Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to the committee for this critical study on anti-Semitism.
My name is Nati Pressmann. I'm a first-generation Canadian Jew in my third year at Queen's University. I'm the first person in my family to be born in a country where I'm given the same rights as other citizens, despite the fact that I am Jewish.
I've always been grateful for the opportunities and peace that Canada has given me and my family. However, that peace has been blemished by anti-Semitism. Although anti-Semitism has always been present in Canada, including at universities, and Jews have consistently represented the community most frequently victimized by hate crimes, I've seen the situation get exponentially worse since October 7.
As vice-president of the World Union of Jewish Students, I observed a void in Canada. There was an absence of a national democratic organization for Jewish students. The CUJS, or Canadian Union of Jewish Students, was established to fill this gap by creating a platform for Jewish students across Canada to elect representatives who can advocate for our interests and address our concerns with university administrators, governmental bodies and Jewish and non-Jewish organizations. This need has never been greater.
On October 7, our Instagram feeds exploded with videos of Hamas's murderous assault on Israeli civilians. Our Jewish peers were horrified. They shared videos of Naama Levy being forced into a jeep by a Hamas gunman, with blood staining the crotch of her sweat pants.
Many non-Jewish students instead shared posts that celebrated the killings and purported to justify Hamas's barbarity as resistance in decolonization. A student at Queen's University wrote in a blog that it was a glorious day. That same student was given an award for equity.
I remind the committee that these incidents of outright violence and hate speech were taking place before Israel even responded to Hamas's murderous assault.
Our universities should be places of learning, critical thinking and respectful dialogue. Instead, they have become home to unsanctioned protests featuring anti-Semitic rhetoric.
We frequently hear, “There is only one solution! Intifada revolution!” For Jews, the Intifada was a series of suicide bombings that claimed the lives of up to 1,400 Israelis. Israelis like me, and the children of Israelis, grew up learning how to stay away from unattended baggage in case it was a bomb.
Across the country, Jewish students who used to wear Jewish symbols, like the Magen David, now hide them as they walk past protests, including my friends who used to wear kippot, who now instead wear baseball caps going to class. This is not because we are any less proud to be Jewish, but because our universities have allowed an environment where being openly Jewish could be a threat to our safety.
We've had to have our Jewish pride be inside of us because we are scared of being physically harmed by other students on our campuses.
Some CUJS members have relatives among the hostages in Gaza. Nonetheless, they are exposed to abuse that treats those murdered and taken hostage as perpetrators, rather than the victims they are.
Student-led groups at Queen's, McMaster, the University of Alberta and others shared posts that accused Israel of fabricating reports of sexual assaults that the family members saw of female hostages. My own friends and CUJS members saw these posts while their own family members were still in Hamas captivity, and those family members who are hostages are young women.
First-year students living away from home for the first time feel unsafe in residence. At Dalhousie, a first year Jewish student wrote “Never again” in honour of Holocaust Remembrance Day on a personal whiteboard that every student is given outside of their dorm room. When they returned to their dorm, the word “Never” had been erased.
At Queen's, first-year students have had over five mezuzoth torn down in the Leggett residence building. This is just one singular building and repeated hate crimes that Jewish students have had to face.
We have also seen frequent acts of Holocaust distortion, which is also incredibly concerning, not just because of Holocaust memory, but because of the rise of Holocaust denial and distortion, and the fact that many Canadian Jews are the descendants of Holocaust survivors.
A nursing student at the University of Manitoba posted images equating the actions of Israel to those of the Nazis in the Holocaust. The Students for Justice in Palestine group at the University of Regina held posters saying that one Holocaust is not equal to another. Similar signage has been seen at many other rallies in Calgary, Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Saskatoon and Halifax.
All of these incidents result from the normalization of anti-Semitic rhetoric through inaction by university administrators, who fail to use even their own policies and their own codes of conduct to act against anti-Semitism on their own campuses. Administrators are entitled to act when students and/or faculty create a poisonous campus environment, but we have seen little to no action taken.
The increase in anti-Semitism is deeply troubling. Jewish students experience fear and anxiety. We, as a society, need to support them. We, as Canadians, need to support them, as Canadian values demand no less.
With over 300 members from over 20 university campuses, CUJS will play its part in providing such support for Jewish students who face anti-Semitism on campus and beyond. Now it's your turn to lift up our voices so that all Jewish students in Canada will be able to feel safe in their places of learning.
Thank you.