Zionism is so rampant in Canada’s Jewish community that it has effectively become more important than Judaism, though many, if not most, Jewish Canadians say the two are actually one.

Many anti-Zionists dispute this assertion in theological terms, but I don’t care about these debates, in the same way that theological schisms in Christianity are of no interest to me outside of the odd late-night Wikipedia search.

I cannot stress how much I vehemently disagree with this kind of anti-intellectual statement. Both for Judaism/Zionism différence but also for the schisms of Christianity. This kind of know-nothing assertion would be instantly flagged as very very stupid if the writer was trying to flatten for example the differences between Sunni and Shia Muslims, or the difference between Palestinian/Muslim (Palestinian Christians exist).

The distinction between Zionism and Judaism is not cosmetic, it is the very heart of the matter. It is the key to defeating politically Zionism here in the West. And to make this conflation precisely when Canadian anti-Zionist Jews are actually taking on the fight at the highest levels of the national discourse is downright politically idiotic. (The NDP has a leader and an executive president who are both proud and very outspoken members of IJV.) At the same time, there is a very important shift in US centre-left Jewish discourse, which will unavoidably have an echo here because of course it will.