The report, compiled from an online survey of Jewish parents, is plainly titled “Antisemitism in Ontario’s K-12 Schools,” but the findings are shocking to read.
The survey documented 781 incidents since Oct. 7 2023, when terrorist group Hamas launched a well-planned attack in northern Israel.
Among the findings of the report, an average of one out of two reported incidents were investigated by school officials, the report said. When the incidents were investigated, the perpetrator was suspended in only 4.7% of the cases. The schools took other action, short of suspension, in 6.1% of the cases.
In one incident, a 13-year-old Jewish girl was cornered by five boys who shouted “Sieg Heil” and gave the infamous straight-armed Nazi salute. In a second example, a Jewish student, age 6, said a teacher told her she is only “half-human” because one of her parents is Jewish.
The report was commissioned by Deborah Lyons, a longtime Canadian diplomat, whose current title is Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism.
Among the provinces, Ontario has the largest Jewish population, estimated to be 200,000, who live in and around Toronto. That number includes about 30,000 school-aged children.
Asked for his reaction to the report, Charles Mcvety, president of Canada Christian College, tells AFN he was not surprised the Oct. 7 attack is related to the dramatic jump in antisemitic incidents. That’s because, he says, many people who claim they sympathize with the Palestinian people are really masking their hatred of Jews.
“Under the guise of being anti-Israel, or being pro-Palestine,” he tells AFN, “the hatred of the Jewish people comes out in horrific ways.”
One example McVety cites is the “from the river to the sea” chant, which is frequently heard at anti-Israel protests. In reality, the college president says, the protesters are calling for the “genocide” of Jews because the point of the chant is a future without the state of Israel between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
According to the report, some school teachers wore t-shirts to class with the “from the river” slogan and a map of Israel and the Palestinian flag.
The school children are being told in their classes, McVety points out, that Israel is a “colonial entity” that has displaced the Palestinian people and is conducting a “genocide” against them.
Just such an incident was documented in the Ontario report. Last year, a teacher reprimanded a 6-year-old girl for her necklace with a pendant in the shape of Israel. The pendant is really Palestine, the teacher said. When a second Jewish student spoke up and said the necklace is a gift from their Hebrew school, the teacher scolded them both.
“Your Hebrew school teachers are lying,” the two Jewish students were told by the teacher.
Even though Hamas gunned down mostly civilians in its Oct. 7 attack, such as kibbutz families and the Nova music festival, its defenders view the attack as a justified uprising against “colonial” Israel. They also accuse Israel of purposely killing Palestinian civilians when the IDF counter-attacked Hamas after the surprise attack. Hence a Jewish high school student was called a “terrorist, rapist, and baby killer” by a classmate in an incident that occurred in September 2004.
McVety says the Ontario report reminds him of the 1930s in Europe, when the Nazi Party was gaining power in Germany and their main target was Jews.
The terrible lesson Jews learned from the period, McVety says, is when they say they want to kill you, you need to believe them.
“And when someone starts to marginalize, you must push back,” he warns. “And not just Jews, but Christians. It is incumbent upon us to push back against this hatred."
