Antisemitism on Canadian Campuses: Debunking a New Report by the Government of Canada

By Stephen Gowans

August 9, 2026

A Canadian-government-sponsored report has concluded that antisemitism is widespread on Canadian university campuses. Some media outlets have picked up on the report. According to the CBC, the new report shows that “Antisemitism on campus is ‘systemic’ and going unaddressed.” Israel’s Haaretz reports that the research found that “95 percent of Jewish Students on Canadian Universities Have Encountered Antisemitism.” Meanwhile, The Canadian Press let its readers know that the study reveals that “Jewish students on Canadian campuses report pervasive antisemitism.”

But what the report really shows is that there is a growing wave of anti-Zionism and pro-Palestinian activism on Canadian campuses—hardly a revelation. The authors, whose political biases and methodological lapses will become evident in a moment, have turned this commonplace into an alarming trend by a slight of hand: They have defined criticism of Israel as hatred of Jews.

It’s difficult not to conclude that the motivation behind the report is to discredit pro-Palestinian activists by smearing them as antisemites, with the clear intention of shutting down criticism of Israel at Canadian universities. Once you consider who sponsored the report (a pro-Israel, pro-Zionist Canadian government); who wrote it (the lead author is a Zionist who was once the executive director of pro-Israel organization); and who was surveyed (Jewish students who identify Israel and Zionism as important parts of their lives), it becomes clear that the aim of the report is not to dispassionately assess antisemitism on campus but to discredit students who have organized against Israeli atrocities in Gaza as Jew-haters.

All of this starts to become clear when the report reveals that it “uses the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism,” a definition that has been widely discredited for falsely conflating antisemitism with antizionism.  The Government of Canada’s “Handbook on the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism” (Ottawa adopted the definition in 2011) cites the following as examples, among others, of antisemitism:

• Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
• Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
• Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.
• Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.

All these examples refer to attitudes toward Israel, a state, and Zionism, a political movement, not Jews as an ethnoreligious group. The action depicted in the third example—using antisemitic images to denote Israel—may be crude, stupid, and intolerable, but the target is Israel, not Jews. This illustrates the problem with the IHRA definition, and why it’s considered invalid. If it were true that hatred of an ethnocratic movement (Zionism) or ethnocratic state (Israel) was the same as hatred of an ethnoreligious group (Jews), then it would be true that anti-fascism represented anti-Italian hatred, that anti-Nazism equaled anti-German animosity, and that opposition to South African Apartheid amounted to intolerance of white people.

The report’s pro-Zionist orientation is further evidenced by its definition of antizionism as “a movement that calls for the erasure of Israel and denies the Jewish people the right to self-determination in part of their ancestral homeland.” In defining antizionism this way, the report’s authors make the claim—which would hardly be accepted by pro-Palestinian students on campuses—that the Jewish people have a right to dispossess the Palestinians of their country, land, homes, and property.

The report’s authors argue further that antizionism relies “on libel and distortion to claim that the Jewish collective, Israel, rather than the individual Jew, is uniquely evil. It further asserts that Jews, who have thousands of years of history in this place, are fabricating a legitimate claim to their ancestral homeland. Antizionism claims that Israel, exceptionally, is the one state that must be eradicated.”

These claims are false. First, antizionism is not a doctrine concerned with definitions of evil, let alone unique evil. Second, it doesn’t deny that many, though not all, Jews claim Palestine as a homeland, only that Jews are not the only peoples who have lived in Palestine, and that prior residency or what the Pentateuch says Yahweh promised to Moses do not justify the colonization of Palestine and the dispossession of its inhabitants. Finally, antizionism is only anticolonialism specific to Palestine. Anticolonialism has opposed other settler colonial states, including Algeria, Rhodesia, and Apartheid South Africa, declaring that these states too needed to be eradicated as ethnocratic political orders. Much as Israel’s supporters like to think the Zionist state is being singled out, it is not.

The report’s lead author, Jack Jedwab, served as Executive Director of the Quebec branch of the Canadian Jewish Congress, from 1994-1998. The CJC became the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (note the priority of ‘Israel’ in the title), a pro-Israeli outfit that “educates Canadians about the central role Israel plays in Jewish life and identity” and which monitors “issues that affect the Canada-Israel friendship”—like the growing disapproval of Israel in Canadian society, owing to its connections to genocide, apartheid, and settler colonialism.

Citing the report, the CIJA is urging “university leaders and governments at every level to carefully consider this report and the recommendations by the Network of Engaged Canadian Academics.” NECA recommends that Canadian universities formally adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism, an ambit that would allow university administrators to suppress pro-Palestinian activism on campus by labelling it as antisemitic. The body also recommends that universities define Zionism as a part of a Jewish student’s identity. In this way, antizionist activism can be proscribed and punished as antisemitic speech and conduct.

Survey Results

If the authors’ overly broad definition of antisemitism leaves much to be desired, so too does their survey methodology and treatment and reporting of the results.

Below are the percentages of surveyed Jewish students who say they have experienced or witnessed various instances of what the authors call “antisemitic” incidents.

Over the past 12 months, how often have you experienced or witnessed the following on your campus?

(Scale: Often or Occasionally)

• Hateful or discriminatory treatment of Zionists. (81%)
• Vandalism of school property motivated by antisemitism. (71%)
• Hateful or discriminatory treatment of Israelis. (67%)
• Antisemitic remarks/gestures directed at others. (59%)
• Hateful or discriminatory treatment of Jews. (56%)
• Intimidation or threats directed at Jews. (54%)
• Exclusion from an event or group (on campus). (36%)
• Antisemitic remarks/gestures directed at you. (34%)
• Physical violence directed at Jews. (22%)

Notice that two of the incident types concern Jews as Zionists and Jews as Israelis, not Jews as Jews. Second, the most frequently reported incident of hate or discrimination concerns Zionists, followed by Israelis. Jews, as a group, come last. This says that more of what Jewish students report as antisemitism is anti-Zionism and anti-Israeli conduct than antisemitism.  

Who were the Jewish students the study surveyed? According to the report, they were recruited “through Jewish student organizations, community networks, and related channels.” Nine of every 10 said that attachment to Israel was important to them and nearly as many said the same about Zionism. Since pro-Israel, Zionist Jews have long been inclined to label criticism of Israel and Zionism as antisemitism, it comes as no surprise that these students would view the growing wave of pro-Palestinian activism and opposition to Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians, apartheid, and settler colonialism as a sign of rising Judeophobia.

A final remark on the results. The study used a four-point scale of often, occasionally, rarely, or never.  The percentages sum two points—often and occasionally. This invites the question or whether the answers leaned more to “occasionally” than “often”, or whether results based on the percentage saying “often” alone would tell a different story—one less likely to arouse media interest? Not that it would matter much. When a government that officially equates antizionism with antisemitism hires researchers who equate antizionism with antisemitism to survey students who equate antizionism with antisemitism about their experiences with antisemitism, it would be naive to think that the findings would claim anything other than campuses that are bursting with antizionist activism are hotbeds of antisemitism.

Conclusion

The report is a transparently dishonest attempt to shut down pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist activism on campuses by misrepresenting opposition to Israel as Jew hatred. It was sponsored by the Canadian government, which supports Israel and has adopted the discredited IHRA definition of antisemitism. Its first author is a Zionist, who once held an executive position in a pro-Israel organization. The study surveyed overwhelmingly pro-Israel, pro-Zionist students—students inclined to see opposition to Israel as antisemitism. Likewise, the study’s authors accept a discredited definition of antisemitism, which conflates opposition to Jewish ethnocracy with hatred of Jews as an ethnoreligious group. Additionally, the results, for what they’re worth, show that incidents labelled as antisemitic tend most often to be directed at Jews as Zionists and Jews as Israelis than Jews as Jews.

Based on the study’s evident political bias, it is not unreasonable to conclude that the aim of the research was to paint pro-Palestinian activists as antisemites. It would appear the study pursued this goal in order to support the Zionist and pro-Israel project of pressuring governments and university administrations to prohibit and punish campus campaigns against Israeli apartheid, genocide, and settler colonialism.  This is a study with a clear pro-Israel agenda. It cannot be taken seriously as a measure of antisemitism on Canadian campuses.