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Rising anti-Semitism is leading an increasing number of Jews to decide to emigrate to Israel.
Published on June 27, 2024 • Last updated 19 hours ago • 4 min read
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Israeli soldiers and their relatives wave Israeli flags to welcome new Jewish immigrants from the United States and Canada as they arrive at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv in 2013. Photo by Ariel Shalit/Associated Press
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Dana Kontorski, a 27-year-old social worker, was wearing a Star of David necklace at Montreal’s Fuego Fuego music festival last month when she was buying a drink when she met a girl wearing a keffiyeh, a traditional Middle Eastern scarf that has become a symbol of solidarity with the Palestinian cause. Upon seeing Kontorski’s necklace, the girl called her a “mean Jew.”
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“The atmosphere in Montreal is very tense, very heated, and people are scared to go to synagogue, to go to Jewish school,” said Kontorski, whose Jewish roots were rekindled after Hamas terrorists and Gaza civilians carried out a rampage of murder, rape, kidnapping and looting in southern Israel on Oct. 7.
Though her parents are Israeli, she was born in Montreal and has always tried to see things from a Palestinian perspective, but the reaction to the Oct. 7 massacre shocked her.
“People were taken from a music festival and shot at point-blank range because they were Jewish. I saw on social media that people had absolutely no regard for any indication or sympathy for Jewish life. That’s when I really realised I needed to feel more connected to my community.”
Her personal journey has led her to the Holy Land, and although she is on a six-month trial residency in Israel, she is already convinced this will be her new permanent home.
And she’s not alone: Political and institutional responses to rising anti-Semitism in the country have led a growing number of Canadian Jews to decide to emigrate to Israel, where the Law of Return makes it easy for anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent to gain citizenship.
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According to Nefesh Benefesh, a nonprofit that helps Jewish immigrants from North America to Israel, the number of applications has more than doubled since the outbreak of the war: 1,091 Canadian Jews have started applications to immigrate since Oct. 7, 2023, compared with just 517 in the same period in 2022-2023. The only other year in the past decade to see a similar spike was 2020, likely due to COVID-related issues.
Shimon Fogel, CEO of the Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs, says more young families are considering moving to Israel because they don’t see a future in Canada.
“They see what’s going on in our communities and in our neighborhoods and they feel really unsafe,” he said. “But what’s worse than that is they feel like they’re not acting the way they’d expect them to, whether it’s law enforcement or different levels of government. They feel like no one is going to protect them.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is one of the few Western leaders who has not visited Israel to show support since Oct. 7. Instead, in March, photographs were released showing Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly and Liberal MP Yaara Sachs holding hands with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, a well-known Holocaust denier.
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It took months for Jolie to address the mass sexual violence that Hamas has perpetrated against Israeli women, before she spoke out about alleged “sexual and gender-based violence” against Palestinian women, falsely equating Hamas crimes with allegations of sexual assault contained in a UN report that contains no names or details.
Throughout, Trudeau has repeatedly pledged his “unwavering” commitment to Israel and the Jewish community, while accusing Israel of “murdering women, children and babies” — a common Hamas tactic to exaggerate civilian death tolls to gain sympathy.
Many Jews believe the Trudeau government’s constant pandering and inability to take a clear moral stance has emboldened those who commit anti-Semitic acts in the country. “The message Jews are getting is that you’re not ready to come to our defense,” Vogel said.
In recent years, Jews have watched as Canada’s Liberal government aggressively protected every other minority from what it perceived to be microaggressions, yet when masked thugs roamed Jewish neighborhoods yelling “baby killers” they were met with silence and shrugs, and when protesters yelled “Zionists go to hell” outside synagogues, police merely stood by and watched.
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When Jewish primary schools and synagogues are burned, shot at and vandalized, politicians condemn the crimes but do not attend solidarity rallies. When encampments appear on university campuses and some Jewish students stop attending classes, suddenly freedom of assembly is once again a cornerstone of Western civilization.
Patricia Kadoche, 52, of Toronto, has already submitted an application to emigrate to Israel and plans to move there next year. She said Monday was “like a kick in the gut,” and it prompted her to plan a volunteer trip to Israel in December.
The visit “reaffirmed to me that this is where I was meant to be,” she said. “When I saw the anti-Semitism happening in Toronto, Canada, I was shocked. It was beyond shocking. I didn’t even know the word. I couldn’t believe that anti-Semitism was so widespread. And it didn’t just come out of nowhere. It was lurking, waiting to come out. And when it did, I thought, ‘I can’t be here anymore.'”
Jews are motivated to emigrate to Israel by both fear and desire: the fear that their host country is slowly turning against them and that it is better to leave while they still can, and the desire to return to the tribal lands of their ancestors. October 7 had elements of both: there was an increase in anti-Semitic acts that scared Jews, but at the same time it also triggered a strong desire to return to the comfort of their own people.
“I feel more at home in Israel than I do in Montreal,” Kontorski said.
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