Since the brutal atrocities of Oct 7, they’ve been stalked on social media, doxxed, confronted on campus and have experienced several death threats.
The three highly articulate female university students who spoke at a well-organized Canadian Women Against Antisemitism (CWAA) rally Sunday all said — unequivocally — that their university administrators have done nothing about it and, in fact, have allowed it to fester.
The first event of the newly formed CWAA – founded by women’s advocate Esther Mordechai – drew about 3.000 women and men to Queen’s Park and a variety of speakers including Conservative MP and deputy leader Melissa Lantsman, independent MP Kevin Vuong, Progressive Conservative MPPs Goldie Ghamari and Robin Martin, and Deborah Lyons, Canada’s special envoy charged with fighting antisemitism.
At the first pro-Palestinian protest on campus after Oct. 7, Laura Barkel, a fourth-year student at Toronto Metropolitan University, was grabbed by someone who yelled into her face, “You dirty Jew, too bad Hitler didn’t finish what he started or you disgusting Zionist wouldn’t be alive today.”
While subsequently being interviewed on campus by United Jewish Appeal, she said another woman spat in her face and hit her on the head. The assault was “completely unprovoked,” she said.
“Time and again police have had to be called to keep Jewish students safe and de-escalate the stressful situation (on campus),” Barkel said. “These are just a few instances of many.”
She said she’s been physically assaulted, verbally attacked, and hit by objects and people’s fists. She added that she’s received death threats and threats of sexual assault.
“I’ve had photos of me edited with guns and knives in my chest similar to what Israeli women’s bodies went through on Oct. 7,” she said.
When she returned to campus from volunteering in Israel last month, her photograph was shared online with the tag, “The Zionist.”
Some said there was no way she was Jewish because “her nose wasn’t big enough.”
Despite all of this, she said she found a “newfound strength” in her and has become a writer for the Times of Israel and has joined other pro-Israel advocacy organizations.
Samantha Kline, 22, said she too has experienced many cases of antisemitism as a student at Toronto’s OCAD University – acts perpetrated by students, faculty and the administration.
Antisemitism on campus, already an issue, has “significantly intensified” since Oct. 7. By Feb. 8, the antisemitic messages on her school stairwells were “intolerable,” she said.
In response, she said she took it upon herself to “paint peaceful messages” to cover the antisemitic ones.
In mid-February, she said she received photos of graffiti with death threats targeting her.
“This shattered any sense of safety or belonging I once felt at school,” she said.
Since then she has been unable to attend school due to fears for her life.
OCAD has done nothing, she charged.
“The school’s silence has been perceived as compliance,” Kline said.
“It’s become painfully clear that zero tolerance towards discrimination on campus applies to everyone but the Jews.”
If university administrations are allowing hate crimes to exist, it won’t be long before this moves to the workplace, she reasoned.
“What starts on campus does not end on campus,” Kline said.
Lyons, the government’s antisemitism representative, told the crowd she’s “so sorry” that they didn’t get it right on the antisemitism file but after listening to the three women students, she said she’s confident there are leaders to take the Jewish community through these times.
She admitted her role is “much more difficult” than she ever thought it would be.
Shira Litvack, a fourth-year student studying “gender violence,” had to leave the University of Ottawa at the end of October after she too was subjected to “serious threats” for her safety.
The 21-year-old said these came after she tried to stand up to the antisemitism on campus and her fellow Jewish students – “taunts and threats” that came fast and furiously after Oct. 7.
She begged the administration to provide some security to Jewish students, even something as simple as a room where such students could safely go.
It never happened and that same day she got “targeted death threats,” she said. Even though she spoke to police and campus security, all of it fell on deaf ears.
“Universities across Canada, you have failed us,” she said to sustained applause.
You have shown your greed, your apathy, your disinterest in our livelihoods … you have allowed jihadists to rule your campuses.”
Litvack said she’s “deeply disturbed” but not surprised by the rampant antisemitic vitriol.
“This war didn’t create something … it was only the straw to break the camel’s back,” she said.
“I’ve dealt with antisemitism since I enrolled at the University of Ottawa … it was finally the opportunity for people to lift their cloaks and become who they always were.”
CBC fair to link Ben Shapiro to extremists, ombudsman rules
The ombudsman overseeing Canada’s public broadcaster recently ruled that a report linking conservative US commentator Ben Shapiro to extremists and far-right groups was “sustainable” and fair.
The CBC published a 2022 article titled “‘It’s a slippery slope’: How young men fall into online radicalization.”
The article’s cited expert, podcaster Ellen Chloë Bateman said Shapiro’s “content is used by extremist, far-right groups as an entry point that exposes young men to harmful comments and posts on platforms like TikTok, YouTube and other apps.”
CBC’s attempt to link Shapiro to far-right extremism led to a complaint to CBC ombudsman Jack Nagler by Jamie McDonald, who argued that the public broadcaster had no evidence to back up its claims.
“What we have here is state-sponsored propaganda written by someone with a particular ideological bent, as well as an aversion towards Mr. Shapiro and those like him who uphold traditional Judeo-Christian values,” wrote McDonald.
The complaint prompted a review by Nagler. Although CBC added an editor’s note to the story, the report was largely unchanged.
“It seems the broadcaster is bent on maintaining the narrative they have written, which is even more slanderous and lacking in journalistic professionalism now that it has been edited for a second time,” McDonald wrote back to the ombudsman.
In his conclusion, Nagler did conclude that using the term “expert” to describe a podcaster was an “amorphous descriptor.”
“In this instance, the experts that CBC has cited are journalists. Now, there are times when a reporter dives so deeply into a subject that they have truly mastered all the ins and outs. But more often than not, their expertise is ‘once removed,’” wrote Nagler.
While noting that the article had areas in which it could improve, ultimately Nagler upheld the report without any significant changes.
“There are peer-reviewed academic papers that explore a connection between the work of Shapiro and other conservative figures and the radicalization of young men, the very theme of CBC’s article,” wrote Nagler.
“I’m not saying that the examples I cited are perfect, or necessarily correct in their analysis. But they demonstrate the thesis that CBC was getting at in this report: that there is an observable phenomenon that might help predict which young men are at risk of radicalization. So my ultimate conclusion is that the premise of the article is sustainable, and so is its reference to Ben Shapiro. It was not a violation of journalistic standards.”