Canada’s Jewish communities are left reeling after receiving simultaneous death threats yesterday.

At roughly  5 a.m. a threatening email arrived in the inboxes of numerous synagogues, community centers, and hospitals across Montreal. It warned of explosives placed in black backpacks set to detonate within hours.

“You will all end up in a pool of blood, none of you deserve to keep living,” the message reads.

By 7 a.m., police were alerted to the threats and quickly mobilized their anti-terror squad and hate crimes division. Synagogues in Montreal suburbs including Hampstead, Westmount, St-Laurent, Dollard-des-Ormeaux, and Côte-St-Luc were among those targeted.

A drastic rise in antisemitic incidents since Hamas’ attack against Israel on October 7 has raised serious concerns among Canadian Jewish communities. B’nai Brith Canada, who was also received a death threat yesterday, reveals that the number of antisemitic incidents more than doubled from the year prior, reaching an unprecedented 5,891 cases.

“For many, many months, Canada’s Jewish community has raised alarm bells about the escalation of rampant Jew-hatred, as incitement and hateful rhetoric have become normalized online, on our city streets, and on our university and college campuses,” Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center wote on X.

“Repeated calls for violence against Jews and Jewish institutions are a stark reminder that extremism and radicalization are thriving in Canada, and must be confronted before it’s too late.

As of Thursday, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) had taken charge of the overall investigation after reports of other Jewish Canadian communities affected kept coming in. Overall police estimate that 100 Jewish institutions were targeted across the country.