Jesse Kline: It's simple. Islamic extremism is behind all the Jew hate
Canada has an antisemitism problem, but listening to our politicians, government agencies and some in the media, it's easy to get the impression that no one really knows where the hatred is coming from or who is committing attacks against Jews.
In his much-discussed speech Monday at a Toronto synagogue, Prime Minister Mark Carney called out Jew-hate as a "crisis" that is testing the very "nature" of our country. He tacitly admitted that some immigrants are bringing old-world hatreds with them when he said, "When you come to Canada, you bring your faith, your tradition, your language, your story. You leave behind your wars and your animosities."
What he did not say is anything about Islamic extremism, the foreign-funded campaign that's driving anti-Jewish hate or the groups, foreign and domestic, that have been organizing the hate-filled protests that have taken over Canadian streets.
On the same day, Toronto police announced that five people — Hosaam Hemdan, Omer Turcan, Syed Hussaini, Hasan Aydin and Yasaf Shaikh — had been arrested for allegedly holding blatantly antisemitic signs at an anti-Israel rally.
A month earlier, Toronto residents described by police as "visibly identifiable members of the Jewish community" sustained minor injuries following a drive-by shooting with a "replica firearm." The following week, people standing in front of a synagogue were targeted in a similar attack. A day after the second shooting, police arrested 18-year-old Ruslan Novruzov.
Although not much is known about Novruzov, his surname is common in Azerbaijan, a 97.3 per cent Muslim-majority country where 53 per cent of the population harbour antisemitic views, according to the Anti-Defamation League's Global 100 index.
Yet anyone who read the CBC's story on the arrest would not have known Novruzov's name, because the public broadcaster chose not to publish it. And this is not the first time this has happened.
The CBC similarly failed to mention the names of people arrested for attacks against two Jewish schools in Toronto and one in Montreal, which serves to create the impression that some amorphous blob is responsible for Canada's antisemitism problem.
This is not the case in many other places, especially in Europe, where authorities, the media, academia and advocacy groups have historically been far less timid about identifying the sources of antisemitism.
All the way back in 2002, journalist Tove Gravdal, reporting on the rise in antisemitism in France, noted that after the start of the Second Intifada, "Young French men of Arabic origin came together over the Palestinian cause, turned French Jews into symbols of Israel and launched a wave of attacks on Jewish targets."
In a 2017 study, researchers at the University of Oslo asked the victims of antisemitic incidents in Europe who committed the attacks and found that respondents "most often perceived the perpetrator(s) to be 'someone with a Muslim extremist view.' "
Similar findings were reported in a 2017 study from researchers and Bielefeld University and Goethe University Frankfurt, in which almost half (48 per cent) of victims described the perpetrator as "Muslim."
In the United Kingdom, the Community Security Trust's latest annual report on antisemitic incidents found that when the victims of anti-Jewish hate were able to identify their attackers, a quarter were described as "Arab or North African," and 11 per cent were said to be "South Asian."
These numbers are similar to those found in a 2015 report from the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, which noted that, "Cautious estimations put the percentage of Muslim perpetrators of antisemitic acts in Great Britain at between 20 and 30 per cent, while the percentage of Muslims in the general population stands at five per cent."
Likewise, surveys conducted by the European Union in 2024 found that 30 per cent of the victims of antisemitic harassment and half of Jews who endured physical attacks reported that their victimizers held "Islamist extremist views."
In Canada, however, the ethnicity or ideological leanings of those who disseminate hate or commit violence against Jewish targets is rarely discussed. A Senate report on antisemitism that was released in April made no mention of Islamic extremism.
Liberal cabinet ministers also seem unable to denounce antisemitism without incorporating the word "Islamophobia" into the sentence, creating the impression that Jews and Muslims are being victimized by hate crimes at similar rates, or that both communities are engaged in an ethnic conflict with one another.
But the government's own statistics show that this is simply not the case. According to Statistics Canada, police-reported hate crimes targeting Muslims rose 44 per cent between 2015 and 2024. While this is certainly a problem, and one that needs to be addressed, it pales in comparison to the 417 per cent increase in hate crimes against Jews over the same period.
In an interview with National Post, Raheel Raza, president of the Council of Muslims Against Antisemitism, noted that the violence and hate is all one-sided.
"I remind the Muslims: Do you ever think that the Jewish community can also retaliate? You know, have they gone and burned halal meat stores? Look at all the Muslim businesses. Have they targeted them? They don't retaliate. And this is the big difference," she said. "While it's hate on one side, the other side is just so busy defending themselves and looking for ways to make peace."
Even our security services seem reticent to name the source of the violence: a recent CSIS report noted that some violent extremism stems from "extreme interpretations of religion," but did not venture a guess as to what religion that might be.
This contrasts sharply to the situation in many other western countries. The German government's "2023 Report on the Protection of the Constitution," for example, was refreshingly candid in its assessment that Islamists are one of the primary drivers of antisemitic rhetoric and violence.
According to the report, "Islamist extremist groups exploited" Hamas's October 7 massacre in Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza to "organize," "mobilize support," "take part in demonstrations" and "engage in agitation on social media."
This was orchestrated by domestic interests — including followers of Salafism, which is described as "the Islamist extremist movement with the largest number of adherents in Germany" — and foreign terrorist groups, such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Vancouver-based Samidoun, the Islamic State and al-Qaida.
Some of these groups began working together for the first time after October 7, with their "antisemitic ideas" forming the "common denominator in the ideology of the entire Islamist extremist spectrum." The report further noted that in Germany and neighbouring countries, numerous attacks were planned or carried out by "lone actors with Islamist extremist motives," proving that "Islamist terrorism continues to pose a threat."
Yet Robert Brym, professor emeritus at the University of Toronto and the country's leading pollster on Canadian Jews, said he's unaware of similar data on the perpetrators of antisemitic hate crimes being collected in Canada.
"I suspect Canadian police forces consider such information potentially inflammatory," he said, even though it would be useful. "Just as crime statistics categorized by race of perpetrator have been used to identify biases in the criminal justice system, information on the religious and ethnic identity of perpetrators of hate crimes can be used to provide certain categories of the population with educational support, thus helping to ameliorate the problem."
Since October 7, anti-Israel demonstrations have become commonplace on many university campuses and in cities throughout the country. Yet the protesters' opposition often extends far beyond the policies of the Israeli government, with many expressing animosity towards Jews, in both Israel and Canada.
Caryma Sa'd, a lawyer and independent journalist of Palestinian and Indian descent who has documented many of the protests, said she's witnessed this first hand.
"My Jewish videographer has been targeted countless times at demonstrations and online. The stated reason for some attacks is that he's a 'Zionist,' yet he's never expressed any opinion about Israel," she said. "So it stands to reason that Canadian Jews are caught in the crossfire of assumptions, including conflating their mere existence with Israeli policy."
Raza, who has also witnessed some of the demonstrations, is adamant that the protesters are "not so much pro-Palestine, as much as they hate" Israel. If "these people were saying, let's have peace, let's have a ceasefire, it would make sense," she said. But that's not what they're saying.
In one notable example, a Toronto man named Razaali Bahadur was caught on video telling Jewish children attending a rally in support of hostages being held by Hamas that their moms and dads "raped and murdered children," that the Jewish people are "not from Israel" and "have no religion," and that, "You guys crawled out of the earth … that's where you belong."
Bahadur — who has a history of anti-Israel activism, including support for Hamas's atrocities — was subsequently convicted of public incitement of hatred.
Anti-Israel agitators also hold regular protests in Toronto's Bathurst and Sheppard area, a neighbourhood notable only for its large Jewish population. In March, protesters were caught holding antisemitic signs, including images of a Gollum-like Orthodox Jewish man emerging from a cave, a man with a hook nose wearing a kippah and rats scurrying out of a Star of David.
"I call it the new antisemitism," said Raza, when asked how people justify protesting in a Jewish neighbourhood, rather than, say, outside the Israeli Consulate. "All those Islamist organizations who don't get along with each other come together with one cause — the hate for Israel and the Jewish community. So they justify it."
The protests are being organized by a variety of loosely-knit, ostensibly pro-Palestinian groups, but some of the major ones include Samidoun, Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).
Samidoun was responsible for organizing protests where demonstrators chanted "death to Canada" and praised the October 7 massacre as "heroic and brave." It was co-founded by Charlotte Kates, who was born in the United States but resides in Vancouver when she's not in the Islamic Republic of Iran accepting "human rights" awards, and her husband, Khaled Barakat, a Palestinian and member of the PFLP, a listed terrorist entity, who spends much of his time in Lebanon. In 2024, Samidoun was designated as a terrorist organization by the Canadian government.
PYM, an international group with chapters in Canada, the U.S. and Europe, has been described as the "most prolific organizer" of anti-Israel rallies, which include celebrations of the October 7 massacre as it was occurring. According to the Israeli government, PYM has "close ties" with the PFLP, an assertion backed up by a 2019 French court ruling, which found that it is "affiliated" with PFLP and "claims resistance against the State of Israel."
SJP organizes anti-Israel protests on campuses throughout North America. It published material immediately after the October 7 attacks glorifying Hamas and calling for a "day of resistance." The group has well-documented alleged ties to Hamas and organizations accused of fundraising for the terror group.
"It's quite clear that the major funders of these rallies, while the head of the snake, of course, is Iran, and through its proxies, through its organizations, through its mosques, they channel the funding," said Raza. "This is not something that just happened on Oct. 8 … this is something that has been in the works and been planned for years before October 7."
As hate-filled protests have taken over our streets, Canada has witnessed a spate of attacks targeting Jews and Jewish institutions. Sa'd said there's "certainly a correlation" between the two.
"As far as vandalism and shootings that target Jewish businesses and synagogues, there generally isn't enough publicly available information to draw a straight through-line between such incidents and the protest circuit," she said, but "it's all happening in an atmosphere of increased animosity towards Jewish people and groups (with 'Jewish' effectively being a stand-in for 'Zionist')."
Raza was far less hesitant to draw such a link, saying that the demonstrations and the violence are "totally connected."
One case that clearly illustrates this relationship took place last fall, when the group Students Supporting Israel at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) held an off-campus talk featuring Israel Defense Forces soldiers. SJP's TMU chapter immediately called for a protest of the event, which ended with a group of masked demonstrators smashing a glass door, forcibly entering the private venue and injuring some of the participants.
Six people were charged in relation to the incident, including Qabil Ibrahim, Fatimah Mugni, Nicole Baiton, Kiana Alexis, Manal Kamran and Chelsea Wu. Sa'd said she's "frequently encountered" Ibrahim at the protests. He was previously charged with arson after allegedly burning an Israeli flag at a demonstration last spring, and now faces six additional charges, including forcible entry, assault and rioting while masked.
Arrests have also been made in relation to attacks against Jewish synagogues, day schools, businesses and other community institutions.
Amir Arvahi Azar was charged with 29 crimes, including advocating genocide, wilful promotion of hatred, arson, mischief to cultural property, criminal harassment and firearm possession. Over eight months, he is alleged to have vandalized and set fire to four synagogues, threatened a Jewish centre and vandalized a Jewish-owned cafe.
Mohamed Ilyess Akodad is accused of throwing a Molotov cocktail at a Montreal-area synagogue and smashing the windows of Federation CJA.
In December, police arrested three suspects in Toronto — Waleed Khan, Fahad Sadaat and Osman Azizov — and laid 79 charges, including "attempted kidnapping with firearms" for an alleged crime spree that targeted women and the Jewish community. After executing search warrants, police said they "uncovered links to terrorism."
Abdirazak Mahdi Ahmed and Feijhoo-Leito Joseph were both charged in connection with an incident in which shots were fired at a Montreal-area Jewish school. Mohamed Mahdi was charged with four firearm-related offences in connection with a shooting at a Jewish-owned restaurant in Toronto. And Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, an ISIS supporter and Pakistani national, plead guilty to planning a mass shooting targeting New York Jews.
"The protesters are not all" Muslim, said Raza, but she believes the crux of the issue is "animosity against Israel and the Jewish community" from some segments of Canada's Islamic community, noting that, "Hamas, Hezbollah, name all the extremist terrorist organizations — they're (all) Muslims."
Sa'd believes that characterization misses an important part of the story: the so-called red-green alliance between Islamists and western leftists. She said the protest movement has created "an uncomfortable common ground between 'progressives' and Muslim protesters. Both groups harbour lots of true antisemitism in their midst, which neither side bothers to root out."
In his book, "After the Pogrom," British author Brendan O'Neill documents the history of what he terms "the unholiest alliance" between socialists and Islamists. It starts in the early 1990s when western communists were struggling to define themselves in the aftermath of the Cold War and socialist journalist Chris Harman penned a manifesto arguing that the left should forge alliances with radical Islam on some issues.
That's exactly what happened after 9/11, when the anti-war movement found common cause with Muslim groups opposed to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. A little over a decade later, the leader of Her Majesty's official Opposition in the United Kingdom, Jeremy Corbyn, was bragging about being "friends" with Hamas.
In Canada and elsewhere, this marriage between people who claim to be "anti-racist" and value human rights, and those, such as Hamas, who oppress women, stone gay people and denigrate Jews, has been gathering steam on university campuses for decades. It is why, after October 7, we saw educational unions that claim to represent broad swaths of society and left-wing professors actively cheering on Hamas's "resistance."
At the same time, Canada has seen an influx of newcomers from Muslim-majority countries with high rates of antisemitism. Between 2008 and 2016, the number of permanent residents from Africa and the Middle East admitted to Canada each year increased from 24,221 to 42,917.
Between 2015 and 2024, the number of permanent residents from Algeria — a country where eight out of 10 people harbour antisemitic attitudes, according to the ADL — nearly tripled, rising to 8,255 from 2,830. Immigration from Lebanon, where 86 per cent of the population holds antisemitic views, doubled.
Permanent residents admitted from the West Bank and Gaza, where 97 per cent of the populations holds negative attitudes towards Jews, nearly doubled. The number of immigrants from Morocco, where seven in 10 people have antisemitic attitudes, reached a high of 7,635 in 2024, up from 2,705 in 2015.
Immigration from Turkey, where 79 per cent of people hold antisemitic views, nearly tripled between 2015 and 2024. The number of newcomers from Sudan, which scored 72 per cent on the ADL's Global 100 index, increased 14-fold between 2015 and 2025, while immigration from Tunisia, with a score of 83, quadrupled. The list goes on.
This has led to a significant demographic shift: the 2001 census found that Muslims and Jews made up two per cent and 1.1 per cent of the Canadian population, respectively; by 2021, the Muslim population had increased to 4.9 per cent and the Jewish population fell to 0.9 per cent.
This likely goes a long way in explaining why Ottawa has done little to curb the tide of antisemitism — the Carney government's recent spring fiscal update allocated over three-times more money to save whales than to save Canadian Jews — and has turned its back on its historic allies in Jerusalem.
The result of a decade of unfettered immigration without regard to shared values is that Canada's multicultural mosaic, once hailed as a model for the world, has been smashed to pieces. Demonstrators openly hold antisemitic signs and call for genocide against Jews. Prominent taxpayer-funded Islamic charities, like the Muslim Association of Canada (MAC), invite supporters of extremism and people who oppose liberal values to speak at their conventions.
In this climate, it's little wonder that when the phrase "Jew free" was displayed in a word cloud about what type of world attendees at the recent MAC conference in Toronto want to build, no one protested. In modern-day Canada, antisemitism has become normalized, and advocating for violent jihad is no longer seen as taboo.
When asked how to deal with the situation, Sa'd advocated for dialogue, as well as holding people accountable by enforcing existing laws. Raza is a big believer in education and inter-faith dialogue, goals she works toward with her community outreach, but also highlighted the need for immigration reform to ensure people coming to this country share our values.
All of these solutions are sorely needed if Canada hopes to quell the hatred that continues to seethe in our streets well after a ceasefire took effect in Gaza, create a safe environment for Jewish-Canadians and return to a time when this country was held up as a model of multiculturalism. But none of that can happen if Canadians can't have an honest conversation about who's committing these crimes and where the hatred is coming from.
