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Montreal police are investigating attacks against six Jewish institutions in the city over the weekend, and at least one rabbi is planning to tighten security at his synagogue.
Someone broke windows at four synagogues in Hampstead and Côte St-Luc, and at a Jewish school and a kindergarten in Côte St-Luc.
The attacks were quickly condemned by federal Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, and by the Liberal MP for the area, Irwin Cotler.
Cotler said the attacks were clearly an anti-Semitic hate crime.
Ignatieff called the vandalism a series of hateful and systematic acts, not just on institutions but on a religious community itself.
Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz, of the Tifereth Beth David Jerusalem synagogue, which was vandalized in Côte St-Luc, was a little more philosophical.
"It's not the end of the world, but it's not the way the world should be," he said.
"I think as Jews we've developed a defence mechanism when an act of anti-Semitism is relatively small, we kind of shrug it off.
"Certainly things in Montreal are a lot better than they were 50 years ago, or in Europe 100 years ago. But, at the same time, it's completely unacceptable," Steinmetz said.
Const. Olivier Lapointe says all the vandalism happened between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m. Sunday morning. "There is obviously a link to be made," he said.
"In each case, there was a window that was broken. We think a rock or something like that was thrown. And right now we're looking for witnesses. Someone who might have seen something suspicious," Lapointe said.
Police will examine surveillance video from the areas where the crimes took place, said Const. Raphael Bergeron.
Steinmetz said a rock was thrown through a decorative window on the second floor of the Tifereth Beth David Jerusalem synagogue.
"We probably do have to add some surveillance cameras," he said.
"You shudder to think — the guy who threw the rock — what he would do to one of my little kids if they were walking around the streets and he got a hold of them alone. I mean, he's throwing that rock through the window because he hates Jews."