Canadian Jews divided by PM Carney’s new council tasked with addressing antisemitism

JTA — Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has announced a plan to fight antisemitism, but Canadian Jews are debating whether it’s enough.

Carney said on Monday that the country was “failing Jewish Canadians” as antisemitic hate crimes rose to the highest levels seen in Canada since World War II. In a speech at Toronto’s Holy Blossom Synagogue, he announced a new Ministerial Advisory Council on Rights, Equality, and Inclusion to guide the government in combating all forms of hate and racism, with the “first responsibility” of addressing antisemitism.

Pressure was mounting on Carney to stem the tide of attacks since 2023, which have included gunfire at Jewish schools and synagogues and attacks on Jewish businesses and community centers.

Carney’s response has exposed faultlines among Canadian Jews over what tackling antisemitism should look like. Carney, the leader of Canada’s Liberal Party who recognized a Palestinian state last year, joins a growing number of left-leaning world leaders to grapple with fighting antisemitism while preserving room for Israel critics in their political tents.

Some Jewish groups are criticizing the council’s bureaucratic mandate and Carney’s general targeting of “hate,” saying his proposal is too broad and ineffective for Jews in need of urgent protection. Some Conservative politicians and Jewish leaders also targeted the makeup of the council, whose seven members include one prominent Jewish politician alongside a lawyer representing pro-Palestinian campus activists and a former Liberal Party lawmaker and ex-chair of the Canadian Arab Federation. The last especially has been criticized by some pro-Israel voices.

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Other Jewish groups support Carney’s move to unite efforts against antisemitism, Islamophobia and other forms of racism under one umbrella. Liberal and progressive leaders including Maytal Kowalski, head of the group JSpaceCanada, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that attacks on the council’s Arab member were “rooted in racism.”

Carney said the new council will assess the nature, scale and drivers of antisemitism, align federal policies and public safety programs to confront hate, and improve data collection on hate incidents.

Those measures did not satisfy B’nai Brith Canada, the country’s oldest Jewish advocacy group, which called for stronger enforcement and prosecution.

“Absent was a clear commitment to mobilize all levels of government, law enforcement, prosecutors, security agencies, educational institutions, and civil society around a coordinated national response,” the group said in a statement.

Melissa Lantsman, a Jewish Conservative MP, said Carney showed Canadian Jews “he thinks you are stupid.”

“‘Canada’s civic compact is failing Jewish Canadians’ is an extraordinary admission,” Lantsman said on X. “It should have been followed by concrete actions and concrete consequences for those doing the failing. Didn’t happen.”

Some Jewish groups also objected to how Carney defined antisemitism. B’nai Brith Canada, which promotes Zionism and Israel, pressed him to condemn anti-Zionism as a root of the crisis.

“Anti-Zionist manifestations of antisemitism have become increasingly legitimized and normalized,” said CEO Simon Wolle. “A government cannot successfully fight antisemitism while refusing to confront one of its most prevalent contemporary forms.”

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, an advocacy arm of the Jewish Federations of Canada, similarly said that Canadians “needed to hear” Carney address anti-Zionism. “It is essential to recognize anti-Zionist extremism as a driver of hostility toward Canadian Jews since the Hamas-led October 7 terrorist attacks,” the group said in a statement.

Carney acknowledged the shadow of Israel in his speech, though he never explicitly named the country. He urged Canadians not to “transpose foreign conflicts onto each other” and ensure that “no Canadian child goes to school being seen as a representative of any foreign state.”

Attacks on Canadian Jews have surged since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and the ensuing war in Gaza, which has deeply soured Canadian views of Israel.

Rather than identifying political ideologies, Carney pointed to a broader threat of hatred spreading “when conspiracy becomes discourse.”

That statement was applauded by Jewish leaders like Kowalski, who said that conspiratorial thinking and polarization lay at the root of dangers not only against Jews, but all minority groups.

“I think that it is a mistake to say that it is Israel or anti-Zionism, or the war in Gaza, or what is happening now in Lebanon or Iran, that is causing the rise of antisemitism,” said Kowalski, whose liberal Zionist organization, JSpaceCanada, advocates for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “I think, quite frankly, that’s giving antisemites too much credit. It’s saying once these things end, they will cease to be antisemitic, and that is simply not true.”

Independent Jewish Voices, a progressive group, also told JTA that it welcomed the government’s decision to “bring together the fights against antisemitism, Islamophobia and other forms of organized hate.”

The council’s makeup has been closely scrutinized by Conservative politicians and Jewish leaders.

Carney announced the appointment of Marc Gold, a lawyer and Jewish community leader who retired last year from the Senate of Canada, to join the body. The council will be chaired by Marc Miller, the minister of Canadian identity and culture. It also includes former Liberal MP Omar Alghabra, the first Syrian-born Canadian elected to the House of Commons and previous chair of the Canadian Arab Federation, and Avnish Nanda, a lawyer who is representing pro-Palestinian activists in a lawsuit against the University of Alberta.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre singled out Alghabra, telling reporters on Tuesday, “I’m not sure he’s the right guy to combat antisemitism.” He accused Alghabra of “lobbying me before he was in politics to keep Hezbollah legal.” Poilievre did not respond to a request for more information about his allegation and Alghabra did not respond to a JTA request for comment.

During a parliamentary debate in 2016, Alghabra said that Hamas was a “terrorist organization” and called for “peaceful dialogue and consultations to reach a peaceful resolution to the two-state outcome that we would like to achieve.”

Alghabra’s appointment was also decried by Rabbi Zolly Claman of Montreal’s Tifereth Beth David Jerusalem Congregation. Claman told Fox News on Thursday that he was “truly shocked” because Alghabra “publicly mourned the death of Yasser Arafat and remained silent when asked to condemn the attacks of October 7.”

Alghabra condemned the attacks on October 13, 2023, saying on X, “The terror attacks committed by Hamas against Israelis are horrific and unjustifiable.” He added, “The images of mass destruction of Gaza are horrifying. Civilians in Gaza are defenseless and Israel has obligations under international law.”

The Fox piece linked a video recorded by a member of the far-right website Rebel News, in which a videographer followed Alghabra while he walked on a street and asked whether he condemned the attack. Alghabra did not answer or acknowledge the videographer’s questions.

After the 2004 death of Arafat, the first president of the Palestinian Authority who both oversaw terror campaigns against Israel and negotiated a framework for peace with it, Alghabra told the Globe and Mail that Arafat “played a tremendous role in highlighting the Palestinian struggle for independence and making it visible in the international arena.”

Kowalski said many critics of Alghabra’s appointment were “writing someone off because they are Arab.” She worked with Alghabra on a panel hosted by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz last year, during which she said that he contributed a “great voice” to discussions about Canada’s relationship with Israel.

“It’s very upsetting to me, because he is someone who has always been a great ally to the Jewish community,” said Kowalski, who told JTA that Alghabra was not doing interviews after he did not respond to a request for comment.

Nanda is currently representing two Palestinian Canadian alumni and a Jewish American professor in a lawsuit against the University of Alberta. They allege that the school violated their freedom of expression, assembly and association by directing police to forcibly remove a pro-Palestinian encampment in May 2024, according to the CBC.

B’nai Brith has not explicitly addressed the claims made about members of the council, but has said the group “lacks the mandate and expertise to lead the fight against antisemitism in Canada.”

Kowalski argued that the stakes of combating hatred called for a diverse coalition. “If such a council were to be built for anti-Palestinian racism, I would equally hope that they would have Jews on that council,” she said.