Anti-Semitic Acts Soar in Canada, Audit Finds

TORONTO — Reported anti-Jewish attacks jumped 60% in Canada last year to their highest level in 25 years, according to an audit released this month by B’nai B’rith Canada.

The audit found that 459 incidents of anti-Semitism were reported in 2002, a year in which synagogues in Toronto, Saskatoon and Quebec City were torched and Jews were singled out for abuse by both radical Muslims and white supremacists.

Those incidents included “death threats, bomb threats, physical assaults, anthrax scares with a hate/bias orientation, serious acts of vandalism and cemetery desecrations,” the report said.

The numbers document only those incidents in which religion was an important factor. Such complaints have more than doubled in the last five years, partly because of the spillover of anti-Israel sentiment from the Middle East.