Antisemitism in Canada since the 7 October 2023 pogrom

Cross-national surveys conducted in the years before the current Israel-Hamas war show that Canada was among the world’s least antisemitic countries, in the same league as Sweden and the Netherlands. To see whether this remained true during the Israel-Hamas war, I conducted a survey in February 2024 involving four independent samples of Canadians: 1,121 non-Jewish adults, 1,010 non-Jewish university students, 414 Jewish adults, and 312 Muslim adults. For non-Jews, I provided a battery of statements about Jews, half positively worded, half negatively worded, calculated an average score, and found little change in attitudes toward Jews since the period before the war. Some 87 per cent of non-Jewish Canadians have positive attitudes toward Jews.

Yet police-recorded hate crimes against Jews have skyrocketed in Canada since the war began. For example, in Toronto, the number of hate crimes against Jews jumped 75 per cent between 2022 and 2023, with the post-Oct. 7 period responsible for most of the increase. In Toronto in 2023, Jews were the victims of 78 per cent of all police-reported hate crimes based on religion. Muslims took second place at 17 per cent.

How can the discrepancy between attitudinal and behavioural measures of antisemitism be explained? Several factors are at play, but I think the most important is that a small number of individuals may be responsible for a large number of criminal incidents. As a result, while the overwhelming majority of Canadians have positive attitudes toward Jews – a 2022 poll even found that Canadians think more positively about Judaism than any other religion – a small number of individuals may create a very different impression by their widely publicized actions.

Things become even more complicated when one brings attitudes toward Israel into the picture. In my survey I also provided a series of statements about Israel, half positively worded, half negatively worded, and I calculated an average score for all non-Jews and for particular groups of non-Jews. I found that just 59 per cent of non-Jewish Canadians have positive attitudes toward Israel. For non-Jewish university students, the corresponding figure is 32 per cent. For Muslims, it is 13 per cent.

Why does this finding complicate the picture? Because most Canadian Jews view the anti-Israel protests that have become common on the campuses and streets of Canadian cities as antisemitic. My survey found that 26 per cent of Canada’s non-Jewish university students and 52 per cent of Canada’s Muslims have negative attitudes toward Jews (respectively, two and four times the percentage for Canada’s non-Jewish population as a whole). This finding suggests that Canadian Jews have a point: university students and Muslims figure prominently in anti-Israel protests, and many anti-Israel protesters apparently dislike Jews. For Muslim Canadians, the correlation between attitudes toward Jews and attitudes toward Israel is at the high end of moderate (r = 0.471).

The rhetoric employed by anti-Israel protesters strengthens the judgment of Canadian Jews that the protests are antisemitic. When protesters shout “from the river to the sea,” most Jews hear, “destroy the Jewish state.” When protesters call out to “globalize the intifada,” most Jews hear “kill Jews.” (The 158 suicide bombings of the first and second intifadas were responsible for 832 deaths and 4,610 injuries, many of them life changing.) And when protesters display symbols linked to Hamas, an organization whose founding document stipulates the destruction of the Jewish state and the killing of Jews as its chief goals, most Jews become convinced that many anti-Israel protesters are indeed antisemites. The data suggest that many protesters are not antisemites – and many are.

The February 2024 survey found that three-quarters of Canadian Jews do not think it is antisemitic if people criticize specific Israeli government policies. Indeed, according to a survey of 486 Canadian Jews conducted in August-September 2024 and sponsored by the New Israel Fund of Canada, JSpaceCanada, and Canadian Friends of Peace Now, half the Canadian-Jewish population thinks the construction of Jewish settlements on the West Bank is illegal and 70 per cent support the mass weekly protests against the Israeli government that have been taking place for more than a year in Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities. However, rhetoric threatening the existence of the Jewish state is an entirely different matter.

The existence of Israel as a Jewish state is a core part of Jewish identity for most Canadian Jews, who have been raised to understand that, although early Jewish history involved the establishment of three Jewish states in the territory that is now Israel, most of Jewish history is one of persecution and statelessness. Israel, created thanks to a UN resolution supported by most of the world’s countries and now recognized by 85 per cent of UN member states, provided a haven for 250,000 European Jewish refugees after World War II, 850,000 Sephardic Jews displaced from Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East and North Africa in the 1950s and 1960s, nearly 100,000 Black Ethiopian Jews facing impoverishment and discrimination in their home country, more than a million Jews unwanted in the former Soviet Union, and so on. Because the existence of the Israeli haven is an essential constituent of their identity, most Canadian Jews hear rhetoric threatening the existence of Israel as a threat to their identity as Jews – as antisemitism.

Anti-racist activists correctly argue that only members of racial groups can adequately define what constitutes racism. White people may insist that they are not prejudiced against Black people, but Black people are entitled to point out how some actions of White people are nonetheless discriminatory. By the same token, some anti-Israel protesters may insist that they lack prejudice against Jews, but Jews are entitled to point out that actions threatening the existence of the Jewish state are antisemitic because the existence of that state is a central component of their identity as Jews.

Conflict brings out the worst in people – extreme words and extreme actions. The good news is that moderate Jews and moderate non-Jewish critics of Israel can create common ground. Recognizing that both Jews and Palestinians need and are entitled to sovereignty and security, they can outnumber and push Jewish, Muslim, and other extremists to the sidelines.