Hate crimes increase against Montreal Arab-Muslim, Jewish communities since Israel-Hamas war: SPVM data

There have been 134 hate crimes and hate-related incidents against Montreal’s Jewish and Arab-Muslim communities in the more than five weeks since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, according to police data.

Of those, 79 were hate crimes and 55 were hate-related incidents.

The data provided to CityNews by the SPVM covered the period from Oct. 7 to Nov. 14 inclusively.

Broken down by community, 104 hate crimes and incidents targeted Montreal’s Jewish community — an increase of 31 from the Nov. 7 tally. There were 30 against the Arab-Muslim community — an increase of five from Nov. 7.

A Muslim leader previously told CityNews he believes the actual numbers are much higher than those provided by police because community members don’t always report them.

Leaders within the city’s Muslim and Jewish communities have been calling for peace and calm.

It’s not clear how the latest police statistics compare to a similar timeframe earlier this year as Montreal police say a complete overview of 2023 will only be available next spring in an annual report.

“These statistics are evolving and continually updated,” an SPVM spokesperson said via email.

And while data from previous years are available in those annual reports, hate crimes and incidents are not broken down by community. Rather, they are separated into larger categories such as ethnic origin, language, skin colour, sexual orientation, age or political ideology.

In 2022 in Montreal, for instance, there were 212 total hate crimes – all categories combined. Most of them were linked to a victim’s ethnic origin/skin colour (118), religion (50) and sexual orientation (20).