MONTREAL — Noam, a kosher restaurant here, was burned to the ground Aug. 1, one of a growing number of attacks on Jews in Canada. Luckily, no one was in the building at the time. Police are treating the act as arson, but refuse to call it an act of Jew-hatred.
Other examples in just the last month are a violent assault on Hasidic Jews as they left their synagogue; soccer fans chanting “Death to Israel” and throwing things at Dor Turgeman, an Israeli player on the New England Revolution team, after he scored a goal in a match at Montreal’s Saputo Stadium; and a woman launching a Jew-hating tirade at a Jewish family relaxing in Lafontaine Park, screaming “Jews aren’t allowed here.”
The Hasidic men who were attacked July 3 were on their way home after synagogue services. Security video shows two men confronting Jewish residents of the neighborhood, shouting antisemitic abuse, throwing objects and spitting at them. They yanked shtreimels, a traditional fur hat worn by some Hasidic men, off their heads and made off with them.
“This type of harassment and intimidation against the Jewish community, or any community, will not be tolerated,” Sam Muller, executive director of the Jewish Hasidic Council of Quebec, told the press.
“Montreal is experiencing a wave of antisemitic violence,” B’nai Brith Canada reported on its website. “Arson, specifically, has been used repeatedly during recent months and years to target Jewish institutions in Canada. In June, a 31-year-old man attempted to set fire to Temple Emanu-El” in Montreal.
The pattern of increased acts of Jew-hatred evident in other cities across Canada was described in an Aug. 5 Globe and Mail editorial headlined “Thoughts and prayers, Canadian style.” It points out that little is being done by governments to deal with the rise in acts of Jew-hatred and that the “thoughts and prayers” expressed by officials and politicians do nothing.
While Montreal police tried to claim the attack on the Hasidic Jews was an “isolated incident,” the editorial explains that following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, pogrom targeting Jews in Israel, Jew-hatred and violent attacks on Jews in Canada jumped 82%. They’ve continued to rise since, going up 20% in the first quarter of 2026.
“Antizionism is fueling the rise in antisemitism,” the Globe and Mail said. “The rejection of Israel, of its very right to exist, has become the growth medium for the contagion of antisemitism.”
Fighting Jew-hatred is union issue
“Montreal police claim that the attacks on the Hasidic Jews were ‘an isolated incident,’” Joe Young, Communist League candidate in October’s Quebec provincial elections, said in a campaign statement. “This is false and part of the capitalist rulers’ attempt to downplay the significance of the major rise of attacks against Jews since the Oct. 7 pogrom.”
“Fighting against all acts of Jew-hatred is a life-and-death question for working people,” said Young. “Jew-hatred is the inevitable product of capitalism in crisis,” as was so horrifically demonstrated during the 1930s Depression, when the capitalist rulers in Germany turned to Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party to attack Jews, turning the blame for the economic catastrophe away from the wreckage of their system.
Washington, Ottawa and other imperialist powers shut their doors to Jews trying to escape the Holocaust. One Canadian government official at the time infamously summed up Ottawa’s antisemitic immigration policy against Jews by saying, “None is too many.”
The Jew-hating attacks in Canada are also fueled by the campaign of the imperialist rulers to try and force Israel to back off from its unfinished battle to destroy Hamas as well as Tehran’s nuclear weapon capacity. “Carrying out this battle to the end is the only way to push back the threat of new, more deadly pogroms,” Young said.
Adding to the antisemitic atmosphere, Ottawa says it is committed to arresting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he sets foot on Canadian soil, pointing to the warrant issued by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, on the false charge Israel commits “genocide” against Palestinians.
“Unions should take responsibility to mobilize to protest Jew-hatred and to physically defend Jews who come under attack,” Young said.
“Jew-hatred can be ended,” he added, “but only by building working-class parties to overturn capitalist rule around the world and reorganize society along socialist lines.”