The remains of a kosher restaurant in Montreal’s Côte-des-Neiges neighborhood are seen after a weekend fire caused extensive damage in an incident police are investigating as possible arson amid a wave of antisemitic attacks targeting the city’s Jewish community. Photo: Screenshot

World leaders and Jewish organizations are urging Canadian authorities to take decisive action after a wave of antisemitic attacks intensified fears of an increasingly hostile and violent climate for the country’s Jewish community, fueling alarm over the growing threat of anti-Jewish hatred.

Israeli Ambassador to Canada Iddo Moed warned on Sunday that the latest string of antisemitic incidents in Montreal should serve as a wake-up call, cautioning that the violence could be building toward something even more dangerous.

“The hate must be stopped before it transforms into something lethal,” the Israeli diplomat wrote in a post on X. “Israel continues to stand ready to be part of the fight against antisemitism in all its forms.”

Early on Saturday, a well-known kosher restaurant in Montreal’s Côte-des-Neiges neighborhood — a diverse district home to one of the city’s largest Jewish communities — sustained extensive damage after being engulfed in a fire that local police are investigating as possible arson.

US Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra described the suspected arson attack as “tragic,” urging Canadian leaders to bolster security for the country’s Jewish community and warning that the latest wave of antisemitic violence poses an increasingly grave threat that demands decisive action.

In a separate incident, a visibly Jewish man was assaulted in Montreal’s Outremont borough — a neighborhood with a large Orthodox Jewish population — in what police are investigating as a suspected antisemitic attack.

The assailant allegedly targeted the victim with antisemitic verbal abuse before violently assaulting him, repeatedly punching and beating him until police intervened and arrested the suspect.

Adding to this string of recent incidents, anti-Israel chants echoed throughout CF Montréal’s Saturday night match at Saputo Stadium as an Israeli player was targeted with cans, lighters, and other objects thrown from the stands while sections of the crowd shouted, “Death to Israel.”

After the match, CF Montréal announced it had launched an investigation into what it described as “discriminatory comments,” stressing that hate and discriminatory behavior have “no place” at Saputo Stadium.

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs condemned the chants as dangerous incitement, warning that the incident reflects a broader and deeply troubling pattern of antisemitic and extremist activity contributing to an increasingly hostile climate in Montreal.

Like most countries across Europe and the broader Western world, Canada has seen a shocking rise in antisemitic incidents over the last two years, in the wake of the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

According to recent government data, Canadian Jews were the targets of more than 70 percent of all religion-motivated hate crimes reported to police in 2025 despite making up less than 1 percent of the country’s population.

Statistics Canada reported last week that police recorded 4,708 hate crimes nationwide last year, including 788 targeting Jews. Anti-Jewish incidents therefore accounted for 16.7 percent of all reported hate crimes and 70.7 percent of the 1,115 incidents motivated by religion.

Earlier this month, B’nai Brith Canada warned that the country is on track for its most violent year for the Jewish community in recent memory after the group documented 27 violent antisemitic incidents nationwide between Jan. 1 and July 15 — more than double the 10 incidents recorded throughout all of 2025.

The group’s preliminary 2026 total has already surpassed the full-year figures for 2022, 2024 and 2025, and trails only the 77 violent incidents documented in 2023.