2019 Annual audit of antisemitic incidents in Canada

While Jews were viciously attacked and / or killed in New York , New Jersey , California and Germany in 2019, the number of antisemitic incidents in Canada set records for a fourth consecutive year.

The 2019  Annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents , produced by B'nai Brith Canada's advocacy arm, the League for Human Rights, recorded 2,207 incidents of antisemitism, an increase of more than 8 per cent compared with the previous year. This marked the second successive year in which the 2,000 plateau was exceeded, amounting to an average of more than six incidents per day.

Assaults became more brazen and violent in 2019, with several occurring in broad daylight and some directly in front of eyewitnesses.

Such incidents included:

  - An assault against a visibly observing Jewish man by a Montreal taxi driver. 

  - A Toronto woman being spat on after being accosted with antisemitic abuse by her neighbor.    

  - A group of Hasidic children in Outremont, Que. being sprayed with tar by a construction worker.     
  - A physical attack against two young observing Jews in a Toronto area public park. 

Other incidents included:

  - A workplace supervisor abused a Jewish employee in Montreal, verbally harassing him and then throwing a coin at him.

  - A student-union representative in Toronto refused to endorse a campaign to bring kosher food to campus because a group supporting the idea was “pro-Israel.”

  - Two male youths gave a Nazi salute outside a Winnipeg Jewish school in full view of students.
In St. John's, Nfld., Spray-painted swastikas appeared on road signs and fences.

  - In Gabriola Island, BC, antisemitic graffiti was spray-painted on the main building at a Jewish summer camp.

  - In Edmonton, a cleric publicly suggested that “international Zionism” was behind the ISIS terrorist organization.

There was an increase of more than 11 per cent in anonymous online harassment, much of it advocating genocide and Holocaust denial.

Source: Bnai Brith