It happened again in 2016, repeating a trend that has been
ongoing for at least 10 years.
According to the latest Toronto Police Service (TPS) hate
crime report — on the agenda of this week’s police services board meeting —
Jews were the most targeted group in Toronto when it came to acts of hate crime
last year.
Some 43 of 145 offences or nearly 30% of all occurrences
reported to police in 2016 involved attacks on the Jewish community, mostly
pertaining to vandalism and graffiti or criminal harassment.
The LGBT community was a far distance behind at 24 or 17%
of all occurrences followed by 22 occurrences each against Muslims and blacks,
amounting to 15% of all incidents reported.
Hate crimes against Jews are up 7% from last year and the
police report that the Jewish community has been among the three most targeted
groups (including the black and LGBT communities) since 2006.
None of this surprises me in the slightest given the rise
in antisemitism dressed in the guise of an anti-Israel, pro-BDS, pro-free
speech movement that has found a home amongst alleged Liberal thinkers on
university campuses and in union and feminist-backed solidarity movements
across Canada, the United States and western Europe.
