Jack Jedwab: In France, as in Canada, yesterday’s 'dirty Jew' is today’s 'dirty Zionist'

"Yesterday's dirty Jew has become today's dirty Zionist."

That stark warning came from Caroline Yadan, the Deputy for the 8th constituency of French citizens living abroad in France's National Assembly and architect of what has become known as the "Yadan law," during my interview with her in Paris on June 1. For Yadan, the issue is not whether Israel, like any other democracy, can be criticized. Of course it can. The issue is whether the language of anti-Zionism is increasingly being used to legitimize something far more dangerous: the denial of the Jewish people's right to self-determination and, ultimately, calls for the destruction of the world's only Jewish state.

In Yadan's view, the contemporary demonization of Zionism cannot be treated as a neutral semantic debate. The word "Zionist," she argues, has become a pretext — a more acceptable way of saying "Jew" while avoiding the appearance of traditional antisemitism. For too many people, a Jew is deemed acceptable only if he or she renounces attachment to Israel, declares opposition to the Jewish state, or accepts the charge that Israel itself is illegitimate.

This was the logic behind Yadan's legislative initiative. As she explained it, the law did not seek to punish criticism of Israeli policy, nor did it refer to Zionism as such. Its purpose was to sanction calls for the destruction of a state formally recognized by France, in violation of the right of peoples to self-determination. In other words, it drew a line between criticism and eliminationism.

The reaction to her initiative underscored her point. Yadan's effort was met not simply with political opposition, but with a flood of virulent antisemitic attacks and several death threats. The campaign against her became a grim illustration of the very phenomenon she was trying to name: the ease with which hatred of Israel, or of those who defend Israel's right to exist, slides into hatred of Jews themselves.

That distinction is too often missing from Canadian public discourse.

On June 1, Prime Minister Mark Carney was right to say that Canada is failing its Jewish community. He was also right to acknowledge that antisemitism in this country is specific, severe and in need of a targeted response. But his instruction to the new Ministerial Advisory Council on Rights, Equality and Inclusion to examine the nature, scale and drivers of antisemitism risks treating the central driver as though it were still obscure.

A serious advisory council should study data, enforcement gaps, institutional failures, online radicalization and the social settings in which such hate is normalized. But it should not pretend that the principal contemporary vocabulary of antisemitism is a mystery. The question is not whether antisemitism has many channels. It does. The question is whether Canada will name the ideological current that has made antisemitism newly acceptable in so-called polite spaces.

If antisemitism is the council's first order of business, then its members must be prepared to answer a basic question: do they accept that calling for the elimination of the State of Israel is antisemitic?

That should not be a difficult question for anyone appointed to advise the Government of Canada on antisemitism. Canada has adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism, and on June 1, Carney reiterated that it is Canada's definition. The IHRA framework recognizes that antisemitism today often expresses itself through the denial of Jewish peoplehood and Jewish self-determination.

Caroline Yadan's intervention in France offers Canada a useful lesson. The issue is not whether Israel may be criticized; it happens all too regularly, both outside and within Israel. The issue is whether calls for Israel's destruction are allowed to masquerade as ordinary political critique. Yadan's answer is categorically no. Canada's answer should be the same.

For the Canadian advisory council members this should be a minimal bar. If a body tasked with prioritizing the fight against antisemitism cannot say that calls for the elimination of Israel are antisemitic, then it lacks clarity.

The French story shows that the issue has not disappeared simply because the Yadan law itself did not succeed. France, too, has seen a flurry of antisemitism since October 7, and Aurore Bergé, Minister Delegate to the Prime Minister, responsible for Equality between Women and Men and the Fight against Discrimination, has been outspoken in identifying a principal cause of hatred toward Jews: the tendency to insist that acts of antisemitism are too often expressions of anti-Zionism. Revisiting Yadan's effort, Bergé will introduce new legislation on racism and antisemitism on July 1 that aims at targeting acts of antisemitism that purport to be anti-Zionist.

Prime Minister Carney has said that this moment demands clarity. That clarity must begin by repudiating those who seek the destruction of the state of Israel. Canada does not need an advisory process that studies the obvious into ambiguity. It needs one that says plainly what Canada's own adopted definition already makes clear: calls for Israel's destruction are antisemitic. Antisemitism cannot be seriously confronted while its most fashionable contemporary expression is left unnamed.

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