I'm Proud to be a Zionist

Anthony Housefather is a Canadian Member of Parliament for Mount Royal, Montreal.

“Mr. Speaker, I am a Canadian. I am a Jew. I am a Zionist.” That is how I started off my speech in the House of Commons last Monday evening as we debated an NDP motion that sought to reverse the last five decades of Canadian foreign policy as relates to our friend and ally Israel.

As I listened to the debate that day in the House, I realized that there was a fundamental misunderstanding of what Zionism was and why the vast majority of Canadian Jews identified with Israel and supported it in its effort to eradicate the terrorist group Hamas which attacked the country on Oct. 7.

As a community, for us this is a very personal issue. We are keenly aware that when Hamas wrote its 1988 charter, it called not only for the obliteration of Israel but also was full of antisemitic tropes and called for actions against Jews as a group. We are also keenly aware that when Hamas promoted its first day of action following the Oct. 7 pogrom, it encouraged followers to target Jewish communities across the world including here in Canada. So not only do we identify with our co-religionists in Israel who were and are directly under attack by Hamas, but we ourselves are targets of their incitement.

There are many antisemitic tropes. A very common one is that Jews are more loyal to Israel than their own country, an odious dual loyalty trope that I have frequently seen mentioned when any Jew posts anything supportive of Israel on their social media. I decided to address this one in the House to explain that Jewish Canadians love our country and that there is nothing irreconcilable in being both proud Canadians and Zionists.

My community has been here since 1760 and helped build this country. We have been given opportunities beyond our ancestors’ wildest dreams and in pretty much every field from academia to law to medicine to science, sports, politics and the arts. We have achieved a prominence vastly disproportionate to our actual numbers. We have fought in all of Canada’s wars and are an integral part of this country. But the vast majority of us are also Zionists. So are many other Canadians who are not Jewish.

Zionism is simply the belief that Jews have a right to have one state in our ancestral homeland. Jews are indigenous to Israel. We have been there for thousands of years.

We also have a history where Jews have faced persecution in every country in the world. We were expelled from England in 1290, from Spain and Portugal in the 1490s and in recent history from Arab lands. We were murdered in the Crusades, in pogroms and in the Holocaust. Throughout the 1930s as Jews attempted to escape from Germany and later from other countries occupied by the Nazis, most countries refused to open their borders and offer them refuge.

Anthony Housefather speaking in the Canadian House of Commons.

As such, it is etched in our collective understanding that for security we needed one place where every Jew in the world could go if things went wrong in their country. That is Israel. That is what Zionism means. I am proud to be a Zionist. Nobody can or will shame me for this. Being a Zionist does not mean blind support for the Israeli government or that we won’t criticize the Israeli government. It does mean that we will not give wilful support to those who seek the disappearance of Israel and create false double standards making ludicrous comparisons between a democratically elected government and a terrorist organization.

Regrettably, the anti-Zionism and anti-Israel sentiment that has grown exponentially during the Israel-Hamas war has caused antisemitism in Canada to grow to levels we have not seen since the 1930s. Canadian Jews should not have to live through what we are living through right now. We are being intimidated over and over by people protesting outside of Jewish buildings. Canadian Jews have no control over what happens in Israel, yet, for some reason, Jewish buildings across this country are being targeted.

In my own riding in Montreal, at the Jewish community offices, where the Jewish Public Library and the Holocaust museum are located, demonstrators went on private property, surrounded the building, blocked access to the building and blocked anyone from leaving for over three hours. One group should not be allowed to use its freedom of speech to block the rights of others. It is regrettable that due to the failure of police and political leaders in Montreal, the court was obliged to grant an injunction to create a buffer zone between demonstrators and Jewish community buildings.

At universities across the country, Jewish students are being intimidated on campus. Stories of people removing any symbols of being visibly Jewish and even considering their future in the country are common. Respectfully, this is not the Canada that I know and love. The feeling of abandonment is rampant. I call upon governments of all levels, police, universities and all others that have failed us this far to work together to act. Support for police acting as police and not bystanders at demonstrations. Prosecuting criminal offences where warranted. Codes of conduct at universities properly dealing with escalating antisemitism. Action is needed. Not just empty words.

This op-ed originally appeared in The National Post.