Antisemitism is a threat to every democracy

I write in the shadow, pain and continuing trauma of the unspeakable mass atrocities of October 7 – on the 1,000th day following the worst day in Jewish and Israeli history since the Holocaust – of horrors too terrible to be believed, but not too terrible to have happened; of horrific mass murder, rape, torture, maiming and mutilation, burning and beheading, of women, children, the elderly, disabled, Holocaust survivors – the most vulnerable of the vulnerable; of the crime of “kinocide” – the crime without a name for victims without a voice – the intentional, premeditated and wholly criminal targeting, terrorizing, torturing, tormenting and murdering of whole families – of the killing of parents in front of their children, and children in front of their parents; and the forcible abduction of 251 hostages, many of whom were, themselves, tortured or even murdered in captivity, and where every day spent in Hamas’s captivity was an ongoing crime against humanity.

Hamas, the perpetrator of these unspeakable atrocities, is not only a terrorist organization, but a genocidal antisemitic terrorist statelet, not because I say so, but because Hamas has said so in its 1988 Charter and reaffirmed since, pledging to commit October 7th “again, and again, and again, until Israel’s annihilation.”

One would have thought that these genocidal atrocities by Hamas – let alone its standing incitement to genocide, which is a standalone breach of the Genocide Convention – would have resulted in a global condemnation – including by the UN, ICC and ICJ – of Hamas; that it would have resulted in global action against Hamas. On the contrary, beginning on October 8, one found denial even that these atrocities took place, or support for them, or justification for them, or even celebration and glorification of them, in the political square, the public square, the cultural arena, and, in particular, in the campus and academic culture.

What we witnessed, beginning on October 8, was an unprecedented global explosion of antisemitism, where we have seen not only the highest level of incidences of antisemitism since audits began in the late 1970s, but the highest level of hate crimes targeting Jews; and where, for example, Canadian Jews, 1 percent of the population, are the target of 72% of religiously motivated hate crimes, and where Canadian Jews are 25 times more likely to be the target of a hate crime than any other minority.

And when I speak of antisemitic hate crimes, these are not just matters of incidents of antisemitism. These are identity-based crimes. These are crimes which reverberate amongst the global Jewish community and beyond; where, for example, the Bondi Beach Hannukah massacre was felt by Jewish communities the world over, as was the killings of two Israeli embassy officials outside the Jewish Museum in Washington DC, and the firebombing attack on a group marching peacefully in Boulder, Colorado for the release of hostages, which injured thirteen people, including 88-year old Holocaust survivor, Barbara Steinmetz, and resulted in the death of 82-year old, Karen Diamond, in June 2025.

At the same time, and also paradoxically, while we witness a virulent resurgence of global antisemitism, we now have more resources being dedicated to combating antisemitism than ever before: Special envoys across multiple countries, working individually and collectively; national action plans to combat antisemitism; and advocacy involving Jewish communal leadership and their respective domestic governments and parliaments.

How do we explain this paradox: on one hand, the unprecedented explosion of antisemitism, on the other, an unprecedented mobilization against it?

We need to appreciate the origin, nature, essence and impact of antisemitism. That antisemitism is not only the oldest, the longest, the most enduring, the most lethal and toxic of hatreds, but one that mutates and metastasizes over time, but is anchored in one historic, foundational, generic, international, conspiratorial trope, and that is that the Jews, the Jewish people and the Jewish State are the enemy of all that is good and the embodiment of all that is evil, reflecting whatever is the particular zeitgeist or ethos of the moment.

And so, when, for example, the zeitgeist was the Christian religion, the Jews were held out to be guilty of deicide of Christ’s killing. When in the Middle Ages, we had the Black Plague, then the Jews were the poisoners of the wells. When the zeitgeist was race, then the Jews were deemed to be untermenschen, were subhuman. And when the zeitgeist became anti-racism, the Jews were deemed to be the embodiment of racism and then apartheid.

Finally, at a time in the 1970s where human rights emerged as the “new secular religion of our times,” – which I celebrated at the time – Israel, was the “Jew among nations” held out a meta-human rights violator, the new Geopolitical Antichrist of our time; the forerunner of the 1975 UN General Assembly “Zionism is Racism” resolution – which the late US Senator Daniel Moynihan said “gave the abomination of antisemitism the appearance of international legal sanction,” – that led to a process proceeding inexorably, indulgently over the next 50 years, involving the laundering of antisemitism under the protective cover of the United Nations, the authority of international law, the culture of human rights, and the very struggle against racism itself.

I still remember when then-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan told me when I was Canada’s Minister of Justice, that “a United Nations that does not put the combating of antisemitism at the forefront of its responsibilities, is a United Nations that has betrayed its past and forfeited its future,” which should underpin our international advocacy in this regard.

I would not wish to have it inferred from my remarks, that Israel and the Jewish people warrant any political privilege or preference because of the horrors of the Holocaust or the horrors of Jewish history. Israel, like any other state, must be held responsible for any violation of human rights or humanitarian law. But the problem is not that Israel should seek, or that anyone should seek on its behalf, that Israel be above the law. The problem is that Israel is systematically denied equality before the law. Not that Israel must respect human rights – which she should – but that the human rights of Israel deserve equal respect. Not that human rights standards should not be applied to Israel, but that these standards should be applied equally to everyone else.

As for the international community and the Community of Democracies, they have a responsibility to implement “a whole of government” action plan, which goes beyond performative tweets and virtue signaling. And action cannot be implemented only on the grounds that antisemitism is a threat to Jews, but because antisemitism is toxic to democracies, and therefore democracies have a responsibility to combat antisemitism to protect their democracies; antisemitism is a threat to the national security of democracies – and the individual and collective security of its citizens – so a democracy protecting its national security must thereby combat antisemitism, and as antisemitism is an assault on our fundamental human rights, the protection of human rights, both domestic and foreign, must thereby also involve the combatting of antisemitism.

Finally, in the face of the ongoing historical, moral, legal, and normative inversion of fact, law and evidence – exemplified by the settler-colonial, ethnic cleansing, apartheid and genocide libels, that have underpinned the internationalization of lawfare delegitimization, may I close by reaffirming three foundational truths:

First, that the Jewish people are a prototypical indigenous people and Israel a prototypical indigenous state – a people that still inhabits the same land, embraces the same religion, studies the same Bible, observes the same traditions, speaks the same indigenous language, Hebrew, and bears the same indigenous name, Israel, as it did 3500 years ago.

Second, that the Jewish people are a prototypical anti-colonial people – a people that have been enslaved, exiled, dispossessed, displaced, persecuted, and prosecuted, and victims of Holocaust and genocide – the worst of inhumanity – until finally returning and rebuilding its historical, indigenous, national homeland, Israel.

And third, Israel is a multiracial, multiethnic, multicultural, multireligious, multi-linguistic and multi-juridical Jewish and democratic state. In a word, the characterization of the Jewish people as a white oppressor supremacist group and Israel as a settler-colonial, apartheid, Nazi state, is a lie that turns history, fact, identity and law on its head.

May I close with the inspiring words of Martin Luther King, Jr., “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” also anchored in our own historic understanding and belief, netzach Yisrael lo yishaker – the Jewish future is secure.

This text was adapted from recent talks I gave at The Herzliya Conference at Reichman University and the Contemporary Antisemitism Conference at the University of Haifa.