Canada’s antisemitism strategy is being written by people who don’t recognize it.

A government effort to combat anti-Jewish hatred collapses when those shaping it platform anti-Jewish narratives, misdiagnose its sources, and ignore the forces driving it.

photo: Eric Prouzet/Unsplash

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This is a guest essay by Cynthia Lazar, a retired psychiatrist and Canadian Zionist writing about Israel and antisemitism.

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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Canadian politicians keep asserting that antisemitism has no place in Canada.

So how did three of nine senators on the committee who wrote Canada’s strategy to combat antisemitism sign an open letter condemning Israel? The required detail to understand their actions makes this interesting.

The Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights was tasked with providing recommendations to the government on fighting antisemitism. Their recently released report, “Standing Against Antisemitism: Protecting Communities and Strengthening Canadian Democracy,” was applauded by mainstream Jewish organizations like the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, B’nai Brith, and the Israeli embassy, but questioned by a number of journalists like Aviva Klompas and even pilloried by Tristin Hopper at the National Post for failing to mention Islamist extremism.

When a third of the committee cannot recognize the modern day anti-Jewish bigotry that underlies this open letter, then their work has gone terribly wrong. There was not a single Jewish member of the nine senators, nor did any Jewish senators take part in the hearings or writing of the report. The deputy chair, Wanda Thomas Bernard, spoke in the Senate about Gaza, insisting that Israeli actions were “not about self-defense” and “that people are dying of starvation and dehydration. The Israeli military bombed and raided hospitals.”

Unlike the three senators who signed the open letter, Thomas Bernard spoke two years ago, before she had heard the testimony about antisemitism, and shortly after she had completed her report as deputy chair of the committee fighting “Islamophobia.”

In order to understand how this committee’s work went so far off the rails, I read the 75-page report of the Senate committee on antisemitism, as well as the transcripts of all their meetings and submitted written briefs.

I also read the Senate committee’s other “anti-racist” report, “Combatting Hate: Islamophobia and its Impact on Muslims in Canada.” That nine-person committee, exploring anti-Muslim bigotry, had four Muslim members and a refugee from Iran. Unlike the report on antisemitism, there were no included briefs or testimony from groups that vilified the minority.

The three who signed the open letter to the Canadian government demonizing Israel on July 29, 2025, have no excuse for their level of ignorance. It is a wilful refusal to identify modern-day hatred targeting Jewish communities. The open letter expressed “grave concerns about Canada’s continued military export to Israel and the deepening humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.”

In July 2025, they repeated the libel that “more than 1 million Palestinians are facing catastrophic levels of food insecurity” and that “over 50,000 Palestinian children are killed or injured.” Seven months into the work of the committee on antisemitism they could not recognize a recycled medieval blood libel about Jews killing children, let alone modern disinformation.

Were the three Jewish senators asked to contribute? I don’t know.

Throughout the transcripts of oral testimony, antisemitism is written with a hyphen, but in the report it was changed to antisemitism without the hyphen, finally recognizing that anti-Jewish bigotry has nothing to do with semites. They would not consider an alternate name for the hatred, even though antisemitism is a relatively new term for the world’s oldest hatred and reflects specifically Nazi racism rather than today’s iteration, “anti-Zionism.”

They focused relentlessly on Right-wing, white-supremacist hatred of Jews. That made them feel comfortable. The awareness that much of the Middle East imported that Nazi hatred to Muslim countries was lost upon them. The semantics, insisting on the term antisemitism rather than anti-Jewish bigotry, reflects a lack of understanding of the broader picture.

In the report, they state “the committee is keenly aware of the similarities between antisemitism, sexism, anti-Black racism, Islamophobia, and other forms of hate, as well as the ways in which individuals can face intersectional discrimination.” Their desire to force other templates upon this hatred led to a complete negation of the unique character of anti-Jewish bigotry. Two of the seven meetings were devoted to hearing from “anti-Zionists” as credible experts to discuss hatred of Jews.

One was given over to zealous “anti-Zionists” represented by Corey Balsam and Rabbi David Mivasair of Independent Jewish Voices, a group that works closely with Students for Justice in Palestine. Students for Justice in Palestine is a terror-supporting collective that organized most of the celebrations of October 7th a day later and the university encampments in 2024. Independent Jewish Voices’s mailing address is the office of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, the group pushing “anti-Palestinian racism” onto our institutions, in an effort to criminalize Zionism.

Independent Jewish Voices was joined by the virulently “anti-Zionist” law professor Joshua Sealy-Harrington. Mr. Sealy-Harrington has his own page on Canary Mission’s website describing his support for the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, as well as the “pro-Palestinian” encampments. He was mentioned in the Toronto Metropolitan University report as a signatory of the law school’s open letter, written days after October 7th, accusing Jews of causing the massacre. He has often repeated that resistance by any means is valid.

David Mivasair stated in his testimony, “If our government didn’t support [the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s well-renowned definition of antisemitism], I think fewer people would associate Jews as a whole with the State of Israel and their anger at Israel wouldn’t be directed at the rest of us Jews.” In other words, he blames Israel for antisemitism in Canada.

Mivasair also called one of the most mainstream Jewish advocacy groups in the United States, the Anti-Defamation League, “a racist anti-Palestinian hate organization.”

Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East was invited to submit a brief in which they stated, “The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s Handbook goes on to sanitize Zionism as simply Jewish self-determination … The perverse framing of this International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance example ignores that anti-Palestinian racism is the conjoined evil twin of Zionism.”

The unique demonization of the Israeli state and all those who support her (i.e., the vast majority of Jews) is classic anti-Jewish hatred. The committee chose to give Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East a platform to repeat anti-Jewish libels, such as all Palestinians were forcibly removed from Israel and that the state was founded as a settler-colonial project as payment for the Holocaust on the backs of Palestinian peasants.

Another day was reserved for Left-leaning academics arguing to rescind the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism. Professor Ivan Kalmar quoted two of the greatest purveyors of modern-day Jew-hatred — Edward Said and Mahmoud Mamdani — as academics he respects, who have shaped his understanding of antisemitism. He describes antisemitism as arising intertwined with Islamophobia due to Christian bigotry.

Annie Ohana, a “Sephardic Arabic Jewish white presenting person,” started her testimony with a land acknowledgement and called herself an “anti-oppression curriculum specialist.” She described teaching the “Balfour Declaration”¹ as step one “of a genocide in 10 steps.” She asserted that we need not erase the “Nakba.”

People may differ in their descriptions of the war started by five surrounding Arab states upon the State of Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948. However, one of the few meetings meant to remedy the plight of Jews in Canada was used instead to offer an ahistorical narrative of the origins of the State of Israel. Attributing Palestinian suffering to Israeli actions and ignoring Jewish dispossession served only one purpose: legitimizing “anti-Zionism.” The Jewish fig leaves fulfilled their assigned roles.

Professor Kenneth Stern said he “respected Rashid Khalidi as an academic.” Khalidi was Edward Said’s protege at Columbia University and continued disseminating anti-Israel propaganda, as had his mentor. Stern scandalized that after the implementation of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, the deeply bigoted and dangerous Israel Apartheid Week was cancelled. He lamented that Khalidi had been unable to teach his usual curriculum about the history of the Middle East.

Mira Sucharov, a professor at Carleton University, insisted that “Jewish institutions, here in Canada, need to realize that they may be fuelling the wrongheaded assumption by presenting all or part of their mission as being to support Israel.” To be clear, she added: “Anti-Zionism and antisemitism are not the same thing.” She insisted that we need to ask protesters what they mean by “intifada” and “globalize.”

Sucharov wants to adopt a stance of “co-resistance” where Jews and Muslims come together to fight all forms of oppression. There was absolutely no understanding of the muqawama (Arabic for “resistance,” often defining a doctrine of persistent warfare and “constant combat” against perceived occupiers or oppressors, notably Israel and Western influence in the Middle East) and what that resistance actually means. She stated that “a large uptick in antisemitic incidents is a function of what Israel is doing in Gaza.” Sucharov made this accusation on December 1, 2025, approximately two months after the October 9th ceasefire. The war ended exactly as Israel had promised, when the hostages were returned.

On October 20th, the committee chairperson asked the head of the Canadian Union of Jewish Students, “How can we distinguish and disentangle the Israeli government from Jewish individuals who are being targeted?”

A third meeting was given to Police and Stats Canada employees, who seemed to understand little about the problem. One employee insisted that anti-Jewish hate crimes declined in 2025 despite B’nai Brith’s evidence to the contrary.

The representative for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (Canada’s national police service) stated, “We are finding now that if the youth hate Jewish people, they will hate Black people, the LGBTQ community, and many others.” Again, this completely negates the Left that has allied with Islamists to foment the hatred of Jews. I guess he had never heard of Queers for Palestine or the Pride marches that excluded Jews.

Over and over again, senators emphasized that Jews should not be held responsible for the actions of the Israeli government. While holding Jews responsible for the actions of the sole Jewish state is anti-Jewish bigotry, they ignored completely the genocidally antisemitic propaganda from Hamas, Qatar, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and others that lead to the demonization of Israel.

They briefly alluded to foreign interference, but neither Qatar nor Iran are ever mentioned in this report. There is no awareness of the Muslim Brotherhood and their decades-long plan to infiltrate media, universities, elementary education, and every level of government in an effort to destroy all Zionists and the only Jewish nation. This committee maintained their view of Israel as a pariah state, while decrying the poor treatment of Jews in Canada.

If a country cannot even name the forces driving hatred against its Jews, it is not fighting antisemitism; it is laundering it.

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1. The Balfour Declaration was a 67-word letter issued on November 2, 1917, by British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild, supporting the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in British Mandate Palestine.