Assaults, bomb threats, Nazi salutes: Canada’s courts are starting to convict those targeting Jews
The surge of crimes against Canada’s Jewish community that began after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack and Israeli military response in Gaza has resulted in the first handful of criminal convictions.
In February, Omar Elkhodary was convicted of assaulting a woman as he tore down the posters she was putting up on a Toronto street showing children held hostage by Hamas.
Waisuddin Akbari, the owner of a Newmarket, Ont., shawarma shop, was convicted of threatening to bomb Toronto’s synagogues and “kill as many Jews as possible,” Global News revealed in March.
And on Thursday, Kenneth Gobin was to face sentencing for doing a Nazi salute, spouting Hitler rhetoric and spitting on a Jewish couple walking home from their synagogue in Vaughan, Ont.
The trio of cases has caught the attention of national Jewish organizations, which said they would be reading victim impact statements at the sentencing hearings of all three men.
A hate crime is more than an attack on an individual, said Richard Marceau, vice-president of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. “It is made to send a message to an entire community, to make that community feel unsafe.“
Antisemitic incidents spiked across Canada after Hamas members attacked southern Israel 19 months ago, killing 1,200 people and taking hundreds more hostage.
Since then, Jewish schools, places of worship and businesses have been shot at, torched and threatened, and the RCMP disrupted an alleged plot to bomb a pro-Israel rally on Parliament Hill.
“Caustic protests” have also targeted Jewish institutions, B’nai Brith Canada wrote in a letter last week to Prime Minister Carney, urging him to address the “crisis of antisemitism.”
According to Statistics Canada, incidents of hate crimes against the Jewish community jumped to 900 in 2023, from 527 the previous year. Last year, the number remained high at 816.
Although comprising just 1 per cent of Canada’s population, Jews are by far the top victims of hate crimes against religious groups, accounting for more than two-thirds of incidents, StatsCan data shows.
“The situation has created an atmosphere of fear for the Jewish community that is untenable,” said Jaime Kirzner-Roberts, senior policy director at the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre.
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