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FIRST READING: Senate report on Jew hatred makes zero mention of Islamic extremism

Report concludes that 'young Canadians' radicalized by 'social media' are responsible for most of the unprecedented upsurge in threats on Jews

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FIRST READING: Senate report on Jew hatred makes zero mention of Islamic extremism Back to video

In a report attempting to diagnose skyrocketing attacks on Canadian Jews, the Senate of Canada didn’t once mention the role of Islamic extremism.

Fifteen Senators spent more than 17 months interviewing 44 witnesses as to why Canadian incidents of Jew hate have spiked to all-time highs in the wake of the Hamas-orchestrated terrorist attacks of Oct. 7, 2023.

The period being studied by the Senate has seen security services foil multiple Islamist plots to kill Jews. This includes a Toronto-based Pakistani national who just pled guilty to plotting a mass shooting at a Brooklyn Jewish centre and a father-son pair accused of plotting a deadly terrorist attack on Jewish sites in Toronto.

In fact, the same week the Senate report was published, an Ontario court convicted an Ottawa youth of plotting an Islamic State-inspired attack to “murder as many Jewish persons as possible.”

But across the entirety of the Senate report’s 73 pages, its only mentions of the words “Muslim” or “Islam” are in citing Canadian Islamic communities as being comparable recipients of hate.

As an executive summary reads, “the committee is keenly aware of the similarities between antisemitism, sexism, anti-Black racism, Islamophobia, and other forms of hate, as well as the ways in which individuals can face intersectional discrimination.”

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The Senate Committee on Human Rights began probing the issue of antisemitism late in 2024, after Canada had already experienced an unprecedented wave of violent attacks on Jewish sites, including bullets being fired into synagogues or Jewish schools.

This included three separate incidents of nighttime shootings targeting a single Toronto-area Jewish girls school, Bais Chaya Mushka Girls Elementary School.

“The committee was disturbed to hear recent examples of Jewish schools being shot at, synagogues and Holocaust memorials being vandalized, and Jews being harassed and intimidated on campuses, outside synagogues, and in their communities,” it read.

As to who’s committing all these attacks on Jewish sites, the closest the report gets to identifying a culprit is that a lot of them seem to be “young Canadians” radicalized by “social media.” Some of that social media, they wrote, came via “malicious foreign actors.”

As such, one of the committees’ 22 recommendations is that Canada do a better job to “develop and support digital literacy and social media education initiatives.”

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In a 2025 special report, the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism would describe the same surge in Canadian Jew hatred identified by the Senate, but characterize it as largely being a symptom of entrenched Islamist political networks.

“For decades, organizations affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is also an adherent, have managed to embed themselves at all levels of Canadian society,” it read, placing particular emphasis on campus groups.

“These organizations and their radical ideologies have significant carry-over effects, most notably within the academic space.”

Ironically, the report would rely in part on testimony that had been delivered to the Senate in 2015. Lorenzo Vidino, an expert on Muslim Brotherhood influence operations, told the Upper Chamber at the time that “they basically aim to be the gatekeepers to the Muslim communities, that whenever politicians, governments or the media try to get the Muslim voice … they would go through them.”

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Nevertheless, the Senate’s only explicit mentions of extremist ideologies are when it mentions far-right extremism.

As an example, one of the Senate’s recommendations is for Canada to consider banning the display of “hate symbols.” This precise issue came up in early 2024, when Toronto Police took the rare step of laying hate charges against a man accused of waving a “terrorist flag” at anti-Israel rally.

But the only “hate symbols” the Senate can offer as examples are “Nazi and White supremacist symbols.”

In fact, the final report would even accept testimony from an anti-Israel group in declaring that Jew hatred should only be addressed within a wider agenda of “decolonization.”

The fringe group Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) is explicitly anti-Zionist, and is a frequent collaborator with Palestinian Youth Movement, a group that held Canadian rallies to celebrate the October 7 massacres.

IJV has also issued defences of Samidoun, a group now listed as a Canadian terror entity.

The Senate heard from two IJV representatives, Corey Balsam and David Mivasair, and would highlight their view that “antisemitism should never be taught in isolation, nor privileged above other forms of racism and discrimination.”

Rather, said the group, Jew hatred can only be countered “within a broader commitment to anti-racism, decolonization, and solidarity among communities facing discrimination.”

This sentiment would make its way into one of the Senate committee’s final recommendations.

It recommended that Canada could better encourage “antisemitism awareness,” but partially as a vehicle to encouraging “broader historical literacy regarding racism and discrimination in Canada, including the histories and experiences of 2SLGBTQI+ communities, residential schools, and anti-Black racism.”

The government of B.C. Premier David Eby has just entered a bizarre state of ossification that may not be survivable.

It’s all surrounding DRIPA, a 2019 B.C. law that codified the tenets of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People.

Although pitched as a largely symbolic gesture of reconciliation, public opinion turned hard against DRIPA after it effectively became a kind of veto over all other B.C. laws. DRIPA enshrines a right for Indigenous people to “own, use, develop and control” any land that they’ve previously occupied.

And in December, an Appeals Court judge ruled that this meant First Nations now effectively have final say on almost everything. DRIPA was “the interpretive lens through which B.C. laws must be viewed,” it ruled.

This has not been a popular view among BCers, with one recent Angus Reid Institute poll finding that 53 per cent think it goes “too far,” against just 30 per cent who call it “necessary.”

Which is why Eby has pledged all along to rescind at least some of DRIPA until it could no longer be used as a lever to put courts “in the driver’s seat” of the province’s basic functions.

But then this week, he surrendered, announcing in a joint statement with a First Nations activist group (the First Nations Leadership Council) that he wouldn’t be touching DRIPA after all.

As retired Aboriginal law expert Geoffrey Moyse told the National Post, “you have a First Nations advocacy organization co-governing a province.”

“They told him he couldn’t legislate, couldn’t change legislation, without their consent.”

And in a press conference, Eby would even seem to admit that the decision had been influenced by First Nations threats to pursue “collective resistance” in the form of road and rail blockades.

When a reporter asked if “threats” had caused him to back off, Eby replied “there is a very real threat to our province in continued conflict with First Nations.”

First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.

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