Last fall, Public Safety Canada released a document claiming that anti-zionism is a form of antisemitism. Until recently, Zionism/anti-Zionism was mostly debated inside Jewish communities and activist circles. Few non Jews knew what Zionism was or what it meant. Or cared. But in the last few years, Zionism has become a subject of mainstream public-policy debate. This is true in most of the Western world. Why? (photo credit IJV Canada)

For the last several decades, public criticism of Israel in Canada mostly focused on its policies and practices toward the Palestinians who live in West Bank and Gaza, which Israel conquered in 1967.

Israel itself was rarely examined. This was exemplified by Jimmy Carter’s famous book “Peace not Apartheid” in which he was at pains to describe Israeli “democracy” in glowing terms while criticising its “apartheid” behaviours in the West Bank. Objections from Palestinians that there is a problem with Israel itself were ignored.

Zionist consensus begins to crack

However groundbreaking works like “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine”, (2006) by Israeli author Ilan Pappé challenged the prevailing narrative about the creation of Israel. It documented the racist intention of the Zionist leaders to expel Palestinians and replace them with European Jews. His book was ignored – did not even merit a review by the New York Times, despite its fascination with Israel..

Western blindness toward Zionism started to crack with a report in 2021 by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. It documented Israel’s regime of what it called “Jewish Supremacy” “from the river to the sea”. (i.e. including Israel itself). However, B’Tselem carefully avoided mentioning Zionism or linking it to the doctrine of “Jewish Supremacy”.

That was followed in February 2022, by a shocking Amnesty International Report: Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime Against Humanity. Amnesty concurred with B’Tselem, claiming that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians both inside and outside Israel was a “crime against humanity”.

The Amnesty document went a step further than B’Tselem by accusing specific Zionist institutions like the Jewish National Fund, and the World Zionist Organization of discrimination, but it did not take issue with Zionism as an ideology.

While this work laid out the intellectual basis for a broad critique of Zionism, neither report gained broad public attention. The Canadian government, for example, refused to comment on either report, despite being repeatedly asked to do so. It sensed, no doubt, the far reaching implication that there was a problem with Israel itself.

Gaza changes everything

However, Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza, going far beyond what anyone could describe as “proportional” response to October 7th, did get international attention.

Yoav Gallant, Israel’s then defence chief said on Israeli television on October 9th, that Palestinians are “animals’ and should be treated as such. Images of starving children and flattened neighbourhoods shocked many Canadians. An Angus Reid poll found that 52% of Canadians believe that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

The declaration in July 2024 by the Israeli parliament that there will NEVER be a Palestinian state and the continuing images of brutality from Gaza and the West Bank, further raised international awareness of the meaning of the ideology behind Israeli actions. Zionism itself – the idea that Jews have more right to Palestinian land than do the Palestinians themselves – has now come under renewed scrutiny.

The beginnings of change in international opinion about Zionism and has frightened Zionist groups in Canada and led them to launch an intense campaign to defend the racist Zionist idea.

The quiet adoption by Public Safety Canada of the idea that opposing Zionism is in itself antisemitic is the fruit of that campaign. But it has also resulted in a significant counter campaign led by groups like CJPME, and IJV Canada, as well as Palestinian Canadian groups which serves to give the issue even higher profile.

Anti-zionist Jewish voices becoming louder

The renewed challenge to Zionism around the world is often being led by progressive Jews and progressive Jewish organizations like IJV Canada.

A full throttled public debate is unfurling in the UK since the declaration by the UK Green Party that “Zionism is racism“. The anticipated counterattack by the Zionist lobby in the UK has been weakened by the fact that the Green Party leader Jack Polanski himself is Jewish.

A new book by Benjamin Moser, a Pulitzer Award winning American Jew “Anti-Zionism – a Jewish History” has shaken the Zionist establishment. Moser reviews the history of the debate among Jews over Zionism which he argues is closely linked to antisemitism because they both are based on the idea that Jews are not welcome or safe anywhere in the world outside of Israel. Moser is also very good in interviews, and is getting a lot of interest on social media. See HERE.

In Canada too, Jews have been prominent in their criticism of Zionism. One of the most prominent is Professor Yakov Rabin of the University of Montreal.

NDP leader Avi Lewis (himself Jewish) very clear about his opposition to the Zionist ideology referring to himself as an “anti-Zionist Jewish person” seeking to “unlearn and unpack the Zionist myths that most Canadian Jews were brought up with.” Of course he has been attacked by CIJA and other Zionist organizations in Canada.has been very clear about his opposition to the Zionist ideology.

Is Zionism doomed?

Israeli historian Ilan Pappé argues that with the genocide in Gaza being shared globally on social media, and the violent ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, the racist nature of the settler colonial Zionist project is becoming clearer and clearer. “This is the last phase of Zionism”, says Pappé.

Canada Talks Israel Palestine is the biweekly newsletter of the Ottawa Forum on Israel/Palestine (OFIP). It aims to promote a serious discussion about the Israel/Palestine issue from a Canadian perspective. Readers are invited to make comment. To get on our regular mailing list, or to get notices about our monthly webinars with experts from around the world, write: ofip.chair@gmail.com.