The antisemitism report that erases a century of Jewish debate

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