It’s almost like an epidemic, or perhaps a pandemic. And it goes something like this.

First, Israel attacks Gaza in retaliation for rocket attacks or, in the case of the events of October 7, 2023, a large-scale assault by Hamas. The Israeli military kills and injures hundreds, sometimes thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of Palestinians, always including multitudes of children, and often turns the coastal strip into rubble.

During these attacks, on social media, many Canadians tweet or post outraged condemnations of Israeli actions.

From time to time, a federal or provincial election is called.

Some of those social media critics of Israel present themselves as candidates in those elections and win their parties’ nominations.

During the election pro-Israel organizations scour the internet looking for these denouncers of Israel.

When the pro-Israel organizations find these messages, they distribute media releases and send notes to rival candidates, accusing the scribes of Jew-hatred.

A disproportionate number of those targeted in this way are racialized people.

Almost always uncritically, the media and rival candidates pick up the accusations as gospel truth and engage in antisemitism-shaming.

Much of the time, the candidates’ sponsoring party removes them or persuades them to resign from the campaign.

Rinse and repeat at the next election cycle.

Given that the kind of people outraged by Israel’s massacres are disproportionately members of the NDP, it is that party, and not the Conservatives or Liberals, that is usually caught in the crosshairs.

That’s what happened recently to Tammy Jakeman, an NDP candidate in the Nova Scotia provincial election. An educational program assistant, social and community activist, and ardent trade unionist, she had made several public comments about Israel-Palestine a year before the election campaign. One of Jakeman’s comments noted the irony of a World Children’s Day post from the Auschwitz Memorial about Jewish children in the Holocaust at the same time that Gazan children were being killed in great numbers. The post contains pictures of child inmates of Auschwitz. In another, Jakeman re-posted messages from others about the irony of Israel being one of the “happiest nations” in the world at the same time as that country is “terrorizing Palestinians.”

The Atlantic Jewish Council (AJC) and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) pounced on Jakeman’s remarks, sending howls of indignation (without warning the NDP) directly to the media and to her opponents, who seized the opportunity to denounce her.

If the AJC and CIJA had spent a fraction of the time looking at Jakeman’s social media that they did looking for her posts about Israel, they would have—and probably should have—noticed that she is a person of Indigenous ancestry.

From there the saga moved quickly. Provincial NDP staff (one of whom had been behind a similar ousting of a candidate in the 2015 federal election) visited Jakeman, told her that the situation would only get worse and presented no viable option other than resigning. In tears, Jakeman withdrew her candidacy. Party stalwarts subsequently picked up the refrain, wasting no time in telling everyone who would listen that Jakeman’s resignation was not the party’s doing, but entirely voluntary.

Ms. Jakeman’s messages were acerbic and sarcastic. But were they antisemitic?

Are acerbic and sarcastic comments about Israeli treatment of Palestinians during what the International Court of Justice calls a “plausible genocide” equal to Jew-hatred, especially when these comments nowhere use the word “Jews” or “Jewish”?

In the fevered imaginations of the AJC and CIJA, the answer is a resounding “yes.” According to them and their preferred definition of antisemitism, practically all criticism of Israel is ipso facto Jew-hatred.

But that would mean that the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, the UN General Assembly, the UN Security Council, the UN Special Rapporteurs for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, most of the countries in the world and probably the majority of people in the world, are antisemitic.

Indeed, Israel and all-too-many of its supporters insist that all of these organizations, position-holders, countries and people are antisemitic. And then Israel doubles down and the outrage against it grows and the outraged are denounced as antisemites. And on and on it goes. Where it stops, nobody knows. Perhaps until the “new” antisemitism turns into the “old” antisemitism?

The dominant theorist of the “new antisemitism” is pro-Israel ideologue, Canadian human rights maven and politician, Irwin Cotler. Just like individual Jews of Europe subject to antisemitism over the centuries, says Cotler, Israel, as “the Jewish state,” is nothing more or less than “the collective Jew” and antipathy to Israel is no different than age-old hatred of Jews.

But the Jews of the shtetl did not have the eighth most powerful country in the world. They did not have soldiers, armies, planes, tanks, and nuclear weapons. All of which kill, maim, and destroy men, women, children, their homes, schools, and places of work and worship.

You might think that the NDP would have learned by now. You would think that they would defend their candidates, rather than throw them under the bus, or stand by when the bus hits them. But it happens in most elections.

Through many election campaigns, “establishment” Jewish organizations have followed a similar modus operandi. They scrape the internet for any criticism of Israel by candidates and sitting legislators and then feed bogus accusations of antisemitism to the media and rival political parties. NDP candidates and politicians targeted this way include Sara Jama, Syed Hyder Ali, Hans Marotte, Matthew Rowlinson, Jerry Natanine, Sana Hassainia, Craig Sauve, Shameela Shakeel, and Nova Scotia’s Rana Zaman and Morgan Wheeldon, among others. In more cases than not, these victims have paid with their political lives.

Zaman, a Muslim, is a well-known and widely admired Halifax social justice campaigner who, among many other things, has brought Muslim, Jewish and women of other faiths together to work for peace. The federal party removed Zaman as a candidate in the 2019 election due to earlier tweets denouncing Israeli soldiers shooting unarmed Gazans in the “Great March of Return” and comparing Israelis to Nazis.

Zaman immediately issued an apology:

My intention was to raise awareness, engage others in a conversation and dialogue that would be productive. Instead I have inadvertently caused pain using such language and I humbly apologize for that. My emotions at the sight of so many innocent Palestinians being shot, maimed or killed overwhelmed me. I have learned an important lesson, the need to be mindful and not to use this analogy in the future!

But the Atlantic Jewish Council refused to accept her apology. In fact, apologies seem only to encourage it to redouble its efforts. Zaman was, later that year, bestowed with an award by the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission. Ten days later, after the publication of letters by the AJC and two local rabbis denouncing her, the commission rescinded the award.

Regarding the Jakeman affair, as a statement released by the Halifax chapter of Independent Jewish Voices put it:

Criticism of Israel is not antisemitism. We know that many in the NDP understand this and speak out frequently in support of Palestinians living under Israel’s brutal regime. While antisemitism is a real problem, and growing commensurate with other forms of bigotry and white supremacy, it is incumbent upon us as Jews to separate real instances of antisemitism from bad-faith, politically motivated attacks such as that made by CIJA and the AJC.

Part of the problem is the way the NDP brass sees and frames the issue. In the recent case, Nova Scotia leader Claudia Chender told Jakeman that her remarks “did harm” to Jews. In framing it this way, the NDP is succumbing to a horrible moral blackmail. Whenever anyone criticizes Israel, whether robustly or mildly, some Jews are going to feel hurt. But just because somebody is possibly hurt does not mean what we say is necessarily wrong or antisemitic. When the ICJ called Israel’s actions a plausible genocide, no doubt many supporters of Israel felt pain.

The end result of focusing on hurt feelings instead of dead bodies is to shut everyone up as a genocide unfolds before our eyes.

Not only are candidates and sitting parliamentarians targeted for the slightest perceived “hurt,” even NDP leaders must watch their Ps and Qs. Just last July, Ontario NDP leader Marit Stiles visited a “Taste of the Middle East” event and tweeted with some photos: “From beautiful Palestinian embroidery, to young entrepreneurs, to savoury kebabs and sweet baklava, the Taste of the Middle East is an unforgettable experience. Can’t wait to go back next year!”

To Stiles’ innocuous comment, the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (FSWC) angrily tweeted, “The ‘beautiful Palestinian embroidery’ that you speak of represents the erasure of Israel and its Jewish people, Marit Stiles. It is unbecoming of a political leader to celebrate such a display, which causes harm to Jews in Canada and Israel. An apology is owed to the community.”

In response, Stiles deleted the tweet, and then apologized. Apparently, this is what the NDP has come to. What’s next? A boilerplate apology on every NDP website or piece of literature handed out on doorsteps? Or better, perhaps, would be keeping absolutely quiet on the issue of Israel and Palestine, since the mere mention of either gets the NDP in trouble. This is nothing less than a campaign of “civil terror” spreading across Canada, among many countries.

Another hypocrisy apparent in the removal of these candidates is that it is done at the behest or on behalf of a foreign country. In 2023, the federal government, egged on by opposition parties, set up the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions under Justice Marie-Josée Hogue, a judge of the Québec Court of Appeal. According to the inquiry’s website, its mandate was to investigate “the interference that China, Russia and other foreign actors may have engaged in, and any impact it may have had on the 2019 and 2021 federal elections.”

How are the above instances of pro-Israel organizations meddling in the Canadian electoral process any different than the alleged interference by China and Russia? Isn’t Israel, a country separate and apart from Canada with its own government, a “foreign actor?” Does this not amount to “interference” in our elections?

When it comes to the issue of Israel and Palestine, the wonders never cease.

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