Tag: antisemitism

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 report is not to an honest attempt to gauge antisemitism on campus but a politically motivated effort 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, a gambit 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.

The Politics of Defining Antisemitism

May 2, 2024

By Stephen Gowans

Yesterday, the House of Representatives voted to pass the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which would require the Education Department to use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism when enforcing federal antidiscrimination laws.

The IHRA defines the following as an example of “antisemitism in public life”: “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.”

In connection with this, it should be noted that, “the Jewish people” do not have a right to self-determination senior to, or negating, the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination on the historic territory of the Palestinians.

Israel, exercising de facto control over the traditional territory of the Palestinians from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, by the force of arms largely supplied by the United States and Germany, is an apartheid, racist, state, which enforces Jewish supremacy over the native Palestinian population. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, and other human rights organization have characterized Israel as an apartheid state.

Political Zionism, which elevates the interests of Jewish settlers above those of Palestinian natives in historic Palestine, is a racist doctrine.

Political Zionism has, from its inception, been a movement which has openly solicited the support of great powers in exchange for acting as their client and proxy in West Asia and North Africa against the interests of the Arab and Muslim worlds.

Political Zionism, Israel, and the settler colonial project in the Levant, are the instruments of great powers, and most especially, since 1967, the United States. They could not exist without Washington’s ironclad support. In return, they help keep Arab and Muslim nationalist forces in check in order to safeguard US domination of West Asia and its petroleum resources and key energy supply routes.

The IHRA does not deny that the State of Israel is a racist endeavor; it only seeks to discredit those who say it is, by labelling them antisemites.

The IHRA is far from a neutral organization. It is a political animal which represents the combined interests of the United States and its key allies, and their client, Israel, whose aim it is to police criticism of Israel and the US-backed settler colonial project in the Levant under the guise of combatting anti-Jewish racism and promoting remembrance of the Holocaust.

The IHRA and its supporters are keen to foster remembrance of the anti-Jewish genocide and are equally keen to suppress opposition to what the International Court of Justice has judged to be the plausible possibility of an Israeli-perpetrated genocide in progress against the Palestinians.

Whether the Israeli military assault on Palestinians in Gaza, on civilian infrastructure, and efforts to starve the population, along with the pogroms against Palestinians in the West Bank, rise to the ICJ definition of genocide, it is clear that key Israeli decision-makers and Israeli soldiers have expressed genocidal intent and that the Israeli military campaign in Gaza is undeniably one of massacre.    

The IHRA lists many examples of what it says is antisemitism but the list is open; the organization says there are other examples, which it does not enumerate. This allows the definition to expand in order to traduce critics of Israel and political Zionism’s racist settler colonial project as circumstances demand.  Doubtlessly, the IHRA definition will be used, and probably already has been, to define the designation of Israel as a state plausibly carrying out a genocide as an act of anti-Jewish hatred.

Apart from the problem of the IHRA definition’s manifest political intent to intimidate critics of Israel into silence, is its logical flaw. The definition illegitimately conflates Jews and Judaism with Israelis and Israel—not all Jews are Israeli, and many Jews reject any identification with the state—so that criticism of the Zionist project is dishonestly equated to hatred of Jews. The description of Germany from 1933 to 1945 as a racist, imperialist, state, bent on genocide, hardly amounts to hate speech against Germans. By the same principle, the description of Israel as a racist endeavor, carrying out a plausible genocide against a people it has been trying to erase since 1948, is not hate speech against Jews; it is criticism of Israel and its racist project.

Israeli officials employ the legerdemain favored by the IHRA to shelter the state from criticism and opposition. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for example, is apt to defend every Israeli crime by labelling opposition to them as an assault on “the world’s one and only Jewish state”, as if criticizing Israel for a plausible genocide, or its apartheid, amounts to criticism of Jews as a people. Zionists would dearly love to be the spokespersons of the Jewish people, but the position is a self-appointed one, and the United States and Israel’s other patrons participate in the deception. Just as the Nazis appointed themselves as spokespeople for the Germans, over the opposition, it might be noted, of many million Germans, so too do the Israeli clients of the United States affect to be the spokespeople for the Jews (over the opposition of many Jews.).

Sadly, the frequent abuse of the word “antisemitism” for the political gain of Israel and its great power patrons, debases efforts to combat genuine anti-Jewish hatred.  Stretch a definition too far, and it becomes meaningless. Still, in their zeal to defend settler colonialism in the stolen country of the Palestinians, the Zionists and their great power patrons will stop at nothing, including turning the concept of antisemitism into a politicized slur. In so doing, they impede sincere efforts to combat genuine antisemitism.

This, however, is consistent with the fundamentally antisemitic character of Zionism, a doctrine which:

a) denigrates the fight against antisemitism as pointless, since, in the Zionists’ view, hatred of Jews is ineradicable;

b) promotes the view that to secure themselves against the ineradicable antisemitism of non-Jews, Jews must emigrate from the countries in which they now live to take up residence in the Jewish state erected on the stolen land of the Palestinians;

c) defines Jews as members of a nation, rather than followers of a religion.

Points (b) and (c) are consonant with the antisemites’ belief that Jews are aliens, a nation within the nation, who must emigrate from the lands in which they live.

Thus, apart from the racism inherent in Zionism as a doctrine of Jewish supremacism in the stolen country of the Palestinians, Zionism also rejects the project of combating antisemitism and shares with antisemites their core beliefs.