with the knowledge that Polish neighbours of Jews involved themselves in local pogroms targeting Jews. This local community in Bedzin, however, actively works to revive its Jewish history. 

 

Entrance of  the underground hideout of Jewish residents of the 1943 Jewish ghetto in Bedzin, AP

 

"[Maintaining] peace, order and public safety, while allowing free expression [is part of the mandate for the Surete du Quebec (SQ)]."

"[Officers only intervene] to protect life and property, as well as to ensure everyone's peaceful and free exercise of their individual and collective rights."

Spokesperson, Surete du Quebec

le journal de quebec

 

 52-year-old Andre Therrien, a resident of Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, Quebec, learned through a Facebook page of a planned rally in his neighbourhood, called Stop General Dynamics, mounted by the Palestinian Youth Movement. Taking umbrage at the Palestinian Youth Movement planning a rally in his neighbourhood, he drove the short distance from  his home to the site on Saturday, planning to voice his objections to their appearance in his neighbourhood. Clearly, the constant 'protests' and pro-Palestinian marches through Montreal and elsewhere in the province have been disruptive to ordinary residents, many of whom resent that this group and others like them bring their violent-voiced and threatening presence all too often to the streets of Quebec's major city.

 

For the most part, these protests are aimed directly at Jewish Quebecers, whether they take place in residential areas with a heavy Jewish presence, or at Quebec's universities where they have mounted campus pro-Palestinian encampments whose purpose is to disseminate anti-Israel propaganda labelling the Jewish state genocidal against the Palestinian population in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Both of which territories are the never-ending source of campaigns challenging Israel's legitimacy, along with frequent deadly attacks against Jewish Israelis. Ironically, as the source of the lethal attacks, the Palestinians describe themselves to sympathetic Western media as the 'victims' of Israeli 'aggression' and 'occupation'.

 

Mr. Therrien, to put it mildly is not enamoured of the Palestinian group's influence in his community. The protest was scheduled to take place at the Elisabeth Monette School, a five-minute walk from Mr. Therrien's home. "I don't want these groups in my neighbourhood", he explained in an interview that took place following the scheduled rally. He began to film the rally, when one of the group knocked his phone out of his hand. A 30-second video showed him approaching the masked demonstrators with their keffiyehs, those leading holding a banner that read "Genocide Dynamics".

 

Screenshot 2026-06-03 124944

 

The clip shows Mr. Therrien addressing the crowd in French, before his recording stops abruptly. That was when SQ officers informed him their presence had a purpose; to protect him. "OK, if you're going to protect me, I'm going to stand in front of the manifestation (protest)", he responded. At which time the officers arrested the man for "assault and obstruction", reflected by his aggressive behaviour manifested toward the protesters. "Charges related to the arrest may be laid at a later date", he was subsequently informed, as he was released, at that point.

 

Mr. Therrien could be seen speaking with police officers and protesters, before turning around and walking off. A video posted to social media by the X account Leviathan, documented the proceedings. The officers followed him, and then tackled him from behind, knocking him to the ground, punching him in the liver, and ultimately breaking his eyeglasses, before cuffing him. He was released soon afterward without charge in front of his vehicle, where his two dogs awaited  him.

 

Mr. Therrien explained later that he had gone directly to a police station to file a complaint where an officer on duty advised him to file it online, warning that charges against him would likely remain pending. 

 

The Facebook page of the Palestinian Youth Movement heralded its mission to "stop the expansion project of the General Dynamics factory in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield", promoting it as well on Instagram, adding that there were arrangements for two buses to ferry protesters to and from the site. A network of Montreal area pro-Palestinian groups; PYM Montreal, Montreal4Palestine (Divest for Palestine) and Monteregie Antifasciste are all networked on the Stop General Dynamic Facebook account. 

 

Also connected is activist Safa Chebbi who serves on the board of the federally funded L'Observatoire des inegalites raciales au Quebec, "an action group for the production of knowledge" to researchers, community and union actors, speaking on behalf of Divest for Palestine. She also acts as a spokesperson for the Global Sumud Flotilla that annually sets off to break the Israeli government's sea blockade of Gaza.  

 

André Therrien says his glasses were broken after he was knocked to the ground by Sûreté du Québec (SQ) officers in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, Que., on May 30, 2026. André Therrien (used with permission)

 

All of which, taken together, makes one wonder why the provincial and municipal governments in Quebec fail to address the hate-mongering, socially divisive, ideologically-driven messaging of these groups which have brought a far-off, complex conflict of long duration and currency to Canada and more specifically Quebec. Their viral, disruptive gatherings openly calling for the destruction of a democratic nation, their offensives mounted against Jewish Quebecers, their alienation of ordinary non-Jewish Quebecers, express values that have no currency in Canada/Quebec. Yet nothing is ever done to dissuade these groups from their mission of malevolence against Jews in Canada whose constitutional rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms are constantly imperilled.

 

Quebec, on the other hand, has demonstrated time and again why it bears the reputation of being the most Jew-hostile province in Canada. That its governments tolerate the presence of groups that set out to deliberately and with malice aforethought plan to estrange the province from its relationship with its Jewish citizens is obvious enough, and no one in authority appears to be particularly perturbed although all would be swift to avow that antisemitism is deplorable. Those who defy and have contempt for Canada's social compact and its laws against hate-mongering appear to have soft-handed treatment by both government and policing authorities.

 

Citizens who demand accountability from both in the matter of public order are given short shrift. Worse, in the instance of Salaberry-de-Valleyfield resident Andre Therrien, at the very time that the Surete du Quebec present themselves at such disturbing events to ensure that no undue and obvious violence erupts, it is not groups such as the Palestinian Youth Movement that are held to account, but members of the community who express their exasperation and profound annoyance at their presence, disrupting the social order with their campaigns of delegitimization and threats, who become the villains that the Surete must respond to with physical force. For shame! 

 

le journal de quebec

 

Peter L. Biro, University of Toronto

"[Massey College wanted a needless [advisory committee to vet [an antisemitism conference] ."

"A good portion of Canadian society is utterly oblivious to the fact that our current age represents the next great transmutation of Jew-hatred in human history."

"That only underscores the critical importance of this conference." 

"[Everything for the conference production was developed in] full cooperation with and the full contemporaneous knowledge of the Principal, beginning in mid-January and continuing through to May 27."

"[The Massey College president's concerns are] absolutely false."

"[Massey's concern is] one of substance rather than one of process [from] undisclosed senior members of the College about whether the subject of antisemitism is being curated in an appropriate fashion, [and] about whether the salient issues are being framed in a politically and socially appropriate way." 

University of Toronto Law Professor Peter Biro 

 

"When Massey was first approached by Mr. Biro with his written draft conference proposal on antisemitism, after some conversation, I agreed to hold a programmed conference on antisemitism. I welcomed the initiative and told Mr. Biro that Massey would engage in a process of consultation about the proposed conference."

"[We -- he and Biro -- had] two meetings on the proposed conference [during which he] particularly emphasized the centrality of consultation and collaboration in defining the agenda and speakers, and my responsibility as Principal to seek appropriate advice, and that I would do this."

"Unfortunately, Mr. Biro did not check back on the process of consultation. I had begun that process of consultation with colleagues, when I was informed by email that all Mr. Biro's proposed speakers had been invited, that the Prime Minister of Canada had been invited, and that a partnership with another organization had been established."

"Much of the necessary collaborative process was ignored. In a subsequent phone call with Mr. Biro, he informed me that the agenda was fixed, that he was moving the conference to another venue, and that he was resigning from the College."

Massey College principal James Orbinski  

Peter Biro quits Massey College over conference vetting dispute  MSN

 

 A respected and highly esteemed professor at University of Toronto, in view of an unprecedented tsunami of viral antisemitism that has swept through Canadian academia, along with Canadian society at large, thought the time was right and appropriate to launch a conference on the subject to view and analyze the phenomenon that was roiling the social order in Canada and producing a hostile atmosphere for Jewish Canadians, in an attempt to make sense of what is happening. To that end, the professor invited speakers whose comprehensive insider knowledge of the subject would help in the search for a solution to the untenable situation. 

 

Yet the one-day conference titled Antisemitism in Our 'Free and Democratic Society': A Canary's Song, scheduled to take place at Massey College on September 15, as was discussed on a number of occasions between Professor Biro and the College principal, James Orbinski, must first undergo a close scrutiny to ensure that Massey College, linked with the University of Toronto, but separate from it, not be taken off guard by the conference content, its presenter, and invited speakers, intended to closely investigate all those involved, along with their purpose. Mr. Orbinski also took exception to the fact that the conference would be held in conjunction with and under the auspices of, another group.

 

Specifically taking umbrage that arrangements were made with the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights as co-host. Canada's former special envoy on Holocaust remembrance and combatting antisemitism, Deborah Lyons was to be the feature speaker In addition to which the Raoul Wallenberg Centre's founder Irwin Cotler, a renowned human rights activist, and former Justice Minister and Canadian Attorney-General, alongside American Holocaust historian and diplomat Deborah Lipstadt. Altogether a cast of accredited speakers of great international repute. 

 

That the College principal felt it a requirement that this conference, its agenda, and its roster of speakers required vetting, to ensure that the reputation of Massey College remained safely intact from criticism is beyond belief. Surely, the spectre of Critical Race Theory, DEI and wokeism are alive and well at Massey. This ideological trifecta that spurns the social, legal and historical equality of Jews, preferring to regard them as 'colonialist Imperialists' guilty of crimes against humanity past and present, must have spurred Principal Orbinski to action, in the opinion that he had the right and an obligation to verify the appropriateness of the conference, its agenda and its speakers.

 

This is what Canadian universities have descended to; declined from their purpose as institutions of higher learning no longer valid, but venues for ideological totalitarianism which celebrates the rights of Indigenous peoples everywhere to rise against their oppressors. Israel, in this context, seen as a genocidal oppressor, though it sits on ancestral Judean land and has been under attack by its neighbours from its very re-dedication in 1948 to the present, while representing the very epitome of indigeneity.  

"Our academic institutions and government are willing to address antisemitism only insofar as the discussion sanitizes the connection between Judaism and the land of Israel."

Chemistry Professor Dvira Segal, University of Toronto

 

"[This is] an important story of what appears to be an attempt by leadership at Massey College to censor a major conference on antisemitism."

Michael Geist, University of Ottawa law professor 

Life on campus at the University of Toronto has materially changed in recent years, in particular following the Hamas atrocities in southern Israel that took place on October 7, 2023, wryly observed Professor Biro. "Israel vilification has become the currency, cornerstone and language of much of what transpires in the social sciences", said Professor Biro, adjunct professor of law at University of Toronto.