In June 2024, after years of advocacy from Palestinian and Jewish families, the Toronto District School Board voted to include anti-Palestinian racism as part of its Combating Hate and Racism strategy. While many people saw this as long overdue, a number of pro-Israeli organizations almost immediately began campaigning to have the decision reversed. Some even went so far as to suggest that anti-Palestinian racism is an oppressive and antisemitic framework, and called on the TDSB to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism instead.
Antisemitism must be vigorously challenged as a pillar of Eurocentric white supremacy. Zionism is a specific political ideology and form of ethnonationalism that drove the establishment of the state of Israel and maintains the illegal occupation of Palestine. The Zionist mantra of “a land without a people for a people without a land” parallels the settler-colonial ideology of terra nullius (barren land) that led to the colonization of the Americas. But Palestine was not a land without people. The land purchase agency for the Zionist project was actually called “The Jewish Colonization Agency,” and Israeli civilians call themselves “settlers” and refer to their colonies (recently deemed illegal under international law by the International Court of Justice) as “settlements.”1
Conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism suppresses dissent to settler-colonial Israeli state violence and Israeli apartheid, and also actively perpetuates anti-Palestinian racism. The report “Anti-Palestinian Racism: Naming, Framing and Manifestations” identifies anti-Palestinian racism through its many forms, including “denying the Nakba and justifying violence against Palestinians; failing to acknowledge Palestinians as an Indigenous people with a collective identity, belonging and rights in relation to occupied and historic Palestine; erasing the human rights and equal dignity and worth of Palestinians; excluding or pressuring others to exclude Palestinian perspectives, Palestinians and their allies; defaming Palestinians and their allies with slander such as being inherently antisemitic, a terrorist threat/sympathizer or opposed to democratic values.” A recent study reveals that slander of Palestinians as antisemitic is the most common subtype of anti-Palestinian racism in Canada.
IHRA definition: state-sanctioned anti-Palestinian racism
“When the State of Israel claims to represent all Jewish people, defenders of Israeli policy redefine antisemitism to include criticism of Israel.”—On Anti-Semitism: Solidarity and the Struggle for Justice.
A key legislative tool to suppress Palestinian human rights and institutionalize anti-Palestinian racism in Canada is the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) working definition of antisemitism, which the federal government and several provinces and municipalities have adopted.
The primary goal of the IHRA definition is not to fight antisemitism or to protect Jewish communities from racist attacks, predominantly carried out by white supremacists; it is a mechanism to suppress advocacy for Palestinian rights. Of the definition’s 11 examples, seven deem criticism of Israel or Zionism to be antisemitic. Even one of the definition’s original authors, Kenneth Stern, has condemned its anti-democratic and repressive impact on Palestinian rights.
In 2023, over 100 Palestinian human rights groups and global organizations including American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch, urged the United Nations not to adopt the IHRA definition. They wrote “the UN should ensure that its vital efforts to combat antisemitism do not inadvertently embolden or endorse policies and laws that undermine fundamental human rights, including the right to speak and organize in support of Palestinian rights and to criticize Israeli government policies. For these reasons, we strongly urge the UN not to endorse the IHRA definition of antisemitism.”
Forty international Jewish organizations similarly write: “The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which is increasingly being adopted or considered by western governments, is worded in such a way as to be easily adopted or considered by western governments to intentionally equate legitimate criticisms of Israel and advocacy for Palestinian rights with antisemitism, as a means to suppress the former.”
In a sweeping letter in 2020, a group of 122 Palestinian and Arab intellectuals also expressed their concerns about the IHRA definition and the cover it provides to a global military superpower: “There is a huge difference between a condition where Jews are singled out, oppressed and suppressed as a minority by antisemitic regimes or groups, and a condition where the self-determination of a Jewish population in Palestine/Israel has been implemented in the form of an ethnic exclusivist and territorially expansionist state.”
In Canada, the IHRA definition is opposed by an array of organizations, including the Canadian Labour Congress, Coalition of Palestinian Canadian Organizations, Independent Jewish Voices Canada, Canadian Federation of Students, BC Civil Liberties Association, Canadian Association of University Teachers, Union of BC Indian Chiefs, Confédération des syndicats nationaux, Canadian Union of Postal Workers, and International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, as well as 40 faculty unions, 200 Jewish faculty, and over 650 Canadian academics, all of whom cite the threats to freedom of expression, academic freedom, and constitutionally-protected rights to oppose government policies.
A recent 2024 report “Combatting Anti-Palestinian Racism and Antisemitism: An Intersectional Approach to Canada’s Anti-Racism Strategy,” states: “[C]onflating legitimate criticism of Israeli policies and actions with antisemitism makes it more difficult for the public to identify genuine antisemitism, thereby advertently putting Jews in danger. Further, insisting that Judaism/Jewishness means uncritical support for the policies and actions of a state that is widely and justifiably condemned for serious human rights violations is itself antisemitic, erases non-Zionist Jewish identities and histories, and also puts Jews at risk.” This report also highlights the systemic power imbalance between Palestinian and pro-Israel Jewish communities in Canada.
The IHRA definition continues to be pushed in Canada by the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, B’nai Brith Canada, and other staunchly pro-Israel organizations. The 14-page report “IHRA’s True Intentions” by Canadians for Justice in Peace in the Middle East details how efforts to adopt the IHRA definition in Canada comes from an explicitly pro-Israel coalition that wants to subdue growing pro-Palestinian movements. Independent Jewish Voices has also painstakingly documented numerous examples where the IHRA definition has been used to silence the Palestinian solidarity movement in Canada through fabricated smears of antisemitism. Their report “Unveiling the Chilly Climate: The Suppression of Speech on Palestine in Canada” sheds light on the wave of suppression of pro-Palestinian speech, including intense reprisals, harassment, and intimidation faced by students, teachers, and organizations speaking in support of Palestinian rights.
The intensifying energies to implement the IHRA definition and escalating smears on advocacy for Palestinian human rights coincide with Gaza being subjected to one of the heaviest and most destructive bombing campaigns in modern history. Hospitals, schools, refugee camps, mosques, churches, residential buildings, UN shelters have all been destroyed. Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah harrowingly reports that children in Gaza are “the biggest cohort of pediatric amputees in history.” Almost two million Gazans have been displaced. These war crimes are in the context of Israel’s violent 76-year-long occupation of Palestine.
At this juncture in history, acting to urgently end the genocide of Palestinians and fighting antisemitism both necessitate the dismantling of colonialism and racism. This means we must be able to openly criticize Israel in the same way as any other state—especially settler-colonial and genocidal ones, including Canada. This includes education on Palestinian history and liberation; fighting anti-Palestinian racism, Islamophobia, antisemitism, Zionism, anti-Indigenous racism, anti–Black racism, and anti-Arab racism as interconnected forms of racism; rejecting the adoption of the vague and problematic IHRA definition in educational institutions; and upholding the right of students and educators to teach Palestine and act for Palestinian rights, such as through university encampments, without reprisal. As Nelson Mandela said “In extending our hands across the miles to the people of Palestine, we do so in the full knowledge that we are part of a humanity that is one.”
