Antisemitism has been rampant in public schools of the Canadian province of Ontario since the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, according to a new report published by the country’s federal government.

Nazi salutes in the hallways, assaults, pronouncements of solidarity with the aims of Hitler’s Final Solution coupled with expressions of regret that he did not live to “finish the job,” and teachers converting their classrooms into outposts for the distribution of anti-Zionist propaganda compose the background of the lives of Jewish students in the province, the report says. One teacher, it added, even called a student “half human” after learning that she has one Jewish parent.

Written by University of Toronto sociology professor emeritus Robert Brym, the report is based on data drawn from interviews conducted with 599 Jewish parents as well as nearly 800 reports of incidents of antisemitic hatred which took place in Ontario public schools, roughly three-fourths of which occurred in the Toronto District School Board, Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, and York Region District School Board systems.

Toronto specifically was the site of 61 percent of the incidents, part of a broader trend in which Ontario’s largest city, home to half of Canada’s 400,000 Jews, has seen a surge in antisemitism following the Oct. 7 atrocities. Last year, 40 percent of all hate crimes reported to law enforcement involved antisemitic bigotry, according to police data.

“The 7 October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and the ensuing Israeli retaliation in Gaza provoked a three-month outburst of hostility against Jewish K-12 students such as never before seen in Ontario schools,” Brym wrote. “One is immediately struck by the high percentage of responses that have nothing to do with Israel or the Israel-Hamas war. More than 40 percent of responses involve Holocaust denial, assertions of excessive Jewish wealth or power, or blanket condemnation of Jews — the kind of accusations and denunciations that began to be expunged from the Canadian vocabulary and mindset in the 1960s and were, one would have thought, nearly totally forgotten by the second decade of the 21st century.”

Some 30,000 Jewish school-age children live in Ontario, according to the report, which was commissioned by the Office of the Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism, Deborah Lyons, in order to provide a picture of the situation in Ontario schools.

Brym noted that many Jewish students abstain from reporting antisemitic discrimination due to fear of “being ostracized, re-victimized, or physically harmed.” In lieu of pursuing a course of action which guards their civil rights, they resort to effacing “visible symbols of their Jewishness,” which, he explained, “suppresses the visibility of the problem and contributed to the undercounting of incidents.” He recommended that school boards correct the hostile environments on their grounds by applying the widely adopted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism and recognizing the Zionist component of Jewish identity, which is often the target of antisemitic bullies.

“This report exposes an appalling reality that far too many Jewish students face antisemitism and harassment on a regular basis, and worse yet, many schools are failing to take the necessary steps to protect them,” Michael Levitt, chief executive officer and president of the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center, a human rights nonprofit which raises awareness of discrimination and racial intimidation, said in a statement responding to the Canadian government’s findings. “These latest revelations are a searing indictment of what we’ve been hearing anecdotally for some time now.”

He added, “While the Ontario government and some school boards are making an effort to bring antisemitism training and Holocaust education to staff and students, our education must do more to root out antisemitism and hold perpetrators accountable. There must be a genuine commitment by schools and school boards to ensure every student, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, feels welcome and safe.”

Antisemitism infects all levels of Canadian society, as The Algemeiner has previously reported, from the streets to the halls of government. Following the Oct. 7 attack, the Toronto Police Service (TPS) issued data showing that Jews had been the victims of 57 percent of all hate crimes, with 56 of the 98 hate crimes that occurred in the city from Oct. 7 to Dec. 17 being documented as antisemitic. Compared to the same period in 2022, the number of hate crimes targeting the Jewish community during that period more than tripled.

During all of 2023, Jews were the victims of 78 percent of religious-based hate crimes in Toronto, according to police-reported data. Overall in Canada, Jewish Canadians were the most frequently targeted group for hate crimes, with a 71 percent increase from the prior year.

In 2024, according to the latest TPS data, Jews were the victims of over 80 percent of religious-based hate crimes in Toronto.

“These numbers reflect a disturbing reality: antisemitism in our city is growing more aggressive, more visible, and more tolerated,” Michelle Stock, vice president of the Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs, said in May, commenting on the statistics. “Jewish Canadians — like all Canadians — deserve to feel safe. It’s time for governments to match words with actions.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post ‘Half Human’: Antisemitism Rampant in Ontario Public Schools, New Canadian Report Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.