IJV members are kvelling, bursting with pride, at the election this past weekend of two Independent Jewish Voices members to leadership positions in the NDP!
Avi Lewis was elected NDP Leader on the first ballot with 57% of the vote. Niall Ricardo was elected President of the NDP executive board, alongside former NDP deputy leader Libby Davies who was elected as Vice-President.
With Lewis as leader, Ricardo as president, and Leah Gazan among its most high profile MPs, the NDP is now Canada’s most Jewish-led party.
Despite this, the largest Jewish advocacy and pro-Israel lobby group in Canada, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), is kvetching, whining or complaining, rather than kvelling. In a statement released shortly after Lewis’ win was announced, CIJA had the audacity to suggest that Lewis’ victory has made the NDP a hostile place for Canadian Jews.
As usual, CIJA is dangerously conflating Jewish identity with the political ideology of Zionism and support for a genocidal and apartheid state. They have so entrenched this conflation that the election of Jewish Canadians to leadership positions in a major federal political party somehow represents, to them, a rise in antisemitism.
Let us be clear: politicians like Avi Lewis are not creating a hostile environment within spaces like the NDP for Jews, as Jews. CIJA and pro-Israel lobby groups have long promoted a belief that politicians cannot take fighting antisemitism in Canada seriously while also supporting and advocating for Palestinian human rights. But this is a false dichotomy. Lewis and Ricardo show us clearly that there is a different way forward for Canadian political leaders, where we can have clear-eyed condemnation of Israel’s genocide and apartheid, while simultaneously standing for justice for all, including Jews.