Two antisemitic incidents in the last week have shaken Canada's Jewish community.
On June 30, a religious Jewish man was attacked by a self-declared Houthi in Toronto in broad daylight.
Joseph Bitton posted on Facebook that he was at a client's commercial property when a man who said he was a Houthi from Yemen started yelling that he was "going to kill me because Israel is killing babies and committing genocide."
Bitton said, “He then threw a parking pylon at me as well as a brick, rocks, metal bars and struck me with a thick tree branch.”
While many people witnessed the incident, only one person – an acquaintance of Bitton – intervened.
Bitton said he sustained only minor scratches and abrasions, but he told The Jerusalem Post that while he did “sustain minor physical injuries, it’s more the trauma of someone saying he’s gonna kill you and trying to do that.”
'Not the Canada I grew up in'
"This is not the Canada I grew up in and have lived in over the past 64 years," he said. "We don't feel safer here in Toronto. This is not the Toronto I loved and was proud to contribute to."
He is now considering leaving Canada with his family.
The Toronto Police Service arrested Abdulkadir Al-Jelani, 58, of Toronto, and charged him with three counts of assault with a weapon and one count of uttering death threats. The Police deemed it a hate crime.
Bitton said he was impressed with the way the police responded. “The dispatcher from 9-1-1 took it very seriously. I said: ‘I’m being physically attacked because I’m visibly Jewish,’ and she took that quite seriously and she dispatched four cruisers with two policemen in each cruiser.”
The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) said, “This attack demonstrates how the anti-Zionist hate movement is being weaponized to justify intimidation and violent attacks against Canadians.”
“The problem needs to be named clearly: Anti-Zionism is fueling radicalization, extremism, and anti-Jewish violence. We continue to advocate for stronger action to identify, deter, and prosecute hate-motivated violence, and to ensure Canada’s Jewish community can live and work without fear.”
A few days later, on Friday night, a man was filmed trying to snatch a streimel off the head of a hassidic man leaving a synagogue in Montreal.
Footage, shared on social media, shows the suspect exiting a black car, approaching the hassid from behind and repeatedly trying to pull the fur hat off his head.
Other members of the hassidic community intervened, causing the suspect to flee.
'Being Jewish is not a provocation'
However, according to local Jewish reports, the suspect managed to steal two of the fur hats from other hassidic men and fled.
Richard Robertson, director of Research and Advocacy at B’nai Brith Canada, told the Post that “being Jewish is not a provocation.”
“After every antisemitic incident, we hear the same response from our elected officials: ‘There is no place for hate in Canada.’ Following the recent assault of a Jewish man in Toronto who was simply going about his workday, and the news that multiple visibly Jewish men were the targets of suspected hate crimes while simply walking on Shabbat, such rhetoric has become increasingly hollow,” Robertson said.
“Condemnation is important, but it cannot be the end of the conversation. Actions must be taken to assure Canada’s Jewish community that we can freely practice our faith in this country without fear. We demand a response that ensures that we can remain openly, visibly, and proudly Jewish.”