MONTREAL – The sunken economy and an epic fraud by a Jewish financier are driving a rise in anti-Semitic harassment in Canada, according to tracking by a Jewish group.

The age-old prejudice blaming Jews for hard times combined with Bernard Madoff’s billion-dollar dupe has bigots turning toward their usual scapegoat, said Frank Dimant, B’nai Brith Canada’s executive vice-president.

Mr. Dimant said half of the 1,135 anti-Semitic incidents in Canada in 2008 took place in the final four months of the year, as turmoil rocked the financial world.

Some 803 incidents were described as harassment, ranging from workplace quarrels to hate spewed during protests or on the Internet. Acts of vandalism, which did not increase over 2007, accounted for much of the balance, along with isolated cases of violence.

Hate will worsen as long as the economy remains in a funk, Mr. Dimant said.

“As people lose their jobs, hostility grows and people need their traditional scapegoats, a job Jewish people have fulfilled,” Mr. Dimant said yesterday. “A bigot doesn’t need the facts. You pull out a few Jewish-sounding names, that’s enough for anti-Semites.”

B’nai Brith has tracked year-on-year increases in anti-Semitic incidents in nine out of 10 years since 1999.

On top of the economy, Mr. Dimant blamed a new Canadian “coalition of hate among left-wing academics, radical Muslims and unions” who mingle anti-Semitism with protest against Israeli policies.

The Anti-Defamation League in the United States has also warned the economy has spurred anti-Jewish sentiment.

But experts don’t fully endorse the claims of the organizations, or their studies using small statistical samples and self-reporting.

“If you go by what they say, there is always a rise in anti-Semitism,” said Leonard Dinnerstein, a historian and the retired director of Judaic studies at the University of Arizona. “And they don’t tend to give you all the details. They don’t tell you, for example, 80 per cent of these ‘incidents’ are by people under 25, or how many of them can be attributed to one person.”

The Internet provides an easy platform and B’nai Brith notes Canadian web-based hate increased by 16 per cent.

“Sometimes it’s easy to exaggerate those voices and sometimes a small number of noisy people can be seen in Jewish eyes as the marching of the storm troopers,” said Jonathan Sarna, a professor of Jewish history at Brandeis University.

(Source: Globe & Mail)