The year 2023 was an ‘excessive’ year for anti-Semitism in Canada, according to the annual audit released by B’nai Brith on Yom HaShoah

On By Vaseline

A leading Canadian Jewish organization says there were high levels of anti-Jewish hatred in Canada before October 7 – and has skyrocketed since the Hamas attacks on Israel and the Gaza war.

Now at record levels of anti-Semitic incidents across the country, B’nai Brith Canada says of its annual audit, the organization recorded more than double the number of incidents between 2022 and 2023.

Richard Robertson, director of research and advocacy at B’nai Brith, said the annual audit – which dates back to 1982 – has served as “the authoritative document on the existence of anti-Semitism at the national level.”

He called the audit’s findings “an indicator of the state of anti-Semitism in Canada.”

“If a physical barometer did exist, the 2023 value would be off the chart,” Robertson said at a May 6 news conference in Ottawa.

Richard Robertson, director of research and advocacy for B’nai Brith Canada, holds a copy of the organization’s 41st annual audit of anti-Semitic incidents in Canada for 2023 during a news conference in Ottawa on May 6, 2024. (CPAC)

With 5,791 incidents recorded nationally from January 1 to December 31, 2023, he said, there was an average of 15 incidents per day (compared to an average of eight per day in 2022), the highest number ever recorded in the audit. 41-year history.

Robertson said this figure represents a 109.1 percent increase in the number of incidents recorded by B’nai Brith last year.

“In 2023 we entered a period of crisis,” he said. “Eight provinces or territories saw increases of more than 50 percent,” he said.

There were 77 incidents of violence compared to 25 in 2022, he said, or a 208 percent increase in the number of violent acts, including threats.

Online attacks or harassment have increased 135 percent nationwide, he said. Personal intimidation also increased, by a total of more than 40 percent.

Robertson said the audit’s statistics should cover all decent residents of the country.

“Anti-Semitism is not just a plague on the Jewish people. It is an attack on Canadian values ​​and a threat to our multicultural, diverse society,” he said in a statement.

“We urge people to think seriously about what this spike in anti-Semitic incidents says about the direction our society is moving.”

Robertson called the figures “horrific” and “warrant immediate action and response” from both government and non-governmental “social stakeholders.”

He said the underlying figures were worrying.

“What can’t be directly extrapolated from the numbers may be the most ominous,” he said.

“The result of the aggressive rise of anti-Semitism is that Jews from coast to coast, after being exposed to dehumanizing levels of hatred over the course of the previous year, feel left out and abandoned,” he told a press gallery.

“The systemic nature of anti-Semitism has forced Canadian Jews to question the continued vitality of the country’s Jewish communities…perhaps for the first time there is genuine concern that the Jewish Canadian story, a proud history that is inextricably linked with modern Canada and the improvement and progress of our society, is in danger of being erased.”

The horrific “notable examples” B’nai Brith cites in a press release about the 2023 audit include that “a Jewish student in B.C.’s Lower Mainland (Langley) was physically assaulted by classmates while being taunted with anti-Semitic epithets ” and that a Manitoba Jewish student “was confronted by classmates doing the ‘Sieg Heil’.”

In the audit, B’nai Brith says it has ensured that the impact on Canadian Jews of a confrontation between Israel and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorists in May 2023 has been demonstrated.

B’nai Brith Canada’s audit found that 50.9 percent of anti-Semitic incidents in 2023 occurred in the months following the October 7 Hamas attacks in southern Israel. (B’nai Brith Canada)

“If Israel is attacked, the consequences reach far beyond its borders. In 2023, Canada’s Jewish community was needlessly subjected to scapegoating and hostility as a result of foreign conflict. The actions of a foreign government were used to justify targeting Jewish schools, houses of worship, institutions, businesses and individuals.”

Robertson said it was alarming how “the pervasiveness with which anti-Semitism has permeated the fabric of our society over the past year.”

“But equally troubling is that the dramatic increase in anti-Semitism cannot be attributed solely to one factor or incident,” he said.

“Anti-Semitism was pervasive in Canada in 2023. Separate conflicts in Israel, first in May and June, and then from October 7 through the end of the year, saw an increase in anti-Semitic incidents.

“When there is unrest in Israel, Jewish Canadians suffer unnecessarily,” he said, although he noted that foreign conflicts “are not solely responsible for the rise in anti-Semitism in 2023.”

In September, he noted, anti-Semitism had increased following the celebration in the House of Commons of Yaroslav Hunka, a 98-year-old Ukrainian-Canadian who served in the Nazi SS Galizien division during World War II. (The 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, also called SS Galizien and SS Galicina or Galicia, was founded in 1943 by Heinrich Himmler, and soldiers swore an oath to Hitler.)

The cover page of B’nai Brith Canada’s 41st annual audit of anti-Semitic incidents in Canada.

Robertson said the 2023 report also found increasing use of artificial intelligence to “produce and promote” anti-Semitic incidents, noting that college campuses had become places where Jewish students and staff were “forced to go ‘ with the consequences of anti-Israel. rhetoric about their academic environment.

“What is clear is that the situation is intolerable and requires urgent action,” he said.

“As Canadians, we must act collectively to ensure that the dramatic rise in anti-Semitism we witnessed in 2023 does not intensify in 2024. We are standing on a precipice and cannot allow our society to fall into the abyss. The absurd rise of anti-Semitism does not reflect our shared morals and values.

“Canada, we can do better.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke Monday at a ceremony commemorating Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, at the National Holocaust Monument in Ottawa and called out rising anti-Semitism in Canada.

After thanking the Holocaust survivors who attended the ceremony for their strength and commitment to sharing their stories with future generations, Trudeau said there had been a “disturbing increase” in anti-Semitism “on a scale we have already seen.” had not seen for generations’.

“Synagogue windows broken and shot at… Jewish stores vandalized… all these acts open wounds from painful chapters in our collective history,” Trudeau told the crowd at the Holocaust Memorial.

“There are people who still deny the Holocaust. There are people who deny what happened on October 7. And I know that Jewish Canadians have all too often felt isolated and unsafe in their communities in recent months. People have felt unsafe living openly Jewish in Canada. And that’s not right.”

He called behavior directed against Jews, including Zionist Jews, unacceptable.

“In a country like Canada, it should be safe to call yourself a Zionist, Jewish or not,” he said.

“Zionism is not a dirty word or something that anyone should be targeted to agree with. In its simplest form, it is the belief that Jewish people, like all peoples, have the right to determine their own future.

“Threatening, intimidating or excluding Canadians because of their faith, their identity or because they support the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland is absolutely unacceptable,” Trudeau said.

“You can be a Zionist and strongly support the creation of a Palestinian state living in peace and security alongside Israel, a view I know is shared by many in the Jewish community and across Canada,” he said. “It is also my belief.”

In a nod to some of the tense demonstrations taking place in Canadian cities and around the many encampments at Canadian universities such as McGill, University of Toronto, University of British Columbia and University of Ottawa (among others in BC and Ontario), Trudeau addressed popular rhetoric in pro-Palestinian protests that can turn into anti-Semitic rhetoric.

“Anti-Semitism in any form, whether on the internet or in certain chants we have heard, is unacceptable,” he said. A current national anthem characterizes all Zionists as ‘racists’ and ‘terrorists’.

“We all know that anti-Semitism was not new 80 years ago and did not end in 1945,” Trudeau said.

Before concluding, followed by remarks from Debra Lyons, the current Special Envoy for Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Anti-Semitism, Trudeau referenced former envoy Irwin Cotler.

Cotler taught him that “anti-Semitism is the canary in the coal mine of global hatred,” Trudeau said.

“The work of combating anti-Semitism should not be for the Jewish community to solve alone. It is up to everyone to take up this challenge, all Canadians together.”