A new spectre has arisen on the pro-Israel Jewish right. And it is all the more dangerous as it purports to sit in the progressive heart of the labour movement in Canada and the United States.

It consists of Jewish union members claiming that they are currently the targets of antisemitism within their respective unions. In Canada, they have coalesced around an organization called the Canadian Jewish Labour Committee (CJLC). They say their mission is “to unite Jewish workers across Canada’s labour movement by fostering inclusion, combatting antisemitism, and championing engagement and solidarity.”

I want to consider how seriously we should take this new group, what its real mission is, and take a look at its historical antecedents.

But first we need to ask what relevance Canada’s labour movement has for the question of Israel-Palestine. Winning hearts and minds is crucial on this issue and unions are influential thought and action leaders. Just under a third of Canada’s workers are covered by a union agreement, totaling 5.3 million people. While union members are diverse in political opinion, they are an audience for the campaigns their unions espouse. Those in and around the labour movement are a significant part of the liberal and progressive portion of Canadians and thus often more receptive to humanitarian arguments.

The name “Jewish Labour Committee” has an old and honourable history. But its present incarnation in Canada bears very little resemblance to the original.

The choice of the name by the current group, which was founded on Labour Day 2024, is no coincidence: The cynical purpose is to present a veneer of progressivism and labour-friendliness. The reality is advocating for Zionism within the labour movement.

The original Jewish Labour Committee began in the United States in 1934 as a human rights organization within the labour movement during the heyday of Nazism in Germany and antisemitism in North America. A Canadian analogue was created two years later.

To fully appreciate the difference between the old and the new organizations, it is crucial to distinguish between the situation of Canadian Jews in 1936 and that of today. As historian Irving Abella summarized that earlier era:

The Canada of the first half of the last century and particularly from the 1920s through the 1940s was a foreboding place for Jews, as it was for most immigrants. Closed to most of the world by racist immigration laws that divided the peoples of the world into preferred and (mostly) non-preferred, Canada was a country permeated with xenophobia, nativism and antisemitism.

Today, by contrast, Canadian Jews by and large enjoy great privilege, strong public respect and, compared to other minorities, suffer no systemic barriers to entry in schools, professions, jobs, business, and politics.

It was amid the raging antisemitism of the 1930s that Kalman Kaplansky, a Polish-born Jew and member of the International Typographical Union in Montréal, inspired by the traditions of the left-wing Jewish Bund, initiated the Canadian version of the Jewish Labour Committee and served as executive director until 1957. The organization dissolved in the mid-1970s as Canadian governments took over promotion and adjudication of human rights.

In the post-war period, the Canadian JLC, like other Jewish organizations such as B’nai Brith and the Canadian Jewish Congress, decided that the best way to fight antisemitism was to take a universalist rather than a particularist, approach. And thus, they not only combated Jew-hatred, but contributed to a wide range of anti-discrimination developments and institutions by uniting with, rather than isolating themselves from, other minorities and equity-deserving groups.

Although most leaders of the JLC were Zionists, Israel was not a major focus of their work. As several historians have argued, after many years as but one issue among many for diaspora Jewish institutional organizations, Israel came to be the consuming issue only after the 1967 Six-Day War, and much more in the past few decades, to the point of the near-abandonment of universalism.

I personally experienced this anti-universalist momentum in a case on freedom of religion that made Canadian legal history and is now taught in university human rights courses. In 1990, our nine-year old son Max told us that our school board in Saskatoon was insisting that students recite the Christian Lord’s Prayer or absent themselves from assembly. He refused to do either. Rather than fight this only as Jews, we helped assemble a multi-ethnic, multi-religious group of families, Muslims, Hindus, atheists, Christians, Unitarians, and Jews. We launched a nine-year battle against a Canadian constitutional law loophole that seemed to allow Saskatchewan and Alberta to defy the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In an earlier era, such a case would have been a slam-dunk for Canada’s Jewish legacy organizations to embrace. However, early on in this campaign we approached the local official Jewish community organizations; they declined to participate. Having achieved good standing in Canadian society, they were reluctant to rock the boat with accusations of discrimination, or to unite with a broad coalition. Only after nearly a decade, with national public and media attention focusing on our struggle, did those organizations engage with this important initiative as intervenors. At the tribunal, a lawyer represented a local Jewish synagogue and a B’nai Brith League for Human Rights expert testified about the harm to children of religious discrimination. Max and his friends, by then high school seniors, testified before a human rights board of inquiry in Saskatoon that made a landmark ruling in our favour.

As David Koffman has written very recently:

Canadian Jewish communal resources increasingly moved away from what was once called “community relations” (and is now called “allyship”). Instead, we invested in vertical alliances: forging strong ties with police chiefs, university presidents, Members of Parliament and Members of Provincial Parliaments, and other officials. This made sense at the time: Jews were entering the highest echelons of power and elite institutions and had more access to these officials. But the focus on vertical alliances came at the expense of horizontal ones—with labor unions, teachers’ federations, municipal councils, churches, temples, mosques, and grassroots organizations. And so, we arrive at today’s condition: Canadian Jews are politically enfranchised but socially estranged; powerful in official circles, but uncertain of our neighbors.

Even the modest salute to universalist human rights seen in the Saskatoon case has arguably atrophied further among Jewish institutional organizations over the last 35 years. Indeed, with their current obsessive focus on antisemitism and Israel, and their single-minded promotion of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of Antisemitism (IHRA-WDA) and other initiatives, those Jewish organizations are now doing the exact opposite of the old JLC: they are working to restrict civil rights and freedom of expression in a wrong-headed focus on themselves and defence of Israel at all costs.

In contrast, three quarters of a century ago, the old JLC was kicking up a storm. Canada’s Human Rights History website describes the old JLC’s prodigious work and serious impact:

JLC activists were involved in some of the most comprehensive anti-discrimination campaigns in Canada. In Montreal, for example, the United Council for Human Rights (the local JLC labour committee) continually badgered Québec’s provincial government to pass a bill of rights.

The JLC can claim much credit for the eventual formation of human rights commissions across Canada in the 1960s and 70s, albeit in rudimentary form, and was arguably an inspiration for Canada’s 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

It is no small irony, then, that under that very Charter, attacks on freedom of expression—like a definition of antisemitism that conflates Jew-hatred with criticism of Israel—are likely to be struck down, and with it the muzzling of critics of Israel, currently promoted by pro-Israel Jewish organizations in Canada.

As for the current CJLC, it claims to have associates in the following unions: Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), Health Services Association of British Columbia (HSABC), British Columbia General Employees Union (BCGEU), Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU), Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), Canadian Association of Professional Employees (CAPE) and Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC).

In a recent Rabble article on the new CJLC, journalist Paul Weinberg calls it a “zombie,” alluding to something that is dead but still walks the earth—at the behest of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), he says—causing pain and suffering to the population:

CIJA has never shown any interest in the issues of the labour movement. It is essentially a secretive corporate-structured organization that was created by large wealthy interests to replace the century old and democratic Canadian Jewish Congress as the representative organization of Canadian Jews. Since then, the Canadian Jewish leadership has focused almost exclusively on Israel, as if that is all there is to Jewish identity.

Like many on the left, the Canadian trade union movement was once enamoured of Israel. As long as the Palestinians and their cause could be ignored, Canadian labour activists looked to the young country as a symbol of anti-Nazism and a bastion of collectivism and socialism. Canadian trade unionists rubbed fraternal shoulders with representatives of Israel’s labour federation, the Histadrut, at the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (later the International Trade Union Confederation) to which they both belonged. “Friendly” delegations visited each other’s countries. Up to about 15 years ago, I have been told by a reliable official of the Canadian Labour Congress, Canadian labour leaders, like many intellectuals, politicians and opinion influencers, would regularly be wooed with free or subsidized junkets to Israel.

But as Israel’s maltreatment of the Palestinians became harder to ignore, as Israeli forces’ brutality increased, as the Jewish settler movement perpetrated more atrocities, and as the Israeli polity moved steadily rightward under Likud dominance from 1977, that relationship began to change—first slowly, then more quickly.

As an indicator of current Canadian trade union support for Palestine, from the beginning of the new century, labour has increasingly backed the Palestinian civil society call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. The Ontario branch of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE-ON), with 240,000 members, came on board in May 2006. The Québec Teachers Union (FNEEQ-CSN), with 34,000 members, endorsed BDS in June 2007, and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), numbering 51,000 members, declared its support in April 2008.

To date, 14 union groups, with a cumulative membership of almost two million, have joined the call. Other unions, like the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), with over 72,000 members and over 40 individual academic associations, have rejected the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism as an affront to academic freedom.

Labour 4 Palestine (L4P), a national organization of trade unionists active in many cities, vigorously promotes campaigns like “hot cargo” (targeting shipments, especially military, to Israel by and through Canada), cutting ties with Histadrut, and directing union members facing discipline for pro-Palestine activity to legal help. The CJLC has maligned L4P as “steeped in anti-Israel rhetoric and full endorsement of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement.”

With the Israeli ravage of Gaza and the West Bank since October 7, 2023, trade union criticism of Israel and support for Palestine has swelled. Accordingly, frantic attacks on the critics by Israel-supporting Jews have escalated.

In August 2024, during the Paris Olympics, popular CUPE Ontario President Fred Hahn re-posted a political cartoon portraying an Israeli diver plunging into Gaza as a bomb and exploding. Compared to widespread condemnation of Israel a year later, that cartoon would, in retrospect, appear rather tame. Nonetheless, the outrage machine exploded, with the well-worn accusations of antisemitism and Jewish unsafety, along with demands for expulsion. CIJA launched a petition campaign urging people to “Act Now: Tell CUPE to fire Fred Hahn.”

After October 7 the attacks on Hahn intensified. CIJA claimed that Jewish union members reported “unprecedented levels of racism, hostility, and discrimination within their own union. Many no longer feel safe participating in union activities—a stark betrayal of the principles unions are supposed to uphold.”

B’nai Brith Canada was not far behind, tweeting about Hahn’s presidency: “This disgraceful post isn’t just an insult to the Jewish community; it’s an attack on our shared Canadian values of decency, respect, and human dignity.”

As usual, politicians at various levels piled on, with Ontario Premier Doug Ford calling Hahn a “bully” and “a disgusting human being.” Provincial Labour Minister David Piccini confronted Hahn in person with the accusation of antisemitism then tweeted a video of his encounter.

A group of 80 Jewish CUPE members are reported to have filed an Ontario human rights complaint against Hahn.

In an apparent bout of panic, CUPE’s national executive also called for Hahn’s resignation. But more recent reports indicate a climb-down and significant support for Hahn from his CUPE Ontario members. Local 1281 lashed out at Hahn’s detractors:

CUPE National’s decision adds fuel to the fire of the widespread repression of Palestinian solidarity and is a boon to reactionary employers, media and politicians looking to silence us… Fred has endured months of badgering and harassment for his vocal support of Palestinians who are experiencing genocide by Israel. CUPE Ontario was a trailblazer by supporting the call for Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions at the 2005 Convention. This has been the work of our Union for decades and we are proud of it.

CUPE Ontario came under pressure from those Jewish organizations to engage in mandatory antisemitism training. But, of course, the training would have to be approved by, or preferably given by, CIJA or the Simon Wiesenthal Centre for Holocaust Studies. The union refused to accede to this demand. In November 2024, CUPE Ontario arranged for a three-day workshop on antisemitism, Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism for executive and staff members. IJV and the National Council of Canadian Muslims facilitated the sessions. As can be expected, some Jewish CUPE Ontario members objected to this training.

Independent Jewish Voices Canada (IJV) has been offering workshops on antisemitism to thousands of Canadians, in unions, academic institutions, student organizations, churches and the like since December 2019. The training has been developed with sound historiography by academic specialists in Jewish studies, equity studies, antisemitism and Israel. Except for the occasional disagreement from some pro-Israel Jewish participants, reception of the training has been overwhelmingly positive. Progressive groups want antisemitism training. But they don’t want the silencing and muzzling approach of the pro-Israel lobby.

The pedagogical approach adopted by IJV in its training on antisemitism and how to combat it differs from that of other Jewish organizations, especially in its emphasis on the historical, political, geographic and intellectual conditions undergirding the phenomenon of antisemitism, as well as in its contextualization of antisemitism as integrally related to other forms of racism rather than as an exceptional case.

Where unions with substantial Jewish membership have chosen IJV’s antisemitism training, some Jewish members have bitterly complained as a matter of course. These tend to be unions with professionalized and credentialized workers such as policy analysts, lawyers, allied health occupations, community college instructors and auxiliary staff at universities and school boards.

In November 2024 when one of those unions, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU), arranged such training with IJV—training that I was slated to deliver—the union’s nascent Jewish caucus (it would not hold its first formal meeting until ten months later) condemned the event.

The Jewish caucus wrote an angry letter to union President J.P. Hornick objecting to my having been selected to deliver OPSEU’s mandated antisemitism training. They complained that the union had not sought the “guidance” of the Jewish caucus, claiming that neither Hornick nor the union “are qualified to determine the legitimacy of an antisemitism trainer.” They went on to argue that, as a leading member of IJV, an anti-zionist organization that rejects the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, I was a misguided choice. The caucus was disappointed that the two proposals they had submitted in an email—a training session offered by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre for Holocaust Studies or one by CIJA—had been rejected. In the event, IJV’s OPSEU workshop was well received.

In its July 2025 newsletter, the CJLC sprayed opprobrium at trade unionists in several venues: chiding HSABC for hosting an L4P workshop where the words “apartheid,” “genocide,” “settler” and “ethnic cleansing” were spoken; remonstrating with BCGEU for expressing solidarity with L4P, and scolding the Canadian Labour Congress for “counterproductive finger-pointing” at Israel’s activity in Gaza. In other words, for not supporting the Israeli cause.

It is evident that the CJLC has a pro-Israel agenda, including advocating for the IHRA definition of antisemitism and attempting to undermine the credibility of Jewish dissenters from the establishment views.

The reality is that the CJLC, the Jewish CUPE litigants, the OPSEU Jewish caucus, and others claiming to represent Jewish trade unionists, represent a particular segment of the Jewish community but claim to represent the only legitimate Jewish opinion so that they can intimidate unions into accepting their political and training approaches and abstain from (or think twice about) pro-Palestine activity.

In essence, the CJLC and its associates, despite their complaints about Canadian antisemitism, are taking advantage of the exact good will that Canadians still hold for their Jewish neighbours despite the horrors in Gaza and the West Bank. As retired sociologist Sheryl Nestel pointed out in her submission on behalf of IJV to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights:

While evidence that antisemitism is a significant threat is indisputable, statistical reports on antisemitism which equate Jew hatred with criticism of Israel exaggerate this threat. Attempts to rank marginalized groups according to reported incidents of hate crimes are likely inaccurate given that marginalized groups consistently under-report hate crimes to police and other authorities. Reports on hate crimes or incidents of antisemitism frequently mis-attribute the growth of antisemitism to the movement for Palestinian human rights.

Precisely because many Canadians understand the difference between Jews and Israel (and between Judaism and Zionism) attempts to guilt the labour movement will increasingly ring hollow. The CIJAs of this world are programmed to keep dishing out lies about antisemitism and Jewish diasporic unsafety while diasporic Jews of all political perspectives quietly experience the dark night of the soul over Israel’s mad rampage. The hinge of fate is turning as we watch entire countries being shut down in anger, and finally most Canadians now say they feel sympathy primarily for the Palestinians, rather than for Israelis.

Larry Haiven is Professor Emeritus at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax and a founding member of Independent Jewish Voices Canada.