Robert Brym: Yes, anti-Zionism is antisemitic

Signs displayed at the 2017 Al-Quds Day anti-Israel protest. Photo by Veronica Henri /Toronto Sun/Postmedia

Article content

In a recent Globe & Mail op-ed, members of the Jewish Faculty Network (JFN) assert that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, that Jewishness is an exclusively religious identity that has nothing to do with statehood and that the debate between Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews has been going strong for 100 years. Their assertions are made without the benefit of reference to recent anonymous peer-reviewed survey research or anything more than a distorted understanding of modern Jewish history.

Article content

Article content

A 2026 survey of a representative sample 626 Canadian Jewish adults found that 92 per cent of Canadian Jews support the existence of a Jewish state in Israel. They therefore fit the standard definition of “Zionist.” Eighty-six per cent of Canadian Jews think that supporting Israel is an important or essential part of their Jewish identity. Jewish statehood is thus a core element of Jewish identity for the overwhelming majority of Jews in Canada — and also, of course, for Jews in Israel (where about one-half of the world’s Jewish population resides) and elsewhere.

Article content

Article content

Article content

In contrast, just 60 per cent of Canadian Jews consider attending synagogue an important or essential part of Jewish identity; 59 per cent say the same about observing Jewish religious law.

Article content

All these findings are in line with results from a 2024 survey of 414 Canadian Jews and a 2018 survey of 2,335 Canadian who identify as Jewish by religion or ethnicity.

Article content

Members of the JFN are therefore wrong to claim that being Jewish is only a matter of religion and not a matter of statehood. Moreover, just as it is antisemitic to discriminate against Jews based on their religion, I believe it is antisemitic to erase support for the existence of a Jewish state as a core part of Jewish identify.

Article content

Article content

Some Jews are anti-Zionists. They deny the need for the existence of a Jewish state. In Canada, a 2025 survey of 332 Jewish Canadians found that 1 per cent of Canadian Jews at the time regarded themselves as anti-Zionists, while the most recent 2026 survey of 625 Canadian Jews cited earlier puts the number at 5 per cent. The proportion of Jews who deny the need for Jewish statehood is thus tiny.

Article content

Article content

The representatives of the JFN correctly note that Reform Judaism in mid-19th century Germany held that Jewishness is exclusively a religious category. However, a century later, in the early 1940s, Reform Judaism officially endorsed the need for a Jewish state as the extent of the Holocaust became apparent.

Article content

Similarly, the members of the JFN cite the Jewish Labour Bund of Poland and Lithuania as a large and vigorous opponent of Zionism since its founding in 1897. This is an exaggeration. Most Bundists were killed in the Holocaust and many of those who survived became Zionists in the face of the Holocaust. In fact, Tel Aviv became one of the centers of Bundism after the Second World War.