How the Left and Muslims Drive Canadian Jew-Hatred
The Senate Committee on Human Rights has just released a report aimed at combating the explosive rise of antisemitism in Canada. Since October 7, 2023, antisemitism in Canada has reached almost unprecedented levels, with Jews the most targeted group nation-wide despite making up barely 1.4% of the population. With regular instances of gunfire and arson against synagogues, Jewish institutions and businesses, many Canadian Jews feel themselves besieged and abandoned. The Senate’s report, while ostensibly driven by good motivations, contributes to that feeling by conspicuously leaving out any discussion of the source of antisemitism in Canada – the unholy alliance between Muslim anti-Jewish attitudes and a progressive left that has adopted hatred for Israel as one of its main dogmas.
While Canada has a native strain of white supremacist and neo-Nazis antisemitism, the recent wave of Jew-hatred has mostly been imported to Canada from the Middle East, Southeast Asia and other parts of the Muslim world. In April 2025, Mohamed Ilyess Akodad was charged with the December 2024 arson attack on Beth Tikvah synagogue in Dollard-des-Ormeaux. In late 2025, Toronto police announced the arrest of three men linked to the Islamic State and planning attacks on the Jewish community – Waleed Khan, Osman Azizov and Fahad Sadaat. In August 2025, Sid Ali Tamrabet, wearing a keffiyeh and a Middle Eastern robe, shouted epithets and threatened to kill Jews in the Saint-Laurent borough. In November 2023, a University of Montreal lecturer named Yanise Arab screamed at Jewish studies at Concordia University to “go back to Poland, sharmuta”. Notice a pattern?
For Canada’s wokerati, the mere suggestion that Canada’s Muslim community may disproportionately hold antisemitic views is blasphemous, racist and Islamophobic. However, this should come as no surprise given the almost ubiquitous presence of antisemitism in many Muslim countries. According to a 2024 study carried out by sociologist Robert Brym, 52% of Canadian Muslims hold negative attitudes toward Jews. This is substantially higher than the Canadian national average.
In October 2023, Moroccan-born imam Adil Charkaoui prayed for the death of Jews at an anti-Israel rally in Montreal. Recently, videos have emerged of hate sermons preached by imams in British Columbia, Toronto and Montreal. In mosques worldwide, the October 7th massacre of Jews in Israel was celebrated as a great victory for the Hamas mujahideen (jihad fighters).
The second pillar of contemporary antisemitism in Canada comes largely from the “progressive left”. Anti-Israel activists portray “anti-Zionism” as a principled critique of specific Israeli policies, yet antizionism is a movement committed to the violent dissolution of the world’s only Jewish state. Antizionists defame Jewish nationalism as a form of racism, then demand that Canadian Jews disavow this “racism” as the price for acceptance in civil society.
Davide Mastracci, a far-left anti-Israel activist, has compiled a database of Canadian Jews who have served in the Israeli army. He has also published a doxing list of the Jewish schools, synagogues and summer camps whose graduates or members have joined the army. Lest one have any doubt of his motives, Mastracci has condemned “Jewish exceptionalism [which] is the belief that Jewish people as a demographic are eternally and ontologically oppressed, no matter the circumstances, and as such should be treated differently.” Repeating a standard Marxist line, Jews are disproportionately successful and privileged, a few synagogue bombings notwithstanding. Of course, they exaggerate their supposed victimhood to cover up their real crimes against the Palestinians.
Antizionists target Jews for their connections to the Jewish ancestral homeland. Several months ago, five anti-Israel groups launched a campaign to revoke the accreditation of 17 Jewish summer camps throughout Canada due to their “support for a genocidal, settler-colonial State”. Quebec’s Education Minister Sonia LeBel launched an investigation following La Presse reports that former students who served in the Israeli army addressed Jewish schools in Montreal in the past two years. There are now regulatory complaints against Jewish schools in Canada. There is also a persistent pressure crusade to prosecute Canadians serving in the IDF. Of course, Israel is a Canadian ally and there is no law in Canada prohibiting serving in the army of a fellow democracy.
The anti-Israel movement seeks to drive Jews out of public life. In January 2024, Selina Robinson, the Jewish British Columbia Minister of Post-Secondary Education, referred to pre-state Israel as a “crappy piece of land with nothing on it.” While not entirely historically accurate, Robinson’s comments reflected that the land of Israel was sparsely populated and lacked natural resources. Jewish migration to Israel was the result of religious and national ties, as well as a desire to flee antisemitism. Robinson faced a deluge of criticism for her “racist” and “Islamophobic” remarks and was forced to resign.
Canada’s antisemitism problem comes from the Red-Green alliance of Muslims and the Left. Confronting it would require acknowledging truths rather than challenging the politically correct orthodoxy in Canada. That would mean overhauling Canada’s immigration system to reduce the number of immigrants from antisemitic countries. It would also require confronting anti-Jewish bigotry when it comes in the form of antizionism or from the left-side of the political aisle.