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Novel about Chinese rescuer of Jews raises questions about facts vs. fiction in Holocaust stories
TAIPEI (JTA) — Ho Feng-Shan, the Chinese diplomat stationed in Vienna who helped thousands of Jews escape from Europe during World War II, never met Adolf Eichmann.
But in “Night Angels,” a novel based on his life, Feng-Shan comes face to face with Eichmann several times — and his wife Grace’s Jewish tutor, Lola, tries to kill the architect of the Holocaust.
That detail is one of many that has spurred Ho Manli, Feng-Shan’s daughter, to speak out against “Night Angels,” the fourth novel by the Chinese-American author Weina Dai Randel. Manli says the book distorts elements of her father’s story, which was unknown before she spent decades documenting his heroic efforts to issue visas allowing Jews to escape to Shanghai.
“What I have found in doing this story is it’s very difficult to try to maintain the historical integrity of the facts,” Manli told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “Countless people … want to use this for their own means, whether it be commercial like this novelist, whether it be political, or whatever. So over the two decades that I have been doggedly trying to uncover more and more, I’ve been constantly fending off these sorts of opportunistic assaults.”
The dispute is casting a shadow over the novel, released this month, and reinvigorating longstanding debates over the importance of truth in historical fiction — particularly in stories about the Holocaust.
“Night Angels” follows Feng-Shan and his wife, Grace, as they risk their lives by issuing visas that allow thousands of Jews escape Germany and Austria to Shanghai. Grace, one of the novel’s narrators and main characters, is based on Feng-Shan’s real second wife with the same name who was no longer in Vienna after the Anschluss — Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938, and the period in which the novel is set. By that time, Feng-Shan had already sent Grace away to Boston. She never witnessed Nazi rule or Feng-Shan’s efforts to save Jews, Manli writes.
Several other events in the book, including Grace’s friendship with a Jewish woman who attempts to assassinate Eichmann and her development of a morphine addiction, are fully fictional.
Manli first took aim at the book in a column last month in China Daily. The novel, she wrote, “exploits real names, real people, real events and places, in what is essentially a Holocaust-themed melodrama.”
“In online reviews, readers say that they are thrilled to learn of my father and this history — except of course, what they have learned is not really history, my father’s, or anyone else’s,” she wrote.
Randel and her publisher, Amazon Publishing, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Randel dedicated the novel to “Ho Feng-Shan, his family, and all the angels in Vienna and beyond.” The book includes a disclaimer disclosing that its contents are a work of fiction and a product of the author’s imagination.
But that’s not satisfactory to some readers, including Tina Kanagaratnam, co-founder of the heritage group Historic Shanghai, whose book group read a previous Randel story set in Shanghai.
“If you’re talking about a historical character, you have to get the history right. Otherwise, just create a fictional character,” Kanagaratnam told JTA. “This is written for people who don’t know the history, but as Manli said, that’s dangerous, because then that’s what they remember. That’s what they take away.”
Ho Monto, left, and Ho Manli stand in front of the Righteous Among the Nations wall at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, Jan. 23, 2001. (Isaac Harari/AFP via Getty Images)
“Night Angels” has accumulated thousands of positive reviews on Amazon and has been promoted by Jewish organizations across the country. On Wednesday, the Jewish Book Council, in collaboration with Tablet Magazine and the Jewish Museum in New York City, will hold an event with Randel and journalist Jonathan Freedland that will explore “fact, fiction, and the sometimes blurred line between them.”
Randel’s book adds to a long list of Holocaust stories occupying that blurry territory, dating from the genre’s early days. Many readers believed, for example, that “The Painted Bird,” the pivotal work of Holocaust fiction from the 1960s, was based on author Jerzy Koszinski’s experience during the Holocaust; it was not. Scholars and booksellers have long agonized over whether to call Elie Wiesel’s “Night” a memoir or a novel, and whether the distinction matters when it is taught in American classrooms.
The fight has extended to questions over who can tell which stories from Holocaust. In 2014, Haaretz journalist Judy Maltz filed a lawsuit against Penguin Canada and author Jenny Witterick alleging that Witterick’s novel, “My Mother’s Secret,” copied Maltz’s documentary film about her family’s rescue during World War II. The court ruled in favor of Witterick on the grounds that copyright protection does not apply to historical events.
“An author is only ever responsible to their own fiction. They have creative license. And fictionalization of other people against their will is part of the history of literature,” said Helen Finch, a professor at the University of Leeds who studies representations of the Holocaust in German literature. “But that doesn’t absolve the writer from criticism.”
Manli — a journalist who has worked for the Boston Globe and helped found the China Daily, a state-backed media outlet, in 1981 — has made it her mission to set the record straight on Feng-Shan’s story. She began researching her father after his death in 1997, while writing his obituary. One line in his memoir from 1990 that recalled “saving who knows how many Jews” piqued her interest and led to a 25-year quest to document the extent of what her father did during the war.
His story of defying both his own government and the government of Germany to write Shanghai visas for thousands of persecuted Jews had been previously unknown, even to the refugees themselves — most of whom never met Feng-Shan.
Manli’s research led to Feng-Shan’s recognition by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum and memorial authority, in 2000 as “Righteous Among the Nations,” an honor given to those who risked their own lives to help Jews during World War II. Since then, greater attention has been paid to his story, and memorials across the world, from Israel to China to Italy, bear his name today.
Manli said Randel reached out to her several times before her book was published but after it had already been written. According to Manli, Randel sought out her blessing on the book by phone and email, saying that “the Holocaust history and your father’s history is now being forgotten” and adding that she wanted to help spread that history. Manli, who is working on a book of her own about her father, said she refused to answer, “just from the tone of her letter and what she wanted.”
“I have been burned before by this,” Manli told JTA. “I knew immediately that this was not something that I wanted to participate in and certainly that I wasn’t going to endorse.”
In an email shared with JTA in response to Manli’s editorial, Randel wrote that she has “great respect for Dr. Ho Fenghan[sic] and his family. I’m surprised to hear such strong negative criticism. I’m puzzled to see my gesture of respect is viewed in such a hostile way. If Ms. Manli Ho wishes to speak to me, I’m here.”
Randel, according to a biography on her website, came to the United States from China at 24 and became “the first Asian American novelist who intertwined Chinese history with the Jewish diaspora in Shanghai during WWII.”
Her previous novel, “The Last Rose of Shanghai,” follows a Chinese woman who falls in love with a German Jewish refugee living in the Shanghai Ghetto, the restricted area in which over 20,000 displaced Jews lived during World War II, under brutal oversight by Japanese officials who occupied the area. In interviews before the book’s 2021 release, Randel recalled hearing about Jewish refugees while she was living near the district that housed the ghetto.
After moving to the United States, she married an American Jew and is raising her children with both cultures in Boston. She has said “The Last Rose of Shanghai” was inspired by her interest in the history she saw in Shanghai and a desire to pay homage to her Jewish side of the family.
“I think it’s apt to say the survival of Shanghai Jews is also a story of how we as different races and as human beings shine and triumph over war and adversity,” she said in a January 2022 interview with World Literature Today.
But other researchers and authors deeply familiar with Feng-Shan’s story and Jewish history in Shanghai told JTA that “The Last Rose of Shanghai” also contained historical inaccuracies, including misrepresentation of real people who appear as characters, such as Victor Sassoon, a Jewish businessman and member of the dynasty known as the “Rothschilds of the East,” and Laura Margolis, the first female Joint Distribution Committee representative.
The book also includes a character named Goya, described as “a shameless Jew … who somehow had won the Japanese’s trust.”
The Jewish character is based on the real Kanoh Ghoya, who was not Jewish, but a notoriously cruel Japanese officer who had dubbed himself “king of the Jews” and “was infamous for his inhumane treatment of ghetto inhabitants,” according to the USC Shoah Foundation.
According to Publisher’s Marketplace, “The Last Rose of Shanghai” was sold to Lake Union Publishing — an imprint of Amazon Publishing — in 2021 as half of a two-book deal worth between $100,000 and $250,000. It was a finalist for a Jewish National Book Award that year. (The Jewish Book Council, which confers those awards, did not respond to multiple requests for comments about the “Night Angels” event.)
Kanagaratnam said Historic Shanghai’s book group read “The Last Rose of Shanghai” in 2021 and hosted Randel for an event. The group was unsatisfied by Randel’s response when factual issues were brought to her attention, particularly the characterization of Ghoya as Jewish, Randel dismissed them, Kanagaratnam said.
Randel’s novel is only part of a growing consciousness among the general public of the Shanghai Jewish refugee story. In recent decades, especially following the normalization of Israel-China relations in 1992 and Feng-Shan’s recognition by Yad Vashem, both governments have promoted the history, sometimes distorting facts to push different narratives about their wartime past.
New books and other media adaptations about the Shanghai Jewish refugee story have proliferated, such as the musical “Shanghai Sonatas” (2022) and the novels “Someday We Will Fly” (2019),“The Lives Before Us” (2019), and “The World and All It Holds” (2023). Other films and books are forthcoming.
“The audience of people who are interested in, if you will, an ‘exotic’ Jewish story, I think has meant that we’re seeing more and more of these. Everyone’s heard the Holocaust story. But now here’s one in an exotic setting,” said Kanagaratnam. “I think authors need to take responsibility. But honestly, I also blame the publishing industry, because where are the fact-checkers? A lot of the stuff in this can be really easily googled.”
Finch said novels that are set during that period are “always a work of fiction about the present.”
“So the question is, why is this author writing this book now? What does that say about the current moment when she’s writing? And what is with Randel trying to reflect either consciously or unconsciously in contemporary politics as well?”
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Taiwan Donates Humanitarian Aid to Israel, Sends ‘Message of Hope and Solidarity’ Amid Iran Strikes
A Taiwan flag can be seen on an overpass ahead of National Day celebrations in Taipei, Taiwan, Oct. 8, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ann Wang
Taiwan has donated NT$5.14 million (more than $160,000) for emergency operations and life-saving equipment to Israel amid Iranian ballistic missiles strikes on the Jewish state, expressing “solidarity” with a fellow democracy under constant threat as China continues to support Iran.
Taiwan’s representative to Israel, Abby Lee, said on Tuesday that the donation reflected continued cooperation and mutual concern for civilian safety amid shared security challenges, Taiwan News reported.
“Our contribution is more than financial assistance. It is a message of hope and solidarity to those affected by the war,” Lee said on Tuesday at a conference for ZAKA, Israel’s volunteer civilian emergency service and rescue organization. “Taiwan and Israel may be geographically distant, but we are neighbors in our values, small democracies under constant external threat that continue to thrive and stand by one another.”
The announcement came after the US and Israel last weekend launched a military campaign against Iran, targeting the Iranian military and security apparatus. Tehran has responded with drone and ballistic missile strikes at Israel and other Middle Eastern countries, aimed specifically at civilian sites.
One Iranian missile strike hit the Israeli city of Beit Shemesh on Sunday, killing nine people and wounding dozens, in what authorities described as a direct impact on a public bomb shelter.
Lee said that ZAKA volunteers used portable lighting towers purchased with Taiwan’s donation and that the equipment enabled emergency work under complex conditions and at night.
“We are particularly proud to contribute to initiatives led by ZAKA and are pleased to see our contribution transformed into equipment of real value on the ground,” she said.
Since the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, “Taiwan was among the first to strongly condemn the terrorist attacks and provided humanitarian aid and financial assistance to support kibbutzim, communities, and local authorities that were affected by the attacks and the threats that followed them,” Lee added.
The donation came less than three months after China condemned a senior Taiwanese official’s reported secret trip to Israel. The Reuters news agency reported in December that Taiwan’s Deputy Foreign Minister Francois Wu made a previously unpublicized visit to Israel.
China considers Taiwan, a nearby island run by a democratic government, as a renegade Chinese province that must be reunited with the mainland — by force, if necessary. Due to pressure from Beijing, few countries have formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Israel only recognizes Beijing but not Taipei, which has been increasingly looking to Israel for defense cooperation.
In October, Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te said that Israel is a model for Taiwan to learn from in strengthening its defenses, citing the Biblical story of David versus Goliath on the need to stand up to authoritarianism.
“The Taiwanese people often look to the example of the Jewish people when facing challenges to our international standing and threats to our sovereignty from China. The people of Taiwan have never become discouraged,” he said. “Israel’s determination and capacity to defend its territory provides a valuable model for Taiwan. I have always believed that Taiwan needs to channel the spirit of David against Goliath in standing up to authoritarian coercion.”
He made the remarks during a dinner of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in Taiwan.
Lai in October also announced a new multi-layered air defense system called “T-Dome” to defend itself against a possible future attack by China. It is partly modeled on Israel’s air defense system.
Lai told the AIPAC dinner that T-Dome had been inspired by Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, as well as US President Donald Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defense shield plan.
“I believe that trilateral Taiwan-US-Israel cooperation can help achieve regional peace, stability, and prosperity,” he said.
Meanwhile, China, a key diplomatic and economic backer of Iran, has moved to deepen ties with the Islamist regime in recent years, signing a 25-year cooperation agreement, holding joint naval drills, and continuing to purchase Iranian oil despite US sanctions.
China is the largest importer of Iranian oil, with nearly 90 percent of Iran’s crude and condensate exports going to Beijing.
With regional tensions rising and great-power competition shaping the Middle East, diplomatic and security relations between Beijing and Jerusalem have become increasingly strained.
Last year, China slammed the Jewish state for joining a United Nations declaration condemning Beijing’s human rights record.
Israel had endorsed a US-backed declaration, signed by 15 other countries — including the United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan — that expressed “deep and ongoing concerns” over human rights violations in China.
In a rare move, Jerusalem broke with its traditionally cautious approach to China — aimed at preserving diplomatic and economic ties — by signing on to the statement. The signatory countries denounced China’s repression of ethnic and religious minority groups, citing arbitrary detentions, forced labor, mass surveillance, and restrictions on cultural and religious expression.
These diplomatic moves came amid an already tense relationship with China, strained since the start of the war in Gaza. In September, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Beijing, along with Qatar, of funding a “media blockade” against the Jewish state.
According to a report released by the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), an Israeli think tank, China has increasingly used state media and covert campaigns to spread anti-Israel and antisemitic narratives in the United States.
The report examined how China’s state media portrays Israel and the United States as solely responsible for the war in Gaza, depicting them as destabilizing actors while spreading anti-Israel and antisemitic messages.
“It is evident that China and its proxies play a significant role in the current wave of antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment in the United States,” Ofir Dayan, a research associate in the Israel-China Policy Center at INSS, wrote in the report.
Last month, the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) published a new report showing how China has embraced overt antisemitic messaging in its domestic propaganda in recent years. The study tied the move to both geopolitical rivalry with the United States and efforts to curry favor with Arab and Muslim countries hostile to Israel.
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Israeli Government Report Reveals a ‘Significant Penetration of Muslim Brotherhood Ideology’ Across Europe
General view of the hemicycle during the debate on the European resolution proposal of the DR group aiming to include the Muslim Brotherhood movement on the European list of terrorist organizations at the National Assembly in Paris France on Jan. 22, 2026. Photo: Sami Karaali / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect
Israel’s Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism has published a new report detailing dozens of activists and organizations affiliated with the European wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, which researchers characterized as acting “autonomous” from its Middle East allies rather than under their direction.
“The Muslim Brotherhood operates in Europe through deceptive methods that project an outward appearance of moderation and pragmatism,” said Avi Cohen-Scali, director general of the ministry. “This front is used to advance dangerous ideological goals. Despite its external ‘moderation,’ the movement consistently rejects liberal democratic principles and Western values, which conflict with its radical aspirations — including efforts to Islamize Europe.”
Amichai Chikli, minister for diaspora affairs and combating antisemitism, warned that “those who close their eyes today will pay tomorrow — with the security of their citizens and with Jewish lives.”
Founded in Egypt in 1928 by schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna in response to the fall of the Ottoman Caliphate on March 3, 1924, the Muslim Brotherhood seeks to implement Islamic law across the entire planet by any means necessary. Operating as a secret society informed by 1930s fascist and communist revolutionary organizing methods, over the last 90 years the Brotherhood has embraced both violent terrorism and lawful political activity, the latter largely through the creation of front groups dubbed by German security as “legalist Islamists” (Legalisten).
The most influential Muslim Brotherhood-created terrorist group today is Hamas, perpetrator of the Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel, the deadliest massacre of Jews since the end of World War II.
The Israeli ministry names the primary threats posed by the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe as escalating incitement through aggressive organizing, radicalizing the Muslim community with extremist Koranic interpretations, supporting terrorist groups, platforming radical figures at events, and systemically delegitimizing Israel.
The report quotes a 2004 statement by Muhammad Akef, who served as the General Guide (Murshid) of the Brotherhood in Egypt from 2004 through 2010, explaining that the Brotherhood operates more by shared beliefs rather than a top-down command structure.
“We do not have an international organization; we have an organization through our perception of things (ideology). We are present in every country – wherever there are people who believe in the message of the Muslim Brotherhood,” Akef said. “In France, the Union of Islamic Organizations of France (MF/UOIF) does not belong to the Brotherhood organization. They operate according to their own laws and rules.”
Another figured cited to explain this strategy is Muhammad Habib, the former first deputy chairman of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
“There are entities that exist in many countries across the world. These entities share the same ideology, principles, and objectives, but they operate under different circumstances and contexts,” he said in 2008. “Therefore, it is logical that there be decentralization in action, such that each entity operates in accordance with its own circumstances and the challenges it faces, and within its own framework.”
The report lays out a spider’s web of interlocking organizations described in a ministry release as showing a “significant penetration of Muslim Brotherhood ideology into European countries” which, alongside financial connections to terrorists, “poses a direct threat to Jewish communities.”
On Feb. 26, 2026, the Israeli Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism published a new report detailing the significant penetration of extremist ideology into terrorist organizations seeking to target Jewish communities across Europe. Map available here: https://embed.kumu.io/a3c1883e3bbd4ff775f3959eb3da5cf1#untitled-map
According to the ministry’s researchers, five organizations “form the core of the Muslim Brotherhood’s pan-European structure,” with each serving a different function and often sharing overlapping leadership.
The primary umbrella group is the Council of European Muslims (CEM), which was previously known as the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe (FIOE) until a 2020 rebrand led by Abdallah Ben Mansour, who had served as chairman of the group from 2014-2018 and again from 2022-2024. European intelligence officials quoted in the report stated that “in every European country, the organization that is a member of FIOE is the central body of the Muslim Brotherhood’s militia in that country.”
The second key Brotherhood body is the European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR), which is responsible for issuing Islamic legal rulings to guide Muslims residing in Europe for how to align Islamic law with their country’s civil law. The late Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi served as president of the council for more than 20 years. He was known for his support of Hamas and defense of suicide bombings, as well as for serving as the “spiritual leader” of the Brotherhood. France and the United Kingdom banned him from entry due to his advocacy of violent jihad.
The third pillar of the European Muslim Brotherhood is the Forum of European Muslim Youth and Student Organizations (FEMYSO), which French intelligence said in 2025 served as the CEM’s youth branch and provided a “training structure for potential senior figures within the Muslim Brotherhood.” Qatar provided more than one million Euros of funding since 2016.
Mahmoud Aldiba is an ex-member of the Brotherhood in Sweden who helped found the local youth network. The report quotes an open letter he wrote upon leaving the movement in which he reveals the deceitful tactics used to deceive naive Westerners.
“The problem is the dual message, which is the most damaging. They conduct official dialogue with Christian and Jewish groups, yet internally spread fear of them. They speak about democracy, but in practice do the opposite,” Aldiba wrote. “In official forums they speak about democracy to achieve objectives, but within the organization there is a deep aversion to democracy, equality, and freedom of expression.”
An example of this tactic named in the report was the hosting by the League of Muslims of Belgium of Kuwaiti Muslim Brotherhood leader Tareq Al-Suwaidan, author of an antisemitic book titled The Jews.
The fourth central organization operates as the continent’s seminary, the European Institute of Human Sciences (IESH). Qaradawi previously led the organization until his death on Sept. 26, 2022. The school has since replaced him with Mohamed Karmous, also a Brotherhood figure. Qatar has supplied millions in funding.
The report emphasizes the role of Qatari funding in fueling the Brotherhood’s network.
“Qatar’s relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood has been shaped through strategic ambiguity in its foreign policy: Qatar has cultivated close ties with Islamist networks associated with the movement while denying publicly giving them direct support,” the report states. “Despite these denials, Qatar provides political refuge and a political base for senior Hamas figures, including members of its political bureau. Additionally, Qatar uses the state-funded media network Al Jazeera to disseminate the movement’s ideology worldwide.”
The last “pillar” of the Islamist establishment in Europe is arguably its most vital. The Europe Trust provides the financial backing for the other organizations, operating a network of real estate investments to fund the activities of the other four.
The report details charitable groups too, such as the Union of Good (a network led by Qaradawi), Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW), and the Al Aqsa Foundation. Israel banned IRW in June 2014 after intelligence reports linked the group to funding Hamas. The United Arab Emirates followed suit in December 2014, labeling the “charity” a terrorist organization while citing its relationship to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas as justification.
Another group emphasized in the report is Interpal, a British organization which both the United States and the United Kingdom designated as a terrorist entity. Ibrahim Hewitt, a convert to Islam, leads the group as chairman of the board of trustees. He has engaged in Holocaust denial and promoted Islamic extremism. Meanwhile, the organization’s director-general is Issam Youssef Mustafa, who a US Treasury report documented working on Hamas’s executive committee and with Qaradawi.
In 2021, an Austrian government report found that “although the Brotherhood is not involved in terrorism, its activity is legal but not legitimate – its objectives contradict democratic norms.” Other European countries’ intelligence services have come to similar conclusions.
“The Muslim Brotherhood is not a civil society movement; it is a conduit for extremism and terror in the heart of Europe,” Chikli said. “Behind a façade of ‘moderation’ lies a network tied to Hamas and foreign funding that destabilizes democracies from within. Europe must wake up.”
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Antisemitic Attacks Across Canada Spark Alarm as Jewish Community Faces Surge of Violence, Harassment
People attend Canada’s Rally for the Jewish People at Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario, in December 2023. Photo: Shawn Goldberg via Reuters Connect
A wave of antisemitic incidents across Canada is raising alarm within the country’s Jewish community, as tensions linked to conflict in the Middle East continue to drive a surge in vandalism, harassment, and violence targeting Jews and Israelis.
In one of the latest antisemitic incidents, a kosher restaurant and a neighboring business in Montreal, the largest city in the province of Quebec, were vandalized on Wednesday, with antisemitic graffiti and swastikas spray-painted across their walls.
The incidents followed separate attacks in Toronto, a city in the province of Ontario, where shots were fired at a Jewish-owned restaurant and at a local synagogue.
A kosher restaurant in Montreal was spray painted with swastikas on its entrance in what is the most radical Islamist city in Canada. pic.twitter.com/pAgte47pyM
— Leviathan (@l3v1at4an) March 4, 2026
In another troubling antisemitic incident, a 15-year-old Jewish student in Halifax, the capital of Nova Scotia, has been forced to continue his education online after his school failed to stop repeated antisemitic harassment and bullying.
In an interview with the National Post, the boy’s mother, Aviva Rubin-Schneider, described how her son had been harassed for years by classmates at Park West School.
He reportedly found swastika graffiti in the bathroom and was repeatedly subjected to antisemitic slurs such as “Jewseph” and “Jewboy,” while some students were also said to have performed Nazi salutes toward him in the school hallways.
The situation further escalated in 2024 when the boy was physically assaulted on school grounds, with fellow students punching and kicking him, throwing him to the ground, and hurling antisemitic slurs.
After the attack, Rubin-Schneider said her son “never really went back to school,” prompting the family to withdraw him entirely while citing Park West School’s inability to provide a safe learning environment.
Now, the boy continues his education virtually through the public school system and requires ongoing therapy.
“He literally doesn’t go to school anymore. He has absolutely no desire to be in school,” Rubin-Schneider told the National Post. “I’ve pulled him out completely. He’s got no desire to learn. He has no faith in any of the schools, the systems or anything of that sort.”
“The fact that my son does not go to school anymore just tells you he’s petrified,” she continued. “He doesn’t want to go to school. He doesn’t want to be around these kids. He knows he’s just going to be bullied again.”
When the incidents first began, the boy’s mother reached out to Halifax Regional Police’s hate-crime unit, leading an officer to meet with the school principal and later conduct student sessions on racism, intolerance, and hate crimes.
However, Aviva Rubin-Schneider said no further action followed, even after her son was physically assaulted on school grounds.
Like most countries across the Western world, Canada has seen a rise in antisemitic incidents over the last two years, in the wake of the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Canadian Jews have been hit by a wave of antisemitic incidents, with at least 32 reported across five provinces in just the first week of January this year, according to data collected by the Jewish advocacy group B’nai Brith.
“Antisemitism in Canada is now accelerating at an increasing rate, spreading across provinces, platforms, and public spaces. That is a warning signal, and it demands more than piecemeal reactions,” the group wrote in a letter urging Prime Minister Mark Carney to create a Royal Commission that would explore the problem and draft policy proposals for solving it.
According to the group’s latest audit released last year, antisemitic incidents in 2024 rose 7.4 percent from 2023, with 6,219 adding up to the highest total recorded since it began tracking such data in 1982.
Seventeen incidents occurred on average every day, while online antisemitism exploded a harrowing 161 percent since 2022. As standalone provinces, Quebec and Alberta saw the largest percentage increases, by 215 percent and 160 percent, respectively.
Now, concerns are growing about increasing targeted attacks on the local Jewish community, fears that Iran may activate sleeper cells abroad, and the risk of politically motivated violence linked to the escalating conflict in the Middle East.
Hours after the announced death of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a boxing gym run by Iranian-Canadian dissident activist Salar Gholami in Richmond Hill, a suburb north of Toronto in Ontario, was struck by gunfire.