Canadian Jewish organizations condemn Colorado attack, call for action against antisemitism at home
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On Sunday in Boulder, Col., eight people were injured, some with serious burns, when 45-year-old Mohamed Sabry Soliman allegedly used Molotov cocktails and an improvised flamethrower on a small group of people assembled to raise attention for the remaining 58 Israeli hostages in Gaza.
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Abraham Global Peace Initiative CEO and founder Avi Benlolo said he was saddened by the incident, but 'not surprised.'
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It's the byproduct, he said, of demonstrators becoming 'much more hostile, much more desperate' in an effort to seek attention. And he thinks it's only going to escalate.
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'I think we're going to see more Colorados,' he told National Post Monday.
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In a post to X, B'nai Brith Canada called it 'a cowardly act of hate filled violence' and suggested this and other recent antisemitic attacks 'are emblematic of what happens when radical extremism is allowed to flourish and when hatred is incited without consequence.'
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B'nai Brith Canada stands in solidarity with the Jewish community in Boulder, Colorado. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of this horrific attack.
Targeting a group that was peacefully gathered to call for the release of the hostages is a cowardly act of hate filled…
— B'nai Brith Canada (@bnaibrithcanada) June 1, 2025
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Less than two weeks ago in Washington, D.C., two Israeli Embassy staff members — Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and Sarah Milgrim, 26 — were shot and killed by a gunman who later yelled 'Free Palestine' while being arrested.
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Hamas's infiltration of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 — during which 1,195 people were killed and 251 more were taken hostage — and the Israeli military's response have led to a wave of antisemitic attacks in Western countries, including Canada.
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And while there haven't been any hate crimes resulting in the deaths of Jewish people in Canada, there has been a marked increase in other offences in the 19 months since hostilities began with the terrorist group in Gaza.
In 2023, of the 1,284 hate crimes targeting a religion — a jump of 67 per cent from 2022 — 900 were against Jewish people, that's over 70 per cent of all hate crimes and a 71 per cent increase over the previous year, according to Statistics Canada police-reported hate crime data.
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There were more than four times as many antisemitic hate crimes as the second-most targeted religious minority, Muslims.
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In Toronto, antisemitic hate crime spiked 76 per cent in 2023 over the year prior, with almost 68 of the 146 occurring after October, per the Toronto Police public safety data portal.
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That figure climbed 20.5 per cent in 2024 with 176 reported hate crimes targeting Jewish people, which represented 81 per cent of all religion bias hate offences.
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That includes three shootings at Bais Chaya Mushka Elementary School in North York — which was unoccupied at the time — and vandalism at the Kehillat Shaarei Torah synagogue, among other unpublicized incidents.
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In response to Sunday's events, Toronto police said Monday officers would continue to maintain a heightened presence around places of worship, community centres, schools and other faith-based locations as they have since the Washington attack.
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Meanwhile, in Vancouver, police data from December 2022 to December 2023 showed a 62 per cent increase in antisemitism, while officials in Montreal accounted for 212 in the calendar year following Oct. 7, 131 of which were reported before January 2024, per The Canadian Jewish News. In March, the city's Congregation Beth Tikvah was hit with a firebomb just over a year after being damaged in a similar attack that included a fire at a nearby Federation CJA building.
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