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Opinion: There's Independent Jewish Voices, and then there’s the other 99 per cent of Canadian Jews

Presenting such fringe voices as authoritative representatives of Jewish opinion distorts public understanding

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Ottawa, we have a problem: It’s called tokenism. Tokenism misleads Canadians by elevating a loud fringe as if it were the mainstream, turning a tiny group of individuals into the supposed voice of an entire community. It shields radical agendas by wrapping them in borrowed identities. Tokenism diverts attention from real threats by flooding misleading narratives.

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Tokenism is exactly what’s at stake where in a recent National Post column, Corey Balsam and his associated anti-Zionist group — Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) were platformed, insisting that opposing Israel‘s existence is not antisemitic.

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The core claims of his piece have already drawn sharp rebuttals from writers, academics and commentators, such as Robert Brym, Matthew Taub and Lynne Cohen. However, the deeper question of why IJV are even platformed was sidestepped.

We have heard this story before: Balsam pushes a narrative aimed at persuading Canadians that attacks on Zionism are legitimate critiques. However, we, and many others, argue that anti-Zionism today often operates as a modern hate movement, using “Zionist” as a proxy for “Jew” and denies Jews the right to self-determination, thereby reinforcing a campaign that targets Jewish history and collective identity itself.

While it is understandable that many feel compelled to challenge efforts attempting to normalize anti-Zionism, an even greater concern is having this discussion with IJV. It legitimizes a well-founded radical network, to which they lend their tokenized status.

Some of IJV’s closest allies include the Canadian BDS Coalition, whose campaigns they have, for a long time, proudlyparrotedandadopted. IJV has also made statements defending the fanatical organization Samidoun, now listed as a terrorist entity.

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For those who don’t remember, Samidoun is the group that, while celebrating the one-year anniversary of Hamas’ October 7 attacks at a Vancouver rally, chanted “death to Canada, death to the United States and death to Israel,” following a speaker who told the crowd, “We are Hezbollah and we are Hamas.”

Moreover, IJV routinelycollaborates on advocacy campaigns and socialmediaposts with the influential Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM). Together, they fundraise, co-organize workshops, town halls, author reports, and mobilize for the same events, like the All Out for Gaza protest on October 14, 2023.

IJV also collaborates on Instagram (which is a way of co-authoring posts with other accounts by invitation) with Yipeng Ge, an Ottawa doctor who has posted the following on X: “Palestinians as an indigenous population living under brutal military occupation and colonialism have every right to armed resistance against their oppressors. Solidarity with Palestinians and their right to life and dignity, must extend to solidarity with their armed resistance.” Ge has also shared social media posts supporting Hamas’s orchestrator of the October 7 terrorist attack, Yahya Sinwar. IJV and Ge collaborate through press conferences, statements of support and shared socialmediaposts.

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Often associated with IJV, David Mivasair, posted a report in early December 2023 suggesting sexual violence likely wasn’t committed on October 7, arguing that released female hostages spoke positively about their time in captivity. In March 2024, Pramila Patten, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, found after visiting Hamas’ attack sites that there was reasonable grounds to believe sexual violence had occurred during that attacks and was still occurring with hostages.

For federal elections, IJV has adopted the “Vote Palestine” platform which pressures politicians to adopt stances against many of Israel’s policies.

Independent researchers’ reporting and the Senator Leo Housakos have also noted that IJV shares a mailing address with the anti-Israel advocacy group Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME). CJPME’s current president, Yara Shoufani, began her career with McMaster University’s Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR), a students’ club dedicated to anti-Israel activities, that is currently officially suspended, and an “international leadership role” in PYM.

This is just a glimpse of the network IJV appears to have made itself a front for.

IJV has already begun infiltrating the public conversation about Jew hatred under the guise of expertise. For example, they distorted the Senate of Canada’s Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights’ study of antisemitism, by serving as a Jewish front for a radical network, and importing their ideology into the committee which could lead some to believe they are representative of Jews.

Additionally, IJV was chosen by the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, as well as the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Ontario, to provide “antisemitism training.” Ironically, IJV defended Fred Hahn after he posted what many would view as a clearly antisemitic video, depicting an Olympic diver marked with a Star of David turning into a bomb, followed by scenes of injured civilians. The result is turning genuine efforts to fight hate into platforms for spreading it.

IJV is not an authentic representation of the Jewish community perspective, not even a minority one. While the IJV cites a survey indicating that only 51 percent of Jewish Canadian identify as Zionists, a 2025 survey found that only 1 per cent of Canadian Jews identify as anti-Zionists. As an “advocacy group,” they lend their Jewish identity as a moral authority to anti-Zionists.

Tokenization lies at the heart of this strategy. Throughout history, tokenized voices have been elevated to legitimize broader campaigns against the communities they come from. While minority views can be valuable for an inclusive discussion, tokenized voices are harmful to any discussion, particularly when those tokenized voices push a radical ideology.

Presenting such fringe voices as authoritative representatives of Jewish opinion distorts public understanding and misleads audiences about the breadth of Jewish perspectives.

When IJV is platformed as a moral authority against their own community, the result is not diversity of thought, but the manufacture of a false and damaging consensus that marginalizes mainstream Canadian Jews.

Combating hate means combating tokenism, and it requires action. If Canada is to uphold its commitment to pluralism and genuine inclusion, media outlets, public broadcasters and other institutions should carefully consider whom they elevate and how those voices are presented. Diversity should never be allowed to be manipulated into a weapon against any community.

IJV has had its say and platforming them further will only do harm. Legitimizing those who distort Jewish identity to attack Jewish existence aren’t Canadian values — they are someone else’s values. Platforming IJV again is not inclusion but endorsement of exclusion.

Ori Freiman, Ph.D. Jewish/Zionist

Lauren Frenkel, Jewish/Zionist

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