The premier and public safety minister of British Columbia have strongly condemned the vandalism of Congregation Emanu-el Synagogue in Victoria, pledging support to both local law enforcement and the Jewish community as an investigation is underway, CTV News reports.
Victoria Police responded to the incident on Saturday evening, around 8 :00 p.m., at Canada’s oldest surviving synagogue. Officers documented the graffiti and collected evidence before working with the City of Victoria to have it removed.
The Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver shared images of the vandalism on social media, showing hateful statements scrawled on one of the building’s front columns.
“Jews are evil! Because genocide is evil! Stop genocide stop the Jews! Jews are murdering thousands of gentile children. In the future Palestinians will get their revenge against you child-killing Jew-monsters!” the graffiti on the synagogue read.
The federation’s CEO, Ezra Shanken, spoke out against the attack, pointing to the synagogue's long history of supporting Palestinian care and progressive causes.
“This is a synagogue that had been vocally helping to try to bring the care the Palestinians deserve. This is a progressive synagogue, which also tells you that it is about the Jews, isn’t it?” Shanken said. “What you’re saying by scrawling this on a synagogue that has been active in a meaningful way is that there’s nothing we can do that makes us not evil.”
Shanken described the message as a manifesto and called on lawmakers to pursue criminal charges against those responsible for such hateful acts, drawing attention to the use of antiantisemitic tropes in the graffiti. “I think this should be a wake-up call that antisemitism is a Canadian problem and needs to be dealt with as any other form of hate against any individual group,” he added.
Public Safety Minister Nina Krieger also expressed her condemnation, stating, “Hate has no place in our province.” She affirmed that anti-Semitic hate speech and vandalism are crimes, and vowed to treat them as such.
Premier David Eby echoed this sentiment, writing on social media, “Antisemitism has no place in our communities - not now, not ever.” He extended full support to both the Jewish community and the police as they investigate the incident.
Congregation Emanu-el Synagogue, built in 1863, is recognized as a national historic site in Canada.
Canada has seen a sharp rise in incidents of antisemitism since Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 and the war in Gaza which followed.
Data released at the end of July by Statistics Canada reveal that hate crimes targeting Canadian Jews remained alarmingly high in 2024, with 920 police-reported incidents—making Jews the most targeted religious group in the country.
Jews were found to be 25 times more likely to be the victims of a hate crime than other Canadian citizens.
The number of overall antisemitism hate crimes was down slightly from their high in 2023, when they reached 959. However, they remain well above the figures for 2022, when 527 antisemitic hate crimes were reported.