NDP leader Avi Lewis speaks with reporters in the Foyer of the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Sept. 21.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
The statement that NDP Leader Avi Lewis posted on X on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur deserves to be reproduced in its entirety, in order to fully appreciate its malignancy and reckless stupidity.
“Tonight Yom Kippur begins, the most sombre moment of the Jewish calendar,” Mr. Lewis wrote. “It’s a time of atonement – a time to grieve those who have been lost, a time to acknowledge and take responsibility for harms we have caused, individually and collectively. For Jewish people, the personal has always been political and the political always personal. This year I’m reflecting on the fact that we failed to do our part to stop an ongoing genocide committed in our name. There are many other fronts where I have to do the work of repair. But nothing on this scale.”
In this statement, Mr. Lewis is not criticizing Israel, or even “Zionists” (which has become the appropriate way of saying “Jews” in polite company). Instead, the leader of Canada’s progressive mainstream is explicit: a genocide is happening in the name of Jews everywhere. And those Jews have failed to do their part to stop it.
This type of odious bigotry would have been resoundingly condemned if Mr. Lewis didn’t happen to be Jewish himself, which has the practical effect of inoculating him against most charges of antisemitism. But because no shot is 100-per-cent effective, I feel confident in declaring that what he wrote is, in fact, textbook antisemitism: the sort of abominable, insidious rhetoric that fuels acts of hatred against Jews in Canada and throughout the rest of the diaspora.
Indeed, it’s even more pernicious coming from someone who himself is Jewish, because Mr. Lewis lends this belief a legitimacy it wouldn’t have had otherwise, and in effect he offers permission for non-Jews to say the same thing. Because if a Jewish man is saying that Jewish people have “failed to do our part to stop an ongoing genocide committed in our name,” how is anyone else to say otherwise?
I will admit to not being familiar enough with Mr. Lewis’ history to know if he is indeed a simple man, or just pretending to be one. But anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of leadership would recognize the dangers of assigning blame for a specific action from one government on an entire group of people; of calling out harms caused by Jewish people “collectively,” and chastising them for failing to “do [their] part to stop an ongoing genocide,” as if a Jew in Ottawa has any more obligation to stop what’s happening in Gaza than does a Chinese man in Vancouver to stop what’s happening in Xinjiang.
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If you suggest that Jewish people collectively bear some responsibility for the harms being perpetrated against Palestinians, as Mr. Lewis did in his statement, then you place a target on the back of any and every Jew living in Canada. And when some Canadians hear that Jewish people collectively are complicit in genocide (and hear that from a Jew, no less!), it becomes reasonable, by this twisted logic, to smash a Jewish bakery’s windows, or to tear down mezuzahs from Jewish homes, or to bring a shotgun to a synagogue in Belleville, Ont. during Yom Kippur services and spray bullets through its stained glass windows. Because why should the people complicit in genocide know peace, even if they live in Canada?
Mr. Lewis’ foolish and bigoted statement should be disqualifying for the leader of a major political party, and especially a progressive one. However, because he is leader of the NDP, and because his target was Jews, it very well could boost his internal support by five points. But even if his party looks the other way, the rest of Canada should not simply shrug off such a crass and dangerous statement.
If Mr. Lewis didn’t intend to blame Jewish people collectively for the ongoing violence in Gaza, even though that’s precisely what he said, he should address that publicly, and explain what he really meant. If, on the other hand, he meant exactly what he said, he should tell us why Russian people in Canada bear some responsibility for failing to stop the ongoing assault of Ukraine, and advise on what Muslim people in Canada should be doing to atone for the mass killings carried out by extremists done in their name. Because if one group has an obligation to stop the actions of a government in another country, shouldn’t they all?
Mr. Lewis clearly had a lot to say this Yom Kippur about atoning for the sins of others. But perhaps he should look closer to home, and start with atoning for a pretty despicable one of his own.