NDP leader says he was 'absolutely not' holding all Jews responsible for Israel's actions in Yom Kippur post
NDP Leader Avi Lewis said he is not holding all Jews accountable for Israel's policies in Gaza, after some Liberal MPs called comments he made in a social media post irresponsible and "despicable."
'We failed to do our part to stop an ongoing genocide committed in our name,' Lewis said on social media
Dylan Robertson · The Canadian Press
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NDP Leader Avi Lewis said he is not holding all Jews accountable for Israel's policies in Gaza, after some Liberal MPs called comments he made in a social media post irresponsible and "despicable."
Lewis posted late Sunday that he would be marking the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur, by reflecting on geopolitics.
"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," Lewis posted Sunday evening on the platform X.
Lewis's post did not directly mention the war in Gaza, which started in October 2023, when Hamas killed 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages in a surprise attack on Israel.
Since then, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed in nearly three years of Israeli strikes that frequently hit civilian areas, and by Israeli policies that led to an international declaration of famine.
Liberal MPs Anthony Housefather and Ben Carr both pushed back on Lewis's comments, saying it's wrong to collectively hold Jews responsible for the actions of Israel.
When asked whether Lewis's post was antisemitic, Carr called it "naive."
"That's an irresponsible thing for a leader to say," the Winnipeg MP said.
"It's dangerous and it's the type of narrative that is actually contributing to the type of threats that we're seeing levied against the Jewish community."
Housefather wrote on X that Lewis's post was "despicable."
The federal government's official definition of antisemitism cautions against holding Jews collectively accountable for Israel's actions because it can fuel anti-Jewish hate.
Advocates have linked that notion of collective responsibility to multiple attacks on Jewish institutions, including a shooting Sunday outside a synagogue in Belleville, Ont., while worshippers were inside marking the start of Yom Kippur.
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Lewis made the post shortly before that event, which the Special Investigations Unit says involved a 29-year-old man allegedly firing a gun at a police officer stationed outside the synagogue for security.
Lewis condemned that attack on Monday, first in a post on X just before question period, and later when asked about it by a reporter in a scrum on Parliament Hill.
"It's terrifying," he said. "Obviously, I can picture what it's like to be in synagogue and to have shots ring out in an environment so familiar to me. It's a super scary thing. It's horrible thing."
In that same scrum he said criticisms of his remarks about Israel were partisan.
"It's pretty ugly to see these partisan points being — this occasion, being used to score partisan points," he said.
"Holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of the state of Israel is antisemitic. I've never done it. I think it's dangerous and that's absolutely not what I did.
"I spoke as a Jewish Canadian from a place of profound sadness.… Many Jews have said that we have not done enough as Jewish people, among a family of faiths and communities around the world."
Some — including former Canadian ambassador to Israel Jon Allen — argue that major Jewish groups in Canada are creating the false impression that they support Israel's actions against Palestinians by not calling out the Israeli government.
"By not calling out what's happening in the West Bank and Gaza, there is a complicity of silence," Allen told a Senate committee this past June, adding that he himself is Jewish.
"The failure sometimes, frankly, of the Jewish community" to speak out against Israeli government actions "makes people in Canada say, 'Well, do they support everything Israel does? Do they support what happened in Gaza?"' he testified.
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