Silenced In Our Name: a Jewish commentary on Canada’s IHRA Handbook

JVL Introduction

We welcome a new publication from Independent Jewish Voices Canada on the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism and its increasing weaponisation there to shield Israel from criticism, particularly during the genocide in Gaza.

This has reached a crescendo with the publication of The Canadian Handbook on the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism.

IJV Canada comments:

Published by the office of Deborah Lyons, Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust remembrance and combatting antisemitism in Canada, the Handbook is a roadmap for wide-spread adoption of IHRA in Canada, in law enforcement, the judicial system, businesses, and civil society groups. The Handbook poses a major threat to fundamental freedoms to criticize Israeli war crimes, apartheid, and settler colonialism, and promotes anti-Palestinian racism.

IJV’s latest resource, Silenced in Our Name: A Jewish Commentary on Canada’s IHRA Handbook will walk you through the Canadian Handbook section-by-section. It breaks down arguments for IHRA’s implementation, and highlights sections that go above and beyond any previous definitions of antisemitism for the purpose of criminalizing anti-Zionism. Read and share Silenced in Our Name today.

The arguments set out below, while linked to the specificities of the onslaught in Canada, are also very relevant to the arguments we have to counter in Britain and elsewhere.

RK

This article was originally published by IJV Canada on Tue 27 May 2025. Read the original here.