antisemitism – Page 2

Canada’s mixed messages

In mid-May, a Winnipeg Free Press article by John Longhurst announced a new online database for research. This open access resource lists the names of German Nazi party members. The article’s target audience: the Manitoba Mennonite community.

As background: Many German Mennonites, previously pacifist, joined the Nazi party starting in the early 1930s. In the article, Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, a Toronto researcher, said the goal of researching and publicizing the records was not to condemn or shame anyone. “The point,” he said, “is to understand what made their choices feel plausible at the time, and what this means for us now in Canada and the US.” Aileen Friesen, who teaches Mennonite History at the University of Winnipeg, said it could serve “as a lesson for our current time.”

I’m concerned about this “lesson.” Nazi membership before and during the Second World War is nothing to be proud about. Still, this does make it easier to understand the views of some Mennonites in 2026.

Some Winnipeg Mennonites often offer public opinions about Israel, Gaza and the war. They’re staunchly against war, but support Palestinian resistance and are against Israelis or Jews. This stance appears in local Mennonite gallery exhibits, fundraising, petitions and protests. It’s on stickers on lampposts near a neighbourhood Mennonite school. While out walking, I peel off “Free Palestine” stickers with cartoon characters doing a Sieg Heil and QR code stickers with “Boycott Israel.”

This “pacifism” chooses a side just like German Mennonites chose the Nazi party. This stance doesn’t examine what these choices mean to the safety of others, such as Jewish Canadians who live nearby. It doesn’t reflect a morality-based Christian religious tradition or teachings from a Jewish guy named Jesus, let alone Jewish texts or culture.

Actions have consequences. This failure to understand logical outcomes echoes throughout Canadian society. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Davos speech described Canada’s goals for trade alliances and Canada’s role as a “middle power.” It’s easy to see that this dream is failing on a practical level.

Canada, a “human rights champion,” has an uneven track record. According to United Nations Watch, on April 8, Canada, as part of the 54-nation United Nations Economic and Social Council, “participated in the consensus nomination of the Islamic Republic of Iran” to a committee responsible for funding women’s rights, human rights, and terrorism prevention. The United States was the only nation who objected to this nomination.

Previously, Canada objected in similar UN processes, but, this time, Canada supported the Iranian regime. Iran’s government has enforced a nearly complete internet blackout since Feb. 28. It kills protesters. The regime uses morality police to force women to cover their hair. Female “offenders” suffer arrests, assaults, rapes, torture and murder. Iran’s regime funds terror proxies, including in Gaza, Lebanon and Yemen. Yet, Canada didn’t object to the UN nomination.

Canada also has problems fighting terrorism at home. In October 2024, Canada listed Samidoun, an organization supporting Palestinian terrorism, as a terrorist entity under the Criminal Code. Eventually, in March 2026, Canada revoked Samidoun’s nonprofit status. Based on federal anti-hate provisions, Vancouver police arrested Samidoun’s international coordinator, Charlotte Kates, for inciting hate and released her with conditions. Apparently, those conditions allow speaking on Iranian state television, attending the funeral of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon and continuing permission to live in Canada. (Kates is an American whose status in Canada is not publicly known.) The same goes for her husband, Khaled Barakat, Samidoun’s founder, who was deported from the United States in 2003.

This spring, Canada welcomed international leaders for the FIFA Congress, including Palestine Football Association head Jibril Rajoub, who was previously convicted of throwing a grenade at an Israeli army bus. Israel later released Rajoub in a prisoner exchange, and he committed further offences. Once in Canada, Rajoub publicly refused to shake hands with the FIFA Arab-Israeli representative, Basim Sheikh Suliman. Meanwhile, Canada refused to let the Iranian FIFA representative into the country. These decisions were inconsistent, not the “pragmatic and principled” actions of a country committed to human rights.

If Canada wishes to be a human rights champion, it must work to stop terrorism at home. The government should protect Canadians from danger. Consistent law and immigration enforcement and UN decisions that support these rights would be a good start.

Education’s another way to be an effective middle power. Increase funding for teaching and researching social sciences, including international relations, political science, religious studies and history. These disciplines offer perspectives to better understand global issues and events. Canada must move beyond popular theories like the oppressor/oppressed model that doesn’t adequately explain conflicts beyond biased white/black racial narratives. This oppressor theory fails in Middle Eastern, African or Asian contexts where Western conceptions of colonization, race and power don’t easily apply.

With a broader social science approach, future Canadian leaders could better understand complicated global situations. Educated Canadians with these skills could better examine global economics, conflicts and the geographic strengths.

For instance, our media and government often ascribe outsized power to Israel. This is a common antisemitic conspiracy theory. Israel’s a tiny democracy of 10 million people, with sizeable minority populations. Many also demonize Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister. Canada, like many Israelis, may not agree with Netanyahu’s government’s policies, but no other Middle Eastern leaders were elected by functioning democracies. Further, media seldom hold any other Middle Eastern country responsible for its role in the conflict.

Canada’s resources, educated population and multicultural diversity could make it a powerhouse. Yet, its foreign policies don’t use intellectual rigour. Historically, Canada has offered up inconsistent international policies, and bias regarding many of its minorities. Past prime ministers have apologized, promising to forge a better Canada. Instead, Canada’s “oppressor” rhetoric poses as a “peaceful” bystander and blames Israel.

Canada has a tradition of simplistic politics of blame like “war is bad.” Our geographic isolation protects us. It allows Canada to watch hate happen and reproach others without getting involved. Our country must accept that consistently being a bystander isn’t good enough. Failing to condemn or shame those who committed grievous wrongs isn’t good enough. It wasn’t OK to join the Nazi party 90 years ago. It wasn’t OK to reject Jewish refugees. We know where this kind of hatemongering leads. Canada, and Canadians, can do better than this.

Joanne Seiff has written regularly for the Winnipeg Free Press and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

Questions for museum

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights’ planned exhibit Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present, set to open in June, is cause for concern. While what will be in the exhibit remains to be seen and is likely not yet finally determined, the very announcement that the exhibit will happen sends out wrong signals.

What are the boundaries of Palestine? There are a wide variety of proposals, as well as significant differences in the historical territory once called Palestine. Whatever those boundaries are, Palestine is land, not people. Contrary to what the title of the exhibit suggests, the land was not uprooted; it is still there.

The reference to land instead of people is a commonplace of antizionism. The PLO is called the Palestine Liberation Organization, not the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Pervasive antizionist pamphlets, posters, placards and signs say “Free Palestine,” not “Free Palestinians.”

For antizionists, this reference to land and not people is deliberate. For antizionists, the land that is now Israel is or should be Arab, Muslim land. That a Jewish state exists on that land means to them, bizarre as it may seem, that the land itself is not free.

Let’s suppose that the museum was not aware of this connotation and what they really meant to write was “Palestinians uprooted.” One question that arises is “Why only Palestinians?” There were more Jewish refugees from Arab countries and Iran created by the refusal of Arab and Muslim states to recognize the existence of Israel and the consequent wars against Israel than Arabs who left Israel during and after the 1948 Arab invasion. An exhibit that addresses the woes of only one side of an armed conflict is patently unbalanced.

Also what was the catastrophe? The text of the announcement of the exhibit states “Palestinians use the word ‘Nakba’ … to describe their forced displacement in 1948.” Some Palestinians indeed use the word in that way. Others use the word to refer to the creation of the state of Israel. For still others, albeit a minority, the catastrophe was the 1948 Arab invasion of Israel and the rejection of the United Nations peace plan, which would have created an Arab state alongside Israel.

Some of those who since 1968 have self-identified as Palestinians were forcibly displaced during the 1948 war. Others fled the crossfire, as the text of the museum announcement of the exhibit acknowledges. Others still left voluntarily, with organized Arab assistance, heeding the calls of Arab leadership to get out of the way of the Arab invasion so that the invaders could target Jews living in Israel without risk of harming Arabs, a reality that the announcement of the exhibit does not mention.

Who are the Palestinians? Does the term include all those present in the territory of former British Mandate Palestine at least two years prior to the time of the 1948 Arab invasion of Israel and who left during that invasion and their descendants, as the United Nations Relief and Works Agency now does? Or, is it limited to “those persons who acquired or had the right to acquire Palestinian nationality as of 6 August 1924” and their descendants, the PLO proposal of 2012 for Palestinian citizenship?

The text of the museum announcement states that the exhibit would explore “the human rights violations related to the ongoing forced displacement and dispossession of Palestinians.” The immediate violation of those rights after the 1948 Israeli-Arab war was the refusal to allow those who left Israel because of the war to be locally integrated into the neighbouring Arab states to which they had gone, an integration for which UNRWA was created to facilitate. The states of arrival have kept those who left in a permanent pseudo-refugee status, intended as a permanent indictment of the creation of the state of Israel. Will the museum exhibit explore that?

Antizionists, not least Hamas, have engineered a wide variety of human rights violations and atrocities against the Arab population of Israel who left Israel and their descendants in order to shift blame to Israel for the purpose of discrediting its existence. Is the museum exhibit going to explore that?

The suffering of Palestinians is plain to see. The antizionist attacks on the existence of Israel have caused suffering for both Palestinians and Jews. In its exhibition, the museum must show awareness of the antizionist efforts to engineer and manipulate the victimization of Palestinians to discredit the existence of Israel. If the museum were to say nothing about that engineering and manipulation, it would discredit itself.

David Matas is a Winnipeg lawyer and senior honorary counsel to B’nai Brith Canada. He was a member of the original content advisory committee for the museum. Noemi Gal-Or is an international lawyer based in Vancouver.

Symposium on antizionism

At the first World Symposium Against Antizionism, left to right: Jacob Smith, Eyal Jacoby, Nick Matau and Anastasia Zorchinsky. (photo by Dave Gordon)

The first World Symposium Against Antizionism took place on May 17 in Toronto, with some 30 speakers, from educators and lawyers to influencers and politicians and other activists in the pro-Israel space.

Ben Shapiro, an American pundit and broadcaster, told the thousand people gathered that “antizionism is evil, it is wrong, it is predicated on lies, and it requires violence to achieve the ends it seeks.”

photo - The first World Symposium Against Antizionism took place on May 17 in Toronto, with some 30 speakers, including Ben Shapiro — The first World Symposium Against Antizionism took place on May 17 in Toronto, with some 30 speakers, including Ben Shapiro. (photo by Dave Gordon)

He said, “Antizionism argues that the Jewish state of Israel, a thing that … exists in the world today and has 10 million citizens, some two million of them Muslim, another 200,000 Christians, should be destroyed; that Israel ought to be treated unlike any other country, because Israel is somehow uniquely evil.

“Now, in order to make that case, antizionists must lie…. The antizionists must claim that Israel is an apartheid state, despite the citizenship of two million Arab Israelis…. The antizionist must lie that Israel discriminates against Christians and Muslims, despite it being the only state in the Middle East that provides the highest level of rights to both.”

He added: “the people who argue that Israel ought to be eliminated are antisemitic, for whatever that’s worth. They believe that Israel ought to be destroyed and, to accomplish that purpose, they lie incessantly, and then they spread the biggest lie of all – that global Jewry has bamboozled the population, taken over the institutions and used its magic mind lasers to control the world.”

The symposium was produced by Tafsik Organization and Stop Antizionism.

Syrian-born Rawan Osman, who has a large following with her online advocacy, shared the stage with fellow Arabs United Arab Emirates-based Loay Alshareef and Damascus-born Abraham Hamra, who lives in New York.

Years ago, before befriending Jews in France, she said she was “one of Hezbollah’s biggest fans,” someone who “hated the Israelis, the Zionists and the Jews, and I repeat the three terms because, in the Arab world, we do not make a distinction between the three.”

Growing up in Lebanon, Osman saw the “bombardment” of indoctrination against Jews. That same hatred has been spread in the West, she told the Independent. Her “red line” for engagement is anyone who “justifies or denies Oct. 7.”

“Because they are so deeply indoctrinated that they cannot summon any sympathy for the Israelis, including children … I will not go that close, and I’ll let others fight them,” she explained. “I would rather focus on something else. The same way I think many Jews would not have a conversation with someone who denies the Holocaust, especially if they are descendants of Holocaust survivors.”

She drew a sharp contrast with Abraham Accord countries, like UAE, where their culture has “taught children to tolerate others, to be accepting. You, as a Jew, are safer wearing a kippah walking in Dubai and Abu Dhabi than you are in Paris and in London,” she said.

photo - Left to right: Loay Alshareef, Abraham Hamra, Rawan Osman and Ali Siadatan — Left to right: Loay Alshareef, Abraham Hamra, Rawan Osman and Ali Siadatan. *(photo by Dave Gordon)*

Lebanon-born Gad Saad, a former professor at Concordia University and author of Parasitic Mind and Suicidal Empathy, argued that antisemitism “in a sinister way, is akin to the immune system, and that it so evolves into new variants of Jew-hatred.” In modernity, that means Jews are blamed for open borders that let in rapists, profiting from the COVID vaccine, and even poisoning the minds of sharks, he said.

Toronto lawyer Leora Shemesh shared the stage with American law experts Matthew Schweber, Rona Kaufman and Mark Goldfeder (via Zoom). Shemesh noted that certain small groups in the country have been attempting to mainstream antizionism. “We have an entire political party, the NDP, that ran on a platform of being antizionist,” said Shemesh. “A Jewish guy, Avi Lewis, ran on that platform, and he joined forces with Independent Jewish Voices of Canada, and they have attempted, and have been somewhat successful, to intervene in certain cases.”

Montreal-based Anastasia Zorchinsky, a Concordia Student Union councilor and co-founder of StartUp Nation Montreal, an Israeli organization at Concordia and McGill universities, moderated the panel called NXT GEN: Future Advocates.

“We really try to do lots of events that collaborate between different cultures, so I think the first step is really to take that step to reach out to those other communities,” she told the JI of her organization’s educational initiatives. “If we just approach people with the thought, with the optimism, that, yes, they will accept us or, maybe, they don’t have to agree, but we can still talk, then maybe that’s something that we should keep in mind.”

Dave Gordon is a Toronto-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in more than 100 publications around the world. His website is davegordonwrites.com.

The balancing of rights

Canada prides itself on being a country where free expression is a core value. We have always differed from our American cousins, though, in recognizing a balance between an “anything goes” right to speech and the contending right of individuals and groups to live free from fear and incitement.

Canadian law draws definite lines. Speech that incites violence against an identifiable group, that promotes hatred or that crosses into criminal harassment is not protected. Those limits are not theoretical – they exist precisely because history has shown what can happen when words move from expression into incitement.

Even as governments take steps towards legislation that would create “bubble zones” and strengthen hate crime laws, many Canadians Jews are concerned that limitations already set out in law, intended to protect minority communities, are not being enforced. Rhetoric like “Globalize the intifada,” which is heard as an overt call for violence against Jews by most Jews and other people who can hear clearly, is going uncontested by police and courts, for example.

The Criminal Code is clear: advocating or promoting violence against identifiable groups crosses a line. The question is no longer whether such limits exist. The question is whether they are being enforced. And, increasingly, the answer appears to be no.

What we are seeing is not simply robust debate. It is a climate in which harassment and intimidation are proliferating, often without legal consequence.

There are, of course, consequences. Jewish institutions require heightened security after so many incidents that it is hard to keep up with the grim news. Students and faculty experience actively hostile campus environments. Public demonstrations brazenly cross the line between protest, provocation and hate.

There is no provable causal chain between rhetoric and violence. Democracies are right to err on the side of speech. But, when the same language, the same slogans and the same patterns of escalation appear alongside an unprecedented rise in hate incidents and targeted attacks, the correlation becomes increasingly difficult to dismiss – and demands attention.

Canada is not alone in confronting this tension. The British authorities have begun to draw firmer lines – distinguishing between lawful protest and language and conduct that threatens public safety or targets vulnerable communities.

The approach is not without controversy. It raises legitimate concerns about overreach and the risk of suppressing dissent. But it also reflects a recognition that inaction carries its own dangers.

Canada is facing a similar showdown.

The goal must not be to silence political views, however unpopular. Or to criminalize protest or suppress debate about complex international issues. Those must remain protected. The goal must be far narrower – to enforce the laws that already exist and to ensure that calls for violence, harassment and intimidation are treated as such, regardless of political context. To make clear that free expression does not extend to threatening the safety and dignity of others.

This is a position that seems simple enough, even unquestioned, when it comes to hateful language and physical intimidation against other vulnerable populations. The situation is serious and it demands the willingness to confront uncomfortable truths.

Canada should not abandon its commitment to free expression. But we must recognize, as we always have, that free expression has limits – and that those limits exist for a reason. In this instance, the reason is the evident correlation between rampant anti-Israel, antizionist and antisemitic rhetoric and the violence against Jews and Jewish institutions we are experiencing.

The government of the United Kingdom is now experimenting in enforcing limitations on hate expression. It is a courageous step. It could also be a turning point – in either direction.

The inevitable pushback around “silencing” (itself often founded on antisemitic tropes of Jewish power) and the more legitimate concerns about free speech make this a fraught policy area. However, if the UK, which shares much of our political culture, can find a middle ground, we would be wise to pay attention.

If, on the other hand, more violent protests, adverse court decisions or – more damagingly – if the government suffers internal splits or popular disapproval over its approach to anti-Jewish harassment, it could set a precedent in which politicians in places like Canada learn that it is best not to provoke the harassers. If that happens, it will signal an open season for anti-Jewish agitation and an extraordinary abandonment of free speech’s twin core value of being able to live free from fear and incitement.

What is needed right now is political courage. Some of that exists, but it needs to exist in a sufficient number of decision-makers and in the places of power where it is most needed and can have the most effect. For better or worse, we will know if this is the case soon enough.

Bad behaviour affects us all

Recently, my kids walked home from high school late because of their games club, which meets once a week. On their way, they saw a man on the sidewalk, coming from a pedestrian trail. He wore a sign on his back that read, “Netanyahu, Butcher of Gaza.” They hung back, took photos and alerted me when they got home.

Here’s a good reason to give Jewish teens access to cellphones. I used the “Find My” app to watch them walk home. They used the phone to document this. We found this signage offensive and upsetting, but it hadn’t been an emergency incident, so they didn’t use their phones to call 911.

I reported this incident to B’nai Brith Canada, who suggested also filing a police report. Over dinner, we discussed the sign. Was this antisemitism or just free speech, when using the IHRA definition of antisemitism? Is the test for this, “Would anyone reasonably use this kind of language about other countries’ publicly elected officials?” The answer for us was, “Well, yes.” We don’t approve of it, but, in 2022, we heard all this as part of the truckers’ convoy that came through Winnipeg. They parked (and honked) at the provincial legislature, close enough to our home so we saw their signs and hateful rhetoric.

I Googled the phrase on the man’s sign. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan started using this phrase in November 2023. It’s been used repeatedly in the last 2.5 years of the Gaza conflict. Knowing a phrase’s “origin story” doesn’t make it less virulent. It still didn’t feel OK. Something can be legal, but also shameful, wrong or antisocial, bad behaviour.

As a family, we debated whether we should do a police report. In Winnipeg, it’s not that easy to report something like this. There’s an online form, but it specifically rejects claims due to hate crimes or speech. In situations like this, there is calling 911 to report it or going downtown to the only police station that takes these reports. We chose to leave this one up to B’nai Brith, but the situation remained fresh and upsetting.

First, there’s the debate over whether something hateful and harmful is illegal or immediately dangerous. Our city’s police service is overburdened. Everyone in Winnipeg has heard of someone who has called the cops and been told that, unless the situation was life threatening, no police would show up. This means that squatters without life-threatening weapons aren’t immediately tossed out of vacant homes – but then the homes catch on fire. In one awful case, a panicked teen, trying to protect his grandmother, called the police during a home invasion. He was killed before the police arrived. This horrific incident puts our hate-signage sighting in perspective.

Second, though, is the question of whether we (Jewish people) or teens walking home from school deserve to feel safe. This man wasn’t walking in front of a consulate or legislature in protest. He was near multiple schools, a library, a synagogue, several churches, a hospital and a care home. If bubble legislation existed in Canada or in Winnipeg, it would have been possible to report this and expect a police response. As things stand, it didn’t seem forthcoming.

This incident reminded me of a conversation I had at Kiddush lunch at synagogue. A Jewish family at our table insisted, in alarm, that Bill C-9 (the one for federal bubble legislation) would interfere with their right to free speech. I asked how often they wrote for the press or how this risked interference with their current modes of protest. I asked if they felt that their right to protest was in jeopardy. When I Googled them later, I found that they don’t write widely. Their names don’t appear in the news regarding protests. Their right to free speech or protest was likely not being threatened in any way. It seems they had fallen prey to misinformation. At the table, I brought up multiple incidents that our children face as they leave a public school and walk home past our congregation.

When a protester is outside the synagogue just after school lets out, the police say that it’s public space. The protest is allowed, even though the signage blocks the sidewalk. Kids walking by are exposed to potential hate speech, and normalizing hate speech or graffiti can lead to acts of violence. This kind of protest first happened about two years ago, but, this spring, the signage on a man’s jacket left us in the same quandary.

Well-intentioned allies have asked, “Do you feel safe?” or “What can I do?”

The answer to the first question is, “no.” There are a lot of reasons for that. For one thing, I’d like my kids to be able to walk home without feeling threatened or having to dodge protesters or shoot photos.

I regularly encounter non-Jewish Canadians who ask the second question. I try to help them learn more about the issues, so they feel ready to be “upstanders” rather than just “bystanders.” Calling the police, paying privately for huge amounts of security or shielding children from hateful protest shouldn’t be something Jewish Canadians navigate alone. We’re less than 1% of the Canadian population. It’s necessary to educate and mobilize allies to help.

Political “free speech” can be legal and still hateful. A society that speaks up can make change, even if the offender isn’t arrested. Education happens when we say, out loud, that some behaviours are shameful and un-Canadian. Bad behaviour affects all of us. It’s time to find adults willing to speak up. If somebody wants Jews to feel safe in Canada, then the status quo is not what they want either.

Joanne Seiff has written regularly for the Winnipeg Free Press and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

Thankful for the police

Communities are not built in theory. They are built in presence. They depend on people feeling safe enough to walk through the door, to gather, to participate, to be visible.

Judaism is not something we observe from a distance. We gather. We show up. We pray together, learn together, and support one another in real and tangible ways. Some of our most sacred prayers require a quorum. When people do not feel safe enough to walk through our doors, our way of life and our community itself are at risk.

I felt this during the COVID pandemic. I brieﬂy returned to the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver the day after it had closed. The temperature outside was nearly identical to the day before, yet, inside, the building felt profoundly different. It was not just empty. It was cold. The absence of people had stripped the space of its soul. A body without a soul is not life.

In the months following Oct. 7, 2023, I feared that feeling would return. Not because of a public health crisis, but because of something more insidious: fear, intimidation, extremism. The kind of pressure that makes people hesitate, questioning whether it is safe enough to attend school, synagogue or community programming. When that happens, the consequences are not abstract. They are immediate and deeply human. A community begins to shrink, not by choice, but by necessity.

Leadership in these moments requires clarity. We do not retreat. We do not disappear. And we do not accept intimidation as the cost of living openly as Jews.

That resolve is made possible by those who stand watch so that we can stand together.

Across British Columbia, officers from the Vancouver Police Department, the RCMP and other security services have maintained a consistent presence outside Jewish schools, synagogues and community institutions. Their role is not symbolic. It is practical, preventative and deeply human. It allows parents to send their children to school with confidence. It allows seniors to attend services without hesitation. It allows a community to remain visible.

One officer said something that has stayed with me: “I don’t weigh in on politics. I’m here to protect everyone. But, if I can choose between being spit on or being hugged, I’ll take a hug any day.” That simple statement speaks to the humanity behind the uniform, the quiet dignity of service, and the emotional toll that often goes unseen.

Jewish tradition teaches that saving a single life is considered to have saved an entire world. Protecting our community means safeguarding thousands of those worlds. Not buildings. People.

Jan. 9 is recognized as Law Enforcement Appreciation Day. Most people do not mark it on their calendars. But, for communities like ours, the sentiment behind it is not confined to a single day. For our community, every day is Jan. 9.

At a time when law enforcement officers face criticism, threats and, at times, violence simply for doing the work we rely on, it matters to say this clearly: gratitude is not political. It is human. It must be voiced, not assumed.

To those who stand outside our schools, our synagogues and our community spaces, ensuring that we can continue to gather safely and openly, we say thank you. Strong communities do not endure by accident. They endure because people show up and because others make it possible for them to do so.

Ezra Shanken is chief executive officer of the Jewish Federation of British Columbia.

UBC needs a wake-up call

I am graduating and, somehow, my school, the University of British Columbia, feels more isolating than ever. This campus prides itself on the ideas of critical thinking and open dialogue. But, right now, it feels like neither is being practised. Instead, I see a culture where misinformation about Israel and the Jewish people spreads easily, where hateful slogans replace dialogue and where Jewish students are intimidated and harassed for expressing their Zionism and connection to Israel as an integral part of their Jewish identity. More than that, it feels like expressing these views comes with a social cost – one that many students quietly calculate before deciding whether it is even worth speaking at all.

I’m a Jewish student at UBC. And I’m done pretending this is normal.

Universities are supposed to be spaces where ideas are tested, challenged and debated openly. My four years at UBC have shown me that certain perspectives are treated as inherently unacceptable before the conversation even begins. If freedom means anything, it must include viewpoints that fall outside dominant campus narratives, including Zionist perspectives.

The role of campus groups and student politics cannot be ignored. UBC Staff for Palestine and the way BDS (boycott, divestment and sanction from Israel) is promoted within spaces like the Alma Mater Society elections are not just frustrating. They reflect a campus environment where hateful and discriminatory movements and campaigns are tolerated and normalized.

While BDS is framed as a progressive, justice-oriented movement, it seeks to end Israel’s existence and strip away Jewish rights to self-determination. If BDS were to achieve its political goals, Israeli Jews would either be killed, ethnically cleansed or forced to live as an oppressed minority. According to an official BDS handbook, campus divestment is merely a “stepping-stone” to larger-scale boycotts and other measures aimed at ending Israel’s existence. This hateful and destructive movement is experienced by most Jewish students as contributing to an environment that marginalizes and endangers the campus community.

At its core, this is where the disconnect becomes impossible to ignore. A movement presented as advancing human rights dismisses the legitimacy of a Jewish homeland altogether. When that position becomes the norm on campus without any serious scrutiny, it is not political activism but the legitimization of hate and exclusion.

It is also worth asking why this issue dominates student political spaces in the first place. In a world full of ongoing conflicts and humanitarian crises, Israel is consistently singled out in student government discourse with false and misleading accusations. It does not feel like a coincidence or a legitimate concern for human rights, but rather a pattern of disproportionate focus that shapes how we are perceived and treated on this campus.

These narratives often leave no room for nuance. There is no space to acknowledge complexity, no willingness to engage with perspectives that don’t fit a predetermined frame, and no recognition that calling for the dismantling of a Jewish homeland has real implications for Jewish students on this campus. BDS, for instance, actively tries to shut down Israeli-Palestinian cooperation and dialogue.

You cannot claim to advocate for justice while erasing the legitimacy of other people’s existence. And yet, that contradiction is increasingly accepted here at UBC.

Students like me are excluded from conversations that directly affect them. Discussions about our own homeland often unfold without any Zionist Jewish perspective present. And, many of us are hesitant to speak up, not because we lack arguments, but because we know how quickly disagreement is shut down or mischaracterized.

And there is one final point that cannot be ignored.

The rhetoric and imagery that have surfaced within anti-Israel activism on this campus go far beyond political critique and cross into something far more disturbing. Slogans, symbols and messaging that frame violence as “resistance” or elevate martyrdom are not abstract ideas. For Jewish students, they are not theoretical – they are deeply personal, and they create a real and growing sense of fear for our safety on campus.

When violence is normalized or even implicitly justified, it sends a message about whose lives are seen as expendable. That is not activism. That is not justice. And it has no place at a university that claims to value safety, inclusion and critical thought. UBC cannot continue to ignore this.

What kind of campus we are willing to accept? One where certain students feel unsafe, unheard and pushed to the margins, or one where difficult conversations happen without crossing the line into dehumanization? Right now, we are closer to the former.

A university should not act as an ideological gatekeeper. Its role is not to decide which perspectives are acceptable, but to ensure that all students can participate in good faith without fear of exclusion or intimidation.

UBC, it’s time to wake up.

Avigail Feldman is a fourth-year student at the University of British Columbia, completing a bachelor’s in political science, and set to begin a master of management. She is also a StandWithUs Canada Emerson Fellow.

Is it the end of an era?

The landslide defeat of Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party in the recent Hungarian parliamentary elections could herald a seismic shift in European and global politics. Or not.

There were many issues at play in the election, obviously, including pocketbook economics and other domestic matters. Overseas observers have focused on Orbán’s “illiberal democracy” – his hacking away at free media and other institutions that tend to be measures of democratic health. It bears noting, to his credit, that as undemocratic as Orbán may have been in office, when he was defeated, he accepted the peaceful transition of power without apparent reservation.

The Hungarian election outcome is notable because of the era it could bring to a close. Orbán’s election in 2010 is viewed in retrospect as a major milestone in the advance of far-right politics in Europe.

Orbán did not invent European far-right politics, clearly. His election, though, was a major breakthrough and served as a model and inspiration for other movements, including those outside Europe, like figures in Latin America, as well as Donald Trump, who went so far as to send his vice-president to Hungary in an unashamed bid to shore up support for the Hungarian leader in the final hours of the campaign.

Something else Orbán may not have invented, but which he and his government exemplified and honed, was an ambiguous, somewhat cunning approach to Jews and the Jewish state.

Jews, put mildly, have a history with European far-right politics. Even sensible non-Jews are conscious of this third rail. Neutralizing the echoes of that history – or at least casting its veracity in doubt – is essential to legitimizing contemporary far-right politics.

Being pro-Israel has been a calculated and expedient position for figures like Orbán. In the sense that support for Israel fits into a xenophobic European narrative that sees Israel as a bulwark of Western civilization, there is something more transactional going on. Far-right pro-Israel politicians are often militantly anti-Muslim, supporting Israel less because they endorse Jewish self-determination than because of the adage that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Contemporary Israel is a model for them of defiant nationalism facing down (not coincidentally, Muslim) threats, which justifies some of their own domestic policies.

Support for Israel can also serve as a reputational shield. Supporting Israel in their foreign policy can deflect allegations of antisemitism – even in cases where leaders and grassroots supporters have deeply problematic records of antisemitic rhetoric. In many countries, Jews serve as a wedge in centre and left politics, pitting more vulnerable communities against one another as those in power deflect attention from charges of corruption or the results of bad policies and other inequalities that plague societies.

Pro-Israel politicians who deny charges of antisemitism often engage in anti-Jewish dog whistles like conspiracy theories about “globalists,” “elites,” “the Epstein class” or George Soros, in which linguistic stand-ins for “Jews” allow just enough plausible deniability. Orbán perfected this strategy, using the Hungarian-born Jewish billionaire Soros as a scapegoat, with overtly antisemitic undertones.

In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally presents itself as pro-Israel and protective of French Jews. But many Jews and analysts question whether this is a tactical strategy to “mainstream” the party, which was founded on explicitly antisemitic premises by Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen.

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party routinely attacks the Holocaust memorialization culture in Germany and tolerates antisemitic rhetoric in its ranks, while its pro-Israel foreign policy puts a twist in its ideological pedigree. But the AfD’s commitment to Israel looks to many observers like a qualified alliance based on Jews fitting the party’s anti-Muslim civilizational story.

Austria’s far-right Freedom Party, founded by former Nazis, has attempted to soften the hard edges of their anti-Muslim immigration policy with what some have termed a “charm offensive” toward Jews, especially relating to support for Israel.

The opacity of parties with problematic, antisemitic individuals taking actively pro-Israel stands has blurred conventional lines in politics and apparently created some confusion in the Jewish community. At a time when voices defending Israel are so rare, some Jews welcome anyone who expresses anything that can be construed as something like empathy.

Above all, foreign policy is a place where alliances are commonly as tactical as they are principled. Notably, the government of Israel plays this game, too. Last year, far-right European figures were invited to a conference on combating antisemitism. (Many mainstream Jewish leaders stayed away.)

Whether Orbán’s downfall is a Hungary-specific phenomenon or whether it might portend a waning of the European extreme right and those forces around the world will be known only over time. Either way, what will it mean for Jews and the Jewish state? That, too, remains an open question – one that Jewish communities need to keep trying to better understand and be more strategically positioned to respond to.

The only sure thing is that Jews and Israel will remain tools in the hands of self-interested politicians, one way or another.

Nakba exhibit biased

The following is the executive summary of the study The Canadian Museum for Human Rights and Its Nakba Exhibit: Bias and Animus in Process and Outcome and the Nature and Impact of the New Antisemitism in Canada, written by Dr. Bryan Schwartz, a professor of law at the University of Manitoba, and Rhonda Spivak, LLB, editor of the Winnipeg Jewish Review. It is reprinted with permission, edited for JI style and length. The exhibit is set to open in June. For a link to the full study, go to winnipegjewishreview.com.

The proposed Nakba exhibit at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR), titled Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present, is not a balanced exploration of displacement. It is a partisan exercise in the demonization and delegitimization of Israel – driven from its inception by a process whose composition predetermined its outcome.

A publicly funded national museum exhibiting biased content that vilifies one national/ethnic group’s homeland constitutes a discriminatory denial of equitable human rights education.

The process and work product – to the extent it is already available – are not consistent with the CMHR’s statutory mandate under the Museums Act, the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA), the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism adopted by both Canada and Manitoba, and the ethical codes of the Canadian Museums Association (CMA) and International Council of Museums (ICOM).

The bias is structural and traceable. The CMHR assembled a Palestinian Content Advisory Network whose membership was kept opaque – referenced once in the 2022/23 annual report and then deleted. Investigation reveals that its members hold views that are hostile to Israel and not sustainable on a fair-minded analysis of history and current realities.

Ramsey Zeid, president of the Canadian Palestinian Association of Manitoba and member of the advisory network, has publicly called Zionism a “disease that must be destroyed,” accused Israel of genocide, rationalized the Oct. 7 massacre as Palestinians “biting back,” and condoned violent intifada with language such as “intifada revolution … scorch the earth.” Other advisory network members have framed Israel as an apartheid settler-colonial state, endorsed the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, advocated one-state solutions that would deny the right of the Jewish people to their own state, have accused Israel of genocide at its founding and in Gaza, and compared Israel to the Nazis. The CMHR cannot credibly claim that work product shaped by this group is free of bias and animus rather than driven by it. By including persons with such views in an official advisory committee, it has extended official recognition and an aura of respectability to them.

The process excluded and marginalized the mainstream Jewish community at every stage. There was no public consultation of the kind that accompanied the Holocaust gallery. The Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada withdrew its partnership with the CMHR over the exhibit. The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) warned that the exhibit would deliver an incomplete and unbalanced narrative that would omit Jewish refugee experiences. The Abraham Global Peace Initiative (AGPI) wrote to the CMHR, the minister of Canadian Heritage and the prime minister requesting suspension.

Jewish organizations who supported the exhibit are fringe anti-Zionist groups, such as Independent Jewish Voices (constituting at maximum 0.2% of Canadian Jews, this report places them around 0.0025% of Canadian Jews), the United Jewish People’s Order (expelled by the Canadian Jewish Congress in 1951, and whose membership has never surpassed their 1950s numbers, placing it well below half a percent of Canadian Jews; it seems that their largest attended event in recent years was around 350 people total) and the Jewish Faculty Network (less than 0.05% of Canadian Jews). IJV and UJPO were involved with the organization that organized a Nov. 2, 2025, panel at which the exhibit’s director discussed her involvement in the exhibit.

The exhibit’s content is equally one-sided. The CMHR’s potted history, as per its website, attributes Palestinian displacement primarily to Jewish and Israeli armed forces while omitting critical context: Jewish acceptance of the 1947 UN Partition Plan, repeated Arab rejection of two-state solutions, the invasion by five Arab armies to destroy the nascent Jewish state, over a century of lethal anti-Jewish violence in Mandatory and Ottoman Palestine (documented from at least 1834), the ethnic cleansing of approximately 850,000 to 900,000 Jews from Arab countries after 1948, and the documented pattern of rejectionist violence against moderate Palestinians who favoured coexistence.

The very term “Nakba” – originally coined to describe the catastrophe of Arab armies’ failure to destroy Israel – has been recast to frame Israel’s founding as an illegitimate catastrophe, implicitly justifying campaigns to eliminate it. The CMHR exhibit instead insists that “Nakba” refers only to the displacement of Palestinians and avoids acknowledgement of Arab rejection of the two-state solution, of the right of Israel to exist as the Jewish homeland, and the armed invasion of Israel by the armies of five Arab states aimed at Israel’s destruction.

The museum’s diversity policies require representation of multiple perspectives, especially on contested histories, which in this case requires presenting sources that nonviolent Palestinian villages were allowed to stay, multiple Arab sources showing calls by Palestinian leadership and Arab states for evacuation of villages to further the Arab war effort, or leave rather than give the nascent state of Israel legitimacy…. Since Israel is an open society, multiple lines of scholarship diverge. That is not the case in Arab states, which have not opened their archives. Nor is it the case in the Palestinian Authority, where President [Mahmoud] Abbas made “Nakba denial” a crime subject to jail terms.

The exhibit, as Zeid’s own statements make plain, rests on a double game. The exhibit is presented as a collection of individual personal narratives – merely “telling stories” about the effects of displacement, yet it simultaneously advances “the story” that is supposedly the single overall historical truth. The audience is expected to accept these personal narratives as historical fact, even in the context of an advisory network whose documented members variously call Zionism a “disease” or a virus that must “be destroyed” and adopt other epithets that demonize and delegitimize the Jewish state.

It is known that oral histories can contain varying degrees of fact and can be coloured by “collective memory” – political perspectives on past events that are widely shared but may not reflect fairly or fully the actual events of individual lives in earlier generations. Judging from the composition of the Palestinian Content Advisory Network, we can expect these stories to be infused with negativity towards Israel and a lack of any historical context.

In practice, we can expect that many or all narratives in this exhibit may be an occasion to vilify Israel, from its foundation until the present. For example, it may speak of checkpoints without mentioning the suicide bombings that necessitated them, of displacement without mentioning Jewish acceptance of partition and Arab rejection of it, of suffering without acknowledging that it was Arab rejectionism and aggression that created the refugee crisis in the first place.

The “personal story” framing is a shield against accountability: it permits the museum to disseminate a partisan political narrative while disclaiming responsibility for its historical claims. This exhibit will contribute directly to the rising tide of antisemitism that has made Canada an increasingly dangerous place for its Jewish citizens, as documented in … this report.

This selective framing constitutes the “Three Ds” of antisemitism identified by Natan Sharansky and popularized in Canada by former justice minister Irwin Cotler: demonization, delegitimization and double standards applied to Israel. It occurs at a time when Jews face the highest per capita hate-crime targeting of any group in Canada (Statistics Canada). Many Jewish Canadians feel unsafe in their own country, even though both Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Prime Minister Mark Carney publicly affirmed Zionism and Israel’s right to exist and prosper. Those are the rights that the advisory network has dismissed for this exhibit.

The CMHR, in the aftermath of the genocidal attack on Israel in 2023 and the ongoing brutalization of hostages, allowed an unauthorized pro-Palestinian “die-in” inside the museum. This “die-in” was allowed while refusing a request from supporters of Israel for a counter-demonstration, a disparity that exemplifies the institutional bias at work. [CMHR vice-president of exhibitions] Matthew Cutler’s public statements at the time made it unmistakable that the museum had already promised off the books, without public consultation from the Jewish community, to include an exhibit that focuses on the contested oppression of Palestinians by Israel.

Officials of the CMHR have, on the public record, favoured anti-Israel fringe groups while showing disrespect for the groups that represent the overwhelming majority of Jewish Canadians. The museum has not been transparent with the general public or the mainstream Jewish community. This invites the question of how transparent museum bureaucrats have been with the museum’s own board of trustees, who are responsible for fulfilling the museum’s mandate and maintaining its reputation.

The exhibit in its current form must be halted. The CMHR must commission an independent historical review by balanced, credentialed experts. It must require transparent public consultation, including meaningful engagement with mainstream Jewish Canadian organizations; ensure the exhibit includes parallel refugee stories, Arab rejectionism, the full context of the conflict; and conduct a governance audit of curatorial processes to prevent future partisan capture.

Proceeding instead risks CHRA complaints, further reputational damage and continued erosion of public trust in a taxpayer-funded national institution whose mandate is to promote universal human rights, not to serve as a vehicle for the delegitimization of the Jewish state.

What to do about media bias

photo - Rob Roberts, editor-in-chief of the National Post — Rob Roberts, editor-in-chief of the National Post. *(photo from Upstanders Canada)*

Rob Roberts, editor-in-chief of the National Post, will discuss bias and truth in media with writer and journalist Dave Gordon, a regular contributor to the Jewish Independent, at Upstanders Canada’s first-ever live event.

Media Bias and What to do About It will take place in Vancouver on May 24. Janet Dirks, a veteran CTV news reporter, who served six months in Jerusalem among her decades in front of the camera, will contextualize the changed media landscape. Pat Johnson, president of Upstanders Canada and a member of the JI editorial board, will welcome the audience and explain the work of Upstanders, a national organization that is responding to the antisemitism crisis in Canada by developing innovative initiatives and assembling a broad network of non-Jewish allies in every demographic sector.

Presented live in Vancouver at 2:30 p.m. on May 24 (location to be announced), the program will also be livestreamed nationally. More information and tickets, $18, are available through UpstandersCanada.com.

– Upstanders Canada