A federal government report titled “Campus Antisemitism and Student Experiences” (CASE) recently made headlines. The sensationalist document portrays campus life in Canada as rife with virulent antisemitism. In particular, it claims that 95.7 per cent of surveyed Jewish students reported that they had witnessed or experienced antisemitism in 2025.
The methodology and terminology of this report reveal that its true intentions have very little to do with fighting discrimination on campus. In fact, it is a shameless attempt to justify cracking down on those protesting against the actions of the Israeli state.
The first indication of the report’s real purpose lies in its use of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, adopted by the Canadian government in 2019. The definition conflates criticism of the state of Israel with prejudice against Jewish people.
Antisemitism is a real problem, but this definition hinders the fight against it by equating a just hatred of Israeli imperialism with hatred of all Jews. Therefore, this report has very little to do with making campuses safe for Jews, and very much to do with making campuses safe for Zionism.
And indeed, among the examples given of “antisemitism,” we find things like students complaining they felt “pressure” to “attend pro-Palestinian demonstrations,” a case of a professor who gave readings on Palestinian liberation, “for a course completely unrelated to the conflict,” or a professor of medicine who said, “if we support Israel and don’t denounce the genocide, we would not be good doctors.” Frightful stuff!
The report does contain examples that, if true, are grave cases of antisemitism. That being said, even those should be taken with a heavy dose of salt. When one looks at the methodology of this so-called study, it becomes clear the data contained is at best unreliable, but probably largely made up.
Rather than survey the general Jewish population, the report found its respondents through Chabad and Hillel—militant right-wing Zionist organizations which defend the actions of the Israeli state. This is like surveying white supremacists, and concluding that yes, the white race is indeed in danger! Meanwhile, anti-Zionist Jewish groups like Independent Jewish Voices claim that they were excluded from the study.
In fact, the main author of the report himself served as executive director of the Quebec branch of the Canadian Jewish Congress, now consolidated into CIJA, Canada’s main Zionist lobby group.
It would not be the first time Zionists were caught fabricating evidence of supposed antisemitism. In 2023, The Hillel chapter at UBC was caught spreading fake “I love Hamas” stickers. In Winnipeg, café owners who were victims of alleged antisemitic vandalism were found to have staged the whole affair. B’nai Brith, another major Zionist lobby, produces a sensationalist “antisemitism audit” every year with even more lax criteria and unreliable methodology.
Yet, no one in the political and media establishment questioned the accuracy of this report, and its conclusions made headlines like they were facts. The Canadian ruling class, which views Israel as an important ally in the Middle East, finds in this study a useful propaganda tool. It serves to whip up feelings of insecurity and victimhood among Jews, in order to push them to rally behind Zionist community organizations and push them away from pro-Palestine activism, while justifying further crackdowns on anyone denouncing the genocidal Israeli regime.
Already, university administrations have clamped down on criticism of Israel’s actions. Students participating in pro-Palestine activism have been threatened with arrests, fines, suspension and expulsion. Student unions who spoke up against the genocide in Gaza were threatened with dissolution and withdrawal of recognition. In fact, an investigation by The Breach revealed that 30 Canadian universities conspired with each other and the police to monitor and suppress student involvement in the Palestine movement.
The CASE report even goes so far as to insinuate that universities that allow students to “go on ‘strike’ and bar others from attending their lectures or accessing their studies” are failing “to protect Jewish students on campus.” Again, the very transparent goal here is to depict supporters of the idea of a student strike for Palestine (which the RCP worked to popularize last year and led to an 85,000-strong student strike in Quebec in November 2025) as antisemitic.
This is not to deny the threat of growing antisemitism. But while the report transparently tries to portray that threat as coming from the left and from the pro-Palestine movement, the danger of antisemitism comes from the right. Prominent neo-Nazis of the Nick Fuentes type have gained a larger audience in the recent period. The last mass shooting at a synagogue in North America, in 2018 in Pittsburgh, was perpetrated by a far-right white supremacist.
But the Canadian government is not interested in combatting real antisemitism. In fact, it has associated with antisemites in the recent period, through its funding and training of neo-Nazi military units in Ukraine. The hypocrisy could not be more glaring, when MPs of this same government gave a standing ovation in parliament to literal Nazi WW2 veteran Yaroslav Hunka in 2023.
Antisemitism is a useful tool of the ruling class. The myth of a cabal of powerful Jewish elites pulling the strings allows them to channel anti-capitalist sentiments away from the ruling class and its system, and towards reactionary ideas. This is why they won’t actually fight antisemitism. Throughout its history, Zionism has gone hand in hand with antisemitism, and many of its earliest champions, such as Lord Balfour, actually supported Zionism for explicitly antisemitic reasons. Both of these monsters need to be slain.
