In testimony I gave earlier this year to the House of Commons Justice Committee respecting its study on antisemitism, I outlined factors why antisemitic hatred is so pervasive on campuses across Canada. Today, I elaborate on several of those factors, together with a detailed look at the use of slogans or chants in protests.
Factors Contributing to Pervasive Antisemitism
1. The active involvement of extremists and extremist organizations in Canada, some student based, who operate largely with impunity in Canada. They recruit both the malevolent and the ignorant to their cause.
2. Foreign money infused into the United States and Canada, and the use of Canada as a major hub for extremist financing.
3. The misuse of social media by circulating misinformation, antisemitic tropes and historical distortions. This misuse is also orchestrated by extremists and foreign governments. Young people often use social media platforms as a major or sole source for the news. This is problematic for two reasons: the highly disproportionate anti-Zionist rhetoric contained on social media platforms and equally important, algorithms that virtually guarantee confirmation bias by feeding consumers more of what they are already predisposed to read and believe.
4. Radicalized faculty members who seek to indoctrinate students to uncritically accept the demonization of Zionism and Zionists and to reject the legitimacy of the very existence of Israel as a Jewish democratic state. This results in the marginalization of Jewish students who do not renounce their Zionism and normalizes antisemitic behaviour on and off campuses.
5. Related to the above, the absence, in many classrooms of a culture that promotes respectful dialogue on controversial issues and that encourages critical thinking and “active listening.”
6. The confusion, and often deliberate obfuscation, of the distinction between protected speech and hate speech, so as to immunize those who engage in hate speech or hate activities from accountability. A false narrative has been created that freedom of speech trumps all other considerations and allows protestors to unilaterally decide where and when they protest, what spaces they choose to occupy, whose rights they are allowed to trample upon and, without restriction, what they say.
See my earlier article, “Dialogue v. Hatred’" and my submissions to the Toronto Police Service Board
7. The underuse and inconsistent use by law enforcement and prosecution services of existing criminal law, provincial and municipal tools to address hate. This underuse emboldens hatemongers and their followers. Frequently, there appears to be a lack of common understanding among and between officers and prosecutors as to the applicability of these tools, compounded by an imperfect understanding of antisemitism and the significance of certain activities, language or symbols. In some jurisdictions, there also appears to be a lack of political will to create and enforce a “zero tolerance for hate” policy.
8. The failure by many school administrations to enforce their own codes of conduct to protect students from harm. They also fail to utilize non-criminal legal tools to address those people or activities that create a poisoned environment for students, faculty and staff. For example, universities are entitled to remove signs on their campuses that create a poisoned environment. “All Zionists off campus” is a clear example.
9. The use of slogans that incite violence, promote hatred, and mirror unequivocal jihadist language and activities.
10. Mainstream media stories that (a) minimize or ignore pro-Israel perspectives; (b) subject Hamas’ assertions to a lower level of scrutiny than Israeli assertions (c) treat unsupported assertions as fact; (d) repeatedly fail to correct or give appropriate attention to the disproof or undermining of inflammatory assertions about Israel. This is not an “Israel, right or wrong” point. On the contrary, robust criticism of Israel of the kind any country is exposed to, is legitimate, whether merited or not, and does not constitute antisemitic activity. My point here is that the media should stop putting the proverbial “thumb on the scale” through patently uneven coverage.
Point Nine: Slogans that Promote Hatred
Today, I wish to comment on item 9, the use of slogans that incite violence, promote hatred and mirror unequivocal jihadist language and activities. I primarily discuss one slogan in particular: “From the River to the Sea. Palestine Shall be Free.” Much has been said about the use of this slogan. However, I would like the reader to approach the slogan from a little different perspective. Let me explain.
To many Jews, including me, this slogan represents a genocidal call for the extermination of Israel and its Jewish majority population. This is certainly a valid interpretation given Hamas’ use of the slogan as one of its rallying cries and Hamas’ undeniable genocidal intentions. These intentions were manifested all too clearly on October 7 and as recently as this month, when Hamas murdered six hostages in cold blood rather than risk their rescue by IDF.
Others have given a variety of benign interpretations to “From the River to the Sea,” for example, that it reflects support for equality rights for Palestinians throughout the region, including in Israel, and/or expresses support for a secular state in which Jews, Muslims and others live harmoniously in peace and/or it expresses support for a two-state solution.
The judge who heard the University of Toronto’s interlocutory application that ended the campus encampment described a number of these benign interpretations. He said that the precise meaning depends on the circumstances in which the phrase is used. But he also concluded that there is no evidence that the named respondents or occupants of the encampment were using the slogan with antisemitic intentions.
I leave to a second editorial the serious flaws in his analysis of the occupation and the purported good faith of its leadership – an analysis already cast in doubt by subsequent events. But today, let’s talk about the chant itself, From the River to the Sea, Palestine Shall be Free.
Sadly, the impact that this chant has on the Jewish community and its allies, especially in the aftermath of October 7, has been profound. Many Jews feel unsafe, and at existential risk as a community usually for the first time in their lives as Canadians. This chant and other similar chants, particularly when accompanied by other toxic slogans or activities, evoke images of 1930s Germany. However, existing evidence (viewed skeptically by some Jews) compel us to recognize that many of those who chant the slogan are not homicidal, but ignorant.
Quite a few protestors, when asked, were unable to identify “what river” or “what sea.” A number disassociated themselves from the chant when it was explained to them. It is remarkable how many protestors do not even know that Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. Or anything whatsoever about the concessions Israel was prepared to make that led to the intifadas. Indeed, chants for a global intifada or “the only solution is intifada revolution” are shouted both by extremists with malevolent intent and those ignorant about the targeting of civilians and suicide-bombings that represent the only intifadas known to Israelis and Canadian Jews. Yet again, protestors seize upon a “benign” interpretation of intifada, as if the slogans exist in a vacuum.
All that being said, the existence of more benign interpretations for these slogans does not immunize protestors from legal and moral scrutiny when they are used.
Legal Scrutiny
In a number of instances, there can be no doubt about the genocidal / hateful intent of the chanters: for example, when “From the River to the Sea—Palestine Shall be Free” is accompanied, usually in Arab, by “From Water to Water – Palestine Shall Be Arab." No ambiguity there. Or when protestors chant “From River to River, Palestine Shall be Jew-Free.” Try as you might, there is no benign interpretation that even the most generous or naïve could give to this obvious criminal hate speech. I observe that the judge who decided the University of Toronto injunction application concluded that such antisemitic chants were indeed taking place on campus, but gave them no legal significance (a doubtful proposition) simply because there was no proof that the specific occupiers named in the injunction had uttered them.
Moral Scrutiny
When American university presidents told Congress that calls for the genocide of Jews might violate their codes of conduct “depending on the context”, they were rightly condemned. No context was needed to conclude that advocating the genocide of Jews violates codes of conduct. Chants such as “From the River to the Sea—Palestine Shall be Free” are only differentiated because the ignorant can utter them without genocidal/hateful intent. But as earlier indicated, their true intent may well support criminal hate speech charges if accompanied by other chants or activities that make their hate motivation clear. The same holds true for chants referencing Intifada, when accompanied by signs involving a machine gun, or “by all means necessary”, or Hezbollah or Hamas paraphernalia or flags.
But here’s my point on moral scrutiny. Return to the slogan, “From the River to the Sea. Palestine Shall Be Free.” If you are a protestor who merely wishes to express the desire for equal rights for Palestinians in the region or even the desire for a secular state to replace Israel, why express those views by chanting a slogan that you know is regarded as genocidal by the vast majority of Jewish community members? And which you know has been used as recently as October 7 as a rallying call for the extermination of Jewish men, women, and children. If you are genuine in seeking a reconciliation between Arabs, Muslims, Jews, Palestinians, and Israelis, why would you deliberately choose this incendiary phrase? Why would you chant about global intifadas if you know that the only intifadas Israel has ever experienced involved the targeted suicide bombings of civilians, including children?
A senior Muslim lawyer told me that he instructed his colleagues not to use the phrase, “From the River to the Sea—Palestine Shall be Free” for the very reason I am suggesting here. If you legitimately want peace, not slaughter in the Middle East, if you care about the safety of Canadian Jewry, why wouldn’t you find other ways to make the point? If you did, you might learn that you can promote respectful dialogue, not hatred.
About the Author
Mark Sandler, LL.B., LL.D. (honoris causa), ALCCA’s Chair, is widely recognized as one of Canada’s leading criminal lawyers and pro bono advocates. He has been involved in combatting antisemitism for over 40 years. He has lectured extensively on legal remedies to combat hate and has promoted respectful Muslim-Jewish, Sikh-Jewish and Black-Jewish dialogues. He has appeared before Parliamentary committees and in the Supreme Court of Canada on multiple occasions on issues relating to antisemitism and hate activities. He is a former member of the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal, a three-time elected Bencher of the Law Society of Ontario, and recipient of the criminal profession’s highest honour, the G. Arthur Martin Medal, for his contributions to the administration of criminal justice.