Antisemitism envoy says resignation prompted by frustration over ‘not connecting’ with anti-hate message

2025/07/25 Leave a comment

Dispiriting. But kudos for Lyons for opening sharing her frustrations and critiques regarding the silence of business and faith leaders. Most despairing comment to me was this reference to silos:

“Lyons told The Canadian Jewish News that Amira Elghawaby, the federal government’s special representative on combating Islamophobia, tried to work with Lyons on fighting hate, citing an apparently shelved plan to visit provincial education ministers together.

“Neither my community, nor her community, were happy all the time to see us in pictures together,” Lyons said. “There were often people who just simply didn’t want me participating in respectful dialogues, or wouldn’t come into the room.””

Ottawa’s outgoing envoy for tackling antisemitism is accusing Canada’s business sector and civil society of failing to call out a rising tide of hate against Jews and other minorities.

In an extensive interview with The Canadian Jewish News, Deborah Lyons also said she could not get a meeting with Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre during her nearly two-year term.

In a statement sent to The Canadian Press, the Conservatives said that Lyons was “powerless” in her job.

Lyons resigned early in her term as Canada’s special envoy on preserving Holocaust remembrance and combating antisemitism. She said her decision reflected her “despair” over the growing gulf in society over violence in the Middle East and the failure of many Canadians to find common ground against hate.

“People were listening and hearing on different frequencies, and so we just were not connecting,” said Lyons. “That was where the big despair comes from.”

She said her work wasn’t made any easier by the silence of corporate leaders “whom I asked many times to stand up,” and by faith leaders who seemed to keep quiet on the suffering of people from other religions.

“I was incredibly disappointed with business leaders,” she said.

“We have a tendency to want to blame politicians all the time, but where have the faith leaders been? Where have the priests and ministers and rabbis and imams and so forth (been)?”

Lyons said that some community leaders did ask for her help in finding the right words to speak out against hate — because they feared that they would offend one community if they stood up for another.

“I’ve been really quite amazed — and often become quite despondent and despairing — about the fact that it was hard to get people to speak up. To speak with clarity, to speak with conviction,” she said.

“The mark of a country is not the courage of its military. It is the courage of its bystanders.”

The Canadian Press has requested an interview with Lyons but has not yet had a response.

Lyons told The Canadian Jewish News that Amira Elghawaby, the federal government’s special representative on combating Islamophobia, tried to work with Lyons on fighting hate, citing an apparently shelved plan to visit provincial education ministers together.

“Neither my community, nor her community, were happy all the time to see us in pictures together,” Lyons said. “There were often people who just simply didn’t want me participating in respectful dialogues, or wouldn’t come into the room.”

She said that indicates a “weakening” in the ability of both Canadian society and the broader western world to stand for common human values.

Lyons said she lacked the energy at times to bridge that gap.

“I held back from having some discussions, because I knew there was going to be animosity, or I wasn’t going to be welcome in the room. It disappoints me,” she said.

Lyons said she could not get a meeting with Poilievre despite requesting one and having a cordial chat with him during an event.

“I tried to meet with Mr. Poilievre when I was in the job, and in the end I got a response that he was too busy to meet with me,” she said.

In a statement attributed to Conservative deputy leader Melissa Lantsman, the party did not dispute Lyons’ version of events.

“While communities face increasing threats, vandalism, intimidation and violence over the last 20 months, the Liberals deflected responsibility to a powerless envoy,” says the statement.

“We are ready to meet with the government at any point, because they’re the only ones with the power, the tools and the responsibility to do something — and they have done absolutely nothing to date.”

Statistics Canada reported this week a slight increase in police-reported hate crimes in 2024 compared with a year prior, and a very slight drop in those against Jewish people, who remain the most targeted group in Canada.

Lyons accused all three levels of government of failing to adequately co-ordinate their responses to hate, saying that issues like car theft or tariffs are seen as more tangible.

She said Prime Minister Mark Carney seemed engaged and requested a meeting with her, though she added it was not possible to meet with him before the July 8 date of her departure.

Lyons said she is leaving her job three months early not for health reasons but rather to restore “a little bit of the joy back into life” through retirement.

She said she would have liked to continue, but described the envoy role as more difficult than her stints as ambassador to Afghanistan and Israel.

“It was without question the toughest job I ever did.”

Source: Antisemitism envoy says resignation prompted by frustration over ‘not connecting’ with anti-hate message

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Federal envoy urges Ontario to act on antisemitism in its public schools

2025/07/16 Leave a comment

Of note:

Canada’s special envoy on antisemitism says Ontario school boards need to take seriously incidents of anti-Jewish bigotry targeted at students in public schools.

Deborah Lyons commissioned a survey of nearly 600 Jewish parents in the province, and found hundreds of children were subjected to incidents including antisemitic bullying and blame for the carnage of Israel’s military conduct in the Gaza Strip.

The survey logged 781 incidents between October 2023 and January 2025 that Jewish families reported as antisemitic, such as children chanting Nazi slogans and giving salutes, and teachers telling students that Israel does not exist.

Of the reported incidents, 60 per cent involved what the survey deemed “extreme anti-Israel sentiments,” such as describing Israel as “fundamentally a racist state, that it is committing genocide in Gaza.”

The other 40 per cent involved anti-Jewish attitudes writ large, such as denying the Holocaust, or describing Jews as cheap or having control over the media.

Lyons’ office approached various Jewish groups to promote the survey to their members and ask them to complete it.

Some parents reported moving their children to different schools, or having their children remove things that identified them as Jewish while attending school.

The report marks a rare move of federal rapporteurs singling out issues outside of Ottawa’s jurisdiction.

The Ontario government said antisemitism is unacceptable in its schools.

“We expect school boards across the province to focus on student achievement and creating supportive classrooms,” wrote Emma Testani, press secretary for provincial education minister Paul Calandra.

“We will continue working with our education partners to keep politics out of the classroom and ensure schools remain focused on helping students succeed.”

Michael Levitt, a former Liberal MP who runs a Jewish advocacy group, called the survey “a searing indictment” of how the education system treats Jewish students.

“While the Ontario government and some school boards are making an effort to bring antisemitism training and Holocaust education to staff and students, our education system must do more to root out antisemitism and hold perpetrators accountable,” wrote Levitt, head of the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Canada has endorsed the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which has attracted controversy among academics and free-speech advocates.

The IHRA definition says it is anti-Jewish to single out Israel for criticism not levelled at other countries, to deem the creation of Israel “a racist endeavour” or to compare Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.

Pro-Palestinian groups have said the definition could be used against those who accuse Israel of implementing an apartheid system and intentionally starving people in Gaza.

Source: Federal envoy urges Ontario to act on antisemitism in its public schools

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Lederman: We need to talk about antisemitism

2025/07/12 Leave a comment

Comments highlight need:

…What is happening in Gaza is catastrophic. But comparisons to the Holocaust are inaccurate, unnecessary and damaging. And, arguably, antisemitic.

Would any of this be okay if it was directed at any other minority group? 

One could argue it’s Zionists being targeted, not Jews. But most Jews are Zionists, believing a State of Israel has a right to exist. Further, too often, “Zionist” is a convenient substitute for “Jew.”

Criticism of the Israeli government is absolutely fair. But veering into antisemitism does nothing for the worthy Palestinian cause. If anything, it taints it. It is distracting, divisive and counterproductive. 

The same “fixed it” social-media crowd might write, about this column, “I’m not reading all that. Free Palestine.”

Yes, Palestinians deserve to be free. And Jews in Canada deserve to feel safe in their own country.

Source: We need to talk about antisemitism

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Musk’s A.I. tool has a hate problem

2025/07/10 Leave a comment

Not all that surprising, unfortunately:

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok, has been spreading antisemitic conspiracies — including that Jews promote hatred toward white people and control Hollywood. It also praised Adolf Hitler.

The posts came days after Musk boasted that Grok had improved “significantly.”
How it works: “Chatbots like Grok are based on large language models that comb through massive databases of online content to produce written answers to questions or prompts based on common responses it finds,” explains our Arno Rosenfeld. “But their creators can also instruct the models to respond in specific ways.”

Context: Musk performed what appeared to be a Nazi salute during an inaugural rally for Trump, and followed the incident with a series of Holocaust jokes on X, the social media platform he owns. In response to the rise in antisemitic and hateful content, many major Jewish organizations have left the site.

Fallout: The Anti-Defamation League called the posts — some of which have now been deleted — “irresponsible, dangerous and antisemitic.”

Source: Musk’s A.I. tool has a hate problem

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Gessen: Antisemitism Isn’t What People Think It Is

2025/06/25 1 Comment

Good piece on the risks of “conflating criticism of Israel with anti-Zionism and anti-Zionism with antisemitism:”

What makes these conflations powerful and long lasting is fear. I heard an extraordinary description of how this fear operates in a podcast interview with the Columbia University professor Shai Davidai. If you are familiar with his name, it’s probably because he has been a lightning rod, a hero to those who believe that American universities have become hotbeds of antisemitism. Columbia, for its part, suspended his campus access, saying he had harassed and intimidated other university employees.

Before any of this happened, Davidai identified as left wing, an opponent of the Israeli occupation and a critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A couple of days after Oct. 7, someone showed him an open letter issued by the Columbia chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. It was the kind of strident, tone-deaf letter that student organizations were putting out at the time. It talked about the inevitability of armed resistance as a response to systemic oppression. It did not talk about Jews.

And then Davidai found himself on campus, looking at several hundred students wearing kaffiyeh and, at least as he understood it, celebrating the Hamas attack. A colleague leaned over to him, he said, “and says, ‘This is the antisemitism that our parents and grandparents warned us about, and we didn’t listen.’ And the moment he said that, everything changed for me.” Davidai started speaking out on social media and attracted a great deal of attention.

Davidai described his experience as an epiphany. For many people living in Israel — a nation founded by Jews for Jews — and many American Jews as well, antisemitism is an abstraction, the stuff of stories. (I have to give credit for this observation to my daughter, who moved from a very antisemitic society to New York City at the age of 12.) These stories come from great tragedy, especially for Jews of European origin, many of whom represent the lucky-survivor branches of their families. Seeing something you have only read about suddenly, at least seemingly, come to life is a kind of awakening — the kind that a person in grief and trauma is perhaps particularly open to.

Two recent brutal attacks in the United States have sent more fear through Jewish communities here and elsewhere: the shooting of two Israeli Embassy staff members outside of the Capital Jewish Museum, in Washington, D.C., on May 21 and the firebombing of a rally in support of Israeli hostages 11 days later, in Boulder, Colo. Both attacks have been widely denounced as antisemitic.

That’s no surprise — both were visible and deliberate attacks on public events with a high concentration of Jews. But that isn’t necessarily the end of the story. Daniel May, the publisher of the magazine Jewish Currents (I serve on its board), has argued in a powerful article that neither attacker made any obviously antisemitic statements — unless one considers “Free Palestine” an antisemitic slogan. The D.C. shooter’s 900-word purported manifesto didn’t contain the word “Jew” or even “Zionist.” Of course, someone could still act out of hatred even if he doesn’t shout it in a manifesto, but the absence in that document of any explicit mention does open the possibility that he had a different motive.

Neither of these events was exclusive to Jews, as a synagogue service might be. Both events were inextricable from the war in Gaza. And though the violence in Boulder was wide ranging, the shooting in Washington seems to have been very specifically targeted — at two representatives of the Israeli government.

None of this makes the attacks any less horrific. And none of it should offer any comfort to the victims or their families. The terrible human toll is the same no matter what the attackers’ motivation. But if we are looking to draw larger lessons from this brutality, it’s worth considering that violence that looks antisemitic may — even when it very effectively serves to scare a great many Jews — be something else.

What these attacks can be understood as is, undoubtedly, acts of terrorism. There is no universally accepted definition of terrorism, but scholars agree on some basics: It’s violence committed for political reasons, against noncombatants, with the goal of sowing fear. It’s notable that “terrorism,” a term that in this country has been used and misused to crack down on civil liberties, especially those of brown and Muslim immigrants, has been joined and even supplanted by the term “antisemitism,” wielded in similar ways, for the same purposes.

Terrorists aim to provoke a reaction. A violent and disproportionate response, because it amplifies their message that whatever they have targeted is absolute evil. They got that response in Israel’s devastation of Gaza following the Hamas attack on Oct. 7.

Terrified people tend to support disproportionate violence. Terrified people make perfect constituencies for politicians like Netanyahu because they can be convinced that the unrelenting massacre and starvation of Gazans is necessary to keep Israel safe, and for President Trump, because they may not question the justification for pre-emptively bombing a sovereign country.

My thoughts keep returning to that conversation with the historian of Stalinism. She studied an era of political terrorism carried out on the premise — crazy yet widely accepted — that the U.S.S.R. was full of people who wanted to kill their leader. Today, we may live in an even more cynical era, when political leaders, instead of acting on their own fears of violence, instrumentalize other people’s fear.

The conflations that underlie most political conversations about antisemitism make it seem as if everyone wants to kill Jews — that antisemitism is not just common but omnipresent. If you believe that the whole world wants you dead, then you are much less likely to stand up for human rights or civil liberties, other people’s or your own.

A casualty of this cynical era is our understanding of the actual scale of antisemitism, defined as animus against Jews as Jews. There are many reasons to think that antisemitic attitudes and attacks are on the rise, but the keepers of statistics often thwart the effort to get hard information, because they insist on conflating criticism of Israel with anti-Zionism and anti-Zionism with antisemitism.

New York City is home to the largest number of Jews outside of Israel. But for all the noise mayoral candidates and their supporters have made about antisemitism, Mamdani is the only one I have heard so movingly acknowledge the emotional toll that the real and imagined threats of antisemitism have been taking on Jewish New Yorkers. I wonder how many people can hear him through all the din.

Source: Antisemitism Isn’t What People Think It Is

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David Polansky: Kind, tolerant Canada is failing the antisemitism test

2025/06/21 Leave a comment

Captures some of the dynamics at play:

…To explain: though antisemitism is frequently referred to as the “oldest hatred,” these latest developments are, if not wholly new, at least a new variation, for which prior instances offer minimal guidance. The classic problem is that of the persecuted and supposedly unassimilable minority, exemplified in Canada by the notorious “None is too many” policy or Duplessis’ campaign for the premiership of Quebec during the Second World War. But Jews are no longer a unique minority in a country that has prioritized global immigration and multiculturalism for many decades, and in which “visible minorities” are expected to approach half the population by the middle of this century.

At the same time, Jews remain very much a minority unto themselves, with just under 400,000 total across the country. What makes the present dilemma distinctive is that it stems not from a hostile majority population but from other minority populations that view Canadian Jews as convenient extensions of Israel (and thus as legitimate targets), along with assorted radicals operating under the same logic.i

It is thus the perfect moral shell game: you can harass and even harm Jews under the belief that you are functionally fighting Nazis. All of the fun of antisemitism (venting one’s anger and resentment upon a minority group) with none of the burdens of conscience that might otherwise come with it (because you are in fact venting your anger and resentment upon a minority group). More broadly, the prevailing liberal institutions have removed many of the safeguards that might have once checked these tendencies.

Consequently, this sort of vandalism—much like the idiot yelling antisemitic slurs at (the admittedly irritating) Dave Portnoy the other week—is both unprecedented and precedented. It is in a broad sense unprecedented in a country like Canada known for its mild political culture with a tradition of hospitableness for its Jewish communities. But it is in a narrower sense preceded by 18 months and more of fraying civic threads and the suspension of ordinary laws and norms for the champions of politically favoured causes.

For example, prior to the vandalism of the Holocaust Memorial, Mohamed Fakih, a highly successful entrepreneur and recipient of the Order of Canada, posted on X that, given their affiliations with the state of Israel, synagogues were perfectly legitimate targets of protest—a sentiment echoed by left-leaning academics. That is to say, unless they satisfy certain political and ideological conditions, Jews can continue to expect to be targeted in their neighbourhoods and places of worship. This was remarkable in its own right, but also for what it signified: a willingness to dispense with the modern liberal agreement concerning tolerance and coexistence, exchanging it for a new model of increasingly comprehensive politicization.

Now, it should be noted that Canada has already seen a disturbing spate of church-burnings over the past several years, seemingly triggered by the false reports of mass murder at residential schools. This itself was a highly worrisome development, though the public response to this on the part of both media and elected officials was to downplay it rather than excuse it, though that was really bad enough. What we are seeing now, however, is something new: the attempt to legitimize behaviour that was once completely outside the boundaries of political order in liberal societies. This is a matter of concern not just for Canada’s Jews, then, but for everybody.

None of this is to suggest that Jews should be entitled to special protections; but contemporary liberalism has largely abandoned traditional notions of political legitimacy in favour of offering precisely such protections to preferred groups under its coalition. It is particularly in light of its own record, then, that the present situation of Jews stands out.

The reality is that the world is not always such a nice place, and nasty things are bound to happen from time to time, even in “nice” countries. Any one of these incidents could have been chalked up to that same inevitability, but taken together, it is increasingly difficult to avoid the conclusion: these things didn’t use to happen here; now they do. The inability to properly respond to—or even recognize—this development is yet another test that Canada’s governments at all levels are presently failing.

Source: David Polansky: Kind, tolerant Canada is failing the antisemitism test

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NYT editorial: Antisemitism Is an Urgent Problem. Too Many People Are Making Excuses.

2025/06/16 Leave a comment

Good editorial. Applies to Canada as well:

…Americans should be able to recognize the nuanced nature of many political debates while also recognizing that antisemitism has become an urgent problem. It is a different problem — and in many ways, a narrower one — than racism. Antisemitism has not produced shocking gaps in income, wealth and life expectancy in today’s America. Yet the new antisemitism has left Jewish Americans at a greater risk of being victimized by a hate crime than any other group. Many Jews live with fears that they never expected to experience in this country.

No political arguments or ideological context can justify that bigotry. The choice is between denouncing it fully and encouraging an even broader explosion of hate.

Source: Antisemitism Is an Urgent Problem. Too Many People Are Making Excuses.

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Opinion: Canada’s ‘Islamophobia’ guide falsely equates legitimate criticism with bigotry

2025/04/11 Leave a comment

There are arguments for replacing Islamophobia with anti-Muslim hate, just as there are arguments for replacing antisemitism with anti-Jewish hate:

The greatest victims of extremist interpretations of Islam are Muslims themselves. This uncomfortable truth undermines Canada’s approach to combating anti-Muslim bigotry, as outlined in “The Canadian Guide to Understanding and Combatting Islamophobia.”

The guide defines Islamophobia broadly as, “Racism, stereotypes, prejudice, fear or acts of hostility directed towards individual Muslims or followers of Islam in general.” This definition creates an intellectual sleight of hand, conflating prejudice against Muslims with criticism of certain doctrines or political movements operating under the banner of faith.

The term “anti-Muslim bigotry” serves us better than “Islamophobia,” as it clearly identifies what we should oppose: discrimination, prejudice and hatred directed at Muslims as people.

Islamophobia, with its “phobia” suffix, implies that any fear or criticism of Islam itself is irrational and racist. This linguistic imprecision has real consequences for civil liberties and public safety. The guide does reference “anti-Muslim hatred,” but wrongly conflates it with Islamophobia.

When we intentionally conflate criticism of ideas with hatred of people, we betray both liberal principles and the Muslims fighting for change within their own communities. These Muslim voices are often the first to be silenced by accusations of enabling Islamophobia and find themselves abandoned by the very western liberals who should be their natural allies — a perverse outcome of supposedly “progressive” thinking.

The guide’s recommendation to “centre diverse Muslim voices” sounds admirably inclusive until one realizes which Muslim voices are systematically excluded: secular and reformist Muslims, as well as those who reject the injection of extremism and antisemitism into Islamic doctrine.

Instead, the most extreme political interpretations are presented as the voices of the community. This betrays Muslims fighting for liberal values and denies the rich diversity of thought within Muslim communities themselves. It also creates the false impression that Islam is monolithic, rather than dynamic and evolving.

The consequences extend beyond intellectual discourse. Across campuses, literary festivals and public forums, speakers who critique certain Islamic doctrinal interpretations or practices are labelled as bigots and effectively silenced.

Extremists have weaponized western guilt and liberal sensibilities, learning that calling someone “Islamophobic” can end careers and shut down debate. Thus emerges the circular logic of Islamophobia: any criticism of political Islam becomes evidence of bigotry, and any attempt to expose this fallacy becomes further proof of prejudice.

The guide’s references to an “Islamophobia industry” further illustrate this problem by inverting reality. When critics highlight extremist literature in certain mosques or foreign funding of radical preachers, they’re addressing documented issues with potential national security implications.

Dismissing such concerns as products of an “industry of hate” shields legitimate security issues from scrutiny. This paralyzes police, security services and policymakers, who grow reluctant to investigate real threats for fear of being branded as bigots. The cost of this self-censorship is paid primarily by vulnerable communities, including Muslims themselves.

The guide’s dismissal of concerns about extremism as “fearmongering” ignores the substantial problem of radicalization in some religious institutions. This hinders an honest assessment of how religious institutions can become vectors for political influence that may undermine democratic values and social cohesion.

The guide’s media representation complaints also merit a challenge. While the media does report on world events driven by religiously motivated violence, the guide is wrong to demand de-emphasizing such events. The answer to biased coverage isn’t enforced silence, but more nuanced reporting, including platforming Muslims who clearly separate Islam from Islamist extremism.

None of this denies the reality of genuine anti-Muslim prejudice. From vandalized mosques to harassment of visibly Muslim women, bigotry against Muslims demands unequivocal opposition. Every citizen deserves equal protection regardless of faith. Fighting prejudice, however, shouldn’t require terminology that conflates people with ideology.

Islam, like all religions, needs the space for open critique and discussion, not blanket protection. This balanced position allows us to combat genuine bigotry while preserving the intellectual freedom that benefits believers and non-believers alike.

When we replace “Islamophobia” with “anti-Muslim bigotry,” we lose nothing in our fight against prejudice. What we gain is the clarity needed for both honest critique and genuine protection — clarity that serves us all in building a pluralistic society.

Dalia al-Aqidi, Haras Rafiq and Mohammad Rizwan are members of Secure Canada’s International Muslim Counter-Voice Initiative.

Source: Opinion: Canada’s ‘Islamophobia’ guide falsely equates legitimate criticism with bigotry

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The winding tale of the Sugihara visas, that saved Jews from the Holocaust, led them to Japan and landed them in Canada 

2025/03/31 Leave a comment

Interesting. Impressive courage to refuse direction from superiors, not sure I would have had the courage to do so:

Akira Kitade was about to retire after a lifetime of service at Japan’s tourist bureau, when his boss took a scrapbook off the shelf in his home and showed it to him. In it were photographs of his boss as a young man on a boat bound for Japan with Jewish refugees during the Second World War.

The discovery of the scrapbook, which included seven passport photos of young people, with personal messages in French, Bulgarian, Norwegian and Polish inscribed on the back, set Mr. Kitade on a quest spanning decades to find out who they were.

This week in Ottawa, at an event hosted by Kanji Yamanouchi, Japan’s ambassador to Canada, Mr. Kitade told how the mystery had finally been solved in Canada. A Montreal photographer had recognized a photo of a beautiful young woman in the scrapbook, sparking a train of other discoveries.

In an interview, Mr. Kitade described how the passport photograph, signed Zosia, with a note scrawled in Polish – “To a wonderful Japanese man – please remember me” – had haunted him. Her expression seemed to embody the anguish of Jews persecuted by the Nazis, he said, and he was compelled to learn her story….

Source: The winding tale of the Sugihara visas, that saved Jews from the Holocaust, led them to Japan and landed them in Canada

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Byers: My students spent a semester dissecting the Gaza war. There was much to disagree about

2025/03/24 Leave a comment

Sounds like an informative and respectful discussion, refreshing:

…Our seminar is now over, but I know that my students are following the news from the Middle East. They are watching the resumption of the siege and the bombings, after Mr. Netanyahu walked away from “phase two” of the ceasefire that he’d agreed to with Hamas in January.

The humanitarian situation remains desperate, and it’s time for other actors, including Canada, to constructively engage. In the future, some of my students will lead the way. They’ve demonstrated the ability to debate the most emotionally charged issues objectively, respectfully and empathetically. They’ve gained perspective and depth by learning from, and disagreeing with, each other.

Free and respectful discussion – including the right to peaceful protest – is one of the main reasons we have universities. We have to defend it if free and democratic societies are to survive.

Source: My students spent a semester dissecting the Gaza war. There was much to disagree about

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