Just days after correctly noting in an editorial that anti-Zionism is a hate movement at the heart of modern-day anti-Jewish hate crimes, The Globe and Mail promptly platformed that very same movement, ostensibly in a misguided attempt at ‘balance.’

The August 13 opinion column, “The antisemitism report that erases a century of Jewish debate,” addressed a recent survey of Jewish university students in Canada, which found that some 95 percent of them personally experienced anti-Jewish hate over just the last year. It was also published in La Presse the following day in French.

The Globe Platforms Anti-Zionism While Jewish Students Report Hate

The Globe & Mail – which has not reported on the shocking results of that study – did, however, publish a commentary from Yves Winter of McGill University, Noah Brender of Dawson College, Danielle Bobker of Concordia University, and Michael Blum of the University of Quebec at Montreal, who in our view sought to delegitimize its findings and effectively tell students what they experienced wasn’t really hate at all.

In La Presse, a number of other signatories were named: Shira Avni of Concordia University, Lara Braitstein of McGill University; Kevin Gould of Concordia University, Sara Kendall of Dawson College, Itay Sapir of Université du Québec à Montréal, Vanessa R. Sasson of Marianopolis College, Jeremy Stolow of Concordia University, Katherine Zien of McGill University & Anya Zilberstein of Concordia University.

Anti-Zionism Denies Jews the Right to Self-Determination

The authors – members of Jewish Faculty Network, an anti-Israel fringe group – complain that the recent report “treats opposition to Zionism as evidence of antisemitism,” and defend anti-Zionism, bristling at the statement that it calls for the erasure and annihilation of Israel.

But that is precisely what antizionism is – a rejection of the Jewish People’s right to self-determination in their own homeland.

The authors cite examples of Jewish anti-Zionism in an effort to suggest that it is legitimate, writing about the Jewish Labour Bund in the early 20th century, “a mass socialist movement across Eastern Europe, built a political program based on doikayt, the idea that Jewish safety comes from equal rights where Jews already live, not from a state somewhere else.”

Yet the irony of their own words appeared to escape the authors, given that, statistically, most of the Jewish Labour Bund would presumably have been murdered by the Nazis, who soon swept Europe.

The Jewish Connection to Israel Is Thousands of Years Old

But while Zionism is a modern-day term, it is an ancient concept, dating back thousands of years to the genesis of Jewish presence in the Land of Israel, some three thousand years ago.

Notably, at no point in their column did the authors ever acknowledge that Zionism as a concept is embraced by virtually all Canadian Jews, rendering it not just mainstream, but normative, and that they are attempting to delegitimize the experiences of Jewish students who overwhelmingly see denial of Jewish collective rights as anti-Jewish hate.

Anti-Zionism in Practice Means Demanding Israel’s Erasure

One only need observe anti-Zionism in action over the last three years to see vindication of these students’ worldview, where anti-Israel rallies almost universally call for Israel to be dismantled or destroyed, rationalize or praise Palestinian terrorism, or some toxic combination thereof. For anti-Zionism, destruction of Israel is not a bug, but a central feature.

Antizionism is not mere criticism of Israel, but the wholesale denial of Jewish collective rights. It is textbook antisemitism according to the widely-accepted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition, embraced by Jewish communities across Canada.

In our estimation, the Globe and Mail published a column in the apparent name of balance and which was penned by a fringe of Canadian Jews – purporting to speak on behalf of a significant number of them – defending the pernicious view that the Jewish People apparently do not have a right to self-determination in their own land.