In the 11 months since Hamas launched Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, elected officials and media outlets have declared that Jewish Canadians can’t be held responsible for Israel’s actions. These declarations have sometimes been framed as responding to an alleged rise in antisemitic incidents. 

On April 18, for example, Parliament passed a motion from Green Party leader Elizabeth May with unanimous consent stating, “That the House unequivocally condemn antisemitism, and in particular reject the idea that Jewish Canadians are responsible for the actions of the State of Israel.” May told the Toronto Star, “If this makes a difference to even one Jewish child heading off to school, then it was worth it.”

There’s nothing wrong with the ostensible logic behind these statements. The idea that Jewish Canadians are responsible for Israeli government actions merely by virtue of being Jewish is wrong and dangerous, and some of the incidents that have comprised the alleged rise in antisemitism, such as a Jewish school in Toronto being shot at, are reprehensible regardless of who is behind them. But beyond these basic points that I’ve yet to see anyone contest, the statements and the ways they’ve been employed over the course of Israel’s genocide in Gaza are troubling.

These statements have sometimes asserted, with no evidence, that any particular act of alleged antisemitism was committed by supporters of Palestinian liberation. This unjustifiably defames a movement struggling to end an ongoing genocide.

In this article, however, I’ll focus on something else: how the idea that Jewish Canadians can’t be held responsible for Israel’s actions simply because they’re Jewish has been cynically stretched to mean that no Jewish Canadians or Jewish organizations are in any way complicit and obfuscate the alarming level of support for the genocide among people who identify as Jewish, according to polling data. 

A few particularly galling examples of this weaponization of victimhood to defend those who support Israel include politicians and media framing activism against the head of a charity for Israeli soldiers as being motivated by the fact that she’s Jewish, elected officials at all levels of government issuing a statement calling a planned protest outside a synagogue that was hosting a real estate showing for land in the occupied West Bank “unacceptable” and “hate,” and an MP calling on others to vote against a motion ending the export of military goods to Israel in order to protect Jewish people in Canada.  

Canada has a duty to prevent genocide from occurring as a signatory to the Genocide Convention. This duty should extend, at least in a moral sense, to its population. As such, allowing those who support Israel to do so without any push back is a moral failure. It’s also cowardly, and has shown an unwillingness among even many critics of Israel to call out plainly what is happening. 

What Does Complicity Mean?

I’ll focus on outlining examples of two forms of complicity in the ongoing genocide. 1) Some may be legally complicit, including Israeli government officials, soldiers and foreign leaders. I’m not implying anyone I discuss is legally complicit, but rather that they occupy a position where this is at least a theoretical possibility. 2) Other individuals and groups can be thought of as morally complicit. 

But before I get into it, a disclaimer: I don’t intend to justify any violent actions that have been directed against supporters of Israel, Jewish or otherwise. Those found to be legally complicit in Israel’s genocide should be held accountable through the legal system, and those found to be morally complicit can be met with protests, boycotts, and other peaceful tactics. Furthermore, I don’t conflate Jews and Zionists. Zionism is an ideology that enjoys support from a variety of people and groups. Jewish people are one source of support, though undoubtedly the most important one. 

Government Officials

Officials in governments outside of Israel could theoretically be found to be legally complicit in Israel’s genocide. At the most basic level, this could implicate a minuscule number of Jewish people in Canada because the Liberal government counts Jewish MPs among its ranks. 

The Jewish community isn’t responsible for what these elected officials do. The moves these officials have made also aren’t worse than non-Jewish MPs doing the same, and some of the MPs most uncritically supportive of Israel aren’t Jewish. However, there are cases where Liberal Jewish MPs have directly invoked their identity in making the case for an action that could be considered to create legal complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

On March 18, Parliament debated an NDP motion originally intended to immediately recognize the State of Palestine and prevent Canadian military goods from going to Israel. Liberal MP Anthony Housefather was the staunchest opponent of the motion among his party. In the debate, he explicitly framed his opposition to the motion that could help save lives as stemming from the fact that he’s Jewish and said it was being done to protect Jews. 

Housefather started his speech by saying, “Mr. Speaker, I am a Canadian. I am a Jew. I am a Zionist.” He added, “Canadian Jews should not have to live through what we are living through right now. My community is terrified. We are being intimidated over and over by people protesting outside of Jewish buildings. Canadian Jews have no control over what happens in the State of Israel, yet, for some reason, Jewish buildings across this country are being targeted.” Later in his speech, Housefather directly addressed the motion and said, “Right now the Jewish community is demoralized and intimidated. [...] If this motion is adopted, Canadian Jews will feel tremendous pain.”

After a watered down version of the motion passed, Housefather publicly contemplated leaving the party, which he was encouraged to do as a Jew by many community members, including a columnist at The Globe and Mail, the former antisemitism envoy, and a Conservative MP. In his eventual statement explaining his decision to stay with the party, Housefather said, “The motion passed by the House of Commons on March 18 was a blow not only to me but to many within the Jewish community.” 

Housefather was later named the special advisor on Jewish Community Relations and Antisemitism as a reward for staying with the party. 

Soldiers

There is a long history of Jewish Canadians joining the Israeli army. This practice has continued throughout the genocide in Gaza. Reporting from the Canadian Press, the National Post and the CBC, for example, has profiled several Jewish Canadians who joined the Israeli army in the days after October 7, all of whom described their choice as being due to their identity. 

The idea that these individuals could potentially be found to be legally complicit in the genocide shouldn’t be controversial to anyone. Still, some may be eager to argue the choice these Jewish Canadians made to join the army is theirs alone, and doesn’t reflect on mainstream Jewish institutions. They’d be wrong to do so.

One of the reasons so-called lone soldiers — Jews outside of Israel who decide to join the Israeli army — are able to assume their role is the financial support they receive from Jewish charities. The most notorious of these within Canada is the HESEG Foundation, a charity co-founded by Indigo CEO Heather Reisman that sends millions of dollars to Israel annually to reward lone soldiers by paying for scholarships, living expenses and more.

Jewish schools have also played a role in encouraging young Jewish Canadians to become lone soldiers. In August, Mondoweiss reported that a 20-year-old Jewish Canadian Toronto man who joined the Israeli army was subsequently put into a coma by Hezbollah rocket fire in July. The article notes that the family’s rabbi told the Canadian Jewish News that the man joined the army in part because of the education he received at a chain of Toronto Jewish schools. The mother of one of the man’s classmates said that “a quarter of the class” joined the Israeli army. Mondoweiss noted, “The school has a plaque honoring alumni who joined the Israeli military and its website highlights graduates who fought in the IDF. A 2014 school dinner to congratulate ‘over 100 alumni who served in the IDF’ included a video message from the mayor of Jerusalem and current Israeli economy minister Nir Barkat.”

In February 2021, I wrote about a criminal complaint alleging ongoing illegal recruitment of Canadians into the Israeli army. I noted that the group behind the complaint, which included lawyers, human rights activists, academics and religious leaders, alleged, “That some private Jewish schools, as well as community institutions and organizations, have also taken part in this recruitment.” I added, “One member of this group, a rabbi, has detailed how this process can begin at least as early as elementary school, as he witnessed in the institution his children used to attend.” This process has since been illustrated in the 2023 documentary Israelism. 

The encouragement and celebration of Canadian Jewish youth joining the Israeli army also extends to the highest levels of the community and its representatives. In January 2020, Deborah Lyons, then Canada’s ambassador to Israel and now its antisemitism envoy, held a government-sponsored event honouring Canadian citizens in the Israeli army. A daughter of the former antisemitism envoy, Irwin Cotler, also joined the Israeli army.

Moral Complicity

Support For Israel

Data suggests the majority of Canada’s Jewish community supports Israel to some degree. 

Polling on the matter was published in the Spring 2024 issue of the Canadian Jewish Studies. The study asked more than 2,800 respondents (414 of them Jewish) many questions in February, including whether they believe “Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state.” The study’s author said he believes a positive answer to this question would indicate the person is a Zionist, presumably because the statement is in effect an argument for Jewish supremacy on occupied Palestinian land (though it’s possible respondents could interpret it in a different way than the author). About 91 per cent of Canadian Jews surveyed replied agreeing with the statement, with just 3 per cent disagreeing.

Also, just 26 per cent of Jewish respondents said they find “Israel’s military response to the attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023, ... excessive.” At the time the survey was conducted, Israel had already killed at least 27,000 Gazans, and the ICJ had already determined there was a plausible risk Israel was committing genocide. In addition, only 38 per cent said they believe Israel doesn’t have “the right to build Jewish settlements in the West Bank,” a practice that unambiguously violates international law.

The study also found that 70 per cent of Canadian Jews said they were “‘very’ or ‘somewhat’ emotionally attached to Israel.” The study’s author rightly described this as “concerning,” but only because the number dropped about seven percentage points from September 2023. At this rate, it would take another 50 months or so of genocide in Gaza for Jewish Canadian emotional attachment to Israel to approach 0 per cent, assuming the drop is even because of it. 

In June, an estimated 50,000 people turned out for the annual “Walk With Israel” event in Toronto, which organizers say was a record-breaking number. The rally, which was filled with Israeli flags, moved along an area of the city that contained “mostly Jewish community retail and restaurants,” according to the Canadian Jewish News. The publication noted, “For some of the walkers, the march was an opportunity to confront the pro-Palestinian protests, and acts of violence and vandalism that have preoccupied the Jewish community for the past eight months.”

One Jewish attendee of the rally later wrote, “This annual event has always been a cherished tradition for us, one that brings our family closer together while connecting us to our roots and to the wider Jewish community. But, this year was different; the numbers, the pictures, the emotions, and the sense of community. Walking alongside my children, my spouse, and my mother, we felt a profound connection to our heritage and the power of this community.”

Using Identity To Defend Israel

Jews aren’t the only ones in Canada that defend Israel, though their feelings toward it as a whole are more positive than other groups. Jewish people defending Israel are also not worse than anyone else doing the same. What is unique among Jews, however, is the weaponization of Jewish identity to defend Israel. 

Returning to the previously mentioned study, the author found that the majority of Jews surveyed considered the following statements or actions to be antisemitic: “there is no need for a separate Jewish state” (69 per cent); “Israel is ‘an apartheid state’” (66 per cent); “they support the boycott of Israeli goods/products” (65 per cent); “Israel is ‘committing genocide’ in its treatment of Palestinians” (64 per cent). Well-established assertions about Israel and its conduct, as well as peaceful methods to try to change it, are seen by the majority of Canadian Jews as a hateful attack on them. 

These views aren’t kept private, but used by individuals, media, politicians, lobbyists and others to help argue in defence of Israel and to attack those who protest against it. This is a daily occurrence around the country, online and in-person, as anyone who has been involved with the pro-Palestine movement for more than five minutes can tell you. One particularly striking example is how antisemitism and anti-Zionism have been conflated at the highest levels through the adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism.

This definition, originally published in 2005, explicitly conflates Zionism and Judaism. It has been widely criticized by a range of groups, including Palestinians, Jews, academics, human rights groups and other organizations, in part for the chilling effect it has on free speech, academic freedom, and human rights advocacy. Yet the definition, at the urging of mainstream Jewish groups, has been adopted by governments throughout Canada, including: the federal government, Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, and many cities.

This is a clear example of complicity through the weaponization of identity to defend a genocidal state and attempt to handicap its opponents. 

Pressuring Politicians

Some elected Canadian officials are fanatical believers in Zionism. This probably isn’t true of most of them, and yet there is an adoration of Israel shared between the Liberals and Conservatives. Why? 

It’s not because Israel is very popular among Canadians as a whole. Instead, it depends at least in some part on how the mostly-Zionist Jewish community views Israel. This doesn’t mean Canadian politicians necessarily care about Jews more than other groups, but rather that researchers have found Jewish people are the most likely to base their vote primarily on Israel. 

For example, the aforementioned study’s author noted that, “In what may be an historic first, a plurality of Canadian Jews in early 2024 said they would vote for the Conservative Party if a federal election were held tomorrow.” As to why this is the case, he concluded: “In my judgment, the contrasting Liberal and Conservative positions on the Israel-Hamas war were the main factors leading to the sudden large drop in Liberal Party support among Jewish voters in 2024.” The contrasting position he refers to is that the Conservatives offered “unambiguous support for Israel alone.”

As such, a politician supporting Israel under normal circumstances would not necessarily lose a lot of votes, but not supporting it enough could lead to that outcome. It’s not a coincidence that the elected officials most staunchly supportive of Israel tend to be representing electoral ridings with large Jewish populations.

So, when it comes time for politicians to make decisions on matters connected to Israel, Zionist Jewish Canadians are able to wield significant pressure, both as individuals and through major organizations intended to represent them (the Centre For Israel and Jewish Affairs, for example, had lobbied 56 per cent of MPs and/or their staff as of April and taken at least 22 per cent of them on trips to “Israel” as of November 2023).

Another way to illustrate this point is to look at who politicians credit when making decisions.

In 2016, Ontario’s parliament passed a motion formally denouncing the BDS movement. Testimony from multiple MPPs before the motion was passed focused on the Jewish community’s thoughts as to why BDS should be condemned. The federal government did the same earlier that year, and the debate was similar. Announcing that the Liberals would support the Conservative motion, Minister of Foreign Affairs Stéphane Dion said, “Since we owe so much to our Jewish communities, should we not show solidarity with Israel, a country that is under intense military pressure and the constant threat of terrorism, and needs our support?” 

More recently, in March, Vaughan, Ont., Mayor Steven Del Duca cited the concerns of Jewish Canadians when announcing a plan to pass a bylaw that would ban protests in certain areas of the city. This move was requested and welcomed by Israel lobby groups, and similar moves have proven to be popular with the broader Jewish community in the area. 

In April, Ontario NDP leader Marit Stiles attempted to pass a unanimous consent motion to overturn a ban on keffiyehs in the legislature that had been enacted by the Speaker. Progressive Conservative MPP Lisa MacLeod, one of the people who prevented the motion from passing, thereby allowing the ban to continue, called the vote itself antisemitic, and said, “I think that when Marit Stiles suggests that all Ontarians are in support of this, she is ignoring the fact that the Jewish community in the province feels like they’re under threat and under attack.”

Also earlier this year, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted, “To the members of the Jewish community who spoke with us today: Thank you. Thank you for speaking so candidly about your pain, your anger, and your grief. I hear you. I want you to know that our commitment to you – and to Israel, as a Jewish and democratic state – is unwavering.”

Efforts from Jewish lobby groups (often representing mainstream opinions in Canada’s Jewish population) to influence politicians have helped lead to decisions that have negatively impacted the struggle for Palestinian liberation. 

Sending Resources

Finally, perhaps the most direct way some Jewish Canadians are morally complicit in Israel’s actions are donations to Israel. 

Israel was the top foreign recipient of charitable donations from Canada in seven of the 10 years from 2013 to 2022. Over that time, it received at least $2.2 billion in donations. A significant amount of this money was spent on purposes that violate international law and Canadian government policy. For example, four Jewish charities that have had their charitable status revoked since 2019 spent at least some money aiding Israel’s illegal settlements and/or its military. These are direct forms of subsidizing the Israeli occupation that help enable its murder of Palestinians and its theft of their land. 

To be sure, Jewish Canadians aren’t the only ones sending over this money. Yet based on close reviews of the charities mentioned, I’ve found that Jewish Canadians are clearly disproportionately represented among the charitable donors. This doesn’t implicate most Jewish Canadians, but it does implicate many mainstream Jewish institutions including community foundations and federations, schools, and synagogues, as well as community leaders and many prominent philanthropists.

These sorts of donations are also openly celebrated and encouraged. On Oct. 23, 2023, CTech published an article titled, “Canadian Jewish community raises $100 million CAD to support Israel” under the subsection “Israel At War.” The article noted that the community, through the Jewish Federations, raised this incredible amount of money in just two weeks. 

The author wrote, “The campaign is to date the largest ever fundraising campaign for Israel organized by the Canadian Jewish community. Prior to, the largest amount raised was $46 million CAD during the Second Lebanon War in 2006.” The article also quoted the director general of Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA, who said, “The pulse of Jewish Canada has been beating with Israel. They aren’t sleeping, they are laser-focused, they are fighting in the most profound sense for the people of Israel. It’s really exponential - it’s touched something.”

These donations aren’t illegal, Jewish Canadians aren’t the only ones making them and donating to charities is a normal Canadian practice. But this shouldn’t obfuscate the fact that Jewish Canadians are disproportionately represented among these donors. And the normalization of something doesn’t make it morally correct.

Sending money to Israel for at least some purposes creates moral complicity in its actions.

Rebuttals

I expect I’ll receive push back to this article, and want to preemptively address two potential critiques.

Double Standards

The first rebuttal is that I’d never say Muslim Canadians are complicit in ISIS’s actions, so why do I feel comfortable saying some Jewish Canadians are complicit in Israel’s? This rebuttal seems reasonable, particularly because in the 2010s I was a vocal critic of those who expected Muslims to condemn ISIS simply because they acted in the name of Islam. However, it’s anything but. 

To start, the situation facing the two communities is nowhere near the same. Calling on Muslims to condemn ISIS was a relatively mainstream position in Canadian society and politics for a long time, with many even expecting Muslims to monitor others in their mosque and report them to police if they had suspicions. Meanwhile, no one expects anything of Jewish Canadians with regard to condemning Israel. In fact, as established, the mainstream position is for politicians to defend Israel because many Jewish Canadians care about it.

Beyond that, there’s just no comparison in the way Muslims relate to ISIS and Jews relate to Israel.

Muslim religious scholars and organizations at the highest levels within Canada condemned ISIS. Meanwhile, the Canadian Rabbinic Caucus issued a statement condemning the Canadian government for calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. 

I wasn’t available to find polling data on what Canadian Muslims thought of ISIS. However, the overwhelming majority of people in 11 countries with “significant Muslim populations” expressed negative views of ISIS, according to polling, including 92 per cent of Gazans. Meanwhile, polling since October 7 has found that the majority of Jewish people in Canada have continued to support Israel in general and its actions in Gaza in specific.

The overwhelming majority of ISIS’s victims and those killed fighting against it were Muslims. Meanwhile, Israel’s victims are overwhelmingly Muslim and Christian Arabs, and few to no Jews have taken up arms against it. 

Muslims who left Canada to join ISIS were scorned, with the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada even issuing a fatwa against them. Meanwhile, Jewish lone soldiers enjoy enablement and celebration from mainstream parts of their community. 

Canadian Jews have proudly and openly sent hundreds of millions of dollars to Israel and its occupation over the years. The same can’t be said for Muslims and ISIS. 

Muslims explicitly and repeatedly denounced ISIS by invoking their identity. The majority of Jewish Canadians see critiques of Israel as an attack on theirs, according to polling. 

It’s insulting to even imply the stance Muslims have toward ISIS is anything close to how Canadian Jews relate to Israel. If this were true of Canadian Muslims, I would have happily critiqued them for it.

Zionist Propaganda

Another rebuttal to this article may come from other anti-Zionists, who believe that I’m buying into Zionist propaganda about the state of the Jewish community. I’m more sensitive and sympathetic to this critique, but I ultimately believe it’s misguided.

Zionists assert that anti-Zionism is antisemitism, that to be a Jew is to be a Zionist and that anti-Zionist Jews are not really Jewish. I disagree with all of these points. I’m merely interested in offering an accurate representation of where the Jewish community in Canada as a whole stands on Israel based on public polling and data. This doesn’t mean the Jewish community has always been this way, as Zionism is a violent blip in the long history of Judaism. It doesn’t mean the Jewish community will always be this way. And it’s obviously not an argument for Zionism — Zionism would be wrong even if 100 per cent of Jews called themselves Zionists.

I understand why anti-Zionists want to champion and promote anti-Zionist Jews, as this small but outspoken segment of the community has greatly contributed to the movement. I’ve learned a lot from some of them, and I do think they have an important role to play in the struggle to liberate Palestine. However, sometimes anti-Zionists overstate the portion of the broader community this group makes up. This is a mistake. In order to fight Zionism, we need an accurate picture of where it gains its support. We do ourselves no favours by ignoring the obvious and adopting more comforting narratives, such as that Christians are ultimately to blame. 

Jewish groups are emerging that are explicitly trying to counter this trend.

For example, the “Guide for Jewish Anti-Zionist Allyship,” co-written by Em Cohen, argues that “Jewish anti-zionists should work to disrupt zionism within Jewish institutions.” It notes, “Zionism is a settler-colonial movement undergirded by an international infrastructure. That global base of support is made up of many Jewish communal organizations and institutions. From organizations that host propaganda trips or directly fund zionist settlement to organizations that spread zionist propaganda, the Jewish organizations that structurally support zionism are many.” 

In a Mondoweiss article, meanwhile, Jews Against White Supremacy, a new anti-Zionist organization, writes, “When mainstream Jewish leaders, leaders of Jewish Zionist organizations and institutions, and rabbis, have been openly calling for genocide and the annihilation of Palestinian people, there is no greater evidence that we must organise as Jews to defeat Jewish Zionist institutions.” 

As a whole, the campaign to obfuscate support for Israel within the Jewish Canadian community (when convenient) is part of a broader trend whereby we’re told that we shouldn’t bring what is happening in Gaza here. 

This claim is brought up any time people concerned about genocide in Gaza take actions to express their opposition and hold those complicit in it here to account. Yet it’s never applied to the pro-Israel side, which does whatever it can here to ensure what is ‘happening there’ continues.

We have a duty to try to stop the genocide. At the very least, that requires telling the truth about where support for it is coming from. Genocide is happening there, but it’s being enabled here. We can’t let those who wish for us to ignore this catastrophe they’re funding succeed. 

No one is complicit in what a state does because of their identity — they’re complicit because of their actions. A notable segment of Canada’s Jewish population is complicit in Israel’s actions because of what they do, not who they are.