Monday June 17th we convened at Roy Thomson Hall for our spring 2024 debate.
About the debate
Hate crimes against Jews are surging globally as the war in Gaza continues into its eighth month. This reality has brought new urgency to a decades-old debate about whether anti-Zionism – the rejection of statehood for the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland – is being used as a cover for antisemitism or hatred against Jews as a people. Critics of Zionism argue that it is a supremacist and exclusionary ideology that unjustly privileges the lives and rights of Jews over non-Jewish inhabitants of Israel. The charge that anti-Zionism is antisemitism is a smokescreen to cloak Israel from much needed international scrutiny and hold it to account for its actions. Nonsense, say Zionists. A key feature of antisemitism is applying one standard for Jews, and another for everyone else. Zionism is nothing more than the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in their historic lands. This is the same right that has been claimed by countless other nations and groups for centuries. Those who say that the Jewish state alone is illegitimate are not simply anti-Zionist but antisemitic and bear responsibility for rising hate crimes against Jews worldwide
