FOLLOWING THE UNIVERSITY’S “CONDEMNATION OF HATE” EMAIL SENT OUT TO STUDENTS, CLAIMED TO HAVE BEEN GROWING OVER THE PAST FEW YEARS
The antisemitic graffiti found on campus late Oct. 2025 is confirmed to have been swastikas painted on the door of a Jewish student’s dorm. Despite commentary from the Ottawa Police Service (OPS) and the University of the graffiti being “considered as an isolated incident,” it highlights a greater issue: the silence surrounding Jewish hate on campus.
President Marie-Eve Sylvestre’s “We condemn antisemitism” email, sent out to the student body on Oct. 27, did not specify what the attack was, but committed to “ensure the safety of all community members.”
Per U of O spokesperson Jesse Robichaud, the restriction of details was done “to protect the identity, safety and well-being of the parties who were targeted.” Robichaud continued, saying that “the disturbing attack… must be considered within the broader context that… the Jewish community was the group most frequently targeted/victimized by criminals and hate motivated incidents in 2024,” per the OPS.
The statistics — which claim an 11.4 per cent increase in antisemitic crimes between 2023 and 2024, and a 175 per cent jump since 2020 — are felt first-hand in Ottawa, according to the Jewish student representative at the U of O and Carleton University, Rabbi Chaim Boyarsky.
Rabbi Boyarsky retold what students confide in him: studying in the Morisset library at desks that are etched with swastikas, their peers joking during lectures that “Jews are the cause of natural disasters”, enduring insults and slurs as they walk down Laurier Ave, or coming home to their community center having had a rock thrown through the window. As these instances often go unreported outside of the tightly knit Jewish community, most never face repercussions.
The hate against “one person affects everyone [within the Jewish community]” but “[we] stay quiet to avoid gaining more controversy,” a third-year student told the Fulcrum, leading him to deliberately hide his Hebrew necklace under his shirt, out of worry that “there might be people watching him.”
His friend and fellow student added that “it doesn’t take an extremely targeted incident for Jews to feel unsafe,” saying that “we all know what it feels like to face antisemitism, and that’s something I couldn’t have told you three years ago.”
Their awakening first came about in 2023, during a prayer vigil described by the Jewish students as an event “without any politics involved” held for the victims of the October 7 attacks. The Jewish students were met with protesters “[waving] Palestine flags screaming at us to leave.”
“Like we were here strictly just praying for people who were killed and injured. There’s no reason for this,” one of them said.
The Fulcrum reached out to two student groups, the Palestinian Student Association and INSAF uOttawa, who assembled on campus on Oct. 8, 2023 in solidarity with Palestinians’ “right to resist the [Israeli] occupation, to defend the land [of Palestine], and to free [their] prisoners.” The Fulcrum did not receive a response in time for the publishing of this article and therefore cannot confirm which groups or organizations may have been present at the vigil mentioned above, or the reason for the protest.
Beyond the lecture halls and study spots on campus, the digital Gee-Gee community offers little reprieve from hatred. One of the students, who finds himself “chronically online” said that the dialogue surrounding the University’s condemnation of the graffiti included “a lot of comments where people saying, ‘oh the victims are at it again’,” or engaging with “casual hate” produced by Noticers.
The content, which is often “seen as just a meme” uses dog whistles to reinforce Jewish stereotypes. To the students, this echoes the propaganda that preceded the Holocaust, but now the false information is easily accessed “on Instagram or TikTok, it attract[ing] more eyes than a poster ever could.”
The students who spoke with the Fulcrum are focused on bringing change to campus, driven to build bridges among the community while highlighting diversity and inclusion — like through soup and sandwich deliveries to the homeless and other social events.
Simultaneously, they are calling on the University to take more action against antisemitism, suggesting repercussions for the dissemination of hate using the University’s IP address, and offering electives dedicated to Jewish history to encourage cultural education.
“Sit across the table from [others], realize they’re just like you; they’re the same,” highlighted one of the Jewish students.
Rabbi Boyarsky echoed this, saying “for every swastika or any negativity that goes up, we put up more menorahs.”
