Hanging effigies of Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir paraded in Montreal

Dozens of anti-Israel activists demonstrated on Sunday in Montreal, Canada, where they displayed hanging effigies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), the advocacy group of Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA, protested the display, organized by the Montreal4Palestine group on Phillips Square on Sunday afternoon.

“Let us be clear: this is not a debate about the Middle East. Hanging effigies of Jews in the streets of Montreal evokes some of the darkest antisemitic imagery in history and is completely unacceptable. This is not ‘peaceful activism.’ It is the promotion of hatred and the incitement of violence that fuels the radicalization of our social climate. What will it take for authorities to treat these acts as the serious threat they are?” said CIJA.

In 2024, protesters burned an effigy of Netanyahu in Montreal, prompting then-prime minister Justin Trudeau to condemn their actions. “Canada’s government will not tolerate antisemitism,” he said.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has not commented publicly on the latest display. On Tuesday, Carney’s office published a statement about his conversation with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, in which Carney complained about the treatment of anti-Israel activists who had been detained briefly in Israel last week after trying to breach Israel’s naval blockade on the Gaza Strip.

Carney “reiterated that the appalling treatment of civilians, including Canadian citizens, aboard the Gaza-bound flotilla was unacceptable,” the statement said. It also read: “The leaders discussed the devastating resurgence of antisemitism around the world. The Prime Minister outlined Canada’s work through legislation and community safety funding to counter hate, to confront antisemitism with the full force of the law, and to protect Jewish communities.”

Last month, B’nai B’rith Canada, a Jewish human rights group and watchdog on antisemitism, said that for the third year in a row, it had recorded the largest number of incidents of Jew-hatred in the country.

The group’s annual audit of incidents of Jew-hatred in Canada found in 2025 that the 6,800 incidents that year were up 9.4% from the 6,219 in 2024. The 2025 statistic was the highest figure since B’nai Brith began issuing the annual report in 1982.