Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is speaking out about the rise of Islamophobia and antisemitism across the country.
In the House of Commons this week, he provided Canadians with an update on how the federal government is responding to the war in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank.
“There are rising instances of antisemitism and Islamophobia. We saw the reports of hate crimes against a Muslim woman in Montreal and at a Hebrew school in Toronto. And all of our hearts break at the horrifying news that came out of Illinois yesterday. There are so many people in Canada who are afraid of the escalating tension here at home,” Trudeau said on Monday.
INSTANCES OF HATE
Last week, Toronto police charged three people in connection to a hate crime investigation that happened at Tanenbaum Community Hebrew Academy.
Police said that the suspects attended the school, and were asked to leave by security. Once they left they allegedly passed a group of Jewish students and one suspect made threatening remarks.
According to the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, there’s been a “disturbing” surge of antisemitic discourse online across Canada as well as the normalization of antisemitism in Canadian society.
The report said it analyzed more than 100 million social media posts and “identified a disturbing relationship between online antisemitic remarks and real-world antisemitic incidents in 2021.”
Also last week, a video circulated online showing a woman telling a Muslim woman in Montreal that she should be sexually assaulted in front of her children and dragged through the streets for having a Palestinian flag on her car.
The National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM) expressed their concerns over the disturbing footage and asked that Montreal police investigate the incident.
Trudeau’s remarks come as the organization publicly asked that elected leaders condemn the incident.
“We need to send a clear signal that hate and intolerance is utterly unacceptable,” The NCCM tweeted.
A poll by the Angus Reid Institute conducted in February of this year, where 1,623 Canadian adults were surveyed, showed that 39 per cent of Canadians hold an “unfavourable” view of Islam. In Quebec, that number reached 52 per cent.
Trudeau also mentioned in his remarks about an incident that took place south of the border where a six-year-old Palestinian-American boy was stabbed 26 times by his family’s landlord, also a retired U.S. Air Force veteran, for being Muslim, according to police.
CANADIAN AID
Trudeau first began his speech by touching on what’s been taking place overseas in terms of Canada’s rescue efforts to get citizens out of Israel and Gaza.
READ MORE: Canada to airlift citizens from Israel beginning this week
Additionally, he spoke about the country committing an initial $10 million dollars in humanitarian assistance in order to provide essentials like food, water, emergency medical aid and protection assistance for those affected by the crisis in Gaza, West Bank and Israel.
“I want to be clear, none of this aid is going to Hamas,” he said.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Israel declared war on Hamas on Oct. 8, one day after Hamas militants carried out deadly attacks in Israel in the form of air strikes and assault on the ground. The violence has reportedly left at least 1,400 killed in Israel, according to Reuters.
Additionally, since the violence broke out, 3,785 Palestinians have been killed and 1,524 amoung them were children, according to reports.
United Nations experts have warned that Palestinians are in “grave danger” of “mass ethnic cleansing.”
On Wednesday the Secretary-General of the U.N called for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in the Middle East to “ease the epic human suffering.”
Since Jan. 24, 2008 up until Aug. 31, 2023, there have been 6,407 fatalities in Palestine and 152,560 injuries in the context of the occupation and conflict, as per the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
The same report showed there were 308 fatalities in Israel as well as 3,607 injuries during that same time period.
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