On Sunday, after his runaway victory in the federal New Democratic Party’s leadership race, Avi Lewis linked his own anti-Zionist views to an ancestor’s opposition to the creation of a Jewish state in the Middle East.
“My great-grandfather was a leader in the [Russian anti-Zionist] Jewish Labour Bund,” said Mr. Lewis, who noted that it was founded in 1897, five weeks after the end of the First Zionist Congress. “So, as long as there’s been formal pro-Israel Zionist organizations, there has been a tradition that has disagreed with that within the Jewish community.”
Except, there is a world of difference between describing oneself as an anti-Zionist in 1897 and being one today, more than two years after the Hamas attack on Israel that unleashed the war in Gaza and the global surge in antisemitism that has left Jews everywhere, including in Canada, living in fear.
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To be an anti-Zionist in 2026 is to deny Israel’s right to exist at a time when radical views have permeated the discourse of left-wing parties in Western countries, fuelling political polarization and violence against Jews unseen since the Holocaust. Left-wing denunciations of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, legitimate on their own, are now routinely laced with antisemitic tropes and dog whistles that serve to encourage anti-Israel extremists.
This phenomenon was on disgraceful display at the NDP leadership convention in Winnipeg, where Mr. Lewis delivered his victory speech as keffiyeh-clad supporters joined him on stage and someone behind him waved a massive Palestinian flag. This latter gesture was extremely inappropriate, but it did serve to underscore where the party base now sits.
The NDP, once a flag-bearer of the mainstream Canadian left, is now a party of the far left. It threatens to do here what France Unbowed, Spain’s Podemos and Sumar and Germany’s Die Linke have done to politics in their respective countries by envenoming political debate and spewing antagonism.
In Europe, the far left and far right feed off each other. For both, conflict is the point.
This new breed of New Democrats takes its inspiration from the European far left, spurning the party’s traditional working-class base in favour of radical identity politics.
The new NDP president, Niall Ricardo, greeted last fall’s ceasefire in Gaza, which included a plan to prevent Hamas from rebuilding its military capability, by posting: “The only entity that needs deradicalization and disarmament is the one committing genocide: Israel. Zionism is the sin, genocide is the crime.”
If such language is bad enough from a rank-and-file member, one expects party leaders to weigh their words more carefully. Manitoba NDP Premier Wab Kinew spectacularly failed this test when, in a speech to the NDP convention, he propagated an ugly conspiracy theory about the war in Iran that bears more than a whiff of antisemitism.
“Let the Epstein class fight the Epstein war,” Mr. Kinew said, implying not only that U.S. President Donald Trump launched the war to divert attention from his past links to the sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein, but that there exists such a thing as an “Epstein class” of Jewish elites who pull the strings in Washington. B’nai Brith Canada called Mr. Kinew’s comment “an invocation of a loaded and poisonous antisemitic dog whistle” and called on the NDP Premier to apologize.
Mr. Kinew, who appears to harbour federal ambitions, is a skilled politician who knows how to read an audience. The crowd in Winnipeg lapped up his words. But his remark risks giving licence to the most radical elements in the NDP.
Again, one need only look to Europe to imagine where that might lead.
Rima Hassan, a France Unbowed member of the European Parliament, was barred from entering Canada on the weekend after the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs raised concerns about her anti-Israel views and “glorification of violence, terrorism and antisemitism.”
Ms. Hassan, who was scheduled to speak at two events in Montreal and meet with representatives of the NDP and far-left Québec Solidaire, caused a political storm in France in February after far-left and far-right protesters violently clashed outside an event she headlined in Lyon, leading to the death of a far-right militant.
It seems that wherever Ms. Hassan goes, trouble follows.
Yet, the NDP co-signed a statement with France Unbowed denouncing the decision by the Canada Border Services Agency to cancel Ms. Hassan’s electronic travel authorization after discovering that she had omitted information on her application about being previously denied entry to Israel and facing accusations in France of glorifying terrorism.
By linking up with France Unbowed to defend Ms. Hassan, the NDP showed where it thinks its future lies. That is very worrying, indeed.