An alarming trend...


"Hate is a ticking time bomb in Canada and anti-Semitism is the fuse," said Frank Dimant, executive vice-president of B'nai Brith Canada.

The group's annual audit revealed a 12.8 per cent increase in anti-Semitic incidents reported to its anti-hate hotline in 2006.

There were 935 cases, ranging from slurs on university campuses to street violence, spray-painting swastikas on synagogues and the firebombing of an Orthodox Jewish school in Montreal.

Anti-Semitism also reared its head in federal politics last year, when there was a behind-the-scenes campaign at the Liberal leadership convention in December to shun candidate Bob Rae because his wife, Arlene Perly Rae, is Jewish.

"This integration of hatred into the political process is one that is alarming, frightening and something that should be of concern to every single Canadian," Dimant told a news conference.

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What's more frightening is the argument from Canadians who like to look the other way when antisemitism rears its ugly head, that it's not really antisemitism. Because it is mostly triggered by events in the Middle East. In other words, blame-the-victim fallacy...

You will never hear Canadians excuse Islamophobic incidents as not really Islamophobia because they are triggered by events in Iraq or Afghanistan...