How Montreal became the antisemitism capital of North America

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There is an old saying that when the United States sneezes, Canada catches a cold. Recent events in Canada, however, suggest that the US should immunize itself from a dangerously virulent virus that has swept across the nation — nowhere more so than in Montreal: Open Jew hatred.

According to the Toronto Sun, last year, Montreal has endured the most antisemitic hate crimes of any city in North America.

Indeed, since the October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre in Israel, antisemitic incidents in Canada have increased by an astounding 670%.

Canadian Jews — a miniscule 1.4% of the nation’s population — were the victims of 70% of religious-based hate crimes during roughly the same period.

Jewish schools in Montreal have been shot at, and Montreal universities, including my home university of Concordia, have become cesspools of anti-Jewish harassment.

As a Jewish professor who has weighed in publicly on these difficulties, the situation has gotten so precarious that I have taken an unpaid leave from Concordia University and joined Northwood University in Michigan.

A rioter in Montreal last week during one of the worst examples of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel protests since the Hamas attack on Israel. Don Stewart/X

Last week, Montreal was rocked by violent protests laden with antisemitic overtones.

Aggressive agitators shattered shop windows, tossed smoke bombs and torched cars. An owner of a Second Cup Café franchise, ironically located at Montreal’s Jewish General Hospital, was caught on camera expressing genocidal hate of the Jews.

Where is all of this Jew hatred coming from?

Currently, the three key sources of Jew hatred are Islamic-based hate, ultra-right neo-Nazi types and the academic left, which promulgates the narrative that Jews are the brutal colonizers of the otherwise peace-loving Palestinians.

Within the Montreal ecosystem the neo-Nazi dynamic is less prevalent, but the other two sources have been on overdrive for decades.

The Quebec government has long fretted about protecting its French linguistic heritage.

As a result, they have opened their borders to hundreds of thousands of immigrants from French-speaking Islamic nations who might otherwise not share the secular and liberal values that define Quebec society, and who hail from societies defined by ubiquitous Jew hatred.

As long as the conquerors speak French, the eventual erasure of the host society will surely be painless.

The adage “demography is destiny” is veridical for a reason.

In an effort to promote and maintain the primacy of the French language, Quebec has allowed rampant immigration from French-speaking nations, many predominantly Muslim. LightRocket via Getty Images

The prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, is from Montreal.

He is the product of a deeply progressive educational ecosystem that promotes postmodernism, radical feminism, a commitment to DEI and cultural relativism.

When he was still a mere member of parliament, Trudeau famously became enraged that cultural practices such as honor killings were labeled as barbaric by the then conservative government of Canada led by Stephen Harper.

The barbaric acts did not shock him.

Calling them “barbaric” is what drew his ire.

Trudeau’s desire to exhibit Islamophilic tendencies is so pronounced that whenever a grave antisemitic incident takes place, he is quick to remind us that we must combat Islamophobia (such as he did after shots were fired at a pair of Jewish schools in Montreal last year.)

But it’s actually antisemitism that is running rampant across Montreal, a city now filled with intimidating protests against “Zionism.”

These are taking place on campuses, on the streets, across from synagogues, and in shopping malls.

Everywhere that you turn, masked individuals wearing keffiyehs can be seen uttering the usual chants of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and “globalize the intifada.”

Since the Hamas attack on Israel, antisemitic incidents in Canada have risen by nearly 700%. ZUMAPRESS.com

Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante did not think that the protests from this past week were antisemitic, condemning them instead as “pro-Palestinian” and “anti-NATO.”

A senior administrator at Concordia recently told me that there was no Jew hatred despite the fact that university president Graham Carr, testified on Parliament Hill about the endemic Jew hatred on campus. Ignoring the problem is not going to cause it to go away.

Incidentally, as the city was burning last week, Trudeau was unable to address the violence because was busy attending a Taylor Swift concert.

Meanwhile, this past Sunday a Montreal rabbi was asked to leave the downtown area as his open Jewishness (wearing a kippah) might be viewed as provocative.

While Montreal was engulfed in violent protests, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was enjoying himself at a Taylor Swift concert. Don Stewart/X

This is the reality that I grew up with in Lebanon: “Please don’t flaunt your Jewishness. It might incite violence.” Unchecked immigration from societies endemically hostile to Jews — along with a weak host society parasitized by ideological rapture — create the perfect mix for Jew hatred to flourish in an ecosystem of cowardice and apathy.

Vice President Kamala Harris spent much of her formative years living and studying in Montreal. REUTERS

Trudeau infamously became angry when former PM Stephen Harper suggested that that cultural practices such as honor killings were barbaric. Bloomberg via Getty Images

The United States dodged an immeasurable existential bullet by electing Donald Trump. Had Kamala Harris won (she also grew up in Montreal), the United States would have headed down the path of many European countries and Canada, namely an increasingly more dangerous environment for Jews.

Do not make the mistakes that we have made in Canada. Be vigilant in protecting American exceptionalism and offer zero tolerance for such hate to fester, for I can assure you that it will otherwise metastasize into an incurable societal malady.

In the Middle East, there is an old expression “First the Saturday people then the Sunday people,” (or a variant such as “After Saturday Comes Sunday”) — namely that the Jews might be the first to be targeted but Christians are inevitably next.

Do not allow these realities from which many of us escaped to set root in the US.

Do not tolerate belief systems that are antithetical to the fundamental principles on which the United States was founded.

Dr. Gad Saad is a visiting professor and global ambassador at Northwood University in Michigan.

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