Hate continues to permeate the lives of Canadians as antisemitism and the use of Nazi symbology and ideology repeatedly rears its ugly head in Canada.
An investigation launched Feb. 8 by the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) after an incident at Charles H. Best Middle School — just down the street from the Anne and Max Tanenbaum Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto on Wilmington Avenue at Dufferin Street and Finch Avenue — involving students making a swastika out of construction paper and performing a Nazi salute in front of a Jewish student were reported.
Shari Shwartz-Maltz, spokesperson for TDSB, said the TDSB is very disturbed by these antisemitic incidents.
“As soon as we found out about it, the principal began an investigation,” Schwartz-Maltz said.
Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center CEO and President Michael Levitt is disturbed by Holocaust awareness diminishing, the increasing use of Nazi symbols and the spread of antisemitic rhetoric.
“It’s essential for schools to have the resources to address and prevent such hate and ensure safe spaces for all students,” Levitt said.
“We must never be silent in the face of Jew-hatred in our community and in our country,” Levitt added.
Ontario schools aren’t the only place antisemitism has risen. Canadian flags defaced with swastikas were on full display during the “Freedom Convoy.”
A report from the Ontario government said, in 2020, there were 321 police-reported incidents targeting the Jewish population in Canada, which represented a 5 per cent increase from 2019.
That same report said B’nai Brith Canada conducted an audit of antisemitic incidents two years ago and found a record number of antisemitism cases in 2020, “up 18.3 per cent from 2019.”
UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief Ahmed Shaheed, found antisemitic hate speech had increased at an alarming rate since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“In 2020, over 44 per cent of antisemitic violence was COVID-related, including incidents of Jewish people being spat on and assaulted with weapons,” Shaheed said, in a report from the Ontario government.
Minister of Education Stephen Lecce announced two weeks ago, in partnership with the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) and the Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies (FSWC), an initiative to combat antisemitism.
During the announcement, Lecce said Ontario has seen a disturbing increase of hate crimes targeting Jewish students, their families and synagogues.
“We must fulfill our collective responsibility to acknowledge and decisively combat antisemitism. To ensure that students learn from history so not to repeat it,” Lecce said.
In a prepared statement to Humber News, Lecce said Ontarians must recommit themselves to combatting antisemitism and continue to take this fight seriously.
“The fact that some children are not aware of the horrors of the Nazi regime and the Holocaust only reaffirm the importance of our work to strengthen Holocaust education in the curriculum,” Lecce said.
A survey conducted by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany in 2019, found 63 per cent of Millennials and Gen Z in the U.S. didn’t know more than six million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. Nearly 50 per cent of respondents from the same survey couldn’t name one of the more than 40,000 concentration camps and ghettos established.
Bernie Farber, chair of the Anti-Hate Network, is horrified but not surprised that numbers like these exist.
“I was the Canadian-Jewish representative on the claims conference up to 2012,” Farber said. “They always showed the same thing.”
“That education never happened, and so how would it actually be possible for students to know their history if they’re not taught their history,” he said.
Farber said social media and a lack of education are two major contributors to rising antisemitism.
Farber said neo-Nazis and white supremacists would stand on the corner of streets like Yonge and Bloor handing out leaflets to passersby in the ‘80s and ‘90s. If 10 people took their leaflets that was considered a pretty good day.
“With TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook…at the stroke of a key you could reach potentially millions of them,” Farber said.
For years Farber has advocated for Holocaust education as a compulsory component of “genocide studies” which should be part of the overall curriculum.
“[Genocides] should be part and parcel of a full year’s course, explaining to students and helping them understand the dangers of racism and how it leads inexorably to genocide,” Farber said.
“You may get a mention of it, but it has to be consistent as a course of study throughout the curriculum,” he said.
MPP Robin Martin, a member of the Conservative Party and representative for Eglinton-Lawrence, was involved in the initiative introduced through the ministry of Education to combat rising antisemitism.
Martin said it’s not about creating a specific course relating to “genocide studies,” but rather, making sure students have the requisite knowledge of the subject.
“We have a very diverse society, and we need to be able to learn to live with, understand each other and accept each other and accept differences,” Martin said.
“So, if we don’t even have basic information, I find [the rise in antisemitism] very disturbing,” Martin said.