Dave Gordon
JNS, July 15, 2025
“When complaints are finally processed, they are either dismissed based on the investigation committee having a superficial understanding of the nature of antisemitism, including the IHRA definition, or the investigation committee bends over backwards attempting to formulate excuses for the member’s behavior to justify the issuance of inordinately lenient consequences.”
Primary and secondary schools in Ontario, Canada, failed to investigate 49% of antisemitic incidents reported to school officials, and more than 40% of Jew-hatred instances involved Holocaust denial or glorifying Nazis, according to a government-commissioned survey on Jew-hatred in K-12 schools in the province.
The report, dated July 14, lists 781 instances of antisemitism. “Several times a day on multiple days in September 2024, a 13-year-old Jewish girl in Waterloo was surrounded by five boys repeatedly shouting ‘Sieg Heil!’ and raising their hands in the Nazi salute. On each occasion, she begged them to stop, but they persisted,” it states. “In October 2024, a 6-year-old in Ottawa was informed by her teacher that she is only half human because one of her parents is Jewish.”
Michael Teper, president of the Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation, told JNS that “in the public school system, Jewish students are frequently ostracized, isolated and assaulted verbally and physically.”
“Little is being done to resolve the crisis,” he told JNS.
The office of the Canadian special envoy for preserving Holocaust remembrance and combating antisemitism oversaw the report led by Robert Brym, a University of Toronto sociologist.
From late January to early April of this year, 599 Jewish parents were surveyed. They reported 781 antisemitic incidents, estimated to affect at least 10% of the province’s 30,000 Jewish students. The report covers incidents that took place between October 2023 and January 2025, with more than 80% of the incidents taking place in the Toronto and Ottawa metropolitan areas. ….SOURCE