All hate speech and hate crimes, no matter the target, should be denounced. Canadians of all faiths deserve to live without fear.
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The Jewish custom of placing a stone on a loved one’s grave is performed as an act of remembrance. Different interpretations exist of this custom, but it communicates that those who’ve departed this world have not been forgotten. It’s an intentional act of respect.
Recent images circulating online of a desecrated grave at Kehal Israel Cemetery in Dollard-des-Ormeaux, where small visitation stones were arranged into the shape of a swastika, made my skin crawl. That, too, was an intentional act. Of hate, this time.
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“Sadly, this is not an isolated incident, but part of a disturbing pattern of unchecked and unmitigated antisemitism plaguing the city,” B’nai Brith Canada reacted on X.
There’s no denying antisemitism has increased in Canada and around the world since Oct. 7. So has Islamophobia. Curiously, while a decreasing number of Canadians who are neither Jewish nor Muslim believe antisemitism and Islamophobia are serious problems in the country, people belonging to either of those groups believe the opposite. I suspect that so much has been politicized and so much misinformation is thriving on social media that many have tuned out. But we shouldn’t.
Last week, the windows of two synagogues in the Toronto area were smashed in what police are calling “suspected hate-motivated acts” by potentially the same person. Eighteen attacks have been documented on Jewish schools and synagogues in Toronto since November. Montreal has also seen an uptick in vandalism and attacks, with a Molotov cocktail thrown at a Jewish community centre and a Jewish school struck by gunfire.
The world is understandably focused on the plight of Palestinians in Gaza, as the casualties continue to climb. Like everything else about this war, even the death counts are under dispute. But there is no denying the numbers are staggering — including 15,000 Palestinian children, according to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The Associated Press reports that Israel has approved the largest seizure of land in the occupied West Bank in over three decades. There is much to question about this administration’s intents.
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Nine months of conflict and horrific images of massacres broadcast around the world have only renewed calls for a ceasefire deal, while ever-growing protests in Israel show an increasing desire to oust Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government. Protesters worldwide and at home have a right to their freedom of expression. Students have a right to demand their university fees are divested from companies they feel are complicit in killing children. Demanding action from our governments is not a crime, no matter how offensive to some the protesters may be.
Voicing their outrage with Israel is not antisemitism. But I also fear that rising discontent with the Israeli government has become a pretence for some espousing antisemitic beliefs to target and attack the Jewish community. In the same way many use Islamist fundamentalism to spew Islamophobia about all Muslims.
Members of Montreal’s Jewish community don’t deserve to be targeted or made to feel unsafe. Vandalizing Jewish cemeteries, synagogues and schools? That’s not protesting against the Israeli government; that’s antisemitism, pure and simple. When members of the local Jewish community reach out to me to say they’re receiving death threats or that they’re afraid to even put up a mezuzah, that’s unacceptable.
I also refuse to support calls that I’ve seen online to boycott Montreal’s Jewish-owned businesses. While major brand boycotts can certainly raise awareness in the absence of sanctions, deliberately harming small, local businesses and our fellow Montrealers running them feels wrong to me.
All hate speech and hate crimes — no matter the target — should be denounced. As horrific and untenable as what is happening in the Middle East is, Canadians of all faiths deserve to live peacefully and without fear. That includes members of Montreal’s Jewish community.
Toula Drimonis is a Montreal journalist and the author of We, the Others: Allophones, Immigrants, and Belonging in Canada. She can be reached on X @toulastake
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