The Blogs: Will Zionists be Silenced at the TDSB?

On June 19, 2024, Toronto Jews rallied outside the headquarters of the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) in advance of a meeting scheduled for the evening. The meeting was set to approve the board’s new antiracism policy including new language to address “Anti Palestinian Racism”. The new policy was presented at a Board meeting on June 5, at which a number of delegations spoke in favour of the measure. Concerned members of the Jewish community who wanted to speak against it this evening have been denied the opportunity. The board claims that the period for oral delegations on the matter was concluded on June 5 and today’s meeting is an extension of that one.

In the National Post, this article: Jewish parents to rally outside Toronto school board meeting on anti-Palestinian racism described the concerns of the demonstrators. The policy includes no definition of Anti Palestinian Racism, and the introduction of this issue is seen as a distraction when Toronto schools are dealing with a spike in antisemitic attacks on Jewish students.

“Why are staff and the trustees hiding behind these walls, refusing to hear from the Jewish community? Why are they hiding?” Carly Cohen, another concerned TDSB parent, told the Jewish Educators and Families Association. “Why are the personal stories of hate and racism experienced by Jewish students and teachers in the TDSB incompatible with the TDSB’s combating hate and racism strategy? I have personally lost confidence in the leadership of the TDSB.”

An earlier National Post article published on June 11, describes the delegations which appeared at that meeting in support of the idea: Toronto school board seeks to enshrine anti-Palestinian racism concept as antisemitism soars. The supporters of adding the new language were mostly from Independent Jewish Voices, an anti Zionist organization that claims to speak for the Jewish community. The article notes that Rabbi David Mivasair, one of the leaders of IJV, denies that there is evidence for sexual assault against women in Israel during the Hamas invasion of October 7.

The second article describes the concerns of Jewish parents who have recently seen a number of serious incidents of antisemitism in TDSB schools. At one school, 200 adults escorted a Jewish child to school in May after the child was threatened by other students who said that “they would do to him what Hamas did in Israel” and apparently there was no intervention by staff at the school.

Jewish parents interviewed in the article are concerned that highlighting anti Palestinian Racism means that schools will be required to mark Nakba Day, something which has already occurred at the neighbouring Peel Regional School Board. With an atmosphere of hostility to Jewish students already leading to many incidents in which Jewish students are targeted, parents who wanted to speak this evening say that the focus on anti Palestinian Racism, for which there are not many documented incidents, will make it more difficult to confront the real hostility to Jews that is being driven by anger over the war in Gaza.

Andria Spindel, the executive director of the Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation (CAEF) said that the board should focus on the current crisis of antisemitism:

“Jewish children have been clearly targeted in TDSB schools and the national hate crime data makes it very clear that Jews are the most religiously targeted group in Canada,” Spindel wrote in a statement about the proposed change. “CAEF strongly urges you to send this report back to staff with an eye to addressing issues of antisemitism and anti-Israeli racism in our schools. Do not ignore the issues at hand; do not adopt an anti-Jew bias, do not fail to consider how this bias played out just 76 years ago in Europe.”

In spite of this it seems IJV members who spoke at the June 5 meeting want to impede efforts of the organized Jewish community to help the board confront antisemitism:

“Stop partnering with B’nai Brith, and the (Simon) Wiesenthal Center, and CIJA (Centre for Israel-Jewish Affairs) and UJA. They say they represent all Canadian Jews: they do not. They certainly don’t represent me,” IJV leader Elizabeth Block demanded at the June 5 school board meeting.

Ryan Bird, a representative of the TDSB, when

…asked why enshrining a concept such as anti-Palestinian racism at a time when TDSB schools are experiencing skyrocketing antisemitism is a priority, (he) said the board was meeting a need.

“We have heard from students and the community that there is no recognition in our resources on the lived experiences and identities of Palestinian students and staff,” Bird said.

The board decided to go ahead with the policy at the meeting in the evening.

Readers may know that it was at the TDSB in 2021, that a member of the board, Alexandra Lulka, was investigated for criticizing the incorporation of material that spoke favourably of Palestinian suicide bombings into course material at TDSB schools. Outrageously, an outside investigator, hired by the board, found that Lulka had breached the board’s code of conduct by raising this concern. The board voted 10-7 to reject the findings of the report.

Since the beginning of the war, Canadian media have featured frequent appearances by commentators calling Israel an apartheid state and accusing Israel of genocide. This rhetoric is aggressively advanced by members of IJV. Because IJV calls itself a Jewish organization, we are supposed to believe that the positions they advocate can’t be antisemitic.

It is easy to suspect that those raising concerns about Anti Palestinian Racism want to put Jews who call attention to acts of hatred against our community on the defensive. As they did with Alexandra Lulka, the TDSB appears to be deflecting the concerns of Jews who dare to speak up about Jew hatred promoted in the name of Palestine, by accusing the Jews who are complaining, of anti Palestinian Racism.

This article was originally published at Canadian Zionist Forum.