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Canadian authorities have disrupted four “violent extremist attack plots against Jewish targets” since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict in 2023, says an intelligence report obtained by Global News that warns of continued threats to the community.
The June 29 report by the federal government’s Integrated Threat Assessment Centre said that each of the plots was inspired by the Islamic State, while a fifth involved the “disruption of a Canadian who traveled to Israel.”
Although no such plots have been uncovered so far this year, the report said Canada’s Jewish population had been increasingly targeted since the U.S. and Israel began airstrikes in Iran on Feb. 28.
“There has been an uptick in harassment, threatening rhetoric, and criminal incidents—such as assault, arson and shooting firearms—against Jewish communities in Canada, primarily in the Greater Toronto Area since the Iran-U.S. conflict began in February 2026,” it said.
Even if some of the incidents did not meet the “threshold” of terrorism, investigations were still underway and each event nonetheless “contributes to a growing sense of insecurity and fear,” the report said.
Marked Unclassified/Official Use Only, the report said that “violent extremist and criminal threats targeting Jewish communities in Canada and the West will likely continue at a steady rate over the next six months.”
Groups linked to Iran will also “likely continue to direct threats towards Jewish communities—as well as U.S. and Israeli interests—in Canada and the West,” it said.
But it also pointed to a broader problem in which acts of antisemitism become so prevalent that they create an atmosphere that further fuels such violence.
“Over the longer term, an environment in which the targeting of the Jewish community as a group frequently occurs and becomes more normalized will likely influence some susceptible individuals towards violent extremist pathways.”
Entitled Global Events and Antisemitism Inspiring Domestic Threats, the three-page strategic threat assessment report examined whether Canada needed to raise its national terrorism threat level.
It concluded that while some security threats had worsened, “notably against the Jewish community,” the threat level should stay at medium, which means that a terrorist attack is a “realistic possibility.”
It said the number of attacks in Canada remained stable at one to three per year, and that rising threats “have not been matched by an increase in demonstrated violent extremist capabilities or realized attacks.”
The 2023 Hamas attack and Israeli military response unleashed a wave of antisemitism. Jewish community centres, synagogues, schools and businesses have been targets of shootings, arsons, vandalism and threats.
On Wednesday, Statistics Canada released new figures showing that Jews were the victims of 71 per cent of the religiously-motivated hate crimes last year, up from 69 per cent in 2024.
While StatCan said antisemitic crimes had declined by 16 per cent, the intelligence report said incidents had ramped up again since the start of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.
The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs said the calls for violence heard on Canada’s streets, rising hate crimes, disrupted ISIS plots and Iran-linked activities were disturbing.
“This is a toxic brew that needs to be addressed,” CEO Noah Shack said in an interview Wednesday, after Toronto police arrested a pro-Palestinian protester for terrorism for allegedly acting in association with Hamas.
Shack said he was concerned that Canada could experience an attack like the Dec. 14 mass shooting in Sydney, Australia, where pro-ISIS gunmen opened fire at a Jewish event, killing 15 people and wounding another 40.
“And now we see Canadian authorities are saying that four similar terror attacks inspired by the Islamic State almost happened right here in Canada,” Shack said.
“It’s clear that this threat is a ticking time bomb and we need to ensure that the people charged with preventing these attacks and holding the perpetrators accountable have the resources they need to get the job done.”
There has been a “marked resurgence” of hate crimes targeting the Jewish community since the start of the Iran War, notably shootings at three Toronto synagogues and the firebombing of a Montreal synagogue, Shack said.
The Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Right (IMCR), which is allegedly linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Qods Force, claimed responsibility for two shootings in Canada.
An alleged front for the Iraqi Shia militia Kataib Hizballah, the group allegedly contracted local criminals to conduct attacks in Europe and North America. The FBI arrested the suspected ringleader in May.
According to the allegations filed in U.S. court, Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi had boasted that he was behind attacks in Toronto — shootings at a synagogue and the U.S. consulate.
Toronto police have arrested several gunmen who were allegedly part of a network hired to open fire on the American consulate. Canadian authorities have not publicly linked the incidents to Iran.
According to the ITAC report, 83 per cent of the attacks “planned or claimed” by the IMCR targeted Israeli interests or the Jewish community, but the two in Canada “have yet to be definitively linked” to the group.
The recent collapse of the U.S.-Iran ceasefire agreement has raised concerns that more such violence could be coming in Western countries.
While the intelligence report found the threats did not justify raising Canada’s terrorism threat level, a former national security official wasn’t impressed with the analysis.
Former RCMP assistant commissioner Ches Parsons, who reviewed the report for Global News, said it downplayed “the scale and urgency of the actual threat through narrow definitions, selective metrics, and hedging language.”
By separating extremism from antisemitic hate and other crimes, the document created a “statistical firewall” that minimized the problem, said Parsons, who was the RCMP’s director general of national security.
“This is not rigorous threat assessment; it is a species of containment that protects the status quo,” he said, describing the gap between the report’s conclusions and the reality for the Jewish community as “stark.”
“By maintaining the same threat level through a period widely described by community organizations and independent reports as a national crisis of antisemitism…it risks presenting a sanitized view that lags behind the accumulating evidence of radicalization pipelines and eroded public safety confidence.”
The report follows an April 2 document, also obtained by Global News, that said Iran’s intelligence services may be using local crime groups to attack “Jewish community targets” in Canada.
A March 2026 RCMP threat assessment released to Global News on July 9 also mentioned IMCR had claimed attacks in Europe, but the 10-page report was otherwise redacted.
Stewart.Bell@globalnews.ca
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