Anti-Zionist groups in Canada target Jewish children’s summer camps

Anti-Zionist groups in Canada last week launched a campaign against Jewish children’s summer camps, marking a new front in activists’ global effort to dismantle the Jewish state and demonize its supporters.

A coalition of Canadian leftist and pro-Palestinian organizations announced the campaign seeking to strip accreditation from Jewish children’s summer camps due to their support for “a genocidal state.”

The campaign targeted at least 17 camps across Canada, in Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, and Nova Scotia.

“They pose a problem because they encourage support for a genocidal, settler-colonial state,” the campaign said of the camps, which serve children in elementary school, middle school and high school.

The campaign cited the camps for alleged offenses, such as celebrating Israel’s Independence Day and Memorial Day, staffers visiting Israel, and employment of IDF veterans.

A camp in Quebec, for example, employed a woman as a counselor who had served as a social worker in the IDF. Another camp’s director was decried as a “Zionist who publicly supports Israel.” A camp in Ontario was attacked for cultural “appropriation” for using za’atar, a Middle Eastern spice.

The groups supporting the effort included the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign targeting Israel, the Palestinian Canadian Congress, the anti-Israel group Just Peace Advocates, the Ontario Palestinian Rights Association, and PAJU Montreal.

Children’s camps in Canada must meet a set of standards to gain accreditation from provincial camp associations. The accreditation is a stamp of approval that means the camps meet standards for safety, health, staffing, and programming.

The campaign against the Jewish camps instructed supporters to contact provincial camp accreditors to demand that the Jewish camps lose their accreditation.

Organizers said more than 800 letters had been sent to camp associations.

Anti-Zionist groups have widened their net in recent years to targets including Jewish and Israel-affiliated nonprofits, university clubs, comedy shows, and synagogues.

The latest campaign appeared to mark the first time anti-Zionist activists held an organized, concerted effort targeting Jewish children’s camps.

The campaigners argue they are fighting against “genocide” by Israel, while opponents say the activities amount to de facto stigmatization of Jews.

Anti-Zionist activists have incessantly accused Israel of “genocide” since the Hamas invasion of Israel in October 2023. Genocide is an international crime with a strict legal definition, and international courts have not found that Israel committed the crime.

Some groups have sought to expand the legal definition of genocide to condemn the Jewish state.

The rhetoric used by the anti-Zionists has steadily escalated. In recent months, protesters chanted for Hamas outside a New York synagogue for the first time, and demonstrators in Philadelphia hanged effigies of Israeli soldiers.

The escalating rhetoric also illustrated the international nature of the campaign against Israel, where tactics adopted in one country are often followed elsewhere. After a hip-hop group in the UK led a crowd in chants of “Death to the IDF” last year, for example, the chant began appearing at protests in the US.

Jews are targeted in hate crimes more than any other group in Canada, a figure that surged following the start of the Gaza war. Recent incidents include gunfire at synagogues, violent chants at a Holocaust museum, antisemitic bullying of schoolchildren, support for terrorism on college campuses, and attempted kidnappings of Jewish women.

The announcement targeting the summer camps sparked alarm from Jewish groups.

The UJA Federation of Greater Toronto called the campaign an attempt to “bully and harass” the camps.

“This direct targeting of Jewish campers and staff is a deliberate act of intimidation,” the federation said in a statement.

The Ontario Camps Association, a non-Jewish group that accredits camps, decried the statements as “deeply concerning.”

“…Certain characterizations and claims, we believe, reflect rhetoric that is discriminatory and antisemitic in nature,” the association said in a statement. “Campaigns such as these can be a dangerous expression of the singular demonization and wholesale attempt at the delegitimization of one minority group and have no place in camp culture or elsewhere.”

The association said it was engaging with Jewish groups to evaluate the situation.