Yakabuski: Montreal Pride finally stands up to the pro-Palestinian bullies 

Of note:

…The statement did not name any banned groups, but Ga’ava and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) revealed that they had been suddenly disinvited from the event. In a Facebook post, Ga’ava said the explanation given by Fierté Montréal for its exclusion was related to Ga’ava’s description of certain groups that had previously demanded the organization’s banishment from the parade. Ga’ava’s and CIJA officials had said the groups were “pro-terror” and “pro-Hamas” in a Jewish newspaper article. Ga’ava president Carlos Godoy denied those terms constituted hate speech.

On Tuesday, Fierté Montréal reversed itself and lifted the ban on Ga’ava and the CIJA. It apologized to the Jewish community, and particularly Jewish members of Quebec’s LGBTQ community, who felt it had sought to exclude them. What exactly transpired remains unclear, but it is a safe bet that government and corporate sponsors – which account for about 80 per cent of Fierté Montréal’s budget – had something to do with the move. The chairman of Fierté Montréal’s board of directors also resigned on Monday. 

Fierté Montréal’s reversal angered the pro-Palestinian groups that had called for Ga’ava’s exclusion. But it was the correct move. There are legitimate grievances to be aired about the Israeli army’s increasingly disgraceful conduct in Gaza. Yet, attacking Ga’ava appears to have more to do with the role such groups play in underscoring Israel’s protection of LGBTQ rights, in contrast to the oppression LGBTQ persons face in most Arab jurisdictions. That is not a contrast pro-Palestinian activists want to emphasize, perhaps because it exposes their own cognitive dissonance, if not hypocrisy.

These pro-Palestinian LGBTQ activists accuse Israel of “pinkwashing,” or playing up gay rights in Israel to distract attention from its treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. But what they are really seeking to do is to silence anyone who suggests otherwise.

Source: Montreal Pride finally stands up to the pro-Palestinian bullies

Khan: We shouldn’t turn a blind eye to assaults on Muslim women 

Agree:

…The scourge of hate is corrosive. It cannot be effectively addressed in a siloed fashion, where each affected group stands alone. Here’s an idea: next time when there’s a hateful incident against one group, let’s have a few representatives of all affected groups stand together to condemn the hate. There are fundamental disagreements between affected groups, but all agree that no member of our Canadian family should be subject to intimidation, threats or violence.

Source: We shouldn’t turn a blind eye to assaults on Muslim women

Lederman: There is an abundance of shame – and rightly so – over the calamity in Gaza

Indeed:

…As more than 170 former Canadian diplomats, including former ambassador to Israel Jon Allen, wrote in an open letter this week: “If Israel continues on this path, it will lose its standing with the world community, placing the security and the future of the Israeli people in jeopardy.”

This isn’t the most important reason to speak out about the suffering of so many people, of course. That would be the killings, the starvation, the inhumanity.

“Food and health are basic rights,” Dorit Nitzan, director of the School of Public Health at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, told Haaretz. “When we turned them into a bargaining chip, we harmed ourselves, not just our values and morals.” 

Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak has issued an “emergency call” for “massive nonviolent civil disobedience” to bring a total shutdown of Israel until there is a change in government. “The Israel of the Declaration of Independence and the Zionist vision is collapsing,” he wrote.

The Union for Reform Judaism also issued a statement this week: “Blocking food, water, medicine, and power—especially for children – is indefensible. Let us not allow our grief to harden into indifference, nor our love for Israel to blind us to the cries of the vulnerable. Let us rise to the moral challenge of this moment.”

Yes. Let us. The moral tragedy of this moment is abundantly clear. 

Source: There is an abundance of shame – and rightly so – over the calamity in Gaza

Islamophobia envoy says Mideast war is bringing back anti-Muslim tropes from 9/11

Hard not to disagree but she is silent on whether the nature of some of the demonstrations, their locations and the carrying Hamas related symbols likely also has played a role in reinforcing anti-Muslim tropes:

…Elghawaby spoke to The Canadian Press after the sudden retirement this month of Deborah Lyons, Canada’s special envoy on preserving Holocaust remembrance and combating antisemitism.

Lyons left her post early, saying she felt “despair” over of a growing gulf in Canadian society related to violence in the Middle East, and the failure of many Canadians to find common ground against hate.

Elghawaby said that she and Lyons worked to reinforce “the soul of Canada — a Canada where all of us, with all of our diversities, can belong and fulfil our fullest potential and feel safe to do so.”

Elghawaby said she shares Lyons’s fear that Canadians have “a sense of concern about appearing to be, for example, favouring one community over another.”

She said fighting hate means advancing the shared principle that everyone in Canada should feel safe to express their faith or political views without retribution.

“We do have rules and policies, and we have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and we have human-rights codes that should help be our North Star on how we navigate a time of deep social challenge, when it comes to the rise of hate toward any community,” she said.

But Elghawaby pushed back on Lyons’s claim that some Muslims have been uneasy with seeing her work to combat anti-Jewish hate.

Lyons told the Canadian Jewish News that she and Elghawaby tried to work together to counter hate, and had plans 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 of Elghawaby.

Elghawaby said she’s not aware of Muslims opposing any of her work against anti-Jewish hate.

“I have had no pushback on condemning antisemitism. I have had very good conversations with members of Canadian Jewish communities,” she said.

Elghawaby said many Canadians’ discomfort with confronting the reality on the ground in Gaza is making it impossible to engage in “good faith” dialogue about a path forward.

“Many Canadians of all backgrounds do believe that there is terrible oppression happening in Palestine, that there’s an occupation,” she said. “It’s been described by human rights organizations as apartheid. Genocide scholars, and organizations have called what’s happening now a genocide.

“If we are to have true dialogue, not being able to actually name the situation as it’s being described … by human-rights organizations and experts, it means that it’s a discussion that can’t be had in in fully good faith, because of the effort to almost make invisible or erase what various Canadians are seeing or describing for themselves.”

While Elghawaby said she has no plans to quit before her term ends in February 2027, she acknowledged it’s been “very, very sad and difficult” to see the rise in hate….

Source: Islamophobia envoy says Mideast war is bringing back anti-Muslim tropes from 9/11

How to improve university EDI policies so they address Jewish identity and antisemitism

Thoughtful reflections and suggestions how EDI policies can be inclusive of Jewish identities:

According to Statistics Canada, police-reported hate crimes against Jews rose by 82 per cent in 2023.

In the months following Oct. 7, 2023 and the subsequent war in Gaza, university campuses across Canada became sites of tension, protest and divisions.

Jewish students and faculty increasingly reported feeling alone, excluded and targeted.

As our research has examined, despite these urgent realities, Jewish identity and antisemitism remain largely invisible in the equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) frameworks of Canadian higher education.

These frameworks are meant to address the ongoing effects of historical and structural marginalization. Emerging from the four designated categories in Canada’s Employment Equity Act, EDI policies in Canadian universities tend to centre race, Indigeneity as well as gender, with limited attention to religious affiliation.

Canadian higher education’s primary EDI focus on racism and decolonization is important, given the history of exclusion and marginalization of Black people, Indigenous Peoples and people of colour in Canada. Yet, this framing inadequately addresses the historical and ongoing antisemitism in Canada.

A cross-university study of EDI policies

To understand this oversight, we conducted a content and discourse analysis of the most recent (at the time of the study) EDI policies and Canada Research Chair EDI documents from 28 Canadian universities.

Our sample included English-speaking research universities of more than 15,000 students and a few smaller universities to ensure regional representation.

We focused on how these documents referred to Jewish identity, antisemitism and related terms, as well as how they situated these within broader EDI discourses. We found that, in most cases, antisemitism and Jewish identity were either completely absent or mentioned only superficially.

Three patterns emerged from our analysis:

1. Antisemitism is marginalized as a systemic issue: Where it appears, antisemitism is generally folded into long lists of forms of discrimination, alongside racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia and other “isms.” Unlike anti-Black racism or Indigenous-based racism, which often have dedicated sections and careful unpacking, antisemitism is rarely examined. While EDI policies can be performative, they still represent institutional commitment and orientation. Not specifically considering antisemitism renders it peripheral and unimportant, even though it remains a pressing issue on campuses.

2. Jewish identity is reduced to religion: When Jewishness is acknowledged in EDI frameworks, it is almost always under the category of religious affiliation, appearing as part of the demographic sections. This framing erases the ethnic and cultural dimensions of Jewish identity and peoplehood and disregards the ways in which many Canadian Jews understand themselves. The lack of understanding of Jewishness as an intersectional identity also erases the experiences of Jews of colour, LGBTQ+ Jews, and Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews.

While some Jews may identify as white, some do not, and even those who benefit from white privilege may still experience antisemitism and exclusion.

The recent scholarly study, “Jews and Israel 2024: A Survey of Canadian Attitudes and Jewish Perceptions” by sociologist Robert Brym, finds that 91 per cent of 414 Jewish respondents in the overall study believe that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state — a response Brym believes indicates that the respondent is a Zionist, echoing a broad definition of the term. (Three per cent of Jewish respondents opposed the view that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state, and six per cent said they didn’t know).

For most Canadian Jews in the study, Brym writes, “support for the existence of a Jewish state in Israel is a central component of their identity.”

But Zionism presents a challenge for EDI for several reasons. Firstly, Zionism enters into a tension with (mis)conceptions of Jews as non-racialized people within anti-racism discourses.

Secondly, some scholars and activist movements address Zionism largely as a form of settler colonialism.

While debates over the historical sources of Zionism and their political implications are legitimate and evolving, the danger arises when debates shift to embodying and targeting Jews as individuals. Furthermore, “anti-Zionist” discourses, often amplified in student protests, risk flattening the diversity that exists under the Zionist identification.

3. Pairing antisemitism and Islamophobia: In the EDI policies we examined, antisemitism is rhetorically paired with Islamophobia: In nearly every case where antisemitism was mentioned, it was coupled with Islamophobia. This rhetorical symmetry may be driven by institutional anxiety over appearing biased or by attempts to balance political sensitivities. Yet it falsely implies that antisemitism and Islamophobia are similar or are inherently connected.

While intersectional analysis of antisemitism and Islamophobia can yield insight, this pairing functions as an avoidance mechanism and a shortcut.

Failure to name, analyze Jewish identity

The erasure of antisemitism from EDI policies affects how Jewish students and faculty experience campus life. Jews may not be marginalized in the same way as other equity-seeking groups, yet they are still deserving of protection and inclusion.

The EDI principle of listening to lived experiences cannot be applied selectivity. Jewish identity is complex, and framing it narrowly contributes to undercounting Jewish people in institutional data and EDI policies. Simplistic classifications erase differences, silence lived experiences and reinforce assimilation.

By failing to name and analyze Jewish identity and antisemitism, universities leave Jewish members of the academic community without appropriate mechanisms of support. The lack of EDI recognition reflects and reproduces the perceptions of Jews as powerful and privileged, resulting in a paradox: Jewish people are often treated as outside the bounds of EDI, even as antisemitism intensifies.

The question of Jewish connection to Israel or Zionism introduces another layer of complexity that most EDI policies avoid entirely. While criticism of Israeli state policies is not antisemitic, many Jews experience exclusion based on real or perceived Zionist identification. Universities cannot afford to ignore this dynamic, even when it proves uncomfortable or politically fraught.

What needs to change

If Canadian universities are to build truly inclusive campuses, then their EDI frameworks must evolve in both language and structure.

First, antisemitism must be recognized as a form of racism, not merely religious intolerance. This shift would reflect how antisemitism has historically operated and continues to manifest through racialized tropes, conspiracy theories and scapegoating.

Second, institutions must expand their data collection and demographic frameworks to reflect the full dimensions of Jewish identity: religious, ethnic and cultural. Without this inclusion, the understanding of Jewish identity will remain essentialized and unacknowledged.

Third, Jewish voices, including those of Jews of colour, LGBTQ+ Jews and Jews with diverse relationships to Zionism, must be included in EDI consultation processes. These perspectives are critical to understanding how antisemitism intersects with other forms of marginalization.

Fourth, the rhetorical pairing of antisemitism and Islamophobia, while perhaps intended to promote balance, should be replaced with a deep unpacking of both phenomena and their intersections.

Finally, universities must resist the urge to treat difficult conversations as too controversial to include. Complex dialogue should not be a barrier to equity work. The gaps we identified reveal how current EDI frameworks can exclude any group whose identities fall outside established categories.

In a time of polarization and disinformation, universities must model how to hold space for complexity and foster real inclusion.

Source: How to improve university EDI policies so they address Jewish identity and antisemitism

Casey Babb: Canada doesn’t need an antisemitism or Islamophobia czar

Very one sided but one does have to ask whether these special rapporteurs are effective in improving cross community relations or not or just assuaging and reflecting the concerns of their particular groups.

Former antisemitism envoy Lyons and current islamophobia envoy Elghawaby apparently did try some joint events and initiatives but Lyons, in any case, was frustrated that neither group wished to listen to the concerns of the other.

No easy way to have such dialogues but clearly, current approach not effective:

All told, this disconnect between the positions of Canada’s special envoy on preserving Holocaust remembrance and combating antisemitism and its special representative on combating Islamophobia has rendered them not just futile, but problematic. Never in our nation’s history have we so desperately needed moral fortitude, truth tellers and courageous religious and community leaders to come together and face hard truths in unison. Yet for the last two years, this need has been met not just with inefficiencies and obstacles, but what feels like deliberate attempts to undermine relations not just between Jews and Muslims, but between Jews and everyone else.

Canada is at an inflection point — socially, culturally, politically and economically. Major issues could improve in these spheres — or gradually worsen over time as they have been now for many years. It is therefore imperative that every dollar and initiative be spent and developed with prosperity and unity in mind — not the indulgence of endless grievances, the infantilization of entire peoples and the notion that our country can only be unburdened of our sins by relentlessly confirming our guilt.

Step 1 in achieving these things: get rid of useless and divisive positions.

Source: Casey Babb: Canada doesn’t need an antisemitism or Islamophobia czar

Michael Geist: When it comes to antisemitism, the sound of silence is loud in Canada 

Valid comments on lack of consistency in approaches:

…In response, there have been some notable efforts to address the antisemitism scourge. Both the federal government and some local municipalities have enacted or proposed bubble zone legislation designed to create a safe perimeter around places of worship, schools, hospitals, and other vulnerable institutions. Some universities and governments have adopted much-needed guidelines to combat antisemitism and promised to enforce them more aggressively.

More is required, but those responses appear to have shifted the discourse from disbelief to efforts to silence and thwart initiatives to protect the community. It often starts by insisting that the Jewish community is not only unable to judge what constitutes antisemitism, but that it actively engages in its weaponization. It is hard to think of any other group that is not only denied its own ability to identify harms but is painted as acting nefariously when it does so.

When the issue does break through, the efforts to protect the Jewish community are then silenced by framing them as undermining the rights of others. For example, bubble zone initiatives are frequently criticized as an affront to freedom of expression, despite being carefully drafted and modelled on similar laws that have been upheld by Canadian courts as constitutional.

Similarly, antisemitism guidelines on campus have been derided as chilling freedom of expression. These institutions have long histories of adopting extensive regulations to protect women, visible minorities and Indigenous groups, even going so far as to identify and guard against micro-aggressions. But the same approach seemingly does not apply to the Jewish community, who instead face charges that protecting their rights would come at the expense of the rights of others.

In fact, even political views on the founding of the State of Israel or expressions of support for Zionism, which as former prime minister Justin Trudeau noted “is the belief, at its simplest, that Jewish people, like all peoples, have the right to determine their own future” runs the risk of being labelled as “racist” in today’s educational environment, thereby silencing the perspectives.

As the rise in antisemitism has become too pronounced to ignore, there have been some important efforts to chronicle it and call for action. But what has been missing is an examination of its day-to-day effects, which has placed the safety and well-being of an entire community, from grade school to seniors’ homes, at risk. Those effects will become less visible if all that is left is the sound of silence.

Source: Michael Geist: When it comes to antisemitism, the sound of silence is loud in Canada

A Columbia genocide scholar says she may leave over university’s new definition of antisemitism

Of note:

For years, Marianne Hirsch, a prominent genocide scholar at ColumbiaUniversity, has used Hannah Arendt’s book about the trial of a Nazi war criminal, “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil,” to spark discussion among her students about the Holocaust and its lingering traumas. 

But after Columbia’s recent adoption of a new definition of antisemitism, which casts certain criticism of Israel as hate speech, Hirsch fears she may face official sanction for even mentioning the landmark text by Arendt, a philosopher who criticized Israel’s founding. 

For the first time since she started teaching five decades ago, Hirsch, the daughter of two Holocaust survivors, is now thinking of leaving the classroom altogether.

“A university that treats criticism of Israel as antisemitic and threatens sanctions for those who disobey is no longer a place of open inquiry,” she told The Associated Press. “I just don’t see how I can teach about genocide in that environment.”

Hirsch is not alone. At universities across the country, academics have raised alarm about growing efforts to define antisemitism on terms pushed by the Trump administration, often under the threat of federal funding cuts. 

Promoted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, the definition lists 11 examples of antisemitic conduct, such as applying “double standards” to Israel, comparing the country’s policies to Nazism or describing its existence as “a racist endeavor.”

Ahead of a $220 million settlement with the Trump administration announced Wednesday, Columbia agreed to incorporate the IHRA definition and its examples into its disciplinary process. It has been endorsed in some form by Harvard, Yale and dozens of other universities. 

While supporters say the semantic shift is necessary to combat evolving forms of Jewish hate, civil liberties groups warn it will further suppress pro-Palestinian speech already under attack by President Donald Trump. …

Source: A Columbia genocide scholar says she may leave over university’s new definition of antisemitism

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

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

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

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