The antisemitism report that erases a century of Jewish debate
2026/08/14 2 Comments
From the minority Independent Jewish Voices perspective:
…But beneath the report’s stark figures and shocking examples of antisemitism lies a partisan move. The report treats opposition to Zionism as evidence of antisemitism, a move that provides institutions grounds for disciplining scholars for what they teach and for policing students over how they protest.
We write as members of the Jewish Faculty Network, a group of Jewish Canadian academics who share a commitment to social justice. This includes criticism of, and opposition to, Zionism.
The report defines “anti-Zionism” as a movement that calls for the “erasure” or “annihilation” of Israel. This is incorrect, and it attempts to turn a legitimate political position into a synonym for hatred before a single survey question is even asked.
Anti-Zionism is a 100-year-old, well-documented current of Jewish thought that has never called for erasing or annihilating anyone. Reform Judaism’s 19th-century founders argued that Jews were a religious community, not a nation awaiting a state. A few decades later, the Jewish Labour Bund, a mass socialist movement across Eastern Europe, built a political program based on doikayt, the idea that Jewish safety comes from equal rights where Jews already live, not from a state somewhere else. Some Hasidic communities have opposed Jewish sovereignty on religious grounds for over a century. …
Yves Winter is an associate professor of political science at McGill University. Noah Brender is a faculty member in the humanities department at Dawson College. Danielle Bobker is a professor of English at Concordia University. Michael Blum is a professor in the École des arts visuels et médiatiques at the Université du Québec à Montréal.
Source: The antisemitism report that erases a century of Jewish debate
About Andrew
Multicultural Meanderings 
In order to understand this article, it’s important to define the term Zionist. Zionism is a 19th century nationalist ideology. Put simply, it’s the desire for the Jewish people to have a homeland in the Ottoman province that contained Jerusalem.
It’s not an endorsement of any particular Israeli government or its policies. It’s not an endorsement of any particular set of Israeli borders. It’s not an endorsement of the post-1967 settlement of the West Bank. And it’s certainly not an endorsement of war crimes.
Sociologist Bob Brym did a recent study of Canadian Jews. While only about half would use the word “Zionist” to describe themselves, closer to 90% would agree with the core value of Zionism: a belief in the right of a State of Israel to exist. In this vein, IJV and its ilk are best understood as a fringe minority. They are entitled to their opinion, of course. But they are not entitled to represent a huge group of people.
How do I know this? Because from 2017 to 2023, I was a dues-paying member of IJV. Their brochures lured me in. I believed that IJV was primarily a supporter of a Palestinian state on the territory of the West Bank (which I support too). Their anti-Zionism emerged more slowly, and I dismissed some of the things I read as my being too “semantic” about their posts and emails. Then came October 7, 2023. IJV didn’t quite celebrate the attack, but they certainly implied that it was justified and an important step towards achieving their anti-Zionist goals. I cut ties with IJV after that.
When a banner appears on a university campus that says “Israel is an apartheid state,” it is both wrong and right, depending on how you define Israel. There is no question that Palestinians in the West Bank are treated different than settlers living a couple of kilometers away. But ask the people who unfurled the banner what the solution to that problem is and most of them will suggest that the State of Israel should cease to exist. Given that 90% of Canadian Jews believe otherwise, it is hard not to view this belief (and thus the banner) as antisemitic, no matter how much IJV may claim otherwise.
Thanks for sharing your personal experience. Familiar with the Bob Brym study and its conclusions, which appear very reasonable to me. And agree, of course, advocating that Israel should cease to exist crosses the line and is anti-semitic, unlike critiques of Israeli government policies which are legitimate, but more so when consistent with criticism of other government policies.