Canadian government conflates antisemitism with criticism of Israel

By Joel Winter

One day during my teaching career I entered the teacher’s staffroom to find brochures promoting Chapters — a Canadian national bookstore chain. This was during a period when I was protesting every week in front of the Chapters store in Toronto. The owner of Chapters supports the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) through the Lone Soldiers Program. In response to their advertising, I wrote on the flyers, “Boycott Chapters for supporting Israeli apartheid”. This resulted in me being hauled up to the principal’s office for a tongue lashing.

I was upset by the principal’s reaction, since I saw it as a trampling on my rights of free speech and protest. However, such rights could get trampled a lot more if the Canadian government and the Israel lobby get their way.

Like most Western governments, the Canadian government is perpetually trying to appease the Israel lobby – the latest effort being a “handbook of antisemitism,” which by any indication will be a suppression of our rights to protest against Israel. The handbook is being developed by Deborah Lyons, a former ambassador of Canada to Israel and who is known to have cosy relations with Israel and its supporters and has said not a peep about the Everest-sized genocide in Gaza.

Lyons is not creating the handbook out of the blue, but is using the much-maligned definition of antisemitism as set out by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). This definition has been panned by many human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, for conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

We don’t know exactly what is going to be in the Canadian handbook, but Lyons doesn’t seem at all sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. In fact, from comments that she has made so far, she seems to mix up any criticism of Zionism or the state of Israel with antisemitism. Protesting against the war? Antisemitic. Chanting for freedom? Antisemitic. Want a conversation about Israeli genocide? Antisemitic. Saying the word “intifada”? Antisemitic.

One might be tempted to dismiss all this as hot air and politicking, and surmise that the guidebook will end up forgotten on a dusty shelf like so many other government projects. But gauging by the strength of the Israel lobby, I wouldn’t count on it.

The danger lies in the possibility of this guidebook becoming a government-mandated resource for public officials, such as my former principal, leading to a slanted definition of antisemitism. Perhaps even this article and those like it could be shut down and fines issued. The next time a student group attempts a protest or encampment they could be immediately stopped. Of course, we are not living in a fascist state (yet), and Canadians do have recourse to the courts if this should happen, but imagine the monumental waste litigating this misguided handbook of propaganda.

Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) has started a petition to get Lyons removed from her job, arguing that she cannot be an objective person to guide the guidebook. To its credit, CJPME isn’t demanding a scrapping of the project, but asking that she be replaced by someone better able to fight antisemitism without promoting racism against Palestinians.

I don’t know about you, but I’m getting tired of the power and ability of the Israeli lobby in Canada to influence policy decisions that negatively affect other minority groups such as Palestinians and their supporters, while not benefitting the rest of Canadians. Antisemitism is as wrong as any other form of discrimination, but it cannot be used a tool to deflect optics about Israel in its treatment of Palestinians.

There is already a viable definition of antisemitism, The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, created by international scholars working in Antisemitism Studies and related fields. Initially signed by over 200 scholars, it now has around 350 signatories. This definition was a response to the IHRA definition, because they claim it has “caused confusion and generated controversy, hence weakening the fight against antisemitism.” The Jerusalem Declaration draws a clear and reasonable line between discrimination against Jewish people and criticism of the state of Israel.

The principal who called me on the carpet for my stance against Israel did not enquire about the facts behind the boycott or my rationale for protesting. Instead, she avoided discourse and said I shouldn’t have made a negative statement against Israel, though it was certainly within my right to do so. If Deborah Lyons gets her way, rational discourse will be replaced by even more heavy- handed repercussions, and Israel will keep up their indiscriminate killing.

“Joel Winter is a writer, researcher and musician from Toronto”.