TDSB: Is criticism of Israel and Zionism antisemitic?

It’s time to do what our teachers always told us and support our ideas with argument, facts and reason. The urgency of this requirement is brilliantly illustrated by the shameless lies that currently pervade political discourse. Unfortunately, it is also manifest in the disaster that was the presentation, on February 12 and 13, of the TDSB staff update: Affirming Jewish Identities and Addressing Antisemitism and the Combatting Hate and Racism Strategy.

Parents, community members and trustees were presented with a report that appeared to have a plan – but which staff members, themselves, said was not complete. It’s clear that there is a disturbing  rise in antisemitism; antisemitic hate crimes reported to Toronto police rose by 108 percent in 2023. The staff update had no current figures on incidents of antisemitism in TDSB schools; the last Human Rights office annual report was in 2022-23. There were certainly alarming reports of antisemitism: kids being accosted for wearing Jewish symbols, removal of Israeli flags from displays, denial or minimizing the Holocaust, being held responsible for Israeli policies, complaints ignored and similar problems.¹ These have to stop.

Staff said they had spoken with 125 students along with members of 35 groups including, social justice, Holocaust and antisemitism educators as well as members of the TDSB Jewish Heritage Committee. What about others like board staff and parents who would certainly have insight as to what goes on in schools? This is to come later, staff explained.

And of course, what about people very closely affected by the report: members of the Palestinian community? What could be more obvious than consulting them?

 

A working definition?

The update missed basic information and was back-to-front: rough plan first, full consultation to follow. Under normal circumstances that miscalculation wouldn’t be so serious; this time was different. This time, the update affirmed the TDSB’s use of the working definition of antisemitism developed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA):

Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.

It adds: Manifestations (of antisemitism) might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. However, criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.

So, criticism of Israel like any other state – isn’t antisemitic? Apparently not.

After listening to nearly 100 delegates, both for and against the motion that the Board’s Planning and Priorities Committee receive the update, Trustees Shelly Laskin and Alexandra Lulka Rotman chastised TDSB constituents with whom they sharply disagreed:

Trustee Laskin said:

“There was true harm spoken tonight. There was antisemitism. There was Jew hatred and I need to apologize for all those who have witnessed this. This is not acceptable; no form of hate, no form of hate within deputation is acceptable.”²

When the meeting reconvened the next day, Trustee Lulka Rotman said:

“Last night might be the most offensive experience I’ve had to sit through as a Jewish woman on this board. The amount of antisemitism that was on blatant display last night was absolutely gut-wrenching. Not only did we hear an overwhelming number of factual and historical inaccuracies, but full-on antisemitic tropes, including blood libel, global Jewish power and Holocaust inversion.”

She added:

“I implore my colleagues to recognize that, while we heard loud voices last night, they represent only a minuscule percentage of the Jewish community. You heard from 60 – 70 people last night who came here out of hatred and animosity, many of whom were not Jewish or do not reside in Toronto.” ³

The two trustees said absolutely nothing to back up their claims; they came from nowhere. During the 6 hours I spent listening to the delegates, I heard no assertion of such disgusting tropes. It’s true that delegates described completely unacceptable behaviour their children endured. But that didn’t come from other delegates to the meeting. I heard no “Jew hatred” expressed by them – unless opposition to or criticism of Zionism or Israel is the sharp dividing line between hate and support; between acceptability and opprobrium.

None of the other trustees at the meeting challenged these outrageous propositions. Instead, they voted 13 – 5 to accept the update and move it further along to become TDSB policy.⁴

 

Delegates

Delegates to the Planning and Priorities Committee on February 12, were worried about the  safety of kids in school – worried for different reasons, maybe, but this was at the bottom of their remarks. It was moving to hear from the majority of people delegating, nearly half of whom said they were Jewish, demand the update be rejected. To many of them, anti-Zionism must not be conflated with antisemitism. In many cases they were opposed to Zionism because of the actions taken in its name by Israel: that if criticism of Israel is a priori anti-Zionist and thus antisemitic, where does it leave people who oppose the action of the state?  A child related a story about being told to revise a picture she’d drawn that showed a sign saying: ”Free Palestine” – an example of antisemitism, she said: the denial of diversity of Jewish opinions. Parents worried that community voices would be cut off, argued that wearing Palestinian garb is a legitimate expression of solidarity with people who are losing their lives – not hate towards Jewish people. One parent told of being called pro-terrorist because she wore a Palestinian pin. A recurring concern was that the update hadn’t mentioned anything about the rise of right-wing antisemitism. ⁵

Those on the other side of the argument were equally moving, though for different reasons. Speakers wanted the update received, most claiming that anti-Zionism was indeed antisemitism. Some of them had seen swastikas drawn on washroom walls, staff indifference to complaints, a picture of bomb wielding Palestinian, anti-Jewish graffiti – or of all things, a student wearing a keffiya. A parent described how her children had been told Jews were greedy; that Hitler didn’t finish the job. For others it was because Zionism was deeply rooted in Jewish culture, that the vast majority of Jewish people are supporters. Jews criticizing or opposed to Zionism are a minority not worth hearing. Others believed opponents had formed some kind of alliance or lobby group.⁶

It’s obvious that there is not agreement amongst Jewish people about what is and is not antisemitic. Are Jews who oppose Zionism or criticize Israel anti-Semites, “Jew haters” supporters of “blood libel?” To an outsider like me, it’s unfathomable.

 

Challenging the definition

Writing last week in Jewish Currents, author, Peter Beinart commented on investigations  that followed nearly a year of pro-Palestinian encampments on university campuses across America. Like the TDSB update, the investigations were a good idea in theory, he said, but that their reports conflated statements that “challenged the legitimacy of Israel and Zionism”⁷  with antisemitic remarks about Jewish people, themselves. Particularly relevant here, he argued that to comprehend the relationship between antisemitism and pro-Palestinian activism, you need to understand the experience of Jewish students who feel threatened by this activism, but also the experience of Palestinians that shapes the way they talk about Israel.

Beinart describes the lack of scholarship and restricted perspective in these reports written by scholars on campus opposition to Zionism:

“The UCLA report, for instance, declares that “Zionism is the movement for the self-determination and statehood for the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland” and that it ‘has been equated falsely to racism.’ For a committee assessing Jew-hatred among pro-Palestinian protesters, this is no small conclusion. If Zionism is merely a movement for Jewish self-determination, then what could explain anti-Zionist activism on campus except animus toward Jews? But as UCLA’s own (Dov) Waxman has noted, Palestinians and their supporters ‘oppose Zionism not because it is a Jewish national movement, but because it has resulted in Palestinian dispossession and the denial of Palestinian rights.’ The UCLA report never acknowledges that the Zionist movement created a state by expelling hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in 1948, or that, since 1967, that state has held millions of Palestinians as permanent non-citizens under military law. Indeed, it never examines Zionism’s impact on Palestinians, nor does it cite a single academic work on that subject.”⁸

Something similar is happening at the TDSB, something that tilts the discussion in favour of current Board dogma regarding antisemitism. The Jewish Heritage Committee, thanked by trustees for its contribution to the update, has significant information on its website about this established position. From that site, the reader can follow a couple of links to learn about the Anti Defamation League’s side of the conflagration it blandly calls the “Israeli-Palestinian Conflict”  and then go to the ADL definition of anti-Zionism:

“Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionism, the movement for the self-determination and statehood of the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland, the land of Israel. Anti-Zionism is often expressed, explicitly or implicitly in the rejection of Jewish nationhood and the right to self-determination; the vilification of individuals and groups associated with Zionism; and the downplaying or negation of the historic and spiritual Jewish connection to the land of Israel.

Anti-Zionism is distinct from criticism of the policies or actions of the government of Israel, or critiques of specific policies of the pre-state Zionist movement, in that it attacks the foundational legitimacy of Jewish statehood.

Anti-Zionism is antisemitic, in intent or effect, as it invokes anti-Jewish tropes, is used to disenfranchise, demonize, disparage, or punish all Jews and/or those who feel a connection to Israel, equates Zionism with Nazism and other genocidal regimes, and renders Jews less worthy of sovereignty and nationhood than other peoples and states.”

This is something the TDSB supports!? This is a statement that informs Board actions towards those it deems to be antisemitic? Something with no basis in scholarship or argument? It is presented as a statement of fact. But it is really a statement of ideology, surely not something you would apply to children and teachers in the largest and most multicultural school board in the country. Some of them have already faced criticism and discipline, not for expressing revolting anti-Jewish tropes, but for supporting freedom for Palestinians.

 

Dealing with the whole picture

What is so appalling about the discussion surrounding this update, is that it occurs with hardly a word about the horror that has been ongoing since October 7, 2023. The dreadful Hamas attack is  explained on links connected to the Jewish Heritage Committee site. Bizarrely though, nowhere is there even cursory acknowledgement of what has happened to Palestinians since. The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), one of the most sophisticated militaries in the world has killed at least 46 600 people in Gaza including 18 000 children who will never attend the schools or use the hospitals targeted and destroyed by the IDF – the Lancet predicts the number will rise to over 64 000 deaths. We are all witnesses to the levelling of Gaza that Trump proclaims he will ethnically cleanse and turn into an American resort. We have all witnessed the tactics of starvation and deprivation of basic medical care. We are all witnesses, since October 7, 2023 to killings by Israelis, including those by civilians, of over 800 Palestinians in the West Bank. None of this description begins to speak to the history of death and dispossession of Palestinians endured since the time of the British mandate.

Zaid Zawaideh, co-founder of Toronto Palestinian Families made this statement about this poorly informed antisemitism strategy update:

“By framing its antisemitism strategy on the flawed premise that anti-Zionism equals antisemitism, the TDSB has made Palestinians direct stakeholders in this discussion. Yet, it has failed to uphold basic principles of equity by excluding Palestinian voices—those most impacted by Zionism, as seen through the ongoing Nakba, occupation, apartheid, and genocide.”

This is key: if it affects us, it must include us. The position taken by this received update will affect Palestinian students as well as their families: what they wear, what they can say, what they can discuss with their teachers and what they learn.

Trustees can ignore this fact; they can denigrate the people deeply affected by the policies they choose. Or they can face reality and tell staff go back and rewrite the update based on TDSB claims of respect for equity and human rights.

They must not move ahead without reconsidering the IHRA definition. Independent Jewish Voices of Canada (IJV) calls it  a “deeply flawed document”  too vague to be meaningful,  “it fails to provide an adequate objective standard that can be used to identify antisemitic incidents and/or antisemitic speech.”  IJV defines antisemitism “as hostility, prejudice, or discrimination against Jews because they are Jews.” The stress is on discrimination against people – not the state they may or may not support. It follows that it is not antisemitic, in IJV’s view, to oppose Israeli policies that oppress Palestinians.

The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemism  clarifies the IHRA definition in several ways that could be useful for a real discussion, offering “examples that on the face of it are not antisemitic”: supporting Palestinian rights demands encapsulated in international law, allowing criticism or opposition to Zionism or arguing for full equality for Jewish and Palestinian inhabitants “between river and sea” and evidence-based criticism of the policies and practices of the state of Israel with words like apartheid or settler- colonialism. These and other arguments may be contentious, but they are not antisemitic.

What’s critical here is that bullying, sickening claims and characterizations of Jewish and Palestinian community members as well as others who find themselves in the crosshairs of bigots – stop now. That message must be unequivocal and repeated often by the Board and in the schools. Senior staff know perfectly well they have the policies and tools right now to deal with antisemitic and anti-Palestinian bigotry in schools on the same basis they deal with bias and racism that harm others who are part of TDSB school communities.

The pain is real for everyone. Don’t make it worse.

 

 

Notes:

1. Update: Affirming Jewish Identities and Addressing Antisemitism and the Combatting Hate and Racism Strategy, TDSB 2025-02-12 Appendix A 4,5
2. Wednesday February 12, 2025 meeting. Time stamp: 6:29:28
3. Thursday February 13, 2025 meeting. Time stamp: 1:55:07
4. For: Aarts, Li, Williams, Dawson, Lulka Rotman, Ehrhardt, MacLean, Hastings, Nunziata, King, Pei, Laskin, Rajwani. Against: Shan, de Doviitis, Ghous, Patel, Rajakulasingam

5. Here are some other examples of remarks – time stamp is in brackets:
   1. Member of Independent Jewish Voices (IJV): don’t let fear of being labelled antisemitic, influence their decisions, but to remember Palestinian students who “fear being punished for simply existing.”(1:26:00)
   2. Jewish parent: that making criticism of settler colonialism and Israel synonymous with antisemitism is not only wrong, but will open the door for more, not less than this discrimination. (2:14:07)
   3. Grand-daughter of Holocaust and progrom survivor: report said nothing about the dangers of neo-Nazi white supremacist movements, as focused as it was on Israel and Zionism. (4:02:38)
6. Here are some other examples of remarks – time stamp is in brackets:
   1. Complaint: coalition dominated by Independent Jewish Voices, Jews Say No to Genocide and Toronto Palestinian Families are fighting to redefine Jewish identity to fit their political agendas and that “Jew hatred” is allowed to masquerade as social justice.  (4:09:0)
   2. Community member: had experienced antisemitism since October 7, and was ”…experiencing it tonight at this meeting” adding that TDSB staff need to be trained about an anti-Israel form of antisemitism” (2:40:41)
   3. Community member: Jewish community must be the only group to define what is and what isn’t anti- Semitic; for a year and a half, Jewish people have marginalized and denigrated the Jewish community believing that their antisemitism is directed only at Zionism. (5:18:04)
7. Peter Beinart, The Perils of Universities’ Unscholarly Antisemitism Reports, Jewish Currents, 2025-02-14 https://jewishcurrents.org/the-perils-of-universities-unscholarly-antisemitism-reports?token=JiVMEj4jom7uIF-fD9dM1C1nWibhfPB6&x-craft-preview=23e4f93ca9445884f06ffaa1789ddcee80d6b9001e629647cdfbb4a376d0cb61blrbgdhvrg&fbclid=IwY2xjawIhYUJleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHZvmAGG7eiu7hYG-ktHmFIIiKZmdlIwTfUo8ipdR9GnvQ0rw4iDkFSK48Q_aem_pnSpDl1vWDxnR-8d54lPHQ
8. Beinart, 2025