B’Nai Brith Canada released its annual audit of antisemitism in Canada last week. This report is a dangerous document that promotes anti-Palestinian racism and misrepresents the important reality of antisemitism in Canada.
B’nai Brith’s audit uses a discredited definition of antisemitism
The audit relies on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which has been widely criticized by experts as inaccurate and misleading. While it claims to distinguish between legitimate criticism of Israel and antisemitism, in practice IHRA repeatedly blurs that line, treating anti-Zionism and certain criticisms of Israeli state policy as inherently hateful.
The report claims that terms like ‘settler-colonial apartheid’ or ‘genocide’ are fodder for antisemitism. This makes it impossible to accurately describe Israel’s ongoing war crimes, which leading international human rights organizations and legal experts have shown Israel is culpable for, without being accused of antisemitism. It silences urgent criticism and dehumanizes Palestinians.
The audit misrepresents anti-Zionism
The audit frames anti-Zionist speech and action as inherently antisemitic. As anti-Zionist Jews, we fundamentally reject this framing. Claiming that anti-Zionism is antisemitic erases Jewish political diversity and prevents Palestinians from speaking about their lived experience as Zionism’s primary victims.
The audit uses bad data methodology
The audit has major methodological deficiences. It lacks transparency and independent verification. It aggregates a wide range of incidents, overwhelmingly online, without sufficient clarity about their nature or severity. By its own numbers, incidents involving physical violence are thankfully extremely rare.
This kind of sloppy data aggregation and poor differentiation between online speech, including political criticism of Israel that is not antisemitic, gives a skewed picture of how antisemitism actually plays out today. The audit’s bad methodology gives the public a distorted understanding and stokes fear and panic among Jewish communities.
Antisemitism is a serious problem, and B’nai Brith’s audit makes it harder to understand
Jews, like all Canadians, deserve to feel safe. Many in our communities are facing real-world acts of antisemitism that are alarming, including attacks on Jewish community spaces and buildings, and the promotion of antisemitic conspiracies by the right-wing media apparatus.
But many in the Zionist lobby capitalize on the rise of real world antisemitism to promote their false narrative that a Jewish supremacist Israel is necessary for our safety, and that anti-Zionism is an existential threat to Jewish life everywhere. Understanding antisemitism accurately requires evidence-based approaches that clearly distinguish between hate and political discourse, not ones that suppress legitimate debate.