It is an anxious time for Jewish communities, in Canada and beyond.
In the aftermath of the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran, three Jewish institutions in the Greater Toronto Area were shot at. This comes after years of attacks on Jewish-owned small businesses, Jewish high schools, and other communal institutions.
In online threads on stories about these incidents, you can find comments like “fuck around and find out” or “violence begets violence.” To literally be Jewish, these comments imply, is to “fuck around.” And right in the heart of working class Jewish Toronto in Downsview, protesters are regular fixtures at a shopping centre, holding racist signs depicting cave-lurking, hook-nosed Jews, despite Palestine organizers denouncing them.
For me, who grew up as a Jewish kid in North York, it feels personal. I attended a number of Bar and Bat Mitzvahs at the Temple Emanu-El—ten minutes from my childhood home—that was shot at in March. Indeed, I frequent many of the Jewish small businesses targeted. The shopping centre where the antisemitic signs have been spotted is right across from the garage where I get my seasonal service and tire changes done.
I never experienced even a modicum of fear of antisemitism growing up in the ’80s. But in the present moment, I cannot say the same thing for more than a few children and teenagers who are among my loved ones.
At the same time, no one should trust the statistics coming from the rightwing B’nai Brith, let alone the Toronto Police Services, amid their continued targeting of Pro-Palestine activists. Leaders within the institutional Jewish community, opportunistic politicians, and journalists like Jesse Brown are up in arms over the cracks in the Zionist consensus in the Jewish community. While the significant growth of anti-genocide sentiment among Jewish people may not yet be explicitly anti-Zionist, the old consensus of “Israel, right or wrong” is increasingly untenable. An old guard is lining up to gin up fear of everything from keffiyehs to slogans, attempting to keep community members in line.
Yesterday Prime Minister Mark Carney denounced what he rightfully called the “scourge of antisemitism,” announcing more details about his Ministerial Advisory Council on Rights, Equality, and Inclusion, created earlier this year after the elimination of the special envoys for Islamophobia and antisemitism. The objective would be to “combat hate in all forms.” The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs were not impressed, demanding immediate security measures against “anti-Zionist extremism.” It’s too soon to judge the council, but it must not introduce the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which does not distinguish between anti-Zionism and antisemitism.
Beyond that, those of us on the left need our own response to antisemitism.
When some parts of the left falter in addressing these incidents—ignoring them, treating them as inevitable, or even indulging in antisemitic language—this marks a failure to show up with principled, consistent solidarity. Solidarity is not solidarity if it is conditional or contingent. If we leave a vacuum, it will be filled by the antisemitic and white nationalist right, confusing those new to anti-war and pro-Palestine politics. And it will mean we lose a crucial chance to help push forward the already-emerging unravelling of the Zionist consensus in the Jewish community.
Combating anti-semitism after the destruction of Gaza
These recent events, of course, occur in the context of the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran, the continued brutalization of Lebanon and Gaza, and the police-protected settler pogroms in the West Bank and Jerusalem. This leads to suggestions from some on the left that it is Israel, in the last instance, that is the author of actual antisemitic acts—that antisemitism is a tragic, if inevitable response to the terror inflicted on Palestinians and others by the state of Israel. This should be a point of departure, not a point of conclusion.
It is true that Israeli leaders across the political spectrum have often been okay with, if not encouraged, antisemitism in the so-called diaspora. Foundational Zionist figures such as Theodor Herzl saw Europeans as inherently ethno-nationalist and antisemitic, and hence made common cause with antisemitic ethno-nationalist currents, as against the dominant socialist, liberal and assimilationist politics of European Jewry. More recently, Israel has cultivated theologically antisemitic Christian Zionists as some of its top allies in North America (it is for this reason that English Defense League hooligan Tommy Robinson and U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, both open antisemites, are belligerent allies to the current Israeli government).
But the position that antisemitism is inevitable given Israel’s war and genocide obscures the agency of those who perpetrate and particularly those that incite antisemitic acts. After all, imagine if that’s how people rationalized the targeting of Muslims and other Brown people after 9/11—that Muslims “fucked around and found out.” Those acts of racism were widely condemned by most of the left. Yet antisemitism has often provoked a different response.
This implicit response is to see antisemitism as a secondary concern compared with the genocide, and thus to be soft on antisemitism. Yet being soft on antisemitism is not only tactically inept and effectively antisemitic, it is also a betrayal of the left’s historic responsibility.
When this kind of minimization of antisemitism shows up on the left, it means our internationalism is fraying. Take just one example: the executive committee of my own union local, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) local 3903, showed a lack of interest in passing a motion in solidarity with the Jewish community after the shootings at synagogues earlier this year. The mover withdrew the motion after leading members suggested that making such a statement would be seen as supportive of Zionism and that it would distract from attention to anti-Palestinian racism as if it was a zero sum game.
Veteran Palestine organizers were shocked at this claim. CUPE 3903 has historically been a bulwark of internationalism in the labour movement, with members being instrumental in passing an historic Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) resolution within CUPE Ontario, the first labour federation in North America to adopt BDS.
Longtime Toronto activist and educator John Clarke put it this way: “This latest development drives home how this indifference to antisemitism among sections of the left is a serious issue.”
Moving beyond a modern-day ‘socialism of fools’
Solidarity is not genuine if it is contingent. As a union activist, I don’t only strike for my coworkers who share my socialist politics, I strike for the working class. Solidarity is not contingent on people having the right politics. Indeed, solidarity may be a requirement with those with politics we may find abhorrent.
I’ve seen leftists using irresponsible if not outright antisemitic language, under the argument made fairly by the Palestinian writer Mohammed Al-Kurd that it is hardly realistic to expect “perfect victim” behavior from those in Palestine and Lebanon, whose lands and families have been torn apart by Israeli bombs and settlers. But Al-Kurd’s work is cited to excuse and defend antisemitic language among some white non-Jewish Palestine activists in North America.
There are disturbing affinities amongst right-wing anti-Zionists and left-liberal ‘very online’ anti-Zionists. From Breaking Points to Tucker Carlson, the message, the discourse, even the guests are similar. Well-known YouTube “left-liberal” talk show host Ana Kasparian of The Young Turks uses antisemitic language quite freely and poses as a horrifying Nazi-era antisemitic cartoon of a Jewish merchant.
More often, there are leftists who express distaste for antisemitic acts—but also share a sense that these events are inevitable, because of the genocidal actions of the state of Israel. Yet if these events are treated as inevitable, the left fails to pounce on opportunities for political education.
If we are in a moment when much of the public can’t tell the difference between Jewish people as a whole and Zionism as a political ideology, it is the long-term task of the Left to move people beyond this “socialism of fools”—a 19th century description for some early socialist currents that blamed the inequities of the age on supposed Jewish power and wealth, instead of on capitalism. It doesn’t help when instead of “bourgeoisie” or “capitalist class,” we use “Epstein class.” When we fail to look at capitalism as a social structure, we are bound to find conspiracy or at least “secret elites.”
With elements of the “very online” left failing to hold a clear line against antisemitism, this has led to confusion among working-class people, many of whom oppose Israel and America’s wars. The fact that “free Palestine” is now increasingly common sense says good things about our culture. This was unimaginable a few years ago. But despite the more visible role of anti-Zionist or at least anti-genocide Jews, a conflation of Jews and Israel persists in the public mind.
As a result, we see dismissive hints that antisemitic acts are “false flags” meant to evoke pity, even from people who may not on a personal level be antisemitic. There are insinuations that institutions being attacked may have been Zionist. It is true that many Canadian Jewish people—for reasons having far more to do with false consciousness, fear, and indoctrination than having a murderous racist sensibility—see Israel as core to their Jewish identity in spite of, not because of the continued attacks on Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran.
Don’t make the job of winning Jews to anti-Zionism harder
This is not due to wanting to protect “the pedophile state” of “Is-not-real.” Indeed, there is growing opposition within the mainstream Jewish community to the genocide in Gaza, even if many people won’t use the g-word itself. While opposition is lagging in Canada compared with the United States, a November 2025 poll conducted by the liberal Zionist Peace Now group indicated that 30 per cent of Canadian Jews oppose the war on Gaza. An October 2025 Washington Post poll in the United States, on the other hand, showed that 61 per cent of American Jews believe Israel is committing war crimes and 39 per cent are OK with the g-word.
One high-profile example of an American figure who does use the g-word is Jeremy Ben-Ami, head of AIPAC rival J-Street, reflecting the general sentiment of the North American Jewish community. J-Street has been under concerted attack from the Israeli government since the ostensibly Pro-Israel group has been involved in pushing for blocking arms sales to Israel.
Beyond J-Street, there are Jewish people who may casually call themselves Zionists, but whose effective politics are actually anti-Zionist. These are people reading books like Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza, by former liberal Zionist and now left-wing anti-Zionist Peter Beinart, and more recently, the New York Times Bestseller Molly Crabapple’s Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund.
There are limitations to the liberal or social democratic variants of Zionism. Ethnic cleansing and genocide are baked into the Zionist idea in the first place—it’s not just Bibi. However, when we flatten our analysis of people’s politics by virtue of what label they use to describe themselves, we sacrifice opportunities to see how some people may end up on our side, though they don’t use the same language as us, at least not yet.
At any rate, rejecting someone’s politics should not mean scoffing at or minimizing them being harmed. This position is akin to liberal Americans expressing schadenfreude over Latino Trump supporters being targeted by ICE. (Thank you to Aaron Lazaro for this point.) The dismissive reaction to these events will harden people’s positions and increase their fear.
It’s very important to encourage the unravelling of the Zionist consensus. This unravelling is hindered when people associated with the left play fast and loose with language. This isn’t a call for holding back our critique of Zionism. In fact, we need to hold steady. This does, however, mean being far more scrupulous in how we talk about it.
‘Colonial racism is no different from any other racism’
Part of why this is an urgent problem to tackle is the ways that antisemitism is showing up in anti-war spaces online on the left and right.
To be sure, not all right-of-centre antiwar or anti-Zionist politics are motivated by antisemitism; there have always been libertarian anti-interventionists, albeit motivated by pecuniary, not humanitarian concerns. But antisemitism has been a great accelerator of the anti-war right, those already enamoured with the Great Replacement Theory.
On the left, even without outright-intended antisemitism, antisemitic framing is rampant among some “very online” circles. Part of the reason for this is the exceptional growth of right wing anti-Zionism and the simplicity of its nationalist, isolationist arguments. It’s far more difficult, after all, to explain the complex role that Israel plays in American imperialism and global capitalism than making the claim that Israel “controls” this or that political figure to varying degrees.
It’s quite clear that while Israel played a role in influencing the timing of the joint attack on Iran, the doth-protest-too-much words from Rubio and Trump on this matter seem designed to make Jews a scapegoat. Rubio’s official State Department briefing early in the war made the claim that the U.S. attacked Iran as that country was about to attack U.S. bases due to Israel’s own attacks on Iran. Note that the already antisemitic MAGA base is antiwar. This guarantees a situation that as the Iran war goes sideways, regardless of where Jewish people stand politically, we will be blamed. It is no accident, after all, that during the war in Iraq, while some suggested the most responsible parties were cynical operators like Rumsfeld and Cheney, a lot of ink was spilled on a “cabal” of neoconservatives, many of whom happen to be Jewish. For millennia, events of anti-Jewish violence, expulsion, and genocide have occurred after the scapegoating of Jews for either military or economic loss.
Progressive social movements and the Left need to be much more attentive to this. As the social theorist and Frantz Fanon biographer Peter Hudis reminds us, we need to take our cue from this great anticolonial thinker who wrote that “colonial racism is no different from any other racism. Anti-semitism hits me head-on: I am enraged, I am bled white by an appalling battle, I am deprived of the possibility of being a man. I cannot disassociate myself from the future that is proposed for my brother.” We need to relearn the right instincts, as the ones we are operating with leave much to be desired with regards to developing a consistent anti-capitalist, anti-colonial, and anti-imperialist perspective. For Fanon, as for us, this is a foundational principle.
CORRECTION: The reference to a motion being discussed by the CUPE 3903 executive initially stated that they “would not pass a motion” in solidarity with the Jewish community after the shootings at synagogues earlier this year. In fact, the motion was never voted on, since its proponent withdrew it when a number of executive members argued against it.
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In the aftermath of the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran, three Jewish institutions in the Greater Toronto Area were shot at.” This comes after years of attacks on Jewish-owned small businesses, Jewish high schools, and other communal institutions”. ………..What attacks are we talking about? Years of attacks?
I find this new op-ed in The Breach somewhat pedantic and overly concerned with the online world.
Have a look for yourself in the comment below ~>
The article ignores that the majority of our Canadian Jewish institutions have been overtaken by the Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), since the mid 2000s and that this has created situations such as the sale of stolen Palestinian land in Synagogues.
The repercussions of this right wing-politicization of Jewish spaces naturally leads to criticism and protest outside these spaces which are then weaponized as primary examples of anti-semitism and used as pretext for supression of dissent.
I don’t blame people for protesting institutions that host the sale of stolen land and that provide lock-step support of a genocidal state. I blame CIJA leadership who have deliberately moved us to this point of support for genocide.
The author also seems ignorant to the broader climate of racism and hate (especially against Muslims and Arabs) in Canada. He doesn’t do an effective job of differentiating between white supremacists and the relatively small contingent of ignorant Palestine sympathizers. These conflations tend to uphold a Jewish exceptionalism that leads to divisions.
We must fight back as a united front against the rising level of racist hate, regardless of who it’s against but we must also name the institutions responsible for fanning the flames.
CIJA, Bnai Brith and Friends of Simon Wiesenthal purport to speak on behalf of all Jewish Canadians and their craven support for a genocide has been reflected by mainstream media as the voice of Jews. This has led to a tokenizing of our whole population and the false choice for many Jews of whether to side with ‘our community’ or ‘the radical left’.
We must find a way to hold these zombie institutions accountable while removing their stranglehold on Jewish life in Canada.
As a Jew I don’t think it’s our job to police our allies and pretend that the situation is ‘complicated’ to the point of requiring our approval of each statement or action. Many other ethnic and religious minorities must not only deal with violent crimes but also systemic oppression and a virtual gag-order on speaking out on Palestine. Let’s not let our privilege as a white-passing and relatively integrated minority cloud our goal of broad-based organizing against white-supremacy and imperialism. When we as Jews myopically fixate on the sporadic hate-crimes targeting Jewish institutions, without bringing in the broader context, we do ourselves a disservice and unwittingly feed in to the narrative that Jewish safety is only achieved when everyone polishes their talking points and agrees to give disproportionate attention to our share of the struggle.
I would encourage participation in Independent Jewish Voices so that we can continue making a dent in the spurious narrative that all Jews are standing by as Israel commits war crimes.
Please publish this version instead:
I find this article somewhat pedantic and overly concerned with the online world. The article ignores that the majority of our Canadian Jewish institutions have been overtaken by the Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), since the mid 2000s and that this has created situations such as the sale of stolen Palestinian land in Synagogues.
The repercussions of this right wing-politicization of Jewish spaces naturally leads to criticism and protest outside these spaces which are then weaponized as primary examples of anti-semitism and used as pretext for supression of dissent.
I don’t blame people for protesting institutions that host the sale of stolen land and that provide lock-step support of a genocidal state. I blame CIJA leadership who have deliberately moved us to this point of support for genocide.
The author also seems ignorant to the broader climate of racism and hate (especially against Muslims and Arabs) in Canada. He doesn’t do an effective job of differentiating between white supremacists and the relatively small contingent of ignorant Palestine sympathizers. These conflations tend to uphold a Jewish exceptionalism that leads to divisions.
We must fight back as a united front against the rising level of racist hate, regardless of who it’s against but we must also name the institutions responsible for fanning the flames.
CIJA, Bnai Brith and Friends of Simon Wiesenthal purport to speak on behalf of all Jewish Canadians and their craven support for a genocide has been reflected by mainstream media as the voice of Jews. This has led to a tokenizing of our whole population and the false choice for many Jews of whether to side with ‘our community’ or ‘the radical left’.
We must find a way to hold these zombie institutions accountable while removing their stranglehold on Jewish life in Canada.
As a Jew I don’t think it’s our job to police our allies and pretend that the situation is ‘complicated’ to the point of requiring our approval of each statement or action. Many other ethnic and religious minorities must not only deal with violent crimes but also systemic oppression and a virtual gag-order on speaking out on Palestine. Let’s not let our privilege as a white-passing and relatively integrated minority cloud our goal of broad-based organizing against white-supremacy and imperialism. When we as Jews myopically fixate on the sporadic hate-crimes targeting Jewish institutions, without bringing in the broader context, we do ourselves a disservice and unwittingly feed in to the narrative that Jewish safety is only achieved when everyone polishes their talking points and agrees to give disproportionate attention to our share of the struggle.
I would encourage participation in Independent Jewish Voices so that we can continue making a dent in the spurious narrative that all Jews are standing by as Israel commits war crimes.
Hm. Not entirely sure where Cummings is coming from or going with this . . . .
Much of this piece is so common-sensical that I have to scratch my head over why it’s here (other than it possibly being a slow news day and something has to be put in this space). The rest of it seems to be a great effort at nit-picking (notwithstanding the pics of anti-Semitism provided by a _very_ Zionist org ie Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre).
Part of the issue here is the conscious weaponization of anti-Semitism by Zionists ie the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism. It’s a bomb thrown into the general left-discourse that’s emphasized a strain that’s always been there but rarely drawing much attention AFAICR. Among other things, and I do believe this was intentional by the Israeli government officials who came up with it, it ties all Jews publicly to Israel, providing ready-made hostages for that state (which has shown no qualms in the past over sacrificing innocent Jews in order that Zionism can continue to roll on). When this new definition of anti-Semitism first came out, it didn’t take long for the anti-Zionist left to figure out in what manner “regular Jews” would be affected by something that’s ostensibly there to protect them.
Cummings points to attacks on Jews and Jewish-owned property (and I can’t say if these people are or aren’t Zionists; Cummings certainly doesn’t point out how the venue where PM Carney made his remarks saw fit to display Israel’s flag right beside him). It’s as though somehow the responsibility and motivations for these actions are as “obvious” as who needs to take action about it (and what action needs to be taken, apparently without thought and immediately).
The rest of it could easily be summed up by Cummings’ own words: “For me, who grew up as a Jewish kid in North York, it feels personal.” Cummings is made anxious because there are rich and powerful Zionists whose work (even if this looks exactly like an anti-Semitic trope ie the Rich and Powerful Jew) makes other Jews look bad, but that’s hardly something the broader, anti-Zionist Left needs to be told.
“At any rate, rejecting someone’s politics should not mean scoffing at or minimizing them being harmed.”
Given how odious some politics are, scoffing at their proponents or not caring about how they might be harmed strikes me as reasonable. Others, such as Cummings, seem to desire a certain level of respectability to be included in their politics and their political comrades, and, if they don’t see it, it’s “obvious” to them who’s at fault and who needs an attitude adjustment.
Cummings leaves us with an invocation of Fanon; however, he either forgot or is ignorant of some of Fanon’s other words on neutrality, violence, and traitors. I would rather call on real memory rather than myth: Martin Luther King Jr.’s comments in _Letter from Birmingham Jail_ on “the White moderate” and their relationship to anti-Black bigotry and violence. Anxiety-creating stuff, but it knows the direction it’s pointed in.