Report finds antisemitism new normal in many Ontario schools

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A federal government report suggests it’s open season on Jewish students in Ontario schools when it comes to being targets of antisemitism.

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Equally alarming, it concludes schools and school boards are reluctant to address reports of antisemitism and are simply ignoring many of the complaints – or blaming the victims.

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Authored by award-winning University of Toronto sociology professor Robert Brym, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada who has published more than 200 academic papers, the study, “Antisemitism in Ontario’s K-12 Schools,” was commissioned by Deborah Lyons, Canada’s federal special envoy on combatting antisemitism, and released in July.

In the same month, Lyons resigned her position, three months before her term of office was up, telling the Canadian Jewish News she had grown “despondent and despairing” over how few Canadian business leaders, religious leaders and politicians were prepared to publicly support Canada’s Jewish community in a time of unprecedented antisemitism and hate crimes against Jews.

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Brym surveyed 599 Jewish parents who reported 781 antisemitic incidents aimed at Jewish children in Ontario’s kindergarten to Grade 12 school system, occurring between October 2023 (Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel occurred on Oct. 7, 2023) and January 2025, after seeking input through 257 Jewish organizations.

Among the incidents cited by Brym:

A six-year-old girl in Ottawa was told by her teacher that she was only half human because one of her parents is Jewish.

A 13-year-old girl in Waterloo was repeatedly surrounded by five boys shouting “Sieg Heil,” several times a day on multiples days, ignoring her pleas for them to stop.

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A Grade 9 student in York Region, north of Toronto, was accused by a classmate of being a “terrorist, rapist, and baby killer.”

An Ottawa teacher, noticing a six-year-old girl wearing a necklace with a pendant in the shape of a map of Israel, informed her it was a map of Palestine. When a fellow student responded “it’s Israel” and explained it was a gift from their Hebrew school, the teacher responded: “Your Hebrew school teachers are lying.”

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Disturbingly, Brym reported, “nearly one in six antisemitic incidents were initiated or approved by a teacher or involved a school-sanctioned activity … in about six of 10 reported cases, schools do not investigate, deny that the incident involves antisemitism, or effectively punish victims by recommending that they take remote classes or switch schools” rather than deal with the perpetrators.

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“In short, the picture illustrates the way some Ontario school children treat their Jewish classmates and the manner and degree to which some teachers and school administrators in Ontario disrespect, exclude and devalue Jewish children, not just by doing little to prevent, stop and punish antisemitic actions, but also by initiating actions that make Jewish students feel unsafe and unwanted.

“This … demonstrates the existence of a disjuncture between (1) the desire of Ontario schools to ensure that all students feel respected, included and valued and (2) the treatment of their Jewish students.”

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Among Brym’s findings:

“More than 40% of antisemitic incidents involved Nazi salutes, assertions that Hitler should have finished the job and the like” while “fewer than 60% of antisemitic incidents refer to Israel or the Israel-Hamas war.”

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Just over 6% of the incidents involved assaults – hitting, pushing, spitting, throwing objects, touching aggressively, or preventing movement – 14.9% were vandalism, including malicious property damage, defacement and graffiti, while 34.7% involved spoken harassment including threats, intimidation, expressions of hatred and incitement to violence.

“Just over two-thirds of antisemitic incidents occurred in English public schools and nearly one-fifth were directed at Jewish private schools. Fourteen percent … occurred in French, Catholic and non-Jewish private schools while “nearly three-quarters of antisemitic incidents took place in the Toronto District School Board (39%), the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (20%) and the York Region District School Board (16%)”just north of Toronto.

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Brym concluded the rate of antisemitic attacks on Ontario school children is being under-reported because many parents and children are reluctant to complain to the school, fearing repercussions if their complaint becomes public.

“In short, the high level of anxiety in Ontario’s Jewish community depressed the total number of incident reports available for this survey.”

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He added some school boards, including Toronto’s, use a narrow definition of Jewish identity and thus don’t count many attacks on Jewish students as antisemitism, “even if they are clearly motivated by antisemitism. As a result many affected students are excluded from official tallies.”

None of this is surprising given that nationally, incidents of Jew hatred through harassment, vandalism and violence increased by 125% to 6,219 incidents last year compared to 2,769 in 2022, according to B’nai Brith’s annual audit on antisemitism.

That’s consistent with reporting by Statistics Canada that while Jews make up 1% of Canada’s population, 70% of all religiously motivated hate crimes today are aimed at Jews.

Nor should it be surprising given that the federal Liberal government has been repeatedly praised by Hamas for taking anti-Israel stands, abandoning its traditional support of the Mideast’s only democracy.

lgoldstein@postmedia.com

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