‘I was told to go die’: What Canadian Jewish students said about the antisemitism they’ve experienced on campus

Student protesters block the entrance to a lecture hall in the Leacock Building on the downtown McGill campus in Montreal. Photo by John Mahoney /Montreal Gazette

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Canadian authorities, by and large, now regard antisemitism as a significant and growing problem, and universities have become one of the places where, post-Oct. 7, 2023, it has manifested itself most visibly. 

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Hundreds of experiences like that and far more egregious instances of antisemitism are detailed in the Campus Antisemitism and Student Experiences (CASE) report issued last week. 

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Here’s a verbatim sampling of what some Jewish students say they have experienced on Canadian campuses taken from that report:

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I was told “Hitler should have finished you off” when people found out that I was Jewish. 

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I saw graffiti saying “Zionism is a death cult,” “Zionists invent false allegations of sexual assault,” “Death to Zionism,” and “Death to Israel.”

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A professor wrote that we need to kill all Zionists, that she had worked with them and saw how evil they were. 

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I went to the bathroom; someone saw my (Star of David) and said, “Welcome to your gas chamber,” while people were vaping.

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I was told to go die when I said I was a Jew from Israel.

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My friend was walking through (REDACTED) Hall. He also wears a kippah, and a group of students shouted, “There’s a Jew…let’s get him.” They then chased him out of the building.

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I was told by a professor, in class, in the middle of the lecture, that Jews belong in Poland and need to go back. 

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I was told that it was a shame Hitler did not finish the job.

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I heard a Jewish friend being called a Zionist whore and spat on because she was wearing a visible Magen David.

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I faced extreme pressure from other student organizations to release a statement against Zionism in my position as president of the (REDACTED) student union, and had my name placed on a list circulating on and off campus as a “known Zionist.” 

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Students asked me to remove my chai necklace because it was too Jewish. 

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Professor assigned us to listen to a podcast that discussed how Zionism was similar to Nazism, which was unrelated to the course. 

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I was harassed online … She went as far as spamming my art page for five days straight, sending me radical reels, calling my elderly family “killers.”

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Various (protesters) shouted antisemitic slurs at visibly Jewish students on campus, including phrases such as “Hitler should have killed all of you.” 

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In first year, several mezuzot were torn from the doors of my residence. They never caught the people who did it.

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Residents at my on-campus residence started rumours about me that I am a child killer, white supremacist, racist, and Zionist, all because these people found out that I was Jewish.