Record levels of anti-Semitism were recorded in Canada last year, with sharp increases in Quebec and British Columbia, according to a report released Sunday.
The annual audit of the Jewish advocacy group B’nai Brith found 2,799 anti-Jewish hate crimes, including beatings, vandalism in synagogues and swastikas in schools.
Anti-Semitic incidents have risen by a total of seven percent over the previous year, but the number of violent incidents has increased by more than 700 percent, from nine in 2020 to 75 in 2021.
A recorded incident alleges that a man sent a Nazi salute before attacking a woman at a Toronto subway station, the report said.
Another employee at an Ontario liquor store was attacked by a customer who called him a “dirty Jewish king.”
In June, the Montreal Kosher Bakery was bombed.
The report found that in May last year, there was an increase in anti-Jewish hate crimes, coinciding with escalating violence in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel. Jewish pro-Israel protesters were beaten, stoned and spat upon.
At an anti-Israel rally in Winnipeg, a man paraded with an inscription showing a figure throwing a star of David in a trash can over the slogan “Please keep the world clean.
The most purposeful religious minority
David Matas, a senior legal adviser to B’nai Brith, said the Jewish community “tops the list” of minorities suffering religious hatred.
“If you are a Jew, you are more likely to be a victim of a hate crime than if you are a member of another minority,” Matas said.
He told a news conference in Ottawa that there was an “increase” in anti-Semitic incidents on university campuses.
Anti-Semitic graffiti can be seen on a plaque in front of the Ottawa Provincial Court Building on November 15, 2021. Graffiti was also found on the side of the building. (Simon Lassall / CBC)
The report said universities were “a significant breeding ground for anti-Semitism”, with Jewish students increasingly reporting vandalism and threats of violence.
Conservative MP Melissa Lanzman said there was a “rising wave of anti-Semitism in this country”, not only among far-right but also among university professors.
“Anti-Semitism is one of the ugliest manifestations of racism,” she said.
The report found that harassment of Canadian Jews fell slightly to 2,460 incidents in 2021 from 2,483 in 2020. But there was a 12 percent increase in online hatred due to more people communicating online during the COVID pandemic. -19.
B’nai Brith, which is investigating incidents, found that some Jewish candidates in the federal election, including Montreal-based Liberal MP Anthony Hausfader, had strewn their posters with swastikas.
At a news conference in Ottawa on Monday, Housefather called anti-Semitism a “serious problem.”
He said he had personally witnessed people in a car driving on a busy street in his constituency “screaming insults” through windows, including “kill Jews, kill Jews”.
The lawmaker said the abuse had frightened many voters and that one had asked if he should remove the mezuzah – a small decorative case containing rows of Torah – on the outside of his door because he would identify her household as Jewish.
Quebec reports most incidents
Marvin Rotran, national director of the B’nai Brith Human Rights League in Canada, outlined “alarming trends” in a number of provinces.
The most reported anti-Semitic incidents last year occurred in Quebec, where 828 incidents were reported in 2021, up from 686 a year earlier.
British Columbia grew 111 percent from 2020 to 2021, from 194 to 409, including 56 cases of vandalism and 296 cases of online abuse and hatred.
Anti-Jewish abuses rose sharply in Alberta, doubling in the prairies and Nunavut.
In Atlantic Canada, the number of reported incidents decreased to 80 last year from 199 in 2020.
Ontario is second in the number of reports of anti-Semitic incidents in 2021, but 821 incidents are down from 1130 a year earlier.
New Democrat MP Randall Garrison, who represents Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke, said he was shocked by the increase in cases in British Columbia, noting that online communication “made it easier for haters to be heard”.
The report includes a case in Richmond, British Columbia, where a wooden column reading “COVID is a Jewish world order” was found on a busy street.
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