Anti-Semitic slurs and a death threat were directed at Grade 12 students from Winnipeg’s Gray Academy of Jewish Education in two separate incidents during a trip to another local high school for a university fair.

Rory Paul, Gray Academy’s head of school, said he has contacted the Winnipeg Police Services hate crimes unit, which is investigating the Nov. 8 confrontations on the grounds of Sturgeon Heights Collegiate.

Ron Weston, superintendent of Winnipeg’s St. James-Assiniboia School Division, said that one student at Sturgeon Heights received a five-day suspension for uttering “anti-Semitic comments” and that the internal investigation of the matter continues.

He added that “we have been looking at parking lot surveillance to see if the other students can be identified.”

Apparently, while the Gray Academy students were in the Sturgeon Heights schoolyard, some of them began talking with a young man wearing a black-and-white keffiyah over his shoulders.

The young man approached a Gray Academy student and asked if she was from Israel, which she was. The young man said he was a Palestinian from Jerusalem and that all he wants is peace. The girl she responded that she also wants peace.  

According to a Gray student, the young man with the keffiyah was with his cousin, who said to the Gray students, “Jews go home.”

As the Jewish students boarded their bus, someone from the non-Jewish group of teens told the Gray students that “we are going to blow you up.”

After the Jewish students boarded the school bus, there was a second incident in which three other non-Gray teens came up to the bus and began banging on its windows.  One of the three young men who had been banging on the outside of the bus then pulled out a knife.

Police say they are investigating the incident.

(Source: Canadian Jewish News)