Terry Newman: Minister’s letter does not backtrack on anti-Zionism acknowledgment

Screenshot of post from the National Council of Canadian Muslims suggesting that the government's letter had clarified that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism. Source: X.com/AmiraElghawaby

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On Sunday, the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM) posted a response letter to Instagram it received from Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree to its request for further clarification about the national commitments to combat antisemitism initiative’s recent report, which acknowledged that antisemitism includes anti-Zionism. It began with a misleading headline: “Government of Canada clarifies: anti-Zionism is not antisemitism.” This headline was also shared on X by Canada’s former special representative on combating Islamophobia, Amira Elghawaby.

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Below the misleading headline was a snippet of Anandasangaree’s response letter, which clarified that the report did not intend “to suggest that all criticism of Zionism, Israeli government policies or the State of Israel” are antisemitic.

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The NCCM’s post is dishonest. Acknowledging that not all anti-Zionism is antisemitism isn’t the same thing as saying that anti-Zionism is never antisemitism in any instance.

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It’s not surprising that the NCCM sent the letter to the public safety minister. So far, Anandasangaree’s office has yet to explain how it will decide which expressions of anti-Zionism are antisemitic, which suggests that the acknowledgement, like the “Canadian Handbook on the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism,” is non-binding, non-prescriptive and essentially useless until government realizes that antisemitic anti-Zionist acts need to be properly defined and categorized and does so.

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In his letter, Anandasangaree reassures Fatema Abdalla, the NCCM’s senior government affairs and public policy officer, that, “Canada’s position has not changed. Canada continues to support open, respectful and lawful debate on issues related to Israel, Palestine, the Middle East and international affairs,” and points out that even the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism “explicitly recognizes that criticism of Israel, similar to that levelled against any other country, is not in itself antisemitic.”

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The public safety minister then points out that the IHRA definition was adopted in 2019 as part of Canada’s anti-racism strategy and continues to be used for these reasons. He explains that the handbook was published by the Department of Canadian Heritage in 2024 as “non-prescriptive guidance for how the IHRA definition can be practically used.”

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As mentioned in the handbook, the definition “does not supersede, modify or direct an interpretation of any existing federal, provincial or municipal statute or regulation,” nor does it “constitute a binding directive on any government department or agency requiring the IHRA definition to be implemented or used in a particular manner.”

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This is nothing new. The definition has always been toothless. For better or worse.

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Anandasangaree explains that the reference to anti-Zionism in the recent report “reflects the understanding” in both the handbook and the definition that, “Denying the Jewish people the right to self-determination may, depending on the context, be considered a manifestation of antisemitism,” without elaborating on what those contexts might be.